Ethics

‘I've been a long time that I've wandered Through the people I have known’ ‘Northern sky’, Nick Drake

Initial Plans: Ethics approval was required by the university before the research process could begin. I was obliged to demonstrate to the faculty ethics committee that participants in my research would be recruited free from coercion, with full consent and that research processes would ensure that confidentiality was established and maintained throughout. The committee also

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required that strategies be implemented to minimise any identified psychological, social or other risks.

Students were invited to participate voluntarily and provided with clear and thorough information about the nature, purpose and outcomes of the research. Students were required to read and sign consent forms prior to participating. I undertook to disclose all current and future teaching commitments and roles at Victoria University so that participants would be aware of my identity as both teacher/employee and researcher. To ensure confidentiality I offered that data analysis and thesis writing would involve de-identification of participants and employ the use of pseudonyms. I informed potential participants that data would only be used for the stated purposes - exploring student experience and informing curriculum development.

In order to minimise potential psychological and social risks to participants I made students aware that participation in the research was voluntary. The nature, purpose and requirements of the research were made clear to students in both in the information provided to participants at the time of consent and at the beginning of focus groups and interviews. Information to participants clearly outlined my role as a music teacher in the music department, and although I had taught many of the students prior to data collection no participants were recruited from classes I was teaching at the time. Focus groups and interviews were conducted according to the principles of respect and justice to all participants. Participants were informed that they were free to make comments and answer questions as they wished and were not asked to discuss issues or areas they were uncomfortable about. Participants were informed that they could discontinue the focus group or interview discussion at any time. Participants were informed that the focus group and interview discussions would be taped and that transcripts would be used at a later date as part of data analysis and presentation. Finally, I informed participants that they would not be identified in any data presentation and that any published analysis of data would de-identify participants.

My original ethics application acknowledged the need to maintain awareness of my role/bias as teacher and coordinator in terms of my impact on project development, direction of research, data interpretation and impact on student

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responses. I intended to remain constantly reflective of my roles and purpose throughout the research and writing. At this planning stage of the research, I experienced ‘ethics’ as a required process to be navigated in order to be able to begin the collection of data. I applied for and was granted ethics approval to conduct the research under the conditions outlined above. In hindsight, I associated this process with meeting university guidelines concerning risk and the importance of a personal sense of care and sensitivity in the conduct of research.

Reflections: Throughout candidature and the gaining of ethics approval I saw myself as a reasonably just and fair teacher and person. I trusted my instincts to act fairly and sensitively with participants. On reflection I’ve learned that ethics of research is a far more complex and important notion than I conceived as I set out on this investigation

I came to this research with several critical opinions of ‘traditional’ formal music educational cultures. These stances were developed through a number of my own experiences as a student and through my work as a music teacher in a range of roles. However, as a beginning researcher I felt I had to keep these views hidden and establish a tone of objectivity in my analysis and writing. I believed that to do otherwise would be to compromise the validity of my findings. However, I was later inspired to read that ‘qualitative researchers acknowledge their personal subjectivities and make their assumptions explicit in their reporting’ (Kervin et al., 2006, p. 35). In declaring that amongst my aims was the desire to improve conditions in music education, I came to understand that I should admit that I firmly believed (rather than perhaps coyly implied) that much of the tried and tested music curricula and pedagogy was negatively impacting developing musicians. I also had to acknowledge that I was critical of an over-reliance on statistical data to describe, and drive, the student experience both locally at Victoria University and in the wider tertiary education field. I had to openly declare that I felt music and creative arts more generally had been pushed to the edges of all levels of educational curricula and had become woefully under resourced and deprioritised. These affirmations formed a part of my attempt to let ‘readers know what we believe and what we feel…’ (Pelias, 2015, p. 610). In allowing myself inside the research process and in

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admitting my political and moral stances, I was actively attempting to find ways forward for music education and research. These acknowledgements assisted me to explore my beliefs, opinions and ethical positions as both educator and researcher.

