RESEARCH METHOD COHEN ok

128 SENSITIVE EDUCATIONAL RESEARCH
Academic educational research on the powerful
may be unlike other forms of educational research
in that confidentiality may not be able to be
assured. The participants are identifiable and
public figures. This may produce ‘problems of
censorship and self-censorship’ (Walford 1994c:
229). It also means that information given in
confidence and ‘off the record’ unfortunately
may have to remain so. The issue raised in
researching the powerful is the disclosure of
identities, particularly if it is unclear what has
been said ‘on the record’ and ‘off the record’ (Fitz
and Halpin 1994: 35–6).
Fitz and Halpin (1994) indicate that the
government minister whom they interviewed
stated, at the start of the interview, what was
to be attributable. They also report that they
used semi-structured interviews in their research
of powerful people, valuing both the structure and
the flexibility of this type of interview, and that
they gained permission to record the interviews
for later transcription, for the sake of a research
record. They also used two interviewers for each
session, one to conduct the main part of the
interview and the other to take notes and ask
supplementary questions; having two interviewers
present also enabled a post-interview cross-check
to be undertaken. Indeed having two questioners
helped to negotiate the way through the interview
in which advisers to the interviewee were also
present, to monitor the proceedings and interject
where deemed fitting, and to take notes (Fitz and
Halpin 1994: 38, 44, 47).
Fitz and Halpin (1994: 40) comment on
the considerable amount of gatekeeping that
was present in researching the powerful, in
terms of access to people (with officers
guarding entrances and administrators deciding
whether interviews will take place), places (‘elite
settings’), timing (and scarcity of time with
busy respondents), ‘conventions that screen off
the routines of policy-making from the public
and the academic gaze’, conditional access and
conduct of the research (‘boundary maintenance’)
monitoring and availability (Fitz and Halpin
1994: 48–9). Gewirtz and Ozga (1994: 192–3)
suggest that gatekeeping in researching the
powerful can produce difficulties which include
‘misrepresentation of the research intention, loss
of researcher control, mediation of the research
process, compromise and researcher dependence’.
Research with powerful people usually takes
place on their territory, under their conditions
and agendas (a ‘distinctive civil service voice’: Fitz
and Halpin 1994: 42), working within discourses
set by the powerful (and, in part, reproduced by
the researchers), and with protocols concerning
what may or may not be disclosed (e.g.
under a government’s Official Secrets Act or
privileged information), within a world which
may be unfamiliar and, thereby, disconcerting
for researchers and with participants who may
be overly assertive, and sometimes rendering the
researcher as having to pretend to know less than
he or she actually knows. As Fitz and Halpin
(1994: 40) commented: ‘we glimpsed an unfamiliar
world that was only ever partially revealed’, and
one in which they did not always feel comfortable.
Similarly, Ball (1994b: 113) suggests that ‘we need
to recognize ... the interview as an extension of
the ‘‘play of power’’ rather than separate from it,
merely a commentary upon it’, and that, when
interviewing powerful people ‘the interview is
both an ethnographic ... and a political event’.
As Walford (1994c) remarks:
Those in power are well used to their ideas being
taken notice of. They are well able to deal with
interviewers, to answer and avoid particular questions
to suit their own ends, and to present their own role
in events in a favourable light. They are aware of
what academic research involves, and are familiar
with being interviewed and having their words taperecorded.
In sum, their power in the educational
world is echoed in the interview situation, and
interviews pose little threat to their own positions.
(Walford 1994c: 225)
McHugh (1994: 55) comments that access to
powerful people may take place not only through
formal channels but also through intermediaries
who introduce researchers to them. Here his own
vocation as a priest helped him to gain access
to powerful Christian policy-makers and, as he
was advised, ‘if you say whom you have met,