Ethical issues in cross-cultural research

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International Journal of Research & Method in Education Publication details, including instructions for authors and subscription information: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/cwse20

Ethical issues in cross-cultural research a

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Eileen Honan , M. Obaidul Hamid , Bandar Alhamdan , a

Phouvanh Phommalangsy & Bob Lingard

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School of Education, The University of Queensland, St Lucia, Queensland, 4072, Australia Version of record first published: 12 Jul 2012

To cite this article: Eileen Honan, M. Obaidul Hamid, Bandar Alhamdan, Phouvanh Phommalangsy & Bob Lingard (2012): Ethical issues in cross-cultural research, International Journal of Research & Method in Education, DOI:10.1080/1743727X.2012.705275 To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/1743727X.2012.705275

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International Journal of Research & Method in Education iFirst, 2012, 1–14

Ethical issues in cross-cultural research Eileen Honan∗ , M. Obaidul Hamid, Bandar Alhamdan, Phouvanh Phommalangsy and Bob Lingard School of Education, The University of Queensland, St Lucia, Queensland 4072, Australia

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(Received 17 December 2011; final version received 9 May 2012) The gap between theoretical expectations of research ethics as outlined in the bureaucratic processes associated with University Ethics Committees and the situated realities of students undertaking studies within their own sociocultural contexts is explored in this paper. In particular, the authors investigate differences in ethical norms and practices by providing ‘subaltern’ voices from the field, as three of the authors narrate their experiences during their doctoral field work that led them to challenge the validity of ethics review processes in institutions at the Centre when undertaking research at the periphery. The field work experiences produced unavoidable tensions as the students attempted to construct the hybridity required when working within transnational contexts of higher education. The paper concludes with some advice to students and advisors and members of Ethics Review Committees to encourage the destabilization of essentialist assumptions often made in Eurocentric research designs. Keywords: cross-cultural ethics; ethical research processes

Introduction Cross-cultural research in education and other social sciences is fraught with ethical issues and challenges which can be traced to a range of factors including: the colonization of local practices and traditions of knowing by the Centre (Appadurai 2001; Connell 2007; Smith 1999); differences in sociocultural norms and realities among societies; and differential understandings of research ethics and principles across societies. These differences are also located within different epistemologies (Appadurai 2001; Connell 2007). In postcolonial terms, this paper considers some of these challenges within the context of doctoral students from the periphery ‘talking back’ to the Centre (Appadurai 1986, 2001) in relation to the power of university-based ethics review committees and institutional review boards to govern the conduct of ‘ethical’ research. Here, we use the geopolitical reference to Centre –periphery in an attempt to acknowledge the impact of this dichotomy on the ‘legitimation of knowledge’ (Odora Hoppers 2000, 285), while at the same time being cognizant of the dangers of using any binary terms to describe relationships between diverse sociopolitical, cultural, and linguistic contexts. ∗

Corresponding author. Email: [email protected]

ISSN 1743-727X print/ISSN 1743-7288 online # 2012 Taylor & Francis http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/1743727X.2012.705275 http://www.tandfonline.com

