Transformative research collaboration as third space and creative understanding: learnings from higher education research and doctoral supervision

ABSTRACT

Any research collaboration can potentially transform the participants’ understandings and enhance their professional relationships with one another and with significant others. If this transformation is to eventuate, research collaborators need to exhibit mindfulness with regard to their multiple relationships, as well as to the intentions and effects of their collaborations.These requirements of transformative research collaborations align with, and build on, Macfarlane’s (2017a) influential, six-element representation of research collaboration as a moral continuum, through the authors’ rationale for adding a seventh element to this representation, centred on the ethically informed fusion of third space (Bhabha, 1994) and creative understanding (Bakhtin, 1986). The authors argue that this fusion enables researchers to move beyond the self-regarding and other-regarding binary underpinning Macfarlane’s representation, and also to progress to a new collaboration dimension that is fundamentally democratic in character as well as creative and productive in its effects.The evidence for this argument derives from the first-named author’s Doctor of Philosophy thesis (Veles, 2020), which investigated the cross-boundary third space collaboration of university actors, and for which the second-named author was a supervisor/adviser. The authors posit this particular research collaboration as transformative through its creative fusion of third space and creative understanding.

KEYWORDS:

• Creative understanding
• doctoral supervision
• higher education
• research collaborations
• university third space

Disclosure statement

The material from the doctoral research interviews used in this article has not been published elsewhere and was not included in the first-named author’s thesis (Veles 2020).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Natalia Veles

Dr Natalia Veles is an experienced researcher, educator and manager-practitioner based at James Cook University, Australia with the doctoral student supervision affiliation with the of University of Southern Queensland and international research collaborations. Having worked in educational leadership in Russia, China, New Zealand, and Vietnam, she embodies a third space professional identity: her scholarship and professional practice, commitment to improving learner engagement and increasing collaboration among university actors drive her research and teaching pursuits. Natalia holds a PhD in higher education research. Her academic background is in applied linguistics, organisational sociology, intercultural psychology, and career development, with a particular curiosity for how organisational boundaries and discursive spaces impact collaboration.

P. A. Danaher

Professor Patrick A. Danaher is currently Professor (Educational Research) in the School of Education at the Toowoomba campus of the University of Southern Queensland. He is also Adjunct Professor in the School of Education and the Arts at Central Queensland University, and Adjunct Professor in the College of Arts, Society and Education at James Cook University, both in Australia, as well as Docent in Social Justice and Education at the University of Helsinki, Finland. His research interests include the education of occupationally mobile communities; education research concepts, ethics, methods and theories; and academics’, educators’ and researchers’ work and identities.