This intense and personal investigative process has led me to conclude that qualitative research is political and characterised by an inexorable set of moral and political considerations. Teachers, researchers and students in formal educational contexts move, think and act with degrees of agency afforded to them by virtue of a long history of power dynamics and distributions. Institutionalised education tends to operate on hierarchical structures that allow for the accrual and maintenance of power within a top to bottom paradigm. For example, as a researcher and teacher I came to this inquiry with inherent power in relation to the students and participants in this investigation.

Acknowledging my power in this process of inquiry accords with the proposition that ‘teachers (and researchers) must admit that they are in a position of authority and then demonstrate that authority in their actions in support of students’ (Kincheloe et al., 2011, p. 165). Those tasked with the job of educating can do this by ‘relinquish(ing) the authority as truth providers…and assum(ing) the mature authority of facilitators of student enquiry and problem posing…(so) …students gain freedom…the ability to become self-directed human beings capable of producing their own knowledge’ (Kincheloe et al., 2011, p. 165). Having initially satisfied the uniform ethical guidelines set down by university policies, I found myself thinking about why I was really doing this research. My aims became increasingly clear to me as I talked to students and read the literature within the relevant academic communities. I was spurred onwards by Pelias (2015, p. 610) who reminded researchers to continually ask what our explorations and storytelling are trying to achieve, and for whom? My research was about voicing the unheard student voice and understanding their experiences in the context of exploring tertiary music education. It became increasingly clear that I wanted to create an opportunity for students to share their challenges, in addition to having capacities and strengths acknowledged as well. This thinking was an attempt to bring a more authentic ethical practice to my investigation, to own up to students, about what I was trying to do. I came

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to see the importance of continuous reflective ethical practice in my role as both teacher and researcher. I found I was attempting to apply an ethical standpoint in my research that incorporated a ‘transformative egalitarianism, attention to the problems of representation, and continued examination of power orientations’ (Lincoln and Cannella, 2009, p. 279)

I was continually challenged by the actual and theoretical differences between formal university procedures relating to ethics and the day to day ethical considerations of the teacher/researcher. Berger (2001) was interested in exploring the relationship between the observer and the observed and how researchers might use reflexivity in methodological frameworks to bring both parties closer together. Conscious reflexive attention within the investigative process, she argued, had the potential to alter the traditional power structures between those who actively investigate and those who are passively investigated. By acknowledging power distributions and including self-stories in the discussions of other data I attempted to establish a focus on power dynamics and upon the relationship between researcher and those being researched. I wanted to create a functional way of ‘acting ethically’ that augmented the necessary agreement to act ethically by adhering to the uniform guidelines of a university policy.

Berger (2001) was also interested in the importance of establishing an empathetic understanding of the subjects of ethnographic research. She saw empathy as a crucial part of an ethical approach to research. Ethical approaches can, and should, apply to the localised contexts of various research projects but I’ve also come to see that they relate to the role of qualitative inquiry more generally as an empathetic, caring and respectful method of investigation and inquiry (Hultberg, 2005)

Berger (2001) explored the positioning of researcher into telling and writing about the participant stories she was telling. I felt like I needed to tell the stories of learning about the research process in addition to the outcomes of the research, but I struggled to articulate a legitimate or clear reason why this was so important. Reed-Danahay (2009) has acknowledged the complexity and tension inherent within the dual roles of insider and outsider in the research process. I came to feel that, despite my confusion between me as researcher

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and the research itself, there was merit in struggling through. My intention was to achieve a kind of balance, or to ‘create a more equitable relationship between the researcher and those she or he studies by subjecting the researched and the researcher to an analytical lens…(and) to explore a topic or research question more fully by including the researcher’s experience of it’ (Chase, 2011, p. 423). My writing and analysis of the vignettes situated me as both the teacher and researcher in the narrative inquiry. By writing me into the stories about musicians’ experiences in communities and institutions I was tackling the real ethics of my research. I strove to get as close as I could to answers or at least some suggested ways forward.