This is the first video cast about creative research methods. I wrote a book on methodological in research which was published in 2015. It’s a fast-moving field and quite a lot has happened since then. Nevertheless, I think what I wrote about methodological in research is still quite relevant. So, when I was writing the book I really looked for examples of creative methods and methodological in research and I read about 800 research reports. I think about 500 of the 800 methodological in research made them into the book and about 100 are used as detailed boxed examples so quite a big body of knowledge to draw on. As I was doing that work, that reading I became aware that the research and methodological in research that I was reading really fell into four broad categories. They’re not mutually exclusive of course and some research falls into more than one or falls into three or in a few cases even all four, but essentially these categories are as you can see arts based research. Some people think that is creative research methods and methodological in research but actually it’s just a subset although an important subset. There’s also some very creative work being done using technology in research methodological in research. Mixed methods research and methodological in research is perhaps one of the most mature examples and then there are transformative research frameworks such as feminist research, participatory research, activist research and so on. I’ve also become aware since the book was written that indigenous methodologies and methodological in research are a pillar of their own. So, I’ll bring those into this presentation. As such we’ll be looking now at arts based research and as methodological in research. Then in the next video cast I’ll be looking at research using technology and mixed methods research and then in the last video cast I’ll be covering transformative research frameworks and indigenous methodologies with methodological in research. So people often think that arts based research equals the visual arts but again that’s not the whole story. Of course the visual arts are included in methodological in research, but so are the performative arts such as the arts of theatre and dance and song, comedy even and the written arts- so fiction, poetry, playwriting, screenwriting and music are included. I’ve already mentioned song but there are other forms, including music as a facet of research and methodological in research. Also the technological arts as methodological in research and this is of course where there’s a crossover with research using technology, so video and film can be included in arts based research and storytelling. In a sense all research and methodological in research is made up of stories. Stories are how we learn as human beings. We learn from stories that we hear from other people and we tell stories to explain things to people we’re talking to. Every research project is a story is made up of many stories, whether it’s quantitative, qualitative or mixed methods and methodological in research numbers tell stories just as much as words do and researchers need to write stories around the numbers, the words, and the images that they collect and interpret. There’s a key debate within the euro-western paradigm around arts based research and methodological in research about how skilled you need to be in the arts techniques, methodological in research you want to use and this is a kind of a spectrum of debate really. At one end there are researchers such as professor Jane Pieto in the United States who will not supervise doctoral students doing arts-based methodological in research, unless they have been peer reviewed to a similar level with the arts that they want to work with as with the research and methodological in research that they want to work with. So peer review in the arts works differently from how it works in research. It’s not just about writing and publishing in journals, it’s about perhaps if you’re a fine artist being exhibited in public having an exhibition that people will attend or maybe even pay to attend if you’re a musician. It’s about playing in a group playing for other people getting bookings maybe producing cds that people will pay money for and so on. So these forms of peer review within the arts are about other artists recognizing you as an artist of worth and for Jane Pieto, that’s hugely important and I think that is a defensible position and an understandable position but, it’s certainly not the only position. At the other end of the spectrum we have Katrina Douglas in the U.K. and her view is that the arts should be accessible by everyone and you can have a go that you don’t need to have ever written a song before but you might decide you want to write a song about some data that you’re analyzing and that by doing that you will learn something so it won’t be wasted. If you’ve never written a song before, you’re highly unlikely to write a very good song but it’ll still be a song. It might not be a song you ever want to share with anyone but you will learn something from the process. You will see your data differently. It’s absolutely fine, Katrina Douglas would argue for you to do that if you choose. My own position is around the middle of this debate of methodological in research, so for me it depends on the context. If I’m using the draw and write technique with year one school pupils, I don’t feel I need a massive level of artistic skill to administer that technique to have children draw me a picture in response to a prompt and add a few words which they may write themselves. If they’re able or ask an adult to write for them, if they’re not yet ready to do that themselves and I don’t think I need a massive level of skill to interpret those drawings because I can use a form of content analysis in methodological in research. They’re not going to be particularly sophisticated images although I do recognize that if I had input from a fine