Abstract
The email heading seemed innocent enough. It read, “A Quick Query.” The note opened with a formal salutation and some pleasantries but swiftly got to the point. In relevant part, it read: I’m teaching an epistemology course in a social work doctoral program. Students are from a diverse background and grappling with the epistemological questions leading to their qualitative research. I find that these epistemological underpinnings are often not adequately explored, although crucial in qualitative research. There are several powerful papers coming out of this course that I believe are important to share with QSW readers. Would you suggest that the students individually submit them for your consideration? I wonder if it is wiser to guest edit a section of the journal, perhaps the new voices section?” (Kumsa, private email communication 3 December 2014)
I responded to Dr Kumsa’s email query cautiously, unwilling to commit a section of the journal, as I had no idea what her student papers might look like. We developed a plan where Martha would forward me the polished papers when ready and I would make a decision about how to proceed. In late February 2015, they arrived in my editor’s inbox. I opened the first, intending merely to skim though a handful of them in order to assess the general quality. The next thing I knew I was engrossed in reading, one by one, until I made my way through the entire stack in one sitting. Each paper stood alone as an independent gem. Even more remarkably, however, the collection seemed to magnify the power of the individual messages, reflecting and refracting struggles and accomplishments of the group. As one of the sojourners had summarized, they were engaged in journeys of clarity and confusion. Students reached moments of lucidity only to be plunged back into the darkness of chaos and confusion. Clearly, the students had ventured forth as a united crew, weathering some rough emotional, personal, and professional waters in the process and had temporarily docked in their epistemological voyages. In short, the collection of papers offered a spellbinding read. I immediately understood the importance of keeping them together.
Perhaps the boundary of the project should have ended there. However, inspired by the power and potential of the essays, a more ambitious plan began to take root. It was partly borne out of circumstance. This too requires some additional explanation. Let me start decades earlier when I was a doctoral student nearing the end of my program of study at Columbia University School of Social Work in New York City. One of my favorite faculty mentors, Denise Burnette, had been granted permission to teach a qualitative research methods course, the first to be offered in recent memory at the school. Even though I had finished all of my course work, I begged Denise for the opportunity to sit in on her new course. Denise—clearly with an eye on the class roster, which was already bursting at the seams—answered my pleas with a polite, but firm, “no.”
As fate would have it—in early 2015 when the Kumsa Collection arrived—I was once again in New York City and in the proximity of the Columbia University School of Social Work. I was on sabbatical from my university and had temporarily relocated for my research. Denise happened to be half-way through teaching a two-semester course on qualitative research methods to the latest batch of Columbia doctoral students. Never mind that it was nearly two decades late, I asked, yet again, if I could sit in on her course. This time she granted permission. The next thing I knew, I was joining a second faculty member, Ellen Lukens, who was also auditing the course, and a flock of doctoral students.
Although Denise’s course focused on methodology, not epistemology, the question Martha had posed to her students: “how do you know what you know?” was obviously relevant. I approached Denise with the idea of sharing the Kumsa Collection—with permission from the authors, of course—with the Columbia students. Eventually, with the ongoing permission of the Wilfrid Laurier students, and the blessings of both Martha and Denise, I not only shared the “Canadian papers” with the Columbia students but extended an invitation to join the writing project with their own versions of how they knew what they know. I envisioned an expansion of the Wilfrid Laurier discussion to a second university, in a second country, with a second pool of talented and equally diverse students.
In the end, five of these Columbia students joined the project working diligently on essays that earned them no academic credit but did entitle them to a place in this issue of QSW. To some extent, they worked against the odds through the summer months well after the course had ended. The project entailed many weekend skype calls, straddling three zones that linked students in NYC with a classmate in India and another in Mexico. There were hours of community and individual feedback and countless revisions. There were false starts, “ah ha!” moments, uneven progress and the occasional tears shed in moments of frustration. Quitting and being drawn back into the group, self-doubt and discovery were all integral parts of the process. I was reminded, during this period, how hard these journeys are. As an educator, I was also reminded how difficult the work of guiding students to question what they know and how they know. It is so much easier, for example, to teach the mechanics of coding, than wrestle with this emotional and challenging terrain.
In addition to the Columbia papers, a third step was added to this project. I invited a handful of “senior scholars” into the fold, asking two favors of them. The first was to provide peer review feedback for all the student essays. The second was to submit an essay of their own, reflecting on their epistemological journeys. I am extraordinarily grateful for the work of four generous senior scholars: Silvia Nicoletta Fargion from Free University of Bozen in Italy, Lesley Chenoweth from Griffith University School of Human Services and Social Work in Australia, as well as Mark Hardy from University of York and Alastair (Ali) Neil Roy, a Reader in Psychosocial Research at the University of Central Lancashire. Mark and Ali are both from the United Kingdom. All four scholars offered extensive feedback on the student submissions. In addition, three of them found time in their busy schedules to contribute essays of their own to our growing collection.
