Methodological pluralism in educational research

1. Methodological pluralism in educational research Paul Garland Sheffield Hallam University England 23th November 2010

2. Doctoral students and methodology • want to ‘nail down’ your work with methodological labels (constructivist grounded theory, phenomenological, realist, etc.) • labels do not adequately reflect the work that you are doing, particularly the tensions or contradictions within that work between different epistemological and ontological discourses you tap into.

3. typical methodological tensions • espouse social constructionist views but want to claim cause and effect • take a discourse analytical approach but treat verbal data at face value • avow participative approach but 'other' the participants by use of third person and absence of researcher • identifying one's work as belonging to a particular approach (e.g. grounded theory; ethnography; action research) without recognising the approach encompasses many different positions

4. continued .... • saying you are doing qualitative research for rich data but fretting about small numbers, representativeness of samples • referring to numbers as if this makes the work more acceptable/scientific • wanting procedures (the lure of software) • viewing the interview as mutual construction but getting transcriptions done for you (sorry for the accusatory tone)

5. How to understand these tensions? • confusion arising from ignorance • (applies to all of us) • the effects of different discourses • (it is hard for students who espouse social constructionist positions to resist appealing to ‘positivist’ constructs such as validity, reliability and value neutrality) • desire (expectation) for consistency • or perhaps a reflection of multiple-ontological relations to the social world? • (the right answer!)

6. Example of multiple ontology: Habermas’ three ‘worlds’ • a ‘hard’ physical world, a ‘soft’ mental world and, sitting between these two an intersubjective or everyday social world • “.. that issues from the interpretive processes of acting subjects and congeals to objectivity” (1984: 79), forming a “reference system that is mutually presupposed in communication processes” (1984: 84). • For each of these worlds, claims to validity can be made which can be tested or challenged using intersubjectively agreed norms and procedures. TASK: find an example of an object of study that can be understood in terms of these three worlds

7. 3 worlds give rise to different claims claims to • truth (in the objective world - “the totality of existing states of affairs”) • rightness (in the shared social world – “the totality of the legitimately regulated interpersonal relationships of a social group”) • truthfulness (in our own subjective world - “the totality of experiences to which one has privileged access”).

8. Can we avoid ‘ontologically inclusive’ positions? With elements of • Positivism? • Patterns, structures, mechanisms, explanations, cause-effect relations • Hermeneutics? • Interpretations, constructions, construals, perceptions, reflexivity • Linguistic turn? • Discourses, discursive practices, limits imposed by the language available to us

9. Dilemmas of postmodernism • 'dangerous relativism' • no grand narratives, truth is context-bound • leads to a obsession with identity? • The process of doing research, my involvement in the sense-making, who am I and what is being done here? • or a pragmatic concern with practice? • If truth is contextual, we can still work on contexts ...

10. Habermas: history of philosophy as succession of different paradigms • a process of correction, refinement and accumulation • not the replacement of one paradigm by another • the 'old ontological paradigm' of the correspondence theory of truth (an objective world that we can directly interpret) remains “a residual intuition” (1996b: 355) • not replaced by subjectivism (introspection, scepticism, a dependence on the self as the source of truth) • Nor does the linguistic turn mean the abandonment of what has been learnt through the subjectivist paradigm.

11. research as objectification • Distinction (1984: 47) aesthetic disposition presupposes distance from the world “which is the basis of the bourgeois experience of the world” • Homo Academicus (1988: xv) aim is “reappropriation of the self which, paradoxically, is only accessible through objectification of the familiar world” • “In fact his freedom in the face of the social determinisms which affect him is proportionate to the power of his theoretical and technical methods of objectification, and above all, perhaps, to his ability to use them on himself, so to speak, to objectify his own position through the objectification of the space within which are defined both his position and his primary vision of his position, and positions opposed to it” (1988: 15)

12. Habermas: objectification need not mean withdrawal ..... • “In thematizing what the participants merely presuppose and assuming a reflective attitude to the interpretandum, one does not place oneselfoutside the communication context under investigation; one deepens and radicalises it in a way that is in principle open to all participants. In natural contexts this path from communicative action to discourse is often blocked…” (1984: 130) • “What is at stake is not the correct representation of reality but everyday practices that must not fall apart.” (1996b: 359)

13. communicative action • aimed at achieving consensus, which requires: • openness to all, • equal opportunity of participation, • inclusiveness • freedom from compulsion • idealised consensus not an outcome, but a process that is implied in the way we build and use knowledge, the way we agree actions that are achieved by consensus and the way we make claims to validity and moral rightness, that is the way we try to convince each other of our beliefs and values

14. communicative research • educational research as unblocking a path of communicative action by moving to a level of discourse, in which the taken-for-granteds of a segment of the educational lifeworld receive a radicalised re-examination through the problematising of givens about what is taken to be true and right in given practices because • The researcher is inescapably within yet, having the capacity to objectivise, able to stand outside (in some senses at least) practice by adopting a theorising stance that allows thematising to take place.

15. discourse ethics • research as a form of ethical practice • moral argumentation //theorising : both take a stance outside of the natural or naïve attitude of everyday practice, whilst stressing “the web of moral feelings and attitudes that is interwoven with the practice of everyday life.” (Habermas1990: 77). • " the moral disarmament of academics already in the grip of a cultivated scepticism” (1990: 98) • “Every morality revolves around equality of respect, solidarity, and the common good.” (1990: 201)

16. Why should educationalists subscribe? • Performatively: educational researchers subscribe to some notion of truth, explanation or enlightenment through their very practices • Ontologically: we want to acknowledge the fundamental competence and capability of all social actors to adopt an objectifying stance. • Ethically: much (most) educational research appeals to values of individual rights and social solidarity • This subscription to a common rationality is implied through an engagement in both empirical research and scholarly discourse.

17. objectivity or criticality? procedural ideal of communicative action v recognition of the vulnerability of the general public sphere to the “repressive and exclusionary effects of unequally distributed social power, structural violence and systematically distorted communication” (Habermas 1996a: 307-8)

18. tools for criticality • critical theory – instrumental v critical rationality • rationalisation thesis • performativity • critical discourse analysis • colonisation thesis • Etc are bound up with value positions

19. facts and values • are these separate in your thinking or linked? • are you seeking knowledge about or seeking to change practices? • if change, what is the basis of evaluation of what needs changing? • can research that is motivated by values be unbiased?

20. ‘precious’ or pluralistic? • Discussion: • have you already decided on a 'coherent' position? • does this allow for tensions and contradictions or is it exclusive? • are you reading 'how to' books or texts that give inspiration? • are you thinking procedurally or methodologically?

21. Bibliography/references Bourdieu, P (1988) Homo Academicus, trans. Peter Collier, Cambridge: Polity Bourdieu, P, (1984) Distinction, trans. Richard Nice, Abingdon: Routledge Habermas, J. (1984) The Theory of Communicative Action, Vol 1: Reason and the Rationalisation of Society, London: Heinemann Habermas, J. (1990) Moral Consciousness and Communicative Action, Cambridge: Polity Habermas, J (1996a) Between Facts and Norms, Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press Habermas, J, (1996b) ‘Richard Rorty’s Pragmatic Turn’ in Habermas, J ed Cooke, M (1999) On the pragmatics of communication, Cambridge: Polity pp 343-382