A collaborative inquiry into the positioning of gender practice within systemic psychotherapy.

This case study describes a “collaborative inquiry into the positioning of gender practices within systemic psychotherapy.” As colleagues working in different contexts (National Health Service and Higher Education), we undertook a research inquiry into our own ideas and practices in relation to gender. Here, we discuss some of the challenges and key learning points we experienced when attempting to conduct and to write an “academic telling” of the project, and how we have learned to value both the process and the product of our research endeavor. We attempt to speak to a non-linear inquiry process consistent with an action research methodology, complete with moments of doubt and hesitation. Cycles of inquiry are described briefly to give the reader a flavor of our research method, before drawing out the case study themes: writing as form and finding voice; research as social intervention and attending to quality. By widening our appreciation of the process and interventions of action research methodologies, researchers are offered more positions from which to write. We conclude by acknowledging the tensions that a student audience might experience as action researchers writing in an academic context, and emphasize the role that supervisors, tutors, and researchers have in continuing the debates on the politics of epistemology in academia.