artist, they might see things differently from the way I would see them. Alternatively if I was perhaps as I have been in the past working with young people, who want to present findings using drama I have minimal drama skills. I could do it but I probably couldn’t do it very well. So in that context I would ask a drama worker, a young people’s drama worker to join the research team and to put in their expertise about methodological in research around producing drama. I would bring my expertise as a researcher. The young people would bring all their young people expertise and together we could produce a good result arts based research with methodological in research. It isn’t just about data gathering as I’ve hinted. It can be used at all stages of the research process and methodological in research so when you’re designing research, some people think visually, some people prefer to think visually and find it very useful to use visual methods and methodological in research such as spider grams, where you write a problem or a word in the center of a big piece of paper and then spin off with other thoughts in all directions and mind maps which is similar with perhaps a little bit more flow to them or timelines where you might draw a long timeline on a big piece of paper and plot different points at which you want different things to happen to figure out whether your timing is realistic, whether it’s manageable in the context of perhaps other commitments that you may have. Then when you’re reviewing literature you can take a broader view of literature if you include arts based research and methodological in research. Some people like to look at novels if they’re studying sociology or if they’re studying history of a certain period to look at the creative literature from that period. Personal documents such as diaries if you can get access to them can be very revealing and self-published literature is gaining prominence as methodological in research. There’s literature such as zines which are being collected by some universities. Now such as mount royal in Canada or the University of Iowa, both have collections of scenes which I think you can view online graphic novels all sorts of things that you can bring into literature of you that are arts-based types of literature then of course when you’re gathering data you can enhance interviews and methodological in research by using photography. So photo interviewing as a methodological in research, photo elicitation photo voice there are a number of names for it but this is perhaps one of the more common ways of doing arts based data gathering. Another methodological in research- poetic inquiry is also gathering momentum. People are asking research participants to write poems for them keep journals, do maps draw pictures and so on and so forth as methodological in research. Then when you’re doing analysis, you can use arts based techniques and methodological in research for this as well. So again poetic inquiry, you might write a poem about your data you might create a poem from your data, you might create an ipo as a methodological in research. This is a methodological in research which was devised by Susie Weller and Rosalind Edwards from the University of Southampton where you take every statement from an interview transcript that begins with I, or has I prominently within it. Put them each on a line of their own and they form a kind of poem that may tell you something really useful about that person’s identity or how that person sees the subject under investigation. Analyzing metaphors as a methodological in research can be very interesting if you’re looking at how people see the world and how they represent the world to themselves and to other people. Writing screenplays with snippets of dialogue from participants or the kinds of dialogue participants as a methodological in research might be using and then you can check that back with participants to see if they feel you’ve represented them authentically of course when you’re writing. Writing is a form of the arts and methodological in research. Even non-fiction writing is creative. I would argue you’re creating writing that wasn’t there before you’re making a new argument. You’re putting together words to make new sentences and sentences to make new paragraphs. That is a creative act but you can also bring in techniques from so-called creative writing so techniques from fiction, techniques from poetry, techniques of description, techniques of storytelling, and of course you can add in snippets of video if you’re working with multimedia or if you’re going to be publishing online examples of art space data as a methodological in research. You may have collected photographs and so on as your methodological in research which will bring what you’re saying perhaps more to life. Then when you’re presenting research there’s loads of scope for using arts based techniques for using illustrations on your powerpoint slides using diagrams, graphs and info-graphics and so on as your methodological in research, for using short videos for people to watch. And if you’re feeling brave or you have the skills for using some drama or some song or interpretive dance for your methodological in research. If you haven’t come across this, you might like to look up dance your “phd topic” on youtube where natural and social scientists present their phds in dance. It’s really quite entertaining and quite instructive to use such forms as a methodological in research and then again when you’re disseminating findings, of course creative writing but also exhibitions or installations, multimedia and so on. There are various circumstances in which arts-based research is particularly helpful. I’ve never yet met a child who didn’t respond positively to the question- would you like to draw me a picture, and being presented with some paper and some pretty colored crayons. It’s also a useful methodological in research where there are