Vol37#2 Confessions of a Qualitative Researcher: Reflexive Photography and the Exhibition of Culture in Schools

in Madison, when I received an invitation from the office of International Students Services to participate in a cultural outreach program, that I began to critically examine my involvement in the design and implementation of these events. Because the focus and interest of my graduate studies was multicultural education, I attended the meeting and listened with interest to students from several non-Western countries discuss the types of activities they had participated in when visiting local area schools. Some spoke to the high school students about issues relevant to their country, some performed dances for middle school students, while others worked with elementary students to make traditional handicrafts. Their experiences immediately brought back recollections of a cultural event that I had planned several years before and I realized how similar the format of this cultural program was to the one I had organized. More significantly, as I looked around at the faces of the students, I realized that, apart from the program director, I was the only other person in the room from a “first-world” country. As a result, I began to think Introduction In their introduction to the Handbook of Qualitative Research, Denzin and Lincoln (2000) identify five phases that define the research process, adding that “behind all but one of these phases stands the biographically situated researcher” (p. 19). My biography as a qualitative researcher began long before I entered the doctoral program at the University of Wisconsin-Madison in the fall of 1998, and I can situate my early interest in the exhibition of global cultures in K–8 schools to my second year as an ESL teacher at a high school in Toronto, Canada where, in 1991, I was selected, with other teachers from the district, to participate in a workshop on multicultural and antiracist education. One of the goals of the four-day workshop required each participant to facilitate and plan events at their school that would engage the school faculty and student body in conversations about issues related to diversity. As someone who had traveled extensively throughout Latin America, Europe, and Asia, and who had attended numerous exhibitions of culture, one of the ideas generated that year was a “Cultural Variety Night” where high school students and members from various racial and ethnic groups would perform “traditional” music and dances for the school and local community. The event, which lasted over three hours and involved the participation of more than 100 students and performers from the wider community, was a sell-out and by every indication a “success.” However, it was not until some seven years later, during my first year Michael J. Zambon Confessions of a Qualitative Researcher: Reflexive Photography and the Exhibition of Culture in Schools

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