Abstract
In this article, I examine the process of establishing the communicative validity of research. Using Habermas’ ideal speech situation as a theoretical backdrop, I explore three moments in which the roles enacted by members of a research collective were implicitly or explicitly negotiated. I find that by examining moments of role negotiation we can explore the level of participation at which stakeholders engage in the process of knowledge production. When roles are explicitly negotiated, therefore, fluid, authentic participation is greater and communicative validity is enhanced.
One of the foundational aspects of participatory action research (PAR) is “the understanding that people—especially those who have experienced historic oppression—hold deep knowledge about their lives and experiences, and should help shape the questions, [and] frame the interpretations” of research (Torre & Fine, 2006, p. 458). Chataway (1997), hearkening back to Fals Borda and Rahman (1991), Reason (1993), and Whyte (1991), says that someone engaged in PAR should strive “to share power and break down the usual hierarchical relationship between researcher and researched” (p. 750) to allow that deep authentic knowledge to be central in the research process.
Even before I knew what PAR was or had very much methodological training or insight, I felt myself drawn to this underlying epistemological commitment to shared control over the process of making meaning and constructing knowledge. Perhaps this is because I was raised in a family with three older brothers, who often, from my perspective, disregarded how I felt or what I thought as their younger sister. Or maybe it comes from my formative years spent living in Cairo, Egypt, keenly aware of my privilege as a White expatriate yet at a loss about how to make the world in which I lived more equitable. However it began, this commitment has grown as I have engaged in participatory research.
It has been this engagement in participatory research that has helped me discover the theories that underlie the concept of PAR within the practice of it. The ability, opportunity, and willingness to speak and be heard that is so foregrounded in the practice of PAR as well as in its underlying epistemological commitments is characteristic of Habermas’ (1984, 1987) theoretically articulated ideal speech situation, the basic foundations of which are (a) all participants have a right to speak, (b) all participants are open to seeing possible errors in their arguments, and (c) all who would be affected by the conversation have their needs represented (Dennis Korth, 2007; Korth, 2005, 2006). According to this idea, as researchers produce claims to truth through the research process, the validity of those claims must be open to scrutiny. Most important, according to Habermas, would be the scrutiny of those who will be affected by the process and outcomes of the research itself.
The PAR project that I discuss here affords a unique opportunity to examine this Habermasian communicative validity as discovered and made visible through the research process. While others, such as Lather (1986), Cho and Trent (2006, 2009), and Koro-Ljungberg (2010), have provided useful methodological and theoretical discussions on this topic, this article provides insights into how communicative validity is established, lost, or gained in practice. My central aim is to make this process of establishing communicative validity visible, thereby clarifying the theoretical discussion as well as the process itself.
The Project: Background
Schools present a unique challenge to researchers who seek to demonstrate communicative validity by striving for equitable research relationships because schools are most often rigidly hierarchical, with a built-in power structure that may be put on the defensive if threatened. As Ayala (2009) writes, “Working with schools on such projects introduces a set of complexities that can impact/constrain what gets studied, how questions are cast, and what type of actions follow” (p. 71). These complexities are emphasized when school-based research collectives include students; by inviting students to be critical of their lived school experiences, we are in fact inviting them to “risk making themselves more vulnerable in an unequal system” (Fine, as quoted in Ayala, 2009, p. 79).
For 18 months, I struggled with questions and concerns around how I might facilitate the emergence of a research collective comprised of minoritized, marginalized students and their de facto powerful White teacher. Our group worked together during this period of time at Atkinville High School, 1 which is located in Atkinville, a small dairy town in southern Idaho in the United States. During our first few meetings, we participatively identified a question that resonated as authentic and important for us to explore. The students wanted to understand more about teacher–student relationships at that high school; specifically, they wanted to understand what felt like racism emanating from White teachers toward Latino/a students. 2 Over these 18 months, we collected various forms of qualitative data, analyzed the data, and presented it to various policy bodies (such as the local school board) and local service organizations. I then created a website that displays the process and some of our findings. 3 Throughout the lifetime of the project, I kept detailed journals and notes and also had reflective discussions with my university advisors about the process and my role in it. These journals, notes, and discussions, as well as individual interviews with members of the collective, form the basis for the points raised here.
