I chose two particular artifacts that are uniquely tied to my revelations around the methodological issues within research practices. What Kitchen Stories from EDU 9002 and the choice readings involving ‘African Oral Traditional Storytelling’ (AOTS) from EDU 9005 provided was a deeper understanding of the ethical concerns involved within research practices. When individuals conduct research with people, ethics must be paramount. As an individual who is also from a vulnerable population, relational ethics was something that impacted my local Vietnamese community. More than a decade ago, university researchers, who did not identify as being Vietnamese entered our community seeking knowledge about our transition to Canadian life. As the Vice-President of Internal Affairs, I welcomed these individuals and advocated to others within the community to be involved. That way, our stories are documented for posterity. After sharing our stories, we never heard from the researchers, much less know where our stories ended up. As a result, I swore that if I ever conducted research, I would take ethics very seriously.
It appeared that Kitchen Stories was positioned around a positivist methodology. While positivists utilize an objective stance when undertaking research (Denzin & Lincoln, 2011), it was apparent that the primary data collector (Folke), appeared to hover around the participant (Isak). As I observed how Folke scribbled and wrote every action and movement while hovering over Isak, I could not help but feel uncomfortable with such interactions. While it appears that the movie was set around post-WW2, technology such as video recorders may not have been feasible for obtaining data. However, to me, there could have been other ways one can obtain such data without having such awkward interactions. Unfortunately, when watching the movie, it felt as if the study did not attempt to maximize ethics. This is especially evident when the participant was offered a horse for being in the study. However, as the participant later finds out, he was given a toy horse instead of a live animal. While I have provided two ethical concerns, there were a few others within the movie.
In linking Kitchen Stories to that of my choice reading from EDU 9005, relational ethics was a major theme between both artifacts. My pending dissertation is focused around Black and African Nova Scotian learners in which I will utilize an autoethnographic approach. While I have been exposed to other facets of Afrocentricity (i.e., the research brochure artifact), Osei-Tutu’s (2023) reading on AOTS provided me with further insights on maximizing relational ethics. As I am investigating the narratives around student success from an already racialized and vulnerable population, I do not wish to be perceived as an individual who enters a culture for some sort of professional gain, recklessly leaving and never heard from again (Adams & Ellis, 2012). Instead, I wanted to embrace the humanistic approach of AOTS by removing the classical terminology of ‘data collection’ and ‘data analysis.’ Instead, I co-opted Osei-Tutu’s ideas by renaming ‘data collection’ to ‘recollection of memories’ and, instead of using ‘data analysis’, I chose to rename it as ‘interpreting memories and experiences.’ That way, as Adams and Ellis claim, individuals are not treated merely as data points to merely be studied.
Artifact 1: Proto-Methodology Chapter
Draft Version of the Chapter 3 Methodology Section
EDU 9005: Dr. Corinne Haigh, Acadia
Research Knowledge & Competencies
Demonstrate research competence and critical analysis of current research and methodological issues.
Artifact 2: Ethics in Research
Kitchen Stories (EDU 9002) and African Oral Traditional Storytelling (AOTS) (EDU 9005)
EDU 9002: Dr. Susie Brigham, MSVU
EDU 9005: Dr. Corinne Haigh, Acadia
Like the Problem Identification Literature Review artifact found under Theme 2
Artifact 1 (coded: T2A1), the Proto-Methodological Chapter would be my second largest undertaking within the PhD program. Because I realized the incredible transformative power autoethnography had in enhancing my teaching practice, I decided to again utilize autoethnography as a research methodology for the PhD dissertation. Fortunately, I was able to use my Master-level thesis’ Chapter 3 as the basis for the dissertation, albeit with significant changes.
Much of my adult life has been steeped within a quantitative lens. As a physics educator, I once believed that the positivist tradition, which the quantitative paradigm exists in, was the gold standard for research (Denzin & Lincoln, 2011). However, over time and through personal revelations, I realized that quantitative and qualitative approaches have different merits for answering the how and why questions. As Bochner and Ellis (2022) identify, because life is unpredictable and we live in chaotic and uncertain times, autoethnography enables researchers to address how individuals may endure such aspects moving forward.
In writing this latest iteration, I felt as if I had a better understanding of autoethnography. I leaned into my thesis and reviewed any potential gaps or new understanding from Dr. Haigh’s course content. Through this thorough review, I reinforced and enhanced this iteration by not only incorporating content found from Dr. Haigh’s EDU 9005 course but, I also enriched sections that explored culture (see Ball & Ladson-Billings, 2020). While I briefly spoke about reflexivity in my thesis, I provided a detailed examination regarding the importance of personal reflexivity. Additionally, this iteration recognized the importance of interpretivism because society is embedded with meanings through our words, languages and actions, and, as such, the interpreted meanings can be difficult to encounter (Taylor, 1985a, 1985b). Therefore, to sufficiently decipher the meanings of interpreted data, researchers need to embrace the act of interpretivism so that one can bring about a greater understanding of an experience (Thomas & Corbett, 2018).