Reflexive work is being entangled with the data, not just entangling the data. Analysis functioned less as extraction and more as a process of thinking with the data, where meaning developed through relationships between elements rather than from any single account (see process image of thematic analysis on Miro below). As Jackson and Mazzei (2012) argue, qualitative analysis works by generating connections that produce new ways of thinking, rather than extracting findings from data.
Emerging from analysis, collegial feedback was not the most generative focus. What consistently surfaced instead was collegial partnership. The question that asserted itself was not “How can we improve peer feedback?” but “What conditions support positive and sustainable collegial partnerships?” Participants described feedback as viable when embedded in relationships characterised by trust, shared purpose, mutual respect, and psychological safety. These partnerships tended to form organically rather than through formal allocation, and this relational grounding appeared central to sustainability.
I noticed that the candidate themes sat differently to parts of the peer feedback literature. Much existing research frames peer feedback through teaching development and structured practices such as reciprocal peer observation or co-assessment, suggesting that closeness can emerge through participation (e.g. García, 2024; Ribosa et al., 2024). My findings point to a different analytic emphasis. In this project, collegial partnerships tended to form only where a degree of trust, mutual respect, and shared purpose already existed. These conditions functioned as entry points rather than outcomes of collaboration. Framing collegial partnership solely through teaching development risks overlooking how academics experience professional growth across a wider range of aspirations and identities. Recognising this clarified my contribution as identifying the relational conditions that make collegial partnership possible, rather than evaluating learning outcomes once feedback is already underway.
Feedback is indeed messy. It’s an entanglement of emotional, structural, aspirational, and relational dimensions. Attempting to isolate these nodes is ultimately counterproductive. Instead, thematic storytelling allowed for subjective grappling and repositioning of these multiplicities into provisional coherence. What is challenging is creating a distinct focus for each theme but not the contextual complexity that’s shared between the themes.
For example, feedback appears to require some structure in order to be sustained, yet too much structure risks turning it into another administrative task. Conversely, feedback that is too informal often lacks time, space, or symbolic permission to be valued and supported strategically by the institution. Sitting with these tensions reinforced the importance of resisting premature analytic closure and instead working carefully with complexity as it appeared, echoing Law’s argument that social research often sanitises mess in ways that obscure how phenomena actually operate (Law, 2004). As Braun and Clarke emphasise, qualitative rigour in reflexive thematic analysis lies not in analytic closure, but in transparent, well-justified interpretive decisions made in relation to context, purpose, and consequence (Braun and Clarke, 2021).
Throughout this phase, I resisted the urge to tidy things up or to follow the path of least resistance by grouping data according to surface-level similarities alone. Some contradictions remained unresolved, and some themes felt deliberately unfinished. Rather than treating this as analytic weakness, as I might have prior to this project, I now understand it as part of the work. Indulging in multiplicity is permitted.
Bibliography
Braun, V. and Clarke, V. (2021) Thematic Analysis: A Practical Guide. London: SAGE.
García, E.C. (2024) ‘Peer feedback for teaching professional development: conditions for it to take effect’, Cogent Education, 11(1), p. 2391577.
https://doi.org/10.1080/2331186X.2024.2391577
Jackson, A.Y. and Mazzei, L.A. (2012) Thinking with Theory in Qualitative Research: Viewing Data Across Multiple Perspectives. London: Routledge.
https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203148037
Law, J. (2004) After Method: Mess in Social Science Research. London: Routledge.
Ribosa, J. et al. (2024) ‘Teachers’ closeness of professional relationship and its role in learning perception after reciprocal peer observation’, Teaching and Teacher Education, 140, p. 104469.
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tate.2024.104469