Abstract:
Over the past three decades, qualitative research has called attention to thinking deeply, differently, disruptively and diffractively. This article responds to the possibilities for this type of work by exploring my subjectivity emerging within the process of data collection while investigating the student-teacher interactions in Taiwanese buxiban classrooms. The data for this paper were from research conducted in a Taiwanese buxiban (private cram schools) classroom with a focus on an examination of student-teacher interactions through the poststructuralist concepts of subject positions, relations of power, space, language and discourse. In addition to the main characters, teachers and students, in this study, I also connected to them tightly instead of being a complete outsider. In other words, it is inevitable to take my positions into consideration when collecting and analyzing data.
By asking myself who I was while collecting data, instead of being in a fixed position, I would like to argue that my subjectivity is in a process of becoming through my interactions with the participants, spaces and discourses. My becoming-subjectivity further indicates how power is exercised as well as how the participants positioned themselves during this data collection. In this paper, I attempt to rethink the possibilities for seeing data differently and deeply by unfolding my becoming-subjectivity, which further makes a response to calls for alternative forms of qualitative research that require researchers to think differently.
By asking myself who I was while collecting data, instead of being in a fixed position, I would like to argue that my subjectivity is in a process of becoming through my interactions with the participants, spaces and discourses. My becoming-subjectivity further indicates how power is exercised as well as how the participants positioned themselves during this data collection. In this paper, I attempt to rethink the possibilities for seeing data differently and deeply by unfolding my becoming-subjectivity, which further makes a response to calls for alternative forms of qualitative research that require researchers to think differently.