Abstract
Though researcher dilemmas are not new to the pages of Qualitative Inquiry, we argue that the current contemporary context has both altered and intensified issues associated with conducting qualitative research within sites most affected by more recent social, political, and economic shift. Navigating such sites as researchers poses new questions and new “speed bumps,” going well beyond those highlighted by Weis and Fine more than ten years ago. In this article, the authors revisit and extend the work by Weis and Fine using a set of informed reflections on engaging ethnographic research inside an iconic and beleaguered, large Northeastern, urban school district, a context that, we argue, establishes an increased range of new and largely unanticipated “speed bumps.”
We are, at our core, ethnographic selves uniquely crafting stories about culture, a creative process intrinsically connected to the multidimensional call of ethnographic reflexivity. We are storied selves entangled with others’ stories (those of our participants, characters, and fellow ethnographers), our understandings of their stories, and their understandings of ours. These ways of reflexively being, of innovatively narrating the researching selves’ presence in ethnography, in turn, create very significant consequences concerning ours and others’ stories and ours and others’ storied beings.
Introduction
Qualitative research, ethnography in particular, is a deeply personal experience. As Berry (2011) asserts, “central to Husserlian phenomenology is the concept of intentionality, which positions human beings as always being directed toward [emphasis in original] the phenomena we engage” (p. 167). The set of research questions one chooses to explore, while grounded in the scholarly literature, ultimately emerges through personal interests. In other words, researchers gravitate toward topics that pique their curiosity or resonate with their experiences, biographies, and/or interests. Herein lies a fundamental tension: researching that which interests us or is close to us, subsequently prompts a number of personal and/or ethical questions regarding who we are, how we present ourselves in the field, how we enact our relationships with participants, how we represent our findings, how and when we intervene with regard to what we see and experience in the field, and how, and under what circumstances we disconnect (or not) from long-term field research sites. In essence, the question of concern becomes, how do we perform our identity(ies) as researchers in the field and to what extent do such identities meld with and/or conflict with our other, multiple, nonresearcher identities?
Upon entering the field, then, qualitative researchers, and ethnographic researchers in particular, must concern themselves with a litany of questions, some seemingly trivial pertaining to their role, position, beliefs, and even appearance within selected research sites. Questions such as “What should I wear?” or “What should my participants call me?” or “What, if anything, should they know about my personal life?” although ostensibly inconsequential, can have serious consequences, particularly since ethnographic research both engages and depends on numerous and differentially positioned stakeholders. Dilemmas like these—“speed bumps,” (Weis & Fine, 2000) if you will—cause us to slow down and yield to reflection. This article seeks to recover buried conversations concerning research-related speed bumps and extend the work of Weis and Fine (2000) by moving the focus away from tangible speed bumps—the actual things that cause us to slow down and reflect—to the potential consequences and outcomes that arise from particular speed bumps.
Furthermore, while affirming the importance of researcher positionality and the role of the researcher, we wish to explicitly link the discussion of speed bumps and the resultant outcomes to the material realities of our surroundings (Madison, 2011). The deep disinvestment in our urban cores, which has led to marked social, economic, and institutional changes—the “new normal,” as we call it—have real and lasting consequences for social research, consequences that, we argue, complicate the work of the researcher and call for a renewed reflexivity that moves beyond a simplistic focus on the self (Madison, 2011; Stich, 2011) to one that is interconnected with the larger social context. Here we argue that navigating distressed sites as researchers and working with and across multiple constituencies within such sites constitutes a methodological tightrope that demands a fully reflexive approach that moves beyond simple constructions of the self to one that fully and explicitly engages the context.
To advance our point, we begin with a brief discussion of the “new normal” followed by an overview of the larger ethnographic research project that informs this article. We then reflect on our personal research practices and dilemmas within each of our respective sites. Subsequently, we address two broad-based issues: (a) gaining and maintaining access to iconically located urban research sites and the range of people who both work in and are served by such sites, relative to our own identities, and (b) engaging research while simultaneously working with and across varied groups of stakeholders that increasingly envision themselves as sharing little common ground and managing the contingent ethical and personal dilemmas that arise. Finally, we conclude with a discussion of speed bumps in relation to the “new normal,” intentionally extending the earlier work of Weis and Fine (2000). While researchers have always needed to reflect on their positions and performances relative to the contexts and people we study, we argue that the realities of disinvestment both heighten and complicate this need.
Research and the “New Normal” 1
An onslaught of neoliberal policies (Harvey, 2005) has led to widespread disinvestment in our urban centers, rendering them even more fragile and distraught than they have been over the past 40 years, a trend that does not appear to be on the decline any time soon. Increased disinvestment in public institutions (Giroux, 2011; Lipman, 2008, 2011), particularly urban institutions of education located within communities that have long suffered the effects of deindustrialization, poverty, and racial segregation, coupled with increased accountability measures via high stakes testing and the education reform movement more generally, have contributed to what is arguably our current crisis within the public system of education. Such institutional and community-level changes represent the consequences of business-oriented, accountability-centered, national transformations in public education (Ravitch, 2010), often producing highly contentious sites wherein tensions grow and frustrations mount as parents, teachers, administrators, and districts blame one another for academic failure. In times of markedly deepened public disinvestment, (negative) consequences proliferate.
