ABSTRACT
This chapter explores my journey as I traversed the epistemological and methodological spaces in-between the Samoan cultural and social context and the Australian higher education context in which I completed doctoral studies. Carrying out educational research in Samoa was fraught with complexities because of the need to travel between the mainstream and marginal spaces within the education system in Samoa, Samoan culture (faasamoa) and the Western style of research. This chapter focusses on the attempts I made to deal with these complexities, including understanding the relationship between these mainstream and marginal spaces, and making use of the concept of talanoa (Samoan for storytelling) to write my doctoral thesis, to try to traverse the boundaries between the mainstream and marginal spaces, to try to capture the personal and the interpersonal, and to try to make sense of the frustrations, contradictions and complexities involved in conducting a ‘Western’ study within a Samoan context.