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The paper includes a critical interrogation of the issues and contradictions between the boundaries and norms associated with ethics approval and three of the authors’ lived realities and knowledge of ethical practice in their home settings. It could almost be taken for granted that conflicts between the institutional norms and practices of higher education institutions, and those experienced by students from the periphery would arise in this era of transnational education, with the marketing of universities located in the Centre as sites for education opportunities that are often provided through government and aid organization scholarships. Issues related to the globalization and commodification of education have been explored in depth from a variety of perspectives (Rizvi and Lingard 2009; Rizvi, Lingard, and Lavia 2006; Waters and Brooks 2011). These issues include reflexive recognition of the locatedness of epistemologies, with those developed in high-status universities in the Centre often assumed to have universal applicability (Appadurai 2001; Connell 2007; Lingard 2006). Within this context of globalization and the internationalization of higher education, there have been calls to ‘deparochialize the research imagination’ (Appadurai 2001). Such deparochializing, in our view, includes consideration of the requirements for approval to conduct research in universities of the Centre. Against this background, this paper explores differences in ethical norms and practices by providing ‘subaltern’ voices from the field, as three of the authors narrate their experiences during their doctoral field work that led them to challenge the validity of the ethics review processes in universities of the Centre when undertaking research on the periphery. As ‘international’ students enrolled in an Australian University, the researchers were confronted with two irreconcilable and even conflicting obligations: on the one hand, following the requirements of the ethics review committee, while on the other hand, abiding by the social cultural norms for ethical behaviour in their own home contexts. We are cognizant of the conflicting issues experienced by many researchers when grappling with the differences between the conduct of ‘ethical’ research, and the processes of ‘ethics’ review committees (Rivie`re 2011, 196). We follow here Rivie`re’s practice of referring to the process of approval as ‘ethics’ review, while the reflexive process of reviewing the conduct of research is referred to as ‘ethical’. The difference between these two processes include that ‘ethical dilemmas cannot necessarily be resolved or addressed through the ethics process’ (Rivie`re 2011, 200). The fieldwork described in this paper was undertaken while studying at one of the Australian universities that form the ‘Group of Eight (Go8)’, leading Australian universities that claim to be ‘intensive in research and comprehensive in general and professional education’ (http://www.go8.edu.au/). In Australia, ethics review processes for research involving humans are governed by policies and guidelines produced by the National Health and Medical Research Council of the Australian government. At our university, the National Statement on Ethical Conduct in Human Research (NHMRC 2009) is used as a basis for guidelines/interpretations developed at the university level, and students undertaking research higher degrees are required to seek ethics clearance from review committees established at the school level. The gap between theoretical expectations of these policies and guidelines, and the situated realities of doctoral students who come from countries on the periphery can be framed using Guillemin and Gillam’s (2004) distinctions between macroethics and microethics. Macroethics refers to the context of university-based ethics committees

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and institutional review boards where ‘general ethical principles’ are laid down for ethical research conduct in the research site, whereas microethics ‘refers to everyday ethical dilemmas that arise from specific roles and responsibilities that researchers and research participants adopt in specific research contexts’ (Kubanyiova 2008, 504). Since the decontextualized macro-context conceptualizes ethical principles (e.g. respect for persons, beneficence, and justice) in the abstract, such generalized norms may ‘largely ignore the relational character of situated research’ (Kubanyiova 2008, 504). Such tensions and ethical dilemmas are most pertinent in the context of cross-cultural research in which the macroethics is located in central academia but the fieldwork is carried out by ‘local’ researchers in the situated contexts of peripheral societies (see Hamid 2010). As well, the prescribed nature of the ethics application is imbricated within the rules and regulations of a university. As doctoral students from the periphery enrolled in a prestigious university at the Centre, it is assumed that these rules and regulations dictate one’s research processes. In other words, for the sake of the study, research ethics have to be formulated in theory rather than in reality (Hamid 2010), regardless of whether they would make sense in the context where the study was to be carried out. In the following sections of this paper, three stories from the field are told that explore particular issues raised when these macro- and microethical contexts clash. From Bangladesh, issues related to the notion of privacy and confidentiality are confronted; from Saudi Arabia, ideas related to informed consent and the right to withdraw are discussed; and from Laos, assumptions about the consent to record interviews are interrogated. The last section of the paper ‘talks back’ to the ethics review process from the perspective of early career researchers from the periphery by providing recommendations and thoughts about improving the review process to take account of cross-cultural contexts. Stories from field 1: Obaid’s narrative In this section, Obaid recollects his lived experiences in conducting fieldwork for doctoral research (Hamid 2009) in a rural sub-district in Bangladesh. Using a mixedmethod design (Creswell and Plano Clark 2007; Teddlie and Tashakkori 2006), this research explored relationships between students’ families’ economic, social, and cultural capital and habitus and their English-learning experiences and outcomes. Obaid administered questionnaire surveys, proficiency tests and student, teacher, and parent interviews to collect both quantitative and qualitative data (see Hamid 2009 for details). The fieldwork experience has been narrated in Hamid (2010) and in this paper further key issues are explored and additional examples are provided to demonstrate the irreconcilability between the expectations of ethics committees and the sociocultural norms and realities prevailing in the field. These tensions are demonstrated with particular reference to the notion of privacy of personal information and the ethics rules guiding disclosure of personal information, which is related to the macro-principle of respect for persons (see Kubanyiova 2008). We argue that although the meanings and valuations of privacy are not universal but are variable across cultures, the ethics rules and expectations are generally informed by hegemonic sociocultural norms and therefore may not apply to societies such as Bangladesh, particularly in rural areas. Personal information (e.g. names, contact details, and date of birth), which is treated as private and confidential and requires ethical as well as legal protection in the Centre,

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is not treated the same way in Bangladeshi society. It is a common social practice to ask for someone’s name or phone number and it is equally common to provide the requested information if the addressee possesses this information. In fact, an efficient and socially acceptable way of collecting such information is to ask people, and it is unlikely that people would refuse to supply this information unless the information is about a special group of people such as celebrity figures, or the addressee is quite certain that the information provided will be used for harmful purposes. Being a Bangladeshi, Obaid had been familiar with this socially acceptable way of collecting information. However, his position within academia and his understanding of the requirements of the ethics review placed him in a situation where he had to unlearn what he had taken for granted as part of his socialization in the Bangladeshi society and culture. He found himself a stranger in a place where he was born, brought up, and socialized. For instance, for the research, Obaid needed to contact teachers and students of different schools in the region. He could easily ask for a teacher’s mobile phone number at the local shop, or a neighbour, or even a student, and no one would see anything wrong in the request. However, the terms of the ethics clearance application reminded him that this personal information could not be requested from a third party, even though there was nothing wrong socially in this particular context. In this ‘ethically important moment’ (Guillemin and Gillam 2004), the decision was made to collect information from these local sources which could be seen as a breach of the ethics process, although there was nothing unethical in the peripheral context of the fieldwork. This ethical dilemma can be discussed in relation to the social values attributed to personal information and socioculturally appropriate ways of preserving such information and the implications for research in peripheral societies. It appears that personal information in rural communities in Bangladesh is treated as social capital or a community resource which is preserved by individual members constituting the community. This is not idealizing these communities in terms of harmony or internal coherence at the expense of potential differences, or even conflicts. To a large extent, they are guided by traditional social values and practices, since urbanization, modernization, technologization and, consequently, individualism are yet to make significant inroads into the society. This communal orientation of information preservation and dissemination conflicts with the individualistic characteristics of information collection and dissemination in the Centre, which is then reflected in advice to researchers within the ethics guidelines. This collective character of life and living is also reflected in the social sense of space in the rural context of this fieldwork which also conflicted with the ethics review’s notions of privacy and confidentiality. For instance, as argued in Hamid (2010), the home is not a private space in the sense the concept is understood in the Centre, because it usually remains open to relatives and next-door neighbours. This means that relatives and neighbours do not need to seek permission to enter the home. In fact, asking for permission may appear unusual. This is not implying that the people do not have a sense of privacy, but that their sense of private space is different from that in other societies. This can be illustrated with reference to interviews with 15–16-year-old students and their parents, which were arranged in their home. Once the conversation was started, Obaid found that he was surrounded by the interviewee’s relatives and next-door neighbours. Continuing the interview in their presence and allowing them to listen to the conversation was a clear breach of the promise of privacy and confidentiality. However, asking the people to leave and continue the

