Beyond "Doing No Harm": Saddle Points In Anonymization And Masking As Socialized Practices For New Researchers

A central challenge to addressing what becomes taken-for-granted in method in educational research is socialization into the field. During graduate training, students and their mentors are challenged by unique projects. Here, authors, two early career scholars and a faculty mentor, offer a critical interrogation of socialization experiences related to methods of anonymizing and masking, questions of responsibilities to varying publics, and the good that research might, or might not, do in the world by sharing a co-constructed narrative based on interactive interviews which took place over six months. The authors identify saddle points, or points of stillness, within these conversations that offer, but do not dictate, considerations for teaching practices of anonymizing and masking as part of qualitative research training and socialization.