Articulating choice and deliberation in conducting research-researchers ‘working in the interpretive zone’

For researchers, committed to a research problem, finding meaningful answers is a process of careful weighting and interpreting what is actually found as an outcome of their mode of inquiry in reference to initial intentions and research goals. Particularly in doing qualitative research in/on teaching researchers have recognised the need to acknowledge the ways in which one's intentions interact with the process of study, and how they serve to shape research outcomes. Such a recognition calls for attention to working in the interpretive zone (Wasser and Bresler 1996). Based on our own studies on teachers? reflective expertise, we show how articulation of researchers? intent and deliberation in designing a study could ameliorate critical subjectivity and reflection while analysing and interpreting accounts of data and clarifying interactions between researcher and their object of study in the construction of knowledge. This lead us to construct a heuristic tool for achieving greater reflexivity in conducting research, which may be utilised, primarily, in programmes aimed at research education.