Qualitative Research in the Post-Modern Era: Critical Approaches and Selected Methodologies 9783030851248, 3030851249

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Robert E. White Karyn Cooper

Qualitative Research in the Post-Modern Era Critical Approaches and Selected Methodologies

Qualitative Research in the Post-Modern Era

Robert E. White • Karyn Cooper

Qualitative Research in the Post-Modern Era Critical Approaches and Selected Methodologies

Robert E. White Faculty of Education St. Francis Xavier University Antigonish, NS, Canada

Karyn Cooper OISE University of Toronto Toronto, ON, Canada

ISBN 978-3-030-85126-2    ISBN 978-3-030-85124-8 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-85124-8 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. This Springer imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland

Preface

Welcome to the second volume of Qualitative Research in the Postmodern Era. In our first volume, we introduced some of the important underpinnings related to qualitative research in this, our postmodern era. In that volume, a number of conditions impacting qualitative research were explored. Of interest is the observation that there is more research being conducted today than at any time previous to this point in history. Not only is more research into matters educational being conducted but it is also being performed by increasingly diverse groups of people outside of North American borders. Furthermore, not only is educational research being conducted by people other than the archetypical white male, research is being developed in ways that challenge our heretofore “colonial ways of knowing,” This is to say that many forms of research no longer subscribe to what has become considered the “correct” or appropriate form of research. As a result, not only are there many methodologies, or research designs, to choose from, there are numerous research designs that need not conform to conventional dominant conceptions of research methodologies. This book represents the second of a two-volume set that describes and discusses some of the intricacies associated with qualitative research in this postmodern era. While the first volume tended towards a more theoretical perspective, this second volume is more methodologically oriented. In Volume I, we attempted to compare and contrast qualitative research with the quantitative vein of inquiry. These two veins of inquiry represent two distinct paradigms of thought—the latter being more concerned with the scientific method of quantification than qualitative research, which strives to understand and describe a variety of perspectives that entertain qualities. Having said that, it is necessary to bear in mind that, while quantitative and qualitative research both allow certain similarities, it is not likely that they would be confused for one another (Cooper & White, 2012). Further to this, qualitative inquiry has been divided into a variety of approaches to research. Most notable among these are the interpretive approach and the critical approach. While these approaches to qualitative research have been addressed in Volume I, this current volume concentrates on the latter, the critical approach. In introducing this second volume, the final chapter of the previous volume notes that v

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• The twin paradigms of quantitative and qualitative research differ distinctly. • The choice of methodologies and methods tends to follow the paradigm within which the researcher operates. • Quantitative research has held such sway in the past that many researchers continue to justify qualitative methodologies in terms of their quantitative counterparts. These points beg the need to choose pertinent qualitative methodologies from among those research designs generally considered to represent the corpus of qualitative thought. Consequently, it is essential that the qualitative researcher be informed regarding suitable qualitative research methodologies. Further to this, there is a need to continue to establish an operational vocabulary that is expressly qualitative in nature, rather than simply borrowing existing terms from quantitative research processes. As the first volume dealt with theoretical underpinnings of qualitative research, this second volume showcases selected methodologies relevant to qualitative research. We continue the practice of using selected video clips of key scholars to support those methodologies represented between the covers of this book.

The Structure of the Book This volume has been structured in a manner similar to the first volume. First of all, we are comfortable with that format. Secondly, because it appears to be a successful format, we have decided not to change it. However, as a reflection of our “postmodern” or “liquid” times (Bauman, 2000), a brief summary of the features of the book may help readers to navigate through a variety of resources that are intended to be helpful in the pursuit of qualitative research. To this end, we have included, as in the original volume, a series of video clips that can be accessed online in conjunction with this volume, a selected annotated bibliography of the topics covered in each chapter and questions that may be useful for further study. We have also included open access “feature articles” that represent the particular methodology under discussion. The very term, “methodology” can be misleading, however, because the novice researcher may expect some sort of a recipe or, at least, a checklist of “how things are done” using a particular research design. Methodologies, unfortunately, are nothing of the sort. In fact, in reality, they represent a particular point of view, a stance or a lens through which to observe and ponder the phenomenon under study. So, it makes sense to use a methodology, also increasingly known as a “research design”, that is useful for what it is that the researcher really seeks to understand. As a result, it behooves one to explore various possibilities associated with any number of methodologies, to seek the “best fit” and to proceed from there. A well-chosen methodology will allow for the compatibility of the research questions, a conceptual or theoretical framework, and reasonably articulated findings and discussions.

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These items should work well together in order to provide strong qualitative research. We have attempted to make this volume academic and accessible at the same time. While this may, on the surface, appear to represent a binary opposition, we hope that we have achieved our goal, which is to be both eminently readable and reasonably intelligent. The audience for this volume will most likely be composed of researchers, graduate students and casual readers, locally and internationally, and particularly those engaged in qualitative research within and beyond the humanities and social sciences. The very complexity and multi-dimensionality of a volume that discusses aspects of qualitative research calls for a framework capable of lending itself to the task at hand. To assist in developing this volume, we have utilized a conceptual framework that we have used previously in other works. We have termed this framework the “Five Contexts” (Cooper & White, 2012). We have found this framework to be quite useful for analysis and discussion. Each context, although distinct from one another, is capable of overlapping and existing concurrently with the other contexts that we use. These contexts are identified as the autobiographical, the historical, the political, the postmodern and the philosophical context. They do not appear in hierarchical order but may be utilized as required. We have also deliberately strived to maintain the format of the first volume in this current book. Utilizing video interviews and the “Five Contexts,” we hope to offer a fresh and comprehensive approach to the topic of qualitative research methodologies. These five contexts are described below. For further information, please refer to volume I, Qualitative Research in the Postmodern Era: Contexts of Qualitative Research (Cooper & White, 2012). The “Five Contexts” has proven suitable in disentangling complex notions involving qualitative research. The autobiographical context is important in situating a particular scholar within a personal frame of reference in order to assist readers in making inferences relating to particular individual perspectives. In short, this context can enable the recognition of multiple, marginalized and/or dominant perspectives. Through such sharing of perspectives, one may come away with a broader, more critical viewpoint. The historical context allows narratives represented within the text to be identified and located in a certain time and place. History is less a compilation of facts than it is an individual, cultural or societal response to events that are considered “historic.” All events, artefacts and individuals have a history, however short or long that history may be. The history need not be dramatic but is a function of time and ascribed importance. Viewed in this way, history becomes contextual and, given this, there is not just one conceptual truth. It is this variance in what passes for “truth” that is at the very heart of qualitative research. The political context aids in determining consequences of actions referenced within the text, itself—in this case, qualitative methodologies. Things historical may not necessarily be political in nature. However, things political, specifically events, tend to become, almost by definition, historical events. While these two contexts are not interchangeable, they are frequently observed in tandem—joined at

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the hip, as it were. In short, we attach historical footnotes to events that we wish to remember as special in some way. The postmodern context offers a perspective on what it means to be alive in one of the most exciting epochs in human history. The postmodern era, now frequently referred to as “liquid modernity” (Bauman, 2000), has, as its hallmark, questions about the nature of almost everything. Thus, postmodernity is not about questioning the nature of “truth” but is more a matter of questioning the contexts within which any discourse is embedded. The postmodern era has heralded in a time when choice abounds, although the choices themselves may be less important than the notion of choice, itself. Postmodernity offers a time of change, rapid change, where the one constant has become the accelerating nature of change. As such, postmodernity is an important context in making sense of, describing and exploring qualitative research; in particular, how various methodologies have been adapted to ever-­ changing circumstances—locally, nationally and globally. Perhaps the most important context is the final one, the philosophical context, as it allows one to step back and to view the whole ball of autobiographical, historical, political and postmodern contexts with some level of objectivity and to begin to gain some further perspective on the particular phenomenon under study—in this case, qualitative research. Through the pages of this volume, with some of the most influential scholars of our time, across global contexts, we hope to explore the nature of qualitative research and how it has been shaped by individuals, how it may be understood, and which research situations lend themselves to specific qualitative research methodologies.

Selected Video Clips Video interviews provide a means of capturing a number of the “experts in the field”. Throughout this volume, we offer interviews with numerous individuals who have developed, refined and put into practice—in short, performed—qualitative research. These renowned scholars have offered their time, their insights and their knowledge to add to our understanding of what qualitative research may be or may become, and how it may operate in these “interesting times” of the postmodern era. Arranging interviews with the renowned scholars represented in this book was also a representation of the postmodern world within which we live. Exhausting? Yes. At times, difficult to co-ordinate? Definitely! Rewarding? Absolutely! We consider ourselves to be extremely privileged to be able to gain access to such well-­ known researchers, in being able to interview these renowned individuals whose works have helped to shape qualitative research and who, in this way, have helped to make the world a more recognizable and more understandable place. We are impressed with how generously they gave their time, how graciously they answered the most challenging questions and how supportive they all were of this project. The interviews reveal that deeply thoughtful aspect of these individuals and the work

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that they engage in. They have passed this legacy on to you, the recipient of their, in many cases, hard-won knowledge. We have one regret, however. Perhaps it is not so much a regret than a statement about the life and times in which we conducted, engaged in and performed qualitative research. So many breakthroughs in qualitative research are attributed primarily to men who, arguably, have understood the importance of their developments pertinent to qualitative research agendas. Unfortunately, we have been able to interview very few scholars from beyond the margins of this group. We are aware that there are important reasons for this. First of all, as qualitative research developed over the years, the tenor of the times dictated that men happened to be in positions amenable to the development of such qualitative means. After all, many of the breakthroughs that we now think of as fairly commonplace were developed many years earlier and have taken time to become part of the mainstream culture of qualitative research. As a result, much of the history of qualitative research is male dominated. Secondly, many women, who we approached, declined to be interviewed. We are still puzzling over this and wonder if, in this age of apparent equality of the sexes, women are still trying to find their way and are hesitant to step forward and to acknowledge their work that has served to benefit those who engage in qualitative research. While we are interested in exploring why these and perhaps other issues have conspired to keep women in the background, this remains beyond the scope of the current volume. As with the companion volume to this book, we have included video clips that we hope will speak to current and future generations of students, researchers and other readers in a way in which typical qualitative research textbooks do not. This project represents an ambitious undertaking and has already taken a number of years to complete. Beyond the scope of this text rests innumerable possibilities for researchers who wish to capture, to archive or to simply enjoy the “heteroglossia” (Bakhtin, 1981), the perspectives and the experiences of the distinguished scholars who have given so generously and graciously of their time. The sheer energy of this group of top international researchers, which has been captured on video and which is represented between the covers of this book, commends these scholars to you, the reader, most highly. As for us, the authors of this work, we have attempted to be both timely and original. As time marches on, it is conceivable that these scholars may not be available to all who wish to converse with them in person. As such, these selected clips from full-length interviews represent an interface between the reader and the scholars themselves. Although transcripts are available for perusal as appendices, we, the authors, hope that the ability to view the research scholars, as they verbalize their insights, speak about their perspectives and discuss their work, will imbue the reader with a sense of their personality, attitudes and sensibilities that will allow a sense of depth and a feeling of familiarity for the reader/viewer. We believe that online access and the judicious use of video footage represents, at least for the moment, the state of the art in high-definition technology.

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Annotated Bibliographies Selected annotated bibliographies are placed towards the end of each chapter and refer to topics discussed within that chapter. It is hoped that these annotations prove relevant and informative. We hope that the annotations are clear, concise and provide greater clarity and connection for the reader who wishes to explore specific topics in greater depth than can be allowed on the pages of this more modest volume. It is for these reasons and more that we, the authors, have decided to write this volume. In their introductory chapter to The Sage Handbook of Qualitative Research, Norman Denzin and Yvonna Lincoln (2005) make a number of cogent observations regarding research methodologies. Among these observations are two very significant points for us. The first refers to the blurring of genres and the second one has been identified as the “crisis of representation.” Both of these points have been elucidated by Denzin and Lincoln and have also been further described in our first volume on the topic of research methodologies, Qualitative Research in the Postmodern Era; Contexts of Qualitative Research (2012). Briefly, the notion of blurred genres reflects the view that not only is the amount of qualitative research on the rise, the rate at which qualitative research methodologies are being employed is also increasing. More importantly, as this term suggests, distinct demarcations among genres are less evident than previously noted, due largely to postmodern sensitivities. This represents an explosion of possible and potential methodologies available to the qualitative researcher. The second point that Denzin and Lincoln raise is the (triple) crisis of representation, an umbrella term for three related, yet distinct issues—representation, legitimation and praxis. The first crisis, that of representation, concerns the view that how qualitative research is presented affects what it is that is being represented. In short, the medium definitely becomes a part of the message (McLuhan, 1964). Alongside the first crisis, that of representation, is the notion of the crisis of legitimation. This problematizes traditional criteria for evaluating and interpreting qualitative research. As Denzin and Lincoln (2005) espouse, this involves a reformulation or a reinterpretation of terms such as validity, reliability and generalizability—very much a postmodern influence. Perhaps part of the reason for this reformulation or reinterpretation is a growing recognition that qualitative research has “borrowed” much of its vocabulary from quantitative research. Because of this, researchers are still attempting to make qualitative sense of quantitative terms. After all, we still live in a world that is dominated by the scientific paradigm (Kriel, 2000; Varela et al., 1991). However, qualitative researchers have been quietly and busily developing a vocabulary that is relevant to the research they are involved in. As a result, terms such as “member check,” “hypothesis” and “generalizability” are giving way to notions of crystallization (Ellingson, 2009; Richardson & St. Pierre, 2005), research questions and the idea that qualitative research does not necessarily lend itself to generalizability. Thus, the question of legitimacy is raised. While it may be easier for researchers if qualitative research conformed more closely to the tenets of quantitative research, this would

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limit the validity of qualitative research itself. Thus, legitimacy is represented in the qualities of the proposed research that seek to differentiate qualitative research from other forms of research. A third component of the triple crisis is the question of praxis, which may be considered as the practical application of a theory. This asks if it is actually possible to effect change in the world if society is always and only a text (Derrida, 1988), or if everything, including reality, is contextual. Of course, the term “text” is a vague and general term used to identify boundaries around not just books, but experiences as well and can be viewed as a contextual approach to reality. In short, everything can be viewed as a text. In such a complex and complicated world, can one truly effect praxis, then? While it may not be easy, at least it is possible. Our postmodern times struggle to make sense of these three crises. Perhaps this volume serves as a suitable example. First of all, with regard to representation, the words of the chosen scholars, as viewed through video clips, may appear to be completely authentic. However, the representation of what it is that is discussed or described is still in the hands of the researcher, author or editor. In this case, we, the authors, have chosen what we believe to be representative of the issues relating to qualitative research. Who we have chosen to speak, what it is that we have identified as germane and how these scholars’ words appear are all testament to the complexities of the first component of the triple crisis—that of representation. The second component, the problem of legitimation, problematizes traditional criteria for evaluating and interpreting qualitative research. Not only is vocabulary an issue, the very nature of the research itself must be legitimated. This is accomplished by the audience to whom the work is directed. It is the evaluation of this group that determines whether a piece of research is legitimate or not. Acceptance of the work is most often a proxy for legitimation. Finally, the third component, that of praxis, is determined by the usefulness of the research in question to effect change. Thus, the triple crisis of representation is a situation encountered by all researchers who must struggle with how their research is represented, whether it is “good” research or not, and whether it is useful research, particularly in this day and age, when more research is being conducted by more people from differing cultures, whose research may or may not conform to conventional, historical or traditional ways than research that has been “performed” in the past. Throughout this volume we have mindfully respected the triple crisis of representation. Denzin and Lincoln (2005) also note that, as new methodologies and ways of conducting research are being explored, researchers necessarily must struggle with representations of the “Other,” especially as epistemologies from previously silenced groups are beginning to emerge. The researcher as “observer” is no longer tenable, thanks, in large part, to the work of Clifford Geertz (1973) who postulated that the researcher is the main instrument of analysis and interpretation. Research is influenced by the very presence of the researcher, even in the act of observing. In the face of these changes, grand narratives have begun to fall to local, small-scale theories that have been customized for specific problems, issues and situations. Suffice it to say that these points have been dealt with in greater detail in other volumes. The purpose of the present volume is to explore some of these

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methodologies that have become traditional means of “performing” qualitative research and to discuss them in postmodern terms. In the first chapter of this volume, we briefly discuss some of the history and underpinnings of qualitative research and, throughout the remainder of the text, amid discussions of various qualitative methodologies, we offer video interviews with some of the world’s leading scholars who have helped to develop and promote these research methodologies. The final chapter discusses a number of emerging or developing research methodologies as they pertain to qualitative research. As time passes, it is expected that more methodologies will emerge—some will offer new insights into how research may be conducted while others may offer suggestions as to how such research may be positioned with respect to cultures and groups of people who, traditionally and historically, may not have had their voices heard. We trust that this volume will be accessible, informative and entertaining. We hope that you enjoy reading it as much as we have enjoyed bringing it to fruition. Antigonish, NS, Canada  Robert E. White  Toronto, ON, Canada  Karyn Cooper

References Bakhtin, M. (1981). Discourse in the novel. In The dialogic imagination: Four essays (pp. 259–422). University of Texas Press. Bauman, Z. (2000). Liquid modernity. Polity Press. Cooper, K., & White, R. E. (2012). Qualitative research in the postmodern era: Contexts of qualitative research. Springer. Denzin, N. K., & Lincoln, Y. S. (2005). Introduction: The discipline and practice of qualitative research. In N. K. Denzin & Y. S. Lincoln (Eds.), The Sage handbook of qualitative research (3rd ed., pp. 1–32). Sage. Derrida, J. (1988). Limited Inc. Northwestern University Press. Ellingson, L. L. (2009). Engaging crystallization in qualitative research: An introduction. Sage. Geertz, C. (1973). The interpretation of culture: Selected essays. Basic Books. Kriel, J. (2000). Matter, mind, and medicine: Transforming the clinical method. Rodopi. McLuhan, M. (1964). Understanding media: The extensions of man. McGraw Hill. Richardson, L., & St. Pierre, E. (2005). Writing: A method of inquiry. In N.  K. Denzin & Y. S. Lincoln (Eds.), The Sage handbook of qualitative research (3rd ed., pp. 959–978). Sage. Varela, F.  J., Thomson, E.  T., & Rosch, E. (1991). The embodied mind: Cognitive science and human experience. MIT Press.

