ON-LINE ISSUES

V.5 N.1, August 1999

Ethical Considerations of Conversation as a Research Methodology: Seeking Just Ways to Study Personal Experience

by Lynn Thomas
thomla@interchange.ubc.ca

Centre for the Study of Curriculum & Instruction
University of British Columbia

This paper describes how, as a researcher, I came to a greater understanding of using conversation as a research methodology to study the personal lived experience of bilingual parents of young children. I describe the process I followed in my attempt to find ethical ways of conducting research, and include references to literature I found influential, as well as reflections on my own experience of researching the lived experience of others.

My interest in language education has led me to wonder not only about how people learn languages but also why. Why is it that some people in some circumstances are able to learn two or more languages and remain fluent all or most of their lives while others, in the same circumstances do not? What is it about our interaction with language that influences what we do? More specifically, why I have become interested in language learning in bilingual families, and what it is that parents believe and understand about language that influences how they will interact linguistically with their young children.

It occurred to me early on that an interesting way to research this area would be to talk with bilingual parents about their own experiences with language and how these affected what they understood and came to believe about language learning and bilingualism. I was very encouraged by the fact that I was regularly conversing with parents about children and language on an informal basis as they approached me in the park, the school, the library, with stories to tell about languages in the family. One example follows:

At the Swimming Pool

I am sitting at the edge of an outdoor swimming pool with my four-year-old daughter, hearing the shouts and cries and splashes of children in the pool, including my older daughter, and enjoying the warm sun on my face. We are leaning against a chain link fence which separates the pool from the rest of a small park. A woman pushing a stroller approaches, and stops to share the sight of the children leaping into the bright blue water with her child. Before long my daughter and the baby are gurgling and cooing at each other while poking their fingers through the fence. The woman and I begin to chat, and she immediately picks up on the fact that I speak French with my daughter as I warn her to be gentle with the baby. Before long the woman is telling me her story of how she is concerned about which languages to teach to her child because her husband is Lebanese and speaks Arabic and French, and she herself is from Ontario and speaks only English. I explain my circumstances, she expands on hers, I offer some suggestions, she describes what she has learned from a book. Soon the swimming lesson is over, and I turn to wrap my shivering child in a towel while my younger daughter waves good bye. The next day we are back in our places because the lessons take place every day. I hear someone calling and turn to see the same woman approaching. "I just had to come back, " she says, "There is so much more to say."

It appears that there is a great need for information, but not just on the part of parents who want to know the most up to date research, but a need for an exchange of information: people express a need to share what they have experienced, as well as learning from others. Hearing personal stories about language learning and use helps me as an academic to understand who is coming to school and what they might need when they get there.

The most obvious way of going about researching this topic seemed to be through interviewing: asking questions, listening to the answers, writing them down. But as I looked more closely into interviewing as a research method I became apprehensive. What does it mean to interview someone? What does the word "inter view" really mean? Does it mean to view or look into someone? Spradley's classic The Ethnographic Interview (1979) states: “If we want to find out what people know we must get inside their heads” (p. 8).

McMillan and Schumacher (1993) write:

To mitigate the disadvantages of interviewing, the interviewer should be thought of as a neutral medium through which information is exchanged. If this goal is attained, then the interviewer's presence will have no effect on the perceptions or answers of the respondent. (p. 266)

I cannot accept this to be true. I do not want to go rummaging inside other people's heads. I am not neutral, nor am I a medium. I want to make my presence as a researcher felt, to acknowledge that I play an active role in the exchange of knowledge, and to embrace it honestly and openly. Michelle Fine (1994) has redefined the interviewer's place in research:

As researchers we need to position ourselves as no longer transparent, but as classed, gendered, raced and sexual subjects who construct our own locations, narrate these locations, and negotiate our stances with relations of domination. (p. 76)

Madeleine Grumet (1987) reminds us that as researchers we must be respectful of both the tellers of stories and the stories themselves:

So if telling a story requires giving oneself away, then we are obligated to devise a method of receiving stories that mediates the space between the self that tells, the self that [is] told and the self that listens: a method that returns a story to the teller that is both hers and not hers, that contains herself in good company. (p. 322)

