Socially just research for social justice: negotiating consent and safety in a participatory action research project

Abstract

This contribution explores what it means to pursue equality and social justice through equitable and just collaborative research methodologies, with a particular focus on two issues: the creation of safe spaces for research participants in the context of a ‘dangerous’ research topic, and the generation of ethically viable research consent. The data analysed is based on an extended self‐study of the ethical issues arising during the No Outsiders project, a participatory action research project investigating approaches to lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) equalities in English primary schools. While we had no particular difficulty securing permissions to conduct the research, our experiences throughout the two and a half year‐long project and the debates they generated have suggested that ethical issues emerge within a community as part of the research practice and are better addressed through ongoing discussion than through an external evaluation of potential risk. Further, the insistence on protecting participants through anonymity, while serving an institutional need for litigation protection, can restrict participant agency.

Keywords:

• ethics
• qualitative methods
• design

Notes

1. With the understanding that they may not necessarily share the interpretations described here, I would like to acknowledge the contribution of the entire No Outsiders research team, and particularly that of project director Elizabeth Atkinson.

2. One worked in an early years setting, another worked at local authority level, and another moved from primary teaching into initial teacher training after the first year of the project; the rest were primary teachers, including some headteachers.

3. Schools Out is a UK organization working towards LGBT equality in education (www.schools-out.org.uk) and Stonewall is a UK‐based lobbying group supporting LGB rights (www.stonewall.org.uk). Gendered Intelligence, an organization dedicated to understanding gender diversity, was eventually represented at later advisory group meetings (www.genderedintelligence.co.uk).