Critical Qualitative Research as Consciousness Raising: The Dialogic Texts of Researcher/Researchee Interactions

Abstract

In this article, the author explores the critical potential for consciousness raising available when critical researchers and researchees interact about ethnographic texts. A critical ethnography of an elementary constructivist charter school provides the context for this article, which aims to build methodological theory capable of explaining the consciousness-raising potential of critical ethnography and epistemology. The author achieves this by locating the way relevant third-person positions burst through three modes of consciousness-raising texts: texts of form, texts of coherence, and texts of difference. The innovation to theory involves precisely locating various third-person positions through respective universalizing moments as idealized force against either generalized, relativized claims that are produced through empirically contingent texts or counter idealized claims. Moreover, the article exemplifies the methodological potential for (a) reformulating the “text’ metaphor in action-theoretic terms and (b) retaining researchees as primary audiences for research texts.