Acknowledgements

This volume has taken more than a decade to develop, research, write and revise and, because of this, many of the people who began this journey with us have departed in order to pursue other adventures. Their assistance and good wishes have been instrumental in bringing this volume forward, even though they may not have been with us from the beginning to the end. There are too many of these wonderful individuals to name; some may even have been lost or forgotten along the way. However, there are a few individuals whose efforts have been enormously helpful to us, as we have worked our way through this book in order to bring it to fruition. Neil Tinker deserves acknowledgement as our first and, likely, most capable videographer. If ever there was an issue with the videotapes, the camera or anything of a technical nature, it was Neil who was the first responder, recovering lost videos, resetting camera parameters and joining us on the beginning of this adventure. There were times when it may have been called a misadventure, but Neil persevered. For this, we shall be eternally grateful. Rebecca Hughes has also been instrumental in helping to bring this volume forward. Rebecca not only brought in people to help with things that we could not fathom, but she also helped to write grants and served as our in-house tech person. There was no end of technical points that Rebecca envisioned, invented and developed. She was responsible for establishing the first website that we successfully created. Thank you, Rebecca, for all of your assistance. Without you, we would still be wandering in the dark, seeking answers that we have only recently come to understand how to ask. Other individuals have added to the development of this book. Jonathan Arendt, Mehdi Ravandi and numerous other individuals have added their talents to the development of this volume in ways too many to mention. We owe you a huge debt of gratitude. There is one individual who has been extremely important in making this book a reality. Alison Mann has slaved over the editing and mounting of the video clips featured in this text. She has worked tirelessly, often with only the promise of an end to her labours. Alison, we thank you from the bottom of our hearts. This volume was

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a labour of love for us and we did not expect to find one such as you, who was also totally committed to bringing this volume to life. An additional word of thanks, if not gratitude, is due to the Social Sciences and Humanities Council of Canada, whose funding has helped to defray expenses, of which there were many, for the successful completion of this work. We, the authors, shall be eternally grateful. Thank you. To all of you, thank you. Although your efforts have become one within the totality of this book and, although your names may not grace its pages, this volume stands as testament to the energy, faith and commitment that you have shared with us in order to create this thing that is new and fine and reminds us that, although a long journey begins with a first step, it is seldom completed alone. May all of your future paths become as fruitful as this one has been.

Contents

1

 Brief History of Qualitative Research������������������������������������������������    1 A Introduction����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������     1 From the Beginning ��������������������������������������������������������������������������������     3 Qualitative Research: The Missing Years������������������������������������������������     6 From Pre-history to the Renaissance ��������������������������������������������������     6 Considerations������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������     7 Research Paradigms ��������������������������������������������������������������������������������     9 Contemporary Qualitative Research��������������������������������������������������������    13 Qualitative Research in the Postmodern Era��������������������������������������������    14 Postcolonial Research������������������������������������������������������������������������������    16 Eight Moments of Qualitative Research��������������������������������������������������    19 Summary: From Plato to Aristotle and Back Again��������������������������������    21 References������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������    26

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 Introduction to Critical Approaches������������������������������������������������   29 An Introduction����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������    29 Approaches to Qualitative Research��������������������������������������������������������    30 Postpositivism in Qualitative Research����������������������������������������������������    30 Descriptive, Definitional and Deconstructive Approaches����������������������    31 Pragmatism����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������    32 The Interpretive Approach ����������������������������������������������������������������������    32 The Critical Approach������������������������������������������������������������������������������    33 Approaches, Methods and Methodologies����������������������������������������������    36 Critical Theory as Method: Critical Thematic Analysis��������������������������    37 Feature Article: A Critical Approach to Research������������������������������������    37 Summary: Approaches to Qualitative Research��������������������������������������    40 Transformative Potentials of Critical Educational Inquiry����������������������    45 Introduction������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������    46 Autobiographical Context��������������������������������������������������������������������    47 Historical Context��������������������������������������������������������������������������������    50 Political Context����������������������������������������������������������������������������������    51 xv

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Postmodern Context����������������������������������������������������������������������������    53 Philosophical Context��������������������������������������������������������������������������    54 Conclusion ������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������    55 References��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������    56 References������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������    57 3

Hermeneutic Inquiry ������������������������������������������������������������������������������   59 Introduction����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������    59 The Biographical Context������������������������������������������������������������������������    60 The Explicate and Implicate Order������������������������������������������������������    62 The Historical Context����������������������������������������������������������������������������    62 The Political Context ������������������������������������������������������������������������������    68 The Postmodern Context��������������������������������������������������������������������������    69 The Philosophical Context����������������������������������������������������������������������    70 Ontology and Epistemology����������������������������������������������������������������    72 The Hermeneutic Circle����������������������������������������������������������������������    73 Interpretation of Texts��������������������������������������������������������������������������    74 Feature Article: Experience and Interpretation in Global Times ������������    75 Summary: The Art of Interpretation��������������������������������������������������������    75 Experience and Interpretation in Global Times: The Case of Special Education ������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������    82 References��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������    89 References������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������    90

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Narrative Inquiry������������������������������������������������������������������������������������   93 Introduction����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������    93 The Biographical Context������������������������������������������������������������������������    97 Methods for Data Organization���������������������������������������������������������������    99 The Historical Context����������������������������������������������������������������������������   101 The Political Context ������������������������������������������������������������������������������   103 The Postmodern Context��������������������������������������������������������������������������   104 The Philosophical Context����������������������������������������������������������������������   107 Narrative as Genre Versus Narrative as Method����������������������������������   109 Three Narrative Interview Techniques ������������������������������������������������   110 Feature Article: A Narrative Approach to Research��������������������������������   110 Summary: Narrative Inquiry in Qualitative Research������������������������������   111 Storying schools: Issues around attempts to create a sense of feel and place in narrative research writing ����������������������������������������   118 A Visit��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������   118 Creating a sense of ‘feel’ and ‘place’��������������������������������������������������   125 ‘Othering’��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������   126 First Encounters ����������������������������������������������������������������������������������   127 My Place in all This ����������������������������������������������������������������������������   128 Finally��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������   128 References��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������   130 References������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������   132

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Phenomenological Inquiry����������������������������������������������������������������������  135 Introduction����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������   135 Phenomenology����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������   138 The Biographical Context������������������������������������������������������������������������   140 The Myth of Sisyphus��������������������������������������������������������������������������   145 The Historical Context����������������������������������������������������������������������������   146 The Political Context ������������������������������������������������������������������������������   150 The Postmodern Context��������������������������������������������������������������������������   155 The Philosophical Context����������������������������������������������������������������������   159 Feature Article: Phenomenological Inquiry in Education������������������������   161 Summary: Phenomenological Inquiry and Existentialist Thought����������   162 Exploring relationships in education: A phenomenological inquiry��������   168 Introduction������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������   169 Research Foundations��������������������������������������������������������������������������   170 Research Method ��������������������������������������������������������������������������������   170 Participants������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������   171 Data Collection������������������������������������������������������������������������������������   171 Trustworthiness������������������������������������������������������������������������������������   172 Findings�����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������   172 Comportment ������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������   175 In the play��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������   177 Conclusion ������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������   179 References��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������   180 References������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������   182

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Ethnographic Inquiry������������������������������������������������������������������������������  185 Introduction����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������   185 The Biographical Context������������������������������������������������������������������������   187 The Historical Context����������������������������������������������������������������������������   191 The Myth of the “Lone Ethnographer”������������������������������������������������   192 The Political Context ������������������������������������������������������������������������������   195 The Postmodern Context��������������������������������������������������������������������������   200 The Philosophical Context����������������������������������������������������������������������   202 Feature Article by Clifford Geertz ����������������������������������������������������������   204 Summary: On Ethnography as Process and Product��������������������������������   204 Thick description: Toward an interpretive theory of culture��������������������   210 I������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������   210 II����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������   212 III����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������   215 IV ��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������   218 V����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������   220 VI ��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������   223 VII��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������   225 VIII������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������   228 References������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������   231

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Case Study Research��������������������������������������������������������������������������������  233 Introduction����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������   233 The Biographical Context������������������������������������������������������������������������   235 The Historical Context����������������������������������������������������������������������������   237 The Teachings of Robert Stake������������������������������������������������������������   241 The Political Context ������������������������������������������������������������������������������   244 Types of Case Studies��������������������������������������������������������������������������   244 The Political Role of Case Study Research ����������������������������������������   246 The Postmodern Context��������������������������������������������������������������������������   249 Variations Within Case Studies������������������������������������������������������������   250 The Philosophical Context����������������������������������������������������������������������   252 Challenges to and Benefits of Case Study Research����������������������������   254 Feature Article: A Case in Case Study Methodology������������������������������   257 Summary: Case Study as Methodology and Method������������������������������   258 A Case in Case Study Methodology��������������������������������������������������������   264 WHY A CASE STUDY? ��������������������������������������������������������������������   265 DESCRIPTION OF THE ILLUSTRATIVE STUDY��������������������������   266 DESIGN DECISIONS ������������������������������������������������������������������������   267 SELECTION OF DATA COLLECTION PROCEDURES������������������   270 DATA ANALYSIS ������������������������������������������������������������������������������   274 VALIDITY AND RELIABILITY��������������������������������������������������������   276 DISCUSSION��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������   280 References��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������   281 References������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������   284

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Arts-Based Research��������������������������������������������������������������������������������  287 Introduction����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������   287 The “Meaning” of Art������������������������������������������������������������������������������   289 The Biographical Context������������������������������������������������������������������������   291 The Historical Context����������������������������������������������������������������������������   294 The Narrative Turn������������������������������������������������������������������������������   295 Non-linguistic Forms and Blurred Genres ������������������������������������������   297 Arts-Related Research as Evolving Inquiry����������������������������������������   297 Emergence, Acceptance, Disruption����������������������������������������������������   298 The Political Context ������������������������������������������������������������������������������   300 The Postmodern Context��������������������������������������������������������������������������   302 The Philosophical Context����������������������������������������������������������������������   305 Data Sources, Collection and Analysis������������������������������������������������   306 Considerations of Arts-Based Research����������������������������������������������   307 Arts-Based Research and Aesthetics����������������������������������������������������   307 Eisner’s Connoisseurship Model����������������������������������������������������������   308 Arts-Based Research as a Pedagogical Tool����������������������������������������   309 Feature Article: Applying Arts-Based Research to Bedouin Women’s Drawings��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������   310 Summary: Arts-Based Research and Its Variants������������������������������������   311

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Researching Creations: Applying Arts-Based Research to Bedouin Women’s Drawings����������������������������������������������������������������������������������   316 Introduction: Why use the arts in research?����������������������������������������   316 Art as a form of inquiry ����������������������������������������������������������������������   317 Issues in arts-based research����������������������������������������������������������������   318 Connections between art therapy and arts-based research������������������   320 Art-based research, art therapy, and culture����������������������������������������   320 The context of the Bedouin women ����������������������������������������������������   321 Using art as a research method: The Bedouin women’s drawings������   322 Summary����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������   333 References��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������   334 References������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������   336 9

Grounded Theory������������������������������������������������������������������������������������  339 Introduction����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������   339 The Biographical Context������������������������������������������������������������������������   341 The Historical Context����������������������������������������������������������������������������   343 The Political Context ������������������������������������������������������������������������������   344 The Postmodern Context��������������������������������������������������������������������������   347 Variations of Grounded Theory�����������������������������������������������������������   348 The Philosophical Context����������������������������������������������������������������������   351 The Research Process������������������������������������������������������������������������������   353 The Research Question������������������������������������������������������������������������   353 Data Collection������������������������������������������������������������������������������������   354 Data Analysis ��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������   354 Criteria for Judging the Efficacy of the Theory ����������������������������������   360 The Constant Comparative Method ����������������������������������������������������   360 Anomalies and Caveats������������������������������������������������������������������������   361 Limitations of Grounded Theory ������������������������������������������������������������   362 Feature Article: Grounded Theory and Negotiating Breast Cancer��������   364 Summary: Grounded Theory from Multiple Perspectives ����������������������   364 Negotiating emotional order: a grounded theory of breast cancer survivors��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������   369 What Sparked This Research ��������������������������������������������������������������   369 Negotiating Emotional Order: A Grounded Theory of Breast Cancer Survivors����������������������������������������������������������������������������������   370 Method ������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������   370 Data Collection������������������������������������������������������������������������������������   371 Data Analysis ��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������   371 Trustworthiness������������������������������������������������������������������������������������   372 The Theory of Negotiating Emotional Order��������������������������������������   372 Limitations ������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������   378 Discussion��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������   378 Implications for Practice����������������������������������������������������������������������   380 Acknowledgements������������������������������������������������������������������������������   380

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Declaration of Conflicting Interests ����������������������������������������������������   380 Funding������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������   381 References��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������   381 References������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������   383 10 Action Research���������������������������������������������������������������������������������������  387 Introduction����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������   387 The Biographical Context������������������������������������������������������������������������   389 The Historical Context����������������������������������������������������������������������������   391 Stephen Kemmis and Action Research����������������������������������������������������   395 The Political Context ������������������������������������������������������������������������������   397 Participatory Action Research��������������������������������������������������������������   398 The Postmodern Context��������������������������������������������������������������������������   404 The Philosophical Context����������������������������������������������������������������������   407 Single-Loop, Double-Loop, and Triple-Loop Learning��������������������������   408 Single-Loop Learning��������������������������������������������������������������������������   409 Double-Loop Learning������������������������������������������������������������������������   410 Triple-Loop Learning��������������������������������������������������������������������������   410 The Action Research Process as an Agent of Change��������������������������   411 Action Research in Organizational Development��������������������������������   411 Feature Article: Action Research in an Urban Elementary School����������   414 Summary: Action Research in a Participating Society����������������������������   414 Action Research in practice: Critical literacy in an urban grade three classroom����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������   419 The critical literacy action research project ����������������������������������������   421 K What we KNOW (One’s preconceptions)����������������������������������������   423 W What we WANT to learn ����������������������������������������������������������������   423 L What we have LEARNED����������������������������������������������������������������   423 “K” Represents the Research Team’s Current Understanding of Critical Literacy ������������������������������������������������������������������������������   424 “W” Represents the Action Research Plan: What the Research Team is Seeking to Know��������������������������������������������������������������������   428 Overall Expectations – Grade 3 Reading. By the end of Grade 3, students will:����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������   428 Expectations in Specific Areas. By the end of Grade 3, students will:  429 “L” Represents Critical Literacy: What the Research Team Learned��   432 Conclusion ������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������   434 References��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������   435 References������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������   436 11 The  Future of Qualitative Research ������������������������������������������������������  441 Introduction����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������   441 Bricolage��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������   442 Bricolage Research Methods ��������������������������������������������������������������   446 Feature Article: Conceptualizing Bricolage��������������������������������������������   449 Mixed Methods Research������������������������������������������������������������������������   449

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The Rationale for Mixed Methods ������������������������������������������������������   451 Characteristics of Mixed Methods Inquiry������������������������������������������   451 Strengths and Weaknesses of Mixed Methods������������������������������������   452 Design Strategies ��������������������������������������������������������������������������������   453 Procedures and Processes��������������������������������������������������������������������   455 Fundamental, Generic or Basic Qualitative Research Methodology ������   456 Fundamental Qualitative Research Methods ��������������������������������������   459 Considerations in Basic Qualitative Research ������������������������������������   461 Rhizomatic Research ������������������������������������������������������������������������������   462 The Five Contexts������������������������������������������������������������������������������������   468 The Autobiographical Context������������������������������������������������������������   469 The Historical Context������������������������������������������������������������������������   469 The Political Context ��������������������������������������������������������������������������   470 The Postmodern Context����������������������������������������������������������������������   470 The Philosophical Context������������������������������������������������������������������   470 Postcolonial Indigenous Research ����������������������������������������������������������   471 Summary: Emerging Qualitative Research Methodologies��������������������   479 Final Thoughts ����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������   486 Describing the Bricolage: Conceptualizing a New Rigor in Qualitative Research����������������������������������������������������������������������������   489 Bricolage in the Cosmos of Disciplinarity and Interdisciplinarity������   490 The Great Implosion: Dealing with the Debris of Disciplinarity��������   491 Rigor in the Ruins��������������������������������������������������������������������������������   492 Bricolage and the Dialectical View of Disciplinarity��������������������������   493 Questioning the Social Construction of Interdisciplinarity ����������������   494 Bricolage as Deep Interdisciplinarity: The Synergy of Multiple Perspectives������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������   495 Expanding The Boundaries: The Search For New Forms Of Knowledge Production ������������������������������������������������������������������   497 Life on the Boundaries: Facilitating the Work of the Bricoleur����������   499 References��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������   500 References������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������   502 Appendices��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������  507 Index������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������  563

Chapter 1

A Brief History of Qualitative Research

The question of understanding the other and understanding oneself by understanding the other, that is the goal of what is now called qualitative research. Stephen Kemmis, Charles Sturt University

Introduction As so often happens with matters of research, it is generally thought that quantitative research is the father of modern qualitative research. At face value, this may be true, but the reality is much more convoluted. In order to gain a perspective on the beginnings of qualitative research, we must return to Ancient Greece. But first, a definition or two. Qualitative research has also been construed as “qualitative method.” However, in order to avoid confusing the “methods” with the research that they represent—that is to say, methodologies—we use the term “research” to refer to methodologies as opposed to methods. Also, we will regard qualitative research as a paradigm (Cooper & White, 2012), similar to the way that quantitative research can also be viewed as a paradigm. Thus, broadly, qualitative research can be viewed as a means of inquiry utilized by many academic disciplines, most notably the social sciences and humanities. Qualitative research, generally speaking, is represented by a collection of methodologies, also known as research designs, which help to determine how it is that the researcher is searching. It is also worthwhile to note that there are many forms of less formal qualitative research being conducted by individuals in marketing institutions, for example, or by service industries, such as educators, who frequently use a form of action research known more commonly as “practitioner research.” Supplementary Information The online version contains supplementary material available at [https://doi.org/10.1007/978-­3-­030-­85124-­8_1]. The videos can be accessed individually by clicking the DOI link in the accompanying figure caption or by scanning this link with the SN More Media App. © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 R. E. White, K. Cooper, Qualitative Research in the Post-Modern Era, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-85124-8_1

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According to Brinkmann et al. (2014), qualitative research “does not represent a monolithic, agreed-upon approach to research but is a vibrant and contested field with many contradictions and different perspectives” (p.  17). The “multivoicedness” (Aveling et al., 2015, p. 670) of this form of research may contain aspects that are frequently overlapping, are sometimes in conflict and are, occasionally, even incommensurable (Brinkmann et  al., 2014). There exists a multiplicity of phases and significant moments of qualitative research in evidence, that range from “informal, implicit, and unacknowledged practices to philosophically informed and scientifically sophisticated methodologies with norms and carefully specified procedures” (Wertz, 2014, p.  4). However, despite the importance and ubiquity of qualitative inquiry, a comprehensive account of its history has not been written (Wertz, 2014). While it is not the intent of this volume to produce a definitive account of the history of qualitative research, the historical context, part of our Five Contexts that frame this book, is an essential category to consider. The Five Contexts serve as a conceptual framework for this volume. These contexts include the (auto)biographical, the historical, the political, the postmodern and the philosophical contexts. Utilizing this framework allows a much more comprehensive understanding of not only the people who were involved in the development of the qualitative methodological paradigm but also of the politics and the histories that have helped to shape them. Further to this, the postmodern context is a useful addition, as it is very certain that our technological lives, as well as our political and commercial infrastructures are different than they have been in the past. As Zygmunt Bauman has claimed, in discussing this new era, “It is not like it used to be” (Cooper & White, 2012, p. 149). Finally, the philosophical context allows one to step back in order to attempt to view the entire phenomenon a little bit more clearly. Of course, things rarely go according to plan. Throughout this volume, we have attempted to introduce some of the leading lights of qualitative research. We have striven to identify historical and political machinations that have influenced the development of these methodologies—or research designs, if you will. However, one of the more interesting features of the methodologies presented here is that, given our postmodern sensibilities, nothing ever gets treated in exactly the same way it was intended. Thus, the postmodern context attempts to identify the various permutations that each of the presented methodologies has undergone. Indeed, in some cases, it seems that many of the methodologies have been adjusted to suit the needs of the individual researcher. As a result, we seem to have almost as many variations on a particular theme as there are researchers to operationalize each theme. Perhaps this is what makes qualitative research so exhilarating, demanding and dynamic, all at the same time. One final thought has to do with the use of the philosophical context in this book. Building from the previous statement that methodologies—and frameworks, as well—are not insulated from individuals who wish to bend them to their own purposes, we have done exactly that with the philosophical framework. Although offering philosophical thoughts regarding each of the methodologies presented is a lovely idea, it is not as easy to accomplish as it may appear at first sight. Also, the how to of each methodology has not always been made clear in many of the books

From the Beginning

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pertaining to qualitative research that have crossed our desks. With a dearth of philosophical pronouncements but an oversupply of method, we have “repurposed” the philosophical context to serve as a guide to the performance of each of the presented methodologies. This does not mean that there is nothing philosophical about the process, but we have tried to make the process as transparent as possible. As we commence at the commencement (apologies to Alice from Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland) (Carroll, 1865/2018), we hope that you will not only enjoy this volume but also find many things that will allow you to further your research agenda.

