Methodological decisions and the researcher’s positioning

A few decades ago, ^{Gilberto Fregoso Peralta (1994: 19)} pointed to an absence of discussion on methodology:

There are facets of our everyday research work that are almost never made public by those of us who undertake the task of extracting from reality some aspects with the overt aim of systematize and understand them better. It would almost always seem more important to communicate the results of our inquiries as a product, rather than dwell on the process that led us to make some findings (when these exist).

Although any scientific publication worthy of that name features a methodological section that accounts for the methodologies, methods or techniques and instruments through which the data were collected or produced, in many cases this is limited to mentioning them, without any justification of the decisions made to use them or any reflection upon them. This is not a complaint - we have all done it at some point in our career - but it would be worthwhile to stop and place methodological concerns as a priority.

A short time ago the authors of this text spoke with our colleague Fernando Cornejo about how our interest in methodology was born, and all three of us agreed that it stemmed from the absences we encountered in our training as researchers. Both classes and manuals on methodology usually offer more or less general orientations, and it is our responsibility to translate such abstractions into concrete elements that later allow us to do things.

Thus, we believe it is necessary to maintain a permanent discussion on methodology. We agree with ^{Hammersley (2011)} that methodological reflection is essential in the practice of research. We must remember that scientific research is a practice, and that as such it is reproduced and also transformed by the actors who carry it out.

In this sense, we focus our reflection on methodological decisions, in which there are three key moments: when we plan our research, when we conduct it, and when we publish its results.

The first moment is when we design our research and we must make decisions on the methodological approach that will orient our work, and on the techniques with which we will make it operable. All too often we hear - and we even say - that something “was used” or “chosen”, and that conjures up the image of a supermarket in which there are different boxes with techniques ready to be used: an instrument design by this person was applied, digital ethnography was used, a discussion group was chosen. However, we must ask ourselves if such methodological decisions are coherent with the question and objectives of our research, if they are viable in the context in which we are working, and even why we incline ourselves for certain choices instead of others.

The second moment, when we conduct our research, happens mainly if that which we designed is not working as we expected in practical terms: the people did not respond to our survey, some of them did not speak enough in the discussion group, the university authorized two weeks of field work for something that might well take four months. In these cases we must make decisions, and do it quickly. This is often more difficult for researchers in training and a little more manageable for researchers who have spent more time in the field, but even for the latter these decisions imply considering several possible aspects and scenarios.

The third moment is when we present or publish the results of our research. It often happens that a reviewer of an article before publication asks why certain techniques were used instead of others. This leads us to justify - sometimes a posteriori - the decisions made, and to accept our responsibility for the scope and limitations they imply.

This reflection upon our decisions involves thinking about our own position as researchers vis-a-vis what we research on, the people with whom we do it - and there is a broad spectrum between study subjects and participants in the research - and the social and academic context in which we move (^{Anderson et al., 2010}; ^{Berger, 2015}).

As we can see, the different methodological moments are, in principle, epistemological moments insofar as they are the product of decisions and positions on how we know what we know. In education, as in any other discipline or disciplinary field in the social sciences, self-reflectiveness takes part in shaping its future and its course. New methods, techniques, and the design of methodological routes itself, depend on our capacity to look around ourselves. In doing so, the park bench from which we watch or participate is not an innocuous choice.