Session Information
99 ERC SES 05 G, Research on Arts Education
Paper Session
Contribution
Proposal Information (590/600 words):
Empirical research has historically been shaped by the doctrine that power in research should be held by the researcher over the research participant. This approach, however, has often resulted in marginalized groups not being represented accurately, as the researcher's choices will shape the scope of what is discoverable in the work. By allowing researchers to have complete control over the research design, participants' agency is often limited, leading to results that are not truly reflective of their concerns. Reconsidering this power imbalance and exploring ways to foreground the authentic concerns of participants is growing to be a key concern in social justice research, particularly in relation to neurodiverse participants, where disrupting traditional research orthodoxies can help bridge this gap and enact emancipatory participation in social justice research.
This paper presents an examination of my PhD work and how emancipatory participation has been considered in the design to disrupt traditional research power imbalances. In the work, four dyslexic participants shared their experience of the university library using photovoice methods and member check processes. Utilising theoretical frameworks drawn from the writings of Gramsci (1971) and Friere (1970), the content of the paper will illustrate areas of good practice in the research, and postulate what could be improved in future endeavours with dyslexic participants to maximize their input in sharing their experience as part of social justice research.
As I sought to evidence the experiences of dyslexic library users, the methods were carefully considered with participant agency in mind. The definitions used to identify dyslexics are often underpinned by a deficit approach; the most ubiquitous and synonymous characteristic of dyslexics is a failure to meet expected reading and writing levels, (Rice & Brooks, 2004; Elliot & Gibbs, 2008) where these levels vary by country and language, such as the case of bilingual monolingual dyslexics who are considered dyslexic in one language but not another (Miles, 2000; Wydell & Butterworth, 1999). Consequently, it is pertinent to question how insight into the lives of this marginalized group is gained, and whether methods of inquiry are congruent to participant living experience and strengths.
I wished to foreground the participants' voices’, reducing my control over the data in the process, I crafted co-production activities through which participants and I could work together to ensure that my writing was representative of their experiences and that I had not misunderstood or impressed meaning into their stories based on my subjectivities. I kept note of my subjectivities in a methodological reflexivity journal, where I recorded a personal inventory (Gramsci, 1971) and memos (Charmaz, 2011; 2014) about my thinking, feelings, and experiences that related to the ones participants shared so that I could identify overlaps in our stories as I sought to relate to theirs without assuming I understood their experience. Traditional methods, such as structured interviews, where question sets remain inflexible to the insights gleaned from participants, do not allow for agentic input from participants or the corresponding rich data that can be accessed. The work appealed to a constructivist grounded theory methodology that allowed for the alteration of questions used in the semi-structured interview, to better reflect the discourses which arose in the data where I had not considered such aspects of library use in the study design (Charmaz, 2014). Altering the research tools (i.e., the question set) to reflect participants' insights thereby allows for an investigation into the authentic concerns of the participants and enables the investigation to take shape according to themes that are truly grounded in the richness of the data that was reflective of participants' unfolding stories.
Method
In contrast to investigations that have predicated insight into dyslexic experience on an exchange through written methods, I propose that photo-based knowledge exchange affords emancipatory action in research with dyslexic participants, as the data gathered is not predicated on the deficit that defines them and can be applied across national and international contexts (Rose, 2012). Rose (2012) explains that photovoice involves images captured by the participants, enabling the researcher to experience the participant's world as closely as possible, seeing what the participants sees through symbolic meaning attatched to the photos they take. However, the literature (Plunkett, Leipet, & Ray; Pollock, 2017) cautions that reflexive processes are to be used alongside photovoice methods, to be transparent about the researchers’ subjectivities that could impact the inquiry. Taking regular personal inventories throughout the research can aid the researcher in “knowing thy self” (Gramsci, 1971, p.324); the researcher can acknowledge their influence on the investigation, enabling them to clarify their own and the participant's voices as they construct the research together. Similarly, keeping memos, as suggested by Charmaz (2014), affords insight and reflexivity into the researcher's influence over the project, where consideration of co-production through photovoice methods enables authentic illustration of participant experience. Co-production in research is hailed as "a cornerstone of social innovation" (Voorberg, Bekkers, & Tummers, 2015, p.14) as it provides an opportunity to disrupt the traditional research orthodoxy that sees researchers in a 'privileged' position over the inference placed on the data. This is a vital consideration in research involving neurodiverse individuals so that the results may be crafted according to a systemic 'neurotypical gaze' (McDermott, 2021; Bertilsdotter Rosqvist et al., 2023). Drawing on the insights of Friere, I argue that this is a necessary consideration for all researchers, as self-oppression of neurodiverse traits in line with harmful systemic neurotypical discourses may influence the scope of the investigation, where neurotypical researchers may “internalized the image of the oppressor and [adopt] his guidelines” (1970, p.47). Despite being dyslexic myself, I could not guarantee I would interpret participants experiences accurately, and so both self-inventories and memos were kept throughout the project; opportunities for co-construction and member checking were built into the research design to enable enhanced participant agency over the picture I was portraying of their experiences (Dickenson-Swift, James, Kippen, & Liamputtong, 2007; Birt et al., 2016).