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conversation in private was a violation of the social code because these people were not intruders in the private space of the home; they had entered the space in a socially appropriate way; or if not, they were accountable to the home owner, not to Obaid, as an outsider in that space. Their presence in this ‘private’ conversation with the interviewee provided an ethical challenge and Obaid did not know how to respond to this unanticipated critical moment. From the perspective of the ethics committee, this could be seen as unacceptable because these people were listening to private conversations and therefore showing no respect for privacy. However, such an interpretation reflects the sociocultural norms of societies that subscribe to individual ideologies (Barrett and Parker 2003). Their presence in the interview space was simply an innocuous curiosity for something new and different – from outside the world of literacy and research. They had no use for the information that was being shared or negotiated between the interviewer and the interviewee. Moreover, to them it was probably unthinkable that the interview was private and therefore not accessible to other people. To them probably this suggestion would be preposterous because they would wonder how the interviewee, who was one of them, could have a private conversation with a stranger, the researcher, who was from outside the community and not one of them. Ethical dilemmas in such situations are inevitable because the researcher cannot decide whether to continue the interview in the presence of other people and thus violate the ethics code of conduct or to ask the people to leave and violate the social and moral code. Although such ethical dilemmas result from differences in the expectations of ethics committees and the social expectations in the field, the key site of the ethical conflicts is located in the self of the ‘local’ researcher who may undergo socioethical metamorphosis as a result of his/her socialization into the academic norms of the Centre. For instance, when researchers undertake fieldwork in their own societies as doctoral students affiliated with central institutions, they may actually return as transformed beings equipped with different perspectives on sociocultural norms and ethical behaviours. The same old norms and behaviours in the local context may appear different to them because of the transformed perspective. Stories from field 2: Bandar’s narrative This narrative is an attempt to document the lived experiences of a doctoral student conducting a research study in the field of teaching English within a setting not commonly used by universities in the Centre, that of rural Bedouin areas in Saudi Arabia. In this study, fieldwork played an important role. Using qualitative methodologies, the study explored how institutionally imposed discourses contribute to forming and (re)forming English as a Foreign Language (EFL) learning and the teaching beliefs and practices in the Saudi context. Such an investigation endeavours to conceptualize the interplay between Saudi EFL textbooks, EFL teaching/learning activities, and the teachers’ and learners’ epistemological beliefs. The study employed three instruments of data collection: document study, interviews, and classroom observations. Two Saudi EFL teachers and 30 EFL Saudi Bedouin learners were interviewed and observed. The issues addressed when seeking ethics approval for this study, as is usually the case for research conducted in the social science paradigm involving human subjects, were primarily related to ensuring participants’ anonymity, gaining informed consent, and considering the ‘rights’ related to accessing and gathering data (Cohen, Manion, and Morrison 2007; Taylor 2001). However, these ethical codes are assumed to be

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universal (Hamid 2010; Rivie`re 2011) and therefore were the only ethical issues addressed in the ethics clearance process. In this fieldwork, Bandar encountered a number of ethical dilemmas, which contradict this assumption that research ethics guidelines have universal applicability. Some of the issues addressed in the ethics application either did not make sense in the context of the study or were impossible to comply with. Such a gap between ‘theory’ of the research ethics and ‘reality’ on the ground (Guillemin and Gillam 2004) put Bandar in a situation where he had to contend with several conflicting choices. This gap and these choices are discussed here with reference to obtaining gatekeeper clearance, and seeking informed consent including the right to withdraw from the research. In the research methodology literature, obtaining gatekeepers’ permission has been deemed crucial (see, e.g. Denscombe 2007; King and Horrocks 2010; Roberts-Holmes 2005; Scheyvens and Storey 2003). Before approaching the fieldwork, it had been assumed that obtaining gatekeepers’ permission in the context of the study would be straightforward. However, the process was more complicated than anticipated. Saudi Arabia is a survey research (usually quantitative) dominated context (Alnasser 1999). Conducting a qualitative study in the field of education in this context is not common. The gatekeepers’ unfamiliarity with the qualitative design of the study was a contributing factor that added to the complication of getting approval. Importantly, the research officials in the Ministry of Education and in the Directorate of Education in the region where this study was conducted were concerned about the design of the study, but failed to comment on or raise ethical issues about the fieldwork. This lack of attention to ethical issues could be because they were satisfied with the ethics clearance from the university located in the Centre of academic knowledge; or they had no concern about ethical considerations attached to the study; or because there are no ethics protocols in the Ministry of Education in Saudi Arabia. Regardless of the reasons, the lack of attention to ethical issues prescribed the use of protocols that were not necessarily appropriate to this particular cultural context. The concept of informed consent has been considered ‘pivotal in efforts to introduce consistent ethical principles into the research process for researcher and research participants’ (Barrett and Parker 2003, 9). The ethics review process presupposes that participants will be made fully aware of the nature of the research including the techniques employed, expectations about the nature of their contribution, the time involved, the nature of the risks associated with participation (Lankshear and Knobel 2004), and information about their right to withdraw at any stage of the study (Israel and Hay 2006). Accordingly, the parents of students involved in the study were invited to an introductory meeting where Bandar explained the purpose of the study, the data collection procedures, and addressed these participation issues. Participants were asked to give their verbal consent to participate. Importantly, none of the informants refused to participate in the study and all gave their consent on the spot. However, the invitation to come to this introductory session was turned down by the majority of the parents. Those few who attended the meeting had their eyes on their watches and, while they indicated they appreciated the conduct of the study at the school, they also indicated that they were in a rush to leave and so asked for the forms to sign. In contrast, when Bandar addressed the students, they asked many questions, although most of these were about personal identity such as where Bandar was from and what tribe he belonged to. Chang (2009, 99) encountered the same situation in her fieldwork where her student participants ‘were more curious about [her] personal information than the research procedures’. As with the officials in the Ministry, students

