Institutional ethnography, reflexivity and ‘I’ poems

This workshop explores researcher reflexivity developed during an institutional ethnography (IE) (Smith 2005) of a primary school. It illustrates use of a narrative method, ‘The Listening Guide’ (Mauthner and Doucet 2008), in particular the researcher’s production of an ‘I’ poem after being interviewed by research participants. The sociological basis of IE is troubled by the psychological foundation of The Listening Guide, yet it is precisely because of the troubling nature of The Listening Guide and ‘I’ poems that they can be utilised by institutional ethnographers in revealing and analysing the co-ordination of social relations.