‘Leaving the field!’; Lessons learned from a participatory educational game design process in Ethiopia

• In Event: Beyond the technical-rational: Bridging between theories and practice in vulnerable girls' education.

Proposal

Conducting field research means interacting with humans and requires strategies for ‘gaining entry' to the field as well as strategies for ‘leaving the field’. Taylor (1991) drew attention to the fact that leaving the field should not put the researcher in an uncomfortable position by leading the participants to feel exploited or used. Caretta and Cheptum (2017) pointed to the emotional aspects of withdrawal from the field and argued that for both researcher and participant the field extends beyond a geographical location and turns into a “set of relations nurtured, contested and developed during the course of long fieldwork phases often lasting several months” (p.415). Furthermore, Stebbins (1991) highlighted the ethical aspects of this issue and argued that “[a]n important obligation that keeps many researchers in extended contact with the field is the one of doing something beneficial for the people who have been kind enough to allow and facilitate research access” (p. 253). But what strategies can help researchers withdraw ethically so that the participants do not feel exploited? Although the body of knowledge on both getting in and leaving practices is generally undeveloped (Iversen, 2009, Azungah 2019), my literature review showed that discussion on ‘gaining access/entry’ strategies and managing its challenges (e.g., Feldman et al., 2003 & Okumus et al., 2007) have been drawn more attention by scholars than ‘leaving the field’ strategies. Mitchell and Sommer (2016) are among those cases that asked: “What happens when the researchers depart”? (p. 522) and described how participatory visual methodologies (PVM) could empower participants to continue their efforts beyond the study. In PVM (e.g., photovoice, cellphilm, drawing, digital storytelling) ‘product’ is as important as ‘process’. So, while the ‘process’ helps to interact with participants and collect reliable data, the ‘product ‘or as Michell et al. (2017) call it the “digital artifact” (p.121) is an entity that remains in the field and promotes further dialogue. My broader field research in Ethiopia aimed to address sexual and gender-based violence (SGBV) of agriculture colleges through building college instructors’ capacity through a digital educational game called Mela. Mela is meant to be a self-educating tool (Sadati, 2019) which is accessible online and includes several learning objectives that all contribute to raising college instructors’ awareness about their potential roles in combating SGBV. Mela has been designed using a participatory arts-based game design technique, which has been discussed in detail elsewhere (see Sadati & Mitchell, 2021, under review; Sadati & Mitchell, 2021). In this paper, I will review “leaving the field” strategies that are offered by participatory arts-based and visual methodologies and will specifically focus on my own experience. Here I will share the ways I tried to keep my connections with the research participants after ending the project (e.g., creating a printed guideline for Mela, distributing printed hard copies of group pictures as take away gifts in the last session). Also, I will describe how, in my last trip to the field, I organized workshops for research participants so that they practice the possible ways of working with Mela in their colleges beyond just playing the game. In this context, Mela not only serves as an educational source, but it also has the potential to be used as a tool to generate other types of activities (e.g., game nights, quiz nights) that are meant to address gender-based issues of the colleges after my departure. The processes of participatory action research, particularly when it involves collective creation of digital artifacts, and the attempts to set the field as a context for cooperative work, make the research process a two-way communication. This is opposed to one-way data collection processes that consider the participants as just sources of the data, which might lead them to feel what Taylor (1991) said used or exploited. This approach could have implications in expanding Freire's (1970) “banking concept of education” (p. 72) to field research as well. Described in his book, Pedagogy of the oppressed, Freire refers to “banking education” as a one-way knowledge transfer process “from those who consider themselves knowledgeable upon those whom they consider to know nothing” (p. 72). This viewpoint considers the students just as receivers of what is called knowledge and ignores that education is an inquiry process. Adapting the banking concept of Freire, I believe the one-way knowledge transfer process from research participants to the researcher could be recognized as a ‘banking research’. Both of these banking mechanisms are common in their one-way and oppressive procedures, and are different just in the type of involved parties (educator-learner vs. researcher-participant) and the type of so-called knowledge (educational material vs. research data). Consequently, there is no interaction, mutual learning, or participation among both parties in banking systems. This could also have implications in addressing hierarchal barriers between researcher and participants; a subject that has been considered in decolonizing research methods (see Datta, 2018). In brief, this paper will explore some of the “leaving the field” strategies and the lessons learned from my field research in Ethiopia and discuss some of the relevant challenges (such as COVID-19 related restricting measures). The findings can contribute to designing research projects that pay more attention to explicit “leaving the field” strategies as a significant stage that requires a foreseen timeline in the research process. This is specifically important in the sustainability of the projects that seek to raise awareness on gender issues in communities.

Author

• Seyed Mohammad Hani Sadati, McGill University