Positionality, power and the postcolonial context: Meditations on identity, access and relations in education policy research

Through a combination of reflections, fieldnotes and transcripts of semi-structured interviews with elite informants, this chapter presents personal meditations on positionality and strategic navigation of power relations whilst researching Malaysia's policy emphasising Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) education. As a Malaysian student trained at an elite university in the United Kingdom and undertaking fieldwork at home, the author is equipped with a unique combination of privileges, cultural sensitivity and perceived status – coupled with the associated ambivalence – to negotiate data collection. Subsequently, Malay proverbs are embraced as method and way of knowing in this chapter, congruent with the spirit of postcolonial knowledge production. Malay proverbs represent the identity work undertaken as strategies for navigating power imbalances, as well as to maintain relations in engaging with elite informants. These include leveraging on the university's elite status in interaction with informants and performing local constructs of deference as respect. Overall, this chapter demonstrates how the postcolonial context and the legacy of ethnic and education privilege bear upon methodological concerns of positionality and power in the course of researching education policy.