The ethics of outsider research

This chapter examines criticisms made by or on behalf of ‘disempowered’ groups against outsider research into their experience: that outsiders cannot properly understand and represent their experience and are exploitative and disrespectful, and that having outsiders articulate your views for you is intrinsically disempowering. I argue that ‘outsider research’ can contribute to the better understanding of the researcher, of the community engaged in the research and of the wider community. Nevertheless the claim ‘nothing about us without us’ expresses an ethical and epistemological truth in educational research: as a statement about the kind of relationship which should obtain between researcher and participants.