Figure of the 'tightrope walker' in participatory research: an experience of alterity?
Résumé
Contribution
Enrolled in “psychoanalytically orientated clinical approach in education science” (Blanchard-Laville et al., 2005; Blanchard-Laville & Chaussecourte, 2012), we have been conducting participatory research for several years: action-research (Dubost, 1987), intervention-research (Dubois & Hans, 2018), intervention in an open environment (Bordet, 2021) with education professionals (middle and high school teachers, academic trainers, special educational needs teachers…) in France, Lebanon and Morocco. For us, one of the challenges of contemporary educational research is to strengthen the link between researchers and education professionals. This link engages work “with” professionals (Lieberman, 1986) but also work “on” the discourse of the participants involved in the research (Dubois & Kattar, 2017).
However, what we call “participatory research” should be understood more as appellation grouping together a diversity of nominations and practices, rather than a methodology per se. Yves Bonny’s work (Bonny, 2017) highlights this diversity. Indeed, for this author, participatory research can be distinguished from one another according to the place of the scientific frame of reference and the participation of professionals within. Without going back over the history and debates concerning “participatory research” which have marked the different fields of the human and social sciences for more than sixty years, this diversity of doing research “with” refers to epistemological issues which make up the richness, diversity and conflict of the scientific field. Moreover, diversity is also to be understood from a second angle, that of the actors with whom the work is done and pushes us to think about the commitment and the unconscious framework of these actors, their practices as well as the contexts in our research.
For this paper, we will rely on participatory research projet (2019-2021) conducted with eight academic trainers (A.T.) of the academy of Amiens (France) in which we sought to understand how the set of values, social norms and cultural and educational models that support the accompaniment, is experienced by the academic trainers; to study how their representation of the accompaniment that they provide is developed.
Starting from the diversity of participatory research, we will show what characterised our research by analysing the work “with” the A.T. in the aftermath. More specifically, we will discuss the impact of the research process on these professionals involved as the research stages unfolded. In other words, in what way did the collaborative work that was instituted between practitioner and researcher allow for collective elaborations based on experiences that opened up a balance to be achieved between their expectations as academic trainers, the researcher's request and the expectations of the institutional order? In the aftermath, we will analyse the researcher's commitment on the one hand, and on the other, the A.T.'s position, caught between the will to transform elements of their professional practice and the intention to search in a comprehensive way. Moreover, as the A.T. constitute “an instituted collective”, their links “are in a way already there” (Dubois & Hans, 2018), inscribed in an institutional history. Our paper will therefore be an opportunity to return to the “containing function” (Bion, 1962; Winnicott, 1960; Ciccone, 2001; James, 2016) experienced in this group space (A.T. and researcher) where a singular phantasmatic is actualised and in which unconscious anxieties emerge and unfold, including those of fragmentation. Indeed, this unconscious anxiety of fragmentation is present in training and research groups and each member is, more or less, inhabited by the fear of losing “his unity” (Anzieu, 1999) when confronted with alterity.
Method
In our paper, we will return to the way in which the relationship between the researcher and the professionals in the field was constructed, as it seems to us to be a determining factor in the construction of the research mechanism. We will first discuss the process of analysing the “order-offer-demand” in a collective manner, where the aim is to grasp the representations and meanings emanating from academic trainers caught up in real support situations likely to raise questions or represent a professional concern for them. Indeed, participation in participatory research in a clinical approach strongly engages the subjectivity of professionals in relation to their background, gender and age. This experience can neither be dismissed nor taken as an immutable fact. This subjective dimension is expressed in the collective dynamics and constitutes its complexity. Secondly, we will develop the different stages of the participatory research that we conducted: the problematisation of the research questioning, the literature review including the definition of the vague contours of the notion of accompaniment, the data collection system, its analysis as well as the valorisation of the results. In this paper, we will focus on the individual semi-directive psychosocial interview conducted by the academic trainers participating in the research with their fellow trainers. Beforehand, they were trained by the researcher in this type of data collection in order to make them aware of the issues at stake in the encounter. It was not a question of "getting people to describe", but of "getting people to talk about". The researcher-participant group carried out a thematic and transversal content analysis in the sense of Laurence Bardin (Bardin, 2013). To complete this analysis, the researcher proposed a more clinical reading of the comments collected. 16 interviews took place, and we will return to the methodological uses of the device in our communication. This participatory research work produced knowledge dependent on a process that is to be considered as unique and unrepeatable. But it seemed to us that a form of valorisation of this work was possible. The research results were valorised “by” and “with” the professionals during two scientific events. Finally, we will discuss how the clinical posture of the researcher, the presence of what is happening and the attention paid to transferential movements ensure the essence of the animation and guarantee the conditions of subjective participation of the actors in their diversity in the collective project.
