negotiating ethical research engagements in multilingual ethnographic studies in education: a...

Over the past 20 years, an increasing amount of research in applied linguistics and education has taken an ethnographic or more broadly qualitative and socio-cultural approach to explore language and literacy practices and multilingual development in homes, communities, schools, and other educational institutions (Duff, 2008a, 2008b, forthcoming). Theoretical and practical issues and popula-tions that were under-researched in the past have inspired new research questions and research participants representing diverse demographic features. New con-ceptual frameworks, constructs, methodological designs, analytical and record-ing tools, and even reporting genres 1 are being used in this research as a result. The role and voice of the researcher is also more prominent in such work than it was previously, with more narratives and ref lections on the process and experi-ence of conducting and interpreting research included in dissertations, published articles, and books. Indeed, in contemporary ethnographic research this form of explicit subjectivity has become almost mandatory (Atkinson, Coffey, Delamont, Lof land, & Lofland, 2001; Van Maanen, 1995).

Yet discussion of the actual negotiation of ethical research engagements and protocols receives insufficient attention in publications (particularly in journal articles, where space is limited) on ethnographic research in applied linguistics and education. For example, in a special issue of The Modern Language Journal noteworthy for featuring a multifaceted discussion of ethics in second language acquisition research (Ortega, 2005), the ethical dimensions had more to do with such issues as ecological validity, discourses surrounding the positioning of learn-ers (e.g., as “deficient” versus “multicompetent”), the problem of contentious paradigm debates and related critiques in the field, and the importance of rep-lication and practical applications based on research. In the education literature,

7 NEGOTIATING ETHICAL RESEARCH ENGAGEMENTS IN MULTILINGUAL ETHNOGRAPHIC STUDIES IN EDUCATION

A Narrative from the Field

Patricia A. Duff and Klara Abdi

122 Patricia A. Duff and Klara Abdi

Heath and Street’s (2008) book on ethnography in language and literacy educa-tion written for novice researchers has a short section dedicated to researcher ref lexivity , but this is not explicitly linked to ethics ; they nonetheless address the role of power and authority in research and thus meaning-making. They also discuss (post)colonialism and ethnography, scholarly responsibility to popula-tions and to knowledge construction, and the possible impact—both positive and negative—of research on particular communities.

In Murchison’s (2010) introductory textbook on “ethnography essentials” (research methods), ethics is discussed mainly in connection with the need to protect human subjects when studying sensitive topics (e.g., HIV/AIDS, trauma) or illicit activities (e.g., drug use) that might have stigmatizing or harmful con-sequences for research participants, if identified, or for researchers if they become enmeshed in or cognizant of illegal activities or have taken field notes that can be subpoenaed in court cases. All of these considerations should be recognized as features of ethical engagement, ref lection, and responsibility.

A much more explicit treatment of research ethics is found in the third edi-tion of Ethnography: Principles and Practice (Hammersley & Atkinson, 2007), in which an entire chapter—the last in the book—is devoted to ethics, whereas it was absent from the first edition of the book in the 1980s. Similarly, Robben and Sluka (2007) dedicate a whole section (five chapters) of their anthology on eth-nographic research to fieldwork ethics, a topic that gained attention in the 1990s with greater professionalization in the field of anthropology and concerns about the power of researchers in relation to those they typically research and especially when the research is done in the service of (covert, classified, or clandestine) for-eign policy agendas or corporate interests. Finally of note, in their edited Hand-book of Ethnography , Atkinson, Coffee, Delamont, Lof land, and Lof land (2001) include a chapter on the ethics of ethnography (Murphy & Dingwall, 2001) that examines many of the issues and factors involved in research fieldwork relations, activities, and reporting (e.g., interpretive authority), citing examples from key studies in the 1990s especially.

Changing Discourses, Cultures, and Practices Surrounding Research Ethics

Since the early 1990s when the first author (Patsy) completed her Ph.D., institu-tional guidelines, requirements, and procedures for ethical review and approval have evolved quite dramatically and explicitly in Canada and the United States, not only for research by full-time faculty but also for students conducting empirical research for theses, dissertations, and course assignments. In Canada, much of this development has been driven by the three major national research councils and funding agencies; the council funding most educational research in Canada (including work by both Klara, who is currently conducting her Ph.D. research under Patsy’s supervision, and Patsy) is the Social Sciences and

Negotiating Ethical Research Engagements 123

Humanities Research Council (see Duff, 2008a). These more stringent guide-lines and requirements for ethical review and documentation ref lect concerns among government funding agencies, universities, and other institutions (e.g., schools or hospitals) about protecting the well-being of those who participate in research and especially about minimizing risk or harm to them; they also signal the institutions’ own responsibility and liability for research that vio-lates agreed-upon principles and any possible negative consequences for the university, its employees, or students. Among other possible repercussions, future research endeavors by university researchers with local school districts or other institutions can be imperiled when major breaches in research ethics are reported.

Another reason for more explicit attention being paid to ethics in ethno-graphic research in the United States, in particular, according to Sluka (2007), is the acknowledgment of regrettable past covert research for military or political purposes by researchers sent to other countries and the more recent profession-alization and corporatization of anthropology (e.g., with companies employ-ing ethnographers to study their institutions or marketplaces). Although the management of institutional ethical review in the social sciences, humanities, and education might help provide essential protections for research subjects, researchers, funders, and institutions, certain types of research have become quite difficult to navigate and negotiate approval for, despite the best inten-tions and high degrees of cooperation and patience of the university commit-tees and staff who manage such matters (in our experience)2 and the various other parties involved.

