Critical approaches in qualitative educational research: Perspective, reflexivity and bias

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Introduction

Critical research takes a political stance. Therefore the issue of bias, and the associated issues of perspective, position, prejudice and reflexivity, are relevant to understanding and carrying out critical research. All researchers unite in their condemnation of bias. However there is less unity in how bias is understood. One group of researchers makes accusations of bias at research which takes a clear moral or political stance, or which in the words of one influential paper on research makes it clear ‘whose side we are on’ (Troyna and Carrington, 1989). These researchers assume that it is possible to achieve value-free knowledge which is universally true for all people, places and times. Such researchers often look to science, especially physics, as a model. They view any influence on research design and findings by a researcher’s values, ideology or positionality as bias which needs to be corrected.

However, the opposite view is taken by those researchers who do make their political and moral values clear. They challenge the notion of value-free knowledge, which they see as implying that it is possible to escape from the situation which is being researched and to see it from some outsider position. Challengers have called this an aspiration to a ‘God’s eye view’ (Haraway, 1989) or the ‘the view from nowhere’ (Nagel, 1989) in order to emphasise its impossibility. This group of researchers argues that since all research is affected by the social and political position of the researcher, making this position clear is one way of avoiding bias. They argue that researchers not only take political and ethical stances, but they also inhabit them (as do all human beings). Like all human beings they inhabit specific social roles and specific historical, geographical locations.

The subtitle of my book, Educational Research for Social Justice: Getting off the Fence, indicates that I am in the latter group. This page should be read with this in mind!

In that book I say (1998, p.133):

“Bias comes not from having ethical and political positions – this is inevitable – but from not acknowledging them. Not only does such acknowledgment help to unmask any bias that is implicit in those views, but it helps to provide a way of responding critically and sensitively to the research.”

Discussions of bias and its relation to stance use various terms and concepts. These may be differently understood, depending on the theoretical perspective underlying the discussion. Particularly significant are perspective and positionality and prejudice, which, I argue, should not be confused with ‘bias’. In the following paragraphs I comment on the meaning of each of these. Then follows a section responding to the question: if these do not constitute bias, then what is bias? Finally there is a brief summary of reflexivity and its role.

Perspective and positionality

Perspective refers to the context which influences what a person can see and how they interpret it. It may indicate ideology or value systems (e.g. feminist, socialist, anti-racist, post-colonial and queer research), and it may indicate positionality which refers, more narrowly, to the social and political landscape inhabited by a researcher (e.g. gender, nationality, race, religion, sexuality, (dis)abilities, social class and social status).

Prejudice

In everyday language, the term ‘prejudice’ is used more or less interchangeably with ‘bias’. But in the more technical language of educational research it may need to be used more cautiously. The term is used by Gadamer to refer to the inescapable historical and social position of researchers and philosophers, and so it becomes a positive term rather than a pejorative. Prejudice is an essential element in his epistemological approach to truth and method. Gadamer is an influential theorist in relation to critical theory. The concept of prejudice forms the basis of his disagreements with Habermas, also hugely influential in critical theory. The debate between them is significant enough to have become labelled the Gadamer-Habermas debate. A useful discussion of this is to be found in Hostetler (1992).

Bias: if it is not perspective, positionality or prejudice, then what is it?

Bias, unlike perspective, positionality or prejudice, is to be eliminated as far as possible: to avoid it is an ‘intellectual virtue’. Bias is a skewed view that is presented in such a way that the audience for the research is not in a position to allow for it. There are various ways of skewing the research, for instance by looking only for confirming evidence and overlooking or ignoring disconfirming evidence; or by reporting only some of the results and suppressing others. That is, it is something that can be guarded against in the process of research by (i) using rigorous methods of sampling, data gathering, analysis (including representation), literature search and declaring interests that arise from funding (etc.) and (ii) reflexivity about positionality. The reader of research has a right to expect that a researcher has guarded against bias. That is, that the researcher has exercised academic or intellectual virtue: i.e. has done what is right in academic, intellectual terms. Bridges discusses intellectual virtue in the Ethics and educational research resource, also available through BERA resources. In effect, intellectual virtue is the main subject of most Research Ethics policies (BERA, EERA frameworks). Pring (2001) and Bridges (2003) both discuss how far intellectual and moral virtues can be distinguished, using, for instance, concepts such as lying and trust to make the argument.