verbal language barriers. So if you’re working with people who don’t speak or don’t fluently speak a language in common or people who have difficulty communicating, there’s been some great work done using art specific based techniques as methodological in research with people who have dementia or people who have brain injuries or post stroke survivors so on and so forth. This methodological in research is also useful with mixed ability groups where some may take more easily to the verbal or the textual than others and it’s also useful when you’re working with particularly sensitive topics or emotive topics that might be hard to talk about, but much easier to draw a picture about or model about in clay or create a song about or whatever it may be. However, not everyone is comfortable with the arts as methodological in research. Some people are quite resistant to use them as methodological in research, some people feel they’re not good at it, some people feel it is well outside their comfort zone and feel challenged by the idea. Some people will love the idea of doing arts based work but others will be reticent perhaps really uncomfortable even using it as methodological in research. It’s not okay to make research participants feel uncomfortable so, it’s really worth having a second option in case you do come up against someone who’s very reluctant and clearly feeling uncomfortable to use them as methodological in research. Have another option for those people in case of need, so that’s a quick introduction to arts based research and methodological in research. Next I’ll be looking at research using technology, and mixed methods research. This is the second video cast on creative research methods. The first was on arts based methods and the third will cover transformative research frameworks and indigenous research methods and methodological in research. But this presentation is about research using technology and mixed methods research and methodological in research. We’ll start by looking at the use of technology as methodological in research in research technology. It can be used at all stages of the research process if nothing else researchers are going to be sending emails to each other throughout, from the very start to the very end of the process; but technology is most commonly used at the data collection and analysis stages as well as for this communication that happens throughout technology is also very helpful for planning research and using various methodological in research. Think about spreadsheets gantt charts all those great tools for project planning and project management that exist technologically as methodological in research. It’s also great for setting research into context. We go to the internet to find academic literature, grey literature, other forms of context, setting secondary data perhaps, that may set research into context great for presentation powerpoints prezis and so on and for dissemination through the internet through multimedia through cds and so on. And of course for collaboration, technology is a huge help as a methodological in research to researchers but it’s not entirely only positive, because technology can also go wrong, equipment can break down, the skills of the researcher may be inadequate to the situation that they face technologically. Speaking technology as methodological in research changes how we work as well it enables it gives us opportunities that we wouldn’t otherwise have, as well as causing disappointment for example, if you audio record an interview get back to the office and discover that your tape or other recording device is in fact blank that would be a nasty surprise. There are also nice surprises researchers are now using social media and apps and all kinds of technological devices for methodological in research we do need to remember that technology does change our research practice and try to acknowledge when that happens. It’s not a bad thing in itself for methodological in research but it is important to recognize when and how technology affects and has an impact on our practice as researchers. So if you’re using technology and research, it’s important to remember that the digital divide is still very much there and it’s quite a big chasm. In fact those of us who work perhaps in universities or for organizations where we earn an income and all the organizations are technologically collected and we’re technologically connected and we have maybe a smartphone and a laptop or an ipad or whatever, it is it can be easy to think that oh but everybody’s connected, everyone has access, everyone’s online. It’s not true. There are still quite a percentage of people in the U.K. for example I think it’s 28 at the last account who don’t have access to technology. Access itself isn’t an absolute so I’m quite well connected. I have a smartphone, I have a laptop. If I get mugged and my bag is stolen containing my smartphone and my laptop how much access then do I have? None, until I can maybe replace those items or find somebody else’s device I can borrow to access the internet. So there is a problem of exclusion if you’re doing research using an app for a smartphone as a methodological in research.
