The ethical significance of (mathematically) engaging with students and teachers while collecting qualitative data

Abstract

Qualitative research in education is organized and conducted around knowing something specific about teaching and learning: it is conducted in the search of knowledge. This attitude, LÉVINAS explains, poses an ethical challenge because it reduces the otherness of the other to sameness and negates our fundamental relation of responsibility for the other: "knowledge is still and always solitude." Although scholars articulate the significance of such ethics for teaching and learning, it is yet to be conceptualized in the perspective of conducting classroom research. In this paper, we provide an exemplifying analysis of a classroom research episode (form our content area of mathematics) to renew the concept of observing through which going into the classroom and collecting data is realized in/as ethical responsibility for the students and the teachers.