Furthermore, in addition to institutional research ethics protocols, many academic and professional associations such as the American Psychological Association (APA), the American Educational Research Association (AERA), and the American Anthropology Association (AAA) themselves have devel-oped and formally adopted ethical codes that underscore some of the same principles about researchers’ academic integrity, respect for participants, sen-sitivity to possible harm that might befall those involved in research, and ways of minimizing such harm and instead maximizing benefits to participants and society. These “codes” or statements emphasize, as guiding principles, beneficence (promoting the well-being of people and communities) and nonma-leficence (doing no harm), fidelity and responsibility , integrity, fairness and justice , and respect for human rights and dignity (APA, 2010). The AERA (2011) Code of Ethics is a 12-page document pertaining to matters including, but also extending beyond, academic scholarship. It provides very detailed guidelines regarding values, dispositions, and practices that the profession expects from researchers toward their research and communities. The AAA (2012) guide-lines (or code of conduct), especially relevant to ethnographic research, pres-ent core principles and other supporting materials informing ethical practice by anthropologists.


Negotiating Research Ethics for (and in) Ethnographic Fieldwork

Ethnographic fieldwork is an approach to scholarly inquiry that can pose chal-lenges for researchers and their university’s research ethics board (i.e., the behav-ioral research ethics board [BREB], as it is known in Canada, for nonclinical research involving humans; or institutional review board [IRB] in the United States) and other stakeholders or sponsors of research. For work that is envisioned in communities outside of mainstream English-speaking academic ones, such as Indigenous communities with oral traditions and with their own ethical proto-cols, or in countries where North American BREB protocols may be viewed as alien, suspicious, and unwelcome, the process becomes even more complicated. Thus, the protocols developed for Canadian or American universities might not be well received or even appropriate in certain contexts, or may simply be inad-equate. There may be additional local (e.g., Indigenous) cultural practices and principles for securing permissions for access to sites, participants, knowledge, or artifacts that may be different and even contradictory to the researcher’s own institution’s norms.

Other ethical dilemmas may arise and need to be addressed to the satisfaction of all parties (institutions, parents/guardians, and research subjects themselves) when aspects of the research involve children or other vulnerable participants and populations or when participants have low levels of proficiency in the language of institutional consent forms—both in the English language, in our context, and in a particular formal, written, and quite legalistic register, even when trans-lated into participants’ own languages. Complications may also arise when other public and private educational institutions are involved as research sites that have their own equivalents of BREB and their own policies and protocols that might be different from those of the principal investigator or when some, but not all, of the parties potentially involved are enthusiastic about or supportive of a proposed study (e.g., De Costa, 2014).

Ethnographic research typically unfolds in dynamic ways that may not have been predictable at the outset of a study, as Klara’s narrative in the second part of this chapter illustrates. The researcher might simply have become more familiar with the cultures, social groups, focal participants (if any), and by means of a “funneling process” might proceed from a broader contextual understanding to a focus on particular practices or activities of special interest, or new devel-opments might be observed and noted (e.g., Duff, 1995), or new participants recruited.

Both of us (Klara and Patsy) have conducted ethnographic research on issues connected with language ideologies, classroom interaction, and language learn-ing and use in Canadian secondary school courses (e.g., Abdi, 2009, 2011; Duff, 2002). Patsy has conducted numerous other studies as well that have entailed eth-ical review and has supervised thesis and dissertation research by approximately


30 graduate students, and projects requiring BREB approval by another dozen supervised students. Each of these studies received close scrutiny and usually required some changes, as requested by the university’s BREB. (Concerns or requested changes, clarifications, or amendments are referred to as provisos .) Patsy also sat on her university’s BREB for 2 years in the 1990s (invited to do so after initially failing to receive approval for a proposed action research project involv-ing teachers). She gained additional insights while serving on that committee, and since then, into some of the dilemmas and difficulties of seeking to conduct research that meets disciplinary standards and fulfils researchers’ intentions, but is constrained by institutional requirements.

The research that we and many other applied linguists do explores language and literacy learning and use in everyday settings in order to understand the processes of second language (L2) learning and socialization, identity formation, and the types of participation in learning communities that facilitate or impede social and linguistic integration. Much of the research, and the case that follows, attempts to track the learners’ educational and linguistic trajectories over time as well. We believe that the research we have conducted or have been closely involved with has sought to contribute interesting, timely, and valuable insights to our field and to society, and has also aimed to minimize risk to participants and institutions (e.g., by changing or withholding details about participants and sites to protect their identities and by being respectful of people’s time, preferences, privacy, and dignity). Yet each study or case also represents a complex but largely untold nar-rative, full of drama and uncertainty, time pressures, compromises, disappoint-ments, relief, or even jubilation (when research proposals and BREB applications are approved, and when suitable participants have agreed to take part). There have also been countless unexpected twists and turns and questions. Anxious behind-the-scenes interaction is often part of the untold research narrative: interactions between researchers (or between the supervisor, who is the principal investigator on all student applications at our university, and the student, the coinvestigator but primary researcher); interactions with the departmental authorities who must sign off on all applications and may seek changes or clarification before doing so; a whole series of interactions with staff from the office of research services that oversees ethical review applications (who in our case have invariably been very helpful, efficient, and obliging) and with comparable boards at other institutions involved; and interactions with research partners, agencies, and participants. The process may take weeks or months, as in Klara’s narrative below, well before the participant recruitment and research can proceed. 3 Any significant changes in plans then necessitate further ethical review and deliberation, adding to the plot, characters, and arc of the continuing narrative and project, and possibly extend-ing the project’s timeline and likely completion date considerably. The time fac-tor is all the more significant given that many universities and funding sources in Canada and the United States now expect doctoral students to complete their degrees in 4 years, having conducted, presented, and published original research,


gained recent teaching experience, and having thereby become well positioned to embark on a career in academia and scholarly research. Adding to the time pressure is the typically longitudinal nature of ethnographic research in applied linguistics commonly requiring a half year to a full year of fieldwork or longer.

