Positionality and reflexivity: Recognising and dismantling our privileges in childhood research through the use of windows and mirrors

This article explores how privileges, identities and worldviews influence every stage of childhood research processes. By using the ‘windows and mirrors’ and ‘the danger of the single story’ metaphors, I seek to deconstruct reflexivity and positionality in order to include different lenses of analysis for exploring how power and privileges inform the relationship between researchers and child participants. I argue that this reflexive process needs to pay greater attention to the intersection between identities, inequalities and power, to the impact of researchers feeling sympathy for the marginalised status of the child participant and to the normative and dominant positions that researchers might have based on their social standing. Drawing from my international fieldwork experience, I conclude that an understanding of how identities, power and privileges affect childhood research is critical for conducting ethical research, negotiating power with child participants and dismantling researchers’ privileges.

Women in the field: Positioning, troubling, and (em)bodying researcher identities in international and comparative education

In this paper, I consider not only issues associated with the positionality of the researcher in international and comparative education fieldwork, but also how the researcher’s gender intercedes and intersects with position. Using heuristic research methods, specifically (self-)dialogue and the collection of research manuscripts, I explored how women researchers describe their experiences conducting international fieldwork and how they position their work as insiders/outsiders. Findings suggest that women struggled less with their insider/outsider stance than they did with a researcher/practitioner stance. Additionally, women spoke of gender as being associated with their bodies, perceptions of their bodies by participants and others, and how this positioned them in the field. Important, challenging questions emerged related to how we train women researchers, the homogeneity of the field of international and comparative education, and using gender norms to gain access to participants.