There is an interesting discussion in a special issue of the Journal of Philosophy of Education about how procedures may or may not help guard against bias – in that the adoption of set procedures may itself affect the content, processes and conclusions that are drawn from educational research (Bridges, 2006, Smith, 2006). Bridges outlines how researchers might provide confidence in their research by evolving procedures and language in common. Smith, on the other hand, warns against too much systematization, arguing that this ‘threatens to cut educational research free of the wider range of ideas and theories that should govern or at least inform it.’

Reflexivity

Whatever their differences, almost all commentators agree that reflexivity is significant. However, reflexivity is itself a much discussed and often contested concept. Denzin and Lincoln’s collection provides discussions of reflexivity in relation to ideologies, positioning and values, with an extended discussion in Marcus (1998). In general, reflexivity is an explicit self consciousness about the researcher’s (or research team’s, and/or the research funder’s) social, political and value positions, in relation to how these might have influenced the design, execution and interpretation of the theory, data and conclusions (Griffiths, 1998; Greenbank, 2003). Such self-consciousness needs to acknowledge that the self is not fully transparent to itself, so enough description of the researcher needs to be given for the audience to make judgements about his or her social and political positionality. Interesting reflective discussions about this cam be found in a collection by trhe Personal Narratives Group (1989). For instance Marjorie Shostak discusses a now standard work of anthropology she had carried out twenty years earlier, showing how her younger positionality had affected what she saw and how she interpreted it. (See also Shostak, 2000.) However it is also important to guard against making the researcher the central figure in the research. This tendency has sometimes been called ‘vanity ethnography’. Articles arguing against this tendency include Patai (1994), Pillow (2003) Smith (2006) and Burman (2006). Beyond self-consciousness is explicit consciousness about the expectations that the readers will bring to the genre that the researcher has used.

References

Bridges, D. 2003 Fiction written under oath?Essays in Philosophy and Educational Research Chapter 7.

Bridges, D. 2006 ‘The Disciplines and Discipline of Educational Research’. Journal of Philosophy of Education, 40 (2)

Burman, Erica (2006) Emotions and reflexivity in feminised education action research, Educational Action Research 14 (3)

Greenbank P. (2003) The role of values in educational research: the case for reflexivity , British Educational Research Journal, 29 (6)

Griffiths, Morwenna (1998) Educational Research for Social Justice: Getting off the Fence, Milton Keynes, Open University Press

Haraway, Donna 1989. Primate visions: Gender, race, and nature in the world of modern science. New York: Routledge.

Hostetler, Karl (1992) Solidarity and moral community, Philosophy of Education Yearbook 1992,

Marcus, Georeg E. (2000) What comes (just) after ‘post’? The case of ethnography, In Denzin Norman, K. and Lincoln, Yvonna S. (eds.) Handbook of Qualitative Research Sage

Nagel, Thomas (1989) The View from Nowhere, Oxford, Oxford University Press. The introduction to Nagel’s book is available here

Patai, Daphne (1994) When method becomes power, in Gitlin, A (ed) Power and Method: Political Activism and Educational Research Routledge

Personal Narrative Group (1989) Interpreting Women’s Lives: Feminist theory and personal narrative, Indiana University Press

Pillow, W. (2003) Confession, catharsis, or cure? Rethinking the uses of reflexivity as methodological power in qualitative research International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education, 16 (2)

Pring, Richard (2001) ‘The virtues and vices of an educational researcher’ Journal of Philosophy of Education 35:3

Shostak, Marjorie (1989) ‘What the wind won’t take away’: the genesis of Nisa – the Life and Words of a !Kung woman. In The Personal Narratives Group (ed.) Interpreting Women’s Lives: Feminist theory and personal narratives Indiana University Press

Shostak, Marjorie (2000) Return to Nisa, Harvard University Press

Smith, R (2006) ‘As if by machinery: The levelling of educational research’. Journal of Philosophy of Education, 40 (2)

Stanford Encylopedia of Philosophy (2005) Hans-Georg Gadamer. Available online here

Troyna, B. and Carrington, B. (1989) Whose side are we on? Ethical dilemmas in research on ‘race’ and education. In Robert G. Burgess (ed.) The Ethics of Educational Research, London, Falmer