5.1 Positionality and doing research in one’s own university
The issue of positionality and locating myself in this study as the researcher was a challenging one. The lecturers I worked with were friendly colleagues and people I have worked with previously on other projects, particularly in Law. The two Politics lecturers are colleagues as well, but I have not formally worked with them on projects previously, although I have worked with other lecturers in the Department including the two coordinators working with the lecturers in Pol 131. Thus, I was given access to their classrooms, documents and ideas and thoughts without hesitation. I believe their willingness to work with me came out of their knowledge of me as a colleague, as a friend and as an ethical and trustworthy person. I am firmly of the opinion that they trusted me, and knew that my research would not seek to portray them or their departments in a negative light. The positive effects of these choices based on these existing collegial relationships are that there is a level of trust and comfortable-ness between myself and the lecturers which has allowed for a very open and flexible environment in which for me to do my research, and further that the trust they have in me, and the friendly and collegial nature of our relationships, has allowed them to be very honest with me; they have not simply told me what I want to hear or taken the ‘politically correct’ route in interviews.
However, in spite of the positive effects of the choices I made in selecting my case studies and participants, there were also challenges and potential pitfalls to consider. The largest challenge was that of doing research in my own institution, particularly with regard to ethical issues, and designing the research to be both rigorous and transparent (Trowler 2011), as well as the issue of gaining knowledge that may have put me, as the researcher, in a difficult position with regards to those it pertained to (Williams 2009). In terms of doing ethical and transparent research in one’s own institution, Trowler (2011) argues that one advantage of this is exactly what the case study design offers: a rich, thick, ‘emic’ account that blends experience with theory. This is also what Thomas (2011: 24) refers to as ‘exemplary knowledge’ linked with ‘phronesis’ or practical wisdom. However, the flipside of these rich accounts is that they do include a great deal of the researcher’s own experiences of and in the context, particularly one who plays the role of a participant observer, and thus the researcher may be impaired in offering more culturally neutral, ‘etic’ accounts; in Trowler’s (2011: 2) terms, the researcher may well struggle to ‘make the normal strange’. This is certainly a challenge that I was aware of throughout, particularly given the close collegial relationships between myself and the lecturers, and my hesitance around critiquing their pedagogic practice too strongly or including information that might seem to betray the trust and confidence the lecturers placed in me.
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This hesitation on my part is echoed in William’s (2009: 211) notion of ‘guilty knowledge’. This is knowledge that one can learn when doing research in one’s own institution that may be harmful to colleagues if it is brought to light, and that may harm relationships between researcher and researched that are built on trust. This knowledge is difficult, and can present the researcher with particular challenges and questions around whether to pursue certain lines of inquiry that may lead to further difficult knowledge and ethical questions, or to change the line of inquiry to save the researcher from ethical dilemmas and to save the researcher and researched from possible harm.
I took into consideration that, as a result of the collegial and amicable relationships between myself and the lecturers I observed and interviewed, and their level of openness, they may well disclose information that could be ‘difficult’ in the sense that, once it was analysed and drawn into the framework of this study, it may not portray aspects of their teaching in the kind of light they may want to have shining on them. Alternatively, my analysis of the data might not be what they are expecting, and in sharing it with them and with the wider academic community through my thesis and subsequent publications, I may inadvertently cause them a kind of harm, or betray their trust in me.
This was a difficult issue to think through, because the trust my colleagues have placed in me is very important to me. I will continue to work with them in different ways when my present research has concluded, and I did not want to do anything to jeopardise those relationships. However, as a researcher I also felt an ethical and moral responsibility to my project, and to my questions, and also to truth and knowledge. How could I leave out potentially exciting and also illustrative findings if they will further my own knowledge, and also contribute to the growth of my field, even if those findings represent ‘guilty’ or difficult knowledge? In response to these questions, Williams (2009) raises a discussion about the nature of ethics and the ethical researcher, which will be returned to in the following sub-section below.
The conclusion I reached in terms of my positionality is that I am implicated in my own research, even though I was not a full participant observer in the case studies. I have vested interests in the departments in which I have done this research because I would like to continue doing research with these colleagues and also need to continue working with them as a professional within my university in the future, for example in running writing and tutor training workshops, and these interests have inevitably made me biased. However, this bias has not necessarily been a drawback, because all ‘insider’ research is biased to some extent; researchers examining their own contexts cannot be fully objective or neutral (Trowler 2011). Further, in terms of the critical realist ontology this study adopted, it can be argued that while all knowledge is socially constructed, and therefore fallible (Easton 2010; Sayer 1992), the
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knowledge is not completely reducible to the contexts in which it is created and has meaning (Sayer 1992). Even though, by positioning myself as I did in my study, and by choosing to work with colleagues who are also friends, I opened up spaces where bias can enter and be part of my data and my discussion about it, using Critical Realism and also LCT allowed me to move beyond a relativist notion of what I think is true or real based on my own observations. I was able to move beyond my own potential bias to create sound and analytically defensible claims that are critical rather than relativist in nature. By focusing on finding the generative mechanisms or principles underpinning and shaping experiences of pedagogy, Critical Realism and LCT allowed me to connect with the level of the real, and to see what was happening beneath the surface that could explain what I was observing of teaching and learning as it was happening, and why it could have been happening thus. ‘Observation is fallible’ (Easton 2010: 123), therefore I collected different kinds of data that have allowed me to ‘distinguish among alternative explanations’ (Easton 2010: 123) using the tools derived primarily from LCT.