From the Beginning In order to gain a perspective regarding the beginnings of qualitative research so as to better interpret such, let us begin in Ancient Greece. In this era, it was possible for an individual to know everything that was known about the world as it was at that time (Neill & Ridley, 1995). Here, we encounter the teachings of Socrates, Plato and Aristotle. Although Plato was significantly older than Aristotle, Plato and Aristotle were contemporaries of one another. Socrates was the mentor of Plato who, in turn became the mentor of Aristotle. Socrates (circa 470–399  BCE) is arguably one of the primary founders of Western philosophy. As such, this enigmatic figure is primarily known through the writings of his students, most notably Plato and the playwright, Aristophanes. It has been said that Socrates, himself, has been “hidden behind his ‘best disciple,’ Plato” (Kofman, 1998, p. 34). However, through Plato’s writings, Socrates is honoured for his contributions to the field of epistemology, among many other accolades. Epistemology, very briefly, concerns itself with the theory of knowledge, particularly with regard to methods, validity and scope. Thus, epistemology is the investigation of the distinction between “justified belief” and opinion (https:// en.oxforddictionaries.com). From the Greek term, ἐπιστήμη (episteme), which means “knowledge,” and –logy, which refers to the study of things, epistemology refers to the branch of philosophy concerned with the study or theory of knowledge. As such, epistemology combines the study of the nature of knowledge, its justification, and the rationality of belief. There has been a significant amount of debate concerning the study and nature of knowledge that revolves around four points. These four areas include the philosophical analysis of the nature of knowledge and how it relates to concepts such as truth, belief, and justification. In short, an epistemological stance asks what knowledge is and what we mean if we say we know something. The sources and scope of knowledge and justified belief also come into question when we ask what it is that justifies our beliefs. This leads to a third area of contention, which refers to the criteria for knowledge and its justification. In short, is our knowledge reliable? Almost needless to say, the final point regards a variety of issues related to various problems of scepticism, such as questions regarding the scope of knowledge and its limitations. In essence, epistemological thinking asks us how we know that we know (Wenning, 2009).

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Epistemology, as such, is deeply and intimately connected with how we represent the world around us and is, therefore, a significant consideration in terms of the triple crisis of representation, as mentioned in the preface of this volume. Returning to Socrates, his contributions have provided a strong foundation for Western philosophy, even though none of his writings have survived the sands of time. As a result, in order to grapple with Socratic thinking, we must turn, instead, to the works of his student, Plato. Plato’s dialogues serve as a proxy for the understanding of Socrates and his thoughtful epistemics, and Plato’s writings represent reports of discussions that involved his beloved mentor and tutor (Kahn, 1998). According to Plato, the method of inquiry known as the “Socratic method,” known also as “elenchus,” was applied to moral concepts. In order to utilize this method to resolve an issue, the problem would be broken into a series of (research) questions. The answers to these questions would eventually render answers to the problem posed. While this may be somewhat reminiscent of the scientific method—the approach used by scientists who use the positivist or quantitative paradigm, as opposed to the qualitative paradigm—the scientific method makes use of the hypothesis, whereas qualitative research employs research questions. So, while Plato assisted in the development of the Socratic method, utilized by qualitative researchers today, it was Plato’s student, Aristotle, who is given credit for the development of the “scientific method,” which is in use by quantitative researchers around the globe. While, like Plato, Aristotle’s philosophy is aimed at universal understandings, unlike his mentor, Aristotle seeks the universal in concrete examples that he claimed to be a combination of both matter and form of all things, which he called the “essence” of things. Plato, however, believed that universal knowledge exists aside from such things, and is represented by exemplars or prototypes. Plato (circa 428–348 BCE), a student of Socrates, developed the first institute of higher education and learning in the Western world and is considered to be pivotal in the development of modern philosophy (Cooper & Hutchinson, 1997). Along with Socrates and Aristotle, Plato continues to be viewed as one of the most important figures in Western philosophy. The term, “Platonic,” was coined to refer to the denial of the reality of the material world. In his allegory of the cave, Plato, through the voice of Socrates, argues that the invisible world is the most intelligible and, by way of contrast, that the material world is the least knowable and, thus, is the most obscure. This theory has enormously influenced Western philosophy and religion. Although there is some disagreement over exactly what constitutes Plato’s legacy and which extant manuscripts can be attributed to him (Brumbaugh, 1991), Plato, along with his student, Aristotle, laid the foundations for modern Western philosophical thought, including the twin paradigms of quantitative and qualitative research. It was Plato, however, who transformed the scope and ambitions of nascent philosophical thought. As such, the topic of philosophy developed a rigorous and systematic investigation of epistemological issues, which can be attributed to the genius of Plato (Kraut, 2013). For Aristotle, the scientific method implied a study of particular phenomena in order to understand this knowledge of Socratic essences. For Plato, however, the

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philosophic method meant that knowledge of particular forms or ideas emanated from universal thinking. Concrete items formed only an imitation of these universal characters. It is interesting to note that Aristotle is the individual whose works tended to guide modern society towards a more positivistic outlook, while Plato is credited with a more qualitative approach to discovery. Consequently, it is curious that Plato was the master while Aristotle was the student and, yet, Aristotle has influenced our modern world more so than the mentor who preceded him. Aristotle (384–322 BCE) was a student of Plato in much the same way as Plato had been a student of Socrates. Aristotle is one of the most important figures in the development of Western philosophy, particularly in the realm of the natural sciences, which have helped to shape scholarship through the ages. As an adolescent, Aristotle attended Plato’s academy, where he remained for the next 20  years (Anagnostopoulos, 2013). Aristotle’s writings cover a multitude of topics and disciplines. Interestingly enough, he later became tutor to Alexander the Great of Macedonia (Russell, 1972). Following Plato’s death, Aristotle immersed himself in empirical studies and shifted from Platonism to empiricism. While Plato was of the opinion that concepts and knowledge exist as a function of perception and, therefore, a function of subjectivity, Aristotle viewed the natural sciences as foundational to the development of knowledge (Barnes, 1995). Although Aristotle’s philosophy, like that of his tutor, Plato, is based in universal understandings, his ontology, the way that he understood the world in which he lived, focused on particular things. Consequently, for Aristotle, epistemology, the way in which the world can be represented, seeks to understand specific phenomena. As such, and to risk oversimplification, Plato’s epistemology is represented by a “top down” perspective that begins with universal forms and moves to a knowledge embodied in the imitation of those forms. However, for Aristotle, it was the opposite. Aristotle began with the study of the particular and moved to generalizations, where possible, of those events or phenomena (Jori, 2003). For Aristotle, his notion of “natural philosophy” encompassed the study of scientific phenomena such as physics, biology and what we now term the “natural sciences.” He introduced the conceptualization that nature is composed of mutable, ever-changing things and that the study of such changes provides important knowledge about these objects’ underlying patterns of existence. Aristotle founded logic as a formal science and established foundations for the study of biology. It was his study of formal logic, known today as “Aristotelian Logic,” that dominated Western thought well into the nineteenth century. Although Aristotle’s work would be considered qualitative by today’s standards, and regardless of numerous scientific blind spots, Aristotle is credited with originating what later became known as the “scientific method” (Durant, 2006). By way of summary, while Aristotle suggests that universal truths can be discovered through investigation of the natural world, Plato’s “forms” or ideas, emanating from universal thinking tend to operate independently of the normally accepted range of human comprehension. For Plato, the material world is not real, but merely

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represents an image of the real world. It was Plato’s rejection of the material, concrete world that has allowed for the development of a more qualitative form of inquiry, in that, while an object can never be truly known, its qualities can be described. For example, we can recognize a tree; we know what a tree is and what it looks like, but can we ever truly know a tree? In this way, there can be seen a direct link between Plato’s non-material world and the development of a more qualitative form of research.

Qualitative Research: The Missing Years From Aristotle’s time until rather recently, qualitative research seemed to have experienced somewhat of a hiatus. This does not imply that qualitative research ceased to exist during this extended period of time, however. It simply implies that this type of research was not well defined and embodied within the European culture. As evidenced by contentions that qualitative and quantitative research were part of the same overarching body of experimentation and dissemination of understandings, qualitative research assumed the stance of a non-issue.

From Pre-history to the Renaissance As Europe moved through the Stone, Bronze and Iron Ages, it was clear, retrospectively, that advancements in scientific technology had been achieved, particularly in terms of armaments and weaponry. For example, from the demise of the Greek civilization to the expansion of the Roman Empire, much emphasis was placed on conquest and empire building. Of course, scholars and scholarship existed, but it was not of the same calibre or quantity as was previously enjoyed at the height of the Greek civilization. Priorities had changed. The sacking of Rome by the Goths, Visigoths, Ostrogoths and other Teutonic tribes issued in what is commonly known as the Middle Ages. This time period has also been referred to as “The Medieval Period” or “The Dark Ages,” perhaps fittingly where qualitative research is concerned. The Middle Ages was introduced into Europe through the advent of three major occurrences, with the fall of Rome in AD 476, the death of Emperor Justinian I in AD 565, and with the introduction of Islam in AD 632. It was these events that marked the end of ancient European history and the beginning of the new era, an era where qualitative research was to take a back seat for the next millennium. The Middle Ages served to bracket the period known as classical civilization, or antiquity, and what we now know as the Modern Period (Pastoureau, 2001). The Middle Ages endured in Europe for nigh on a thousand years, from the fifth to the fifteenth century. Beginning with the fall of the Roman Empire in the West, the Middle Ages merged into the Renaissance. The Early Middle Ages was a time of population decline due to wars, plagues and famine (Pastoureau, 2001). By the

Considerations

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seventh century, parts of the Byzantine Empire, occasionally referred to as the eastern Roman Empire, came to be associated with the emerging Islamic empire (Grodecki, 1991). Kingdoms rose and fell. The High Middle Ages witnessed an increase in the European population, technological and agricultural advances, and trade. This was the Age of Chivalry, characterized by feudalism and the Crusades, an attempt to regain lands that had been taken over by Islamic rule. This period saw the rise of scholasticism in the form of universities. “Intellectual life was marked by scholasticism, a philosophy that emphasized joining faith to reason, and by the founding of universities” (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ Middle_Ages). Theology, architecture, art, sculpture and poetry waxed strong, as did exploration of new lands. However, this period was followed by the Late Middle Ages, where war, famine and plagues once again devastated the continent, reducing the population of Europe by one third. Thus ended the Middle Ages and so began the early modern period, characterized by the Renaissance. Interestingly enough, “new” ideas, thought to have been lost to the sands of time, re-emerged from the exploration of eastern lands, most notably those under the control of the Muslims, in the area that was known as Persia, established by Cyrus the Great (600–530 BCE). Much of the ancient wisdom of the Greeks had been protected by the conquest of this great empire by Alexander the Great of Macedonia (356–323 BCE). This rediscovery of ancient wisdom was not an epiphany, however, and had been in process since the eleventh century, during the High Middle Ages, where, according to Michael Crichton, renowned author and physician, the world was emerging from a “modern” ice age (Crichton, 2009) that began to ease poverty and famine through increasing agricultural production and this allowed for the arts and sciences to flourish as never before. Further developments in philosophy and theology followed, spawning greater intellectual activity. In Western Europe, the philosophies of Aristotle re-emerged, and the Age of Discovery was born, lasting from the remnants of the fifteenth century to the 1700s. This era saw the beginning of transcontinental discovery, colonial expansion and continuing empire building. This has been said to be the beginnings of what we now know as globalization.

Considerations Perhaps a more pointed explanation about how contemporary philosophical aspects of qualitative research have moved beyond conceptual analysis to incorporate notions of heteroglossia, intertextuality, binaries, erasures and inversions may be of some use at this point, in order to show how these deconstructive analyses are performed in order to dislodge some of our more comfortable notions of textuality and narrative sequence. For instance, James Clifford’s (1988, 1997) work has been responsible for sparking serious controversy and critical debate in numerous disciplines, including

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literature, art history and media studies but, most importantly, in the realm of cultural anthropology. Clifford, acknowledged by Cooper and White (2012), used deconstructive moves to rethink some of the more traditional notions of narrative that Geertz (1973) relied upon in his early work on the Balinese culture. In addition to James Clifford (1936–1987), numerous other writers, including Mikhail Bakhtin (1895–1975), Roland Barthes (1915–1980), Michel Foucault (1926–1984), Jacques Derrida (1930–2004), and others exerted enormous influence upon the way that we perceive qualitative research in the postmodern era. For example, Mikhail Bakhtin, a Russian philosopher and literary critic, also left his mark upon the study of, among other things, semiotics and structuralism. Bakhtin’s concept of unfinalizability suggests that a person can never fully know or be fully known. Roland Barthes, in reacting to existentialist philosophy, influenced numerous schools of theoretical thought, most notably anthropology, semiotics, social theory and post-structuralism. Michel Foucault, another French philosopher and historian, and one-time friend and colleague of Derrida’s, attempted to address conceptualizations of power and how it operates to control knowledge. Jacques Derrida is famous, among other things, for an apparently mistranslated quote that there is “nothing outside the text.” While this seems to imply that there is nothing outside of language, Derrida claimed that the term “text” had been confused with the term “context,” thus altering the meaning of the entire statement to mean “There is no out-of-context” (Derrida, 1976, p. 144). That is to say, everything has a context. While a much fuller discussion of the influences of these great thinkers would be most satisfying, the volume required to do justice to not only these enormously influential thinkers and the logic and understanding that characterize their theories would take far more time and space than can be afforded in this all too brief encapsulation of qualitative research and its relation to the postmodern times within which we live. However, it is interesting and probably important to note that these great thinkers were all contemporaries of one another. Perhaps, if one were to look for culturally intertextual patterns, one may wonder what the most important historic events that occurred during their lifetimes would have been. Perhaps the answer to that question would be World Wars I and II. From the cataclysmic events of the First and Second World Wars came a body of thought that has served to create a paradigm shift in ontological thought. This shift grew out of the destruction, on catastrophic proportions, not only of property and possessions but also of human faith. This sense of loss, coupled with a grim determination to not only succeed but to prevail in the face of nihilistic events, served to engender a new breed of philosophers—the existentialists, such as Jean-Paul Sartre (1946) and Albert Camus (1955), who believed that one must not only invent meaning for one’s life but that meaning must belong to something greater than oneself.

Research Paradigms

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Research Paradigms The scientific method, thanks to the work of Aristotle (Magee, 2016), has held sway for millennia and has provided contemporary society with a “scientifically-based ontology” that seems to imply that all and every question about the cosmos, as well as more closely related issues, can be resolved by science. Because of this, it can be contended that the scientific method and the paradigm that we know as quantitative research have always been with us and that qualitative research has recently presented itself as a modern way of looking at phenomena without necessitating the use of statistics or “hard science” in order to find the “truth” that Socrates so desperately sought. Ironic though it may seem, qualitative research predates quantitative research. As such, qualitative researchers need not feel that the research that is “performed” qualitatively is somehow inherently inferior to quantitative research. While qualitative research may have languished in the shadow of its dynamic twin, quantitative research, qualitative research also seeks truth. However, this is found in multiple “truths,” or perspectives that offer qualities or understandings about diverse phenomena, rather than attempting to distil a single truth or answer from a scientific conundrum. As one may easily perceive, qualitative and quantitative research are not completely dissimilar, but they do attend different masters. Quantitative research typically seeks to find the truth behind a particular research problem and attempts to explain that phenomenon in scientific terms, frequently availing itself of statistical analysis. Qualitative research, on the other hand, attempts to understand the complexities of any given phenomenon, and attempts to explain the phenomenon through identifying its qualities rather than its attributes. As such, qualitative research strives to identify perspectives relative to the issue under investigation. However, Professor Raewynn Connell of the University of Sydney, Australia, cautions that the simplistic view that the two paradigms are completely and absolutely dissimilar is erroneous.

Professor Raewynn Connell

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In the following video-clip, Professor Connell details some of the common features of both quantitative and qualitative research. While each may share some characteristics with one another, it is unlikely that one would confuse them or use them interchangeably.

Video Clip 1.1: Professor Raewynn Connell (▶ https://doi.org/10.1007/000-­6ck)

Professor Connell begins by noting that there is almost an artificial distinction between the conventional concepts of qualitative and quantitative research. For example, she notes that any qualitative research contains some elements of quantitative research. The same is true of quantitative research, as it also contains elements of qualitative research. This may be partly due to the fact that qualitative researchers in the postmodern era have borrowed from their quantitative counterparts. Much of this borrowing has had to do with vocabulary being transmuted from quantitative research to the qualitative mode. However, with the passage of time, new vocabulary, developed specifically for qualitative research, may very likely appear. Returning to the video-clip, Raewynn Connell notes that, with regards to qualitative research, we conduct interviews, which are then transcribed and are mined for data. Within this research, however, there is a necessity to make quantitative judgments along the way. It is more than merely a matter of identifying the number of interviewees, or participants, or other necessary quantitative information, it is also about judging whether the statements made in the interview are typical statements made by the interviewee. Also, what outcome is expected? And does the current study reinforce previous findings or refute them? Professor Connell notes that, categorically, these are quantitative statements, albeit inexact statements, embedded within qualitative research. Comparing and generalizing are also attributes of quantitative research. Another example offered by Professor Connell is the view that, when we consider a particular phenomenon to be normative, this would constitute the predominant pattern within the group we have interviewed. However, it is not simply about quantitative research insinuating itself within qualitative research. It happens the other way around, as well.

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Within conventionally acknowledged quantitative research, one may recognize that, when studying statistics and responses to a given question, one makes qualitative judgments about the meaning of that question. Professor Connell points out that, upon seeing a correlation between two items, you, as researcher, are asking questions about the meaning of these items and the meaning of the connection, which are qualitative questions. Consequently, Professor Connell points out that there is not really a sharp distinction between qualitative and quantitative research. Such moments, she suggests, coexist within almost every piece of research. So, according to Professor Connell, every piece of research contains both quantitative and qualitative elements; however, some pieces of research have a greater saturation of one paradigm or the other. As previously noted, we would never confuse one for the other. Each paradigm has its own conventions regarding the handling of information, or data. As such, each paradigm requires an effort to think through questions of meanings, significance, internal contradictions, the layering of experience and awareness. Also, according to Professor Connell, research with a higher concentration of qualitative elements will require greater effort to tease out participants’ experiences, particularly as they pertain to social practice. Raewynn Connell notes, at the end of this video-clip, that different kinds of questions come into focus with what is conventionally termed qualitative research. Additionally, because participant responses to any given question may vary and, thus, produce a range of responses, it is frequently necessary to return to the question and assess whether it is the correct question or if it is phrased so as to elicit appropriate data. To illustrate this point, Let us visit the classroom of Professor Robert Stake, of the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign.

