ABSTRACT
Just a few years ago, when I was giving a presentation on my doctoral research to a graduate class, one of the students asked me, “How did you get away with it?” The “it” to which the student was referring was my non-standard approach to educational research. The research I had conducted did not require university ethics approval. It was not exactly narrative research; it was not exactly autobiographical research; it was not exactly empirical research; it was not exactly conceptual research; it was not exactly action research. It was not exactly easy to categorize my doctoral research as it did not exactly fit the structures in place for standard educational research. I described “it” as a re-conceptualization of conceptual research. Maps, poetry, vignettes from my everyday living, a narrative about sailing through the lands of curricular documents and classroom practices, text printed on transparencies instead of white paper, and fortune cookie fortunes layered underneath a discussion of scientific approaches to research all found a place among the pages of my dissertation.
