Articulating the practice architectures of collaborative research practice

This chapter explores a collaborative practice of comparative data analysis through the researching activities of four researchers from Australia and Finland. We interrogate the ontological and empirical reality we experienced while engaged in a practice of analysing narrative data on mentoring. In this chapter, we are not reporting on the outcomes of our analysis of mentoring practice; instead we focus on our collaborative engagement, articulating the practice architectures of our research practice. This collaborative research practice was pre-figured by: (1) philosophical traditions instituted through a theory of practice architectures; and (2) normalised practices of researching mentoring, narrative data analysis, and research collaborations. By examining these preconditions we are attempting to understand the multifaceted space of research collaboration and the practice architectures of our collaborative research practice.

The study shows that the three kinds of arrangements that comprise the practice architectures of research practice (i.e., cultural-discursive, material-economic, and social-political arrangements) are foregrounded differently at different stages of research analysis. In the researchers’ collaborative engagement, the material-economic arrangements were most visible and explicit in the beginning of the analysis (first order analysis). However, more of the cultural-discursive arrangements and social-political arrangements became apparent after further contemplation (second order analysis). Analysing the differing degrees of visibility of these three types of arrangements in our analysis is significant since they occur as an enmeshed ensemble in reality.