1. An Exploration of Doctoral
Students’ Reflections on
Researching Multilingually
Mariam Attia & Richard Fay
Researching Multilingually Durham Seminar 28 March 2012

2. What?
This presentation is based on
• an analysis of public-facing online texts
• performances of developing researcher
competence
• a process of reflection on action (Schön,1983, 1987,
1992; Boud & Walker, 1998)
• reflection on the experience of doing research
multilingually.

3. Why?
Purpose
• to see what we can learn from these reflections
on experience
• in order to contribute to researcher education
with regard to better understanding the
complexities of multilingual research design
• and how researchers (e.g. doctoral students and
their supervisors) might be better prepared for
these complexities.

4. How?
2)We gave profile writers two prompts:
• What is your experience of doing research
multilingually? (reflection on experience; resonating with
Schön 1983, 1987, Boud & Walker, 1998)
• What is your experience of becoming aware of
the complexities in this area? (meta awareness;
associated with developing intentionalities, Stelma, 2011, Stelma
& Fay, in process)

5. How?
b) We want to develop a way of
understanding these profile data:
Particularities
Form Content
Commonalities and syntheses

6. How?
Each end of the two continua could be
framed as a question:
Based on their profiles what can we learn about each
doctoral researcher’s :
• performance of their reflection on action? (form-focused
particularities)
• insights into researching multilingually? (content-focused
particularities)

7. How?
From our analyses of the profiles what can we learn
collectively about doctoral researchers’:
• performance of their reflection on action? (form-focused
synthesis of particularities and commonalities)
• insights about researching multilingually? (content-focused
synthesis and commonalities)

8. Analytical Framework
• We have four research questions for analyzing
the profiles which the doctoral researchers
performed in response to two prompts.
• We are currently exploring the value to this
analysis of the framework used by Klenowski and
Lunt (2008) to analyze reflective statements by
doctoral researchers.

9. Exploring the Profiles
In the remainder of the presentation we will
• present our analysis of one profile in relation to
research questions 1 and 2
• invite you to similarly explore a second profile

10. Sara’s Profile

11. Sara’s Profile
Based on Sara’s profile what can we learn about her
• performance of reflection on action? (form-focused
particularities)
• insights into researching multilingually? (content-
focused particularities)

12. 1. Performance of reflection on action
• Storyline
• RM-relevant to researcher background and
experience (overview)
• Presentation of specific RM study
• Study’s defining RM-characteristics
• Researcher’s developing RM-awareness from the
experience
• Performance of developing researcher
competence

13. Sara’s Profile
• Storyline
“My personal experience of researching multilingually can be
considered as a sort of ‘necessity made virtue’ “
• RM-relevant to researcher background and
experience (overview)
“Coming from an academic background in the Cultural Studies of
Eastern Asia and International Cooperation my research interests
placed me within contexts where Italian, despite being my mother
tongue and the language I always consider I am translating
myself from, was never central in the research design”

14. Sara’s Profile
Presentation of specific RM study
“Central for developing considerations around the multilingual
dimension of research practice have particularly been my two
years of experience within local communities in the North East of
England”.
Study’s defining RM-characteristic(s)
“Central in the research implementation has been the issue of
translating participants’ individual narrations into a language-
English that has been a central and mandatory working and
communicational choice, without it being my first language and
often neither it being the mother tongue of the participants”

15. 2. Insights into researching
multilingually
• Researcher’s developing RM-awareness from the
experience
“Research experience with such a diverse range of women and my
own experience of always working ‘multilingually’ made me
reflect on how the emotional component of language risk to get
lost in translation”
• Performance of developing researcher
competence
“I became convinced that cultural awareness and openness to
diversity together with a flexible multilingualism can support this
process, being powerful tools to engage participants and
encourage their subjective narrations even on sensitive topics”

16. Exploring Vivien’s profile
Let’s discuss..

17. Final Thoughts
• Why is a better understanding of doctoral
researchers’ performance of reflection on action
useful?
• Are the insights alone sufficient?

18. Thank you
mail@mariamattia.com
richard.fay@manchester.ac.uk