Fluctuations and Ethics

I had an eventful week a couple of weeks ago which threw up   issues to reflect and ask 1) what am I going to investigate in this module 2 inquiry 2) looking at ethical dilemmas resulting from my very eventful and thought provoking week and lastly 3) the variability of my work pattern and how it might affect my ultimate research project if permission is granted.

I’ve been fluctuating between the lines of inquiry I am interested in pursuing and trying to find meaning.    Its interesting how with the ideas I perceive  in my mind are clear until I test them and realise how much I need to return back to the drawing board and start again.  What challenges my ideas has been influenced by outside considerations that I had not anticipated and also when reading a range and variety of texts and I have come into contact with. I suppose that is what this journey is all about to test ideas and not fix them as yet.  I suppose I am illustrating a non-positivist stance in that my reality is not entirely fixed at this point but I do have a broad outline of what it is I would like to investigate.  Perhaps also I am hung up on the level of detail needed.

I am still interested in investigating a codified system of dance (Horton) seen through the lens of an embodied experience – and this has been constant for me in what it is I wish to create – that is fixed in a way but how it ends up will be determined by the type of framework I create.   However I have been faced with whether through creating this inquiry would it be relevant to what it is I want to find out ( do I know the answer already?) where do I intend to go with it? and who will this investigation ultimately serve or benefit?  As I reflect on this Alan’s blog from last week about remembering versus experience made me reflect back to my past training experiences in New York at the Ailey school to ask myself whether my experiences were constructed experiences when training in the formative time of my career and was it fit for purpose. What do I remember going through the rigorous training and how it resonated with my body, my identity physically, mentally, culturally – my sense of self.  Did I only remember the good parts and blot out the negative experiences?   Do I remember anything I constructed in those experiences? Well in my mind yes but fuzzy – however my body remembers the training which became part of my DNA.  I say that because after having my last child many   years after leaving Ailey and my body was not quite back to peak  dancer mode I took a Horton class and was petrified that I would not remember a thing or whether I would cope: the warm up series and fortifications.  I need not have worried.  My body knowledge took over and it was as though I hadn’t left the Ailey school at all. The experiences came flooding back – as if my body said ‘where... have you been for so long!?’ So an embodiment was present and occurred but my inquiry would be to look at the root of that and go through a process of physical analysis of remembering how I remembered.  The codification of the exercises and movement studies of Horton are very structured and anatomical but within that there was a freedom and in body memory terms of allowing and trusting my body’s memory to learn and absorb and understand.   With this body memory I want to get back to the source of it and by doing so make it adaptable and palatable for young people to learn and benefit from the beauty of the form. As it stands I do not teach it in its purest form simply because some of my students who do not have a large movement vocabulary would find it a huge challenge, so I have to adapt it to their preferred learning style and from there when there is sufficient body knowledge – offer more challenging studies. By constructing these experiences I in essence am creating them.  Although I still can’t remember who coined the phrase “you are who/what you think about....” I still draw comfort from it when I hear and express it.   So in essence I am constructing my reality and experiences based on my own belief system – which is okay.  The legacy of that belief has resulted in a vocabulary of dance ideas, experiences and remembering.

So, in finding what my sense of self is and quest for defining this inquiry I am paused by the assumption that what is right for me might not be right for my research subjects – in this case the young people I teach.  This leads to an ethical issue of whether what I am excited about and want to do in research terms would be fit for purpose and relevant to/for them.  Do they care after all and if so how do I frame any lines of inquiry, questions, dialogues, pilots or observational studies that would ensure their buy-in to take part in my research. How do I create research tools when faced with some young people with a host of issues which might challenge the integrity of the research?  The simple answer is find another group but for me it is not so easy due the freelance nature of my work which sometimes result in a longer term relationship during an academic year ( may be asked back next academic year or not) or in a lot of cases covering other teachers classes.  This scenario might affect the research methods I use and not give enough depth to the inquiry possibly. I am facing a dilemma of how to phrase the types of questions or what my research tools will be to frame this inquiry especially when I have to factor in and peel off layers of social and environmental concerns.  Perhaps this is the beauty of the challenge to investigate and see what happens and during the process make the inquiry bespoke to them as subjects and hope that they are in a state of readiness to subscribe to and take part in the inquiry.  A friend recently advised in response to my dilemma that they(young people) are on a journey of which they must travel and go through a range of situations  and emotions some of them more life changing than others and that my entry into their lives as their teacher at the crossroads with my inquiry is part of their journey and mine of developing experiences, learning and memory.   A code of ethics spring to mind by creating a structure or set of guidelines that will protect me as the researcher and my responses to the range of challenges that the project might throw up as well as the ethical considerations of the young people involved.  

 Another consideration around the ethics issue and codes of conduct has come to mind.  As a freelancer my work is dependant on funding which at times is erratic, sometimes last minute , and also dependant on the school’s scheduling.  Plus I am not always in the same school or organisational setting for long periods of time as it might be a one-off covering role.   It places me in a slightly vulnerable position as far as drawing up a personal code of practice for my  nquiry and who do I present it to.  Do I present it to all of the schools I come into contact with? Or my main employer which in this case is the RAD as a freelance tutor.  My only worry is that as my employer they may have the right to change the focus of my inquiry if they have some issue with it – I have to check it out.  I do take comfort  in what  Judith Bell (2010) in “Doing Your Research Project” (5^th edition) advises  that as long as I have done as much as I can do to satisfy myself that my inquiry is done and conducted in  a way that complies with my own ethical principles,  a bespoke approach can be adopted.  She describes a postgraduate student who worked as a teacher in a school and did a piece of in-house research in the school where he taught.  His approach was a bespoke personal code of practice which made clear the conditions and practices to ensure his own and the school’s integrity of the research.   I am sure that it was not without its problems but as a framework it is something worth exploring and food for thought.  I think I’ll bake a cake now!