Reading
The “Thing-ness” Problem
Hesse-Biber, S. (2015). Mixed Methods Research: The” Thing-ness” Problem. Qualitative health research, 25(6), 775-788
Welcome to the new academic year. I can’t help feeling that advocates of mixed methodology remind me of the united reformed church. Set up to transcend the binary between catholic and protestant, they simply add another division rather then a conclusive reconciliation. Mixed methodologists might reasonably claim to be pragmatists rising above the paradigm wars afray. This stance does not in itself mean that the deep differences surrounding methods and methodologies are resolved. It means that a new dimension has been added to the debate. Or rather, that some quite traditional ways of working have been rebranded and added to the debate.
Research as an analytical day dream
Everybody loves a good detective story.
Usher (1997) uses one as an extended allegory about modernist and postmodernist research.
In another of Umberto Eco stories, The Name of the Rose (1984) a monk, William of Baskerville, is called in to solve a number of inexplicable murders in a monastery with a library that contains the most extensive collection of books and manuscripts in the Christian world. This quest then becomes entangled with a quest for the book whose identity is unknown yet whose possession is the motive for the murders.
The plot of the novel is centred on the library – a library which is itself a labyrinth with many hidden secrets, the foremost being the mysterious book around which the action revolves. the library is where all knowledge is to be found – if you know how to find it – and only someone like a detective, the epistemological research par excellence with deeply penetrating observation and highly developed powers of reasoning can unlock the secrets of the library-labyrinth and thereby know the ‘truth’ (the identity of the murderer and the book).
The detective is an apt metaphor for the modernist social researcher. (S)he seeks the one and only truth as some sort of quest – a missing piece 0f a puzzle that – once found – makes the picture whole; she is unable to rest until it is found.
In the Name of the Rose, the epistemological hero, Baskerville – fails in his quest. He discovers the truth (a truth) by chance. He stumbles upon it rather then discovering it through a successive chain of logical reasoning. Indeed, there is no deep structure, no master plan, no coherent unifying plot, no discernible pattern nor grand design underlying these murders.
The champion of empiricism solves the mystery through the misinterpretation of the evidence and the occasional irrational leap prompted by a dream and a grammatical error.
I really enjoy Usher’s use of these stories. They convey something about the research as a process that implies much more then technique, method or methodology. In these stories the modernist epistemological question of how are we to know the world is overtaken by the postmodernist concern with ontology ‘what is the world and what is to be done it it’ p29
Usher, R. (1997) Telling a story about research and research as story telling, Ch 3 in McKenzie, G. W., Powell, J., & Usher, R. Understanding social research: perspectives on methodology and practice (No. 16). Psychology Press.
Phenomenology explained by the muppets
Epistemology s the study of how we know or of what the rules for knowing are. But, assuming for a moment the stance of a postmodern writer how I see (my epistemology) must precede what I see (my ontology).
How I see shapes, frames, determines and – even creates what I see (Scheurich,1997) p29 that’s why we can talk about ‘beer goggles’ or ‘rose tinted glasses’!
For the postmodern researcher – textuality, fictionality and narrativity or story-telling are all dimensions of research. This may be illustrated through the novels of Umberto Eco (Usher, 1997).
Eco’s novels provide a metaphor for the epistemological quest that drives the modernist project, a quest for knowledge of deep underlying causes, for unitary meaning and the total explanation of phenomenon.
In Foucault’s Pendulum three protagonists though their work as publishers of esoterica, become intrigued by conspiracy through writings that purport to explain history in terms of a grand plan, cleverly hidden by its authors – the epistemological quest taken to its ultimate (and irrational) end. On the assumption that the more unlikely the connection made the more convincing the plot which ensues, they set out to devise a plan of their own using random compeer-generated associations. When the group committed to a conspiracy theory of history hears of the plan it proceeds to hunt them down for their hidden knowledge. the more they protest that there is no plan in reality, the more the group believe there is. They end up meeting bizarre deaths at the hands of this group for a knowledge which does not exist.
