The story behind the stories
Good stories often break rules. Like any good story, this book began with a desire to break the rulesârules Fida found that unavoidably enter into the purposes of research and its conduct but often create more conflict and drama than the research âplotâ desires. In the 1990s, Fida embarked on a research career and journey she hoped would bring her closer to understanding the Australian Muslim community and Islam. As a devoted and practicing Muslim, she was familiar with the religious and cultural mosaic of the Australian Muslim community, but less so with the accepted âacademic waysâ of engaging in research with this group. For many years, she trawled through thousands of pages of qualitative research methodology texts eager to learn. Although her enthusiasm and excitement as an early career researchâat the timeâwas unremitting, one incessant question remained unanswered for her: âWhat does a research methodology that values Muslim knowledge, understanding, wisdom, ideas, images, and insights look like?â Frustrated with the often static and essentialist qualitative research approaches to study marginalized groups, and more significantly, the ascribing of religion and culture as a casual role in people's lives, but unperturbed to pursue a response to her incessant questions, she knew that an answer will require new thinking. So began a tumultuous journey filled with creative thinking, disciplined inquiry and theory building, and examination. She was devoted to not only explore ways in which qualitative research can better represent members of marginal, disempowered, or stigmatized groups like the Australian Muslim community but to create ethical research processes and outcomes to better support research with and about Muslims and to supplement the academic educational discourse about Muslim culture and religion. Required was a concerted consideration of ways to redress this balance. So she began exploring further ethics within research processes and in particular she concentrated on how to reconcile certain institutional procedural ethics with those that emerged from the research field.
Temple and Moran (2006) posit that questions of research ethics often arise when considerations are made about best practices to avoid or minimise the exploitation of participants. Although not an under-researched marginalized group, most research in Western dominated countries, on/with and within Muslim communities and Islam, more broadly ascribe a sense of the unknown (Powell 2018), perpetuate common misconceptions (Elbih 2015) generating fear and suspicion (von Sikorski et al. 2017). Research about this marginalized community often fails to acknowledge the heterogeneity of Muslim communities, or distinguish between cultural and religious knowledges within. This story of seeking new ways to research becomes even more complicated when reflecting on our encounters with institutional ethics committee procedures. Clashes occurred when the traditional, institutional biomedical ethics review models were applied to social science research without careful considerations of the different demands incumbent upon this research paradigm. Addressing the insensitivity to different forms of doing research within cultural contexts rather than a propensity towards a, âone-size-fits-allâ approach to ethical clearance was impossible. These experiences made it abundantly clear that what was urgently required was a reconceptualization of ethical processes, which deconstructs and breaks down a dominant, technicist, hegemonic reinforcement of doing research. Urgently required was a rethinking of an orientation toward research ethics, rather than a set of research methods, grounded in epistemic understanding and appreciation aimed for social justice and one permeating the design implementation, analysis, and dissemination process.
While this book begins with personal themes and Fida's journey, it is the addition of all our stories in this book that arguably add to the important elements that enrich this storyline. While also feeling considerable dissatisfaction with institutionalized and formalized ethical review procedures dictating education and social science research more broadly, our innovative research endeavours in our respective fields create movements and moments that challenge the primacy of hegemonic and traditionally powerful systems of research. Our stories are insights on respectful and creative interactions between the researcher and the researched and demonstrate ethical negotiations that allow for an elucidation of ânot just what we have discovered but how we have discovered itâ (Etherington 2007, p. 601). In the details of the sequence of our own research experiences, we learn more about the ethical challenges that are faced, such as understanding insiderâoutsider dynamics, involvement, community participation, about multiple ways decisions were made about selecting and using different research methods. Our stories heighten the importance of ontological awareness in research with marginalized communities. Our moments of reflection and reflexivity enable for greater understandings of community epistemologies. The individual search by each of us on how research ethics can be mobilized to challenge institutional, normative, and at times ossified forms of ethical research within marginalized groups has helped us shape our research processes and encounters.
Although some common structures of educational research are maintained in each of our research journeys, our joint quest for research that addresses cultural determinism and promotes collective participatory responses is always at the forefront of our work. As we avoid idiosyncratic, subjective and potentially misleading information, our research calls for greater awareness of the subtleties with which we frame our research and ultimately gives meaning to participant experiences and the research encounter itself. Fundamental to achieving this is researching ethically the epistemic understanding and values of our research participants and ourselves. Understanding forms of knowledge and in particular, the relationship between social, political, and cultural (including religious) dynamics, beliefs, and behaviours of participants, enables more pronounced understandings of who they are as people, their realities, and stories. Who we are as researchers also becomes significant learning. This relinquishing of the role of âresearcher as expertâ is with the aim to identify and where possible, address power imbalances in the research process to create the conditions necessary for ethical research partnerships. An epistemological driver to research, in particular, is understanding how to work with the difficult knowledge embedded within some marginalized groups, like those explored in this book, which can open doors for more ethical processes, such as cross-cultural communication, and the ability to engage in participatory decision-making with community partners. A focus on epistemology invites understanding difficult knowledge and considering alternative knowledge to assist with identifying and analyzing manifestations of power in research practices and policies. This embodies and generates understandings about complex layers and intersections within cultures and communities. Effective ethical research, required for complex and enduring relationships, is negotiated and formed. The precept of our story is therefore that of care, empathy, and humility. We suggest that ethical, competent research within, of, and for marginalized communities needs to engage with a myriad of individual and community experiences.