Your participant pool is only the people who have smartphones that can download and the skills to download and use that app so exclusion isn’t necessarily just about hardware. It can also be about skills. These are important things to remember. Also doing research online perhaps using social media or other forms as methodological in research of contacting people online, you need to be aware of ways that can cause participants to become unsafe. It’s harder to maintain privacy and anonymity when methodological in research is online mode. You need to understand how people’s identity can be tracked online. You may be for example doing research using facebook as a methodological in research. Your participants may give you permission to access their facebook pages. They may friend you on facebook so that you can collect your data. they may not realize that they’re also inadvertently giving you access to other accounts connected to their facebook account, to their instagram account, or their pinterest account, or their twitter account which they didn’t consent to you using. As an ethical researcher I’m sure you wouldn’t use those accounts but if you weren’t ethical you could do and if someone else was able to hack your account and thereby access theirs, they could end up being stalked online or cyberbullied or other forms of undesirable and unsafe conduct that they could find themselves on the sharp receiving end of. So we need to be aware of the data footprint of our participants, digital footprint and how those things can interact. Also, using technology as methodological in research can be quite seductive, and can actually inadvertently cause people to act unethically. For example, if you’re analyzing quantitative data using the spss software as methodological in research, statistical package for social scientists you need to know which calculations and which tests you should run for your particular data set, its particular configuration. It’s not ethical to run all the tests because if you’re looking at a five percent probability level and you run 100 tests then five of those are likely to produce significant results, but that’s not ethical that’s phishing. That’s not okay. You need to run the tests that are appropriate for your data set and see if you get a significant result. Similarly with presentation, you can do all the charts and graphs and infographics as methodological in research. Your slides will be so overloaded that people won’t be able to read them, let alone remember what it is you’re trying to say. Just because you can make a bazillion chances using excel doesn’t mean it’s a good idea. You need to make good decisions about what to present and how to present it and not let the technology as a methodological in research lead the way. There are some real positives to research using technology as methodological in research. So, for example videocasts like this one have been used as methodological in research for explaining a research project so that, perhaps people with memory impairment or young children are able to watch it as many times as they need, till they decide whether or not they want to take part in the research. It may be someone talking like I’m doing here or it may be animation for example for children. There have been some nice examples where researchers have produced little animations explaining what the research they’re doing is about. Online surveys as methodological in research can be really useful because they can be made so complex and yet the pathway through the survey from a participant’s viewpoint may be only a few questions long. But there’s lots of scope for if this answer is given at this point go in that direction, if this other answer is given in the other direction that might take 60 pages on paper, but online you can hide all the answers that aren’t required. All the questions that you don’t need the participants to answer and simply present the ones that you do need. Also it’s quite easy to complete a survey if you are connected and you have a device on hand. It’s quite easy to do it there and then click send, get it done. Video is great for observational research and methodological in research. Although there are limitations you’re only going to see what the camera is pointing at. Unless you have more than one camera you will miss some viewpoints and also it’s challenging to analyze because there are so many dimensions if you’re observing people, interacting in a natural situation. Are you going to analyze their dialogue? Are you going to analyze their body language, their clothing, what else? What other factors might there be that you might want to analyze? It can become extremely complex and time consuming and difficult to transcribe as a result, but as a methodological in research it is very accurate and it does enable you to go over and over again. So if you’re videoing quite a complex situation you can focus in on little areas to look at them again and see what’s really going on much more easily than you can if you’re observing something complex like that. In person technology is great as methodological in research for crossing distances so I’ve mentioned skype interviewing- that’s fantastic. I’ve conducted skype interviews with people literally on the other side of the world and it’s worked very well indeed and for crossing boundaries in other ways. So across disciplinary boundaries across organizational boundaries, technology helps us to understand what’s going on in other arenas; helps to break down the old silos of disciplines and fields and organizations that used to cause really more problems than they solved. In the sense of increasing the knowledge in the world, technology is a great methodological in research and aid for teaching. It’s really helpful methodological in research for conveying information for enabling people to look at videocasts like this one, in their own time, in their own way, and as much or as little of it as they like. Rather than having to sit through a lengthy lecture at a time prescribed by someone else, and of course we have access now to huge quantities of data through technology, governments are making their data open so our organizations there’s lots of secondary data and this data is not only quantitative but also qualitative. There are qualitative data repositories where you can find interview transcripts and all sorts of other kinds of qualitative data images and so on. So that’s a brief overview of research using technology. Now we’re going to look at mixed methods research and methodological in research. Traditionally research methods and methodological in research weren’t mixed and what that meant in practice. Was that research either quantitative