Your Research is Biased! How to Participate as a Research Subject in School Practice
Charlotte Højholt & Sigga Waleng, Roskilde University

Through a crucial part of its history, the discipline of psychology has been guided by a positivist understanding of science and research ideals such as 'neutrality', 'objectivism' and not being 'biased'. Along a similar line, much psychological research reduces the researcher to an instrument following rigid pre-given methods. The counter-argument that qualitative research inherently entails a subjectivity both in regard to the researcher and inform ants is not new. However, it is often unclear what ideals replace positivism and how means and ends can be linked in critical research practices.
We zoom in on concrete situations from empirical work in our ethnographic practice research at different schools in Denmark focused on respectively school exclusions and conflicts through an everyday life perspective. Here, we analyze selected dilemmas we meet as research subjects with both the intention of acting ethically and at the same time produce relevant knowledge about common causes of school practice. We discuss how research criteria such as collaboration, problematization, co-researcher and situatedness are able to guide our empirical work. In this way, we pursue to link the concrete to the abstract in our research process and thus develop lines of argumentation around alternative research ideals to withstand the ones who might claim that our research is biased.

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