Although Weis and Fine (2000), Metz (1981), Peshkin (1988), and others articulate and reflect on dilemmas associated with doing ethnographic work, and scholars like Weis and Fine (2000) reflect seriously on such ethnographic engagement in the urban context, there has been little recent scholarly attention given to this topic. 2 Moreover, we argue that the current contemporary context has both altered and intensified issues associated with conducting qualitative research within sites most affected by more recent social, political, and economic shifts. Navigating such sites as researchers, then, poses new questions relative to potential “speed bumps” encountered during the practice of conducting research, going well beyond those highlighted by Weis and Fine more than 10 years ago. Herein, we argue that the speed bumps we experience, while certainly tied to our own positionality and performances in the field, are inextricably tied to the material realities experienced by our participants and the larger research context. In this way, research sites, specifically those located in communities suffering from the deleterious affects of disinvestment, highlight particular kinds of dilemmas pertaining to researcher identity that are anything but trivial, dilemmas that strike at the ethical and political essence of research itself and its practitioners. In fact, the conditions of this “new normal” make conducting research increasingly difficult, as researchers must navigate relationships among stakeholders that are evermore tenuous and rife with conflict. Our purpose, then, is to pry open this conversation, emphasizing that the ability to address such dilemmas depends on the careful, fully conscious analysis of the self, the participants, and the context.
The Research Study
At the center of this article lies a set of informed reflections on engaging ethnographic research that emerged from an ongoing, three-year ethnographic research study funded by the National Science Foundation 3 inside a large, urban school district as iconic of the “new normal,” a context that, we argue, establishes an increased range of new and largely unanticipated “speed bumps.” Four nonselective, secondary schools that serve an almost entirely low-income population in a Northeastern, “Rust Belt” city comprise the primary sites for this work. These schools, due to persistently low achievement rates on standardized tests and low graduation rates, have been subject to the blunt edge of No Child Left Behind and Race to the Top policies. Figures from the Census Bureau indicate that this city is one of the poorest large cities in the nation. As an indicator of family SES, 4 districtwide data reveal that 77% of attending students are eligible for free (70%) or reduced (7%) lunch. Within the four sites of this study, poverty is even more concentrated, with approximately 80% to 90% of the students at each of the four schools eligible for free and/or reduced lunch (School and District report cards). The city is also highly segregated. The four schools under study fit Orfield and Lee’s (2005) definition of “hypersegregated”; the presence of White students at each school varies from a high of 10% to a low of 3%.
The larger ethnographic study focuses specifically on high school opportunity structures as linked to “figured worlds of STEM” 5 and subsequent transitions to postsecondary education and college majors. Focal students from each school—students located in the top 20% of their respective classes in math and science 6 —were identified in 10th grade and will be followed through the completion of their senior year. Students will be interviewed at five points over the three-year study. In addition, focal students’ parents, their school counselors, their math and science teachers, and school and district administrators will also be interviewed. Lastly, participant observation is a major component of this study. Researchers attend each school 1 to 2 times per week, logging about 100 hours per semester, enabling us to better understand these complex spaces.
Revisiting Speed Bumps
As a student-friendly guide to qualitative research, Speed Bumps (Weis & Fine, 2000) aims to shed light on some of the complexities of qualitative research, many of which remain largely unexamined in the methodological literature. Specifically, the book explores the ways in which identity can play out across research sites all the while considering the ethical and political obligations researchers have in reporting their research.
While detailing a number of dilemmas, questions, and issues that arise in the field, perhaps most importantly for this article, Speed Bumps addresses the implications of reporting research done in impoverished communities. As Weis and Fine (with Weseen and Wong) note, decisions must be made “about how to represent the consequences of poverty on the lives of the poor and working class men and women in times of punishing, surveilling, and scrutiny by the state” (p. 33). Foreshadowing the deep disinvestment impoverished communities now face, Weis et al. felt compelled to bring to light the ethical concerns associated with “this next generation of troubles” (p. 33). In this regard, the authors take note of the need to speak across multiple audiences while at the same time honoring their participants and considering the consequences of power and representation and the responsibilities that come with assuming the role of researcher (Fine, Weis, Weseen, & Wong, 2000). Moreover, they are concerned with the cost of putting data out into the public register; data that can be co-opted, misconstrued, and severed from their original context, a process researchers find nearly impossible to control. While this continues to be of grave concern to us, we seek to extend and broaden this conversation by focusing scholarly attention on the question of what it means to do research in environments that have sustained intensified disinvestment and, on a more practical level, how to do it.
