Negative Emotions in Fieldwork: A Narrative Inquiry of Three EFL Researchers’ Lived Experiences

Authors

Adilur Rahaman, Independent University, BangladeshFollow
Shuvo Saha, East West University, BangladeshFollow

Abstract

Through narrative inquiry this research depicts and interprets the negative emotions that three English as Foreign Language (EFL) researchers experienced in different research sites during their fieldwork. Narrative inquiry informs the design of this investigation as the approach is particularly useful for understanding lived experiences. The study draws on autobiographical as well as narrative data to report the negative emotions that evolve during English language education fieldwork, an aspect absent in the existing literature. Findings suggest that the researchers experienced a wide range of negative emotions namely ethical dilemma, anger, anxiety, guilt, and shame. These results carry implications for language education research methodology, teaching, and fieldwork related ethical requirements of Institutional Review Board (IRB), and language education researchers’ necessary psychological support.

Keywords

Negative Emotions, Narrative Inquiry, Fieldwork, Lived Experience, EFL

Author Bio(s)

Adilur Rahaman is a Lecturer in the Department of English at Independent University, Bangladesh. He is interested in narrative inquiry and life history studies in TESOL. Please direct correspondence to adilr.1987@gmail.com.

Shuvo Saha is a Lecturer in the Department of English at East West University. He is interested in the narrative inquiry of emotion experienced by language teachers and education researchers. Please direct correspondence to sshuvo010@yahoo.com.

Acknowledgements

We express our gratitude to the editor-in-chief and the reviewers for their valuable feedback on the manuscript. We would also like to thank Peu for offering her observations in livening up the stories.

Publication Date

12-5-2020

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 4.0 International License.

DOI

10.46743/2160-3715/2020.4164

Recommended APA Citation

Rahaman, A., & Saha, S. (2020). Negative Emotions in Fieldwork: A Narrative Inquiry of Three EFL Researchers’ Lived Experiences. The Qualitative Report, 25(12), 4128-4208. https://doi.org/10.46743/2160-3715/2020.4164