Research Quest: Ethics and being

In what ways will my inquiry take my values, and those of others, into account?

I am struggling for a way to articulate this, for me at the moment I see whirls that are both beautifully and frustratingly circular. These whirls are just glimpses of a philosophy of freedom, playfulness and learning.

My inquiry aims to free people to learn through playfulness. This playfulness is not a trivial one - it is a state-of-mind. This state-of-mind is with us all the time and can disclose freedom or freedoms absence depending on how caught you are up in your seriousness or your play. An important point here is that permission and judgement of freedom to learn comes from within each individual - in the context of my inquiry the aim would be to do this through playfulness. Being-in-the-inquiry means being valued and being valuing - inwardly and outwardly. Without this then the basis of the inquiry, its philosophy and phronesis, have to be questioned and regenerated or more to the point question and regenerate themselves.

In what ways will the inquiry take ethics into account?

Ethically there are real issues around messing with the stuff of being. Experimenting with a state-of-mind could be considered ethically fraught. However the inquiry is there not to free people to learn, but to allow people to be free to learn. They are the instruments that measure this freedom as well as its author. Permission to continue is not a tacit or fleeting - it is continual and reflective. The inquiry will have its own ethical journey - moving through and intertwining the shared ethics of those within it.

What is the place of myself and my "voice" in the inquiry?

My voice is where I start. Is there a choice here? My 'I' has to be explicit in order for me to transcend what is mine about freedom and playfulness and discover what is and can be shared. Throughout the enfolding of my inquiry what is and can be shared will become mine to a certain extent - well awareness of these at least. My 'voice' will respond to and guide the inquiry in order to allow other voices to be heard - participants, literature, the inquiry itself...

What are my ways of being mindful in research?

I will refer to mindful inquiry that I have taken quotes from before. We can refer to the four knowledge traditions that mindful inquiry is based on:

• Phenomenology: a description and analysis of consciousness and experience
• Hermeneutics: analysis and interpretation of texts in context
• Critical Social Theory: analysis of domination and oppression with a view to changing it
• Buddhism: spiritual practice that allows one to free oneself from suffering and illusion in several ways, e.g., becoming more aware (1998, p. 6)

From my previous post I think that my ways of being mindful align strongly with these four traditions. What may or not be so clear is that the inquiry is intended to enable participants within it to follow these four traditions themselves. Now that is an interesting line of inquiry...

What are my ways of being scholarly in research and writing?

I have already touched on ways I might be scholarly. In short my research and how it is communicated should be open to be schooled (I see fish here rather than classrooms) by literature, participants, itself and so on... My research and writing should have playfulness and freedom to be scholarly - as those should within it.

Questions: (c) Pugh, R & Yaxley, B. 2005

Bentz, V. M., & Shapiro, J. J. (1998). Mindful inquiry in social research. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage