Sabotaging Method: The Tensions of Accepting Responsibility

• In Event: "Disruption, Interruption, Change...It's Not Enough. What We Need Is Sabotage": Critical Participatory Inquiry as Sabotage in/of the Academy

Abstract

Objectives and Perspectives: Special education research, and research involving persons with intellectual and developmental disabilities (IDD) has a long and dark history which laid the foundation for common threads in the field today (Taylor, 2018; Turnbull & Turnbull, 2000). To avoid the exploitative and murderous deeds of the past (involuntary and forced participation, lack of consent or assent protocols, actual murder), and in particular, lawsuits, research procedures have increased in protections and safeguards (McDonald & Conroy et al., 2016; Juritzen & Grimen et al., 2011). These protections and safeguards often allow, or force, many research studies to make no attempt at including persons with disabilities at all. What little research does exist “includes” persons with IDD through proxies, or a systematic “you say, I take” approach (Taylor, 2018). The pendulum swing from forced sterilization to the complete ignoring of a group of people does not help to answer questions about disability. Therefore, in this paper, I suggest that disability research consider engaging critical participatory inquiry as a way of sabotaging what is accepted/acceptable as method. I argue that questioning who is involved in (or excluded from) the inquiry process, how they are involved, and what is being “studied” is an overdue topic of critical consideration.

Modes of Inquiry and Data: Through a self-study of a critical participatory inquiry project, this paper documents the process of how I approached, navigated, and reconciled researcher responsibilities with commitments to participants during the inquiry process. Using the traditional qualitative research cycle as a framework (Question, Design, Data Collection, Data Analysis, Findings/Next Steps), I follow steps of the research process to engage in research deemed “acceptable” for a dissertation, while I simultaneously question and push back on these methods and techniques. The critical self-study uses reflective data including researcher journals, memos, class assignments, and discussion notes to grappled with the following questions: 1) What is recognized as research in my field, and how am I navigating the difference between “a method” and “a way of inquiry”? 2) Who is the research for? And 3) How is my power and positionality (a person who does not identify as disabled) tied up in the tension of responsibility – responsibility to “produce” knowledge deemed academically significant and responsibility to meaningfully include a commonly forgotten population?

Significance and Conclusion: The journey of engaging in dissertation work with a methodological focus in the field of intellectual disabilities has transformed my views on what and who research is for. In this paper I conclude that shifts in this perspective can and should start early in graduate research careers – or before – and with considerations for the shift to be momentous and sustaining. I offer suggestions for how this might be done from within the field of intellectual disabilities.

Author

• Alexandra S. Reed, George Mason University