Criticality and reflection

PhD Training Session26/1/2012

Sarah AmslerHeather Hughes

Linda Hitchin

Claudia Markovich ‘Reflection’ at http://www.claudiampublications.com/TheCards/CardReflection.shtml

M.C. Escher ‘Self-portrait in spherical mirror’

Today’s programme...

• ‘Criticality’, ‘reflection’ and ‘reflexivity’ are central to all research

• They have different meanings in different disciplines/subjects and are therefore complex

• Our task today: to explore these concepts in order to problematise them

By the end of the session.....

• Clarifying meanings of and relationships between ‘reflection’, ‘reflexivity’ and ‘critical reflexivity’

• Understanding how we are located, individually and collectively, in relation to these concepts in terms of disciplines/subjects

• Understanding how we might apply them to our own research practices

Reflections.... A taskLook at your own reflection in the mirror; what

do you see? Write something downLook at your partner’s reflection: write

something down (but don’t share this yet)

Reflecting as critical practice: some questions

What choices did you make when deciding what to write about your own image? About another’s?

Are there thoughts you entertained but did not write; things you wrote but do not say? Are there resistances to writing and saying things about yourself/others?

Does it matter who holds the mirror? Would it matter if you were doing this at night, by candlelight? In front of a wall-sized mirror? With a different group of people? If you could not see with your eyes?

What do your reflections actually represent?

How can we use this practice of reflecting in our scholarly research?

Reflections....responsesCan I draw what I see? Does it have to be written?Emotional experience of looking at selfDifferences/tensions – in head/mind, words, visual imagesWhat small parts of a person/experience/experiment end up as

public ‘artefacts’?Outside is different from inside: dissonanceDistance of mirror affects our attitude: too close is not good

Reflections....responsesReflections can be true and not true; mirrors hide as well as

revealWhat one sees is uniqueTaking a photo of reflections: collapsing complexity, or

creating it?We use ‘devices’ external to reflection to interpret itIs reflection a form of affirmation or not?

Reflections....responses

What we ‘see’ is shaped by social expectationsWe tend not to stop at description: we are

inclined to abstract and interpretReflection can be about far more than what we

‘see’ – we draw on associations

From reflection to reflexivity

Exploring examples in science, in social science......[Reading time for McGregor and Amsler]

Responses• Our literature review provides the best opportunity for reflection: looking

back to what we reject, what guides us• Reflection can be

– Adaptation– Looking back– Locating politics of choice

• What difference does it make when we are researching THINGS/non-human living organisms?

• ‘Headwriting’ to connect researchers to their research• Violence/violation in research relationships?

More responses...• Experience of professional practice – which is not like

academic research at all! (Eg life of journalist in China)• Reflection: a lens? • Reflexivity: a WAY of doing research; ongoing process• Does reflexivity encompass a universal process?• The significance of situated knowledge

‘Reflexive turns’ in the (‘western’) world of research

• Critiques of positivism from 19th century• Marxist theories of knowledge and power• Feminist theories of situated knowledges• Constructionist theories of lab knowledge• Post-structuralist theories of racialised/universalising

expertise; postmodernism• ‘Writing the world’ – anthropological critique• Action research, militant research, radical science• [to be developed by ‘us’ (?) – critiques, contributions]

Further questions to consider

• Constructionism– As researchers, how are we placed in relation to the topics/processed we are

investigating? Is ‘objectivity’ possible?– Is our role to uncover ‘truth’ - or to question whether there is such a thing?

Are there not always things which we include and exclude? On what basis does this happen?

– Does it matter for us to grasp the situated nature of our own work?• And more……

– When does a truth become a truth – or an error – or a falsehood – and then maybe a truth again?

– Distinction between reflection and reflexivity?– Can you think of examples from your own disciplinary background?

The case of the LHC• LHC commissioned at CERN after 20 years’

planning/construction• Most powerful particle accelerator ever built• To investigate the building blocks of the universe:

particle physics and the fundamental constituents of matter; the Big Bang

• ‘The LHC is going to tell us more about everything’ – Tara Shears

News release 13 Dec 2011

“In a seminar held at CERN today, the ATLAS and CMS experiments presented the status of their searches for the Standard Model Higgs boson. Their results are based on the analysis of considerably more data than those presented at the summer conferences, sufficient to make significant progress in the search for the Higgs boson, but not enough to make any conclusive statement on the existence or non-existence of the elusive Higgs. The main conclusion is that the Standard Model Higgs boson, if it exists, is most likely to have a mass constrained to the range 116-130 GeV by the ATLAS experiment, and 115-127 GeV by CMS. Tantalising hints have been seen by both experiments in this mass region, but these are not yet strong enough to claim a discovery.” http://press.web.cern.ch/press/

The ultimate reflexive question....

At what stage do we pull the plug....?

Summing up

• The importance of understanding what didn’t work as well as what did

• Does research have an end?