researCh and the seLfarts- based, practice- based researchers are able to develop knowledge and ways of
disseminating it which informs the development of practices and skills of people in sim-
ilar but not identical contexts. similarly they are able to provide new understandings
and creative insights. indeed these kinds of knowledge (often termed wisdom, some-
times professional wisdom) need not address themselves to generalities at all. smith
(2008) argues persuasively that poetry and fiction can be valuable forms of knowledge
for educators. For much arts- based, practice- based researchers, it is not a case of find-
ing contexts which are identical. Rather, it is being able to explain the context of the
research so that the audience can judge how it relates to their own. For instance, gem-
mell’s work may appear to apply narrowly to a very specific situation in teacher educa-
tion in one country. however, it would also be relevant in some respects to another
country’s teacher educators, in which it is necessary to visit schools at a great distance
from universities in centres of population. This is not a matter of general similarities.
The research would be irrelevant in much of the united Kingdom but it might be
relevant in apparently very different countries, for example Botswana or australia.
how far scriven, Rumney and Kuksa’s work would be relevant to Botswana with its
very different cultural history is difficult to say. however it would almost certainly be
relevant to australia. giddens and Jones’s work appears to be very much embedded in
a specific technological, cultural and theoretical context. however it may be that their
concept of ‘de- second- naturing’ as it presents itself through the creative deployment of
technology might travel just as well as has technology. in all three cases the selves of
the researchers would inevitably present themselves to the audience and would affect
how the audience perceived the relevance of the projects to themselves, and so how far
they could gain knowledge from the research.
Participant research, value positions and trustworthy knowledgeThis section begins with a consideration of participant research as a source of
knowledge. The view that participant research is not trustworthy tends to be linked
with an argument that being a participant in something entails being unable to view
it dispassionately and neutrally. Therefore, so the argument continues, it is impossible
to make a reasoned assessment of the evidence, with the result that the conclusions
are unreliable and there can be little confidence placed in them. But this view makes
two contestable assumptions. it assumes first that an outside observer would be
neutral, and that such neutrality is desirable. it assumes second that being part of a
human relationship interferes with judgements connected to the relationship. neither
assumption stands up to scrutiny. The view also ignores some crucial ethical issues
underlying participant research: the significant differences between researching on, for
or as a subject of the research.
With respect to the first assumption, the call for neutrality can refer to either or both
political or moral standpoints. it can also refer to a researcher having a personal and/or
professional stake in the outcomes of the research. so critics who are looking for value
neutrality address themselves to research which takes a clear political or moral stance.
There is a suspicion that researchers inevitably find only what their initial position
would lead them to expect, that, for instance, feminists expect and then discover
knowledge about gender oppression, while postcolonialists expect and then discover