Writing with the ‘Other’: Combining Poetry and Participation to Study Leaders with Disabilities

The Qualitative Report, Nov 2017

In this paper, we describe the process of transformative co-authorship between researchers and a participant with disabilities. The researchers were conducting a larger study that aimed to identify different factors that shaped individuals with disabilities to assume leadership roles. Drawing from interview data obtained from the participant, one researcher wrote a poem that provided a stage for the researchers and the participant to engage in reflexive process that transformed the researchers-participant relationship to that of co-authors. This paper describes this transformative process and what everyone learned from this enriching experience.

A PDF file should load here. If you do not see its contents the file may be temporarily unavailable at the journal website or you do not have a PDF plug-in installed and enabled in your browser.

Alternatively, you can download the file locally and open with any standalone PDF reader:

https://nsuworks.nova.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=3041&context=tqr

Writing with the ‘Other’: Combining Poetry and Participation to Study Leaders with Disabilities

The Qualitative Report riting Qualitative Report 0 1 Rama Cousik 0 1 Indiana University Purdue University Fort Wayne 0 1 0 1 Mariesa K . Rang 0 1 0 Indiana University - Purdue University Fort Wayne , USA 1 Rama Cousik, Paresh Mishra, and Mariesa K. Rang Indiana University - Purdue University Fort Wayne , Indiana , USA Part of the Disability and Equity in Education Commons; Leadership Studies Commons; Poetry - W Participation to Study Leaders with Disabilities Writing with the ‘Other’: Combining Poetry and Participation to Study Leaders with Disabilities Abstract In this paper, we describe the process of transformative co-authorship between researchers and a participant with disabilities. The researchers were conducting a larger study that aimed to identify different factors that shaped individuals with disabilities to assume leadership roles. Drawing from interview data obtained from the participant, one researcher wrote a poem that provided a stage for the researchers and the participant to engage in reflexive process that transformed the researchers-participant relationship to that of co-authors. This paper describes this transformative process and what everyone learned from this enriching experience. Creative Commons License This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 4.0 License. Acknowledgements We thank India Vision Foundation for funding the original study through the Reeta Peshawaria-Menon Fellowship Award which provided data for this paper. This how to article is available in The Qualitative Report: https://nsuworks.nova.edu/tqr/vol22/iss11/15 Writing with the “Other”: Combining Poetry and Participation to Study Leaders with Disabilities In this paper, we describe the process of transformative co-authorship between researchers and a participant with disabilities. The researchers were conducting a larger study that aimed to identify different factors that shaped individuals with disabilities to assume leadership roles. Drawing from interview data obtained from the participant, one researcher wrote a poem that provided a stage for the researchers and the participant to engage in reflexive process that transformed the researchers-participant relationship to that of co-authors. This paper describes this transformative process and what everyone learned from this enriching experience. Keywords: Leadership, Disability, Qualitative Research Methods, Arts-based Research, Participatory Research Research is often conducted on persons with disabilities (PWD) rather than with. This is a phenomenon that is also common to people who may be marginalized due to other factors such as race, class, socio-economic status, ethnicity, and other minority status. There is a focus on educational and socio-emotional outcomes for PWD in published work by researchers and educators in special education. However, since researchers often do not have the disabilities that they research and write about, the extant literature could be heavily biased presenting the perspectives of the powered and the dominant groups while ignoring the voices of PWD. Thus, there is a need for a transformation in the interactional space between the researcher and PWD. This paper describes the reflexive process of the development of co-authorship between two university researchers and a participant who is an adult with disabilities. Kitchin (2000) argues that both the perspectives of the researcher and the researched are needed, so that one may understand multiple and insider perspectives. In addition, enabling and presenting the voices of the researched and seeking their role as co-authors of the resulting text reduces power distance between the two groups; creates a sense of authenticity; and increases the credibility of the research narrative. In this paper, we describe how the first author (henceforth referred to as Author A) and second author (henceforth, Author B) developed a partnership of co-authorship with the third author (henceforth, Author C) who was initially a participant in a study conducted by the first two authors. Research Context The benefits of workplace diversity have been documented well in the diversity literature. For example, workplace diversity has been found to contribute to organizational attractiveness (Avery, 2003; Martins & Parsons, 2007) , performance (Bezrukova, Thatcher, Jehn, & Spell, 2012; Ellis, Mai, & Christian, 2013) and creativity (Pearsall, Ellis, & Evans, 2008; Shin & Zhou, 2007) . A diverse workforce can also be a key for organizations to maintain a sustained competitive advantage (Roberge & van Dick, 2010). Similarly, diversity in leadership has also been linked to enhanced organizational performance (Roberson & Park, 2007) . As organizations strive to be demographically and culturally diverse, the incorporation of diversity in leadership is progressively becoming a central issue in organizations. However, most of the research on diversi (...truncated)


This is a preview of a remote PDF: https://nsuworks.nova.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=3041&context=tqr

Rama Cousik, Paresh Mishra, Mariesa K. Rang. Writing with the ‘Other’: Combining Poetry and Participation to Study Leaders with Disabilities, The Qualitative Report, 2017, Volume 22, Issue 11,