The story may offer some insight into the dis/connections between knowledge and power. It certainly questions the modernist separation. While the actual ‘plan’ is a nonsensical fiction – it is nonetheless extremely powerful in its effects in ways unplanned, unpredicted and undesired by the protagonists. Might it be that ‘knowledge’ which claims to explain the world in terms of deep structures and underlying meaning is dangerous and must be treated with caution lest it overwhelms those who create it and those who become subject to it?
Insight is more meaningful than the mastery of understanding.
McKenzie, G. W., Powell, J., & Usher, R. (1997). Understanding social research: perspectives on methodology and practice (No. 16). Psychology Press.
Dada’s Methodology: ‘explosive teeth flaring up in every direction like fire!’
Martyn Hammersley is proud of his capacity to irritate and unsettle.
The rather unexpected academic spat that takes place between him and Delamont et al (2010) across successive editions of Qualitative Researcher illustrates the caustic nature of the exchanges this playful devil’s advocacy can generate.
While I don’t often agree with Hammersly (2008) I do like the insight he inspires. It is unsettling because Hammersley is an ethnographer. Surely he appreciates that ositivism is dead. It has simply not survived the critical onslaught of post-positivist methodology and a new orthodoxy has taken hold. The qualitative researcher has won and nobody counts anything anymore. This is a caricature, after all what is the current policy inclination for ‘what works’ in education if not positivism? And surely one of the ways of interpreting Abbott (2001) is by saying that methods associated with qualitative research can be squeezed into a quantitative methodological frame. I’m inclined to wonder whether Hammersley is really – after all – a shy positivist in qualitative clothing.
But, despite being interested in his work I am not a fan … Questioning Qualitative Inquiry – was an interesting, illuminating, unsettling and enjoyable (re)read. Not only that, in bits it was funny. His introduction quotes a series of letters written by the American Comedian, Woody Allen. In what he calls a fantasy, Allen writes a piece entitled, ‘If impressionists had been dentists.’ This ‘fantasy’ is a series of imaginary letters from van Gogh to his brother Theo in which he recounts his troubles as a dentist The exchange opens with this letter:
Dear Theo
Will life never treat me decently? I am wracked by despair! My head is pounding. Mrs Sol Schwimmer is suing me because I made her bridge as I felt it and not to fit her ridiculous mouth. That’s right! I can’t work to order like a common tradesman. I decided her bridge should be enormous and billowing and wild, explosive teeth flaring up in every direction like fire! Now she is upset because it won’t fit in her mouth! She is so bourgeois and stupid, I want to smash her. I tried forcing the false plate in but it sticks out like a star burst chandelier. Still, I find it beautiful. She claims she can’t chew! What do I care whether she can chew or not! Theo, I can’t go on like this much longer! I asked Cezanne if he would share an office with me but he is old and infirm and unable to hold the instruments and they must be tied to his wrists but then he lacks accuracy and once inside a mouth, he knocks out more teeth than he saves. What to do?Vincent
The humour of this exchange emerges from the transposition of an attitude or temperament of the artist onto a patently functional activity: dentistry.
The underlying point Hammersley is making is connected to the role, purpose and audience of educational research. He is an ethnographer (with strong empirical leanings) but contrasts a ‘scientific’ approach to research with the advocacy of ‘Dadaist’ qualitative research.
I can’t allow Hammersly to stand without challenge. I am and remain of the position that he clearly has openly acknowledged fantasies of control and limitation (of what counts as quality in educational research). I suspect he would – by some unintentional fluke of coincidence – restrict entry to the academic field to the tightly bound by adherence to a set of rules in his own likeness, I am so much more interested in the wild profusion. My hunch is we are so far away from what even begins to be definitive answers as we are so far away from even defining appropriate questions or without questions points of exploration.
