The role of reflexivity and ethics in the context of autism studies

Traditionally social research has been dominated by the methodology of the ‘hard’ sciences in the pursuit of generalisable social ‘facts’ (Durkheim, 1895), yet in more recent decades, the dominance of the Positivist model of research has diminished (Scott and Usher, 1996, 1999), leading to concerns regarding the ‘situatedness’ of social researchers as producers of knowledge and as implicated in a relationship of power with their participants. This essay outlines the ethical issues of positionality and reflexivity in research, highlighting how positionality is of the utmost importance with regards to my own research context: the ideology and practices involved in the education of people diagnosed as having an Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD).