Individual students and groups of learners are sometimes portrayed and positioned as being ‘at risk’ and ‘vulnerable’ educationally. While the constructions of these discourses need to be interrogated for their origins and effects, rather than being accepted uncritically, it is certainly incumbent on educational researchers to approach their interactions with all research participants and stakeholders respectfully and sensitively. At the same time, in implementing research leadership in concert with such participants and stakeholders, educational researchers have both the opportunity and the responsibility to envisage and enact new and potentially more empowering relationships between researchers and other participants, by devising strategies for data collection and analysis that are innovative in their design and reciprocal in their impact. A specific combination of these strategies that the authors have found to be effective is clustered around the shared principles of CHE (connectivity, humanness and empathy) (Reushle, 2005; see also Brown & Danaher, 2012). Conceptually, these principles derive from a strengths-based paradigm that eschews deficit discourses, and they also reflect a relativist and post-humanist ontology. Methodologically, these principles build on autoethnographic and ethnographic approaches that complicate and contest taken-for-granted assumptions about the relationships between researchers and other research participants and stakeholders, and that accentuate the importance of identifying and understanding their separate and shared aspirations and interests. We illustrate these contentions by reference to our respective doctoral studies investigating the practices of active play of very young children supported by parents in the home (Brown, 2012) and the educational experiences and outcomes of the children of occupationally mobile fairground communities (Danaher, 2001). We elaborate how the CHE principles were applied concurrently (Brown, 2012) and retrospectively (Danaher, 2001) in order to frame strategies for maximising rapport and reciprocity with the various research participants. We also articulate potential obstacles to and limitations of implementing such principles, which we relate to broader issues of socioeconomic diversity and marginalisation. Finally, we posit some principles of educational research leadership arising from these applications of the CHE principles to two Australian research projects.

Brown, A. (2012). The new frontier: A social ecological exploration of factors impacting on parental support for the active play of young children within the micro-environment of the family home. Unpublished Doctor of Philosophy thesis, Faculty of Education, University of Southern Queensland, Toowoomba, Qld, Australia. Brown, A., & Danaher, P. A. (2012). Respectful, responsible and reciprocal ruralities research: Approaching and positioning educational research differently within Australian rural communities. In the refereed proceedings of the joint Australian Association for Research in Education and the Asia-Pacific Education Research Association international conference, University of Sydney, Sydney, NSW, Australia. Danaher, P. A. (2001, March). Learning on the run: Traveller education for itinerant show children in coastal and western Queensland. Unpublished Doctor of Philosophy thesis, Faculty of Education and Creative Arts, Central Queensland University, Rockhampton, Qld, Australia. Reushle, S. E. (2005). Inquiry into a transformative approach to professional development for online educators. Unpublished Doctor of Education thesis, Faculty of Education, University of Southern Queensland, Toowoomba, Qld, Australia.