100
V. R. Vargas et al.
from here and here…. And now with structure and I remember from my PGCE and they were
pushing me pushing it…and thinking how to be more inductive and they were telling me ‘in
an activity…talk less and do less and let them find out more and more’… and eventually I
was feeling at the end of the lecture ‘oh this is rubbish’ and the feedback from the people
was ‘Wow that was so awesome’ and What? really? honestly??!’
Researcher b: That’s amazing… because you were letting go…
Researchers can also use their agency to take action to balance power relations.
For instance, the researchers mentioned approaches they used to try to blend in within
a group for example, through showing their own vulnerabilities and communicating
empathy so that unequal power relations could be mitigated. It was challenging for
one of the researchers not being able to fluently engage in Spanish with the rest of
the participants which affected their own sense of agency, whilst also, potentially,
equalising power relations.
4.3 Identity
The researchers used a poststructuralist approach to consider their identities as sociocultural phenomena where “social actors claim, contest, and negotiate power and
authority” (Bucholtz and Hall 2008; p. 154). In this way, identity is seen as a social
action that agency can achieve, with interaction being an important component. The
researchers’ identities were thus engaged with in a multidimensional manner. Identity
can be considered as rooted in interaction. Agency, identity and power relations are
profoundly interconnected but are reflected on here in the context of each researcher
and their professional experience.
In the case of researcher B, identity was linked to institutions, agency, service and
active learning. For researcher A, identity was linked to power relations and institutions. Researcher C did not link her own Identity to other themes (see Fig. 1). The
following extract indicates how the researchers linked their identities with contexts
in the global south and global north:
Researcher A: Maybe academia (in the developed world) does something to the beings …
which is about separating those things.
Researcher B: It does exactly that, it puts it in a box doesn’t it? That’s why those women
[the colombian communit] weren’t in the box…that’s why you got that kind of passion in
the classroom because they weren’t separating out the academic self and their real human
self. They were together.
Researcher A: Because separating [identities] helps you create more power relations
maybe…
Researcher B: Or it helps people recognise which bit of you they can gain power over…
so they can gain power over the academic because they’ve got the hierarchy, they’ve got
the institutional hierarchy, they’ve got the teaching hierarchy … I am the teacher you’re the
student, so those hierarchies reveal if you’ve managed to identify if you’ve got the academic
side or if you’ve got the whole person…or you don’t know how powerful they might be, or
they might have all sorts of powers that you know nothing about.
Researcher A: But it’s very scary to look at them because suddenly you’ve got to…
V. R. Vargas et al.
from here and here…. And now with structure and I remember from my PGCE and they were
pushing me pushing it…and thinking how to be more inductive and they were telling me ‘in
an activity…talk less and do less and let them find out more and more’… and eventually I
was feeling at the end of the lecture ‘oh this is rubbish’ and the feedback from the people
was ‘Wow that was so awesome’ and What? really? honestly??!’
Researcher b: That’s amazing… because you were letting go…
Researchers can also use their agency to take action to balance power relations.
For instance, the researchers mentioned approaches they used to try to blend in within
a group for example, through showing their own vulnerabilities and communicating
empathy so that unequal power relations could be mitigated. It was challenging for
one of the researchers not being able to fluently engage in Spanish with the rest of
the participants which affected their own sense of agency, whilst also, potentially,
equalising power relations.
4.3 Identity
The researchers used a poststructuralist approach to consider their identities as sociocultural phenomena where “social actors claim, contest, and negotiate power and
authority” (Bucholtz and Hall 2008; p. 154). In this way, identity is seen as a social
action that agency can achieve, with interaction being an important component. The
researchers’ identities were thus engaged with in a multidimensional manner. Identity
can be considered as rooted in interaction. Agency, identity and power relations are
profoundly interconnected but are reflected on here in the context of each researcher
and their professional experience.
In the case of researcher B, identity was linked to institutions, agency, service and
active learning. For researcher A, identity was linked to power relations and institutions. Researcher C did not link her own Identity to other themes (see Fig. 1). The
following extract indicates how the researchers linked their identities with contexts
in the global south and global north:
Researcher A: Maybe academia (in the developed world) does something to the beings …
which is about separating those things.
Researcher B: It does exactly that, it puts it in a box doesn’t it? That’s why those women
[the colombian communit] weren’t in the box…that’s why you got that kind of passion in
the classroom because they weren’t separating out the academic self and their real human
self. They were together.
Researcher A: Because separating [identities] helps you create more power relations
maybe…
Researcher B: Or it helps people recognise which bit of you they can gain power over…
so they can gain power over the academic because they’ve got the hierarchy, they’ve got
the institutional hierarchy, they’ve got the teaching hierarchy … I am the teacher you’re the
student, so those hierarchies reveal if you’ve managed to identify if you’ve got the academic
side or if you’ve got the whole person…or you don’t know how powerful they might be, or
they might have all sorts of powers that you know nothing about.
Researcher A: But it’s very scary to look at them because suddenly you’ve got to…