Session Information
05 SES 12 A, Symposium: Doing Participatory Research In Education With At-Risk Participants: Paradoxes And Provocations
Symposium
Contribution
Participatory research has a strong reputation in education research, particularly when it explores the experiences of marginalised children, young people, and/or adults (Mohindra et al 2011; Conrad & Campbell 2013). Its use is often justified because it reduces, even removes, the distance between researcher and participant (Rafferty 2094), allowing the research to reflect their voices and describe their experiences in their own words. It also potentially enables such research partners to be involved in all aspects of the research, allowing it to fulfil an emancipatory purpose (Hall 1975; Barton & Hayhoe 2022) and aligning it with action research (Sharp & Balogh 2021). However, strong reputations often obscure problems and discourage debate and this symposium was prompted by a number of issues associated with using participatory approaches in education research, which it is designed to highlight and explore, drawing on relevant research undertaken in 3 different European contexts. These issues are presented here as provocations.
The first provocation is methodological. While participatory data collection is often as open and wide as possible, analysis can often remain at the level of content analysis or summarising what research partners have said. This captures an interesting ethical shift, which has led in some cases to under-theorised research analysis creating research findings which are both superficial and paradoxically too distant from what research partners actually said. This may mean that participatory approaches deny important insights.
The second provocation relates to the researcher’s positionality. Researchers are funded both to undertake research and to use this research to improve the institutions or services they are examining. This can prevent them thinking objectively and result in them being influenced by the objectives of the institution or the funder, especially if there is pressure to share research partners’ perspectives (Lewin & Shaw 2021) or conversely suppress their views to ‘protect’ partners from their consequences.
The final provocation relates to communication and dissemination. Research findings which remain at the level of quotation or summary are easier to communicate. Producing findings which use more theoretical analytical approaches may be controversial because they foreground the importance of interpretation and oppose participatory purism, as well as risking bringing taboos and “unthinkables” into participatory dialogue.
The symposium’s presentations bring together critical theory and empirical research to explore these provocations, guided by the following research questions:
- How did the research reported here draw on participatory approaches?
- To what extent did issues around methodology, positionality and dissemination affect how the research was conducted and analysed?
- How were these issues addressed?
References
Barton, J, and Hayhoe, S. (2022) Emancipatory and participatory research. London: Routledge. Conrad, D. and Campbell, G. (2013) Participatory Research: An Empowering Methodology with Marginalized Populations, in Liamputtong, P. and Rumbold, J. (eds.) Knowing Differently: Arts-Based and Collaborative Research. New York: Nova Science, 247-263. Hall, B. (1975). Participatory research: An approach for change. Convergence: An International Journal of Adult Education, 8(2), 24–32. Lewin, T. and Shaw, J. (2021) Collective Becoming: Visual and Performative Methodologies for Participatory Research, in Burns, D. Howard, J. and Ospina, S.M., The Sage Handbook of Participatory Research and Inquiry. London: Sage, 711-722. Mohindra, K. S., et al. (2011) owards Ethically Sound Participatory Research with Marginalised Populations: Experiences from India. Development in Practice, 21( 8), 1168–75. Sharp, C. and Balogh, R. (2021) Becoming Participatory: Some Contributions to Action Research in the UK, in Burns et al The Sage Handbook of Participatory Research and Inquiry. London: Sage, 154-168.
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