Expected Outcomes
Participants shared their experience of the university library, capturing photographs to illustrate what impacts their experience, and ranking these according to what impacts their experience the most. During the interviews, rich and in-depth conversations revealed several themes concerning services and resources that shaped each person’s experience, setting the bounds for what they felt capable of and willing to do in the library. The themes of ‘support from others’ and ‘accessibility’ were the overarching themes found through grounded theory analysis, where the participants' experiences overlapped on several topics – for example, the majority of the participants discussed feeling anxious and worried when seeking resources in the library, as they were concerned about onlookers perceptions of them as inadequate or unprepared for university study. These insights were validated by participants in a series of collaborative exercises as part of the member check process and would not have been possible without appeal to emancipatory methods and processes. Engagement with photovoice methods and member-checking processes painted a picture of emancipatory research that contrasts starkly with previous investigations that prised researcher control over the investigation. Expression of agency in the research offered participants to contribute and shape the bounds of what the research could reveal. The insights presented within the investigation illustrate what is possible when working with marginalised groups, and the positive outcomes that are achievable when actively seeking to involve participants in the design and understanding of investigation outputs. Challenges to embedding co-production activities will be discussed, with directions to enhance further works that involve dyslexic participants. The methods discussed enable participant emancipation and agency, regardless of the participant's first language, and could transform the research landscape, offering valuable insights into the lived experiences of diverse groups in both national and international settings.
References
Bertilsdotter Rosqvist, H., Botha, M., Hens, K., O’Donoghue, S., Pearson, A., & Stenning, A. (2023). Cutting our own keys: New possibilities of neurodivergent storying in research. Autism, 27(5), 1235-1244. Birt, L., Scott, S., Cavers, D., Campbell, C., & Walter, F. (2016). Member checking: a tool to enhance trustworthiness or merely a nod to validation?. Qualitative health research, 26(13), 1802-1811. Charmaz, K. (2011). Grounded theory methods in social justice research. Strategies of qualitative inquiry, 4. Charmaz, K. (2014). Constructing grounded theory. Sage. Dickson-Swift, V., James, E. L., Kippen, S., & Liamputtong, P. (2007). Doing sensitive research: what challenges do qualitative researchers face?. Qualitative research, 7(3), 327-353. Elliott, J. G., & Gibbs, S. (2008). Does dyslexia exist?. Journal of Philosophy of Education, 42(3-4), 475-491. Freire, P. (1970). Pedagogy of the Oppressed. New York: Continuum Gramsci, A. (2020). Selections from the prison notebooks. In The applied theatre reader (pp. 141-142). Routledge. McDermott, C. (2021). Theorising the neurotypical gaze: Autistic love and relationships in The Bridge (Bron/Broen 2011–2018). Medical humanities. Miles, E. (2000). Dyslexia may show a different face in different languages. Dyslexia, 6(3), 193-201. Plunkett, R., Leipert, B. D., & Ray, S. L. (2013). Unspoken phenomena: Using the photovoice method to enrich phenomenological inquiry. Nursing Inquiry, 20(2), 156-164. Pollock, S. P. (2017). Literacy barriers to learning and learner experiences.[Student Thesis]. University of Exeter. https://ore.exeter.ac.uk/repository/bitstream/handle/10871/30847/PollockS.pdf?sequence=1 Rice, M., & Brooks, G. (2004). Developmental dyslexia in adults: a research review. National Research and Development Centre for adult literacy and numeracy. Rose, G. (2012). Visual methodologies: An introduction to researching with visual materials. London: Sage. Voorberg, W. H., Bekkers, V. J., & Tummers, L. G. (2015). A systematic review of co-creation and co-production: Embarking on the social innovation journey. Public management review, 17(9), 1333-1357. Wydell, T. N., & Butterworth, B. (1999). A case study of an English-Japanese bilingual with monolingual dyslexia. Cognition, 70(3), 273-305.
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