Theorizing Ethics as Methodology in Equity-Centered Research-Practice Partnerships

• In Event: Research-Practice Partnerships for Educational Transformation

Abstract

Overview
We report on methodological considerations that attend to the unique relational work, and accordingly ethical work, of Research Practice Partnerships (RPPs). We consider what it means to do partnership work where ethical commitments become methodological principles in the co-construction of just, moral and equity-oriented research and practice by examining key ethical dilemmas during the partnership, and methodological adjustments that were made in response to these ethical dilemmas (Bang & Vossoughi, 2016).

Context
ClassInSight is a longitudinal design-based research project (Edelson, 2002) and RPP with two public school districts in San Diego county, Vista Unified School District (VUSD) and Sweetwater Union High School District (SUHSD). This partnership builds on an existing partnership infrastructure between UCSD and VUSD and SUHSD. Our participants include 23 secondary science teachers across 7 schools in VUSD, and 9 schools in SUHSD, who serve a racial, ethic and linguistically diverse student body.

Through iterative co-design and implementation cycles, we are developing a professional development app designed to support teachers in using argumentation discussions to engage students in shared reasoning processes in science (Clarke et al, 2015; Resnick, Asterhan & Clarke, 2018). ClassInSight is powered by visualizations of class discussions designed to instigate productive dissonance (Christman et al, 2016) about their orchestration of student thinking and learning. Our goal is that teachers gain insight into how they orchestrate student sense-making in science, recognize their agency in the process, and engage students in discussions that foster scientific habits of mind.

Methods
In order to visualize class discussions for teacher reflection, we engage in monthly reflective cycles with participants: classroom observation-visualization-guided reflection-classroom observation. Classroom observations are audio recorded, transcribed and annotated with a coding scheme that characterizes the turn-taking in terms of how moves function to co-construct knowledge and reasoning (Hennessey et al, 2016).

Tensions for Research, Opportunities for Refiguring Ethical Research Relationships
The research process is situated within institutional and social structures that have historically suffused research relationships with hierarchical relations of power, with the university as knowledge producer and the researcher as data extractor. We argue that sustained partnership work oriented towards equity and designed with and for communities is not commensurate with these ethics. Locating our commitments with communities, and the process of knowledge production for communities, requires ways of doing and being in research that are antithetical to these hegemonic norms, and more ethical ways of engaging in research require careful vigilance to maintain (as our work is situated within these systems). Over the course of ClassInSight, there have been a number of pivot points (e.g., Covid-19 pandemic) that necessitated a renewal of the project’s commitment to the communities we work with. We view these pivots as necessary and ethical, even if they do not serve research processes, such as gathering data and publishing manuscripts.

Authors

• Sherice Clarke, University of California - San Diego

• Ung-Sang Lee, University of Nevada - Las Vegas

• Andrea S. Gomoll, Gomoll Research + Design, Inc.

• Katherine Dennis, University of California - San Diego

• Sushil Shintre, University of California - San Diego

• Zaynab Amelia Gates, University of California - San Diego

• Tarang Tripathi, University of California - San Diego