Power, Pedagogy and Participation: Ethics and Pragmatics in Research with Young People

Abstract

This article addresses issues of methodology and ethical reflexivity when attempting to investigate the opinions of young people. Drawing specifically on three studies of young people's understandings of citizenship and their views on topical issues, two from England and one from Lebanon, the authors present ways in which the ethical and practical challenges of such research can be met. While acknowledging the power relationship between researchers and informants, they suggest that what they call 'pedagogical research approaches' built on a participative methodology can open up a space where both parties benefit. They argue that, when working in schools, teacher educators can take advantage of this status to present themselves simultaneously as insiders and outsiders. The authors have devised what are intended to be non-exploitative research instruments that permit the gathering of useful qualitative data during a short encounter. They illustrate their approach with examples of classroom activities they have developed to provide simultaneously a valid learning experience and usable data. Power, Pedagogy and Participation

Revisiting subject knowledge in citizenship education: Understanding power and agency

“…methods not focused on experts, teachers or curriculum documents), and second, it seemed that both sets of tasks bore strong similarities to the kinds of teaching materials that are widely used in the social studies classroom. Starkey et al (2014) have discussed the ways in which researchers who have experience of teaching in schools may be able to use their teaching skills to generate data within school contexts. They argue that as long as students are fully informed, and the school is in agreement, that lessons can provide opportunities to conduct student-focused data collection which serves a double purpose – to collect data for educational research and to provide educationally meaningful experiences for the young people.…”

Discomforting presence in the classroom – the affective technologies of race, racism and whiteness

“…While the blurring of the roles between researcher and teacher may be an advantage in gaining access to students' perspectives (Starkey et al 2014), it also poses challenges in the tensions between ethical and epistemological concerns. This became especially clear in the discussions that took an explicitly racist or aggressive turn.…”

Developing an empowering school curriculum: A renewed focus on action research

“…Such approaches resonate with Freire's concept of 'conscientization' of research participants and enable teachers to develop a 'more profound understanding of the situation' (Reason, 1994: 328). Teacher educators are particularly well placed to facilitate collaborative research in schools by taking advantage of their dual roles as 'insiders' and 'outsiders' (Starkey et al, 2014).…”