I'll share with you another side of what might happen when participant
research is done in a very different setting in a very different culture,
e.g., in Hong Kong, where school principals and teachers are not used to
having their classes observed, not to mention audio-taped or video-taped.
They're suspicious of any people from the "university", "school of
edcucation", too, because their only experience of having someone there
in their class is from the inspector from the Government's Education
Department or from a "teacher trainer" from the universities or
educational insitutes... They have no experience with "true researchers"
and cannot comprehend what a researcher's role is: they could understand
it only as a cover; they suspect that there's no such a pure role as
"researcher"... despite all your verbal and written promises of absolute
annoymity and confidentiality of all identifying information of the
school, teachers and students...
I was in a delemma; my supervisor is an ethnomethodologist and
conversation analyst, who, as anyone in these disciplines, always insists
on audio-taped and videotaped data. I sent out 30 letters and got 2 or 3
replies from schools who expressed some sympathy to my situation (notice:
not that they're interested in participating in my research; but because
they found that I was a poor Ph.D. student looking for sites to collect
my data; and the had some trust in me through friends of my friends...
who guaranteed to them that I'm no spy, no inspector, no nosy
journalist... just a poor grad. student trying to complete my
dissertation project...)
I could not describe to you what stress (psychological and physical) I
was under during that period of time... but in the end, I managed to gain
the trust of 7 schools, and I thought I did manage to change somewhat
their understanding of what a "researcher" is... So, though at the very
beginning I thought my supervisor was too much an un-understanding "Gwai-Lo"
(a Cantonese slang word for a "Westerner"), in the end, I was grateful to
him for making me go through "hell" :-) i.e., all these difficulties... it
was more educational to me than any of his courses!
Well, this is going to be a long story... perhaps I should write it out
later on... just as a sideline... this tells me more about my own
culture and the serious lack of a "research culture" in the educational
scene in Hong Kong... I'll stop here, for the time being...
Angel
*****************************************************************
Angel M.Y. Lin
Doctoral Candidate
Modern Language Centre
Ontario Institute for Studies in Education
252 Bloor St. W., Toronto, ON M5S 1V6, Canada
E-Mail: MYLIN who-is-at OISE.ON.CA
*******************************************************************
Oh, East is East, and West is West, and never the twain shall meet,
Till Earth and Sky stand presently at God's great Judgment Seat;
But there is neither East nor West, Border, nor Breed, nor Birth,
When ... we stand face to face in the cyber space? ...
--Adapted from: The Ballad of East and West, Rudyard Kipling
*******************************************************************