In this contribution, we share reflections emerging from applied linguistics research conducted in educational settings situated in the colonial context of metropolitan Vancouver, Canada. In light of the work of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (2015), we examine how our approaches to research and teaching as settlers might be decolonized. We describe shifts in our research practices as we attend more deliberately to relations formed in encounters of children, digital devices, researchers, and other human and (im)material participants in a project on multilingual digital literacies. Post qualitative inquiry (Mazzei & Jackson, 2020; St. Pierre, 2021) provides a framework for us to question current neoliberal university structures and practices as we consider: a) whether researchers and participants can engage in equal and reciprocal relationships despite institutional ethics guidelines and policies; and b) to what extent institutional research procedures in place can accommodate genuine and respectful inquiry approaches in educational settings.
We therefore turn to new materialist, Indigenous and poststructuralist theories – such as agential realism (Barad, 2007) and relationality (Tuck & McKenzie, 2015; TallBear, 2014) – to revisit some of the encounters in our inquiry, viewing them as profoundly relational and sociomaterial. We acknowledge and unpack the tensions that were felt when students in an elementary school classroom questioned whether they wanted their literacy practices recorded, even though their guardians and the students themselves had already given their written consent for participation. We look at the specific moments of ethical friction that emerged and "glowed" (MacLure, 2010) as more than data for us as researchers. In particular, we reflect on the "breaks and jagged edges of methodological practices" (Lather, 2012) that made us pause during fieldwork, research meetings, and as we reported on this study.
We find the requirement to seek participants' "free, informed and ongoing consent" guiding our ethics protocols (Government of Canada, 2018) well suited to procedural concerns but deeply insufficient on site when we vow to "do no harm." Thus, we expand on Nodding's (1988) idea of an "ethic of caring" (Brisson, 2020; Laplante, 2005) and suggest that a post qualitative approach to inquiry in applied linguistics offers a different kind of language. From a new materialist and feminist standpoint, we argue that it allows for an ethico-onto-epistemological (Barad, 2007) way of living our inquiries, which we view as "act[s] of love" (Ibrahim, 2014).
Focusing on relational encounters of human and (im)material participants helps us conceptualise an affective, embodied and caring way of living our inquiries with all participants. It also enables us to avoid falling into hierarchic, linear and constraining research ethics, and allows us to explore ways of sharing co-produced knowledge for the benefit of the communities with whom we work and affiliate (Labov, 1982). Following Gallagher (2018), we seek to do so with renewed rigour, yet one that refuses to leave aside difficult or seemingly useless "data." Instead, we acknowledge how these important moments of ethical friction highlight our response-ability (Haraway, 2016) as care-full researchers and educators.
References
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