Title: Ethics and Narrative Inquiry: Methodological Considerations

Instructor:  Peter de Costa, Michigan State University

Abstract: In light of growing calls to ensure that ethical standards are preserved in applied linguistics research (De Costa et al.,2020; Isbell et al., 2022), I examine how ethical research practices can be enacted in and through our interactions with research participants. I start with an overview of techniques and instruments than we can deploy to this end before recommending general resources to which the workshop participants can turn. Next, I explore how narrative inquiry is fast innovating in ways to include, among other things, small stories, autoethnography and photo narratives. In the third part of my workshop, I focus specifically on how ethical practices can be observed in narrative inquiry both at the macroethical level of gaining institutional approval and at the microethical level of examining how narrative researchers negotiate ethical dilemmas that emerge before, during, and after the investigative process. I close the workshop by mapping out future directions for this increasingly vibrant – but still relatively underexplored – area of research within our field.