or was it qualitative and never the twain should meet. I think one day someone had a bright idea and said let’s talk to those other people doing that other research and see what they’re about and so the discipline of mixed methods research as methodological in research was born from those conversations. And initially it was mixed. Quantitative and Qualitative in the same project, this was radical for a time then it became more mainstream and now you can mix different quantitative methods and have a purely quantitative project that is still mixed methods and methodological in research, or equally you can mix different qualitative methods and have a whole project that is mixed methods but also entirely qualitative. You can also mix quantitative and qualitative methodological in research as was done in the first place. Also where this began was around mixing different methods of gathering data and methodological in research so you might do a survey for the quantitative side. In some interviews, for the qualitative side and then analyze them separately, analyze them together but now we also look at mixing methods of contextualizing. So you might do a literature review and a different form of context setting. Perhaps using quantitative data as methodological in research you might use different kinds of literature in your literature review. You might incorporate images as methodological in research that would be a form of mixing methods. You might mix methods of analyzing your data so you might use narrative analysis and discourse analysis as methodological in research and see if they tell you different things about the same data set. You might mix methods of writing as methodological in research so you might write prose and poetry in the same presentation; same written presentation you might mix methods of presenting. You might use speech and song and images and haiku. You might mix methods and methodological in research of dissemination so you might have an exhibition. But then you might film that exhibition and put the film on youtube, all sorts of ways that you can mix methods in research. But it’s not for doing just for the sake of it. It’s really only sensible to mix methods if your research question calls for you to do so. It’s important to remember where mixed methods research I think really comes into its own is when the research question is particularly complex and so a single method isn’t really going to cut. It isn’t really going to enable us to investigate that question as fully as we need to do. There are some problems with mixed methods research. It does take more resources because you’re using more methods and methodological in research so inevitably it’s going to take more time more money and so on and it can be difficult working with researchers from other disciplines particularly when they work perhaps in a slightly different paradigm. So it’s important to have conversations at a very early stage about how you work what methodological in research you use, why you use those methods, find out what your epistemological and ontological stances are and how those can be integrated and how those can be brought to work together or if not integrated then how you can use from each of those to contribute to the research process also it can be difficult at the analytics stage if you’ve got different data sets you’re probably going to analyze those separately to begin with. You may use different forms of analysis but there will come a point where you want to integrate or synthesize those findings to try to make a coherent narrative, that can be really difficult sometimes. It’s just not possible because they tell such different stories that in itself raises an interesting question about why that should be and it may simply indicate that you need to do further research that you need to collect more data or analyze in a different methodological in research to try to get to the bottom of whatever the problem is that you’re facing. Mixed methods research methodological in research needs to be carefully designed as mixed methods project right from the start what won’t work is if your research is going a bit rocky in the middle and you throw a few more methodological in research in to try and fix it. That’s really not a good idea. That’s not going to work, you need to plan it from the start, be clear about why you’re using more than one method at whichever stage of the research process you want to mix your methodological in research and this is probably the most mature of all the different types of creative research methods. So there are some books and journals that I would recommend to you these are probably the classic ones in the field. So I’ll leave them here on this slide for you to take down if you want to write down or go and look for in the library or whatever and that will end this presentation on mixed methods research and methodological in research. We will look next at transformative research frameworks and indigenous research methodological in research. This is the third video cast about creative research methods and methodological in research. The first was about art space methods and methodological in research. The second was about research using technology and mixed methodological in research. In this video cast I’m going to look at transformative research frameworks and indigenous research methods and methodological in research. These have something in common in that they both explicitly aim to make research more ethical and they try and do this by identifying addressing and reducing power imbalances. But they’re not the same, so we’re going to look at transformative research frameworks and methodological in research.
