Conference Agenda

Across presentations, this symposium explores implications of the onto-epistemological uncertainty paradigm inherent to new materialism, process research, postqualitative research, and activist methodologies. Turning to ontology in qualitative and participatory research emphasizes research as a worlding practice itself (Lather, 2016; Gullian, 2018). Creating knowledge then becomes about respons-able creation of also the practices of knowing (Barad, 2007) in research situations that researchers are part of. Methodology is no longer unquestioned as a pre-legitimized and pre-scriptive fit, procedure or sequencing - in fact, sometimes questioned all entirely (Jackson, 2017; St. Pierre, 2021). Inquiry includes then, instead, a creative and generative assembling of the research situation and its apparatus of observation to the point of emergence where new thinking and new doings become viable.

For many and diverse groups of emergent and senior researchers, process philosophies and their processual ontologies have been inspirational for enacting research differently and in generative ways (Revsbæk & Simpson, 2022). Postqualitative research (St. Pierre, 2023; Jackson & Mazzei, 2018), advanced in educational research and pioneering in organizational studies, as well as new feminist materialism (Barad, 2007; Barad, 2014; Bozalek & Zembylas, 2017), has proliferated multiple innovative, arts-based approaches to research, creating research which move and make in/with the immanence and uncertainty of a world-in-becoming.

Inspired by the processual and ontological turns and experimenting with the onto-epistemological uncertainties embraced in these approaches, the presenters of the symposium illustrate from empirical research situated in Germany, Belgium and Denmark how specific methodological ideas such as diffraction (Barad, 2007) and utopia as method (Levitas, 2013) are put to work in specific organizational education research engagements.

The symposium will discuss the implications of embracing onto-epistemological uncertainties in the practicing of European organizational education research, offering exemplification and illustration of such practices, and discussing their potential and limitations.

“Once you exceed the threshold, something new happens” (Youngblood & Mazzei, 2012, p. 138). In this presentation, I introduce a diffractive methodology to which uncertainty is inherent and discuss how it can contribute to organisational learning in organisational education research. More specifically, I ask how one can use diffraction to explore organisational education. Diffraction signifies waves that overlap to “break apart in different directions” (Barad 2007, p.168 in Foster & Webb, 2023). It helps to ‘spread our thoughts and questions in unpredictable patterns of waves and intensities’ (Jackson & Mazzei, 2012, p. 138) for exploring organisational learning in times of uncertainty. A diffractive methodology then means diffracting data analysis and interpretation in ‘refracting’ different theorists. When putting into conversation Spivak and Foucault, the data analysis becomes more multi-faceted, maybe also more insecure. Lincoln et al. (2011, p. 100) plead for the 'great potential for interweaving of viewpoints, for the incorporation of multiple perspectives, and borrowing, or bricolage' in combining different paradigms to make space for 'multivocality, contested meanings, paradigmatic controversies, and new textual forms’ (Lincoln, Lynham and Guba, 2011, p. 125). As their quote above indicates, Youngblood & Mazzei (2012) understand their engagement with data from various theorists’ perspectives as the ‘threshold’ which lets new things emerge. I will exemplify this ‘new’ in the context of a current research project on gender and sustainability within higher education in which I understand sustainability as a response to uncertainty in relation to climate change for organisational learning (cf. also Webb & Foster, 2023). In these uncertain times, I draw on and contrast with each other Foucault and Spivak to analyse, shed light and diffract data from interviews with higher education professionals and website analysis. In embracing uncertainty through a diffractive methodology, putting into conversation Spivak and Foucault on gender and sustainability within higher education, this presentation contributes to a methodological discussion on how diffraction in organisational education research can be made fruitful for organisational learning as a different form of inquiry, which is continually developing, unpredictable and allows for looking at the phenomena from various angles.

References: Barad, K. (2007). Meeting the universe halfway: Quantum physics and the entanglement of matter and meaning. Duke University Press. Bozalek, V. and Zembylas, M. (2017) ‘Diffraction or reflection? Sketching the contours of two methodologies in educational research’, International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education, 30(2), pp. 111–127. doi: 10.1080/09518398.2016.1201166. Lincoln, Y. S., Lynham, S. A. and Guba, E. G. (2011) ‘Paradigmatic controversies, contradictions, and emerging confluences’, in Denzin, N. K. and Lincoln, Y. S. (eds) The SAGE Handbook of Qualitative Research. 4th ed. CA: Sage, pp. 97–127. St. Pierre, E. A. (2011) ‘Post Qualitative Research. The critique and the coming after.’, in Lincoln, N. K. and Denzin, Y. S. (eds) The SAGE Handbook of Qualitative Research. 4th ed. CA: Sage, pp. 611–626. Webb, R and Foster, K. (2023) Championing a not knowing Transformative Pedagogy and Practice: re-envisioning the role of the ECEC Practitioner, in C. Solvason and R. Webb (Eds)., Exploring and Celebrating the Early Childhood Practitioner: An Interrogation of Pedagogy, Professionalism and Practice. New York, Routledge. Youngblood, J. A. and Mazzei, L. A. (2012) Thinking with theory in qualitative research: Viewing data across multiple perspectives. New York, NY: Routledge 2012.