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and parents did not raise any concern about the ethical conduct of the study. These reactions from the students and their parents raise the question of the applicability of informed consent in the context of this study and disrupt the underlying assumptions that frame the concept. There are a number of possible explanations for the participants’ reactions: the students and parents thought that all research is ‘good’; they trusted Bandar; they felt that they could not refuse a university academic who chose their school as a research site (Hamid 2010); they believed that it is the school’s job to legitimize any study conducted in its classrooms; or they considered participating ‘in the work of people with higher education’ (Hamid 2010, 265) as an honour. Also, although it was made clear that participation in the study was voluntary, deciding whether or not to participate was really not an option. Participants were not free to decide, or had the right to withdraw, because of the obligation created by the school’s principal in asking for the students’ full cooperation during the introductory session of the study. In other words, the school’s principal, who was Bedouin, acted as a community leader; this reality influenced ‘the consent process, the issue of trust, perceptions about the consent process and participant beliefs or research’ (Loue and Pike 2010). Bedouin communities have a strong sense of collective identity which is observed in almost everything in their lives as a result of their developed sense of community and tribal allegiance (Abu-Lughod 2000). Thus, one cannot expect a participant from such communities to withdraw or even to refuse to take part in a study where others in the community have already agreed to participate. This situation problematizes the concept of the right to withdraw with its underlying individualist assumptions (Barrett and Parker 2003). Stories from field 3: Phouvanh’s narrative This narrative recounts an experience within a doctoral study in the field of educational policy analysis in Laos, one of the least developed countries in Southeast Asia. Given that the country is increasingly becoming a recipient of aid, the study was concerned with understanding donor influence on the policy development of basic education programmes. Among other things, the research design required data collection through approximately 50 semi-structured interviews with relevant personnel in both the national government and international aid agencies. In this narrative, the politics of interviewing are discussed in the context of aid-dependent countries, like Laos, where the power relations between the donor agencies and the government impact the way data are collected in the field. The key participants in the study were senior officials from the Lao Ministry of Education, such as directors and deputy directors of relevant departments, who were classified as policy-makers. Policy implementers were also interviewed, technical staff who hold junior positions at the central, provincial, and district levels, but have extensive experience in actually implementing projects at the field level. In the international aid agencies, programme managers and senior advisers involved in the policy-making processes were interviewed. Most of these people were expatriates, while the national local staff who held junior positions such as programme officers were also included because of their involvement in policy implementation. Guided by a ‘policy trajectory study’, which deals with policy across the stages of the policy cycle (Maguire and Ball 1994), semi-structured interviews were conducted with these participants through using a free-flowing conversational style. The discussion was mainly focused on whether there are any influences on the production of