Moments of Role Negotiation
To illustrate how validity theory emerges as practice, I draw on field notes and reflective journaling from participatory research activities at Atkinville High School, highlighting moments of intense confusion and quandary to make explicit the often backgrounded process of establishing validity. The three moments are tied together by two key concepts that will meaningfully clarify the validity process: roles and participation. However, each moment offers a different way of seeing how validity can be established through issues related to participation.
The first moment points to how I, as a relative outsider, consider questions of validity as I establish my role within a research collective, and then as the collective works together to determine research questions to be explored. The second moment explores validity concerns when I take on a teaching role, training the student members of the research collective in research methods and techniques. The third moment focuses on the fluidity of my role as “the university-based researcher,” and the validity implications of my unanticipated role decisions.
Establishing the Role of the Researcher and Deciding on Research Questions
During the summer of 2012, I found myself in discussions with family members about my then-current research interests. I talked with them about a class I was taking at the time, about the interest I had in PAR, and about my dedication to research that was based in a commitment to social justice. One of my relatives, a high school teacher, had just started a club at her school. The club provided service and leadership opportunities for high achieving bilingual Latino/a students. I became generally interested in her work and she in mine.
As we continued our discussions over the next few weeks, our general interest grew into excitement about the possibilities of working together. I asked her, if we did a PAR project together, what would her “authentic question” be—what would she want to know? She responded that she really wanted to know if she—and, by extension, the non-profit organization that formed the club at her high school—was truly empowering these students; “We say we empower them. We say that’s our goal. But are we actually doing that?” (Field notes from phone interview with Mrs. James). We decided that I would visit that fall to meet her students and present to them the possibility of conducting a research project together.
On the first day of my visit, Mrs. James, who had recently parlayed the club into a formal class, 4 introduced me, led a discussion about what an authentic question might be (or how it might be discovered through reflection), and started a group brainstorm about what types of questions the students might have about their own lives, as Latino/a students living in this small town, attending this high school. When the class was coming to a close, she assigned the students to complete a journal entry (a typical homework assignment for this class) about the authentic questions they have about their everyday lives and the world in which they live.
The next day, students arrived buzzing. Class time revolved around a group discussion trying to narrow down or hone in on the most important or salient questions the students shared. One student’s question became the main research question for our budding collective: “Why are our teachers racist?”
After this, my first visit to their school, the class began their exploration of racism at their school and in their community, and they reported to me regularly both through Mrs. James and also via Internet programs that allowed us to communicate by video chat. Before I left the town, I taught Mrs. James an approach to investigating complex social issues called Theater of the Oppressed (Boal, 2000; Dennis, 2009). The first step was for the co-researchers to record experiences they had had, ones they had witnessed, or ones they had heard about. After writing these experiences or stories down, members of the collective would act out the stories in front of the group in a way that would hopefully open up dialogue about the motivations behind actions on the parts of those involved; in this case, on the parts of the students and teachers who were involved in moments where racism was seen or heard or felt in some way.
I explained the approach to Mrs. James and she led the students in the process. One of the students reported to me in a one-on-one interview about the experience:
We all talked about bad experiences that we’ve had with teachers. What we did was we acted it all out and then we asked each other, what do you think the teacher was thinking at that moment, and what do you think he, the student, was thinking at that moment. Or the people around, and stuff like that, and I feel like it was a good exercise because it made me think about things that the teachers could have been thinking about if I was in their place or something like that. I actually was one of the ones that presented like, an act. Like, we acted out, and it was with [Mr. Calhoun] and I had gone up to ask him a question and he was like, I don’t remember. I had a question. I have no idea what. One of like, one of the words in the question—I had no idea what it meant. Because it was about algebra and all that kind of stuff, and so I went up and asked him what it meant, and he kind of didn’t really pay attention to what I had asked him, so all he said was, “Go look it up on the iPad, that’s what they’re for.” And I was just like, “What?” And after that I’m like, “What a jerk.” Like, he’s so rude. But then I kind of thought what he might have been thinking. I mean, I probably could have looked it up on the Internet, but I just thought it was easier to just go ask him. Because, he had made up the study guide and he had made the word sheet, so I thought he could have helped, that’s all. Yeah, but I think it was good, because after that I wasn’t really mad at him, I was just like, “Oh, whatever, it’s just some small incident.” Instead of being like, “He’s rude and I’m not going to deal with him anymore.” (Interview with Mila, audio recorded, transcribed by author, lines 231-248)
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Members of the collective reported to me that Mrs. James and the students had made the activity their own by acting out the scenes as I had suggested but then brainstorming all together about the meaning of the actions of those involved as well as potential motivations for actions or thoughts. The students also challenged each other, making remarks like, “Well, that’s just how that teacher is. You shouldn’t be offended.” or “Did you try X first, before you said Y?” Mrs. James and the students informed me that they appreciated this technique because it allowed them to think more deeply about racism and what racism looks like.
Reflection on roles and participation
Even before my first visit with our collective in October 2012, and since then, I have wrestled with how I established my role in a collective of researchers who already knew each other and who had previously established interactive patterns. I was the only outsider and was presented to the rest of the group—all of whom except one (Mrs. James) were in many ways positioned as un-knowers (Latino/a, immigrant, student, child)—as a knower, an expert, someone to respect, admire, and listen to. I strove to overcome that initial impression by remaining in the background of the first few class meetings, responding to questions rather than volunteering thoughts or information, and putting forth my views only rarely. Also, by introducing Mrs. James to the Theater of the Oppressed and then leaving her to lead it without me there, I hoped to decrease the likelihood that I, as perceived “expert,” would unknowingly or unintentionally force the collective to do it in the way I thought it should be done.
Upon reflection, though, I have become concerned with leaving the negotiation of my role within the collective implicit rather than taking the time and creating the space to make these issues explicit. As a researcher new to PAR at that time, I admit I did not think of raising these questions and discussions about underlying issues of power, expertise, and roles in a way that would allow us to have an open conversation. I was determined not to be considered The Leader or The Knower. My goal was to be just one of many valued participant/researchers. But because I feared slipping into a leadership role, I left both my goal and the justification of the goal implicit. I assumed the students and Mrs. James would understand the reasons behind this: I wanted to democratize the research process, I wanted to allow for equitable participation, and I wanted to value knowledge that is often marginalized. So while aspects of the ideal speech situation were still present, they were left implicit. Had I engaged in the justificatory process more explicitly, aspects of the ideal speech situation would have been made more explicit and the project would have gained communicative validity.
In this example of not making the roles of collective members explicitly negotiable, I leave implicit the potentially oppressive relationships among various members of the collective (teacher, student, researcher, male/female student, older/younger student). The issue that intrudes upon authentic participation here is that implicit negotiations have the potential of leaving power relations unquestioned and norms that support those unequal power relations taken for granted. Obviously, this is an ethical concern because relationships that are unequal in terms of people’s power to articulate their needs, stances, and desires in a way that is valued by others within the relationship are oppressive. However, if we do not have the freedom to explicitly critique the relationship itself and call it into question, then there is the potential of producing distorted claims; we have also encountered a validity problem. The reason this is a validity problem is because validity is communicative and justification is a process that infers the ideal speech situation because it infers that the grounds of justification can be questioned and explained so that everyone at the proverbial table can understand it. Such ability to freely question and justify is distorted to the extent that the communicative scene is distorted. So it seems that the issue in establishing validity in this example has to do with the capacity, opportunity, and willingness to make potentially oppressive relationships explicit, rather than leave them implicit.
“Teaching” Research
After deciding that our collective wanted to focus our research on racism and teacher–student relationships in high school, we set about trying to decide what we could do to collect data that would help us explore and hopefully answer our questions. Before starting to work with the rest of the collective, I knew it was likely that, as a relative outsider, I would be perceived as “the expert” and students might not feel as willing to share ideas and thoughts. I was caught between not wanting to be perceived as the expert and the understanding that I was at that time more knowledgeable about the logistics of the research process than other members of the collective. Therefore, I chose to begin working in the collective in the role of facilitator, encouraging dialogue, answering questions, reframing ideas, and giving suggestions if other members of the collective requested I do so. Again, this role was implicitly negotiated. As other members of the collective requested I act in a particular way, I would, in general, comply.
Our collective’s next face-to-face meeting after exploring our research topic was in March 2013 and started with a simple discussion that included the entire collective. Because we were using class time, Mrs. James began the class and started the discussion but seemed to also try to act more as a facilitator than the head of the class (her presumed, non-negotiated role by virtue of her status/position of Teacher at the school). Although Mrs. James began the discussion, it was clear the collective was again implicitly negotiating individual roles as certain students quickly took control of the discussion, suggesting ways we could collect data to answer our research questions. Mrs. James did not, in general, interrupt the students as they gave suggestions, but would rephrase and paraphrase, always going back to the student who gave the suggestion to make sure what she said was what he or she had intended.
The students suggested we interview teachers from the school and talked about who they would invite and how. They suggested interview questions such as, “Why are teachers racist?” “Why might teachers at this school act racist toward Latino students?” and “What kind of teacher preparation do you get and why doesn’t it focus on understanding other cultures more?” After several similar suggestions, and after encouraging continued discussion through non-verbal cues such as nodding my head, keeping my eyebrows raised, and smiling, and verbal cues like “uh-huh,” “okay,” “good idea,” and so forth, I entered the conversation by asking what the students thought they might get as responses to these questions. I did an impromptu role-play, with me acting as one of the invited teachers and having students ask me their brainstormed set of questions. Most of the role-plays looked like this:
Ms. Call-Cummings, 6 why are teachers at this school racist?
(in a somewhat upset, defensive posture and tone) Um, well, I don’t think we’re racist.
(pauses, as if unsure how to proceed) Well, um, we think that this is important to discuss.
I agree
(stutters and laughs).
(as myself, turning to the class) What happened there?
Students observed that “Ms. Call-Cummings” had not engaged in a discussion, that I was immediately defensive, and it seemed like I did not really want to talk about racism at all. We discussed how they might experience that type of interaction with their teachers if they ask very direct questions, like “Why are teachers at this school racist?”
I explicitly urged the student members of the collective to consider ways we might ask questions that would still get interesting and useful data—and help us answer our main research question—but that might not be so direct. I gave several examples of questions like “What does it take to be a really good teacher of Latino students?” “What does it take to be a really good teacher of at-risk students?” and “What teaching methods do you use for those that have a hard time understanding the subject you teach?” We did the same quick role-play:
Ms. Call-Cummings, what does it take to be a really good teacher of Latino students?
(after a thoughtful pause, eyes cast upward as if thinking or remembering) Well, that’s hard to answer. I guess from my point of view it’s important to understand the Latino culture so that you can make sure that like, for example, the homework you give makes sense to the student, like, if the student has just moved here or something. But then there are also things like language.
(interrupting) What do you mean by “language”?
Well, so like if the student doesn’t speak English very well, then you might have to think about other teaching methods that might better suit him or her . . . . (as myself) Did you notice a difference?
Students observed that the second role-play example invited discussion and back-and-forth talk, whereas the first role-play seemed to stifle any give-and-take between the interviewer and the teacher. Also, students wondered if the teacher might have felt less defensive, maybe even more respected during the second interview example.