While we do not offer a roadmap detailing how to navigate research within the “new normal,” we do advocate for a sustained and deep commitment to the reflexive. While by no means insiders, it is often hard to delineate where our personal selves end and our research selves begin. We are tied to the politics of the institutions we study through our relationships with our participants and it is nearly impossible to disentangle ourselves from the everyday of the institutions within which we have sought to embed ourselves so fully.
Researcher Dilemmas
We begin with three specific dilemmas: (a) negotiating identity in the field—specifically who one is and how one is perceived; (b) navigating relationships within research sites while balancing personal and professional considerations; and (c) managing ethical tensions. As a point of departure, the authors present their personal experiences relative to their struggles within the field and use these stories to illustrate the lived-out realities of researchers within particularly complex research sites.
Our first researcher discusses personal and project-related dilemmas regarding researcher identity as related to larger issues of access. This section elaborates on researcher identity as one that is often performed for the sake of the project (e.g., appearing a particular way to gain access to difficult-to-access students and parents within a persistently low-achieving school) and the personal and perhaps ethical implications of such presentations of identity. In the second section, the next researcher extends the identity work presented in the first example through an exploration of the competing tensions of, on one hand, her identification as both a former urban educator and current graduate student focused on educational equality with her role as researcher and the concomitant attempts to disrupt the field as little as possible, on the other. Our third researcher further examines the complex nature of balancing relationships with stakeholders, focusing on the highly contentious nature of urban sites that are struggling with the impact of public disinvestment and neoliberal accountability policies. Finally, we unite the above dilemmas relative to researcher identity through our discussion of managing what we call “ethical tensions.”
Conflicts relative to performing identity often emerge without subsequent reflexive practices. In this way, qualitative researchers dismiss many of the opportunities for deeper reflection on their own positions within the field and the ways in which decisions related to identity influence research. In Speed Bumps (Weis & Fine, 2000), Kathleen Tocke discusses her own dilemma regarding what to wear within her research site (relative to harassment). As a 20-something graduate student who had attended an all-girls high school, she found herself caught off guard by the level of unwelcomed sexual attention she received in the hallways of her public high school research site. In an attempt to hide her female body, she reconsidered and reinvented the version of herself that she presented within the school: “After just one day at the site, I learned what not to wear: anything that indicated that I might have some semblance of a female body” (p. 72).
Within our four urban high schools, we were often caught midperformance, forced to make trade-offs regarding who we are and how we want to be perceived in the field. For example, the seemingly trivial decision of whether to dress more formally to align ourselves with teachers, staff, and administration, or more casually with the hope of building more open relationships with students, sits inside a much larger set of meanings. All four schools, as emblematic of the district, enforce respect for adults. Significantly, the ways in which respect is marked and performed in these sites relies on relatively formal, traditional, and at times highly authoritative modes of interaction. These interactions are most clearly distinguished by the clothing of both students and adults within the school. Just as students wear “uniforms” to mark their positions, adults are expected to present themselves as distinct from students through more formal dress. In this way, clothing becomes a marker of authority and helps to shape the disciplinary structure of schools. As teachers in urban schools are often required to act less like educators and more like enforcers, and zero tolerance policies come to dominate, serving to criminalize an array of student behaviors that were once met with less harsh and lasting consequences (Giroux, 2011; Nolan, 2011), identifying with these authority figures by way of dress places the researcher in a precarious position, as we as researchers are now marked as part of the disciplinary apparatus of urban institutions.
This press for authority, structure, and control has flourished during this time of public disinvestment, complicating how researchers are to comport themselves. As adults, school staff view us as equals in that we, like them, deserve respect by virtue of our adult status. Thus within these schools we struggled over aesthetic presentations of ourselves—we were caught between wanting to blend in with students during classroom observations by wearing more casual attire (as we sat among them) and adhering to the wishes of teachers and administration in distinguishing ourselves as professionals. While Bogdan and Biklen (2007) alert researchers to the need to be conscious of what one wears as it “can say something to others about who you and with whom you identify,” (p. 98) their brief and relatively unanalytic reference does little to aptly prepare researchers for the potential consequences. But clothing is but one of the areas ripe for conflict in school sites, which have been ravaged by public disinvestment.
In this highly structured context, wherein private security guards patrol the halls, and metal detectors may be brought in for random security checks (see Nolan, 2011 for description of similar occurrences), having students call researchers by their first names is also discouraged. The principal at one of the schools insisted the researcher at that site be called “Ms.,” instead of her first name, which is how she introduced herself, as he wants to “. . . teach kids how to show respect for higher ups.” The same principal insisted that students refer to Lois as Professor Weis, rather than by her first name, which is how she had introduced herself.
Conversations around such seemingly mundane aspects of the research process both jump-started our reflection on this set of issues and serve as a point of departure for us to question the larger complexities linked to researcher identities and positionality and the resultant ethical tensions, inside contexts of disinvestment, diminishing resources, and competing stakeholders.
