Navigating the scholarship of integration: Insights from a maze

This chapter, through reflecting on and drawing from one such journey of integration, explores the theoretical approach and the two skills of multiplicity and precision: multiplicity as the ability to appreciate and even accept differing perspectives easily and quickly; and precision as the desire for exactness. Too often, research appears to apply only one of these skills but not the other. These skills are complementary, perhaps even contradictory. Multiplicity requires a tolerance of, even cherishes, ambiguity; precision abhors it. These skills may each align with two different modes of thinking, perhaps most aptly described as “diffuse” and “focused”. The job of a scholar is not only to traverse mazes but also to explore and map them. Exploration requires the skill of multiplicity—the ability to see multiple paths and hidden crannies. Mapping requires the skill of precision. Research reports usually simplify the research process, presenting it as being relatively linear and unambiguous. This chapter is written at two levels. On one level, it explores a theoretical approach and two skills. On the other, it invites the reader into a maze: a network of pathways.