Ethnographic research is often interdisciplinary, drawing on anthropology, sociology, linguistics, and psychology, as well as education, and involves the doc-umentation and interpretation of cultural and linguistic practices within social groups of interest (and/or within researchers themselves as autoethnographic subjects or participant observers). Data might include recorded interviews in more than one language, observations, print or electronic logs or journals kept by researchers and participants, and other documentation relevant to the study, such as tests, essays, oral presentations, websites, or visual images that are pro-duced. When seeking to triangulate various sources of data and perspectives, the researchers generally seek to incorporate the perspectives of participants as well as their own observations and interpretations. The focal participants may include children, adolescents, adults, and extended family members or other members of the social groups that the focal participants interact with, all of whom must agree to take part in the study.

It is clear from this short description that many kinds of documentation and consent (and assent for minors who cannot give consent on their own behalf ) are required in order to obtain data from multiple individuals, agencies (schools, universities), and other sources. Participants themselves may represent different ages, backgrounds, and levels of oral and written proficiency in their first and second languages and different levels of cognitive maturity. The use of images of participants or their intellectual property (e.g., drawings, essays) must also be negotiated. Being longitudinal in design, ethnographic research requires a major commitment by the researcher and participants to remain engaged in the study through to its completion. But the longer the study, the greater the risk that participants will move away (physically), lose interest in the study, or become involved in other activities that prevent their ongoing participation. Therefore, a great deal of discussion is required in ethical planning, decision making, apply-ing for ethical approval, and negotiating participants’ involvement. More spe-cifically, this entails: (1) identifying the goals, design, and parameters of the proposed study, sometimes requiring changes to meet the expectations of com-mittees and boards but also in response to changing contexts and circumstances for the research (e.g., attrition, new opportunities, the need to recruit new par-ticipants); (2) examining the university’s institutional research ethics policies and practices and forms of documentation and review required; (3) understanding stipulations by other institutions involved in the study whose permissions and approval are required and which may seek additional information or changes beyond those requested by the home institution; and (4) honoring the wishes and preferences of the participants and other stakeholders in the research at all stages of the project.


Against the backdrop of the ethical, moral, epistemological, and practical dimensions of ethnographic educational research outlined above, in what follows we present and analyze one narrative describing an unusually complicated study (in terms of both research ethics and logistics) that we are currently engaged in, involving the early stages of Klara Abdi’s ongoing Ph.D. dissertation research. This narrative illustrates in close detail precisely the sorts of processes and consid-erations involved in multisited ethnographic research with families and students in contemporary multilingual, transnational educational contexts, especially when the researcher and her children, themselves, also become participants in the study.

A Narrative of the Negotiation of Research Ethics and Multiple Contingencies

Klara conducted her master’s thesis (Abdi, 2009, 2011) in Vancouver-area schools examining Spanish-language classrooms that combined heritage and nonheritage learners. She then lived and worked in educational contexts in China for nearly 4 years, becoming proficient in Chinese in the process. She is now undertaking an even more ambitious study for her Ph.D. Her research proposal was approved by her supervisory committee in November 2013 and was presented publicly to the department (see event dated 11/2013 in Table 7.1 in the Appendix). Her disserta-tion research is a 2-year ethnographic multiple-case study of transnational chil-dren moving between Canada and China (drawing on work by transnationalism scholars Appadurai & Breckenridge, 1988; Basch, Glick Schiller, & Blanc-Szanton, 1994; and Bryceson & Vuorela, 2002). It is a study of the children’s language social-ization (Duff & Talmy, 2011; Schieffelin & Ochs, 1986) across different contexts (home and school), different countries (Canada and China), and different lan-guages (English and Chinese). The two overarching research questions follow:

1. What are the discourses surrounding Chinese/Canadian 4 transnationalism (in educational institutions and Chinese communities in both countries)? What language ideologies underlie these discourses?

2. What are the multilingual socialization practices and trajectories of Chinese/Canadian transnational children?

The study was designed in different phases. The first phase consisted of a pilot study (or more accurately, a small, exploratory, preliminary study) involving life history interviews with parents of transnational families. The second phase, or first part of the main study, involved interviewing the children of the pilot study families. 5 The third phase involved the selection of focal families from among the families interviewed in the first and second phases and the observation of the children at home and school in Canada. The fourth phase is the observation of the focal children in China. Although these phases were sequential, they some-times overlapped, such as when potential new participants were identified dur-ing the third phase (and possibly the fourth), which then marked the beginning of the study for them (e.g., interviews with parents).


To answer the first research question, interviews with various school and school board employees are being conducted and analyzed in conjunction with the (earlier) parent interviews. For the second research question, observations of the children at home and school may involve the inclusion of teachers, class-mates, friends, various family members, etc. Therefore the study is a complex one requiring many kinds of consent forms, many of which also had to be trans-lated into Chinese. As of mid-February 2014, nearly 50 different consent forms, in Chinese and English, depending on the audience, were submitted to BREB, some of them revised versions of earlier ones; these documents represent over 180 pages of paperwork for that alone—with other documents including bilin-gual interview protocols for parents, children, teachers, and school and school board employees.

The study was conceived of in very broad terms, with an interest in following the focal participating children across different contexts in their daily lives and perhaps even as they move transnationally from Canada to China, or vice versa. However, it was also understood that the study would likely evolve over time and that certain aspects of the study would take precedence over others or that some aspects might not be possible at all, as is often the case in ethnographic research. A major aspect of the study involves the investigation of the effects of transna-tional movements on children and, to that end, a comparison of the children’s interactions and language use and choice in various settings before and after such a move is expected to yield rich data. Klara is moving back to China in August 2014, along with her own family and bilingual children, and is coordinating her move with that of (some of) her participants. Therefore, the final phase of the study involves a year of ethnographic fieldwork in China.

The following section presents a thematic narrative of some of the most salient issues that Klara and Patsy have faced in getting this project off the ground dur-ing the first three phases of the study. In Table 7.1 in the Appendix, we provide a more detailed timeline showing the various stages of the conception of the proj-ect; the parties involved, the negotiation of ethics (mainly from an institutional perspective), and the results.

The Evolving Nature of Ethnography vs. the Fixed Nature of BREB Documentation

As noted earlier, qualitative research, and ethnography in particular, by its very nature, involve an emergent design where certain research directions are fol-lowed and may change over time. This creates a tension with the nature of BREB protocols that were originally based on a positivist biomedical paradigm where the study design is predetermined and necessarily static, risks and all pro-cedures are outlined and assessed beforehand, and all aspects of the research are tightly controlled once the study has begun. There are, to be sure, very good reasons for requiring researchers to follow carefully vetted and scientifically


defensible procedures that are planned, explicated, and justified well in advance. In that way, furthermore, the prospective human research subjects are assumed to have enough information to make truly informed decisions about whether to participate and what they can expect if they do. Risk assessment in such studies historically has been related to physical or psychological harm that clinical inter-ventions, in particular, might cause. Although the ethics guidelines have been revised regularly to accommodate research with populations and methodologies not originally relevant to the designers of ethical review policies in biomedi-cal contexts (e.g., autoethnographic research, interview-based social research), 6 BREBs still expect that researchers will amend applications whenever a change in design or recruitment occurs and require an audit trail of these through dated versions of forms and archives of all consent forms and data in a secured space in the supervisor’s (i.e., principal investigator’s) university office for at least 5 years. Thus, there is the potential for a study to evolve in a more dynamic way, but this creates an ensuing torrent of electronic documentation, reappraisal, expla-nations, confirmations, modifications, and iterations of the review process so that the BREB office has all supporting documents on file.

Thus, as of June 2014, Klara’s pilot study had been amended once and the main study two times (see Appendix, events dated 12/2013, 01–02/2014, and 05/2014). 7 Some of these changes were minor, such as changes in the amount of time for interviews (1 hour initially vs. half an hour 8 ) or a later start date for a portion of the study when submitting documentation to school boards. Although such changes would not pose any greater risk to participants and do not deviate very much from the research design, they still had to be documented. However, the amendment process, often dragging on for weeks, hindered the progress of the study and was itself very time-consuming.

As an example, out of the six families that participated in the pilot portion of the study in the spring and summer of 2013, which involved life history inter-views with first-generation Chinese/Canadian parents in Vancouver, four were selected as potential focal participants for the main study. Two of these families had young children and were families that had an intention to move to China, possibly in the near future. The other two had preteen and/or teenaged children that had already returned to Canada from an extended stay in China. As it turned out, only the former families with younger children consented to become focal participating families. This led to an attempt to recruit more families for the life history interview portion of the study in order to find more focal families, espe-cially ones with older children. Initial recruitment had been done through snow-ball sampling with Klara’s Chinese friends and acquaintances. This choice was due to Klara’s knowledge of Chinese culture in which people normally prefer to make new social connections mediated by other trusted members in their social networks rather than by complete strangers whose intentions may be unclear. However, when recruitment through friends and acquaintances did not yield the results hoped for, the pilot study was amended to recruit online through local


Chinese networking websites; this change therefore required the approval of a new recruitment notice. Unfortunately, as feared, these attempts did not produce any results (i.e., new participants). This revised recruitment process took several weeks, precluding the beginning of the school-based research in January 2014 as intended, and delaying also the school board applications. The consent forms for schools therefore had to be amended before school board applications could be submitted. When Klara contacted BREB about this, she was told that amending the study after conditional approval but before the school board approval was something that the most experienced board member with whom Klara was in contact had never encountered before. That person was not even able to advise how such a process would work and warned Klara to be very clear in her proviso so as to explain why such changes were being made at that particular time.

When the amendment was filed, one proviso was indicated by BREB, which involved only minor wording changes to eliminate a source of misunderstand-ing. However, after this was responded to, no further communication from BREB was forthcoming, and it was not clear whether we would receive a sub-sequent message. This is because the status of conditional approval remained unchanged and the corresponding letter had already been issued. Not sure of what to expect next and knowing that if there had been any problems with the consent form changes they would have been explained in the proviso, Klara decided to go ahead and apply for school board approval. One school board very quickly approved the study, and the following day BREB issued a proviso stating that once a letter of approval from a school board was received the study would be approved and a certificate issued. The letter was submitted and certificate issued as shown at the bottom of the timeline in Table 7.1 (Appendix, event dated 02/2014).

Negotiating Approval for Research Conducted in Different Institutional Sites and Countries

When the ethical review process reached the stage of applying for school board approval, Klara had contacted two school boards for their respective research application packages, which were in some ways quite different from each other. One school board wanted a description of the background and purpose of the study, the research questions, methodology, and research procedures, plus a copy of all the consent forms, research instruments, and evidence of univer-sity BREB approval. Only after gaining such approval at the district level are researchers able to contact principals and teachers. The other school board also required a similar description of the study but did not ask for copies of consent forms. As for getting access to sites and participants after approval, a “research invitation” form was to be filled out that would be sent out to principals who would contact the researcher if they were interested in the study. Thus the researcher, in such cases, is at the mercy of the principals’ interests, initiatives, and


availability to respond, given their many other duties and priorities. This factor, along with a statement in the school board application guidelines saying that they prefer studies of groups rather than individual students, made Klara very nervous when applying to that particular school board. Yet that same district has the largest numbers of transnational Chinese children, from Klara’s experience. This observation was also confirmed by the preteen and teenaged children of the two families living within the district (who were interviewed for the first part of the main study but withheld their consent to become more involved, as ongo-ing focal participants); they were able to think of several such children in their own classes. Klara therefore decided to scale back her study and simply ask for classroom access, no lunchtime observations of linguistic and social interaction, and no focal participants. 9 The fear of not being approved or contacted changed the nature of the study.

Another challenging aspect of the ethical approval process has to do with the next phase of the research, 6 months after the Canadian phase: conducting research in another country with very different research traditions, and practices or understandings connected with informed consent. In China, and many other authoritarian countries in the world, people are very wary of signing what appear to be very legalistic forms, and all the more so when the researcher is not well known to them and is from another country. In addition, within school settings, classes are large (sometimes with 60 or more students) and educational authori-ties and schools make decisions about what is permissible in terms of research considering what appears to be in the best interests of their students and institu-tions. These decisions are typically accepted by the students and their parents. Asking teachers to hand out hundreds of consent forms to students and their parents or grandparents (who may be the children’s guardians) and then manage their collection would be seen as time-consuming, unnecessary, and institution-ally problematic. Fortunately, Klara was able to explain this in sufficient detail in the BREB application, and after a little negotiation, it was accepted. In this aspect it was helpful that Patsy and one of Klara’s other committee members had experience working in China and Africa where similar circumstances exist in this aspect of research and were able to provide advice on how to proceed. How-ever, some research ethics boards might not be as f lexible or understanding of the exigencies of working within other countries or within cultures with their own notions of ethical research and relationality.

To our knowledge, the issue of negotiating formal research ethics protocols in transnational/transcultural research, and particularly in distant sites in other countries, has not been explored, theorized, or reported on sufficiently in applied linguistics, despite its pervasiveness in anthropological and ethnographic research. Beyond the actual procedures and regulations for negotiating ethical engagements in research are a number of other interesting political, cultural, and social aspects of individual versus collective rights, voice, and agency in social life and in educa-tional and other research more generally. For example, Barrett and Parker (2003),


writing in the area of medical research, discuss the myth of truly collective versus individualistic societies, giving examples where the consent process in a western setting was actually somewhat collective in nature (in the case of doing research with a medical team). In Klara’s study, when she sought consent from a group of potential participating teachers in Canada, they decided as a group, rather than individually, whether to take part in the study (they opted out, unfortunately). Furthermore, the role of guanxi , or personal connections, can be essential in facili-tating access and permissions within Chinese and many other contexts, including those in Canada and the United States, where more junior participants may also be expected to defer to the wishes (and blanket consent) of their superiors, or colleagues and friends, who have already given consent and whom they trust (or cannot easily go against, without consequences). Liang and Lu (2006) discuss this issue of power, culture, and consent in Chinese research, which raises intriguing issues about what constitutes truly “free and informed” and individual consent. In contrast, ethical procedures for negotiating and conducting research with local Indigenous cultures has received much more recent scrutiny, in part because of the legacy of generations of exploitation in the past on the part of some university researchers working in Indigenous communities.

Working with Acquaintances and Family Members

Due to Klara’s recruitment methods, the families that participated in her pilot study were either her acquaintances or those of her friends. When it came to ask-ing them to become focal participants for the larger study, the two that consented were both her own acquaintances, whereas those that were her friend’s acquain-tances or friends did not consent. Perhaps one reason was that Klara did not have a strong enough relationship with them for them to trust her to undertake such a time-consuming study of their families. One of the two who consented was an acquaintance Klara had made within the past year. She is an early child-hood educator, genuinely interested in the study and very open to participating in all aspects of it. Besides their somewhat shared educational background, they also have other things in common, such as being very driven women. The other person who consented is an acquaintance Klara has known for many years. She was actually one of the people who sparked Klara’s interest in conducting research with transnational families when she spoke to Klara about moving back to China with her young twin boys near the start of Klara’s Ph.D. program. They kept in contact as they belong to the same faith community. However, Klara sensed that she consented to participate in the study more as a result of their relationship than a genuine interest in the study. This made things awk-ward when Klara would ask her about coming over to her (the participant’s) home for observations. Klara had initially planned on weekly visits but they always ended up being every other week. After over a month of observations, Klara decided to discuss the frequency of observation visits with her participant,


asking her if she preferred that Klara come every 2 weeks. However, her response was that she had decided that she wanted her 4-and-a-half-year-old twins to take some English classes on the weekend, and their time would be less f lexible as a result. Klara then offered to work on their English with them for half an hour during each 1.5-hour observation. The mother got very excited about this and asked Klara to come every week. Klara felt happy mainly because she was now able to give back something to her research participant and her family for the time they generously gave her to do her research, a form of reciprocity.

