Researcher positionality: Reflexivity, ethnic identities, and cultural lines of difference in multicultural research

Researchers’ positionality shapes the research facilitation and data analysis. This chapter illustrates the multiple positionalities of the two authors in a study of an informal multicultural teacher education programme. This positionality is central to the interpretation of visual data—short videos produced by a group of pre-service teachers. Embedded in such interpretive processes are the authors’ own ethnic identities and their perceptions of participants’ ethnicity. The reflexivity in these processes offers a nuanced understanding of how researchers actively, but implicitly, construct cultural lines of differences by the classification of English names and usage of pronouns between them and their participants. The interweaving of positionalities resulted in a methodological perspective-taking that underlies culturally sensitive research facilitation. Copyright © 2023 The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG.