Ethical Considerations in Ethnographies of Science Education: Toward Humanizing Science Education Research

Abstract

An increasing number of science education researchers employ ethnography as their methodological approach. Moving away from post-positivistic perspectives, ethnographers in science education perceive science learning as a sociocultural process that is situated in macroscopic contexts and tend to have a high commitment to transforming the practices of science and lives of underserved learners (Brandt CB, Carlone H, Ethnogr Educ 7:143–150, 2012). In the ethnographic framework, researchers interact with participants and local communities for an extended period of time, immerse themselves in the research setting, and collect in-depth data based on the relationships built with them. While valuable, these methods also pose ethical questions. In this chapter, I present ethical quandaries that I have run into while conducting two ethnographic studies along three foci: benefiting study participants and their communities, building relationships with study participants, and constructing stories to tell from the study. Then, I discuss my research practices in response to those ethical quandaries, building on the ideas of humanizing research (Paris D, Winn MT, Humanizing research: decolonizing qualitative inquiry with youth and communities. SAGE, Thousand Oaks, 2014). This chapter will call for enhanced reflexivity, relevance, and reciprocity throughout a research process especially when working with marginalized individuals and communities on the basis of race, class, and language among others.