The Best Years of Their Lives?

Pupil's Experiences of School

Cedric Cullingford

• Verlag: Routledge
• Jahr: 2003
• ISBN:
  9781135725426
• Auflage: 1
• Thema: Éducation
• Thema: Éducation générale

Based on structured research and interviews with pupils in years 10 and 11 (15 ^DDS 16 years old) about their views of the purpose of school and their own future employment and the way the two connect, this book offers a blistering critique of the purpose of education and its ability to prepare children for the world of work. The issues raised include: the purpose of school, the nature and quality of the curriculum, whether their time was well spent, whether what they learned was relevant, who influenced them, their views of industry and the world outside. Out of the mouths of babes, the truth comes tumbling and the result is a shocking indictment of an educational system that fails to deliver what it sets out to achieve.

1 Research methods: hearing what
pupils say

The sample and method

One of the authors of a study of early childhood headed a chapter, ‘Early childhood education finds its voice: but is anyone listening?’ (Pugh, 1997). It has recently become more fashionable to assert the rights of children to be heard, but the implications of this right, in terms of responsibility, are rarely taken up. All the demonstrations of the will to include the voices of pupils in school show how limited is the effect when this happens. Listening is all very well, up to a point, but to act on what is heard remains quite another matter. The fact that we can gather crucial evidence about the reality of schools from paying careful attention to the experiences of those within them appears only to be acceptable if the views concur with those who have control. If the views challenge the very nature of schools then they are somehow put aside.

This research depends on listening to pupils and analysing what they say so carefully that what is said can be believed in. School is just a part of the lives of young people, however significant, and they bring with them a number of other experiences than the reception of a given curriculum. This other life might seem to be separate from the objectives and measurements of school, but it is a reality that is significant to the individual if not to the system. The gap between the voice of the pupils and the imposition of policy is huge. If we really listened, would we go on doing what we do? This is the challenge that we will face when we have heard what the pupils say.

The pupils are old enough to be both informed and articulate. That is a deliberately laconic assertion. Far younger pupils are just as objective, and just as capable of giving their views. This outline of the methodology will therefore concentrate on the ethical dimensions of listening to young people, or, indeed, to any individual. Do views count in the face of policy? Can we learn from them? Whether we define pupils as ‘children’, or children as older or younger, and whatever the demarcation lines surrounding infants and adolescents, the personal experiences of the individual should count, given sensitive and thoughtful treatment.

The research basis for this book can be presented simply, but there are implications that need further explanation. The essential facts are these. The main core of the book is taken from 195 lengthy, semi-structured interviews, carried out in conditions of anonymity and confidentiality. The sample was derived from a mixture of schools from deprived to advantaged areas, representing a range of socio-economic backgrounds and minority ethnic groups, and carefully balanced in terms of gender. Every care was taken to make sure that, in an area that is often used by market researchers as the most ‘typical’ and representative of the rest of Great Britain, every possible permutation of social background was taken into account.

The interviews, recorded and transcribed, were structured to the extent of making sure that all those involved covered the same topics; but many of the most significant questions were those concerned with following up answers with subsequent probing —‘why?’ Respect for the opinions of each individual was paramount. What was said was received seriously, without bias or expectation.

The significance of the results derives partly from the fact that there was no chance for the interviewees to guess what it was that the researcher wanted to hear. The theme was both ostensibly and in this case actually what pupils felt about their future employability, and about the attitudes of the world of work—from industry to the professions. Their relationship with schools was introduced as a background to this; the framework was the future, and the experience of school as the context of their lives as a whole. The probing was of their personal experiences and attitudes, not about their views of schooling as such. We did not wish to encourage criticism or give any indication of a line of argument.

Much has been written about ethnographic research and there are many books about methodology, possibly as many books as those that present the results of research. The facts of the sample, the qualitative approach, and the analysis are essentially simple, even if they could be elaborated. The ethical implications of the methodology—and their alternatives—are another matter. Pupils are to all intents and purposes treated as ‘children’ without an adult voice until they leave school. If this remains the case, will they ever be taken seriously?

Rather than elaborate on all the nuances of the sampling, or the particular approach taken in the interviews, or the complexities of the analysis, some of the wide implications of the methodology and its application will be explored, especially the question of ‘informed consent’. In reality the problematic questions that surround research are not so much to do with intricate questions of methodology as such but with motivations and the uses to which the research results will be put.

Ethical issues with pupils

In registering for a research degree students are often asked whether their research raises any ethical issues. What is meant is whether they are dealing with particularly sensitive subjects, like fertility or cancer, where revelations of findings could have great consequences to the participants, and where participants themselves are vulnerable to emotional stress through the research. Clearly there are some subjects that do not raise such fundamental ethical issues, but this does not imply that there is any research that does not raise any ethical issues whatsoever.

