Awaiting further consideration

Abstract

School exclusion is a relatively rare occurrence, but there is a disproportionate over-representation of students with special educational needs (SEN) being excluded from mainstream classrooms, both formally and through hidden practices. Venturing from the classroom into the world of educational research for my doctoral study, I came across further potentially exclusionary practices as questions were raised about the capacity of students labelled as SEN to provide voluntary informed consent. In my contribution to this special issue, I use poetry to reflect on ethical issues in my study and the need to challenge perceptions of the vulnerable in order to fight for their rights to be heard and participate equitably in all aspects of society.

During the twilight years of my teaching career, I embarked upon a professional doctorate programme (EdD). Throughout the programme, I continued teaching full-time. I was working with students identified as having special educational needs (SEN) who had been excluded from mainstream schools, where it was common practice for female teachers to be referred by students to as ‘Miss’.

The doctoral research I had planned involved a mixed-gender class of students aged between 14 and 17. It was a small class of 10 students that I taught on a regular basis. Due to having been classified by the mainstream school system as having SEN, these students were considered vulnerable by the institutional ethics review panel, and their capacity to give informed consent was questioned. This poem reflects my experiences at the start of the thesis, when I felt I was battling with the institutional ethics board. The poem reflects the to-ing and fro-ing involved in negotiating the uncertainties of the ethical approval process and my felt need for the students to be enabled to make voluntary informed decisions about their own involvement in the research.

The use of poetry enables the expression of the emotional aspects of personal experiences. This poem captures something of my own feelings as I waited for and negotiated ethical approval for my doctoral thesis, where I used poetic transcription of my interviews with the participants to access and analyse their experiences of being made to feel ‘other’, and to convey the cacophony of confusion in their responses to being excluded.

Awaiting further consideration

Well

Who am I writing about ethics

Well

This is who I am writing about ethics

A newcomer

An alien

Looking in from afar

A teacher but also a researcher

Passionate to know more

A teacher researcher

Tiptoeing into a new world

An alien world

A world of waiting

For committees and approval

Induction completed

Plans submitted

Ethics forms submitted

A time in limbo

Frustration

Awaiting ethical approval

But now I’m thwarted

My students deemed vulnerable

In this alien world

This Ethics Committee requiring

Further information

I’m unprepared

Unprepared for seemingly endless waiting

It is my conundrum

To prove their capacity

To refuse

To say ‘I’m not participating’

In my world of the excluded

There is no time to stop and wait

This unruly mass

Flung together

Known as the difficult class

How to show what they are like

This difficult class

Their capacity to say no

Especially considering

They even told Ofsted to take a hike!

Ethics permeate both worlds

Codes of practices

Assessing risks

Guidelines for safeguarding

All aimed at

Protecting children

This class

The difficult class

They want to know

Why I study

I talk

We talk

We talk a lot

About

My trials and tribulations

They sowed the seeds

A potential project

To understand

Their pathways to exclusion

But more

Incorporating poetic transcription

Discussing the dangers

Of uncovering past trauma

This fear is real

Articulated clearly by a quiet voice

Articulating his fear

Fear is sharing his past ordeal

Miss, the memories

Miss, the memories

I hate the memories of that place

Those memories too painful to share

I wouldn’t want to participate

It would be too much to bear

This quiet one's articulation

Could it just open up

A pathway to participation

The others excluded from education

But now maybe not from the conversation

I am now an agent

Fighting for the silenced

Fighting for their rights

Their rights to be heard

Excluded

Vulnerable

But also highly capable

But now

Awaiting further consideration

Time passes

A time in limbo

Time passes

Months of mounting frustration

Then…

The email arrived

Relief

Research proposal finally accepted

Ethical approval granted

Voices of the vulnerable finally included

A new chapter begins

New challenges await

My research journey

Just passed through the starting gate