Professor Emeritus Robert Stake

In this video clip, Professor Stake is teaching a course on qualitative research methods and he is asking students to begin to develop a sensitive awareness around the process of writing interview questions.

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Video Clip 1.2: Professor Emeritus Robert Stake (▶ https://doi.org/10.1007/000-­6cj)

Towards the end of his class, Professor Stake describes how he wants students to compose four interview questions in order to develop question construction skills. Students are expected to describe the problem under study and pose questions that will serve to elucidate that phenomenon. At issue is how the students ask the questions and, as a result, this will require fine-tuning. In fact, each student is asked to have a classmate review the questions and offer suggestions by way of written critique. Then, the students are asked to take their interview questions to the streets. In reporting back to the professor, students are asked to provide the questions as written, as well as the questions as asked. Reflecting on the process will allow the students to clarify whether they could have done more to advance the understanding of the issue at hand. To end the project, a five-hundred-word synopsis describes what the student has discovered about the art of questioning. The responses to the questions matter less than the questions themselves because the task at hand is about question building. Professor Stake acknowledges that this is not an easy task if it is accomplished properly. By including the video-clip of Robert Stake in class, one may easily see that question construction in the qualitative paradigm is developed differently than in the quantitative paradigm, which tends to be hypothesis-driven, survey-oriented and commonly uses statistical programs to arrive at an analysis of the data. For qualitative work, interviews require careful construction so as to avoid extraneous elements and to actually accrue information pertinent to the topic under study. It is quite easy to create questions that do not get at the data that is relevant to the topic. As a result, careful construction and multiple tests will help to offer some assurance that the questions asked will be able to access the data required. As such, it is easy to see the differences between the two paradigms. While quantitative research is most commonly associated with the natural sciences, qualitative research tends to be more frequently utilized in the social sciences and humanities. In essence, then, although qualitative and quantitative research paradigms are similar in some respects and, although they may be utilized for both or either natural

Contemporary Qualitative Research

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Fig. 1.1  Yin and Yang (taijitsu). (Retrieved: https://www.ancient.eu/ Yin_and_Yang/)

or social scientific purposes, they are quite distinct from one another. Perhaps one way to capture these similarities and differences is through the Yin/Yang symbol, pictured below (Fig. 1.1). This symbol is fundamental to Chinese philosophy and culture. It dates from prior to the third century BCE. The principle behind Yin and Yang is the concept that all things exist as inseparable and contradictory opposites. From this, it can be seen that both components of the symbol contain some elements, represented by the two dots, of the other. Each component is neither superior nor inferior to the other. However, it is interesting to note that harmony is achieved when the two components are in a state of balance. While there are a great many spiritual and religious trappings, as well as philosophical understandings attached to this symbol, the symbol of Yin and Yang also can be employed to identify the close connection between qualitative and quantitative research paradigms, as well as the fact that the two paradigms are not mutually exclusive from one another. As a result, it is important, when beginning a new research project, that one must first identify the paradigm that will be used in order to construct a planned, coherent and cohesive body of research.

Contemporary Qualitative Research Modern social sciences have attempted to understand the “analysis and patterned conduct and social processes of society,” according to Vidich and Lyman (2000, p. 37). However, the presumption that this was actually attainable implied that the world could be viewed objectively. In spite of the fact that human experience tends to be subjectively based, it is unlikely that qualitative research would offer this. While qualitative research offers many things, a purely objective view is not the intent with this type of research because qualitative research is “based on how we conceptualize our reality and our images of the world” (Denzin & Lincoln, 2005, p. 1).

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Modern qualitative research appears to have developed in tandem with the development of psychology. However, this arrival was by no means heralded in with trumpets blaring because, according to Wertz (2014), psychologists using qualitative measures tended not to include such accounts in their writings about scientific research methods. In fact, increasingly rigorous accountability seemed to be the watchword. Thus, systematic development of qualitative methodology was delayed until much later. Only between the late 1960s and 1990 did phenomenologists, grounded theorists, discourse analysts, narrative researchers, and others articulate and assert the general scientific value, methodologies, and applicable tools of qualitative inquiry in psychology. (Wertz, 2014, p. 4)

From the latter part of the past century, the trend towards qualitative inquiry has burgeoned. Qualitative research has become institutionalized within educational circles, publishing and professional organizations. It is the intent of this volume to acquaint the reader not only with some of the more common methodologies related to qualitative research but also to introduce the reader, via video-clips, to some of the researchers who have been instrumental in developing this field. Thus, as Alasuutari notes, in Seale (2004), “the qualitative methods movement has been a convenient vehicle for the rediscovery and legitimation of approaches to human inquiry that were, in fact, quite prevalent (particularly in sociology) before the Second World War” (p.  100). World War II took the developments and scientific advances from the First World War and moved beyond these to establish a quantitative research paradigm that dominated human sciences at a time when belief in the infallibility of science was most strong (Tomkiss, 2004). Whatever progress had been made in terms of qualitative research was largely overshadowed by a century of scientific developments brought about largely by the two world wars. In fact, this led to what Seale refers to as a “qualitative creation myth,” That contributed to the idea of a separation between qualitative and quantitative method and an amnesia about ‘qualitative’ research practice before the 1940s. In fact, the set of practices that came to be incorporated under the ‘qualitative method’ banner had been part and parcel of a general approach to scholarship and academic inquiry, in which quantitative– qualitative distinctions were relatively unimportant. (Seale, 2004, p. 100)

Any historical analysis benefits from understanding the elision between the two paradigms, as we have come to know them, and how they have come to be viewed as intrinsically dissimilar when, historically, they have both grown from the same root. It is at this point that we will leave quantitative research to its own devices and will concentrate on the qualitative aspects of research.

Qualitative Research in the Postmodern Era Since the Second World War, qualitative research has spawned a multiplicity of forms, or moments, as Denzin and Lincoln (2005) refer to them. This analysis has been supported and discussed in the first of this two-volume series and, as such,

Qualitative Research in the Postmodern Era

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need not bear repeating here. Suffice it to say that, at present, we find ourselves in the eighth moment of qualitative research. One may think that, given the passage of time, any of the kinks and learning tangles that bedevil qualitative research would have worked themselves out. However, there continues to be issues relating to two beliefs that still hold a great deal of sway, even today. The first belief is a long-held position that researchers can clearly, precisely and objectively report observations relating to the society and its inhabitants. However, as Clifford Geertz (1973) stated, the very presence of the researcher, in the midst of that which is being researched, alters the research itself. The researcher’s presence influences the actions of the participants, alters the knowledge that the participants have to share, affects the data collection and, hence, the analysis and findings produced by the data, and, thus, distorts the conclusions, albeit ever so slightly. This brings us back to the notion that subjectivity is far more important than we would like to consider. Objectivity is rare and true objectivity is impossible. The second belief is that individuals can actually distil their experiences of the worlds around them to a succinct and real wholeness. Zygmunt Bauman (Beilharz, 2000) has noted in a number of his works that the artist is the person least capable of interpreting his or her own works. While, in this statement, there is the presumption that another individual would be more objective, this view is as fallible as the view that one is able to be objective about one’s own life, or work, or circumstance. Maxine Greene, in Cooper and White (2012), adds to this view by noting, It’s funny when you look back, you tell it differently. At the beginning of my documentary, I said everything, everything that you are going to hear is a lie because, you know, when you tell a story about your life, it’s not the way you lived it. And so, you know, once you give it a shape, it’s not the way it was [laugh] you know, because your life is only one damn thing after the other. (p. 151)

Fascinatingly enough, Maxine Greene not only points to the issues of objectivity in terms of the inability of one to be entirely objective about one’s own life, she also points to the crisis of representation in that the retelling of one’s own story results in an attempt to vocalize experience as opposed to living that experience. Turning actions into words can never fully capture the experience or the sequence of events exactly. However, the lack of true objectivity regarding the researcher and the participant prevents the construction of a truly objective piece of research simply because the instruments currently available preclude absolute objectivity, regardless of approaches, methodologies, methods, or even paradigms that are brought to bear on the topic to be researched. Qualitative researchers from all disciplines continue to search out a means by which they may be able to accurately recount their observations as they go about recording (authentically) the lived experiences of their participants. Thanks to poststructuralist and postmodern researchers, it has become clear that such an objective state can never be achieved in its entirety. These researchers are aware that numerous filters must be taken into consideration in order to even attempt a partially objective viewpoint. Such filters include ethnicity, race, heritage, culture, social class, gender and language, to name just a few. Clearly, if

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objectivity were possible, it would have to account for each and every variable, many of which are invisible within the society under study because ways of being and doing in any society is particular to that society. Values, beliefs and mores, like successful policy, become routinized, traditionalized, historicized and, hence, almost invisible to all but the most discerning eye, on the part of the researcher and the researched alike. As Denzin and Lincoln (2008) note, There are no objective observations, only observations socially situated in the worlds of— and between—the observer and the observed. Subjects, or individuals, are seldom able to give full explanations of their actions or intentions; all they can offer are accounts, or stories, about what they have done and why. No single method can grasp all the subtle variations in ongoing human experience. (p. 29)

In essence, then, true objectivity is a chimera, ephemeral and impossible to ascertain. It is this acceptance that marks qualitative research as distinct from its quantitative counterpart.

Postcolonial Research Controversy continues to swirl around the topic of reliability and validity in the field of qualitative research in this postmodern age. For example, the problem of how to establish ethnographic authority has been seriously questioned by postcolonial theorists. At one end of the spectrum, if indeed such a spectrum exists, is Margaret Mead, an American anthropologist. Martin Orans (1996) suggests that Mead did not formulate her research agenda in scientific terms and points out Mead’s data support several different determinations relative to her landmark work, Coming of Age in Samoa (1928). He surmises that Mead’s conclusions hinge on an interpretive, rather than positivist, approach to culture. However, compared to the works of Clifford Geertz, also an American anthropologist, Mead’s (1928) work appears to be written along a much more positivistic vein than Geertz’s (1973) work, testament to the inexorable march of time and the changes that occur as a result of its passage. Postcolonial research makes use of methods of intellectual discourse that serve to analyze cultural legacies of colonialism and imperialism perpetrated almost entirely by European influences. As such, postcolonial research is often closely associated with critical theory and examines the exploitation of humans among nations colonized by these powers and the development of a postcolonial identity (Gilbert & Tompkins, 1996). As Gilbert and Tompkins point out, postcolonialism refers to an engagement with, and contestation of colonialism’s discourses, power structures, and social hierarchies…. A theory of post-colonialism must, then, respond to more than the merely chronological construction of post-independence, and to more than just the discursive experience of imperialism. (1996, p. 230)

Postcolonial studies tend to analyze and critique wildly inclusive terms such as “the Third World” that tends to view large groups of heterogeneous people in monolithic

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terms and, thus, control how knowledge of the world is generated and controlled as representations of the past are reproduced and/or transformed (Sharp, 2008). One of the first examples of postcolonial research may be ascribed to Abraham Ulrikab (1845–1881), an Inuk from the Moravian mission of Hebron on the southern edge of the Torngat Mountains in Labrador, Canada (Rivet, 2014). An Inuit fisherman and hunter, Abraham was literate in Inuktitut, spoke a smattering of English and German and held the position of first violinist at in the Hebron church. However, Life was extremely hard in northern Labrador, particularly in winter. Abraham encountered great difficulty providing for his family. However, in August, 1880, Norwegian Johan Adrian Jacobsen, an agent for German zoo owner, Carl Hagenbeck, arrived in Hebron to recruit “Eskimos” (a term offensive to the Inuit) to travel throughout Europe as an exhibit for the European public. Abraham traveled to Europe with his wife and daughters, believing Jacobsen’s offer to be God’s answer to his prayers. In the short period of time remaining to him, Abraham began writing a personal journal, stating how unpleasant life was in Europe was, largely because of the crowds and the constant city noises. In mid-December, a 15-year-old Inuk girl died suddenly. Shortly after Christmas, her mother passed away, as well as Abraham’s 3-year-old daughter, Sara, who was diagnosed with smallpox. Although French authorities requested that they be immediately vaccinated, it was already too late, as all had contracted smallpox. Abraham passed away in January 1881. His observations may have represented a reconciliation of sorts from the point of view of this Inuit man who studied Europeans, striving to make his beliefs compatible with the reality of his heartbreaking situation. Of the estimated 35,000 people who were exhibited in human zoos from the mid-­1870s to the late-1950s, Abraham Ulrikab is one of a handful to have left notes describing his experience. The translated work was published in 2005, under the title The Diary of Abraham Ulrikab: Text and Context, although the original diary in Inuktitut has yet to be found. Repatriation of Abraham’s remains would represent the end of a long journey abroad for the Inuk fisherman, hunter, father and husband (Rivet, 2014).

Abraham Ulrikab. (Courtesy of the Moravian Archives, Herrnhut, Germany and France Rivet)

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As such, postcolonial studies represent a powerful factor in qualitative research, particularly as it applies to the postmodern era in which we live. But, not all the world exists within the postmodern frame. As the forces of neo-liberalism, generally conceived as the marriage of commerce and politics, seek to further colonize those realms, which were held in abeyance by past colonial powers, qualitative research takes on an eerily recidivistic caste as researchers struggle to standardize forms of research and the vocabulary that may accompany it. Thus, there appear to be two forces working against one another, one that continues to build empires, while postcolonial forces seek to deconstruct past damage created by these very forces. As we progress through these postmodern times, it is often quite startling to see things swim into view that we not only disdain but that we have been guilty of practicing. Because qualitative research was founded in Europe, rather than, say, Africa or North America, a particular and unique European perspective has held sway. This perspective naturally justifies the attempts of European researchers, and their counterparts throughout the world to do “European,” or “White” research. This research attempted to identify, locate and explain other peoples in terms of the dominant context. This type of research has been conducted exclusively in the past and is only just now beginning to become accepting of other ways of doing research. Postcolonial research attempts to understand, validate and justify research in terms that people, who are the non-dominant volunteers or conscripts of qualitative research, can relate to. While this type of research is still qualitative in nature, it attempts to be more relevant and useful to those who experience that which is researched. As such, postcolonial research has merit in its insistence on a more authentic research process that is related to societal experience. In this way, the “othering” of the research participant is held to a minimum, is more respectful of the terms and conditions within which the participants and researchers find themselves, and helps to allow for a greater degree of objectivity and subjectivity within the research project. In the past, as noted by Cooper and White (2012), In each of these eras, researchers were and have been influenced by their political hopes and ideologies, discovering findings in their research that confirmed their prior theories or beliefs. Early ethnographers confirmed the racial and cultural diversity of peoples throughout the globe and attempted to fit this diversity into a theory about the origins of history, the races, and civilizations. (p. 53)

By attempting to force fit the experiences of “others” into a kind of history that was palatable and understandable to researchers, a “colonial pluralism” (Cooper & White, 2012, p. 53) was developed that left Indigenous peoples alone and relatively unharmed and unscathed, providing that their Indigenous leaders could be co-opted by colonial administrators, aided and abetted by researchers who, in their study of Africans, Asians, and other Third World peoples of color, served as standard bearers for imperialistic forces seeking to build empires on the backs of the “others.” Denzin and Lincoln add their voices, Early American ethnographers studied the American Indian [sic] from the perspective of the conqueror, who saw the lifeworld of the primitive as a window to the prehistoric past.

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The Calvinist mission to save the Indian was soon transferred to the mission of saving the “hordes” of immigrants who entered the United States with the beginnings of industrialization. Qualitative community studies of the ethnic Other proliferated from the early 1900s to the 1960s and included the work of E. Franklin Frazier, Robert Park, and Robert Redfield and their students, as well as William Foote Whyte, the Lynds, August Hollingshead, Herbert Gans, Stanford Lyman, Arthur Vidich, and Joseph Bensman. The post-1960 ethnicity studies challenged the “melting pot” hypotheses of Park and his followers and corresponded to the emergence of ethnic studies programs that saw Native Americans, Latinos, Asian Americans, and African Americans attempting to take control over the study of their own peoples. (2008, p. 19)

As society evolves, the words of Norman Denzin and Yvonna Lincoln encourage us to acknowledge that things have changed for the better. From viewing Indigenous peoples as “curiosities” to be studied, summarized and explained, societies have now become somewhat more inclusive, if only for the simple reason that Indigenous cultures are no longer content with having their way of life explained to them by people who have never experienced how they truly live, but now strive to study their own cultures, using approaches, methodologies and methods that they feel are appropriate to such studies. Such postcolonial studies, conducted by Indigenous peoples or other groups who have developed their own research methodologies, are becoming more prevalent and will increase in the near future.

Eight Moments of Qualitative Research While it is important to note that the eight moments of qualitative research have had significant impact on the entire paradigm, this topic has been covered elsewhere (see Cooper & White, 2012; Denzin & Lincoln, 2005, 2008). As such, it is fitting that we take brief note of these moments before moving forward. The first moment, the “traditional period” commenced in the early part of the twentieth century and was in vogue until World War II. In this period, objectivity was prized, and research accounts were reflective of the positivist movement that offered valid, reliable, and objective interpretations in their writings (Denzin & Lincoln, 2005). Researchers who typified this approach include Bronislaw Malinowski (1884–1942) and Margaret Mead (1901–1978). Both of these qualitative researchers emulated the position of the “Lone Ethnographer,” which fostered the advent of classic ethnography. However, this position has been relegated to the colonial past (Rosaldo, 1989). The modernist phase, extending from the Second World War into the 1970s, represents the second moment of qualitative research, builds on works from the traditional period where social realism, naturalism, and “slice-of-life” ethnographies were valued. This phase remains concurrent with other moments and sought to formalize extant qualitative methods. This moment was creative in the sense that new generations of students encountered new theories that were interpretive in nature and which offered a voice for those marginalized by society. Chief proponents of this moment include Howard S. Becker, who attempted to make qualitative research

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as rigorous as quantitative research, and Barney Glaser and Anselm Strauss, who developed the methodology of grounded theory. Even as the modernist phase appeared to be turgid with possibilities, the advent of the Vietnam War issued in a new era in qualitative research. This era, the third moment, has come to be called “blurred genres” (Denzin & Lincoln, 2005). At this point, qualitative research was a recognizable paradigm, replete with methodologies, methods and strategies. Computers were being utilized to not only speed up the research process, but also to improve the consistency of methods and results through increased and better opportunities for analysis. This decade of blurred genres was bounded by Clifford Geertz, who wrote The Interpretation of Cultures (1973) and Local Knowledge (1983), signaling both the beginning and the end of this moment. Geertz’s major contribution was the recognition that “thick description” allowed for a more interpretive perspective, given his point that all anthropological writings are interpretations of interpretations. According to Denzin and Lincoln (2008), Geertz went on to propose that the boundaries between the social sciences and the humanities had become blurred. Social scientists were now turning to the humanities for models, theories, and methods of analysis (semiotics, hermeneutics). A form of genre diaspora was occurring: documentaries that read like fiction (Mailer), parables posing as ethnographies (Castaneda), theoretical treatises that look like travelogues (Levi-Strauss). (p. 24)

Within the same moment, new approaches such as poststructuralism, deconstructionism and ethnomethodology were becoming recognized. Within this moment, the works of researchers such as Robert Stake and Elliot Eisner were becoming established. By the mid-1980s, the fourth moment, the crisis of representation, made itself known to researchers by articulating the aftermath espoused by Geertz’s view that all research is interpretive, at least to some extent. Question around issues of gender, class and race began to crop up, as researchers sought new models of truth and representation (Rosaldo, 1989). The erosion of classic norms in anthropology (e.g., objectivism, complicity with colonialism, social life structured by fixed rituals and customs, ethnographies as monuments to a culture) was complete. (Denzin, 2008, p. 315)

Many new theories, such as critical theory, feminist theory, and epistemologies of color burst onto the scene. Reliability, validity and objectivity continued to present themselves as contentions, along with interpretive theories, as opposed to linear theories that held sway, as older models of reasoning continued to be challenged. The fifth moment (1990–1995) is termed the postmodern period. This period attempted to understand the issues presented by the fourth moment and the preceding moments, as well, to a greater or lesser extent, particularly with regards to the crisis of representation. The “other” came to be represented in a multiplicity of ways. There was no objective observer. Greater activism and the abandoning of grand narratives were the order of the day. The sixth moment, post-experimental inquiry (1995–2000), ushering in multiple criteria of evaluation, was a period of great excitement. Second, publications

Summary: From Plato to Aristotle and Back Again

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burgeoned as more and more research was being conducted in so many different ways by an army of national and international scholars. This was an extended moment of discovery (Denzin, 2008). The seventh and eighth moments are upon us, in what Denzin (2008) refers to as the “methodologically contested present” (p. 317), which represents a period of tension, conflict and retrenchment. Also, according to Denzin, the eighth moment is now and the future, as “scholars are confronting the methodological backlash associated with the evidence-based social movement” (p. 317). It is interesting to note that not only is the number of qualitative research “moments” increasing, but the rate at which they are making their appearance is also accelerating. This may be testament to the fact, as stated earlier, that there is more research being conducted today by more people than at any other time in history.

