Learning to Be Ethically Thoughtful When Researching Motivation

About the talk

Whether we are seasoned academics, student researchers or early career scholars, we are all familiar with procedural ethics – that is, the procedures for obtaining ethical approval for our research projects before we can begin collecting data. However, during the fieldwork process itself, we also need to be attentive to unanticipated and potentially complex issues in the ethics in practice of our relationships with the people and communities we research. These issues may extend also to how we write up our research and how we represent ourselves and those involved in our research in our published accounts, dissertations and theses. Where the study of motivation is under focus in particular, such issues may extend to ethical questions about whose motivations and interests are shaping the research inquiry, and whose motivations and interests ultimately matter.

In this talk, I would like to highlight some ethical and relational complexities that we may face in our research and writing up practices when we investigate language learning motivation. My ideas are drawn from a book I have recently published on Language Learning Motivation: An Ethical Agenda for Research (Oxford University Press, 2020).

About the author

Ema Ushioda is a Professor and Head of the Department of Applied Linguistics, University of Warwick, UK. She has been working in language education for over 30 years and has particular research interests in motivation and autonomy in language learning, and in qualitative methods of inquiry. Recent books include Teaching and researching motivation (co-authored by Dörnyei, Routledge 2021), Language learning motivation: An ethical agenda for research (Oxford University Press, 2020); International perspectives on motivation: Language learning and professional challenges (Palgrave Macmillan, 2013), and Motivation, language identity and the L2 self (co-edited by Dörnyei, Multilingual Matters, 2009).