ABSTRACT
In this chapter, the author examines three different conflicting perspectives in the real research problem he faced: first, the English as a second language versus English as a foreign language context setting; second, objectivist/positivist versus constructionist positionality; and third, the Western “extending knowledge” versus Confucian “conserving knowledge” divide. The concepts of positionality and ‘structural embeddedness,’ from an objectivist/positivist perspective, have the potential of invalidating the author’s research project. The author's positionality as a Western researcher and native user of the English language is quite different from the students’ positionality as Japanese learners attempting to cross culture and display critical thinking in their writing of English, a foreign language. The author explores the implications of a Western researcher’s understanding of students at that university and, in offering recommendations to other researchers in similar situations, explains how that impacts the outsider’s interpretation of the students’ ability and exercise of critical thinking.
