This article illustrates how an emerging graduate researcher's conceptions of postpositivist, feminist, and poststructural theories of educational research affected data gathering and initial analysis. These macro theories are exemplified as the voices of an educational researcher, a feminist researcher, and a poststructural researcher, respectively. Theoretical tensions influence an interview with one female preservice teacher as part of a larger research project. Interviewing is a complex method for data gathering, and empathic moves within the interview were a site that revealed simultaneously active incongruous theories. This article provides two examples of tensions affecting the interview: understanding an interview question and the interviewer— interviewee relational energy. The effects of multiple theories in an interview supply implications for novice researchers to theorize their own work and for more experienced researchers to guide novices through these challenges.
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