Donna Frost

Philosophical foundations and methodological principles 69 3 2008 ; Denzin, Lincoln & Smith, 2008 ) place axiological positioning and ideas of ‘what is good’ and ‘goodness’ at the centre of philosophy. Some western philosophers, such as Levinas (Levinas, 1951 / 1989 , 1978 / 1991 ) do the same: for Levinas our ethical stance lies at the centre of our being in the world. He says that the gaze or face of the other (always already) provokes in us an ethical responsibility towards the other. It calls on us to recognise their humanity, their being and becoming, even as we recognize that we do not and cannot know them in their entirety. Ontologically and epistemologically speaking, multiple perspectives or ‘truths’ are possible. In reality certain perspectives are privileged over others within our social groups (eg. Freire, 1970 / 1993 ; Fals-Borda, 1981 ; Carr & Kemmis, 1986 ; Fay, 1987 ; Fals-Borda & Rahman, 1991 ), as has also been touched on in the section above, ‘Age-old insights’. This means that morally responsible interaction with each other must recognise one another’s humanity and potential for becoming and pay attention to inequalities and differences in lived experience (Reason & Rowan, 1981 ; eg. Heron, 1986 ; Reason & Bradbury, 2001 ). Morally equitable research into social phenomena must be explicitly concerned with removing barriers to participation for less powerful groups, and with enabling individuals and groups to take action to transform their contexts, and their ways of being, knowing, doing and becoming in the world. This intent to take or enable transformative action is one of the defining attributes of research undertaken within a critical worldview (Fay, 1987 ; Kemmis & McTaggart, 1988 ; McCormack, 2009 ; Kemmis, McTaggart & Nixon, 2014 ; Titchen, Cardiff & Biong, 2017 ). The moral intent within this research was rooted in the commitment to recognise the humanity and potential of the people who participated, in whatever capacity, and to put effort into the active creation of spaces in which potential could be realised, in which roomwas given to the ineffable qualities of each of us, so that we could be seen and recognised as persons, and in which not everything would be reduced to that which can be comprehended (cf. Levinas, 1935 / 2003 ). The moral intent was thus also directed at holding a certain openness to potentialities. Sing up, question, critique, create Underpinning this research is a belief that we are creative beings, that our creative impulses are essential to our humanity (cf. Dewey, 1910 / 1991 , 1934 ; Freire, 1970 / 1993 ; Bohm, 1996 ) and that the combination of the creative with other aspects of our being brings the potential for powerful insights, personal and