When Klara was beginning her data collection with these two families, they had both been asking for Klara’s own children to come play with theirs. Klara thought it could be interesting to include her children as secondary participants in the study since they too are transnational children (having lived in China for 4 years and being speakers of both Mandarin Chinese and English themselves), although they do not have a Chinese background. However, when her children accompanied her for her observations, things did not go well, particularly with one of the two families. They did not play very much with those children, being quite a bit older, and Klara was torn between her role as mother and researcher. She decided that having her children involved with that family for the research would not work and continued her observations on her own. However, with the other family, the mother continued to ask for Klara’s children to come over, which they occasionally did, and in the end Klara’s younger child became friends with those children and there were some observations of them playing together. This experience showed how including the researcher’s children in her study may be a complicated undertaking.

However, this was only the beginning of Klara’s children’s involvement in the study. This is because, as the focal child observations continued and Klara found out that the plans for these two families to move back to China in the coming year were far from certain, she began considering how to carry out the second portion of her research in China, as her original plan had been to follow a fam-ily or two to China. At around the same time, she found out through one of her friends still living in China that there exist classes for returning overseas Chinese children in some key public schools. Conducting research in such schools seemed like it would yield rich data. Klara began to consider more seriously what kind of role her own children could play in the research since they are also transna-tionals but from a very different background, having a Czech-Canadian mother and an Iranian-Canadian father. If they were to be in those same classes with Chinese-background children returning from overseas, the interactions could be very interesting (e.g., would they use Chinese, English, or a mixture of the two?). Moreover, she could document her own children’s changing language use and adjustment to the move to China. They had previously begun playing together in Chinese when the family had first lived in China, so Klara wondered if this would happen again this time and wanted to see what language(s) they would use when playing with their (returning overseas and other) classmates and friends.


Furthermore, Klara’s children have a unique perspective on themselves and their linguistic/cultural practices and identities. Her older child (11), for example, thinks of herself as Chinese and Canadian (and not Czech and Ira-nian) due to her lived experience and hybrid identity, in contrast to everyone else’s perception of her as non-Chinese. However, when Klara and Patsy envi-sioned adding Klara’s own children as additional focal participants, it seemed potentially problematic in terms of the BREB process, which is generally concerned about the potential for coercion when teachers set out to study their own students (as Patsy had encountered earlier in other studies, though they were ultimately approved) or when parents study their own children. Fortunately, BREB approved this amendment without provisos (see Appen-dix, event dated 05/2014). 10 The actual negotiation of involving the children, however, may be challenging, particularly with the older child who is at an age where she is very conscious of how she is seen by her peers. Interestingly, this child told Klara that she would be more comfortable being observed in China where she is already seen as different due to her foreigner status. Hav-ing Klara’s children involved in her research will involve ongoing dialogue and assent renewal during various stages of the study and will require sensitiv-ity to the negotiation of mother and researcher roles, as well as attention to issues of children’s privacy, autonomy, and family harmony (Adler & Adler, 1996; Kabuto, 2008).

Using Video and Gaining Approval and Consent

The use of video can greatly enhance data collection and analysis in ethno-graphic research. However, it can be complicated to gain consent for the use of video. Before applying for BREB approval, Klara was warned by many col-leagues and superiors that it would be difficult to gain approval for a study using video. Surprisingly, BREB had no problems with the use of video. However, in the field, video recording was sometimes an obstacle for gaining access to research sites. For example, when Klara approached a daycare that the 4-and-a-half-year-old twins attend, she was told directly that if the daycare were to allow her to conduct her study there she would have to remove video recording from her study procedures on the consent form (i.e., she could not just list it, together with audio-recording as another option, for participants to choose to consent to or not consent to). This strong preference by the daycare manager meant that two different consent forms had to be created for daycare observations (the other focal family has an after-school care/daycare in their home and agreed to video recording), adding another layer of complexity and paperwork to the BREB process. The reasoning of the first daycare was that the parents were very much against the use of images of their children even for the daycare’s own advertising. The manager felt that assurances that the video recordings would only be used for data analysis would be ineffective.


As Klara continues with her recruitment, consent, and ethical review pro-cesses, it will be interesting to see how the different aspects outlined above, such as institutional approval and access to sites and participants in two countries, the use of video, and the inclusion of Klara’s children in the study will impact the nature of her evolving ethnographic study. No doubt there will be more challenges as the study moves on to its next phase in China. Clearly, however, although these kinds of issues are part and parcel of conducting ethnographic research across various local and national contexts at the present time, they create enormous burdens for researchers seeking to undertake their studies and often delay the research timeline considerably.

