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The large body of literature concerning couples’ decision making highlights the complexities faced by couples, and the potential challenges for social work practitioners. With population ageing, more people are living longer, many in long-term relationships, thus facing a range of critical later life decisions together. Yet, little is known about the challenges of interviewing couples together. This paper seeks to address this gap by reporting on a reflection on the process of conducting a constructionist narrative study of older farming couples’ retirement decision making. Drawing on Ruch’s (2000) model of reflective learning, this article considers research into couples’ decision making in a reflective cycle, including reflection on the supervisory relationship enabling transition from practitioner to researcher. This paper highlights the value of a reflective and reflexive supervision model when examining contexts dominated by a powerful discourse, such as the generational family farming narrative. The collection of data across two time phases permits exploration of change concerning rapport building and trust, relationships, decision making and participants’ construction of the interviewer. Findings from this study have implications for practitioners and researchers seeking to understand the process of interviewing older couples. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As incarceration rates rise worldwide, increasing numbers of parents are separated from their children. Researchers have studied the psychosocial impact on inmates and their families extensively. However, few researchers have examined how their own perspectives affect the collection and interpretation of data, specifically about parenting in correctional settings. This paper consider methodological implications of conducting research with incarcerated mothers and fathers, employing critical reflexivity to explore researchers' individual and collective experiences in a study in Australian correctional facilities. Using ourselves as informants, we examine how the context and life experiences of 'researcher' and 'researched' interact during interviews in a unique and emotionally charged environment. Correctional research requires careful adaptations to collect meaningful data from inmates and recognise their vulnerability as parents. The emotional content of interviews also has implications for analysing and interpreting research data. Our focus on interviewees as mothers and fathers, rather than as offenders, generated greater understanding of the needs of parents in custody. Recognising researchers' feelings, experiences and perspectives on parenthood can enrich research with families affected by the criminal justice and child protection systems. These insights can also inform the understanding and practice of social workers, health practitioners, educators and students who work with marginalised parents and children. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reports on a collaborative student-for-student research project conducted in 2012, which aimed to improve the first year experience for students at one Australian University. A cooperative inquiry group was established to focus on the issues experienced by first year students from low socio-economic backgrounds, raise critical consciousness, question existing ideological constructs and develop a response to the identified issues in the form of a V-pod. Thematic analysis of recorded data from meetings and written data from group wiki pages revealed three key themes related to: sharing experience, sharing power and sharing time. Findings suggest a clear place for cooperative inquiry in the higher educational sector, but this must be supported by the time and space to establish collaborative relationships. When academics and students recast their roles as ‘the researcher’ and ‘the researched’ in the pursuit of co-created knowledge they are more able to rally against structural barriers and produce more meaningful outcomes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

One unexpected finding from the postdoctoral fellowship I conducted on the needs and experiences of ethnic minority families in the New South Wales (NSW) child protection system in Australia, was that reports of inadequate supervision seemed high compared to their Anglo-Australian counterparts. The aim of this article was to explore this finding further. This article argues that cultural differences between individualist and collectivist cultures (which families from ethnic minority backgrounds tend to be) contribute to the differential rates of prevalence in reports of neglect. Specifically, the greater role of extended family and community in sharing parenting responsibilities (and thus the inferred reduced care from primary caregivers) and the responsibility levels of children at younger ages (and thus the inferred lack of capacity to self-care) may be contributing to reports of neglect in families from collectivist backgrounds. However, this article also argues that collectivist values that influence what is seen to be adequate parental supervision are not, in the main, harmful (especially if it is the only report for a family) because they do not normalize or perpetuate risk of harm to children. The sample size in this study is small and so caution should be exercised. Nevertheless, this article highlights that caseworkers should be careful not to mislabel the behaviours of parents from collectivist backgrounds as neglectful, because to do so is to use one standard of parenting by which to judge all families and the problems with an absolutist approach to child protection are well known indeed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]