Section 1: Performing Identity Within Highly Contentious Sites
I Am Who You Want Me to Be
After months of difficulty trying to connect with parents and guardians of the focal students in the study, I met Mother J whose job title is “parent facilitator” at Lincoln High. She stood perched atop high black heels, without which, she was already of above average height. Her posture then added a few more inches. Mother J greeted me with an exceptionally white smile as I explained my role, the project, and why I needed her help. She replied, “Let’s get it done,” with confidence and conviction. As she described it to me, Mother J had recently been hired on as the parent facilitator, though strangely, she does not have a child attending the school (a district requirement). She mentioned that she was hired through a system loophole because she stumbled on a distant cousin in his junior year at Lincoln. She attributes this to her good, hard faith.
Mother J’s school office is replete with scripture and religious connotation. She told me that the Lord works in mysterious ways and that this job felt like her calling. During one particularly revealing conversation she pointed up toward the roof of my car, communicating that the Lord is responsible for her current position at Lincoln. I was driving her home after we met at the school. I smiled knowingly in response, but the story could not have been any more knotted in my own head. Religion and my sexual identity never seemed to complement one another, not since I came out to my Self as a teenager, forever ceasing my Sunday appearances at our local Presbyterian Church. Mother J is a Baptist. She also seems to have an affinity for discussing the personal and intimate details of our lives. In trying to maintain a certain level of professionalism while also building rapport in hopes of her continued help in gaining access, I became caught within a performance of my own identity.
During the same drive to Mother J’s home, she turned to me and asked, “What does your hubby do?” I could feel the weight of my wedding band. I replied, “He works at an art gallery.” This is only a half-truth. I am married, but not to a man. And she, not he, works at an art gallery.
Researcher Identity as Performative, Social Practice
My story documents the development of a constructed “inauthentic” identity. In one particularly decisive moment, the concealment of my sexual identity became a performance of a newly conceived social identity—that of the heterosexual researcher. Dimitriadis (2009) cites Richard Bauman’s take on the performative as “the act of communication [sic.] put on display, objectified, lifted out to a degree from its contextual surroundings, and opened to scrutiny by an audience” (Bauman, 1992b, p. 44 cited in Dimitriadis, p. 12). My discriminatory audience (Mother J and her assumptions) was quickly weighed against the importance of the research project and the consequences of fabricating my own biography. Revealing this part of my identity seemed far too risky in light of her narrow religious leanings, and as a postdoctoral researcher, this was not only my project to potentially take down in a personal/political battle, but a shared intellectual pursuit and I felt accountable to my colleagues. I knew if Mother J had an issue with my sexual identity that she might be able to limit my access to the parents/guardians of students in the study. In that moment I also reflected on the students I had observed during their study hall in the library punching a balloon in its drawn-on face while referring to it as “fag boy,” among numerous other accounts of homophobia I had witnessed within the school. I soon realized that my sexuality was also something I had been hiding from students and teachers for fear of being negatively perceived. During that decisive moment with Mother J, I realized that my concern for the project outweighed my desire to project a more authentic self-identity. As Ball (2003) asserts,
The ground of such struggles is often highly personal. Expressed in the lexicons of belief and commitment, service and even love, and of mental health and emotional well-being. The struggles are often internalized and set the care of the self against duty to others (p. 216).
My story is more than an account of discomfort as I continue to work through the psychological affects of hiding my sexual identity. It is also meant to problematize the identity of the researcher and the ways in which we are perceived in the field. Our social identities often fabricate the personal in the interest of research. Strengthening my relationship with Mother J, and as a result, gaining greater access to students and parents, meant performing my researcher identity—a social identity that does not neatly mirror that of my private self. My performance, as one that felt closely scrutinized, demanded that I “be” as much of an “insider” to Mother J’s life as possible and homosexuality seemed just too far outside of her imagination.
Though the pursuit and maintenance of access to participants and research sites has always posed particular challenges for qualitative researchers, I began to feel these issues intensify around me as I struggled to anticipate how I might be perceived and how I might then respond appropriately within a network of conflicting opinions and general distrust.
Section 2: Simultaneous Identities and Professional Considerations Within Highly Contentious Sites
While the previous section examined the construction of an “inauthentic self” and related consequences, the following story focuses on the case of two identities held in existence simultaneously; that of researcher in an urban school, and urban educator and activist. The two examples presented herein are not only emblematic of these tensions but also demonstrate the extent to which the current state of disinvestment as filtered through the school context, exacerbates such tensions. While the simultaneous identities of urban teacher, school researcher, and education activist might always be in conflict, the conditions of disinvestment have prompted decisions that seriously compromise the education and opportunity of students who are already gravely disadvantaged (Nolan, 2011; Ravich, 2010). As such, the tensions that arise from these multiple identities prove daunting and difficult to navigate.