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policy, how much engagement there is by external support and donor agencies, the extent of external involvement in the policy development, along with the consideration of conditionalities attached to aid. During the interview process, many challenges were found that could be related to the political nature of interviewing these particular participants and that also raise ethical issues. For many of these participants, voicing their personal opinions about the relations between policy and aid in any context, including a research study, can be problematic. While issues related to recording interviews are always referred to in an ethics review process, in this case these issues were critical. Participants first raised this issue when completing the consent forms. Most of the government junior officials, and some of those in senior positions, were not happy to participate in the study, unless the interviews were conducted without the tape recorder. This issue was also raised by people from Laos and some of the expatriates who work for bilateral and multilateral aid agencies. These people were happy to sign the consent forms and discuss any matters which were central to their working lives, but they did not feel comfortable about being recorded. As a result, more than half of the total participants were interviewed without audio records. Following the ‘correct’ process for gaining informed consent, Phouvanh explained very clearly, prior to the actual conversation starting, that these audio recordings were for research purposes, to review the conversation for further analysis, and that they would be kept in a locked filing cabinet and would not be disclosed to anyone. He also told them that people’s names would not be used when writing the thesis, as stated in the ethics clearance, but generic position titles would be used instead, and that if names were really needed, they would be pseudonyms. However, they still insisted that their words not be recorded if Phouvanh wanted to interview them. Despite these assurances about the privacy of the recordings, it did seem that the national government officials were afraid that their voices, if recorded, could be used as evidence of criticizing the donor agencies about the ‘games’ played that often take the form of interfering with the existing system. In addition, the junior officials seemed to be wary that their superior officers could learn of their words accusing particular donors, and this could affect existing cooperation between government institutions and the aid agencies. It seemed that the participants believed that this could contribute to the loss of grant projects, which would be unfortunate as the education sector is in desperate need of aid. Many of the national staff working with international aid agencies were critical of the way that donors provide financial and technical support to the government, including their own organizations. Some of them expressed frustration with the way that the government handles aid projects, the traditional ways that the government works, and with the limited capacity of some officials in managing projects. It appeared that these people were worried that voicing these criticisms could affect their employment contracts and limit future job opportunities. They were also worried that these criticisms could affect their personal relationships with their government counterparts when working on routine project coordination. The issues of confidentiality are critical to the conduct of research in many aiddependent countries like Laos. Phouvanh had never thought that the recording of the interviews would be of such concern for so many people and, significantly, the issue was not raised during the ethics review process. Importantly, the topic of the research study and the theoretical approach are implicated in the participants’ concerns. Asking questions and challenging the relations between donor agencies and countries

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dependent on aid is not common in those recipient nations. The study has been developed using postcolonial theories, which are about interrogating things that are happening that appear to be unfair, while simultaneously claiming the aspirational right of all people to the same material and cultural well-being (Young 2003). These theories informed the construction of the questions that were asked during the interviews, and the nature of these questions could have added to the concern of the participants. For example, questions were asked about the ‘influences’ of donor agencies and the ‘attachment of conditionalities’ to aid, specifically drawing attention to the power relations between donor organizations and the government. However, Phouvanh was not aware that conducting policy research with donorfunded project personnel would be an issue. Hamid (2010) argues that the local norms of social and cultural behaviours and the absence of institutionalized research ethics in relation to doing studies in developing countries have not been mentioned enough in the literature. Richard (1996) mentioned that in his experience of elite interviewing, interviewees were reluctant to have their comments recorded. Recording appeared to prevent honest responses and restricted the openness of information provided (Beamer 2002; Richard 1996). Sinclair and Brady (1987) also found when interviewing members of the US Congress that using tape recorders with high-ranking officials reduced the frankness of the answers received. The relatively minor attention paid to this issue in the literature could contribute to the unquestioned assumptions made by researchers from the Centre (including research advisors) who think that data collection through interviewing is relatively easy, even with tape recorders. Apart from privacy and confidentiality, there are some additional reasons why people may not want to be recorded. We do not know how much the local people, especially the government officials and the national staff of aid agencies, understood the research processes and the significance of the study. They might have seen the research as an investigation of previous funded projects, or that it was a study looking for evidence to prove an argument, rather than the interpretive and exploratory study that is being undertaken. Phouvanh’s own status of being an insider/outsider also affected people not wanting to speak to the tape – this is a question of researcher positionality. As an insider, he may enjoy easier access and greater rapport while talking (Griffith 1998), but what Mercer (2007) reminds us is that participants’ decisions about allowing their voices to be taped might be influenced by who they think the researcher is. This is because some people may not be willing to share certain information with an insider because of fear of being judged (Shah 2004). In reflecting on the interviews Phouvanh realizes that being an insider is not always advantageous. It is possible that most of the interviewees believed that preconceived judgements about their responses had already been made, and this perception certainly affected the information they chose to give. On the other hand, some of the informants thought that Phouvanh was an outsider, especially those whom he knew socially, but had never previously spoken with professionally. They saw him as a doctoral student, currently living overseas, who had arrived to investigate how things happened in previous projects. It was obvious that they felt uncomfortable talking, especially when talking to the tape recorder. As well as these issues, broader perspectives could be more relevant to how the power and authority of aid impacts on data collection through semi-structured interviews. As the country depends heavily on external support, education programmes can be totally controlled by bilateral and multilateral agencies (Fox 2004). The questions in this research topic seemed to be difficult for many informants who have