Latter offers an amusing take on this. Hammersly addresses the question – if the researcher were an artist, what sort of artist would she be, and Latter remains in this vein. If the researcher were a drink, what sort of drink would she be, or if not drink, then game or if not game a celebrated figure …
The researchers in this paradigm would drink.
Positivist: Scotch on the Rocks (conventional, hard liquor for hard science, hegemonic
Interpretivist: California white wine, (natural, convivial, social and interactive)
Critical Theory: Vodka (the revolutionaries drink, fiery and subversive)
Deconstructivist: Zima (defines categorisation neither wine, nor beer, nor hard liquor; trendy)
References
Abbott, A. (2001). Chaos of disciplines. University of Chicago Press.
Delamont, S., Atkinson, P., Smith, R., da Costa, L., Hillyard, S., & Pilgrim, A. N. (2010). Review symposium: MARTYN HAMMERSLEY, Questioning Qualitative Inquiry. Qualitative Research, 10(6), 749-758.
Hammersley, M. (2008). Questioning qualitative inquiry: Critical essays. Sage.
freedom, ontology, ethics
I am rather struck by this quote at the moment; it is like having the refrain of a popular song buzzing around my brain. One that I am unable to stop thinking about. it has a poetic symmetrical and a simplistic lyricism. I am still trying to work through what the second half means. Is ethics really the considered form that freedom takes? There is a sometimes forgotten phrase that completes the sentence: “…. when it is informed by reflection”
(Foucault, 1997b, p. 284).
On reading. Slowly.
I would probably read much more quickly if I made less detailed notes or if I didn’t have this constant desire to stop every few minutes and after making a cup of coffee write in my DayOne Journal or blog. But having been reminded of Ball’s (2006) paper, The necessity and violence of theory – I couldn’t not re-wind and re-read it. I’m glad I did. Ball offers a personal account of how and why he has developed his interest in the work of Foucault (like Foucault Stephen Ball is not a Foucauldian) and Bourdieu. He also offers a run down of how and why Bourdieu’s writing on class is so important to educational researchers.
If there is a binary that seems to permeate education discourse it is this division between theory and practice. As educational researchers we are – supposedly at least – locked into practice rather then theory. What is education after all if not a practice driven enterprise. I think this is an important and revealing strain in educational discourse – one that frequently reveals itself. To describe oneself as a ‘theorist’ is an attempt to assume an elevated position above the murky grimy handed ‘practice’ of education (how else can I interpret it in the light of Bourdieu’s notion that all our social interactions are driven by a thinly disguised lust for power and ascendancy).
And yet, as Ball (2006) has reminded me this morning:
Bourdieu sought to work between binaries rather than be constrained to make false choices between poles—his social model is articulated between objectivism (construction of a discourse within which to converse with other sociologist about the object) and subjectivism, his epistemology is enacted between scientism and theoreticism, which implies that one can grasp reality without “touching it” (Karalayali, 2004, p. 365).
More importantly – as Ball’s paper so strongly illustrates – it’s impossible to understand the world from within one or the other lens alone. To be locked into theory (madness) or locked into practice (foolishness) is to touch reality without grasping it. Or else to grasp something other than reality.
In a week where the right wing press likes to inform us that we no longer need the Labour Party – Stephen Ball’s discussion of recent developments in class theory and more specifically Bourdieu’s writings on class and their relevance for educational researchers is a welcome necessity.
References
Ball, S. J. (2006). The necessity and violence of theory. Discourse: studies in the cultural politics of education, 27(1), 3-10.
Karakayli, N. (2004). Reading Bourdieu with Adorno: the limits of critical theory and reflexive sociology. Sociology, 38(3), 357/368.
Writing from the margins – a few left over thoughts from (not quite a) week end 2 #HullEdD
The quote below is from something a read a while ago. It is the opening sentence of a paragraph, that has been floating around n my head for months. I have never quite found a moment to refer to it.
