Objectivity is no more than the agreement of everybody in the room

This thought-provoking remark is attributed to Edward Boyle, Minister of Education from 1962-1964 and Vice-Chancellor of Leeds University from 1970-81. I first heard it a few years ago. At the time, I was beginning to do some research to try to reveal the factors which helped bilingual children to succeed in mainstream classrooms. I wanted to track a small group of ‘successful’ children through their different learning experiences at Key Stage 2. I was worried that the approach I was contemplating, which was qualitative and ethnographic rather than quantitative and statistical, was too subjective and ‘unscientific’. Boyle’s remark encapsulated my concerns. It also partly answered the questions related to the problems of objectivity in classroom ethnography for me. It helped me to see that the problem was not one of seeking somehow to make the research methodology totally objective in order to present a watertight hypothesis which could claim to be the answer to the problem. The causes of ethnic minority underachievement are many and complex, and at times seemingly contradictory. The connections between them are similarly complex, difficult at times to see and analyse.

Gillborn and Gipps (1996) point out how qualitative approaches to research can help us to understand the complex dynamics of teaching and learning . They also reveal the factors, often not revealed by quantitative findings, which underpin success or failure (as demonstrated by test and exam results), in classroom situations. They can also help, in a non-judgemental way, to understand attitudes and sensitivities, especially important where complex and deeply personal issues such as racism are involved. They are, thus, appropriate for researching issues to do with the achievement of ethnic minority children in school. Gillborn and Gipps point out (pp. 57-58) how it is often the effects of perception and stereotype which mediate the success or failure of ethnic minority children in school, rather than any more tangible, quantifiable factors.

In my own research, I realised that each participant (which included children, their teachers and their parents) had their own experiences and viewpoints which influenced the situation in some way. They all had to be taken into account, if a meaningful outcome was to be achieved. The problem was to find a way to allow all of the voices of the participants in the process to be heard as clearly as possible. This would inevitably result, in one sense, in biased conclusions. But I realised that the recognition of those biases was actually very important. They showed the ways in which people as individuals were affected by the systems imposed on them, rather than assuming that those people had no thoughts, feelings or responses of their own.

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