I am conscious of my responsibility as a researcher. I hold my participants' stories and can never be parted from them. As Jools Page (2011) points out, I cannot un-know the data.
One of my EdD participants spoke particularly frankly to me, and her story contained details I did not anticipate. I hear and re-hear her words as she uttered them, at different paces, with a range of intonations. And all of her story is relevant to my research. If I am interested in how practitioners feel able to love children in their care, and what their views are about loving children in their care, then I am interested in any reflections they want to share with me about how they experienced love in their own childhoods.
The data suggests that this particular participant has adopted an approach to protect children against the sort of childhood she experienced. Her life experiences give shape to the 'professional love' (Page, 2011) she gives to children.
Her story is dramatic, shocking and moving. It moves me to hold a new epistemological position, in that I now understand the world differently as a result of her story and need to accommodate it into my world view. My position has moved. On another level, I am moved to feel for her, not out of sympathy but with sensitivity. Her story affects me.
Her story also causes me to reflect on how I unconsciously adopt positions and habits in my adult life to protect me from, or contrast with, some features of my own childhood. For example, my mother was very creative and spontaneous, so life was a bit unpredictable. To resist this, I adhered to strict routines as a mother. My parents moved several times, whereas I lived in one place for eighteen years while my children were growing up.
My research affects me. I need to declare this in my thesis. I also need to justify my research activity. What am I giving back to my participants? What is my relationship with them?
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