Who Needs Chemistry Anyway?
I was stationed in one of my more oft-frequented locations at Global Horizons—the counselor’s office—when an interesting conversation about course offerings for the upcoming year transpired. Tabitha, the school counselor was discussing the obstacles that keep a number of seniors from graduating—namely, that students need three years of science to graduate and that chemistry is a course that many struggle with and subsequently fail, putting into jeopardy students’ chances for graduating. As the course trajectory is currently established, students take chemistry in their junior year. However, because so many of them fail the course, they are required to retake it their senior year. Due to “senioritis” Tabitha felt that many students disengage academically and tend to fail chemistry again, which consequently bars them from earning their high school diploma.
The issue of high school graduation is a contentious one in the larger district, not unlike the case in all large urban districts, as less than 50% of the students graduate. So, in an effort to improve graduation rates, Tabitha (and later her principal) thought it best to remove chemistry as an obstacle. Thus, rather than offer chemistry, all junior and senior students would be channeled into Environmental Science, an admittedly easier course. Such a move would ensure that more students earn their three years of science designation and remain on the path to high school graduation.
She can’t be serious! I thought to myself. Without chemistry, how would students be affected in their college application process, specifically those students with interests in medicine, nursing, and other science-related fields? I knew from my extensive research on the college application process that taking chemistry (in addition to having four years of science) was extremely important. I also knew that without chemistry, students would lack a comprehensive science foundation, which could potentially result in the necessity of remedial classes in college, a scenario that low-income, potential first generation college students could scarcely afford. I had also just recently completed a number of student interviews and all of the students expected to take chemistry the next year—in other words, no one notified them that it would no longer be an option (And no one would, as students would not learn their schedules until the first day of school; in fact, they had no opportunity to discuss course selection with their counselor).
Here was an example in which I found myself at a research crossroads. I clearly interpreted the decision to forego chemistry instruction as a blatant (although unintended) attempt to close down an already constricted opportunity structure. Students in this study have high aspirations and want to attend college, yet despite such desires, their positioning inside the college process would be seriously (and increasingly) weakened. I wanted to speak up on behalf of the students in this study. I wanted to tell Tabitha that they had to absolutely offer chemistry, that it was unfair to students not to offer it, as it would hurt their academic portfolios in the long run. I wanted to warn students of this change and encourage them to advocate against it. Yet, I said nothing, because in assuming my identity as researcher, I felt that I was not in the position to protest this decision. Such a move on my part could jeopardize my relationship with the counselor, and hence, access to information and the continuation of the study. However, through this act of silence, I have allowed a group of disadvantaged students to be further disadvantaged. My advocate and former teacher selves were disgusted.
Who to Align With and to What Effect?
It is not uncommon for an “us versus them” mentality to develop between teachers and students. It was a customary occurrence for teachers to speak with me, openly, about the students in front of the students. My hunch is that as a White, former, urban, public school teacher, some of the educators saw me as a natural ally, sympathetic to their concerns and experiences. And while it was often the case that I could relate and sympathize with their experiences, this was not always the case. Perhaps the most egregious example of this assumed camaraderie occurred when a substitute was placed in the math class that I had been consistently observing two days a week for the past three months. The class, which was sometimes difficult for the classroom teacher to manage, was a bit rowdier than what I had typically observed. Despite being given directions to complete some work, a small group of students opted to socialize instead. Initially, the group was just chatty—one girl in particular. The substitute reprimanded her, which only had the effect of escalating the situation. The substitute would alternately address the student and then complain to me about “these” kids. Another girl, who had a gripe with the first girl, began to publicly thank the substitute for reprimanding the first girl. The situation very quickly escalated into a scenario where security was summoned to prevent a fight.
Once one of the girls was removed, the substitute launched into a tirade about the behavior of “these” kids and how things didn’t use to be this way in the public schools. Her constant demeaning of the students was making me uncomfortable, particularly because five of the students in this class were focal students. As she went out, I did not respond. I also did not nod my head or say anything to encourage her. In fact, I continued to look around the room and eventually interrupted her speech to tell her that a student had a hand up. I took this as my cue to leave. I did not want to stay in the classroom any longer because I was worried that I would jeopardize my alliance with the students (and because I didn’t agree with her perspective nor want to continue listening to her).
At the Crossroads of Identity
While the circumstances discussed above (disagreement with school decisions and negative teacher talk) could be (and often are) present in all schools, irrespective of a school’s social, economic, and racial makeup, the consequences of these occurrences take on a heightened dimension here. While research has shown that poor and minority students are disadvantaged vis-à-vis their schooling experiences (e.g., Anyon, 1981; Kozol, 2005; Oakes, 1985; Orfield & Lee, 2005), much of this research was conducted prior to both the acceleration of public disinvestment and press for higher and more prestigious education credentials as a result of increased global competition. The stakes have never been higher, yet here is an example of a group of disadvantaged students further marginalized, an example to which, as a researcher, I bear direct witness. Managing these tensions between identity, researcher/participant relationships, and current circumstances becomes even more challenging when the consequences for students are increasingly dire.
