Untold Narratives: Creating Space to Think before Responding around Difficult Conversations through Drawing and Soliloquy

Workshop Presentation
Jean Farmer  

This workshop is based on the qualitative methods of my completed PhD – Narratives of Black Women Academics in South African Higher Education - to investigate the experiences of a marginalized group of participants. This way of data collection can be used for broaching sensitive topics or for opening up spaces for discomforting conversations amongst members of a work group. A further consideration in developing this method is that while English is often used as the lingua franca in higher education, it may not be the first languages of the participants. This method affords participants a sense of comfort and time to process with their initial thoughts around the topic in their first language before they are expected to talk in the interview. Participants are asked to first reflect and then draw their context, about their experience or a situation. In this way participants are able to "put down" their thoughts without the hindrance that usually comes with having to immediately be responding to interview questions when English is not their first language. A further advantage is that participants have time to reconsider what they would like to share as only the person doing the drawing knows the exact interpretation of the drawing.