Abstract: Even though there is growth in Human Resource Development (HRD) qualitative research, the methodologies used were mostly limited to case study, interview study, and phenomenology (Cho et al., 2022; Grenier et al., 2022). Interview is often the primary source of data in HRD qualitative research and a coding-based approach to data analysis was identified as the “go-to qualitative analysis method” in HRD (Lester et al., 2020; Wang & Roulston, 2007). HRD researchers often rely on qualitative methodologies that are “safe and familiar” (Grenier et al., 2022, p. 760). There are diverse qualitative research approaches that researchers in HRD have yet to apply (Wang & Roulston, 2007). This poster presents a dialogue between Critical Incident Technique (CIT) and diffractive analysis to analyzing interview data collected from a study of informal and incidental learning (Marsick & Watkins, 1990; 2014). The interview data used in this study came from an explanatory sequential, mixed-methods study (Creswell, 2014) that examined informal and incidental learning activities experienced by teachers in adult ESL contexts and the development of their intercultural maturity (King & Baxter Magolda, 2005). CIT is a familiar approach in HRD and often used to examine workplace learning behaviors (Watkins et al., 2022). CIT was developed by Flanagan (1954) and consists of a set of procedures for “collecting direct observation of human behavior in such a way as to facilitate their potential usefulness in solving practical problems and developing broad psychological principles” (p. 327). CIT has been applied to a wide range of areas with proven reliability and validity in generating rich qualitative data (Woolsey, 1986). In this study, participants were asked to recall the critical incidents that were significant to their experiences as adult ESL teachers. After each interview was transcribed, the analysis involved reading the transcripts and identifying the initial critical incidents, re-storying, and categorizing critical incidents. An assertion was generated inductively for each critical incident. The assertion served the purpose of linking the critical incident to the question: How did this intercultural learning experience serve as a trigger for informal and incidental learning? Then, the theory of intercultural maturity was used to guide the deductive analysis of the critical incidents. Diffraction was first introduced by Haraway (1997) and further developed by Barad (2007) as a counterpoint to the methodology of reflection. Diffractive analysis aims to study “how different differences get made, what gets excluded, and how these exclusions matter” (Barad, 2007, p. 30). Reading data diffractively is to perform “a reading of data with theoretical concepts (and/or multiple theoretical concepts) [that] produces an emergent and unpredictable series of readings as data and theory make themselves intelligible to one another” (Mazzei, 2014, p. 743). Data and theory are plugged into one another, and differences emerge from the in between data and theory, material and discourse, human and non-human, and researcher and the researched (Jackson & Mazzei, 2011). Diffractive analysis seeks to meet data differently, make connections between texts differently, and pay attention to the differences that emerge through the intra-action. This process involved reading critical incidentals that “spoke” to the researcher and Barad’s (2007) concept of intra-action into each other. Intra-action signifies a shift from epistemology to an onto-epistemology where “space, time, and matter do not exist prior to the intra-actions that reconstitute entanglements” (Barad, 2007, p. 74). From this perspective, informal and incidental learning can be understood as “a materializing assemblage” (Fenwick & Edwards, 2013, p. 54) where specific material-discursive entanglement makes learning possible. Bozalek and Zembylas (2017) recommended educational researchers to “explore the ethico-onto-epistemological potentiality of diffraction in the historical continuities and breaks with the traditions of reflection” (p. 17). By putting CIT and diffractive analysis into conversation, this poster aims to explore the similarities, differences, and connections that might emerge (Bozalek & Zembylas, 2017; Crickmay & Keene, 2022) and consider the onto-epistemological potential that diffractive analysis can offer to HRD research.