In short, with the permission and supreme patience of the Wilfrid Laurier students, their course papers became the backbone of this “epistemology project” which has been supplemented with the Columbia doctoral student and senior scholar essays. The net result is the collection of articles between the covers of this double issue. I hope they reflect both intergenerational and international conversations on epistemological journeying.
This double issue opens with an introductory editorial by Dr Kumsa offering her thoughts about the project’s earliest days. It is called, Thinking about research. Essays by her seven students follow. They are Kelly Laurila’s “Indigenous knowledge? Listening for the drumbeat and searching for how I know,” Iona Sky’s “Searching for my palm tree: Epistemological journeying of a doctoral student,” Karun Karki’s “Walking in complexities between two worlds: A personal story of epistemological tensions in knowledge production,” Bibi Baksh’s “Clarity and confusion: A Muslim student’s struggle with identity and epistemology in academia,” Wen Juan (Helen) Song’s “A new face of homelessness? Researching the experience of ‘home’ with Chinese high school students in Canadian homes,” Julia Read’s “From diagnosis to research: My epistemological journey towards wholistic qualitative methods” and last, but not least, Aaron Smith’s “Redeeming the rejected: Curious George and evidence-based approaches.”
The Wilfrid Laurier essays are followed by the five written by Columbia University students. They are David Camacho’s “Blurring boundaries: An emotionally aware caregiver, social worker AND researcher,” Laura Vargas’s “Violence, silence and health service provision in Mexico: An arrangement in parts,” Anindita Bhattacharya’s “The many ways of knowing: Embracing multiplicity in narrative research,” Kiara Moore’s “Living liminal: Reflexive epistemological positioning at the intersection of marginalized identities” and Vanessa Wells’s “Falling through the U.S. safety net: Alice’s adventures in social services.”
The final section of this special issue concludes with the contributions of our three senior scholars. They looked back on their longer histories of wrestling with these questions and what they have learned along the way. First, Lesley Chenoweth’s “The road behind and the journey ahead: Travels in epistemology,” next Alastair Neil Roy’s “Field Work Reflections: Journeys in knowing and not-knowing” and finally, Mark Hardy “I know what I like and I like what I know’: Epistemology in practice and theory and practice again.”
What we hope you will find reading this double issue are some provocative essays coming from a diverse and global community of beginning and seasoned scholars. The authors originally hail from Mexico, China, Guyana, England, Nepal, Canada, India, Australia, U.S., and the Middle East. They offer views from secular and religious, indigenous and settler, native and immigrant perspectives. They speak of addiction and recovery, home and homelessness, living with disabilities, violence, or in poverty. Many of the pieces implicitly or explicitly wrestle with the complexity of “walking in two worlds” and with multiple identities. They speak of the complexities of knowledge stemming from being bi-lingual, bi-cultural, and multi-racial. They help us learn about translating, living with in-between ambiguities, or in liminal spaces. They negotiate and navigate their ways toward clarity only to be plunged back into confusion. They show us how to reexamine what we are sure we already know, only to discover that there are indeed other different ways of knowing. From the senior scholars we get poignant reflections of looking back, looking forward, revisiting, remembering, and making renewed sense. We hope readers will be inspired by drumbeats, palm trees, bananas, and cannoli or the emotional roller coaster ride of providing care to parents, revisiting entrenched family stories and secrets, living in poverty, or negotiating silences created by unpredictable, but pervasive, violence.
As an editor of QSW, I also hope that taken together this special issue will offer both inspiration and instruction. The issue might aid those beginning their journeys as qualitative researchers. It might help them think about unearthing their belief systems and shaping their research identities. The collection of essays should also provide some reassurance that we all feel lost or unsure of ourselves sometimes. I also hope the essays will be interesting to those who are already further along in their careers, allowing them to reflect on their own histories with this material. Finally, I hope that the collection will invite contemplation on the rich tapestry of experiences of knowing available to us, particularly when we are willing to embrace difference.
Among Martha Kumsa’s original course objectives were to “start from where we are at and engage in reflexive explorations of our embodied knowledge” and “to deepen our understanding of our assumptions about knowledges and knowers.” With this issue of QSW, we invite readers into that struggle. Ask yourself: How do I know what I know? Answering it may take you on an unexpected quest of your own.
As a final note, we close this volume with our annual tribute to all of the peer-reviewers and referees who have so willingly given their time over the last year. As always, we could not produce this journal without their generous and intelligent contributions to the process.