Summary: From Plato to Aristotle and Back Again Qualitative research is a collection of methodologies that can be viewed as a means of inquiry utilized, most notably, by the social sciences and humanities. Within this paradigm, epistemology concerns itself with the theory of knowledge and is connected with how individuals represent the world around them. Plato’s dialogues serve as a proxy for understanding Socrates, whose contributions provided a foundation for Western philosophy. Plato and his student, Aristotle, who became tutor to Alexander the Great of Macedonia, laid the foundations for modern Western philosophical thought, including the paradigms of quantitative and qualitative research. Aristotle is credited with originating what became known as the “scientific method.” Following the Greek civilization, the sacking of Rome issued in the Middle Ages, which endured for a millennium. By the Late Middle Ages, however, ideas thought to have been lost re-emerged from the exploration of eastern lands, having been protected by the conquests of Alexander the Great, student of Aristotle. A video-clip features Professor Raewynn Connell, who discusses some of the similarities between qualitative and quantitative research. Any qualitative research contains some elements of quantitative research. Thus, there is not a definitive distinction between qualitative and quantitative research, as every piece of research contains quantitative and qualitative elements. For qualitative work, interviews require careful construction to avoid introduction of bias and to accrue data pertinent to the topic under study. In an additional video-clip, Professor Robert Stake offers an exercise relating to effective qualitative question building. The two paradigms of qualitative and quantitative research have both grown from the same root. As such, the acceptance that objectivity is impossible to ascertain marks qualitative research as distinct from its more literal quantitative counterpart. Since the Second World War, qualitative research has spawned a multiplicity of forms, or moments. Postcolonial research insists on more authentic research processes, whereby the “othering” of the research participant is minimized.

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Eight moments of qualitative research have had significant impact on the entire paradigm. Many new theories presented themselves as contentions, as older models of reasoning were challenged. Selected Annotated Bibliography Anagnostopoulos, G. (Ed.). (2013). A companion to Aristotle. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley Blackwell. This edited volume, A companion to Aristotle, offers detailed studies of major themes regarding Aristotle’s philosophies. These philosophies range from the study of art to the realm of zoology. This is the most comprehensive single volume study of one of history’s most influential thinkers and is comprised of 40 essays from leading experts on the life and work of Aristotle. The book covers the complete range of Aristotle’s work, from theoretical inquiries into physics, biology, metaphysics and psychology to the practical and productive “sciences” such as ethics, politics, rhetoric and art. At 672 pages, this volume is suitable for graduate students, researchers and for people who wish to acquire a detailed knowledge about the works of this philosopher. Considering the difficulty of many of the topics, this volume is relatively accessible to the casual reader and also serves as an excellent reference book. Barnes, J. (1995). The Cambridge companion to Aristotle. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. It has been generally accepted that Aristotle remains one of the greatest philosophers that the world has known, within and beyond Western traditions. However, his writings continue to pose a challenge to modern thinkers. Contributors to this edited volume strive to offer clear explanations of many of the most important philosophical concerns regarding his work. While the approaches and methods of the contributors vary, the volume editor allows differing legitimate interpretations to stand. The introduction offers an account of the life and times of Aristotle before guiding the reader through the complexities and varieties of topics relating to Aristotle’s actual writings in order to offer a characterization of his philosophical development. Following this, subsequent chapters discuss Aristotle’s writings on logic, metaphysics, science, psychology, ethics, politics, rhetoric and poetics. A basic assumption of this volume is that readers will not require a conventional knowledge of the Greek language, modern or ancient. Beilharz, P. (2000). Zygmunt Bauman: Ther didactic of modernity. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. This slim volume, by Peter Beilharz, is a measured and thoughtful book that affords a comprehensive and critical commentary on social theory. It explores the roots of capital and labour, and explains how these ideas have flourished in the modern age. Bauman’s writings on culture and intellectuals, interpreted by Beilharz, offer ideas on individualization that are consequential for class analysis. Following a study of the Holocaust and its devastating effects, Bauman speaks of the human condition and, in the final chapter, Beilherz offers up some ideas of mediations

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within and beyond the society. This is a powerful book and will satisfy readers’ cravings for more insightful commentary by one of the most powerful and influential thinkers in the modern age. Beilharz has done justice to a number of Zygmunt Bauman’s insights into contemporary society and the influences that have presented themselves in the form of postmodern “liquid” modernity. Brumbaugh, R. S. (1991). Plato for the modern age. Lanham, MD: University Press of America. This is a one-volume introduction to Plato’s biography. It includes a complete account of his works, along with a systematic examination of his theory of forms. The book concludes with applications of Plato’s ideas to the world of today. This volume is designed as an introductory text for novice students as well as for the general reading public. The book takes a synchronic view of recent work and divides it into four models of Plato’s interpretations—analytic, literate, Aristotelian and “Whiteheadian,” from the great historical philosopher, Alfred North Whitehead. This book is appropriate for students and researchers alike and offers at once a strong and candid discussion of the works of Plato. Plato for the Modern Age, like Plato’s life and works, is divided into three major periods; a youthful commitment to philosophical inquiry and its defense, a mature systematic vision, and a final careful criticism and application of the system Plato had envisaged. Geertz, C. (1973). The interpretation of cultures: Selected essays. New  York: Basic Books. When an anthropologist, urged on by an attentive publisher, begins to gather together certain of his essays for a kind of retrospective exhibition of what he has been doing, or trying to do, over the 15-year period since his release from graduate school, he is faced by two tearing decisions; what to include, and how reverently to treat what is included. The majority of the essays are empirical studies rather than theoretical treatises, all of which are basically concerned with pushing forward, case by case, a particular view of what culture is, what role it plays in social life and how it ought properly to be studied. This redefinition of culture has perhaps been Clifford Geertz’s most persistent interest as an anthropologist. This set of essays emerges as treatises in cultural theory, as developed through a series of concrete analyses. This book has an argument to make and offers a clear view of the construction of society for the scholar and reader, alike. Jori, A. (2003). Aristotele. Milano, IT: Bruno Mondadori Editore. Aristotle was “the master of those who know.” For many centuries Aristotle was considered to be the very symbol of human reason. Even today, the prospects opened by Aristotle contain an undiminished vitality: Various currents of contemporary ethics have highlighted the extraordinary relevance of Aristotle’s practical thinking, while a lively attention is infused into Aristotle’s investigations of practical thinking and his attention to natural philosophy. In this text, the present introduction to Aristotelian philosophy represents a valuable tool for those looking for a reliable access to texts of Aristotle. Emerging from the book is a complex picture of a

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philosopher critically open to every avenue of thought; one who is careful to combine structural inspiration with a problematic approach to issues. This book is written in Italian and may be difficult for those untrained in Romance languages. Kahn, C. H. (1998). Plato and the Socratic dialogue: The philosophical use of a literary form. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. This volume offers a new interpretation of Plato’s early and middle dialogues as the expression of a unified philosophical vision, whereas the traditional view sees the dialogues as identifying successive stages in Plato’s philosophical development. We may read them as more authentically reflecting an artistic plan for the gradual, indirect and partial exposition of Platonic philosophy. Thus, the magnificent literary achievement of the dialogues can be fully appreciated only from the viewpoint of a unified reading of the philosophical content. This book offers a section on the literary and intellectual background of Plato’s work, followed by a section on the interpretation of these works. Included in this volume is a section on Socrates and his importance as a philosophic figure. Beneficial and virtuous knowledge is examined as a central concept of Platonic knowledge, followed by Plato’s theory of forms. The book’s final chapter considers Phaedrus and the limitations of writing. Kofman, S. (1998). Socrates: Fictions of a philosopher. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. As Kofman asserts, Socrates is an elusive figure who remains enigmatic, necessarily, since he did not write or directly state his beliefs. She writes, “With Socrates, we will never leave fiction behind.” Kofman claims that Socrates’s characteristic avowal of ignorance was meant to be ironic. Later philosophers who interpreted his text invariably resisted the profoundly ironic character of his way of life and diverged widely in their interpretations of him. The information available to us about Socrates’s life is paradoxical. His death is as enigmatic as his life. Even his death is subject to various interpretations. Some regard him as a redemptive figure, while others view him as an archetypal Stoic hero. In spite of radically differing interpretations, Socrates remains a dominant figure of immense importance in the history of philosophy. In examining a series of contemporary philosophers’ responses to Socratic irony, Kofman draws specifically on the history of philosophy and psychoanalytic theory. Magee, B. (2016). The story of philosophy: A concise introduction to the world’s greatest thinkers and their ideas. London, UK: Dorling Kindersley Books. In this updated guide to philosophy, Magee guides readers through the history of ideas and thinking, tracing over 2500 years of Western philosophy from the Ancient Greeks to modern thinkers. In discovering what philosophy is, great thinkers have questioned fundamental principles underlying all knowledge and existence and address life’s big questions, such as “What is being?” and “Can the existence of God be proved?” Each philosophical movement includes profiles of key philosophers and their important works. Covering every major philosopher from Plato to Sir Karl Popper,

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via Saint Augustine, Locke and Nietzsche, Magee explore these great thinkers in their historical contexts and examines the influences that shaped their lives and work. The Story of Philosophy is an essential guide to this fascinating subject. Full-­ color photographs, artwork, and illustrations illuminate every page. Rosaldo, R. (1989). Culture and truth: The remaking of social analysis. Boston, MA: Beacon Press. Exposing the inadequacies of old conceptions of static cultures and detached observers, this book argues, instead, for social science to acknowledge and celebrate diversity, narrative, emotion and subjectivity. This book represents an ambitious endeavour and, so, must be judged accordingly. Rosaldo begins well, recapitulating a fine analysis of Ilongot headhunting. His summary of how older Ilongot men, subject to major personal losses, emerge from grief with a rage that, mixed with younger men’s ever-potent anger, can stimulate headhunting, is convincing and powerful. He feels that ethnography must have emotional force as well as a descriptive thickness, which this volume definitely possesses. Culture and Truth is a call for a new approach to thinking and writing about culture. Exposing old conceptions of static, monolithic culture, and of detached, “objective” observers, the book argues for social science to acknowledge and celebrate diversity, narrative, emotion and the unavoidability of subjectivity. Russell, B. (1972). A history of western philosophy. New York: Simon & Schuster. Hailed as “lucid and magisterial” by The Observer, this book is universally acclaimed as the outstanding one-volume work on the subject of Western philosophy. Considered to be one of the most important philosophical works of all time, the History of Western Philosophy is a dazzlingly unique exploration of the ideologies of significant philosophers throughout the ages, from Plato and Aristotle through to Spinoza, Kant and the twentieth century. Written by a man who changed the history of philosophy, this is an account that has never been rivaled since its first publication over 60 years ago. Lord Russell’s A History of Western Philosophy remains comprehensive, clear, erudite, graceful and witty. This volume serves as the perfect introduction to its subject; it remains unchallenged as the greatest account of the history of Western thought. This engaging and comprehensive work is written in accessible and elegantly crafted prose and allows for an easy grasp of complex ideas. Wertz, F.  J. (2014). Qualitative inquiry in the history of psychology. Qualitative Psychology 1(1), 4–16. Despite the importance and ubiquity of qualitative inquiry, a comprehensive account of its history in psychology has not been written. Phases and landmark moments of qualitative inquiry are evident in variations that range from informal, implicit and unacknowledged practices to philosophically informed and scientifically sophisticated methodologies with norms and carefully specified procedures. After the founding of psychology in 1879, qualitative inquiries were conducted by Wilhelm Wundt, Sigmund Freud and William James, who assumed their scientific status. During the twentieth century, with a rising emphasis on hypothesis testing by

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means of quantification, psychologists continued to use qualitative practices but did not include them in general accounts of scientific research methods. Examples of ground breaking, well-known psychological research using qualitative methods have begun to be examined by research methodologists, such as Frederick J. Wertz. Questions for Further Study • What is a paradigm and how does it apply to discussions of qualitative and quantitative research? • What differences and similarities can be detected between the philosophies of Socrates, Plato and Aristotle? • How does the symbol of Yin and Yang reflect the relationship between qualitative and quantitative research paradigms? • Clifford Geertz once claimed that research “follows the flag.” What does this mean and how is it related to the topic of colonial research? • How might Indigenization or decolonization change the “truth” of our history and the framing of Western philosophy and research?

References Anagnostopoulos, G. (2013). Aristotle’s life. In G.  Anagnostopoulos (Ed.), A companion to Aristotle (pp. 1–13). Wiley-Blackwell. Aveling, E.-L., Gillespie, A., & Cornish, F. (2015). A qualitative method for analyzing multivoicedness. Qualitative Research, 15(6), 670–687. Barnes, J. (1995). Life and work. In J.  Barnes (Ed.), The Cambridge companion to Aristotle (pp. 12–26). Cambridge University Press. Beilharz, P. (2000). Zygmunt Bauman: The dialectic of modernity. Sage. Brinkmann, S., Jacobsen, M.  H., & Kristiansen, S. (2014). Historical overview of qualitative research in the social sciences. In P. Leavy (Ed.), The Oxford handbook of qualitative research (pp. 17–42). Oxford University Press. Brumbaugh, R. S. (1991). Plato for the modern age. University Press of America. Camus, A. (1955). The myth of Sisyphus (Trans. J. O’Brien). Alfred A. Knopf. Carroll, L. (1865/2018). Alice’s adventures in wonderland. Wisehouse Classics. Clifford, J. (1988).  The predicament of culture: Twentieth-century ethnography, literature, and art. Harvard University Press. Clifford, J. (1997). Routes: Travel and translation in the late twentieth century. Harvard University Press. Cooper, J. M., & Hutchinson, D. S. (1997). Introduction. In J. M. Cooper & D. S. Hutchinson (Eds.), Plato: Complete works (pp. vii–xxvi). Hackett Publishing. Cooper, K., & White, R. E. (2012). Qualitative research in the postmodern era: Contexts of qualitative research. Springer. Crichton, M. (2009). State of fear. Harper Collins. Denzin, N. K. (2008). Evolution of qualitative research. In L. M. Given (Ed.), The SAGE encyclopedia of qualitative research methods (pp. 311–318). Sage. Denzin, N. K., & Lincoln, Y. S. (2005). Introduction: The discipline and practice of qualitative research. In N. K. Denzin & Y. S. Lincoln (Eds.), The Sage handbook of qualitative research (3rd ed., pp. 1–32). Sage.

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Denzin, N. K., & Lincoln, Y. S. (2008). Introduction: The discipline and practice of qualitative research. In N. K. Denzin & Y. S. Lincoln (Eds.), Collecting and interpreting qualitative materials (3rd ed., pp. 1–44). Sage. Derrida, J. (1976). Of grammatology (Trans. G. C. Spivak). Johns Hopkins University Press. Durant, W. (2006). The story of philosophy. Simon & Schuster. Geertz, C. (1973). The interpretation of cultures: Selected essays. Basic Books. Geertz, C. (1983). Local knowledge: Further essays in interpretive anthropology. Basic Books. Gilbert, H., & Tompkins, J. (1996). Post-colonial drama: Theory, practice, politics. Routledge. Grodecki, L. (1991). Gothic architecture. Rizzoli. Jori, A. (2003). Aristotele. Bruno Mondadori Editore. Kahn, C. H. (1998). Plato and the Socratic dialogue: The philosophical use of a literary form. Cambridge University Press. Kofman, S. (1998). Socrates: Fictions of a philosopher. Cornell University Press. Kraut, R. (2013). Plato. In E. N. Zalta (Ed.), The Stanford encyclopedia of philosophy. Stanford University Press. Magee, B. (2016). The story of philosophy. A concise introduction to the world’s greatest thinkers and their ideas. Dorling Kindersley Books. Mead, M. (1928). Coming of age in Samoa. Williams Morrow & Company. Neill, A., & Ridley, A. (1995). Philosophy of art: Readings ancient and modern. McGraw-Hill. Orans, M. (1996). Not even wrong: Margaret Mead, Derek Freeman and the Samoans. Chandler & Sharp. Pastoureau, M. (2001). Blue: The history of a color. Princeton University Press. Rivet, F. (2014). In the footsteps of Abraham Ulrikab: The events of 1880–1881. Polar Horizons. Rosaldo, R. (1989). Culture and truth: The remaking of social analysis. Beacon Press. Russell, B. (1972). A history of western philosophy. Simon & Schuster. Sartre, J.-P. (1946). Existentialism is a humanism. Methuen. Seale, C. (2004). History of qualitative methods. In C. Seale (Ed.), Researching society and culture (2nd ed., pp. 99–113). Sage. Sharp, J. (2008). Geographies of postcolonialism. Sage. Tomkiss, F. (2004). History of social statistics and the social survey. In C. Seale (Ed.), Researching society and culture (2nd ed., pp. 85–99). Sage. Vidich, A. J., & Lyman, S. M. (2000). Qualitative methods: Their history in sociology and anthropology. In N. K. Denzin & Y. S. Lincoln (Eds.), The handbook of qualitative research (2nd ed., pp. 37–84). Sage. Wenning, C. J. (2009). Scientific epistemology: How scientists know what they know. Journal of Physics Teacher Education, 5(2), 1–15. Retrieved October 21, 2019, from http://www2.phy. ilstu.edu/pte/publications/scientific_epistemology.pdf Wertz, F.  J. (2014). Qualitative inquiry in the history of psychology. Qualitative Psychology, 1(1), 4–16.