‘The idea of objects having a social life is a conceit I (Appadurai) coined in 1986 in a collection of essays titled The Social Life of Things. Since then, I (Appadurai) has have continued to be engaged with the idea that persons and things are not radically distinct categories, and that the transactions that surround things are invested with the properties of social relations. Thus, today’s gift is tomorrow’s commodity. Yesterday’s commodity is tomorrow’s found art object. Today’s art object is tomorrow’s junk. And yesterday’s junk is tomorrow’s heirloom.’
Appadurai, A. (2006). The thing itself. Public Culture, 18 (1), 15.
There are some things you read that for some reason capture your imagination. Perhaps they are well phrased or present an unexpected line of argument. I have not read very much of Appandurai’s work but I liked this idea of ‘things’ having a social life – dependent on the social transactions they are caught up in. I like the idea of the social life of which they are part having the capacity to transform them.
I connect this to the idea of written notes scribbled in the margins of what you are reading. These tiny little thought pieces – or perhaps conversations between you and the writer of a text – can be transformed into a paragraph and illustrated. They are of enormous value. Not only do they plot the development of your ideas from doctoral candidate to post-doctoral researcher – they represent your personal engagement with a text. They may well be junk (if treated as such), but junk if carefully collated might well of more value then you realise. More importantly, they have a name.
‘Sometimes, even if I stand in the middle of the room – no one acknowledges me’
While reading: Denzin, N. K. (2009). The elephant in the living room: or extending the conversation about the politics of evidence. Qualitative Research, 9(2), 139-160.
It is unlikely that anyone would argue that policy-making or education practice should be based on anything other than evidence. The issue is in referring to ‘evidence’ advocates of this approach tend towards a narrow belief in research evidence derived from narrowly defined notions of what does and what does not count. Typically research based on positivist methodology is preferred. I get a distinct feeling of déjà vu. Positivism and quantitative methodology are not equivalents as such, they just overlap with remarkable consistency.
The debate about quantitative or qualitative method – in sociology at least – is a long standing one. In 1926 Lundenberg p61 wrote:
The case method is not in itself a scientific method at all, but merely the first step in the scientific method … the statistical method is the best, if not the only scien- tific method …the only possible question … is whether classification of, and gener- alizations from the data should be carried out by random, qualitative, and subjective method … or through the systematic, quantitative and objective proce- dures of the statistical method.
Some years and several conversation later, Becker argued,
life history, when properly conceived and employed can become one of the sociologist’s most powerful observational and analytic tools. (Becker, 1966: xviii)
Denzin’s narrative weaves these together more meaningfully. In 2014, the conversation continues. In response to the current popular debate around Randomised Controlled Trials in education, Dylan Wiliam points out
[…] it is worth noting that RCTs were not required to establish that smoking causes cancer. If we truly wanted “gold standard” evidence that smoking causes cancer, we would have to solicit volunteers for an experiment, divide them into two groups at random, prevent one group from smoking, and ensure that all the members of the other group smoked a certain number of cigarettes per day for a significant length of time (say around 20 years) and then compare the prevalence of cancer in the two groups. Needless to say, this was not the approach adopted. Instead, researchers looked for a way of establishing a causal relationship without an RCT (Hill, 1965).
Denzin’s narrative – interrupted by Dylan William, weaves these quotes together more meaningfully. And then, along comes the elephant:
Consider the parable of the blind men and the elephant. Lillian Quigley (1996):
In my children’s book, The Blind Men and the Elephant (1959) I retell the ancient fable of six blind men who visit the palace of the Rajah and encounter an elephant for the first time. Each touches the elephant, and announces his discovery. The first blind person touches the side of the elephant and reports that it feels like a wall. The sec- ond touches the trunk and says an elephant is like a snake. The third man touches the tusk and says an elephant is like a spear. The fourth person touches a leg and says it feels like a tree. The fifth man touches an ear and says it must be a fan, while the sixth man touches the tail and says how thin, an elephant is like a rope.
There are multiple versions of the elephant in this parable. Multiple lessons. We can never know the true nature of things. We are each blinded by our own perspective. Truth is always partial.