It was my goal during this and subsequent sessions of working as a collective that the students be able to find authentic, honest answers to their questions. Although I was wary of being seen and treated as “the expert,” I had to come to terms with the fact that in this instance of planning interview questions I had more knowledge and more experience than my student co-researchers, and I felt obligated to offer that knowledge to the collective. However, I tried to offer that knowledge in a way that was hopefully not from a position of authority, but from a position of humble, even tentative facilitation, making sure student co-researchers discovered for themselves how various types of interview questions may work in the field as compared with others.
After our collective had finished this initial phase of data collection and analysis, we again came together to consider how we might share our preliminary findings. On a particular day in May 2013, we were engaged in discussion and group brainstorming but the discussion was lagging. It was late in the academic year, just a few weeks until graduation and summer break. I knew many students were preoccupied with other responsibilities, including planning for graduation and finishing required senior projects, and I was aware that this project was perhaps not at the forefront of my co-researchers’ minds. I was attempting to facilitate a lively discussion and felt like I was failing. Students were unresponsive, slumping in their chairs, texting on phones, and talking to each other.
A few students spoke up in frustration, expressing concern that our collective could not achieve much because we did not have the money, time, or influence to effect change. I started giving examples of ways other participatory research collectives had presented their findings. I talked about making useful pamphlets for teachers, writing books, presenting in an assembly, making a fun video, having a photography exhibit, writing a report, and other creative ways to present what we had found up to that point in our research. I urged my co-researchers to think about what they would want to do if money, time, and influence were not a problem. I asked them to think big. Eyes lit up and after only a few minutes of my giving examples, the students were engaged and actively brainstorming ways we could present our findings. The students wrote their ideas down:
I would go to every school and encourage every student that we need to be that generation to change lives of the next generations. I would like to do it because I truly believe that we can be who we want to be if we stand up and give ourselves a voice. (Libby) I would make a full-length movie and present it around to all schools. It would be motivational and inspire at-risk students to never give up and stay strong. This way, we could present information and tell our story in an interesting way. (Juan) I would want to do everything we talked about for people to make a difference. I would like to get my word and so people know that everybody has a voice in changing our society. (Stephin) No matter what we do, I just want to try. I want to give others a positive opinion of us. I want to be able to change ONE life. We need help ourselves. Why can’t we help others, too? If we do one project, and succeed and do good, I won’t mind whether I agreed or not; just to make some kind of change. (Suehey) Make a book or movie. Send book to Obama and everyone from the class to go visit Obama and make a presentation. WHY? I would like to let Obama know what we’re doing to try to make a difference. (Sussy) I would love to inspire people to make a difference in life. To do this, I would get a video together and interview students, teachers, and little kids to tell how they truly feel, because that’s why people out there know how people feel. I’d like the video to go on TV nationwide. That way, other people can say, “Oh yeah. I feel like that.” That they aren’t the only one. That they can have a voice anywhere if they just speak up. (Eva) I would want to present it to the school board! Let everyone know, not just our town! I would like to speak to everyone and show them who I really am, and who we are. (Elena)
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Instead of inserting my own ideas as “expert” into the discussion, I gave examples of possibilities, offering up the knowledge I had while encouraging my co-researchers to brainstorm new ideas. Again, my implicit goal was to democratize the research process and honor and value the knowledge and expertise of those not traditionally seen as worthy of such honor.
Reflection on role negotiation and participation
The decision to take on a facilitator role was not totally conscious. While I was conscious of being an outsider and of being perceived as “expert” and “knower” (not to mention older, White, and a relative of the students’ teacher), I did not, in every moment of the research process, completely think through what that meant in validity terms. Reflecting on these moments of “teaching” research methods and motivating/facilitating discussions about possibilities for the project, I see now that these seemingly small moments explicitly engaged the characteristics of the ideal speech situation as communicative action: The student co-researchers had greater power (ability, opportunity, and willingness to speak and have their voices heard and valued) to control the direction of the research. Their ideas about how to proceed with the teacher interviews were presented first and then they were able to try out different methods and discuss which approach worked best to achieve their goal of learning about the teachers’ perspectives on racism at their school.
