Shameful interest in educational research

• Published in: Critical studies in education Vol. 61; no. 4; pp. 416 - 432
• Main Authors: Mayes, Eve, Wolfe, Melissa Joy
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Melbourne Routledge 07.08.2020; Taylor & Francis Ltd
• Subjects: Action research; Affect; Affective Behavior; Barad (K); Educational Research; Educational Researchers; Emotional response; Ethics; Feminist criticism; interest; Karen Barad; Professional ethics; Psychological Patterns; Research ethics; Research Methodology; Researchers; response-ability; Responsibility; Secondary education; Shame; Student empowerment; Tomkins (S); Vignettes
• ISSN: 1750-8487; 1750-8495
• DOI: 10.1080/17508487.2018.1489871

This article considers ontological conceptualizations of shame-interest as experienced in educational research. Shame has frequently been reported in research as a property of the autonomous individual: the shame of the participant to share with the researcher, and the shame of the researcher to reflexively eliminate. Shame-interest is re-theorized here as a generative research event, as intra-action, as one simultaneous movement in the ongoing present. We attempt an ethical shift from a reflexive stance to fluxing movements of response-ability and co-consequence in order to encourage socially responsive educational research, informed through the conceptual resources of psychologist Silvan Tomkins, and feminist philosopher and physicist Karen Barad. Theory is threaded through a series of personal research vignettes to illustrate our thinking through ways shame-interest materialized within research events. Shame is re/conceptualized as a contestable composite feeling entangled with interest that allows an alternate non-reductive and ethical approach to educational research. We amplify our researcher responsibility, and our shame, by placing ourselves as entangled with the research 'problem' under investigation.