Section 3: Balancing Relationships in Highly Contentious Sites
While the first two sections examined identity silencing, by creating either an inauthentic self or by allowing parts of oneself to be submerged, the final story explores the challenges of creating several different identities, all of which are, for the most part, “authentic,” to maintain relationships that work across several conflicting (in practice) participant groups. This final section is inextricably tied to the larger struggles with neoliberal policies of “standardization” and disinvestment in public education.
Wearing the Many Faces of Researcher
Broadway Science Academy is typical of many urban schools that have been labeled “failing” under the requirements of standardized proficiency. Located in an area of extreme racial segregation and economic blight, Broadway Science is surrounded by burned-out houses and vacant lots full of trash. A series of boarded up businesses line the main connecting street a block from the building, and the only open shops in the immediate area are a small bodega and a liquor store. Violence is a constant threat, with multiple murders occurring in the local neighborhood every year. Each year several Broadway Science students are injured by gun violence. Police cars guard school grounds in the morning and afternoons, and an armed officer walks the halls all day, every day, along with four private security guards. 7 The mission of Broadway Science Academy begins, “We believe that all students can and must learn at relatively high levels of achievement.” The idea that the best students at Broadway Science can hope to achieve is relative, pervades the environment of the school, as there are no indicators of a push for excellence—no posters on the wall about striving for greatness, no banners in the hall cheering on the sports teams, and so forth. Instead, the environment of Broadway Science is about control. Students wear uniforms, metal detectors are brought in for random search days, and classes are often on “lockdown.” In my first few weeks at Broadway Science, I documented a sense of frustration and sadness among teachers, students, and counselors. By the time I left the site at the end of May, the mood had changed to one of desperation. 8
On a typical day at Broadway Science Academy I would spend time with several different stakeholders, in various locations in the massive school building. Buried in the far corner of the basement, I would start my day catching up on school and student news in the counseling offices, then I would move up to the second floor to observe science classes, and over to the math curriculum office to sit in on the daily math team meetings. On my very first day at Broadway Science the district had sent in a “coach” to help teachers plan for the required changes that would need to be implemented now that Broadway Science had been designated a PLA (Persistently Low Achieving) school. For the next four months I watched as PLA-required restructuring efforts destroyed teacher morale, and significantly fractured working relationships in the building.
When I spent time with the counselors, I would often hear them complain about poor teachers, disinterested parents, and terribly unfair resource distribution within the district. Each time I would nod my head, ask more about their feelings, and sincerely empathize with what they had to say. The school does have an alarmingly high out-of-school suspension rate of 53%, so it is reasonable to believe that administrators might be overusing suspension as a form of behavior management. And when I went upstairs to the science classes? Well, I could see their point of view too. The teachers I worked with were highly trained in their subject and most had several years of teaching experience. I could understand their frustration with students who didn’t do homework, parents who never returned phone calls, and counselors who scheduled the wrong classes—it really doesn’t make sense for sophomores to take bioethics before they take biology. At the math meetings I would hear teachers talk about their disappointment with students and parents, and with other teachers, who “don’t really seem to care about these kids.” And though contrary to other perspectives mentioned above, it was easy to see their point as well. Of course the students had their own concerns, about teachers who “can’t teach” and counselors who “are never available.” And I felt for them as well.
In March, as part of the PLA turnaround, the district decided to “transform” Broadway Science, by removing 50% of its faculty. Teachers and counselors would be required to reapply for their job if they wanted to stay. The Union did not like this plan, and encouraged all teachers to fight it by refusing to reapply. Twelve faculty members, including several STEM teachers, broke with the Union and reapplied anyway, furthering tensions between the stakeholders in this study. Heckled in the faculty lounge as “scabs,” the teachers who reapplied were looking forward to working with new faculty in the fall. However, by May, the 50% staff turnover plan had been abandoned by the district and all teachers were set to return to Broadway Science for at least another year.
A bad situation had become worse, as students, parents, faculty, and staff faced inflammatory newspaper articles about their failings, and low morale and personal animosity in the school building reached a new high. I found myself in a metaphoric “war zone,” with stakeholders increasingly at odds. My previously taken for granted ability to travel between groups seamlessly became ever more challenging. If I was with the counselors and a teacher walked in, I would become quiet and nonchalant, trying to mask my allegiance to either group. While I was with one group, I proudly wore my identification with them as I genuinely could understand the varied positionalities, but while traveling the halls, I hid under a mask of neutrality.