Discussion

Klara’s narrative reveals some of the contingencies, exigencies, and dilemmas encountered in research of this sort, where participants may (or may not) wish to participate for a variety of reasons and where gaining permission to proceed with research may take months of lead-time and negotiation. Even once approvals have been received and the research commences, participants’ involvement and investment in the study may change over time, and their own participation may affect that of others, particularly if they are in the same social network. Klara’s account is very situated in the time that it was written and is bound to change dramatically as she concludes her data collection in Canada and begins the por-tion of her study in China, and as she seeks permissions from schools and other institutions on the other side of the Pacific Ocean.

Many of the issues and concerns illustrated in this narrative are not unique to this study, however, or even to ethnographic research. Perhaps the scale of paperwork and negotiation of access and permissions is magnified in this case due to the number of institutions and sites potentially involved; the bilingual, bicultural, and transnational nature of the study; the age of the participants (thus requiring both assent and consent forms); the participation of the researcher’s own family; and then the duration of the study and fieldwork on two conti-nents. However, much educational research with children is complicated for similar reasons. For novice and experienced researchers alike, the process can be bewildering and intimidating, and changes also arise when BREB guidelines and procedures are updated and refined. Many researchers in applied linguistics might opt, instead, for convenience sampling of competent adults in one familiar site who are able to provide consent on their own behalf and for whom ethi-cal reviews can be expedited as study procedures are deemed to pose minimal risks to them (when video-recording, focus groups, deception, action research, or other research strategies that pose greater levels of institutional concern are not used; see Duff, 2008a). Although it may be expedient and, indeed, very worthwhile to conduct research in that manner and with participants of majority age, understanding the multilingual and transnational lives of families at home,


school, and in the wider community, which is the focus of much very productive language and literacy socialization research, offers important insights to applied linguistics and education. Our understanding of transnational multilingualism and education would be incomplete without being able to observe children’s (and families’) actual linguistic and literacy practices, preferences, progress, and performed identities in situ. Designing such a study, however, must be done in a very provisional way, with sufficient latitude to adapt to local contingencies, as needed and authorized.

There are other equally if not more important aspects of research ethics that have not been addressed in this chapter. These are related, for example, to the “crisis of representation” in ethnographic research in the latter part of the 20th century (e.g., Van Maanen, 1995), when considerable attention was directed to the manner in which data (and human subjects and their cultures, disposi-tions, and practices) are interpreted, represented, and written about. In addition, as noted earlier, disclosures about the role and positionality of the researchers themselves in studies, and a critical ref lexivity, are aspects of ethical engagement that warrant explicit discussion in the larger research narrative (and which we have included in Klara’s narrative). Another ethical aspect of research in ethno-graphic work and life history interviews of the sort Klara has undertaken with the adults in her study is that it is conceivable (even probable) that some of the reasons for participants’ transnational migration may not be fully or candidly disclosed by participants, due to privacy concerns, worries of potential negative repercussions from immigration officials, and perhaps the perception that some information might cast them in a less favorable light (e.g., related, hypothetically, to personal problems or financial issues encountered when living in one country versus another). Thus, the accounts given by participants, while naturally pro-duced and taken in good faith, must also be viewed as such: social coconstruc-tions of experiences and decisions with the researcher-interviewer (see Talmy, 2010, 2011). Again, the discursive and ethical processes and issues in eliciting, and then reconstructing, interpreting, and reporting on lives, actions, decisions, motives, and trajectories are by no means unique to this study.

Finally, we have welcomed the opportunity to craft this exposition and nar-rative of the negotiation of research ethics while we are in the very midst of many discussions with each other and with the research ethics board staff and the committee members who have provided reviews, as well as with other parties to the research (school boards, families). Naturally, as time goes by, memories about the details and complexity of these interactions will fade as new challenges arise (e.g., connected to data analysis, writing, and revisions). Furthermore, we have intentionally included a narrative that is not complete and for which not all aspects have been resolved. The narrative also focuses on the Canadian por-tion of the research only due to the timing of the writing of the chapter (during the fieldwork in Canada and prior to the move to China 11 ). Although a good deal of the BREB work had to be done well in advance, in anticipation of the


China phase, some issues may arise that could require a further BREB amend-ment. Thus in presenting this “tale of the field” (Van Maanen, 1988), we wish to convey the uncertainty, the anxious waiting, the onerous work, and the com-promises that unfold in research, no matter how carefully planned or envisioned. At the same time, we also wish to show that ambitious projects such as the one described here are indeed worth the difficulties they may present to the research-ers undertaking them. In doing so, we hope to embolden other researchers who might become discouraged or overwhelmed by the process so that they begin to see opportunities (and not just obstacles) for conducting complex ethnographic studies, such as those examining multilingual socialization through transnational migration and education. Rich opportunities also exist for critically ref lecting on the research ethics involved in such projects.

Appendix

TABLE 7.1 Klara’s research and ethical review timeline

Date Parties involved Action/Event

09/2012 Klara, Patsy Start of Klara’s Ph.D. and Patsy’s supervision.

12/2012–01/2013 Klara, Patsy Meeting: Ph.D. progress, pilot study, dissertation committee membership.

01/2013 Klara, Patsy, committee

First dissertation committee meeting: Klara’s coursework, comprehensive examination, dissertation research, and pilot study discussed.

02/2013–03/2013 Klara, Patsy, Department Head, BREB

BREB application for pilot study completed and submitted.

04/2013 Klara, Patsy, BREB Provisos received and answered; pilot study approved.

04/2013–12/2013 Klara Pilot study initial and follow-up interviews with parents of (6) transnational families.


Second dissertation committee meeting: Klara’s pilot study progress, pieces to be included in comprehensive examination portfolio, proposal, BREB, as well as timeline for all of the above.