Expected Outcomes
This research had "transformative" effects on the A.T. Although it's difficult for us to measure them afterwards, we have witnessed changes in the way in which the group, the practice of accompaniment and the A.T.'s relationship with the institution are perceived. The work we have carried out with them is similar to the figure of the "tightrope walker", a term used by one of the F.A.'s involved in the research to evoke his journey. We will come back to this term and its meaning in our communication. It seemed to us that for these professionals it was a question of taking risks in order to maintain the balance of the tightrope walker by trying to evoke the difficulties of their professional reality, to take the necessary distance allowing them to question the "group illusion" (Anzieu, 1999) as a defence against the reactivation in the group situation of archaic fantasies which mobilise persecutory anguishes, to construct useful knowledge for each of them and to invest the requirements of the research. For the professionals, this implies accepting that knowledge about themselves and their relationship to the institution is produced in the researcher's self. For the researcher, the challenge is to accept that the results of the research escape him and are taken up by the professionals to be transformed into pedagogical interventions. In this process, each actor experiences alterity and their interdependence in order to accept the pursuit of both different and shared goals. This interdependence, which creates knowledge and new practices, becomes possible when the participatory research mechanism allows the construction of trust and respect between members and guarantees each one a sufficient space of autonomy involving interdependence with others, requiring self-limitation of one's desires and alteration of the self by the other in order to build democratic processes.
Enrolled in “psychoanalytically orientated clinical approach in education science” (Blanchard-Laville et al., 2005; Blanchard-Laville & Chaussecourte, 2012), we have been conducting participatory research for several years: action-research (Dubost, 1987), intervention-research (Dubois & Hans, 2018), intervention in an open environment (Bordet, 2021) with education professionals (middle and high school teachers, academic trainers, special educational needs teachers…) in France, Lebanon and Morocco. For us, one of the challenges of contemporary educational research is to strengthen the link between researchers and education professionals. This link engages work “with” professionals (Lieberman, 1986) but also work “on” the discourse of the participants involved in the research (Dubois & Kattar, 2017).
However, what we call “participatory research” should be understood more as appellation grouping together a diversity of nominations and practices, rather than a methodology per se. Yves Bonny’s work (Bonny, 2017) highlights this diversity. Indeed, for this author, participatory research can be distinguished from one another according to the place of the scientific frame of reference and the participation of professionals within. Without going back over the history and debates concerning “participatory research” which have marked the different fields of the human and social sciences for more than sixty years, this diversity of doing research “with” refers to epistemological issues which make up the richness, diversity and conflict of the scientific field. Moreover, diversity is also to be understood from a second angle, that of the actors with whom the work is done and pushes us to think about the commitment and the unconscious framework of these actors, their practices as well as the contexts in our research.
For this paper, we will rely on participatory research projet (2019-2021) conducted with eight academic trainers (A.T.) of the academy of Amiens (France) in which we sought to understand how the set of values, social norms and cultural and educational models that support the accompaniment, is experienced by the academic trainers; to study how their representation of the accompaniment that they provide is developed.
