Constructing a western researcher's identity and professional integrity in difference: restorying the encountered 'exceptional' as an act of locating possible worlds

Abstract

This autobiographical narrative relates to an ongoing process of 'becoming' a western researcher in non-western contexts. There is an inherent tension between the existing and western introduced paradigm shifts that function to contain ways in which I, as the researcher, could develop faith and trust in myself, in order to insert a more generative and generous local voice into the practice of education. The paper charts a narrative of my experience as I expose my subsequent feelings of uncertainty and doubt through reflecting on processes I engaged in from the time I began my doctoral research process to my current interest in diverse research contexts in the South Pacific and Asia. It introduces influential colleagues, human relationships, critical incidents and events that were crucial to my 'becoming' a researcher. It also describes those generative and creative times when I was able to voyage in, exoticise the domestic and challenge the essentialised discourse I had taken up and subsequently used to guide my initial reflections on the process and product of my research in those cultural contexts (White, 1992). Ultimately then, through narrative, this paper is about being and 'becoming' a western educational researcher in contexts where it is necessary to continually locate a space to withdraw and observe, while remaining involved but detached, in order to make visible those conditions that continue to construct subjectivity and guide beliefs and practices.