We need a Place to Think. The Pre-conditions for Research Work

I coordinated a research project, carried out together with 4 other Italian universities, dedicated to Cultures and Practices of Evaluation in the Educational Services for Adolescents. The project aimed at exploring two types of Educational Services: one is more innovative and the other is more traditional. The aim was 1. to analyze critically the regulations governing the evaluation of Educational Services, 2. to explore concrete evaluation practices in the daily educational work in the community, 3. to compare what gathered in steps 1 and 2, trying to analyze the differences or the points of contact. We used a mixed methodology: the ethnographic, clinical, educational, participatory and narrative method. Among the many themes emerged, I submit the question of the pre-conditions necessary in order to have contexts in which it is possible to do research. In fact, we have experienced that certain contexts are open to the researcher, allowing him to collect data, only after having undertaken a preliminary work, in order to create confidence and support in the way of thinking. The key issues concern the relationship between the preconditions of the research and the possibility to carry it out ranging between training and research, between the strictness of the data collected and the complexity of human experience and education in particular, between the presentation of data and research ethics. The Equipe of the Community was a group of educators very anxious, scared, frustrated, with persecutory fantasies from outside, particularly with respect to the institutions from which it depended (local authority, Co-operative, the Juvenile Court, etc.) and with many internal conflicts. Therefore, it claimed to be helpful and interested by word of mouth but when it came to having to make observations, interviews or focus groups, we went through situations of defensive silence or very strong outbursts of aggression.The alternative we faced was to collect insignificant data, to give up the research or to withdraw from looking at certain times of the research on content data and take charge of the educational and psychological growth of the group. As the research was going on, we realized that we needed to make a double work in order to continue the research, that was to alternate moments of data collection, through ethnographic observations, non-directive interviews (Rogers), focus groups on evaluation, to moments of taking charge of the group and psychological training of the group to learn how to think together as a group. So we started using the model of the Group Relations (Tavistock Institute), of the Bion's group theory of basic assumptions, of the Lewin's field theory, linking together the psychoanalytic and systemic view, in order to be able to listen to the tumultuous emotions and to help the group to tolerate them without going to pieces. Moreover, we used the methodology of clinical and pedagogical training (Massa) to help the group to think of itself as a group, to find ways of communication and dialogue among members, and to go through and to give value to the conflict as a form of knowledge of each other's position . When, after about 1 year of work, the group began to work, that is when the field was 'cleaned', it was finally possible to collect data on the thematic contents of the research. Actually, we considered this support as an important part of the research , using as a method of data analysis the description of the psychological process of the group and the identification of the anxieties of the group according to the psychoanalytical categories.