First examples of these frameworks are feminist activist participatory research. They came about from places of disadvantage really so feminist research began with women in the 1970s women like Anne Oakley. I think she doesn’t necessarily describe her research as feminist research but it seems so to me and Laurel Richardson in the U.S.A. Ann Oakley in the U.K was looking at researching topics like housework and the way women are treated by men and Laurel Richardson in the U.S.A had similar interests at much the same time. Activist research came about from the disability rights movement, primarily people with physical disabilities also people with mental health problems saying if research is going to be done about us we will do that research because we are actually the people who know what this is like and what’s going on here. Participatory research is very much similar to that activist emancipatory paradigm the motto if you like the tagline of activist research is often nothing about us without us and that really sums up the whole point behind participatory research which some people regard as useful and a good way of working beyond health issues or feminist issues. So why these research frameworks are called transformative is because the idea is that they will cause some kind of positive transformation through the research for people’s living conditions people’s way well-being whatever it may be. So this is often very creative research within transformative frameworks is often in a sense made up as it goes along which doesn’t mean that it has no rigor but it is creativity in itself isn’t ethical. It can be used if you think there are some very creative criminals think how creative the joker is in batman for example but creativity can be used for good of course as well as for evil and there is evidence of a very strong relationship between creative thinking and ethical decision making so ethics isn’t really just for research ethics committees or institutional review boards as they’re known in America. I’ve done some other video casts on research ethics which are on the same website and go into the whole ethical side of things in more detail but for now it does make sense to just say that in terms of transformative research frameworks doing ethics isn’t really part of that. It’s very ethical research process as a whole and it’s very much more about moving towards or promoting or trying to create social justice rather than simply a lower baseline of doing no harm. It’s hard to do transformative research properly. It needs a lot of time, it probably needs a lot of money, there’s no room for tokenism. It’s got to be done well, it’s got to be done thoroughly and it’s got to be done quite relationally. You need to take people seriously give them a lot of respect these ethical issues bring it into a very similar part of the research world is indigenous research methods and methodological in research. Although as I’ve already said it’s not the same the key to all, this is to communicate with everyone involved. Different people will have different kinds of knowledge which can be used to help the research but communicating and helping them to communicate and allowing everyone to communicate is a key to making this happen and making it work. It’s also important to be realistic while you may be able to reduce or even eradicate power imbalances within the purview of the research project, you’re not likely to have a huge effect on those power imbalances far beyond the scope of the research. There was some interesting work done with roma communities in Europe, nomadic peoples of Europe, the roma the Romani people, and some very participatory research was done with them using a specific form of participatory research called critical communicative methodology very much about everyone having something to communicate something to offer something to contribute to the research and enabling that to happen researchers from Barcelona developed this approach and they used it with roma people who were initially very resistant to being involved in research because they’d experienced research as abusive. They’d experienced researchers as people who came and took data away and built their careers on it without benefiting the romani people at all. But research has gradually won the trust of the romani people and worked with them to look at how to overcome problems like low employment levels within romani communities and lower education levels difficulties in accessing education and employment in europe partly because of nomadism partly because of prejudice for other reasons too so this research was completed and was eventually presented at the European parliament with romani people as part of the presenting team and it caused changes in laws in european law so that romani communities had more rights to things like education employment health care and so on and this was enshrined in law so you could say that that made a real difference to the balance of power in Europe. However subsequent research demonstrated that romani people in their day-to-day lives really didn’t feel a great deal of impact if any at all from this research which is a bit depressing but doesn’t mean it’s not worth doing it’s also important to remember that trans using transformative research frameworks brings ethical problems with it it can seem that this research that’s participatory that reduces power imbalances that is set up to be so ethical is just simply marvelous and ethical by default one of the difficulties currently in the literature is that much that is written about transformative research frameworks is uncritical and every framework for research every methodology has its limitations. It’s important to acknowledge and recognize those so for example, let’s think about participatory research. Supposing you wanted to do longitudinal participatory research might sound like a marvelous idea from a researcher’s viewpoint, really interesting but how does that look from a participant’s viewpoint. Someone who might be asked to take part in research not only today, or this week, or this month but for the rest of the year, maybe for years to come. That’s a big commitment to ask for someone how are you going to