Chapter 2

An Introduction to Critical Approaches

The reliance on personal experience is the main building block, the main distinction of qualitative research. Not so much feelings, not so much how do we feel about things, but what is the experience as felt, as told, as manifest in the things that we do. Robert Stake, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign.

Introduction As can be understood from the previous chapter, in qualitative research, words are used as data rather than numerical representations (Miles & Huberman, 1994). All qualitative methods rely on linguistic information rather than on statistical evidence. As such, they tend to employ meaning-based (as opposed to numerical-based) data analysis (Polkinghorne, 1983). Thus, qualitative research utilizes data in the form of text, which, in turn, serves to furnish a detailed analysis of a situation, a case, a subject or an event through original analysis (Creswell, 2013). In qualitative research, data is usually collected and analyzed on fewer participants and situations (Patton, 2014) than is commonly found in quantitative research practices. The previous chapter introduced a short history of qualitative research as it relates to quantitative research endeavours. The current chapter devotes itself to a discussion of a number of approaches to qualitative research, specifically the critical approach. Within qualitative research there are numerous approaches that help to frame the research project itself. These are not methodologies and are more closely related to conceptual, organizational or theoretical frameworks than to actual methodologies, which will be dealt with in later chapters. In the first volume of this two-volume series, paradigms of research and attendant approaches to qualitative research were discussed and described. As a result, this chapter will serve as a refresher and will, hopefully, add detail to the previous discussion. Supplementary Information The online version contains supplementary material available at [https://doi.org/10.1007/978-­3-­030-­85124-­8_2]. The videos can be accessed individually by clicking the DOI link in the accompanying figure caption or by scanning this link with the SN More Media App. © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 R. E. White, K. Cooper, Qualitative Research in the Post-Modern Era, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-85124-8_2

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Approaches to Qualitative Research First of all, while there are a number of approaches to qualitative research, this chapter will touch on but a few, largely due to the exigencies of time and space. To begin, (post)positivist, descriptive, interpretive or critical approaches are some of the more commonly recognized approaches to qualitative inquiry. However, even here, there exists a multiplicity of distinctions. For example, positivism describes an approach to qualitative study that specifically utilizes scientific evidence, such as controlled experiments and/or statistics, to reveal the way society operates and functions. This perspective arose during the Renaissance (1450–1600) and continued throughout the Enlightenment Era (1600–1800). Positivism regards human behaviour as passive, controlled and determined by the external environment (Ong, 2016) and is concerned with uncovering truth and presenting it by empirical means (Henning et al., 2004). Positivism posits that sociology concern itself with what can be observed with the senses. As a result, theories of social life should be constructed methodically, in rigid and linear ways that depend upon verifiable fact. Thus, positivism assumes that it is possible to observe social life and to establish reliable, valid and generalizable knowledge about how it works (Crossman, 2017). A major proponent of this approach to research was Auguste Comte (1798–1857), a nineteenth century social and natural scientist. From A General View of Positivism, Frederic Harrison, in his foreword to Comte’s (1908) work, posits the following: Positivism is not simply a system of Philosophy; nor is it simply a new form of Religion; nor is it simply a scheme of social regeneration. It partakes of all of these, and professes to harmonize them under one dominant conception that is equally philosophic and social. ‘Its primary object,’ writes Comte, ‘is twofold: to generalize our scientific conceptions and to systematize the art of social life.’ (p. viii)

As can be seen from these introductory comments, positivism took much of its ammunition from quantitative research. Comte’s attempt was to fashion an understanding of society that was at once understandable, scientific and replicable. His search was for an overarching explanation of social life, habits and values, much the same as Talcott Parsons (1902–1979), a structural functionalist, who used a similar template in the 1950s in an attempt to structure society more effectively. Although Comte attempted to understand the social sciences in terms of the natural sciences, it soon became clear that societies were far too complex to be explained through scientific modes of thought.

Postpositivism in Qualitative Research Postpositivism arrived as a softer-edged version of positivist doctrine. Postpositivism is also referred to as post-empiricism and invokes a meta-theoretical approach to philosophy and to models of scientific inquiry that critiques and amends positivism.

Descriptive, Definitional and Deconstructive Approaches

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Postpositivists differ from their positivist counterparts in that postpositivists accept the contention that background, knowledge, theories and values that the researcher brings to the research can influence the data that is collected. While postpositivists accept the idea that objectivity is not entirely possible, unlike positivists, they do not believe that the researcher and the researched are completely independent of one another. As such, postpositivists pursue objectivity as being obtainable through the recognition of researcher bias. Postpositivists also understand reality as being externally constructed. Consequently, the purpose of the research act is to identify universals (Willis, 2007). Generalization is an important feature of postpositivist research agendae. The scientific method is invoked for purposes of data collection, which, in turn, is used to test specific theories or, as Sir Karl Popper (1979), affirms, to falsify a theory in order to replace it with a superior theory. This “rational fallibilism” serves to guide one’s practice, as various theories fall to newer theories that explain more of the inconsistencies than do previous older theories.

Descriptive, Definitional and Deconstructive Approaches Another approach to qualitative research is the descriptive approach. Although this approach has often been conflated with the interpretive approach, this text will treat them as independent of one another. The descriptive approach to qualitative research asks what varieties exist within the research and what these varieties look like. Clearly, the objective of this approach is to describe the phenomenon as clearly as possible in order to gain clarity with respect to its ramifications. This approach can be contrasted with the definitional approach, which seeks to identify the nature of the phenomenon in terms of its identifying features. This approach strives to understand the phenomenon through addressing the various parts, identifying and categorizing in order to develop an understanding of how the various parts of the phenomenon interact with one another. Just to make matters more complex, an additional approach is the deconstructive approach. This approach seeks to understand assumptions made throughout the research project. It addresses social and cultural implications of any given phenomenon. True to its name, deconstructive approaches are inclined to move research toward the understanding of social structures, purposes and movements. As is true with many of the approaches to qualitative research, the approaches noted above— descriptive, definitional and deconstructive approaches—are not entirely dissimilar. In fact, they may share a number of “family resemblances.” However, it behooves the researcher to be very clear as to the approach (s)he wishes to employ, as the chosen approach does influence the manner in which data is collected and analyzed. So far, however, we have not yet considered two of the most common approaches to qualitative research. These are the interpretive and the critical approaches.

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Pragmatism According to Goldkuhl (2012), critical and (post)positivist approaches to qualitative research are more common that a pragmatic approach. The pragmatic approach is associated with action and intervention, and can also be fashioned through constructivist approaches to qualitative research. Pragmatism concerns itself with action, change and the interplay between knowledge and action. Thus, it is appropriate as a research approach that is aimed at intervening rather than simply observing phenomena of any size, such as large-scale organizational change. An appropriate methodology for a pragmatic approach would typically be found in action research, for example (Goldkuhl, 2012). Pragmatism as a research approach emerged through the writings of Pierce, James, Dewey and Mead, within the Western tradition. Pragmatism, however, can be found throughout societies and around the world, particularly within European and East-Asian societies (Shusterman, 2004). The essence of pragmatism is action and change that implies a continuous state of becoming. Action, as a way to change existence, must be purposeful and based in reason and knowledge. Change for its own sake is pointless and any change should be positive in terms of helping people to live and lead better lives. Goldkuhl (2012) describes three types of pragmatism; functional, referential and methodological approaches. Pragmatic and interpretive approaches, together, have been associated with symbolic interactionism, developed by such luminaries as George Herbert Mead and John Dewey. The term, “symbolic interactionism” was coined by Herbert Blumer (1969).

The Interpretive Approach The interpretive approach is geared towards the process and the product of research in terms of understanding how the phenomenon under study has arrived in its current form and under what circumstances or length of time it has developed. Interpretive approaches are cognizant of change within the phenomenon as time progresses and how these changes affect the phenomenon itself. With regard to the interpretive approach, to the interpreter, reality is socially constructed. What this means for the research act is that its purpose is to gain understanding, rather than to identify universal truths. Because of the goal of gaining understanding, either subjective or more objective research methods are acceptable. In fact, according to Willis (2007), universals are de-emphasized and it is generally recognized that understanding is contextual. Because of this, generalizability goes on holiday. Simply because of the contextuality of any given phenomenon, generalizations become almost impossible and, thus, within this approach to qualitative research, are roundly ignored. As such, it is not the purpose of this approach to identify how some phenomena are similar to others. While similarities may exist, it is not the function of this approach to detail generalizations. Consequently, this approach encourages the researcher to utilize the research to inform his/her practice and for

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the practice to inform the research. Given this, it is common for the data to be collected and analyzed simultaneously. Although qualitative research is often associated with interpretivism (Trauth, 2001) and in order to prevent conflation of terms such as “qualitative” and “interpretive,” as so commonly occurs (Myers & Avison, 2002), alternatives exist. Qualitative research may or may not be interpretive, depending on the underlying philosophical assumptions of the researcher. However, three of the more common approaches include the interpretive, the (post)positive and the critical approaches (Orlikowski & Baroudi, 1991). Interpretivism, as previously noted, places the meaning-making practices of humans at the centre of the research project. The interpretivist approach grew from the critique of positivism within the social sciences and is frequently associated with the “idealism”—a philosophy in which reality is associated with ideas rather than to material objects—and is used to group together diverse approaches, including social constructivism, phenomenology and hermeneutics, which reject the objectivist view that meaning exists independently of consciousness (Collins, 2010). There are many forms of interpretivism, such as conservative, constructivist, critical and deconstructionist, according to Butler (1998), although the deconstructivist approach is not particularly central to interpretivist approaches. Goldkuhl (2012) views the conservative form of interpretivism as being an appropriate approach for a research methodology such as classical hermeneutics and, to some extent, phenomenology and grounded theory. For any interpretive approach, however, the subjective understandings of the people volunteering to be a part of the study are of key importance if, for no other reason than the fact that the social world is filled with meaning, built upon subjective and shared meanings. The task of the researcher is to acknowledge subjective meanings, reconstruct them, understand them, avoid distorting them, and to use them as building blocks in theorizing (Goldkuhl, 2012). A disadvantage that has been ascribed to this approach is the notion that it is subjective in nature. However, this becomes an advantage when dealing with methodologies that require a considerable amount of subjectivity, particularly since it has been noted that there is no truly objective perspective.

The Critical Approach The critical approach is the final approach to be discussed within the pages of this chapter. This approach seeks to identify hierarchies of power, systems of power differentials, and the abuse of power by those in charge. The critical approach to conducting qualitative research is nested within a tradition of critical thought. As such, the critical approach calls upon critical theory and a subset of this, critical pedagogy. According to Thomas & Madison (2010), critical theory evolved from a tradition developed by the Frankfurt School in Germany, based on the German traditions of philosophical and political thought of Marx, Kant, Hegel and Weber. There are several levels of critical theory, however. The uppermost level is devoted to critical thinking.

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Unfortunately, many people seem to believe that being critical simply means to think long and hard about a particular phenomenon, and the reality confirms that, at this level, there is no need to operationalize the results in an attempt to improve societal conditions. Critical theory identifies how things can be made better but has no equipment that can be mobilized to effect the desired change. In the following video-clip, Professor Henry Giroux discusses the critical approach to research and describes how it relates to critical pedagogy.

Professor Henry Giroux

Critical inquiry, however, as distinct from critical theory, takes seriously the primacy of the ethical and the political. It is not only self-reflective, it is also concerned with consequences, in that it takes seriously ethical imperatives that open up the possibility of greater justice in allowing people to live with dignity rather than accepting the status quo. Thus, it takes seriously the relationship between what is and what ought to be. It is, thus, a language of critique and a language of possibility. Central to any critical inquiry is the notion of power and politics, and that power and authority should always be held accountable. Critical inquiry takes seriously those conditions that can maximize the capacities for people to intervene in the world and to learn to govern it themselves. In other words, it questions how we might maximize the possibility for human agency, both individually and collectively. Questions of research, education and critical inquiry emphasize public connections that take seriously the question of dignity, social justice, and the elimination of human suffering. Those elements point to a critical inquiry that marks the intellectual as a publicly engaged individual who acts as a translating device between social institutions and the larger world. For Professor Giroux, critical research must link theoretical rigour with social relevance that, in some way, has something to say to the world. Research, as such,

The Critical Approach

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must be “worldly,” in that it supports the notion that people have unbelievable human potentialities and possibilities and that, first and foremost, research that matters is organized around theoretical principles that acknowledges the primacy of both the ethical and political realms, and is connected to the most important social problems of the time, specifically to issues of agency and democracy.

Video Clip 2.1: Professor Henry Giroux (▶ https://doi.org/10.1007/000-­6cn)

Education, for example, is always a moral and political practice because it is about agency, and the struggle over the lives we inhabit, the futures we imagine, the relationships in which we engage. This is more true today because the question of responsibility is now globalized. Thus, according to Professor Giroux, we must re-­ theorize responsibility outside of the most immediate people in our lives because we now live in a world where who can experience a life with dignity is no longer something that can be separated from other parts of the world. So, questions of agency now take on global significance, suggesting that political and ethnical parameters of research are far more important than they ever have been. Additionally, research, in general, has become so politicized that research is also about questions of power. Pedagogy has a long history, going back to the Greek civilization Critical pedagogy links learning to social change, as it is concerned about questions of agency and developing a language of critique and possibility, validating both pedagogy and political practice. Critical pedagogy provides the educational conditions for giving students the opportunity to become agents rather than merely experiencing themselves as the objects of education in which training becomes paramount. Students need to be able to enter the world in a way in which they really believe they can change it and not merely accommodate to it. At the grassroots level, it is critical pedagogy that arrives with the agenda for change. Critical theory, in its least adorned form, relates to social and class conflict. As such, it has at its roots Marxist theory, which states that the dominant class has

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the means and the power to subjugate the working class. By extrapolating the injustices between the classes into the future, it can be said that the result will be the ruin of all civilization (Marx, 1867/2012). However, before this civilization extinguishes itself, critical theory in its various forms suggests that this knowledge of injustice, inequality and inequity can be operationalized and utilized to effect social change and, thereby, improve the human condition.

Approaches, Methods and Methodologies It is at this point that any discussion of critical approaches becomes somewhat sticky. As we shall find in future chapters, some of the methodologies relating to qualitative research have been called into question because scholars have, with some justification, considered methodologies, such as case study research, for example, as a method, rather than as a methodology. While this will be discussed at greater length in a future chapter, suffice it to say that some approaches, such as the critical approach to qualitative research, have also fallen victim to the insistence that they represent methods, rather than approaches. Perhaps it is this complexity, or confusion, if you will, that prompted Feyerabend’s (1975) comment that science is an anarchic enterprise, rather than one that is enshrined in custom. Presumably, Feyeraband’s comment extends beyond the natural sciences to envelop the social sciences, as well. Taken contextually, this comment refers to epistemological anarchy (Horgan, 1993; Willis, 2007). As noted in the first volume of this study of qualitative research, the paradigms of quantitative and qualitative research are represented by one’s ontological understandings; that is, how one perceives the world, one’s reality, to be constructed. Reality can be perceived in quantitative terms, the notion that one truth exists, or qualitatively in that there are only differing perspectives, rather than universal truths. The same may be said for approaches to research, which are basically epistemological, for the chosen approach requires a decision as to how those truths, or the lack thereof, may be represented. As such, any approach to research calls upon an epistemological stance, and that stance is open to interpretation by one and all. Messy? Yes, but explainable providing that one is able to maintain a perspective that is willing and able to incorporate new and original ideas and attitudes towards the representation of knowledge. Supposedly, any approach to qualitative research can be refashioned and conscripted into use as a method or even as a methodology. Sight lines become blurred as, first, one approach becomes used as method and then as methodology. However, in order to be able to discuss these various points with any precision, it is important to differentiate between what an approach consists of, what a methodology offers the researcher and how that methodology is operationalized in terms of methods used to obtain pertinent data. Critical theory is just one such issue. While it has most commonly been seen as an approach, or attitude, to qualitative research, it has also been seen as a method

Feature Article: A Critical Approach to Research

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and, more recently, as a methodology. The complexity of this is well beyond the scope of this volume and, as such, critical theory, in this tome, represents an approach for the study of phenomena that lend themselves to questions of social justice, and of notions pertaining to equality and equity. However, in an attempt to dispel lingering uncertainty, a word about critical theory as method may be pertinent.

Critical Theory as Method: Critical Thematic Analysis Discourses, whether written or spoken, commonly have hidden and, sometimes, manifest meanings and practices that may become normalized and reinforced through policies, laws or guidelines (Fairclough, 2010). Critical thematic analysis (CTA) is one such use of critical theory to probe and decipher “codes” within the spoken or written word. As such, critical thematic analysis is frequently utilized in the examination and interrogation of social systems that serve to privilege some members of a society over others. Frequently, when discourse is moderated by a dominant social group, it is likely that discursive practices associated with that group will create unstable and inequitable conditions (Fairclough, 2010) in the form of cyclic underclass structures (Wilson, 1987), represented by discrimination, which can lead to unsettling or even violent outcomes. One example of critical thematic analysis is represented by a research endeavour developed from a study of undergraduate student participants’ online reception to fiction film (Orbe & Kinefuchi, 2008). The process focused on analyzing only those comments that directly addressed a theme or themes which the researcher chose to examine by observing the intensity with which the theme occurs, rather than by counting occurrences, creating reductive categories or forming hierarchical relationships between coding terms (Orbe & Kinefuchi, 2008). In a second example, Krippendorff (2003) defined a similar critical method, qualitative content analysis, as the close reading of small amounts of texts, interpreted by those conducting the analysis, which is then re-contextualized into new narratives, serving as a critical lens through which to view the content. In this way, themes relating to social justice issues can be viewed in relative isolation, and means to ameliorate suffering and injustice can be designed to the benefit of the entire society.

Feature Article: A Critical Approach to Research While it may be beyond the scope of this volume to elaborate upon every approach to conducting research, it may be of use to the reader to access an article that utilizes critical theory as just such an approach. Following is an article by a graduate student, completed as a class assignment, to illustrate how a critical approach may be utilized for a topic under study. While this article is not an empirical study, it is

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hoped that the reader may gain some value from the following treatise. In addition, the following article also makes use of Cooper and White’s (2012) Five Contexts, which will be featured as an organizing framework throughout the remainder of this volume (See Transformative Potentials of Critical Educational Inquiry). As can be seen from the article “Transformative Potentials of Critical Educational Inquiry”, the critical approach can serve in developing a work that is not empirical in nature; that is to say, a piece of work that does not use a study that employs a research question, conceptual framework, or a specific methodology that employs data collection and analysis may still seek to identify findings and to eventually draw conclusions. By way of contrast, the critical approach may be employed as a conceptual or theoretical framework, as in the case of critical race theory, to allow a lens through which to explore issues of social justice, equity and equality. Not only can a critical approach be used to assist in developing a theoretical piece, such as the above article, it may be used as a conceptual framework with any methodology, where the utility of a critical lens is required. An adjunct to the critical approach to research is the concept of critical pedagogy, espoused here by Professor Henry Giroux.

Video Clip 2.2: Professor Henry Giroux (▶ https://doi.org/10.1007/000-­6cm)

Professor Giroux notes that one should “push the envelope” about issues of social justice, that societies should be seen as never just enough, and that intellectuals have responsibilities to do what they can to expand and deepen the possibilities of democracy, itself. He notes that, at the time of writing, 70% of the university work force is being exploited through contract work. The United States and, presumably, many other countries are moving towards an authoritarianism that sees the rise of neoliberalism as a form of public pedagogy.

