Julie Timmermans
Failure is often perceived as an experience to be avoided, silenced, or hidden. In this session, however, we will look at failure (perhaps) anew and as a ‘native informant’, leading us, if we so choose, over thresholds and closer to our selves.
We borrow the term ‘native informant’ from anthropology and other social science fields that draw on ethnographic approaches to research. Khan (2005) describes the native informant as ‘the person who translates her culture for the researcher, the outsider’ (p. 2022), and Park Nelson (2016) explains that ‘the native informant is a valuable asset for a researcher in search of the cultural truth of a community, society, or other subculture’ (p. 33). In troubling the notion of ‘failure’ and seeing failure as a ‘native informant’ – we might also see it as a threshold concept – a guide serving to cast light on and helping us to understand more deeply the ‘previously inaccessible’ (Meyer & Land, 2003) landscape and deeper truths of our selves.
Through the lens of failure as a native informant, several ‘big questions’ emerge which we will explore together: Must thresholds always be ‘positive’, propelling us towards an identified threshold, or might they reveal alternative and unanticipated landscapes for transformation? Where are thresholds located – within the discipline or within the self? As we delve into these questions, we will draw both on work exploring the ‘failure’ stories of academics and academic developers and our own professional experiences.
I look forward to exploring with you.
Threshold Concepts 