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the project, enabled through a reflexivity process of identifying and communicating personal
assumptions and ideologies. This term is selected largely for pragmatic reasons, as it is most
commonly used in a postgraduate research thesis (and forms part of the structure provided by
the institution where this dissertation was conducted). It is also selected as an umbrella term
to describe the variety of disclosure of researcher theories and understandings drawn on,
including practices such as reflexivity (Mulkay, 1985, Chouliaraki & Fairclough, 1999); and
terms such as frame problem (Gee, 2004); in history described by Hexter as the second
record (1971); and aspects of bricolage such as injecting a personal voice through an
interpretive approach. More than a disclosure of researcher, injecting the personal voice into
this project aligns with the ‘spirit’ of doing bricolage. Hexter describes the second record as
…it embraces his [sic] skills, the range of his knowledge, the set of his mind, the
substance, quality, and character of his experience – his total consciousness. Since no
historian is identical with any other historian, what each historian brings, his second
record, differs in some measure from the second record of every other historian.
(1971, p. 104)
In relating disclosure to a history methodology context, E.H. Carr asserts “…when we take
up a work of history, our first concern should be not with the facts which it contains but with
the historian who wrote it” (1990, p. 22). In order to present a thorough disclosure of
researcher, this section is divided into two parts. First, theories informing the development of
a disclosure of researcher are outlined aligned with the methodological approaches this
dissertation takes. Second, the ways these theories are practically applied in this project are
demonstrated. This is done so the reader can “…better understand the relationship between
[my] ways of seeing and the social location of [my] personal history” (Kincheloe, 2008, p. 5).
3.7.1 Theories informing disclosure.
Bricolage, with its interest in pluralities and disaffection with positivist research, looks to
poststructuralism to provide a theoretical framework which enables a multiplicity of
perspectives to be articulated, and to avoid a reliance on research which seeks to uncover
grand narratives. Within the approaches of bricolage that this project adopts, disclosures of
the researcher feature as an important aspect in the research process. This link between
poststructuralist research and disclosure of the researcher is made clear by McKenzie who
writes:
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