In such a seemingly contested context, everyone expects one to choose sides, and yet I needed to stand with each group, both because, as an outsider I was afforded the opportunity to recognize complexities, and my role necessitated ongoing relationships with all stakeholders. The context itself seemed to lack a clear right and wrong side, as everyone is losing in the current state of public disinvestment, most particularly of course, the students. While the stakeholders at Broadway Science were trying to make sense of their desperation by pointing fingers at one another, I was able to see the complexity of the situation, and recognize that in some ways each group was right, and yet sometimes wrong. As a researcher doing deep ethnographic work it is my job to understand my participants’ perspectives, to the best that I am capable. In the challenging space of Broadway Science, this was a difficult task, requiring me to frequently change my “face.” By the time I left Broadway Science every afternoon, I was exhausted, not only from the massive amount of data I had collected, but as a result of the “multidimensional performance.” Wearing three or four competing faces during the day was physically and emotionally draining.
Identity Dilemmas and Ethical Tensions: A Contextual Analysis
In Speed Bumps, Weis and Fine reflect, “There has long been a tendency to view the self of the social science observer as potential contaminant, something to be separated out, neutralized, minimized, standardized, and controlled” (p. 34). They go on to acknowledge what researchers doing deep ethnographic work know all too well, that we bring our identity with us into the field and make conscious choices about when, where, and how we will reveal it. Raising questions about this “management” of personal researcher identity and the ways in which such management takes on additional importance when intersecting with a researcher’s ability to maintain her or his personal ethical standards, is certainly not novel. However, as this piece highlights, raising such questions in light of current trends of massive social disinvestment is imperative, as researcher positionality inside such contexts is increasingly strained. Questions that researchers previously raised now require heightened scrutiny as researcher actions are both more constrained and more consequential.
In the first vignette of this article, the researcher chose to hide her identity as a married, lesbian, woman, to gain and maintain access to hard-to-reach participants who, for a number of reasons undoubtedly related to the larger social context (e.g., disinvestment in the very system that became disinvested in their schools, their communities, and their lives), neglected to return consent forms and phone calls. As the school’s parent facilitator, Mother J seemed a direct connection to these potential participants—someone parents/guardians might trust at a time when trust seems increasingly limited. If the researcher assumes the safer, heterosexual identity, she might then improve her chances of accessing difficult to reach parents/guardians through her association with Mother J. Indeed, identity has the potential to impede access, and issues of access and sustaining such access are of particular concern within such challenging contexts. But what cost does such identity management have on the ethical beliefs of a researcher? After years of personal struggle over her sexual identity, what happens to the researcher’s sense of self, following her reversion to a familiar betrayal of the self? What happens to the authenticity of a researcher’s relationship to her partner, and to the larger LGBTQ community? And what is lost to Mother J—as Mother J herself is never offered this teachable moment because it is assumed she will fail to learn her own lesson of acceptance?
The intersection of professional and personal identity as related to research ethics is yet another area ripe for discussion when considering the implications in the field. While one can never be the proverbial “fly on the wall,” to what extent are researchers obligated to intervene? Weis and Fine (2000) argue, “our obligation is to ‘come clean at the hyphen’ meaning that we interrogate in our writings who we are as we coproduce the narratives we presume to collect” (p. 59). But are we not also obligated to do this inside the research site itself, and if so, at what cost to the research process?
In section 2, the researcher chose to allow only one of her two competing identities, that of researcher, to have voice, while her identities as advocate and educator were silenced. To what extent does such silencing of the researcher—particularly for those of us who study inequality—aid in its perpetuation in the name of research? We aim, to some extent at least, to be detached so that we can tell a larger story in the hopes that it may effect more broad-based change, but in this case, does the end justify the means? When the currency is people’s lives, and specifically the lives of the young people we study, do we not have an obligation to work intentionally against the closing off of opportunities, and toward a more just set of economic and social arrangements? While remaining silent may allow us to continue our relationships with our informants and allow us to complete our research, what happens to the relationship with ourselves? And, more importantly, we must ask about the long-term potential consequences for our participants, particularly when we witness an already constrained pipeline of opportunity further narrow. As the tensions from accountability, disinvestment, and increased public scrutiny mount inside poor, underperforming, urban schools, researchers committed to social justice and equity must learn to balance their roles as advocates with that of researcher. Yet this is easier said than done. As the earlier vignettes have illustrated, public disinvestment has led to a situation where school stakeholders are increasingly at odds with one another. Researchers need to carefully negotiate relationships with these competing parties so that research can continue, yet they must do so in a way without fully compromising the self.
Although our third researcher was able to maintain some sense of authenticity and voice as she moved between and among conflicting groups in the increasingly contentious site of public disinvestment, her ostensible neutrality also positioned her “above the fray,” while the others were left behind to take the hit. Perhaps as a researcher she is able to see the many different sides of a complex situation in a challenging setting, yet to what extent is it her responsibility to try to bring the groups together? While playing all sides simultaneously, what is the researcher sacrificing, both of herself and others with whom she connects in the field?