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never been asked to criticize aid projects in Laos. One example is drawn from an interview with an expatriate, who has been working in Laos for almost 10 years, who explained why she was afraid of commenting on the tape. She simply said that she still works in Laos and hopes to work there as long as possible; therefore, she did not want to criticize either aid agencies or the government on the tape, as this might impact on her employment contract. Such fear really showed that she did not trust any promises Phouvanh made to her. These issues may also be related to the way that politics in this country works, where people have been educated not to be critical about whatever the government is doing. They do not feel comfortable in criticizing donor agencies either as they are so generous in providing aid. Most of the key informants pointed out that the issue of donor influence on policy development and the conditionalities attached with their aid are not new phenomena; therefore, many thought the government should just take the aid without any undue scrutiny. Concluding thoughts from the periphery to the Centre The three narratives of field work raise contradictions and irreconcilable differences between the ethically sound conduct of research in these contexts and the requirements of the ethics review committees and associated guidelines and processes in higher education institutions located in the Centre of postcolonial and transnational educational opportunities. In particular, they highlight the personal conflicts that researchers face as they grapple with their twin obligations. Bridging these differences could be seen in some ways to illustrate the hybridity of identities and social relations explained in Bhaba’s and others non-essentialist accounts of postcolonial relations (Rizvi, Lingard, and Lavia 2006). Yet, such hybridity depends in many ways upon the possibilities for boundary crossing available within each space, possibilities that appear to be limited when confronted with the institutional apparatus of an ethics review committee. These limitations must also be considered from the perspective of these researchers who are not only positioned within the periphery of global and postcolonial relations, but are also constructed as peripheral members of the academic community, as not only doctoral candidates, but ‘international’ doctoral candidates with the associated connotations of temporary occupation. The three research narratives and ethical issues raised demonstrate the pressing need for the ‘deparochialization of the research imagination’ in Appadurai’s (2001) terms, in research practices in universities in the academic Centre. The fourth author of this paper is the Chair of the Ethics Committee that approved two of the three applications discussed in the stories from the field. As such, she uses the knowledge, experiences, and skills obtained through that position to negotiate the ethics processes so boundaries can be crossed. To Eileen, the boundaries crossed during the process of seeking ethics approval include those constructed between positivist and poststructural theoretical understandings of research design and method, as well as the cultural and social contexts of another peripheral country, Papua New Guinea and the norms assumed in ethics processes that have been discussed in this paper. She has been reasonably ‘successful’ in gaining ethics approval at the university level, even while transgressing these boundaries. For example, approval has been given for participants in Papua New Guinea to provide oral rather than written consent. It could be argued that such a request would not even be considered by a doctoral student who believes that his/her methodological approach is regulated and restricted