I began looking for ways to understand research that were fundamentally influenced by this notion of equal partnerships. I found that others had similar concerns, and one way to re-envision researching people's knowledge, understanding, experience, and stories is to invite them to take an active role, to take ownership of the data, and work together as a team, so that the study becomes meaningful for all participants. If the wisdom of each participant is acknowledged, if we respect the words and ideas and experience as we respect the person, we learn through the exchange of knowledge and understandings, through which greater knowledge and understandings are revealed. Terry Carson (1986) has been influenced by the hermeneutic idea that knowledge is circular rather than linear and that it builds on itself through people's contact with other people:

... theorists and inquirers do not begin their research from scratch. People interested partake in a continually evolving conversation which has begun long before their arrival and which now continues with their participation. (p. 75)

This coincided with my own views about the conversations I had been having with other people, that they were eternal, omnipresent, and that the ones I participated in were only a very tiny representation of a continual series of conversations that are constantly taking place all around me. I became convinced that conversation is a possible way to conduct research. Mischler (1986) has written: "the research interview is no longer seen as a tool only for 'information gathering.' It is a site where partners meet and converse, and through their conversations they jointly construct meaning" (p. 29). Gudmundsdottir (1996) enlarges upon this theme:

The interview is a form of conversation. Someone asks a question and another person responds....Through their cooperation in the research process, researchers and informants jointly put the pieces together into a meaningful whole, something that makes sense to both with each participant having left his or her mark on the process and the product. (p. 294)

The origins of the word converse provide an interesting link to the research approach because it evolved from the Old French converser, meaning to live or dwell, which in turn was borrowed from Latin conversari, which means to associate with or keep company with. Thus, in 1340, conversation could mean living together, or a manner of behaving as a group (Oxford English Dictionary, 1971, pp. 545-546). Those of us who are living with children, whether we are parents, educators or members of the health profession, are associates in our efforts to assist them in reaching their fullest potential. It is essential that we continue to converse, to keep company with others who are part of the journey, and to share understandings so that they will deepen and broaden with each exchange.

However, Carson (1986) does not view the conversation itself as the sum total of the research:

The potential that conversation has as a mode of curriculum research will depend on whether or not it is regarded merely as an effective technique for data gathering or as hermeneutic reflection with a practical intent. (p. 81)

Hermeneutic reflection informs conversation as a research methodology in an important way. Hermeneutic inquiry is based on the philosophical theory that, as researchers, we cannot obtain objective knowledge through research, only come to a greater understanding of a phenomenon through our engagement with a context, be it text or dialogue. Bleicher (1980), states that "hermeneutics can be loosely defined as the theory or philosophy of the interpretation of meaning ..." (p. 1). Bruns (1992) frames hermeneutic inquiry in terms of questions: "Hermeneutics is made up of a family of questions about what happens in the understanding of anything, not just of texts but of how things are" (p. 179).

In social science research hermeneutic inquiry has been greatly influenced by the work of the German philosopher Hans-Georg Gadamer, particularly through his book Truth and Method, which was first published in German in 1960. Gadamer (1989) is a strong advocate of learning through conversation and dialogue, basing his work on the Socratic dialogues of Plato, but carrying the concept much further, as in the following quotation:

As the art of conducting a conversation, dialectic is also the art of seeing things in the unity of the aspect-- i.e. it is the art of forming concepts through working out the common meaning. What characterizes a dialogue, in contrast with the rigid form of statements that demand to be set down in writing, is precisely this: that in dialogue spoken language--in the process of question and answer, giving and taking, talking at cross-purposes and seeing each other's point--performs the communication of meaning that, with respect to the written tradition is the task of hermeneutics. (p. 368)

Gadamer sees conversation as "a process of coming to an understanding" (p. 385) wherein "the questioner becomes the one who is questioned and the hermeneutic occurrence is realized in the dialectic of the question" (p. 462). In his interpretation, conversation becomes a means for conducting research that invites the participation of all parties to explore their understanding of the subject at hand through dialogue, leading to a collaborative increase in knowledge for all. "To understand what a person says is, as we saw, to come to an understanding about the subject matter, not to get inside another person and relive his (sic) experiences" (Gadamer, 1989. p. 383). Carson (1986) also writes about the potential of conversation in conducting research in a way that reduces the risk of the researcher claiming the stories of the researched:

