by David Woo
Chapter abstract for the book Methodological challenges when exploring digital learning spaces in education
Anonymity is a significant ethical principle with historical and legal precedents for researchers. It is a part of an... more
Anonymity is a significant ethical principle with historical and legal precedents for researchers. It is a part of an ethical trend towards protecting people’s confidentiality and privacy interests in the greater society, and recognizes ethical codes for research developed in response to 20th century research projects. Globally, confidentiality and privacy regulation is increasing in the legal sphere. Legal precedents are established by dozens of privacy commissioners or data protection authorities at national and sub-national levels. Educational institutions and private industries, among others, are obligated to maintain a degree of confidentiality to protect data subjects (e.g. research participants) and data users (e.g. researchers and readership). Furthermore, teaching and learning activities and research activities are generally not exempt from privacy ordinances. As a result, at the university level, such measures such as institutional review board (IRB) protocols and ethics lectures have been developed to promote confidentiality and privacy in research and pedagogical practice. Research literature has also discussed the significance of a principle of anonymity in qualitative research and dissemination of research (Tilley & Woodthorpe, 2011) and in accidental disclosure (Wiles et al., 2008), for example.
However, new limits and degrees of anonymity are emerging in an age of rapid technological change, where new technology enables new types of social research by transforming research participants’ and researchers’ ways of doing. While emergent and innovative use of technology, particularly Web 2.0 technology, by researchers and participants leads to emergent and innovative research projects, this also creates a problem of appropriately applying a principle of anonymity to emergent research projects. This chapter explores the problem of presenting rich, descriptive data on a unique, emergent social phenomenon while adhering to an ethical principle of anonymity. This presentation explores an appropriate degree of and limit to anonymity when reconciling the impact of social research findings with political considerations for research participants, their organizations, the researcher and other research stakeholders.
The data are drawn from five qualitative case studies of pedagogical technologists, whose primary responsibility is to support the pedagogical aspect of teaching through information technology in schools, and who have been found only in a few, unique schools. The objective of the original research project was to explore how pedagogical technologists impact schools’ ways of working with and through technology. Case data were collected over nine months. Pedagogical technologists were observed interacting with other school stakeholders, and they and other school stakeholders were interviewed. Photographs were taken. And Web 2.0 digital texts, including social networks, blogs and Twitter were analyzed. The study adopted an iterative, grounded approach to data collection and analysis. Grounding data collection and analysis entails initial data collection and analysis informing subsequent data collection and analysis in terms of development, primacy and validation of concepts.
The chapter identifies the context for the case studies and significant methodological and political considerations. Both the pedagogical technologist role and pedagogical technologist practice with technology are emergent. Pedagogical technologists use technology, particularly Web 2.0 technology, to spread technological pedagogical ideas, beliefs, values and assumptions. They also use a suite of technologies to build communities of practice. In general, these pedagogical technologists do not work in isolation and maintain high-profiles in their organizations and communities. They are hardly anonymous figures and are aware of this. Additionally, the pedagogical technologists work in few, unique schools. These schools could be readily identifiable by their employing pedagogical technologists, their curriculum, their official school-type designation and their medium of instruction, among other distinguishing characteristics. The primary researcher works in a university where the application of ethics in research is formalized and reviewed.
In view of this context, several considerations became prominent. To maintain the integrity of the findings from the case data, a richly descriptive product is needed, but to maintain anonymity, a less descriptive product is ideal. For the research findings, to name even the type of technology pedagogical technologists’ used is to give away vital information. For example, to illustrate how pedagogical technologists use Twitter to build community is to provide much traceable information even without quoting anything verbatim. Ultimately, the degree to which this social research project could be beneficial, inclusive and democratic became a political and logistical consideration. As the primary research participants were high-profile figures largely by choice, to protect their integrity and this research project, and to benefit their work would suggest disclosing more than not, and not changing key characteristics. Besides, in naming pedagogical technologists and their technologies, other pedagogical technologists and schools could identify these research participants and contact them. To make pedagogical technologists more anonymous in the research project is to belie the research project’s findings. On the other hand, the research project implicates more than the pedagogical technologist and the researcher’s needs. Pedagogical technologists work in unique environments with many organizations and people who may prefer a greater degree of anonymity. There is a shared risk to the degree of anonymity in the research project. To agree to identify the pedagogical technologist is for everyone to agree to identify the pedagogical technologist, themselves, other people and organizations. It would also be difficult to get all people, and organizations implicated in this research to agree to a shared degree of anonymity for all. Moreover, another consideration was in what ways people, their organizations and technologies could be effectively anonymized without becoming generic. In sum, this research project produced several complex considerations which required prioritizing and balancing.
The ways by which the researcher, research participants and other research stakeholders considered anonymity and established a common understanding of it to present the research findings are reported. These ways included informed consent procedures such as detailing research methods for approval by a university IRB, explaining the research and its methods to participants and obtaining their signed, informed consent. During the grounded data collection and analysis, participant checking was used. Coded data, which was anonymized to a degree by the omitting of data and employing pseudonyms, were presented to research participants for their comment. Each data collection instance was fed back to the research participants involved for their checking. Ultimately, each case report was given to relevant participants, who were compelled to read the reports. Discussions on what data to use and the appropriateness of anonymity were discussed with research participants, as well as with other research stakeholders such as this researcher’s supervisor. Disagreements on which data to use and the degree of anonymity were resolved. In these was, research ethics were broached and data anonymity were safeguarded.
The implications of researchers’ and research participants’ emergent technological practice on anonymity in social research are discussed. This chapter emphasizes the need to revisit a researcher’s methodological and ethical considerations, the political considerations for all research stakeholders, and the context for research. In the case of emergent technologies and emergent school roles in qualitative research, the chapter suggests the appropriateness of varying the degrees of anonymity for each participant, organization and technology implicated in the research. It also suggests including research participants in an iterative approach to agree upon degrees of anonymity as data collection and analysis progresses. In this way, there is a balance of the integrity of research findings with anonymity when some research participants shield themselves and others do not. This approach maximizes the inclusion of voices, social change and impact in qualitative research in the 21st century. The dissent from the prevalent discourse on anonymity should continue and be encouraged.
Download (.pdf) 