compensate them for that commitment? Will you be able to do that? This is a problem in terms of writing. Writing is often much less participatory you may find participatory research is carried out in terms of much participation even perhaps in research design, context setting, data gathering, data analysis but when it comes to writing it tends to be delegated to one person to do that there are examples of people writing with participants but they’re fairly few and far between and then because this type of research is so relational, there is a need to maintain or at least continue to acknowledge those relationships. After the research has finished and that can be challenging again in terms of time and resource and simply being able to maintain that many relationships in someone’s life. So that’s a very quick look at transformative research frameworks. Let’s look now at indigenous research methods which are similar but not the same. These methods are developed by indigenous researchers from indigenous communities in countries such as Australia, Canada, New Zealand several African countries and many other parts of the world. There’s a tradition of research in many of these countries that long predates research in the euro-western tradition. Some oral traditions can trace their research activities back 40 or 50 000 years which is a very long time. So this is a very mature and well-developed way of doing research. It is always collaborative, It’s never one person is the researcher and the expert on research methods while other people are the participants. It’s always done consensually and collaboratively in community doesn’t mean it’s always problem free but the aim is always to reach agreement and to discuss and to continue to discuss until an agreement is reached. It’s often experimental or exploratory. It’s usually about finding new knowledge solving new problems replicating research isn’t regarded as so important by indigenous researchers as it is in the euro-western paradigm as I understand it. And of course I must say here that I’m not an indigenous researcher myself and I’ve learned this from books written by indigenous people and from listening to indigenous researchers speaking about their work. But I’m not really an expert I’m just bringing this to you because I think it’s hugely important. I think we all need to be aware that the euro-western paradigm is not by any means the only paradigm. There is indigenous research, highly contextualized. It’s for a specific problem in a specific place for a specific community and it’s communities who test and approve research not separate bodies such as research ethics committees or institutional review boards that simply come together to do that one piece of work. It’s often incredibly creative and yet it’s embedded in tradition. So it manages to have a foot in both camps solidly grounded in the tradition of the indigenous community conducting the research but also very willing to look at new and different ways of doing things. Here’s a useful quote from Bagley Chileza who is a professor in Botswana in Africa she’s talking about how literature is perceived by indigenous researchers. So in the euro-western paradigm literature is primarily written although we’re beginning to widen that out a little bit and take into account perhaps some visual elements and some other non-textual elements. However indigenous researchers have a very much more complex and rich view of literature including things like dances and tattoos and community stories.
You can see this here so it’s a different way of working different basis on which to produce and create research and there are other methods. These are just some of the methods that come into indigenous research. So ceremonies some indigenous researchers regard research as a ceremony in itself or there may be ceremonial parts to a research process and within ceremony there is ritual and out with ceremony sometimes there is ritual. They’re not the same thing ritual may also play a part in research it can be used for data gathering or for introducing researchers from one community to another community so on and so forth existing community structures are used so research approval ethical approval will probably be given by perhaps a council of elders or a similar kind of body within a community of indigenous people talking circles are a common structure in some indigenous communities which can be a useful way to gather data or to plan research to discuss research, to think about what kind of research needs to be done in the community. Next indigenous research may well involve ancestors who may not be living because indigenous communities have ways of communicating with ancestors and respecting ancestors and regard ancestors as very much as part of the community. Just as the living people are part of the community and it may also involve the land which can be seen as perhaps akin to a member of a family or a member of a community or certainly part of a community that can teach and can learn and can take part in research activities. If we’re from a euro-western paradigm these kind of ways of working can feel quite alien quite foreign and quite different and some euro western researchers are very dismissive.
Oh that’s silly you can’t talk to people when they’re dead oh that’s silly the land can’t teach you things it’s teachers who teach you things but this kind of way of thinking is a form of imperialism or trying to dictate how knowledge exists, how knowledge is constructed, and how people can know things one of the things that I find particularly useful as a research methods scholar myself in studying indigenous research methods and methodological in research is that it opens my mind to other ways of thinking not necessarily ways that i’m going to adopt but i think it’s useful for me to have the awareness that there are many ways of thinking about and of knowing the world that we live in as researchers and as human beings you.