Attending to Political and Ethical Dimensions of Remote Research Methods

• In Event: Remote Research Methods to Understand How Families and Educators Are Navigating Youth Learning During the Pandemic

Abstract

“It is inequitable that we have to choose which way to be safe: Through our civil rights or our health.” Jazmyn, 15-years-old

Purpose
In long-term research-practice partnerships (RPPs) in the midwestern and western US, we sought to understand what/how community partners learn about and take action on COVID-19 and justice-related concerns. What counts and what matters when choosing, adapting, remixing and creating methods for remote research begs the consideration of the political and ethical dimensions of doing research with through remote methods.

Theoretical Perspective
In this work, we are called to give witness to how systemic injustices of racism have been enacted and amplified during this time. We are simultaneously called to go beyond witnessing to become more present partners and co-conspirators for anti-racist justice (Love, 2019). Thus, our approach centers practices of “critical witnessing” and “being with” -- practices oriented toward social transformation and the public good of communities historically marginalized by systemic inequities. We seek to amplify possibilities for justice-oriented coalition building and learning in “the daily, (extra)ordinary, and intentional pedagogical work of creating spaces and conditions for critical witnessing and social change” (Villenas, 2019, p. 153). We view critical witnessing in its “double sense of eye-witness and bearing witness to what cannot be seen” (Oliver, 2004, p. 80).

Method
This larger study involves 60 participants across our two RPPs. We used both remote participatory interviewing with experience sampling methods (e.g., videos, screenshots, images, links). Semi-structured interviews, lasting between 90 and 280 minutes, addressed topics including: what COVID-19 information individuals access/apply towards decision-making, how, and why; personal/community COVID-19 experiences; and use of resources and social networks. We co-analyzed data with participants using critical inquiry/grounded theory, using a continuities/contradictions approach (Charmaz, 2017).

Results/Significance
We view being with as a relational practice that foregrounds the ever, always, already, and imagined present(s) in moving/shifting relationalities and insights and the sometimes contested process of seeking common ground (Villenas, 2019). How methods are un-learned, re-learned, re-mixed through their enactments opens possibilities for being with/critical witnessing. New emergent political and ethical threads of methods have also emerged as elemental to critical witnessing/being with. For example, meeting with long-term partners via text and phone calls also involves co-strategizing what methods youth/families are comfortable using and/or learning, when, how and for what purposes; e.g., co-planning for a video-based dialogue during family dinner, when the household computer was free, and people were gathered for dialogue. These also involve co-strategizing infrastructuring of justice-oriented life pursuits in a time of double pandemics, e.g., using video-based interviews to collaboratively sew masks, coordinate supplies sharing/distribution. Co-strategizing methods/infrastructuring has led to the centrality of recognizing/accepting responsibilities that come with a new notion of ‘interview’ that allows for bearing witness to COVID- and justice-related trauma.

Advancing justice-oriented work with community partners in “remote research” requires attention to political/ethical dimensions of how tools get taken up and co-opted in practices of critical witnessing/being with.

Authors

• Angela Calabrese Barton, University of Michigan

• Day W Greenberg, University of Michigan - Ann Arbor

• Leslie R. Herrenkohl, University of Michigan - Ann Arbor

• Tammy Quinn Tasker, University of Michigan

• Elizabeth A. Davis, University of Michigan