When we discuss the issue of ethics in relation to research with children, however, we bring together two areas of moral difficulty: on the one hand, that comprising the host of questions concerned with the limits of behaviour in the activity of gathering data for research purposes and, on the other, that concerned with the status of ‘the pupil or child’. The response to the difficulty and ambiguity of these two issues is that there is a wish to institutionalize and codify, a response that can be described as ‘authoritative absolutism’. This is flawed on two principal grounds. The first is that the claims to provide moral solutions to ethical problems are undermined by the cultural and political character of many of the judgements involved so that what is revealed is ignored. The second is that it is the very existence of procedures and principles that obscures these cultural-political judgements under a cloud of apparently neutral objectivism, so that there is unawareness of the implications of the empirical data. There is a need to apply skilled professional judgement with integrity, rather than to seek indemnity through the application of flawed procedures. The real question revolves not around the sample but around a variety of dimensions to the practice and philosophy of ‘ethical procedure’ in research. One essential question that both emerges from research and affects it is the ‘status’ of the pupil or the ‘child’. It is no longer ethical, let alone true, to regard the child or pupil with a patronizing superiority, as if greater experience led to greater wisdom, or as if the child were somehow not fully human. Ethical questions apply to all research, and apply equally to all subjects. And yet there is an influential mind-set, bolstered by sentimentality, that sees children as separate subjects for research, somehow intellectually disenfranchised.

The most fundamental ethical question that shadows all research is the uses and misuses to which it is put. Questions of motivation, of deliberate or inadvertent manipulation of fact or hypothesis, of attempting to prove what the sponsor wishes to have confirmed, the use of methods of research as a sign of cleverness by the researcher rather than the seeking of what is valid, the mistaking of correlations for causes: all these are the most important ethical concerns, but are more often than not dismissed or disregarded.

Amongst the many reasons why the more fundamental issues remain unexplored is the diverting of attention away from them to other, safer areas of concern. In the place of the status, motivation and approach of the researcher, the focus of attention is placed on the participant in the research. (It needs a spectacular case like that of Sir Cyril Burt to draw attention to these aspects of the researcher. Burt was obsessed with the significance of measurable intelligence—IQ—as a worthy social instrument. His research happened to fit the prevailing belief that society would be better off if pupils were divided into ability streams at the age of 10—the Eleven Plus. After his death it was revealed that he had systematically falsified the statistical evidence.) Instead of looking at the overall context of the methodology and findings, the question raised is that of how much those who are being researched, especially children, know or should know of what is going on.

Informed consent?

The British Psychological Society (1993) lays great stress on obtaining informed consent from those involved in research, and tellingly and unselfconsciously suggests that for children under 16 years of age consent should be sought from those ‘in loco parentis’. One can understand the principles. The famous case of Milgram’s (1974) research on obedience drew attention to two issues. The first was the heavy reliance on deception. As in the case of Latané and Darley (1970), the ‘volunteers’ thought they were participating in one piece of research when they were in fact being observed for quite different reasons. The experiments would never have succeeded without deception (Rosenhahn, 1973). The second issue was the effect of the experiment on the participants. Those who took part, with one exception, were horrified at their own actions. They had been proved willing to administer lethal electric shocks to innocent victims on the grounds that there were those in authority who sanctioned their actions.

The debate about Milgram and others symbolizes the debate at one level on informed consent: can deception ever be justified on the grounds that the research outcomes are so important that the means are subsumed in the ends? The question is, however, more complex than this. What exactly is ‘consent’? This could entail merely the agreement to be interviewed, without having to see, or change, the transcripts, or it could be an implied support for the overall results as if each contribution were a kind of public document. What does the ‘information’ itself consist of? This could be the whole context of the research, the key questions that underlie the hypotheses, indeed all the indications of what a ‘correct’ answer would be. If Milgram had ‘informed’ his subjects he would perhaps have been able to prove that the Holocaust was impossible and that no single act of cruelty to Jews could ever have taken place. The very sensitivity of the approach can imply a particular point of view, or an attitude to the subject’s age, or to the notions of what is meant by educational (David, Edwards and Alldred, 2001). ‘Information’ can mean declared bias.

The more that notions of informed consent are analysed, the more complex they appear. In an overview of the literature, Morrow and Richards (1996) note the fundamental contradictions that impinge on research with children. On the one hand children are regarded as vulnerable, incompetent and powerless in society. This is the basis of parental, or adult, consent, as in the British Psychological Society guidelines. On the other they possess rights and voices that need to be heard. There is an ambivalence about both children’s capacity to be informed and their understanding of what they are consenting to. Plummer (1983) defined two positions: that of the ethical absolutist, which at its extreme allows almost nothing, and that of the situational relativist, which is open to any suggestions. Both are, however, somewhat undermined by the continuing ambivalence about children, their vulnerability and incompetence, their powerlessness and irresponsibility in law, and the lack of a culture of listening to children, despite an incipient recognition of their rights.

Listening to children

Children’s rights, including the right not to be abused in any way, are only taken really seriously in extreme cases. The prevailing culture of regarding children as uninformed and unready to take part in social debate runs deep. It is enclosed in the whole edifice of the system of education where a set curriculum is placed before pupils for them to imbibe. Children’s voices or opinions are the last to be heard in a school, even if the pupils form the vast majority. Even child-centredness, as a concept, can become a cliché of patronage. As Alderson and Goodey (1996:114) put it: ‘Child-centred ethics would simply be a form of the psychopathological egotism often attributed to young children by Piagetian schools of thought.’