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by the ethics reviews processes. This raises questions about the possibilities of hybridity when read from the ‘outside-in’ rather than ‘inside-out’. Is it easier to engage in this dangerously risky business of boundary crossing when you are working from the Centre and trying to move out, rather than working from the periphery and trying to move in? In an attempt to support these hybrid moves, there are recommendations that can be made to both early career researchers and those involved in reviewing applications for ethics clearance. First, to those conducting research in cross-cultural situations, it is important to focus on the principles inherent in the ethical conduct of research: integrity, respect for persons, beneficence, and justice (NHMRC 2009). Conducting research that is ethical is, above all else, being honest in the negotiation of relations between the researcher and the researched. It should be an important part of the process of seeking ethics approval that careful and considered thought is given to the contextual understandings of these principles. For example, a reflexive examination of the ethical conduct of research in cross-cultural contexts could include asking questions such as: How does one show respect in another cultural setting? How is written consent perceived in this context and is it different to the perceptions of those living in the Centre? Any application for ethics clearance should be undertaken with these principles at the fore, with the bureaucratic and administrative aspects of the process being considered as background issues only and as ‘a floor rather than a ceiling’ (Loue and Pike 2010, 33). Admittedly, the ethical principles included in an application for ethics clearance give ‘a shared frame of reference and are useful to guide ethical decision-making’ (Piper and Simons 2005, 58). However, these codes should be considered as ‘abstract statements of intent and cannot be followed simply as rules’ (Piper and Simons 2005, 58). For those holding the authority to approve applications to conduct research, it is important to be cognizant of the contexts in which studies are undertaken, and to make judgements based on understanding the complexities associated with the boundary crossing work discussed earlier. Providing examples of studies that use non-traditional approaches to seeking ‘informed consent’ (see Liamputtong 2008, 12 –15) or assuring ‘privacy and confidentiality’ could assist early career researchers in the process. The development of such examples could provide important ‘educative’ moments for those involved in the approval process. Rivie`re (2011) suggests that beginning the ethics process with questions about the relations between the researcher and the researched is a valuable starting point for rethinking these issues. Interestingly, the form used by all the authors to apply for ethics clearance does include a broad question: ‘Give details of the ethical considerations related to the proposed project’. This instruction is followed by the advice that: This question does not necessarily require a SOLUTION to any ethical issues that may be part of the project, but you must indicate that you have considered carefully the implications of these ethical issues. Unfortunately, this section is often interpreted as part of the regulatory process, which could indicate that the discursive nature of the text of the form requires a regulated, normative response. For doctoral students who are applying for ethics clearance to conduct their studies, and for their advisors and supervisors, the process should not be seen as an administrative or bureaucratic attempt to govern the nature of the research being undertaken, but should provide opportunities for substantive discussions about the nature of ethical

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research and how those ethical principles can be translated or interpreted in cross-cultural contexts. The ongoing work of Smith (1999) and others in Aotearoa New Zealand interrogating the nature of research in cross-cultural situations is invaluable in these discussions (Bishop 2005; Liamputtong 2008; Pope 2008). The construction of principles to support a Maori approach to research is not only invaluable within that particular cultural context but assists in the destabilization of essentialist assumptions made in Eurocentric research designs in general. As Pope (2008) points out, crossing epistemological and cultural boundaries while also working in an advisor/student relationship is ‘tricky’, and uncertain, but is also productively challenging in that new views of what counts as ethical research can be produced. This is what Appadurai (2001) refers to as deparochializing the research imagination in the face of globalization and the internationalization of higher education. Finally, as Sikes and Piper (2010) argue, it is important to consider the impact of ethics processes on students from peripheral countries as a form of colonization, a position also argued persuasively by Appadurai (2001) and Connell (2007). The narratives included in this paper are attempts by those on the periphery to engage in productive and meaningful dialogues with those in authority so that new understandings of the issues related to cross-cultural ethical research can be achieved. It is hoped that the documentation of such realities will feed the broader processes of intellectual conversations across the Centre –periphery divide that will challenge the construction of internationalization of higher education in the Centre as simply socializing peripheral students into hegemonic epistemologies and ways of doing research, rather than advancing possibilities for new more productivity hybrid approaches to knowledge and methodologies (Lingard 2006). Certainly, the evidence adumbrated in this paper supports the argument of so many postcolonial theorists that displacement is productive for the development and advancement of useful knowledge.

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