Discursive Dislocation: Towards a new frontier in participatory research

This paper introduces Discursive Dislocation , a qualitative methodology that generates reflexive insight through strategically designed encounters with difference. Responding to debates about the limits of conventional reflexivity, we argue that many assumptions, norms and professional commitments remain difficult to recognise while they operate as common sense within familiar settings. Drawing on scholarship on methodological disruption, embodied inquiry and reflexive practice, Discursive Dislocation uses contrastive immersion to create moments of productive disruption and epistemic unsettlement through which tacit assumptions become available for scrutiny. We illustrate the methodology through a pilot study involving teacher exchanges between England and Finland. Immersion in contrasting accountability regimes generated experiences of uncertainty, discomfort and ambivalence that prompted participants to question assumptions about professionalism, autonomy and educational purpose. We argue that Discursive Dislocation positions disruption as a methodological resource, offering a framework for investigating how identities, institutional norms and regimes of truth are reproduced and challenged through lived experience.