Doing research in the conversational mode changes the relationship between persons who have been hitherto labelled as "researcher" and "practitioner." While it is unlikely to totally abolish the distinction between them, conversational research does offer the possibility of developing a community of co-operative investigation into significant educational questions. (p. 83)

Supported by this research I began my data collection but shortly encountered new doubts about ethical ways of conducting studies with human subjects. As soon as you pull out your tape recorder something happens to this relationship. Even before--as soon as you describe your research intentions, ask permission to quote, produce the forms on official letterhead to sign, something happens. It's not that people aren't willing to take part, they really want to help, but they had certain assumptions and expectations about how research takes place.

No matter what you do, a planned conversation in front of a tape recorder is not the same as a spontaneous one. It simply cannot be, and it would be dishonest to pretend otherwise. So what are we doing when we use conversation as a research methodology? Are we simply deluding ourselves that it is possible? All planned conversations are prepared in the sense that the participants have thought about what they are going to say to a certain extent.

So how is conversation as a research methodology different from open-ended interviews? How is conversation different from instances where the researcher reflects on what they would like to know, asks questions, listens to the answers and writes them down? In one sense the conversation is not really all that different from an open-ended interview; to an observer they may look quite similar. So why make the distinction?

The real difference is not in what actually happens, but in the intention of the researching participants. If they are intending to have a conversation, not an interview, there are certain expectations about everybody's role, about what is allowed and what is not acceptable behaviour. For example, in a conversation, I, the researcher, am allowed to talk about my personal self. I might or might not do that, depending on the subject under discussion, but I am allowed to. In this way I can share my own experiences as a parent of bilingual children, for example, as a way of joining in the conversation on a more or less equal basis. During the conversation itself, we are two or more parents discussing our children. In this way the conversation I shared with the mother at the swimming pool becomes a part of my research.

It is after the conversation that our roles really differ: the other participants go away and perhaps reflect a little, maybe talk over some of the ideas with a partner, parent or friend. I go away, reflect, transcribe, reflect some more and eventually write a dissertation.

Does that make a difference? Are honourable intentions about doing research enough? What is important here, the process of research, or the final product? If intent is the important aspect, then do the names we call our methodologies matter? That is, does what we call the people we work with: participant, subject, informant; and what we call the data gathering process: interview or conversation, make a big difference? I have to answer mostly yes, but sometimes no. There are times when the words we use become labels of convenience, to manipulate as we see fit. However, beginning with thoughtful, intentional choices of words to describe a process that has great potential for exploitation is the first step in following through with inclusive, participatory research.

Despite the risks, I believe that we who have taken this position as researcher through our studies at the graduate level, have an obligation to carry out research--to search for new ways of making meaning of our lives and those who are connected to us through classrooms, schools and homes. At the same time, we also have an obligation to strive to continually question our ethics, to examine our motives and actions, and to strive to work with people in ways that are inclusive, thoughtful and respectful.

• Carson, T. (1986). Closing the gap between research and practice: Conversation as a mode of doing research. Phenomenology and Pedagogy, 4(2), 73-85.

• Fine, M. (1994). Working the hyphens: Reinventing self and other in qualitative research. In N. Denzin & Y. Lincoln (Eds.), Handbook of qualitative research methods (pp. 70-82). London: Sage Publications.

• Grumet, M. (1987). The politics of personal knowledge. Curriculum Inquiry, 17, 319-329.

• Gudmunsdottir, S. (1996). The teller, the tale and the one being told: The narrative nature of the research interview. Curriculum Inquiry, 26, 293-306.

• McMillan, J. & Schumacher, S. (1993). Research in education (3rd ed.). New York: Harper Collins.

• Mishler, E.G. (1986). Research interviewing: Context and narrative. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Lynn Thomas completed her doctoral dissertation and graduated in spring 1999. Her work is with bilingual families with young children, and she is interested in learning more about what it is to be a bilingual parent. She is also interested in research methodologies that are respectful and offer opportunities for all participants to work together to increase their understanding of the topic under study.

Copyright rests with the author.