One might argue that from a validity standpoint this had the potential to lead toward more authentically produced knowledge. This shared power to determine the direction and mode of research contributed toward equalized participation. However, our collective continued to leave implicit the negotiation of roles. Mrs. James and I attempted to step back from or let go of more rigid and less egalitarian roles of Teacher and Researcher to give the student-researchers a chance to control the direction and decision-making of the project. While both Mrs. James and I did routinely make comments to the students both in individual discussions and with the whole class present, “This is your project” (Research notes, January 2013), or “What do you want to do,” or “We’re going to work on what matters to us as a class” (Mrs. James, October 2012, line 129), we did not engage in the explicit and collective deconstructing of what we were really trying to say—and do—and what that really meant for our group dynamics and relationships. Because of this, our reasons were not open to the scrutiny of the students—the members of our community who would be most affected by our implicit decisions. Therefore, no amount of fluidity could make up for the fact that the reasons each of us had for working this way un-scrutinized. We (particularly I) were all acting under the assumption of understanding. Misunderstanding might have occurred repeatedly but because the justificatory process of communication was left implicit, authentic participation suffered and validity was lost.
Unanticipated Decisions
After several meetings discussing our collective’s experiences with racism, we decided to conduct a photovoice exhibit 8 as a kind of end-of-the-year, end-of-the-research culminating event. Students composed short stories or essays about themselves, their families, or some aspect of their lives, and took pictures of everyday events, situations, people, and objects that they felt represented them and their stories.
Our group was busy and excited about the project. One member of our collective, Juan, came to me during a session we had devoted to working on the logistics of our exhibit. Juan had been one of the students most engaged in the project from the beginning. He had been one of the most vocal and sincerely thoughtful during class sessions devoted to determining the research questions and trajectory, and he often had very penetrating and thought-provoking questions and comments as we discussed racism as a collective. He often spoke to me briefly after class sessions and was one of the first to volunteer to speak with me for an individual interview. He also volunteered to interview other students outside of class time. In short, he seemed particularly dedicated to this project.
When he came to me this time, he said he was concerned and upset. Juan explained to me that he had recently come out as gay to his family, friends, and classmates. In his own words, “everyone knew” (Interview with Juan, May 2013). His process of coming out was not only very important to him, it was also important for him to share during our photovoice exhibit. Because the goal of our exhibit was to help White students and teachers at the school get to know the Latino/a students and their culture, he felt his artwork and story should center on his process of coming out and what it meant for him personally and for his family and culture.
Juan showed me his picture. I had seen the picture the day before, when Mrs. James showed it to me. She had received it from Juan via email, as she had received all the students’ pictures they would use in the exhibit. She showed it to me to ask what I thought about it. The image was amazing. It felt raw and honest. It showed Juan, naked from the waist up, with his head turned to one side, arms outstretched in a somewhat submissive stance, with words like, “wrong,” “mistake,” and “sin” written in large red letters on his torso. Juan explained to me that these were words he remembered being used as he came out to his family, friends, and community. Mrs. James expressed her concern about the appropriateness of the photo and its message. She asked me what I thought she should do—would it be appropriate to show such a picture in the school library, where the exhibit was scheduled to be held? I told her I thought so, but that she might want to consult the principal. When she asked the principal in a private, informal meeting, she was told no, he thought it was inappropriate for the school setting.
When Juan came to me he was explicitly requesting my advice but seemed to be implicitly requesting my protection, guidance, and advocacy. I accepted both his implicit and explicit requests. Over the next 2 days Juan, Mrs. James, and I had various meetings with the principal about the photo. Mrs. James expressed to me she did not want to risk her job by acting as an advocate for Juan. Although she did act as an ally by seeking some decision that would allow Juan to express himself while still appeasing the principal’s concern, she did ultimately choose to cede to the principal’s decision to not let Juan’s picture be displayed at all.