Comprehensive examination portfolio submitted; committee meets about portfolio and upcoming proposal.

(Continued )


11/2013 Klara, Patsy, committee, Department Head, BREB

Proposal submitted, publicly defended and approved; advancement to candidacy; BREB application for main study completed and submitted to Department Head; Department Head issues proviso that is answered and application is forwarded to BREB.

12/2013 Klara, Patsy, BREB Due to insufficient numbers of participants, pilot study undergoes a post-approval amendment for online recruitment (previous recruitment was through snowball sampling); amendment approved and online recruitment begins.

12/2013 Klara, Patsy, BREB Main study provisos received and answered; study gains conditional approval pending school board approval.

12/2013–01/2014 Klara Main study commences with interviews of children of pilot study parents and invitations to four families to become focal participating families; two families with younger children consent to participate in study but no families with older children do.

01/2014–02/2014 Klara, Patsy, BREB Email exchange with BREB representative about amendments during preapproval stage (these include the addition of daycare observations for youngest participants, changes in study commencement dates, and lowering of teacher time commitment to ensure approval by school boards after school board packages received); amendments submitted, provisos received and responded to.

02/2014 Klara, school boards Research applications are submitted to two school boards; one school board approves study.

02/2014 Klara, Patsy, BREB BREB approves study upon receipt of letter of approval from school board; approval certificate issued.

04/2014 Klara, Patsy, BREB BREB approves annual renewal of pilot study.12

TABLE 7.1 (Continued)

(Continued )


TABLE 7.1 (Continued)


05/2014 Klara, Patsy, BREB BREB amendment submitted and approved (amendment includes inclusion of Klara’s children as focal participants and interviews with immigration experts).

05/2014 Klara, school board School board where Klara’s children attend school contacted for approval of interviews with teachers, principal and school board employees13; school board approves study.

Notes

1. That is, there is greater recognition in ethnographic research of the importance of ref lexivity among researchers regarding their role, positionality, and voice in research in relation to the communities or individuals participating in the research and the research process itself; similarly, there is an increase in autoethnographic research. Both trends have resulted in genres and registers of writing that are creative, deeply personal, and often multimodal (incorporating images or performative aspects of the research process) and that are therefore distinct from more traditional reporting genres in the social sciences.

2. This is quite a feat considering that they process roughly 1,100 new BREB appli-cations a year, according to the university’s website (http://research.ubc.ca/ore/breb-frequently-asked-questions).

3. Applications require, on average, 7 to 8 weeks from the time of submission to notification of approval (i.e., without subsequent amendments unless initiated by the researcher), according to the university’s website (http://research.ubc.ca/ore/breb-frequently-asked-questions).

4. We have chosen to use the term “Chinese/Canadian” rather than “Chinese-Canadian” because the latter term typically connotes long-term Chinese immigrants to Canada. It also implies that the children originally come from China. However, Klara’s own children, who became part of the study, do not have a Chinese back-ground but have lived in and later returned to China. The use of the slash also gives the visual image of a border that is being crossed as the families move back and forth between the two countries.

5. Interviews with children were not part of the pilot study; its purpose was to lay the groundwork for the main study whose design it would inform. As such, the data from the pilot study formed the basis of one of Klara’s comprehensive examination papers. Through these interviews, Klara sought to gain an understanding of the Chinese/Canadian transnational phenomenon from the parents’ point of view and also to identify potential participating families for the main study. Also, interview-ing the parents first provided important contextual and background information for subsequent interviews and observations involving their children as well as allowed Klara to get to know the families gradually. Interviews with children were then included in the main study procedures and application for ethical review, and there-fore required a more extensive BREB review as well.

6. See Tri-Council guidelines and notes from our university available at http://research.ubc.ca/ore/breb-forms-guidance-notes.

7. One additional very minor subsequent amendment was required when the certificate of approval was found to have incorrect information in it due to a clerical error.

http://research.ubc.ca/ore/breb-frequently-asked-questions




http://research.ubc.ca/ore/breb-forms-guidance-notes

http://research.ubc.ca/ore/breb-forms-guidance-notes


8. The reason for this (seemingly minor) change was anticipation of school boards not wanting to approve studies that required too much teacher time. Ironically, although the consent form was amended for this reason, the school board in question still rejected the study on the grounds that it would take up too much teacher time. In general, having a wider potential range in time for interviews would give research-ers maximum leeway for such contingencies but can then also be a disincentive to potential participants concerned about onerous time commitments.

9. As noted above (note 8), this school board did not approve the study, even when scaled back.

10. Around the same time that this amendment was approved, one of the families made the firm decision to move to China in early July 2014.

11. Since the writing of this chapter, Klara moved back to China in late August 2014 and began data collection in a public primary school with five focal children who had all moved from Canada or the United States during the summer of 2014. She also tried to continue working with one of the original focal families but they moved to a different city quite far away from her, and the children’s kindergarten did not approve the study. She is also continuing to conduct new and follow-up interviews with transnational families residing in various cities in China.

12. Although labeled and originally conceived of as a pilot study, due to ongoing recruit-ment and follow-up parent interviews, this phase 1 of data collection actually contin-ued through phase 3 and will likely continue into phase 4, when new families may be recruited in China (see first section of narrative for a discussion of the study phases).

13. The reason that the school board was not contacted before is because there were no focal children attending school there until Klara’s children were approved by BREB as focal children.

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