Thematic Chapter 5 - A beautiful mess: Keeping hold of messiness and complexity  in  research 

Liz Todd, Jo Rose

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingChapter in a book

Abstract

This chapter explores how the case studies were “messy” research. Because we were researching in contexts with many unknowns, the research process was unpredictable. “Tidying up” the research in advance, and working within clearly-defined parameters, was not usually possible. Across the case studies, mess occurred at different points and in different ways in the research process. For some projects, the design itself was subject to uncertainty and change: sometimes what had been planned was not to possible, sometimes what had been planned was not the best course of action as the project progressed, and sometimes the design itself was emergent, requiring creativity and flexibility to meet the project outcomes. Some projects faced messiness when trying to combine methods and data. Others encountered messiness when collecting data, deciding what counted as data, and interpreting data. The real world nature of our research, and our need to be responsive to dynamic and often unknown out-of-school contexts, meant that our methods could not fit into the neatly-structured shorthand that is often used to think about (and teach about) methods. As researchers, we were constantly dealing with fluid and changing identities, as our relationships with participants and spaces developed during the project. This also means that tidying up our research could be counter-productive. The chapter concludes that making sense of mess in research can reveal understandings that are sometimes hidden. Mess and complexity, then, is something to be held on to, celebrated, and engaged with, rather than tidied away.
Original languageEnglish
Title of host publicationRepositioning Out-of-School Learning: Methodological challenges and possibilities for researching learning beyond school
EditorsJo Rose, Tim Jay, Janet Goodall, Laura Mazzoli Smith, Liz Todd
PublisherEmerald
Chapter14
Publication statusPublished - 21 Jan 2022

Publication series

NameEmerald Studies in Out-of-School Learning
Volume1

Bibliographical note

Edited by Rose, J., Jay, T., Goodall, J., Mazzoli Smith, L. and Todd, L.

Research Groups and Themes

  • SoE Centre for Psychological Approaches for Studying Education

Keywords

  • Messy research
  • Complexity
  • Transparency of methods
  • Researcher identity
  • Innovative methods
  • Unpredictability

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