became clearer to me that when Western psychologists attempt to generalize Caribbean ways of behaving and seeing, they become colonizers once again (Arneaud and Albada , 2013) as they purport to tell story from their own lens; to understand children from the ‘our’ ‘our’ sidewalks of their own differences and customs and rituals. From the responses in both the pilot study and the focus group discussions, there was the recognition of the more personal language, that of creole or kweyol that weaved students’ through the discussions as they sought to construct their stories. I pause to consider this recognition here, not because of their shifts only, but essentially due to my own that ‘shifts’ were occurring. Why did these shifts take place? 2. The Moko Jumbie emerges The is a Carnival character on stilts (aloof from the real concerns of others, ‘Moko Jumbie’ masking his true self and top-down in his regard of persons). I found that in my earlier transcriptions of the data, I had begun to isolate the language with quotation marks; students’ in a sense, to be a to what they represented. As I translated, I had to be ‘moko-jumbie’ constantly aware that even though I was a multicultural subject also, influenced by history and research traditions, that I was not conducting my research in a way that reflected a legacy of language supremacy or allowing myself to slip into of I had to Eisner’s ‘pit solipsism’! reflect on the imbalances that were temporarily created in my mind, and I welcomed the opportunity to refocus my gaze through the lenses of the language of these Caribbean adolescents. As I sought to understand the experiences of the students through their stories, I again wondered how was appropriated by these adolescents. As the researcher, in my ‘language’ interactions with the adolescents, I used the English language. Did I come across ‘standard’ to them as the researcher or should I be the researcher, speaking the ‘intelligent’ ‘grounded’ creolized English that the students used? Was this perception important to them, I wondered. What could be the here, the disparity of power between the researcher ‘power differentials’ and the researched (Fisher and Rosendahl, 1990) even in the language that I used. Are
became clearer to me that when Western psychologists attempt to generalize Caribbean ways of behaving and seeing, they become colonizers once again (Arneaud and Albada , 2013) as they purport to tell ‘our’ story from their own lens; to understand ‘our’ children from the sidewalks of their own differences and customs and rituals. From the responses in both the pilot study and the focus group discussions, there was the recognition of the students’ more personal language, that of creole or kweyol that weaved through the discussions as they sought to construct their stories. I pause to consider this recognition here, not because of their shifts only, but essentially due to my own ‘shifts’ that were occurring. Why did these shifts take place? 2. The Moko Jumbie emerges The ‘Moko Jumbie’ is a Carnival character on stilts (aloof from the real concerns of others, masking his true self and top-down in his regard of persons). I found that in my earlier transcriptions of the data, I had begun to isolate the students’ language with quotation marks; in a sense, to be a ‘moko-jumbie’ to what they represented. As I translated, I had to be constantly aware that even though I was a multicultural subject also, influenced by history and research traditions, that I was not conducting my research in a way that reflected a legacy of language supremacy or allowing myself to slip into Eisner’s ‘pit of solipsism’! I had to reflect on the imbalances that were temporarily created in my mind, and I welcomed the opportunity to refocus my gaze through the lenses of the language of these Caribbean adolescents. As I sought to understand the experiences of the students through their stories, I again wondered how ‘language’ was appropriated by these adolescents. As the researcher, in my interactions with the adolescents, I used the ‘standard’ English language. Did I come across to them as the ‘intelligent’ researcher or should I be the ‘grounded’ researcher, speaking the creolized English that the students used? Was this perception important to them, I wondered. What could be the ‘power differentials’ here, the disparity of power between the researcher and the researched (Fisher and Rosendahl, 1990) even in the language that I used. Are
Final%20Submission%20June%2C%202017%20-The%20University%20of%20Sheffield%20-%20Submission%20of%20the%20Dissertation.%20Ed.D%20-%20%28Caribbean%29.docx