Starting from the diversity of participatory research, we will show what characterised our research by analysing the work “with” the A.T. in the aftermath. More specifically, we will discuss the impact of the research process on these professionals involved as the research stages unfolded. In other words, in what way did the collaborative work that was instituted between practitioner and researcher allow for collective elaborations based on experiences that opened up a balance to be achieved between their expectations as academic trainers, the researcher's request and the expectations of the institutional order? In the aftermath, we will analyse the researcher's commitment on the one hand, and on the other, the A.T.'s position, caught between the will to transform elements of their professional practice and the intention to search in a comprehensive way. Moreover, as the A.T. constitute “an instituted collective”, their links “are in a way already there” (Dubois & Hans, 2018), inscribed in an institutional history. Our paper will therefore be an opportunity to return to the “containing function” (Bion, 1962; Winnicott, 1960; Ciccone, 2001; James, 2016) experienced in this group space (A.T. and researcher) where a singular phantasmatic is actualised and in which unconscious anxieties emerge and unfold, including those of fragmentation. Indeed, this unconscious anxiety of fragmentation is present in training and research groups and each member is, more or less, inhabited by the fear of losing “his unity” (Anzieu, 1999) when confronted with alterity.
Method
In our paper, we will return to the way in which the relationship between the researcher and the professionals in the field was constructed, as it seems to us to be a determining factor in the construction of the research mechanism. We will first discuss the process of analysing the “order-offer-demand” in a collective manner, where the aim is to grasp the representations and meanings emanating from academic trainers caught up in real support situations likely to raise questions or represent a professional concern for them. Indeed, participation in participatory research in a clinical approach strongly engages the subjectivity of professionals in relation to their background, gender and age. This experience can neither be dismissed nor taken as an immutable fact. This subjective dimension is expressed in the collective dynamics and constitutes its complexity. Secondly, we will develop the different stages of the participatory research that we conducted: the problematisation of the research questioning, the literature review including the definition of the vague contours of the notion of accompaniment, the data collection system, its analysis as well as the valorisation of the results. In this paper, we will focus on the individual semi-directive psychosocial interview conducted by the academic trainers participating in the research with their fellow trainers. Beforehand, they were trained by the researcher in this type of data collection in order to make them aware of the issues at stake in the encounter. It was not a question of "getting people to describe", but of "getting people to talk about". The researcher-participant group carried out a thematic and transversal content analysis in the sense of Laurence Bardin (Bardin, 2013). To complete this analysis, the researcher proposed a more clinical reading of the comments collected. 16 interviews took place, and we will return to the methodological uses of the device in our communication. This participatory research work produced knowledge dependent on a process that is to be considered as unique and unrepeatable. But it seemed to us that a form of valorisation of this work was possible. The research results were valorised “by” and “with” the professionals during two scientific events. Finally, we will discuss how the clinical posture of the researcher, the presence of what is happening and the attention paid to transferential movements ensure the essence of the animation and guarantee the conditions of subjective participation of the actors in their diversity in the collective project.
Expected Outcomes
This research had "transformative" effects on the A.T. Although it's difficult for us to measure them afterwards, we have witnessed changes in the way in which the group, the practice of accompaniment and the A.T.'s relationship with the institution are perceived. The work we have carried out with them is similar to the figure of the "tightrope walker", a term used by one of the F.A.'s involved in the research to evoke his journey. We will come back to this term and its meaning in our communication. It seemed to us that for these professionals it was a question of taking risks in order to maintain the balance of the tightrope walker by trying to evoke the difficulties of their professional reality, to take the necessary distance allowing them to question the "group illusion" (Anzieu, 1999) as a defence against the reactivation in the group situation of archaic fantasies which mobilise persecutory anguishes, to construct useful knowledge for each of them and to invest the requirements of the research. For the professionals, this implies accepting that knowledge about themselves and their relationship to the institution is produced in the researcher's self. For the researcher, the challenge is to accept that the results of the research escape him and are taken up by the professionals to be transformed into pedagogical interventions. In this process, each actor experiences alterity and their interdependence in order to accept the pursuit of both different and shared goals. This interdependence, which creates knowledge and new practices, becomes possible when the participatory research mechanism allows the construction of trust and respect between members and guarantees each one a sufficient space of autonomy involving interdependence with others, requiring self-limitation of one's desires and alteration of the self by the other in order to build democratic processes.