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Professor Giroux notes that, when the social state is under attack, when compassion is under attack, when all forms of solidarity that cannot be measured in financial terms are viewed disparagingly as a dependency or weakness, when social Darwinism becomes the primary motif for how individuals relate to each other, social inquiry must address that because social inquiry is always the outcome of particular struggles. To not recognize that, he avers, is to offer an objectivity that neutralizes and depoliticizes the inquiry itself and, in so doing, makes the arbiter of that inquiry complicit with injustice. In essence, if one is not a part of the solution, one, by default, becomes part of the problem. Education, to have any political and theoretical gravity, must be linked to questions of democracy, since education is the foundation for the development of capacities, skills and knowledge to recognize the importance of democracy. While democracy is an artifice, it is not a given, as it is socially, politically and historically constructed. It is something that is struggled over and, unless people struggle over it, it disappears. One of the greatest challenges in education is to justify and define schooling, in general, as a democratic public sphere that can engage, remind and educate people that they live in very dangerous times. The earth is imperiled by anti-democratic forces and, unless people are educated to think in terms of a democratic ethos on a global level, there is not much time left. As we may be currently presiding over our own extinction, the urgency of this problem demands a responsibility from educators, even while education, itself, is being sabotaged. Professor Giroux continues, stating that, when we look at education today, we are looking at the crises of learning, of youth and of democracy. Therefore, he says, one cannot talk about the political without talking about the pedagogical. Questions of pedagogy are central to any notion of politics because the question of agency is foundational to politics and that raises new questions about the globalization of critique, responsibility, intervention and citizenship. Professor Giroux feels that education should unsettle people and force them to delve into themselves in ways that the most fundamental dimensions of who they are can be questioned, because that translates into unsettling the authoritative nature of what any individual knows. As a result, liberal forms of education that claim to make people critical is not enough. One must make them responsible and accountable, as well. Hope is the precondition for possibility, for agency and for creating a better world, because everything we do implies something about the future. And, the question is, “Who’s future?” Should we educate people to be pro-active and to adapt to a particular kind of future or simply to replicate the existing society? Professor Giroux ends his commentary by stating that education is like an act of war. We are battling over different understandings of how the world works and power is never absent from these discussions. Consequently, people must be educated, not simply driven by the mastery of knowledge. Educators can inculcate in their students the need to recognize that knowledge has to do with power, and knowledge and power have to do with fighting for a particular kind of future; but it is not easy. One must

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be political to do that, because one can never talk about teaching without talking about the political formations in which it takes place. The following chapters will deal with a selection of methodologies, each of which may be used in conjunction with a critical approach, with another approach that lends itself to a theoretical or conceptual framework, or on their own, utilizing an organizing framework of the scholar’s choice.

Summary: Approaches to Qualitative Research This chapter has devoted itself to the identification and exploration of a number of approaches to qualitative research. Such approaches may serve to represent a theoretical or conceptual framework and may act as a lens through which to view qualitative research studies. The first approach to be briefly discussed is positivism, elucidated by numerous proponents such as Auguste Comte (1798–1857). Positivism has been a key approach in quantitative research and has also been used in some qualitative studies. A softer-edged version of positivism can be found in the work of Sir Karl Popper (1902–1994) who espoused many of the principles related to post-­ positivistic inquiry. In addition to positivistic and post-positivistic approaches, the chapter identified and briefly discussed descriptive, definitional and deconstructive approaches more commonly associated with qualitative research endeavours. The interpretive approach, sometimes used interchangeably with the descriptive approach, was also discussed. However, the bulk of the chapter focused upon the critical approach to qualitative research. Professor Henry Giroux, in a brief video-clip, offers a description of critical pedagogy and, in a following video-clip, his views regarding the impact that critical inquiry may have on society, education and democracy. The critical approach has, at its heart, an abiding interest in issues of justice, equity and equality. The critical nature of this approach allows for it to be used not merely as an approach to conducting qualitative research, but also as a method and, in some cases, as a methodology in its own right. Critical thematic analysis, or critical discourse analysis are methods by which the critical approach may be utilized as a method, critical theory notwithstanding. In order to illustrate how a critical approach can be used in research endeavours, an example of this approach is given through a paper, entitled “Transformative Potentials of Critical Educational Inquiry,” developed by a graduate student, who used this approach to examine the critical nature of an article published by Deborah Hicks. Of particular interest, within this paper, was the use of the five contexts that will be used in the remaining chapters of this volume. Suggestions for Further Reading Should the reader wish to read further regarding the critical approach, please visit the following website https://www.henryagiroux.com/online_articles/giroux.pdf to view the following article:

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Giroux, H. A. (2004). What Might Education Mean After Abu Ghraib: Revisiting Adorno’s Politics of Education. Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa & the Middle East, 24(1). Selected Annotated Bibliography Comte, A. (1908). A general view of positivism. (Trans. J.A. Bridges). London, UK: Routledge. This volume represents a founding text in the development of positivism and the discipline of sociology. The work offers not only a full, but revised account of the theory of positivism, which Comte presented earlier in the Course in Positive Philosophy. In this more current volume, Comte outlines his epistemological views relating to positivism and also offers a view as to how sociology should be performed. This version of Comte’s 1848 work, of the same title, claims to be translated into an easier and simpler style, complete with the references and allusions explained, including marginal headings to the paragraphs and a complete analysis of the contents. As Comte notes, the twofold objective of this work is to generalize scientific conceptions relating to positivism and to systematize the “art” of social life through what he considers to be the three major elements of human life; thoughts, feelings and actions. Fairclough, N. (2010) Critical discourse analysis: The critical study of language. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall. Within the pages of this volume is a wealth of information concerning the written and spoken word, and its relationship to ideology and power. Discourse and sociocultural change are described through chapters relating to the marketization of public and private life, specifically as this pertains to hegemony and identity change in political television. A third section in this volume is devoted to theoretical developments in the dialectics of discourse, through discussions on social theory and research, as well as a discussion of critical realism and semiotics. The method and study of critical discourse analysis is offered in a further section. Additionally, part of this volume is given to discussions of political discourse. An additional section is dedicated to globalization and transitioning to a more globalized world. The final section is reserved for discussion relating to language and education, particularly as this topic pertains to critical language awareness, self-identity, and global capitalism. Feyerabend, P. (1975). Against method: Outline of an anarchistic theory of knowledge. London, UK: New Left Books. The modern philosophy of science has, of late, paid much attention to the understanding of the theory of scientific endeavour, in contrast to scientific methodology, according to Paul Feyeraband. This acclaimed volume has contributed in no small way to this newfound emphasis. Feyeraband attempts to reveal some of the deficiencies of generally accepted notions about what passes as knowledge, suggesting that the only reasonable explanations of scientific success are actually historical explanations. In fact, he claims, anarchy must now replace rationalism in the theory of what constitutes knowledge. In this volume, the author takes into account not only

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recent debates on scientific matters but also the impact of scientific products and practices on society. He insists that the voice of the “non-expert” must be heard, listened to and acted upon. At the heart of this volume is the disturbing realization that improved and increasing scientific technology is not a benefit to the society, in general. Henning, E., Van Rensburg, W. & Smit, B. (2004). Finding your way in qualitative research. Pretoria, SA: Van Schaik Publishers. This volume, unlike so many other volumes that offer methodological tools that promise greater ease with analyzing data or finding “tricks and fixes,” is beneficial for students and researchers in the social sciences. While this book proffers some basic considerations, particularly with regard to epistemological, theoretical and design logics, along with suggestions for expressing oneself in terms of qualitative inquiry, this textbook works inductively in order to scaffold the process of qualitative inquiry. The end point of this volume is the development of the qualitative research design as a position point for the further development of methodological arguments for the writing of proposals, reports and grants. Within the pages of this book are situated thorough discussions of paradigmatically-based processes of inquiry that incorporate study design, logical argumentation and specialized writing for specific audiences. Krippendorff, K. H. (2003). Content analysis: An introduction to its methodology (2nd Edition). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Content analysis is a commonly utilized method in the social sciences. This is the second edition of Krippendorff’s classic text, representing an engaging, thorough and well-written description of the processes related to content analysis. The book is divided into three sections. The first part relates to introducing content analysis and its definitions, and offers examples. Part Two identifies the components of content analysis, while Part Three relates to analytical paths and evaluation techniques. All chapters have been updated and have been essentially re-written, offering students and researchers a variety of ways to analyze written or spoken language. In his own terms, Krippendorff does not exclude the analysis of images, as well as video-­ clips. As such, his definition of what constitutes meaningful data is critical to the process, as it recognizes that the researcher must work with data, the physical manifestations of which are secondary to the meanings that they may hold for particular individuals or groups of individuals. Marx, K. (1867/2012). Das kapital: A critique of political economy. Washington, DC: Regnery Publishing. Das Kapital is considered to be one of the most notorious works of modern times, as well as one of the most influential books of all time. This tome presents an incisive critique of private property and the problems relating to the social relations it generates. Marx wrote much of this volume while living in exile in England, and drew on a wide-ranging knowledge of its society in order to support his analysis and to generate fresh insights. This volume argues that capitalism tends to create an ever

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increasing, ever broadening division in wealth and welfare. In this work, Marx predicted its abolition and its eventual replacement by a system of common ownership that stabilizes the means of production. Historically, Das Kapital rapidly acquired readership among the leaders of social democratic parties, particularly in Russia and Germany, and ultimately throughout the world. Marx’s friend and collaborator, Friedrich Engels, came to describe this work as “the Bible of the Working Class.” Miles, M. B., & Huberman, M. A. (1994). Qualitative data analysis: An expanded source book (2nd Edition). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. This volume represents one of the best-selling textbooks relating to qualitative research, in general, and data analysis, in particular. This original text has now been considerably expanded in content, and is currently available in paperback. Bringing the art of qualitative analysis up-to-date, this edition adds hundreds of new techniques, ideas and references developed within the past decade. The increasing use of computers in qualitative analysis has also been reflected in this volume. In addition, there is also an extensive appendix on criteria to choose from, among the currently available analysis packages. This new and expanded source book offers examples from a multitude of social science and professional disciplines. Qualitative Data Analysis remains one of the most comprehensive and complete treatments of this topic currently available to scholars and applied researchers. Patton, M. Q. (2014). Qualitative research & evaluation methods: Integrating theory & practice (4th Edition). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. This is a book which has served as a resource, as a reference and as a training tool for innumerable researchers—both in terms of applied and theoretical research— for evaluators and for graduate students. This new edition has been completely revised to include hundreds of new examples and stories to illuminate a multitude of the aspects pertaining to qualitative inquiry. Patton has created one of the most comprehensive, systematic and up-to-date reviews of qualitative methods available. He has retained and expanded the exhibits that highlight and summarize many of the major issues relating to qualitative research and evaluation methods, as well as relevant guidelines for conducting such research. The summative sections, along with numerous tables and figures, as well as sage advice from the Sufi Master, Halcolm, this revision will help readers integrate and make sense of the great volume of qualitative works that have been published in the past decade. Polkinghorne, D. (1983). Methodology for the human sciences. Albany, NY: Human Sciences Press. Methodology for the Human Sciences addresses the growing need for a comprehensive textbook that surveys the emerging body of literature on human science research. This is a volume that clearly describes procedures and methods for carrying out new research strategies. It also provides an overview of developing methods and describes many of their commonalities and variations. This volume also contains practical information on how to implement strategies in the field. In this book, Donald Polkinghorne calls for a renewal of the debate over which methods are

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appropriate for the study of human beings, and proposes that the results of the extensive changes in the philosophy of science call for a re-examination of the original issues. The book traces and examines recently developed systems of inquiry and their importance for the humanities and social sciences, and relates these systems to practical problems of doing research on topics related to human experience. Popper, K.  R. (1979). Objective knowledge: An evolutionary approach. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press. The essays within this volume present an approach to human knowledge that has produced a profound impact on numerous thinkers, past and present. Sir Karl Popper breaks with traditional “common sense” logic and theories that can be traced back to Aristotle. In this work, Popper examines realism and fallibilism. He presents his own theory of rational fallibilism. In this, he posits that scientific knowledge, once stated in human language, no longer represents a part of ourselves, but becomes a separate entity that tends to grow through critical selection. As a famous science philosopher, Popper describes his famous three worlds. The first world is relegated to the world of physical objects or physical states. The second world is the world of subjects, subjectivity and of mental states, representing subjective knowledge. The third world is represented by objective knowledge and contains the products of thought, including abstractions such as theories, stories, myths, art and social institutions, as created by humans. Willis, J. W. (2007). Foundations of qualitative research: Interpretive and critical approaches. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. This fascinating volume covers the conceptual foundations of interpretive, critical and post-positivist paradigms. As such, it offers the reader, student and researcher a thorough background of theory and social inquiry. This is made possible by offering insights into the development of each paradigm throughout history. Jerry Willis also provides real world examples in the form of cases that illustrate different approaches to the same research problem. In this way, students can better understand the contrasting features of these paradigms, approaches and methodologies. The volume introduces key theoretical and epistemological concepts, replete with historical and current examples that provide an invaluable resource to guide the critical and qualitative inquiry process. The book is written in an accessible and non-intimidating style that brings these otherwise difficult concepts to life. Wilson, W. J. (1987). The truly disadvantaged: The inner city, the underclass, and public policy. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Renowned American sociologist, William J. Wilson, offers a view of the social transformation of inner city ghettos. He offers a sharp evaluation of the convergence of race and poverty. In rejecting both conservative and liberal interpretations of life in the inner city, Wilson provocatively analyzes a number of important issues that vitally affect the provision of legal assistance to the urban “underclass,” a group that constitutes a significant share of the eligible clients of legal services programs. In an earlier book that made him a controversial figure a decade ago, Wilson argued that

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there has been a historical transition from “economic racial oppression” experienced by virtually all Blacks to economic subordination for the Black “underclass.” Today, not unlike decades ago, society is bearing witness to an increasing tendency amongst conservative sectors to blame the most socially excluded groups as the responsible parties for perpetuating the “culture of poverty” and “welfare dependency.” Questions for Further Study • How does an approach differ from a paradigm? From a methodology? • What are some of the distinctions among the various approaches to qualitative research, as identified in this chapter? • What are some of the distinguishing features of a critical approach to qualitative research? • How would a critical approach to qualitative research differ between an empirical study and a non-empirical work? • Can you describe a study that you would be interested in developing that would employ a critical approach?

Transformative Potentials of Critical Educational Inquiry Emma Simmons The foundational questions to critical work are: Who/what is helped/privileged/ legitimated? Who/what is harmed/oppressed/disqualified? (Cannella & Lincoln, 2009, p. 54) Abstract Critical inquiry has been criticized for creating illusions of justice and being unable to transform the situations of the oppressed. Critics have voiced concerns for the paradoxical nature of critical inquiry, arguing that by providing alternative understandings of social phenomena, critical inquirers send a message that the oppressed are partly responsible for their situations due to their lack of “appropriate” knowledge. In this article, we discuss the transformative potentials of critical educational inquiry. We use five contexts of qualitative research, namely, autobiographical, historical, political, postmodern, and philosophical to explore the possibilities of critical inquiry in educational research. We also use an article by Deborah Hicks (2005) to exemplify how critical research may be transformative and empowering by involving the researched in a process of inquiry characterized by negotiation and reciprocity. Keywords:  critical inquiry, educational research, contexts of qualitative research, empowerment

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Introduction Critical theory generally refers to the theoretical traditions developed by a number of scholars affiliated with the Institute of Social Research at the University of Frankfurt in the mid-twentieth century. This group of scholars, including Max Horkheimer, Theodor Adorno, and Herbert Marcuse, situated this inquiry within German philosophical, social, and political thoughts and traditions. Very soon, the life and work of these scholars were heavily influenced by the devastation of World War I, along with resulting economic crises and political instability. They believed that reinterpretations of society were necessary, during an infamous period in history, when various forms of injustice and subjugation were shaping their world. Unfortunately, only a decade after the establishment of the Frankfurt School, the Nazis overtook Germany in body and mind. The leading scholars of the Frankfurt School decided (or were forced) to move to the United States. However, they were shocked by many aspects of American culture, especially the unquestioned acceptance of empirical practices of American social science research. In 1953, Horkheimer and Adorno decided to return to Germany in order to revitalize the Institute of Social Research, but Marcuse chose to stay in the United States and continue his work in social science research and theorization (Kincheloe & McLaren, 2011). All members of the Frankfurt School championed a vision of a more just society, in which people have not only an equal access to desirable things but also control over the economic, political and cultural aspects of their lives. They argued that the oppressed and exploited people would be emancipated only if they were empowered to transform their situations by themselves. This theoretical tradition is called “critical” because the promoters of this theory “saw the route to emancipation as being a kind of self-conscious critique which problematizes all social relations, in particular those of and within the discursive practices of power, especially technical rationalism” (Tripp, 1992, p. 13). Although frequently referenced in social science literature, critical theory has also been misinterpreted, misunderstood and accused of being patriarchal and re-­ inscribing old power structures. For example, Elizabeth Ellsworth (1989) famously questioned the ability of critical theory to empower the oppressed and transform their situations. To avoid confusion in our discussion, we conceptualize critical theory as a framework to understand “issues of power and justice and the ways that the economy; matters of race, class, and gender; ideologies; discourses; education; religion and other social institutions; and cultural dynamics interact to construct a social system” (Kincheloe & McLaren, 2011, p. 288). Because of its emancipatory nature, critical theory is different from traditional empiricist theories in three important ways (Schwandt, 2007). First, it is a self-­ reflective, democratic discourse in the sense that it relinquishes normative and accepted understandings of the social order and adopts a lens of critical reconsideration. Second, unlike the empiricist tradition in which the theorist is disinterested in and detached from the research subjects, critical inquiry is closely related to praxis

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[i.e., action + reflection = word = work = praxis] (for details, see Freire, 1970). Third, critical inquiry “employs the method of immanent critique, working from within categories of existing thought in order to radicalize those categories, reveal their internal contradictions and shortcomings, and demonstrate their unrecognized possibilities” (Schwandt, 2007, p. 55). Therefore, when research is carried out from the perspectives of critical theory, it aims to identify various forms of power and “seeks in its analyses to plumb the archaeology of taken-for-granted perspectives to understand how unjust and oppressive social conditions came to be reified as historical ‘givens’” (Cannella & Lincoln, 2009, p. 54). The critical theory tradition has been taken into the field of education by a number of scholars, “but most notably by Paulo Freire in his work with oppressed minorities which gave rise to the term critical pedagogy, meaning teaching-learning from within the principles of critical theory” (Tripp, 1992, p. 13). Other scholars, such as Michael Apple, Henry Giroux, Joe Kincheloe and Peter McLaren have taken up critical theory to unpack politics of education, epistemological violence, control of teachers and learners, commodification of knowledge, and how schools reproduce social, economic, political, and cultural inequalities. In addition to identifying these oppressive roles of education, they have also provided the language of possibility. In this article, we explore critical inquiry through five contexts, namely, autobiographical, historical, political, postmodern, and philosophical. Karyn Cooper and Robert White (2012) propose these five contexts as “a theoretical framework for conducting, understanding, and interpreting qualitative research” (p. 23). Throughout our exploration, we use Deborah Hicks’ (2005) article “Cultural hauntings: Girlhood fictions from working-poor America” as an example of reflexive, advocacy-centred critical inquiry. In this article, Hicks delineates links between third and fourth-grade girls’ fascination with horror fiction, layered dimensions of their voice and identity, and the complexities of growing up in a predominantly white working-poor community. Using the five contexts of qualitative research (Cooper & White, 2012) as a theoretical framework with reference to Hicks (2005), as an example of critical inquiry, we present our analysis of and insights into the possibilities for and realities for empowerment in critical education research.