In the course of those two days, I felt it was my duty to stand firmly behind Juan in his desire to display that picture. I talked with and encouraged him separately. I urged friends to show him support. I discussed his rights with Mrs. James and with the principal of the school. Juan and I reflected on this experience afterward in a one-on-one interview:
I think it’s selfish. He’s censoring me because his name’s going to be out there and the school’s going to look bad. I feel like he completely basically said he would cut like, he would censor everyone if he had to keep the school in its safe little happy flower prairie state that it’s in, which isn’t, it’s not true life. I mean, I don’t care. I think he doesn’t realize, me deciding to do that, that I’m going to get the negative side. I’ve been through it, I don’t care, I brush it off. Yeah, I don’t care. I mean I care but you have to brush it off because . . . I mean I deal with it all the time so it’s just . . . I, yeah, I know sometimes I get in trouble for being so straightforward but I’m just not afraid to piss off people. I like, everything’s controversial and I feel like people just try to throw it under the rug or kind of make people this and that or people are going to react in a certain way. I’m the type of person that I like that, I mean you have to make people react and you always have to realize that some people are going to react bad, so what, let them . . . I just think it [the class] should be a source of knowledge and education for people and it should be a place for you to express yourself really so other people can learn. Maybe people that aren’t so comfortable with the Hispanic world, you can, you have the knowledge and you can educate them on it, same with homosexuality. (Interview 2 with Juan, audio recorded and transcribed verbatim by the author, lines 1-11; 44-52; 112-115)
In our efforts to reflect on the meaning of this experience for himself, Juan draws the conclusion that racism and homophobia or heteronormativity have a lot in common and argues that it is the responsibility of our collective to educate others through our project.
Reflection on role negotiation and participation
As I wrestled with this decision over those few days and since then, I have reflected on my position within the collective and at the school. I had established various relationships, both prior to and during the course of the project. I had a previous, close, familial relationship with Mrs. James. We had established trust and openness, but there was also an implicit concern on both our parts, I think, that this project not come between our relationship in any way. Our relationship was also that of Teacher-Researcher. She was Head of the Class, and was ultimately responsible professionally for what occurred during and due to class time. I was a relative outsider, asking her to do things outside the norm. There was tension in that relationship as well. I had also established a relationship of trust and friendship with Juan. Struggling to figure out how to both advocate for Juan and maintain a positive relationship with Mrs. James and the school was difficult and, upon reflection, I saw that my actions defending Juan’s picture and his desire to exhibit it along with the other students showed that I had accepted his position as the most vulnerable party and his reasons for wanting the picture to be displayed (as opposed to Mrs. James’ and the principal’s reasons for not wanting the picture displayed) as the most valid—because his reasons were more ethical. If his photo were not displayed with all the other photos, the exhibit would not have been representative of each member of the collective’s experience and life. The exhibit—and the project—would have been compromised because it would have been less authentic, less inclusive.
In this example, I locate the structural aspects of validity, which are communicatively achieved, through decision-making and role engagement in the use of PAR. From a methodological perspective, the negotiation of roles, participation, and decision-making needs to be egalitarian or democratic to be valid. But of course, this is not done in a vacuum and PAR should facilitate this same entrance point for all participants regardless of the role outcomes and the specific decision. This emphasizes the idea that egalitarian and open processes make it possible to see the work of the justification process, that is, the process of establishing validity. PAR is useful in examining this because these characteristics are already valued by PAR researchers and process. As is stated above, the validity of the photovoice endeavor suffers if Juan’s voice is not included (not heard). He is stripped of power (the ability, opportunity, and willingness to speak and have his voice valued) by not being included.
Discussion and Implications
In this article, I suggest that to create a space in which this type of validity process is possible, one who engages in any research that has methodological and epistemological commitments to a democratized system of knowledge production should work to have the relative power of each co-researcher actually and explicitly negotiated with all those involved in the research. To allow the kind of participatory knowledge production in which all members of a community have the opportunity to participate in establishing the validity of the process, these types of negotiations should be a palpable, transparent, and purposeful part of the entire research design, as well as of every single moment of the project. By using Habermas’ (1984, 1987) ideal speech situation as a methodological tool, I highlight moments of participatory meaning making that can clarify how communicative validity is established in PAR and how other research designs might incorporate these same validity processes to achieve goals of democratization.
