Truth Be Told: Reflections on an Integral Research Study

Truth Be Told: Reflections on an Integral Research Study
 
By Lauren Tenney

Spring 2010 is an intense period of culmination for my research project exploring beliefs about sustainabiliy and theories about change processes. A candid reflection on my experience starts with noticing how dramatically my thinking and understanding has changed over the last six months in particular - both as a researcher about research, and an inquirer about sustianability. As my thinking through and about the integral model and integral research has evolved, many of my previously held assumptions about 'what research is' and 'what my research will do' have been brought to light, and deconstructed. So it is - the marriage of structure and form in the integral research endeavor: even the researcher cannot escape the disorienting effects of learning to see interconnectivity and enactment at every level.

Currently I am in the thick of coding and re-coding my body of interview data, and learning to distill the achievables within my grasp from my elaborate and very idealized image of a vastly comprehensive inquiry into 'The Meaning Of Sustainability'. Idealism runs rampant, even now. As a new and rather 'green' researcher, I come up against not only limitations in my own understanding of the research process, but the double-edged sword of an innocent perspective which generates all manner of new ideas - for instance, by looking at an analytical tool like coding in a new way. It seems that only more questions are produced as I delve deeper and deeper into the trilogy of my evolving perspective, the meaning of my topic in collective dimensions, and the structure of presenting all of this through integral research.

My perspective on the relationship between first, second and third person perspecives has also shifted over the last months. It is no longer a kind of neat Venn diagram where three simple circles of 1p, 2p and 3p overlap nicely, and not too much. Now, it feels more like a hall of mirrors in which every look into one of these three perspectives reveals its emergent construction through the other two. My previous approach of neatly boxing each of these perspectives now feels limiting and somehow also inaccurate. As a result, my interest lies in trying to structure my research in a way which actually embodies this interpenetration of enactive perspectives: a sort of marriage of form and function in the written material. The challenge as I understand my orientation to my reserach now, is to offer a form of writing and presentation that makes these perspectives transparent, and makes their interrelationship evident to readers, without doing so in a segmented format. I would like to capture the experience of enactment I have had as a researcher, weaving simultaneously on multiple levels through the dance of self, culture and nature I have found through my research investigation.

I'm sitting in the thick of this, certainly enjoying it, and yet also sometimes tearing my hair out - a familiar sensation when riding an edge and exploring new territory with that old mix of personal passion and trepidation. I suppose the most 'maddening' thing of all might be the realization that my research will not actually end with my written project in a few months, as in reality my project has generated far more questions than 'answers'. And truth be told, I like it that way.

Lauren Tenney is a Master's student in the department of Integral Theory at John F. Kennedy University.  She is the recipient of the 2009 JFKU Integral Research Grant and was recently awarded an additional $3,000 for her study.