Have I been standing on ethically, methodologically “dodgy ground”!

Sikes (2006a) argues that “researchers and their research choices”; “research topics”; “methodologies and methods” and “writing styles” all become “dodgy” when

researchers ignore issues around “reflexivity, identity, values and ethics”. Researchers acts on the ‘dodgy grounds’ then become legally unacceptable as well “ethically and morally dubious”. I think the insight mentioned above has remained engaging for me throughout the research process.

In this research, I have considered the strength of my situated and differentiated position as a teacher-researcher of British Pakistani Muslim and working class background in critically orienting the problem around Muslim identities. However, the dodgy ground question became pressing when my position went into dialogue with participants’ positionality performances in reading and displacing the problem. Although, there has never been a moment of complete insider position with my participants, yet, my own position as a researcher has constantly been pushed and drawn outside and inside in the ‘between’ (Dwyer and Buckle, 2009) insider space (See Axiology section this chapter). Firstly, I have theoretically tried to understand my relationship in this ‘between’ space with my participants. In doing so, I have theoretically reflected on their positionality performances in the shifting situated, contextual and contact awareness. In this regard, I have tried to accommodate difference and located the dislocation of myself and my participants’ positions by iteratively engaging with existing theoretical-empirical insights on fieldwork research relationships (See Axiology section this chapter). I agree with Narayan (1993) when she says that complete cultural insider position is a “colonial construct” and a “misnomer”. It is neither deterministic, nor it is dis-embedded, but, it is performed along the multiple “loci” that go under different positionings and alignments creating the liminal reflection and reflexive insider space.

6.8.1 The recognition of ‘critical warm listening’ as an insider-outsider reflexivity position and a reliability balancing act

Under this heading, I sum up my reflections on the direction of insider-outsider researcher status.

In the light of this research. I have been trying to say and practice what I coin more specifically the practice of ‘critical warm listening’. By warm listening I mean that insider researcher negates some unethical, irrational and non-participatory research attitudes. For example, for me the ‘hot’ and ‘cold’ spaces of listening are ethically, morally and rationally non-desirable. In ‘hot’ insider spaces researcher and participants’ subjectivities are all over the place which remain theoretically non-reflected and aloof from the engagement with good practice. Similarly, the ‘cold’ space merely

of participants’ worlds, and the researcher pursues his/her own research aims without letting the participants define them on shared ground (Cornwall and Jewkes, 1995). Furthermore, ‘cold’ view in some senses can be treated with what Reinharz called the practice of “rape research” (Reinharz cited in Lather, 1986; p. 75). In this sense the

researcher takes what he wants while doing innumerable damage to his/her participants. On the other hand, I argue the practice of ‘critical warm listening’ rationally tries to understand the participants’ and researcher’s subjectivity in a space that is theoretically illuminative and remains in dialogical contact with good research practices. In this chapter, I have provided examples of such critical warm listening which encourages recognition of listening against hearing, sociable, moral, thoughtful, listening as

understanding. In other words, in critical warm listening, the insider researcher does two jobs, one to make it possible that the research design and research processes at all stages should aspire for democratic participation and a critical humane attitude. Secondly, researcher should ensure that there should be ontologically, epistemologically and theoretically built in high degree of self- reflection lenses, that helps him/her make the ‘familiar strange’.

I call this epistemological care in the ‘practice of warm listening’ as the practice of high degree of ‘theoretical conscientiousness’. In this regard, I made conscious effort to theoretically understand the connection of familiar-strange liminality and develop trustworthiness about the research processes. Furthermore, I have deconstructed my self-opacity, and managed the bias of my position in framing problem, making research choices, deciding methodologies and method. In doing so, I have performed critical subjective self-awareness about problem framing (chapter,1) and remained

hermeneutically open in developing rigorous theoretical reflection (chapters 2,3,4 & 5). Furthermore, I considered standpoint problem driven ontologies and epistemology that helped me negotiate a critical theoretical perspective, critical complex case study research strategy, cutting edge methodological, axiological and analytical procedures to provocatively situate mine and my participants’ voices on the problem (Chapter,6). The continual dialogue between normative theoretical, normative axiological frameworks and researcher-participants’ perspectives resulted in critical writing practice about problem examination, interpretation and dissemination (chapters 5,6,7,8 & 9). In other words, I have tried to perform the validity processes that are critical-theoretical, socio- constructivist, communicative, critically persuasive and transformational (Fish, 1980a;

Lather, 1986; Kvale, 1995; Richardson, 2000; Fine, 2006; Keith, 2013; Patton, 2015; pp. 680-681). By the performance of these validities, I achieved working with my participants for: (1) critical normative de-construction, (2) critical emergence and provocative- projective truth-making , (3) speaking counter truth to power, (4) critical persuasion, (5) recognition of listening in its dialogical, sociable, live, thoughtful, moral care and praxis understanding my participants and their narrative performances for the broader audience .

6.8.2 Representative generalisability or theoretical generalisability This leads me to conclude the chapter by briefly pondering the findings scope of this study and the issue of generalisability. The scope of this study is not breadth but depth. So, I am not claiming the generalisation of my findings on the basis of the small empirical data set (four teachers). Instead, I have situated here a misrecognition based critical theoretical argument on the phenomenon of British Pakistani Muslim

politicisation of identities, agency and belonging. The critical theoretical argument has socio-historical embeddedness. My findings are then generalisable in a “fuzzy way” (Bassey, 1999) to other similar studies within the misrecognition normative (chapters 4 & 5) and misrecognition socio-historical problem scope sketched in this research (chapters 1,2 & 3). Hammersley’s (2012) “theoretical inference” principle from critical case studies is relevant here:

Theoretical inference. Here, inference is from cases studied to all the cases (an infinite number) assumed to fall within the scope of the theory being developed and/or tested; in other words, to all members of a theoretical category, those that occurred in the past, are occurring in the present, will occur in the future, and could occur (p. 399).

Furthermore, it is in this theoretical inference domain that I projected my conclusions in chapter 10. There, I consider the implications for theory and methodology of the

outcomes of my study. In doing so, I have drawn together examples of existing good theoretical-empirical practice on pedagogy, policy and practice. This, I did by

inferentially linking these examples to the theoretical propositions reached in this study. Finally, in researching the lives of my participants, I would like to say that I have tried to ethically access their lives and tried to position mine and my participants’ dialogic on the misrecognition problem rigorously.