These three moments are importantly illustrative examples of the potential for PAR to help researchers better understand the process of establishing validity. In the first example, when I was trying to figure out how to establish my role within the collective, I put forth an implicit negotiation of participatory roles and responsibilities. According to Habermas’ (1984, 1987) theoretically structured ideal speech situation, because this negotiation was not more explicit, it lost validity. If I had taken the time and created the space to more explicitly discuss with the entire collective our roles, the fluidity of roles, and the ways in which we could value each collective member’s contributions, I believe that each member’s ability, willingness, and opportunity to speak (power) would have been enhanced and the entire process made more liberatory, indeed, more empowering because each member of the collective would have had more control over the decision-making process. Each step of that process could have been more deliberatively discussed on validity grounds had those roles been more explicitly negotiated.
The moment in which I took on the role of “teaching” research illustrates how roles inhabit distinctions between expertises, motivations, and responsibilities and the negotiated way in which we keep participation interactively egalitarian despite those differences. The shared power to determine the direction and mode of research contributed toward equalized participation and more valid research.
The participatory issue within the third moment was inclusion, and illustrates that the validity of research suffers if even one participant’s voice is not included. By not including a participant’s (or co-researcher’s, in the case of PAR) voice, the person is disempowered. The project loses its validity because a voice is not included.
These moments illustrate how the explicit negotiation of roles can allow insight into the validity of any research—not just PAR. A specific focus on role negotiation has critical implications for several aspects of qualitative research. I will focus on two of these. First, if I seek to establish the communicative validity of my work, my data analysis processes will be affected. As I identify and then examine moments of role negotiation, I can highlight whose reasons are implicitly and explicitly given, heard, and valued. The idea would be that roles of participants, co-researchers, or other stakeholders are not fixed or attached to a person’s status (“researcher,” “student,” “teacher”) but that there might be fluid egalitarianism within the reciprocity of roles, and that that fluidity is seen through explicit negotiation within research collective or group. So, the data analysis process might illustrate that, for example, the Researcher does not always inhabit Role A, and the Student does not always inhabit Role B. Analysis would show that whatever role a person is in in a particular moment is both valued and explicitly justified. Focusing on those explicit justifications would be central to the data analysis process. As I identify and explore these moments of role negotiation through explicit justification, I can draw conclusions as to the communicative validity of the specific moment and larger project.
Second, this process can extend its implications to how I might claim the ethical nature of my research. Through role negotiation, we in fact negotiate norms, that is, we debate and decide what should be, how one should act, or what is acceptable or appropriate in a given situation. By negotiating norms, we are engaged in a communicative achievement that is twofold. On one level, it involves the negotiation of rules for how we participate with one another. On another level, it involves the content of reasons normatively allowable. Ethics coincide with validity on the level of calling into question how we participate with one another. This, again, is foregrounded in role enactment.
As a researcher and methodologist with epistemological commitments to democratization of the research process, I am often taken up with making theoretical connections to and arguments about establishing communicative validity. While theoretical discussions are necessary, it is important to also illustrate how these theories are made visible in practice. In this article, I have underscored how every decision or interaction a researcher makes or has becomes one with communicative validity components and potential effects. My aim is to illustrate that as a researcher engages in fieldwork—whether explicitly couched as participatory or not—one has the opportunity to clearly examine and then show how and to what extent communicative validity was achieved. In addition, by making this process more visible, a researcher can, perhaps more easily, reflexively self-correct while in the field as she returns to co-researchers and participants to more explicitly negotiate roles.
Footnotes
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The author declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: The two sources for financial for this research are Indiana University Center for Research on Race and Ethnicity in Society Research Award, 2013; and Indiana University Graduate School Grant-in-Aid of Dissertation Research, 2013.