Читать книгу Turning Ideas into Research - Barbara Fawcett - Страница 29

In returning to the concept of the relationship between ethics and moral decision-making, Hershock (2000) states that ethics is an expression of morality and can be understood in terms of the ways in which social relationships are envisioned at a given point in time. This has significant currency within the critiques of postmodernist thinking as morality is discursively constructed (Hugman, 2005; Ife, 2008). In speaking specifically about professional practice but making a point that is also relevant for researchers, Hugman (2005: 138) says that ‘discursive ethics is the conduct of a dialogue about that which is good (values) and that which is right (actions) … in which all those who are affected can participate’. This emphasis on participation is picked up further by Ife (2008). Although research ethics has been located within a human rights discourse, in critiquing this discourse, Ife argues that it is dominated by the voices of the privileged; a discourse ‘of the powerful’ such as academics, lawyers, politicians, religious leaders and so on about ‘the powerless’ (p. 136), that has resulted in well-intentioned but dichotomous positions. The dilemma is clear. Not locating disadvantage and powerlessness in this domain results in the exclusion and denial of human rights. However, the desired outcome, that of rebalancing privileged world-views, can only be achieved by full and equal participatory relationships. Extending these arguments further to the research domain, we can begin to see that codified ethical processes may perpetuate dichotomous positioning of the researcher and those being researched, even with the best of intentions.

The emergence of new and different research approaches has challenged the exclusivity of earlier research paradigms. These approaches have been iterative in their evolution and represent a repositioning of social research in equal partnership with research from the physical world. For the purpose of considering ethical issues, and although by no means fully representative of all types of research, the following discussion locates these as three waves of change occurring from the early 1970s to the present.

The first wave of change can be attributed to the emergence of qualitative methodologies in the 1970s that challenged not only the criteria used to evaluate the credibility of the research but also the fundamental ontological position regarding the nature of reality and the relationships between the researcher and knowledge. As qualitative methods found both a voice and synergy in the multiple truths and realities of the postmodernist era, the naturalistic paradigm became the frame of a broad field known as social research. Definitions of social research usually include reference to a systematic process or method of collecting information for the purpose of finding patterns or trends or new ways of understanding social phenomena or relationships. These understandings can lead to new ways of interpreting situations, meaning-making and actions; see, for example, Alston and Bowles (2012: 6) and Marshall and Rossman (1995: 15).

A second wave of change began to reflect the diversity and difference in social relationships that could be attributed to relationships of power. Emancipatory research became the means through which the powerless or disempowered could be privileged in the research endeavour not only as participants being researched but in the open acknowledgement and articulation of previously silent or taken-for-granted assumptions about situations and phenomena that were systematically discriminatory. Contemporary feminist researching can be located in this second wave. In both these research approaches, a variety of theoretical perspectives may inform the research design and interpretation of findings.

The most recent wave of change is the emergence of differing ‘ways of knowing’, which are particularly relevant in the field of Indigenous researching and also in disability researching. As part of emancipatory perspectives, these approaches challenge entrenched and systemic discrimination in the theory, design and implementation of research. Of significance to ethical considerations in these contemporary movements is the epistemological position of the researcher. In exploring changing ideas, Howell (2013), drawing on the earlier work of Guba and Lincoln (2000) and Heron and Reason (1997), examines various paradigms of inquiry and presents new commentary on this position. Unlike the accepted relationships that exist in scientifically orientated forms of positivist research, in constructivist and participatory methods a subjective relationship is developed between the researcher and participants. Findings are subjective, iterative and meanings understood in an interactive, inductive relationship that is not separate but a joined-up activity. This was briefly touched on in Chapter 2 when we began to explore the relationships between the researcher and knowledge.

In an example of the ethical tensions that these positions create, Morley (2011) has documented her experiences as a researcher using critical reflection as a research methodology. In a study exploring self-perceptions of failure in practice by sexual assault counsellors and advocates, critical reflection models developed by Fook (2002) and Fook and Gardner (2007) were used to explore dominant assumptions and discourses that implicitly disempowered individual workers in this field of practice. In a role that challenged the usual objective ethical positioning of the researcher, Morley was an active participant in the dialogue with research participants that led to a transformational view of the work being undertaken, actively challenging the assumptions of the workers in their descriptions of practice and experience. This position was supported by rigorous critical reflection, reflexivity and researcher supervision to ensure the trustworthiness of the study. In the study, Morley was also a participant, answering the interview questions herself and subjecting them to the same discursive analysis. In keeping with one of the principles of critical reflection and discursive analysis, artificial binary or dichotomous positions that become entrenched in subjective understandings of the realities of practice were broken down. Researcher and participants equally contributed to the ‘co-construction’ of knowledge. Morley concluded that this approach challenged the dominant view of what constitutes ethical research and in so doing was an enabling and emancipatory process for the participants through the shared, reconstructed discourses about their practice.

As seen in previous chapters, similar tensions exist in Indigenous research. Whilst external and objective ethical considerations are in place to prevent exploitative research processes, the relationships between Indigenous researchers and Indigenous knowledge cannot be subjected to what Bessarab (2013: 73) calls ‘a colonizing, Western Enlightenment worldview’. She calls for the embedding of Indigenous epistemology in both practice supervision and research relationships. Australian Indigenous research contextualizes knowledge systems and ways of knowing through ‘yarning’, described by Bessarab and Ng’andu (2010) as ‘a culturally safe way of engaging in conversation with Aboriginal people’, and cultural supervision would be a key part of the relationship.

Even if the epistemological position of the researcher and the research draws on participatory approaches, this relationship with knowledge, that is, the co-production of knowledge through the research endeavour, is not automatically emancipatory. Drawing on extensive international work with refugee groups and internally displaced persons, Pittaway et al. (2010) and Hugman et al. (2011) critically examine the efficacy of such research approaches, the constraints and realities of work in the field, and the challenging organizational ethics processes. Their work suggests a new theorization of these relationships based on the work of human rights advocates, anti-oppressive social work approaches, a renewed emphasis on human agency and the privileging of reciprocity of benefit, with researchers being required to articulate clear and tangible benefits and outcomes for the groups participating in the research.

The ethical considerations here are clear and shift the emphasis and meaning of ‘benefit’ from that of an undeserved reward to explicit outcomes that lead to improvements and changes in oppressive social relationships. The challenge for research ethics committees is to ensure that they are open to these changes, ensuring that they assess whether researching is being undertaken ethically rather than to a prescriptive ethics formula. This may mean broadening understandings of the positioning of the researcher in the research; different ways of knowing and the co-construction of the entire research endeavour by both researcher and participants, including the development of the research questions; the theorization of knowledge; the research design and method; and the co-production of meaning and new knowledge.