Throughout this project there was a need to balance my dual roles as a PhD student and researcher and as a writing specialist with both the lecturers and the students. Some of the latter visited the Writing Centre and met me there, and thus saw me in two different ways, because they were also introduced to me in classes as a PhD student and observer. In Law in particular, I was asked to run a writing workshop for all three groups following the first test, and this presented a small dilemma because I was concerned that playing both roles in these groups would compromise my role as observer and researcher. However, I was obliged to do the workshops because of my professional role in the University. It is these kinds of ethical issues that I turn to in more detail now.
5.2 Ethical considerations
Williams (2009) and Pring (2001) draw a distinction between custom and character in research ethics. Custom denotes the systems of rules and protocols that bodies such as university ethics committees draw up, according to accepted standards and norms in particular fields, such as the biomedical sciences or the humanities. These rules are there, ostensibly, to ensure that the research will conform to these standards, and will be ethical in form and nature. Considerations here include, for example, informed consent forms and the ways in which these are worded, and interview protocols and schedules so that the kinds of questions that will be asked can be scrutinised for possible ethical conflicts. These rules and protocols, however useful they can be in ensuring that researchers approach their research carefully and thoughtfully, cannot really protect a researcher from ethical dilemmas and tricky situations that may arise in the field. They also cannot fully ensure that the research that looks ethical on paper will continue to be
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fully ethical in the field; in other words, researchers could step away from their own protocols by making poor decisions when confronted with unexpected situations, and unless they confessed to this no one would be any the wiser. Thus, custom is contrasted with character, which seems to be a far more useful way of thinking about ethical research plans and behaviour. Character is a dimension of research ethics that speaks to the disposition, morals and innate ethics of the person doing the research, and their ability to behave ethically and to make sound decisions in the face of dilemmas and unexpected situations that take the research as well as the participants into account. A focus on this aspect, rather than on the aspect of custom, can lead to a focus on training researchers to behave and think more ethically in the field, so that when issues arise that the researcher has been unable to account for in a proposal, dealing with these dilemmas will keep the research on track and will also enable to researcher to take account of the participants, and be more accountable for the decisions made. This is especially important in projects that rely on qualitative data gathering and analysis, where the ‘data’ are almost always people or involve people’s words, opinions and actions.
An example from my own research was a request from a lecturer I interviewed and whose classes I was observing to run a writing workshop with the three lecture groups as a result of their poor test results in Term one. This was not a large dilemma, but I did need to think carefully about my response. Would the conversations I would need to have with her and her co-lecturer about the students' writing somehow jeopardise our interviews by giving them an insight into the theory I was using in the PhD which they could then give back to me later on in their own ways? If this happened would this be a form of a coerced or coached, rather than more authentic, interview? If I did these workshops with the students as a writing specialist, would this compromise my observer status in the subsequent classes? I decided to do the workshops, because this is my job at the university and it would have been unprofessional and also unfair to refuse. However, I included a short discussion on this in the previous section on positionality as this is linked to ethical concerns and considerations. I did feel that, in a small way, I was a little compromised as a researcher, and could no longer hold myself aloof as an observer. This additional, and unanticipated, involvement in the class changed my observer status and my positionality as a researcher doing research in my own university.
This also seems to be one of the challenges of doing research in one's own university, and especially in a field where one's research and work overlap: one is not fully able to separate the two and remain aloof or distant from the context in which the research is being carried out. In these situations, it becomes especially important to focus on the character of the researcher and their ability to make ethical and considerate decisions when faced with ethical dilemmas and situations they cannot have accounted for. Character, rather than custom alone, is what will
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ensure more ethical research, and more considerate and careful research behaviour in the field and therefore more trustworthy and rigorous research. This kind of research may also have the benefit of growing the fields in which it is done, and published, in more robust ways, and challenging other researchers to raise their own standards in order to more ably join and extend these disciplinary conversations.
In spite of my own personal bias towards a focus on character rather than custom, I was bound by customary requirements for ethical clearance and approval at my own university and also at Rhodes University where I was registered as a student. I approached the UWC Research Office and requested permission to do the fieldwork for this study on campus, providing my proposal and the ethical clearance I obtained from Rhodes University. This permission was given via email. Informed consent was obtained from all the lecturers. A formal information sheet was provided to all of them, which detailed the aims and purposes of the research and what their participation would involve, as well as information about how to withdraw from the study and the ways in which the data would be managed in terms of anonymity and confidentiality. They were given a copy of this to keep, and asked to sign a short declaration indicating their understanding of the information sheet and their willingness to participate fully in the research. There were also several email and in-person exchanges during January and February of 2013, as the data gathering began in earnest, about what the research entailed and the focus of the classroom observations in particular. All of the lecturers were concerned about whether or not their personalities or teaching styles were being judged or evaluated and our conversations, on email and in person, were mainly about reassuring them that this was not the focus of the study, and reminding them of the information in the informed consent documents. Thus the lecturers, through several discussions as well as the formal documents, were fully informed of the aims, nature and purposes of the study and their role in it. All of the lecturers gave their consent fully and voluntarily, and also warmly.