Our stories and dilemmas converge to remind us that identity, always in flux and intimately tied to ethical tensions, is an area worthy of deep intellectual work. However, these ethical questions are not simply new musings for the purpose of this article. Discussions about dealing with our own emotions resulting from what we witnessed at our school sites were and continue to be a weekly activity at research team meetings. While we were cautious about such conversations, for fear they may move our focus largely away from our participants and back onto ourselves, we conceded that we must have a space to deal with the very real challenges of doing ethnographic work in sites of severe urban poverty—sites that are only getting worse rather than better given rampant disinvestment in our urban cores. Without such conversations, we not only risk losing our passion and productivity, but we risk losing sight of how our position as researchers affects our research—for better or worse. We recognize that “we will have to confront the task of ‘self identification’ over and over again . . . [with] little chance of ever being brought to permanent and satisfactory completion’ (2004, p. 98)” (Bauman cited in Thomson & Gunter, 2010, p. 28). With this in mind, we argue that such ethical dilemmas linked to researcher identity require sustained critique and attention.
Concluding Thoughts: Finding Balance
Not unlike the many distressed urban school districts across the nation, the district in which this research takes place—and within which we work to maintain access, build and preserve relationships, and collect data—has suffered a long history of low performance, high dropout rates, limited resources, and arguably, poorly instituted educational reform. The continuance of these patterns has contributed to increased conflict and tension among community stakeholders—groups that now hold each other responsible for the current condition of failing schools as well as a general increase in the level of public disinvestment and indeed public approval. As argued herein, conducting ethnographic research within this context has produced a new set of intellectual and ethical concerns relative to similar “speed bumps” discussed by Weis and Fine. Though the challenges to researchers within the field may not have changed, the context within which we conduct research has dramatically shifted, requiring us to reflect on who we are as we work with and across disparate groups of stakeholders to obtain needed data while sacrificing parts of ourselves in the process. While we do not subscribe to a naïve perception of identity as static, unchanged by situation or circumstance, we firmly believe that while we must be cognizant of our surroundings and realize that they necessarily shape our interactions and performances in the field, we cannot simply act as chameleons, allowing the research site to fully dictate both our identities and our ethical boundaries.
Ultimately, the challenge for ethnographic researchers working within a climate of intensified public disinvestment is to figure out how to manage the many new and/or heightened “speed bumps” that arise. Within this “new normal,” understanding what compromises one is willing to make to maintain researcher access, without betraying ethical commitments can be a challenging tightrope to walk. Moreover, thinking through these issues in relation to the research context—in this case, an urban school district that is struggling to weather the impact of public disinvestment—is imperative. Though we do not propose definitive answers to our questions or simple solutions to our dilemmas, we maintain that reflecting on the role of the researcher while considering the larger social, economic, and political context within which she or he performs her or his multifaceted identities, enables the production of more critical, responsible, transparent qualitative research. This kind of reflection and articulated ethical conflict dominate recent methodological arguments in ethnography and autoethnography, in particular. As we argue here, however, “working the hyphen,” or, more accurately, “coming clean at the hyphen” (Fine, 1994; Weis, 2004; Weis & Fine, 2000) as proposed by Fine and Weis individually and collectively for close to twenty years now, is increasingly complicated, as the intensified complexity of the context itself throws new “speed bumps” onto our paths. This means that we must explicitly take into account the new context—or the “new normal”—as we wind our way through our research sites and simultaneously reflect on and articulate the personal and ethical tensions embedded within such a new context. This enables us to transcend the isolated and often narcissistic “auto” of much current ethnographic research as well as reflection on such research, and push toward research that is at once critical and reflexive 9 in a substantially altered context (see Berry, 2011; Clair, 2011; Madison, 2011; Stich, 2011). As Madison (2011) asserts, “. . . even our mistakes and stumbles are all reciprocally linked now to constitute a kind of reflexivity that is willfully about the social . . .” (p. 136).
Indeed our reflections herein engage our critical minds and push us beyond the self toward an evaluation of our positions as linked to the larger social, economic, and political contexts, as well as the empirical realities of our participants. In times of continued public disinvestment, wherein the methodological tightrope is taut and thin, we seek to find balance by slowing down and yielding to reflection that critically evaluates our positions and performances relative to the contexts and people we study. In so doing, we are better able to revise our site-specific practices and strike a balance that enables us to further our research while still maintaining our commitment to social justice and to our own personal and moral codes. While perhaps always a concern of researchers, the “new normal” in our urban centers has made such considerations all the more urgent as the contestation over limited and shrinking resources creates great tension (and often animosity) amongst stakeholders. As we make our way across the methodological tightrope, we do so with caution, anchored by our reflections and our commitment to do right by our participants and ourselves.
Footnotes
The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
The author(s) declared the following regarding financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article : The larger study from which this reflective essay is drawn is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant No. (1008215).