In a moment of high uncertainty, we need to discuss the notion of becoming from a not-knowing position. The concept penetrates social and educational research from authors such as Barad, Deleuze, Guattari and Atkinson, who contribute to review and question the ontological, epistemological, methodological, and ethical foundations of research.

The dynamics of becoming is understood as a process in which any given multiplicity changes in nature as it extends its bonds (Deleuze & Guattari, 1980/1987). This concept is relevant for the educational ethnographers as any research as a process of becoming. Becoming is always relational, always in between and ethnographers participate in a series of prehensional connections through which beings attempt to take each other into account (Akinsion, 2018).

This discussion panel is to offer an academic conversation based on six authors’ trajectories of becoming educational ethnographers across countries, issues, contextual circumstances, and research experiences.

The notion of becoming relates to the praxis of ethnographic research, researchers, and the very notion of what research could be (Atkinson, 2015; Barad, 2014; Deleuze & Guattari, 1980/1987; Faber, 2011; Masny, 2014). In our presentations and discussions with the discussant and audience, we will address a set of fundamental issues of becoming researchers, such as: How to develop research that does not follow a predefined path or apply pre-set methods, but opens to dialogues emerging in the encounters, experiences and context of the others? What is the effect of the disrupting and unexpected that place researchers in a position of not-knowing? Which is the relevance of researcher’s movements through an ethnographic study and how do they becomes relational experiences happening in non-linear and full of bifurcations processes, doubts, and places of not-knowing? How do these movements allow us to confront another sense of ethnographic research? How does this approach question some foundations and practices on the supposedly standardized way of being an ethnographic researcher in education?

This session makes visible that research is not about following a prefixed path, in which methods are applied to give an account of results foreseen in the initial questions, but a nonlinear, multivocal, continuing process of becoming. The dialogues address calls and contribute to the movements that began in the 1990s about the onto-epistemological, methodological, and ethical foundations of social and educational research, under the umbrella of the post-qualitative turns. According to St. Pierre (2011, p. 615), these turns   "announce a radical break with the humanist, modernist, imperialist, representationalist, objectivist, rationalist, epistemological, ontological, and methodological assumptions of Western Enlightenment thought and practice". This session provides a framework to think about the meaning and practice of research from another perspective, with other foundations and purposes. Our approach has relevance not only for the formation of educational ethnographers, but also provides a way for others to consider that any research process is a process of becoming.

The chaear  will introduce the session goals. Each participant will expose their ethnographic paths, drifts movements, discoveries, uncertainties, and questions. The chair will open the first round of question for discussion among all assistance. The audience will be invited to participate in a lively conversation and build together the relevant conclusions.

This discussion panel offers an extended geographical vision by putting together European (three participants plus the discussant), United States (two participants) and Australian (one) experiences.

Atkinson, D. (2015). The adventure of pedagogy, learning and the not-known. Subjectivity, 8(1), 43-56. Atkinson, D. (2018). Art, Disobedience and Ethics. The Adventure of Pedagogy. Palgrave. Barad, K. (2014). Diffracting Diffraction: Cutting Together-Apart. Parallax, 20(3), 168-187, DOI https://doi.org/10.1080/13534645.2014.92762 Deleuze, G., & Guattari, F. (1980/1987). Thousand Plateaus (trans. Brian Massumi). University of Minnesota Press. Faber (2011). Introduction: Negotiating Becoming. In R. Faber, & A. M. Stephenson, (Eds.), Secrets of Becoming: Negotiating Whitehead, Deleuze, and Butler. (pp. 1 -52). Fordham Univ. Press. Masny, D. (2014). Disrupting ethnography through rhizoanalysis. Qualitative Research in Education, 3(3), 345-363. St. Pierre, E. (2011). Post Qualitative Research: The Critique and the Coming After. In N. K. Denzin & Y. S. Lincoln (eds.) The Sage Handbook of Qualitative Research (4a edition), (pp. 611-625). SAGE Publications.