Abstract:
This paper discusses participation by one of three co-researchers in a pilot project, ‘Becoming a researcher’, which used three different qualitative methods to engage with ten postgraduate-research students in an extended, evolving, conversation about how they felt themselves developing as researchers. The three methods were phenomenography (Elaine Martin), creative arts (Laura Brearley), and composite narrative (Barbara Brook). The project sought to understand something about the way postgraduate students perceive themselves in relation to their research and how this perception may contribute to their inclusion of ‘researcher’ in their sense of self. The project was motivated by a concern that the current research-training focus is heavily on pragmatic aspects and does not pay due attention to the more complex and sometimes contradictory aspects of postgraduate experience as the research students themselves experience, feel, and articulate it. This paper forms a third of the symposium, ‘A Thrice-told Tale of Becoming a Researcher’, presented at the AARE conference 2004, and reflects on some of the problems and processes of the composite narrative component.