Utopia is a concept that fascinates scholars stemming from a variety of research traditions (e.g. literature, philosophy, educational sciences and sociology). From the pun of ‘good’ (εὖ/eu) and ‘no’ (οὐ/ou) ‘place’ (τόπος/topos), it is often described as the never attainable goal of an imaginary good place where humankind could live in harmony. However, utopia could equally be deployed as a method, rather than as a goal: as an approach not just to imagine but also to create another world (see Levitas, 2013). Within an anti-utopian or dystopian thinking, the results are clear, even totalitarian certain. The opposite is at stake when exploring a utopian methodology: a prefiguration of a utopian future is always open, unclear, uncertain. Even as the philosophical positionality is not always made explicit, a utopian methodology nurtures scholars in educational intervention studies (Rajala et al., 2023), in (participatory) action research approaches (Egmose et al., 2020) and in projects that coproduce knowledge in communities (Bell & Pahl, 2017). Despite differences between these studies, they share a commitment to imagining new possibilities, to creating transformations in society and organizations, to critically assessing our current state of play, and to sensitizing for sustainability, equity and democracy. Within my current ethnographical project, I inquire learning materials and strategies developed in a specific educational organization. This organization has a strong commitment to an equitable and democratic education system: within the same organizational structure it combines a school – where Bildung towards a better future is at stake for pupils who are behind, and a SME - a company designing profitable digital tools for the market of pupils with severe learning problems. The project is rooted in the so-called EdTechTestbed-movement, a growing branch in the Belgian field of education that seeks co-creation amongst educational, business and research institutions. Considering learning materials and strategies as utopian prefigurations is one methodological possibility: the everyday activities, the digital tools, the strategies of the teachers and company members could be seen as educational interventions towards a yet uncertain new future. Envisioning this future, grounded in the everyday materials and strategies, is one thing I would like to exemplify. However, also another utopian methodological, merely participatory approach is possible: organizations could participatory seek to develop differently towards a preferred future. By imagining and creating something new together, a utopian future can become viable and achievable, although this utopian envisioning is necessarily provisional, reflexive, dialogical (Levitas, 2013) and thus uncertain.

References: Bell, D. M., & Pahl, K. (2017). Co-production: Towards a utopian approach. International Journal of Social Research Methodology, 21(1), 105-117. Egmose, J., Gleerup, J., & Nielsen, B. S. (2020). Critical Utopian Action Research: Methodological Inspiration for Democratization? International Review of Qualitative Research, 13(2), 233-246. Levitas, R. (2013). Utopia as method. The imaginary reconstitution of society. Palgrave Macmillan. Rajala, A., Cole, M., & Esteban-Guitart, M. (2023). Utopian methodology: Researching educational interventions to promote equity over multiple timescales. Journal of the Learning Sciences, 32(1), 110-136.

From pragmatist Mary Parker Follett, researchers oriented towards community development as part of their participatory research engagements, may draw inspiration regarding community as process (1919), the evolvement of a situation in circular responding of everyone involved, and Follett’s concept of integrative, creative experience (1924[2013]) as a nodal point in community development and the becoming of selves. ‘Togethering’ a situation in whole-a-making (Ibid.) across occasions, actors, fields, and time, have been explored in diffractive inquiry (Revsbæk & Beavan, forthcoming) drawing on Karen Barad’s diffractive methodology of reading insights through one another (Barad, 2007; 2014) in a proliferating process of continued differencing that brings “inventive provocations” which are “good to think with” (Dolphijn & van der Tuin, 2012, p.50). ‘Togethering situation’ as an integrative attitude of inquiry relevant to participatory research is exemplified, drawing on empirics from an action research collaboration between university-based researchers and social care professionals and managers to improve employee onboarding and induction in a Danish care institution for adults with developmental disabilities. Originated as an attitude of inquiry across fields of research and in creative collaborative writing between different researchers (Revsbæk & Beavan, forthcoming), in participatory research a togethering of situation may be conducted across and including different groups of actors in a case study, across case studies, or across case study situations and those in the research literature. As such, the proposed attitude of inquiry from Mary Parker Follett’s concept of ‘Gesammtsituation’ (1924[2013]), responds to the debated concerns of how to combine postqualitative practices of ‘thinking with theory’ with participatory research aimed in part at community development (Mazzei & Jackson, 2023). Responding to the idea of organizational socialization as kin-work (Gilmore & Harding, 2021), the paper explores the idea of togethering situation for community building in participatory research on organizational onboarding.

References: Barad, K. (2007). Meeting the universe halfway: Quantum physics and the entanglement of matter and meaning. Duke University Press. Barad, K. (2014). Diffracting diffraction: Cutting together-apart. Parallax, 20(3), 168-187. https://doi.org/10.1080/13534645.2014.927623 Dolphijn, R., & Van der Tuin, I. (2012). “Matter feels, converses, suffers, desires, yearns and remembers”: Interview with Karen Barad. In R. Dolphijn & I. Van der Tuin (Eds.), New Materialism: Interviews & Cartographies. Open Humanities Press, An imprint of Michigan Publishing, University of Michigan Library. https://doi.org/10.3998/ohp.11515701.0001.001 Follett, M. P. (1919). Community is a process. The Philosophical Review, 28(6), 576-588. Follett, M. P. (1924[2013]). Creative experience. Longmans, Green and company. Gilmore, S., & Harding, N. (2022). Organizational socialization as kin-work: A psychoanalytic model of settling into a new job. Human Relations, 75(3), 583-605. https://doi.org/10.1177/0018726720964255 Mazzei, L. A. & Jackson, A. Y. (2023). Inquiry as unthought: The emergence of thinking otherwise, Qualitative Inquiry, 29(1), 168-178. Revsbæk, L. & Beavan, K. (accepted for publication/forthcoming). Togethering situation in diffractive inquiry, Qualitative Inquiry.