The question of listening to children should rest on respect for what they say, with the assumption that as individual human beings they have information of their own, and that, in classrooms and other places, they are consistently giving their consent to answer questions. In the classroom, however, their willingness to answer is often abused by the dominance of closed questions, where there is only one right answer and the question is being posed as a test. The result is the opposite of listening to what pupils have to say. This does not stop pupils being willing to try.

These views on the subject of ethical considerations attached to research work with children illustrate how complex are the issues associated with research ethics, and how difficult it can be to provide clear and unambiguous guidelines for practitioners. Many ethical dilemmas can only be fully understood in the process of the practice of research, since it is in this arena that the problems of definition of terms such as ‘fully informed consent’ or ‘competence’ emerge as critical. To take one actual example with children, what do we mean by fully informed consent, when the more that is explained to them, the more feedback, the less valid the result? If for example we are seeking to discover the effects of television programmes on them and show a particular relish for any mention of sex or aggression, then children will be tempted to provide us with what is perceived as useful or gratifying. Consent can mean being merely allowed to talk, to be listened to, to be able to communicate things on their mind. If children knew what the research results might mean they might well treat the questions, like the questions that are used in schools, as ‘closed’, as to be guessed at rather than freely given. When one ‘fully informs’, is one actually treating the subject with respect, when respect comes from the personal dialogue and the taking of whatever the subject says seriously? Morrow and Richards (1996) highlight the complexity of the issues of protection and informed consent; Alderson and Goodey (1996) challenge conventional assumptions about the relative lack of competence of children, whilst Kelley, Mayall and Hood (1997) argue through transcripts of their research the fact that informed consent is (or should be) a feature of the whole research process, not simply a precursor of it. But how can one give complete information to the very subjects whose anonymity is being respected, and when the confidentiality of the whole exercise is paramount? The transcripts that arise from interviews are merely the beginning of interpretation and the quality of the result rests on the analysis. It could be more disturbing to feed back the analysis of what is said in a particular transcript—signs of deviancy or child abuse—than not.

Institutionalizing ethics

The preoccupation of individual researchers with the ethical character of their research is mirrored by increasing institutional concern, illustrated by the enshrinement of ‘ethical principles’ in social institutions and practices, such as ethics committees, and the codes of practice that govern their activities and decisions. Part of this stems from the defensiveness of institutions and the fear of litigation. Many codes of practice would actually make qualitative (not quantitative) research impossible. What is most interesting about these rules and procedures, such as those of the British Psychological Society, is that they assume that only some types of research have ethical implications. Not to take the view that every piece of research raises questions of ethics is a curiously ‘unethical’ position to take. We should constantly be reminding ourselves about the misuses as well as uses of research, and of the need for the validity and integrity of the findings and the interpretation, rather than defensiveness about the way of reaching them. Many institutions are following the lead of medical research in meeting situations of moral uncertainty and ambiguity by codifying ethics. Typically, institutions have introduced ethics committees ‘charged with the task of ensuring that all research carried out by, or under the direction of, staff of the University has received adequate consideration with regard to its ethical implications’ (Lovat, 1994). The growth of institutionalized ethics has its origins in the medical profession, and it has been argued that the approach adopted in bioethics should and could serve as a model for the general process of ‘discerning the parameters for good, and encouraging the practice of good, within the professions’ (Lovat, 1994:197). In particular, this is an argument that recognition of the key principles of ‘autonomy’, ‘non-maleficence’ and ‘beneficence’ can support teachers acting as researchers in an era when these principles are beginning to be enshrined as quasilegal ‘rights’ of research subjects. There are however cases where ‘deception’, which sounds so bad, can be the only way of gaining the truth. Is an undercover police officer, trying to discover who is responsible for the selling of contaminated heroin, acting in an unethical manner because the subject has not given ‘informed consent’? Is the action researcher trying to find out behaviour patterns by joining in as a member of a group not acting in a ‘beneficial’ manner?

Many of these research procedures proceed from an inadequate theoretical base, and they contain the seeds of a kind of negative inertia inhibiting research in general, and certain research procedures in particular. This tendency to inertia is accentuated in the case of research with children by the complicating factors of children’s social status as ascriptively vulnerable individuals, by the debate over the character of any rights that they may have, and by natural and socially constructed cultural differences between children and adult researchers. There is a range of ethical issues and their interpretations, within a framework provided by a set of oppositions that present themselves as key dimensions of the process to any researcher trying to establish an ethical position.

The first of these concerns the status of ethics: whether we wish to derive absolute principles and criteria for measuring them that will facilitate processes of judgement, or whether we wish to understand how varying institutions and individuals construe the process of conducting research ethically.

Prescriptive versus descriptive approaches

Whilst many institutions approach the business of developing procedures in a prescriptive fashion, by developing codes of principles and practice that may act as a quasi-statutory framework for making quasi-judicial decisions about individual case...