An intervision is a type of meeting in which colleagues come together and share professional experiences,
issues, and ideas. Such meetings are often organized to support employees and to boost their professional development (van Baarle et. al. 2022). The sessions take the form of what Wierda and Barendsen
(2011: 149) call a “collegial consultation”, in which equals can counsel each
other in a safe space without encountering judgments. This chapter argues that intervisions can be an inspiration or a source
of information for linguists interested in studying professional practices, workplace discourse, or institutional
communication. In doing so, it aims to show the affordances as well as the drawbacks of using intervision as a tool in
qualitative studies. Following the congruous research loop between research design, collection/analysis and dissemination
which characterizes bottom-up research processes (Maryns and Jacobs 2021), the
chapter explores the role intervision might play at different stages throughout a research project. When designing the
research project, issues raised during intervisions can for example help set or finetune the research agenda. This
research-practitioner collaboration ensures the professional relevance of the research agenda, specifically, and translates
into greater societal relevance of the knowledge gains, in general. Secondly, intervision might create opportunities for
recruiting participants or negotiating (further) access. They can also constitute the empirical object of sociolinguistic
analysis in their own right, as inquiries into problem-solving in a particular professional sphere can generate rich insights
on hierarchies, tensions and ideologies that are present in a particular “Community of Practice” (Wenger 2011). Lastly, in the dissemination phase of a research project, intervisions can become
fruitful arenas for checking or sharing research findings.
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