To summarize:
Truth One: The elephant is not one thing. If we call SBR* the elephant, then according to the parable, we can each know only our version of SBR. For SBR advocates, the ele- phant is two things, an all-knowing being who speaks to us, and a way of knowing that produces truths about life. How can a thing be two things at the same time?
Truth Two: For skeptics, we are like the blind persons in the parable. We only see par- tial truths. There is no God’s view of the totality, no uniform way of knowing.
Truth Three: Our methodological and moral biases have so seriously blinded us that we can never understand another blind person’s position. Even if the elephant called SBR speaks, our biases may prohibit us for hearing what she says. In turn, her biases prevent her from hearing what we say.
Truth Four: If we are all blind, if there is no God, and if there are multiple versions of the elephant then we are all fumbling around in the world just doing the best we can.
*Scientifically based research (SBR), or evidence-based movement (EBM)
My take on this is entirely personal. Given that I frequently refer to my preferred style of data analysis as akin to an ‘analytical daydream’, I can see little to gain from qualitative researchers even trying on the methodological straight jacket implied by SBR. More importantly, it misses the question. Teaching is not a technical process of pedagogic intervention leading to predefined learning outcome. Likewise, at what point has any policy maker anywhere ever been interested in what actually works. Policy is politics. Evidence is also politics.
Denzin’s paper aptly illustrates the extent to which all the reservations levelled at qualitative research are evident in qualitative approaches. It is only when truths are settled and accepted by all that flux, change, contestation and controversy subsides.
In the meantime, the question that needs to be answered is not what works in education, but what matters?
While reading Fenge (2010)
Lee‐Ann Fenge (2010) Sense and sensibility: making sense of a Professional Doctorate, Reflective Practice: International and Multidisciplinary Perspectives, 11:5, 645-656
The frequent way of framing the professional doctorate – in contrast to a doctorate that does not carry a qualifier – is that it is more concerned with ‘practice development and change’ than with ‘pure’ research’. The indication being that research concerned with ‘practice and change’ introduces an impurity. There is surely more than a faint echo here of the academic vs vocational divide.
What troubles me most about this is that when this is used in reference to education, it is hard to see how the distinction holds. Unlike sociology, psychology or mathematics – education is an applied field of study. It draws on various disciplines but in itself is non-disciplnary. What then in a field like education might be considered as pure research and what night be considered as practice development?
In addition, it treats ‘practice development and change’ as something that is unproblematic. The EdD assumes those who participate in it are practitioners, professionals who are working as teachers, managers or college governors; this is its defining feature. But the insistence that their intellectual output has to be restricted to ‘practice development and change’ is to so severely narrow its purpose that the qualification becomes meaningless at doctoral level. ‘Practice development and change’ places the doctoral researcher in an untenable position. It treats the practice as something that needs to be developed; it treats change as something that is in the gift of the professional. It divorces the EdD researcher from educational research. Both stances implied by ‘practice development and change’ are derivative of policy assumptions. The perpetual insistence that practitioners are better, bigger, improved, assured and inspected. That headline figures must inexorably rise until everybody participates in ubiquitously perfect practice. To place yourself ‘against perpetual practice development and change’ is to place yourself beyond a normative framework that confers a valued professional status. Who celebrates the mediocre. Who wants to be ‘ok’. Who gets the power of definition?
These are necessary questions for the doctoral researcher; they are nuisance questions for the professional seeking ‘practice development and change’.
Sociologist Howard Becker points out If you want to write about what’s going on – you have to really know what’s going on. This is good old fashioned sociology; people don’t live their lives according to a series of pre-defined variables. My suggestions that the EdD is uniquely positioned to make a contribution to knowledge about education, not just practice. Becker based his sociology on his experience of being a musician. If you are going to write about art, it makes sense to know something about the doing of Art. If you want to write about education, it pays to know something about the doing of education.
woman-in-flight 