Autobiographical Context One of the over-arching aims of critical inquiry is to include various perspectives in academia and to acknowledge that the stories and voices of particular groups have long been underrepresented in conversation of research. Critical inquiry has paved the way for, and continues to incorporate, the lenses of feminist theory, critical race theory and class analyses, among others, and ultimately seeks to challenge the canonical frames of academia that have allowed for only one reality. The autobiographical context provides a step forward in that challenge, and many practitioners of critical inquiry have used the autobiographical context both to inform their larger

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critiques and also to situate themselves within the larger discourse. Race and gender theorists such as Gloria Anzaldua (1987), bell hooks (1994), and Beverly Daniel Tatum (1997) weave their autobiographies throughout their critical analyses in order to establish the inextricability between their lived experience and their perspective regarding the world around them. As described in Cooper and White (2012), the autobiographical context is a way to highlight the researcher’s own perspective in order to better establish a connection between researcher, researched and reader, as well as to contextualize the research produced. Without an autobiographical context, the researcher and, in fact, the research itself would be disembodied and without a human source. As a reader, one would be unable to understand both the insights and the blind spots that the researcher brings to an investigation without an understanding of the author’s preconceived ideologies and experiences: “To use a metaphor, viewing a work of art without contextualizing it in terms of our knowledge about the artist tends to limit our understanding of the painting itself” (Cooper & White, 2012, p.  33). Before theorists in the latter half of the 20th century began to call into question the positionalities within the academy, the autobiography of the researcher was hidden, leading to an inability to trust the work produced, and an “othering” of the subject. Referencing William Pinar, Cooper and White (2012) highlight the use of autobiography in research, noting that it need not be a self-indulgent exercise. Pinar demonstrates, through his method of currere, that autobiography is a part of a larger context. His four steps allow researchers to incorporate their lived experiences into their larger research and, in fact, study themselves in order to ask and understand the question, “What do I make of what I have been made?” (Cooper & White, 2012, p. 34). As critical inquiry attempts to inspire new ways of thinking, it simultaneously follows the steps that Pinar lays out—regressive, progressive, analytical, and synthetical. These steps give us the opportunity first to look back on our formative experiences, then forward to where we desire to go. The third step looks at our present, while being informed by our past and future and, fourth, we bring all three pieces together in order to understand our ways of understanding (Pinar, 1975). Hicks’ (2005) relies heavily on the autobiographical context to perform her critical inquiry. Within her analysis, she interweaves her own autobiography, as well as those of her students. Hicks’ voice as the researcher and author is never lost within her writing; her choices, observations and interactions are always deeply embedded within her work. In fact, the writing/research process and the choices she has made within that are all reflective of her positionality, and she makes no secret of that. In so doing, she avoids the problem of the researcher’s gaze which, gone unmentioned, can affect the ways in which the reader sees the subjects of the research, ultimately skewing the reader’s response and, perhaps in turn, any action taken as a result of her research. As Cooper and White (2012) discuss, by being autobiographically expository, one ensures that both researcher and reader are using the same tools to understand and view the subjects of the research. By revealing our subjectivity, we actually allow more space for our reader to be objective.

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In addition to being honest about her own autobiography, we would also argue that Hicks presents what functions almost as an autobiography of the community where she conducted her research. More than simply contextualizing her students’ narratives, the way in which she describes the setting of the classroom leads the reader to feel as if the place is in and of itself. She describes its position on the economic margins of the city by stating that the middle-class “might drive through on the way to something else, noting in passing the ghostly frames of abandoned warehouses or the thick, gray smoke churned out from one of the few working factories” (p. 172). While this contextualization also has its place in discussions of both the historical and political context, it is raised here as well. Hicks regards the space that her subjects live in with her particular eye and mindset, and gives a specific meaning to both their autobiographies and the very act of contextualization. In doing so, Hicks provides her individual subjects with more of a universality, a way to posit that narrative need not be insular and without academic merit. The research question, as stated by Hicks, is “what was it like to grow up as a girl in contemporary working-­ poor America?” (p. 172). Thus, her focus on the economic and structural context of her subjects is vital to the larger underpinnings of her research, for which horror novels become merely a vehicle and not the point, in themselves. The third modality in which we see the autobiographical context at play is, of course, in the narratives of the girls themselves. Hicks uses bell hooks (1994), Myles Horton (1990) and Paulo Freire (1970) as a framework, all three of whom centered both their pedagogies and their scholarship within a context of dialogue so the human aspect of each of the girls’ experiences is vital to the analysis that Hicks is attempting to construct. We learn about these girls through our understanding of their community and through their understandings of and interactions with the books that Hicks posits as “subversive” texts (p. 174). As Hicks describes their reactions to the texts, their previous experience with different genres and the choices that they make, we are able to understand the girls both as individuals, and within their larger contexts. In Inquiry and Reflection, Diane Dubose Brunner (1994) talks about representations of student experience in various forms of media (pp. 153-186), a topic that is also tackled quite often by both bell hooks and Henry Giroux. By investigating how these girls read different texts, Hicks provides us a new reading of the girls themselves. Brunner talks about the way in which language has been used to describe students, especially along class lines, in television, film and literature, as well as the ways in which students, themselves, have been depicted as using (or conversely, failing to use) language. Hicks’ framing of her larger point of inquiry, the ways in which language and linguistic practices are both reflective and constructive of their material and cultural lives is an investigation into the very way that fictional depictions of youth in educational spaces disembodies them from their contexts, a process described by Brunner (1994). By focusing on the autobiography and narrative experience of herself, her students, and their teacher, Hicks is able to re-­contextualize these experiences.

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Historical Context Moving through the five contexts of critical inquiry, we arrive at the historical context. Cooper and White (2012) open their discussion of the historical context with the African proverb, “Until the lion has his own historian, the hunter will always be the hero” (p. 52). This proverb is central to the ideas of a critical, historical analysis. Without questioning, “Whose history is it?” we are unable to look critically at the stories that we have taken as truth (p. 52). Denzin and Lincoln (2005) do just this by going through what they depict as the eight moments of qualitative research. They move from the traditional, through modernist, blurred genres, crisis of representation, and finally, the triple crisis. As they move through these moments, we see the history of qualitative research in varying complexities itself, as it is opened to new voices, new ways of knowing, seeing and understanding. There are, of course, numerous scholars who aim to illustrate both a critical and historical understanding of their subjects. One such scholar, whose work seems of particular relevance to Hicks’ content and analysis, is David Roediger (1993). By developing a history of American racial construction through the paradigm of whiteness, Roediger takes both a critical and historical look at the ways in which our understanding of self, power, poverty and privilege are informed by the history of racial construction, as well as the history of labour in the United States. As Hicks discusses the working poor character of the town that her work is centered in, Roediger’s (1993) analysis of how labour history and the history of slavery becomes particularly critical to our understandings of the intersections of whiteness and working class identities, as posited by Hicks (2005). Gloria Ladson-Billings (1995, 1999) also captures a historical context in her analyses of education and race, uniting the contexts of critical race theory and critical pedagogy. By tracing notions of racial segregation and looking at cultural deprivation, Ladson-Billings is able to reclaim the ways that we look at modern schooling and the ways that we talk about racial disparities in education. In so doing, the historical perspective in critical inquiry acts as a counter-argument to sometimes dangerous modes of thinking, such as the “deficit” model of education. Hicks continues this tradition by highlighting the voices of subjects schooled within a working class context, as well as by demonstrating positive examples of engaged learning. Many of Hicks’ methodological and writing strategies demonstrate a strong connection to the historical context. Firstly, she contextualizes the geographic location based on historical understanding. She discusses its physical make-up, position within the larger urban space and, also, demographic profiles within a historical context. The critical inquiry piece here is that neighborhoods do not simply arise, just as residents are not divorced from their space—neighborhoods themselves do not exist separately from the forces that construct them (Hicks, 2005). She specifically mentions factors such as factory closings that occurred long before her students were born, largely as a means to highlight the ways in which communities live under the economic shadows of what came before. It is clear within a historical

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context that events do not just happen and dissipate; they continue to have an effect on what comes after them. Hicks is also able to engage with the historical context by extending her study over a year-long period (She even goes so far as to refer to her data as a “history” (p. 173)). By looking at the girls over a period of time, she engages with notions of change. The other way in which she engages with the historical context is by situating her methodology and theoretical framework within a trajectory of study, wherein she cites the work of Gee (2004) and other practitioners of new literacy studies. In so doing, she draws a historical lens over her specific research, as well as engaging in a larger theoretical conversation.

Political Context Within critical theory, it is impossible to create barriers between the political, postmodern, and philosophical contexts. Like the postmodern world we live in, they are liquid, and flow into each other at different times of the research and inquiry process. First and foremost, we currently live in the postmodern era and, thus, all contemporary research is firmly rooted within that particular framework. Secondly, if, as Pinar (1978) claims, all intellectual acts are inherently political, then any act of research by an individual or institution is, of course, political as well. Finally, thoughtful considerations of philosophy hold these concepts together and, through the philosophical context, dialogue and discourse are created to enable change. Nonetheless, the political aspect of critical theory is interwoven into all four contexts and must always be present in any research that aims to be called “critical.” The Frankfurt School, notably Max Horkheimer, is central in exploring the political context of critical theory. Horkheimer (1972) states in his pivotal work, Critical Theory, that there cannot be many defined criteria for critical theory, as it is a product of its political, social, cultural, and economic contexts and is, thus, continually changing; however, he argues that critical theory must always contain the unfaltering “concern for the abolition of social injustice” (p. 242), a sentiment echoed by scholars such as Giroux (2004) and Lather (1986). Lather (1986), in particular, argues that researchers should employ critical theory in order to avoid the “rape model” of research—namely, objectifying and “othering” one’s research subject. Critical theory can help researchers and institutions build and maintain “a more collaborative approach...to empower the researched, to build emancipatory theory, and to move toward the establishment of data credibility within praxis-oriented, advocacy research” (Lather, 1986, p. 272). Essentially, the goal of critical theory should be to encourage and facilitate emancipatory change for the oppressed, marginalized and misunderstood. For example, in her article, Hicks investigates—and eventually advocates for—the typically “hidden face of poverty” or the hidden “white” face of poverty. Intrigued and surprised by the “predominant Whiteness of the neighbourhood” (p. 171), where she situates her research, Hicks draws attention to an often overlooked area in urban poverty research.

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The change called for in critical inquiry can be demonstrated through the realization of agency, which is central to the political context, and to critical inquiry as well: “the political contexts at work within society impact upon one’s sense of agency” (Cooper & White, 2012, p. 72). In Hicks’ article, her goal (though flawed by her own middle-class biases and preconceptions of the working-poor) was to investigate the experience of girlhood in working-poor America, and how the school language practices—mainly reading novels—were “layered within their cultural and material lives” (p. 172). Though her research began with a more observational rather than advocacy focus, Hicks accomplished the praxis-oriented research that is often advocated by Lather (1986) and other critical researchers and theorists. When one student, Brandy, voiced her newfound confidence and proclaimed that “We can start to control this [their situation] by just sitting down and talking” (p. 184), she demonstrated that she had begun to realize her agency—the first step towards the change that critical theory champions. The students in Hicks’ research also struggled with “juggling the tension and ambiguity of their class differences in a middle-class school culture” (p. 173). This is clearly evident in Hicks’ demonstration of her own middle-class cultural capital, when she attempts to begin the course with a text that the girls simply did not relate to, involving a cultural capital (Bourdieu, 1985) that rested outside of their realm of experience. Instead, the girls chose to focus on a type of text that was familiar to them: horror paperbacks. This shift in the types of literature that the students gravitated towards raises some critical questions: Are students in working-poor, urban neighbourhoods only capable of consuming simple, seemingly “low brow” texts? Should educators push those students beyond their comfortable reading environment into something more literary? It is here that the true task of critical inquiry begins to take shape: “Literary” for whom, exactly? Why are these texts considered to be “low brow?” Why do we feel the need to teach certain accepted texts within the English classroom? While not specifically stating that these questions entered her research, Hicks displays in her article her engagement with these issues, as she questions her own cultural capital and decides to investigate, instead, the possibilities that lay within the horror paperbacks for unveiling the layered meanings of her students’ identities. By taking this critical approach, Hicks’ grounds herself in the realm of critical pedagogy for political and social change—after reflecting on and altering her preconceptions of the cultural awareness and capital of her students, she provided them with a forum to be heard and to express their own cultural hauntings. Bauman (1997) claims that “the key to a problem as large as social justice lies in a problem as (ostensibly) small-scale as the primal moral act of taking up responsibility for the other nearby” (p. 70)—while Hicks may not have solved the issue of social justice, her research and willingness to speak and listen to these young girls illustrates her commitment to this group in working-poor America.

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Postmodern Context Critical theory argues that, in our postmodern society, normative assumptions and dominant perspectives of politics, culture and society often remain unquestioned. Horkheimer (1972) proposes that we re-evaluate our interactions and place within society a renewed consciousness that is “dominated at every turn by a concern for reasonable conditions of life” (pp. 198-199). Of course, the critical researcher must question and define what is meant by “reasonable conditions of life;” the researcher must also focus on how that is attainable for each individual. For many theorists, the key lies in the search for individual and collective agency. For example, once the young girls in Hicks’ class developed and discovered their personal stories and voices, they were able to create a larger, collaborative agency that, potentially, could be heard outside of their small, working-poor neighbourhood classroom. Central to the postmodern context is the move from a producer to a consumer society, and the power dynamics that occur as a result—a concept encountered by many critical theorists and researchers. Foucault (1982) claims that, for society to progress to a more equitable and open society, we are in desperate need of a “new economy of power relations” (p. 779). However, as Giroux (2004) notes, it is important to remember that, within our capitalist, postmodern society, power does not disappear but, rather, becomes reworked, replayed and restaged; perhaps that reworking of power can result from the turn from consumer to producer. Bauman also voices his concern for our movement from a producer society to a consumer society and notes that, “if unchecked, [it] will spell dire consequences for humanity” (quoted in Cooper & White, 2012, p. 86). He further explains that the concept of choice, and the deceptively simple ability to choose, is yet another crucial component of our postmodern condition, rooted in the dichotomy of producer and consumer. Surrounded by menial daily choices of what espresso drink to purchase, television program to fit into our schedule or Twitter account to follow, it is clear that our postmodern society values choice. Bauman would argue, however, that these are quick, meaningless choices that require little to no responsibility once the choice has been made, but it is these choices that create and shape our identities, only to be “adopted and discarded like a change of costume” (1997, p. 88). In Hicks’ article, her students began as consumers. They were drawn to the paperback horrors because of their distribution and saturation within the media, from television programs such as Goosebumps, as well as other film interpretations of the genre. However, once they began creating the same horror texts that they originally consumed and became producers, they found their voices and became individuals with their own sense of agency and the awareness of their autobiographical situation within their postmodern, political world. Even so, Hicks’ students do not have the same choices as many of their middle-­ class counterparts. Our consumer-driven society emphasizes the constant need for choice, yet so many fail to have the privilege of choice. Indeed, the word “fail” might seem insensitive and severe but, in a consumer-driven society, members of the working-poor have neither the ability nor the means to choose and participate in

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material culture. In her article, Hicks observes that her students fail to meet the material standards of the dominant, middle-class culture and, therefore, their ability to live within the consumer, postmodern world is gone; there are no jobs left in their area and, so, the “material possibilities” have disappeared for the youth in this working-­poor neighbourhood (p. 170). In addition to their attempted participation in the middle-class consumer culture, the young girls also continuously struggle with “juggling the tension and ambiguity of their class differences in a middle-class school culture” (p. 173). If material possibilities are valued in identity construction in a postmodern consumer society, then the students’ inability to obtain them means a negation of individuality and agency and, thus, the potential for collective action and change.

Philosophical Context The girls in Hicks’ summer school reading group may have juggled tensions and struggled with expression, but they certainly took matters into their own hands when they decided to circulate horror paperbacks amongst themselves. Hicks’ article illustrates a difference between education and schooling, and these young girls in working-poor America used the horror paperbacks as a means of creating their own form of education. Postmodern critical philosopher Maxine Greene (1988) notes the philosophical differences between schooling and education, and argues that “Education...encourages individuals to grow and to become, while schooling constrains students to become servants of a technocratic society” (Cooper & White, 2012, p.  106). This is particularly crucial to coming to an understanding of the dynamic nature of critical theory and, thus, critical pedagogy. Schooling, in Hicks’ situation, relied on a middle-class cultural capital that was not in the same sphere of experience as the education that the girls created for themselves, based on their interests and understandings. They began reading these texts as a self-created peer reading group and it was from this form of education, on the periphery of a middle-­ class school culture and environment, that the educator, Hicks, noticed the potential in exploring (and further complicating) the layered meanings of the girls’ identities. Greene (1988) also states that imagination is central to developing one’s particular perspective and realizing one’s individual agency. It takes imagination to become aware that a search is possible, and there are analogies here to the kind of learning we want to stimulate...it takes imagination on the part of the young people to perceive openings through which they can move. (Cooper & White, 2012, p. 110)

Greene’s (1988) emphasis on imagination paving the path to freedom is central to understanding the philosophical context of critical inquiry and also the philosophical context of Hick’s research. During a discussion of The Wizard of Oz, Hicks asked her students if, given the choice, they would choose to stay in Oz or go back to Kansas. One student, Shannon, imagines her escape from her current situation in a heartbreaking revelation:

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I would choose Oz because it’s a beautiful land and up there you don’t hear no gunshots. And you don’t walk on glass and don’t hear people hollering and screaming at you like you do here. (Hicks, 2005, p. 183)

Shannon might not have made a plan of action for escaping her reality, but her imagination in this one instance displays her awareness of her political, social and economic situation, and her desire to escape. Picturing a better place—even one that is imaginary—could have been Shannon’s first step into plucking herself from her reality and escaping into a new one of change and autonomy (Greene, 1988).

Conclusion Critics often blame critical inquiry for its emphasis on the language of critique, rather than the language of possibility. For example, Elizabeth Ellsworth (1989) expresses her doubt in critical inquiry’s empowering and transformative powers. She argues that “the discourse of critical pedagogy is based on rationalist assumptions that give rise to repressive myths,” and critical pedagogues “perpetuate relations of domination in their classrooms” (p. 297). Like Ellsworth, Viviane Robinson (1992) argues that there is a paradox at the heart of critical inquiry’s endeavours for emancipation. When critical researchers offer alternative understandings of subjects’ situations, their offer has two “arrogant” claims: a) subjects’ (mis)understandings are at least in part responsible for the situation they find unacceptable; and (b) the alternative understandings offered by the critical social scientist, if acted on, would result in outcomes that are more effective and fulfilling than those currently experienced. (p. 346)

Nonetheless, critical inquiry is, by its nature, self-critical, and critical theorists assert that, while these may be potential issues, true critical inquiry inherently addresses these problems. Rather than criticizing the nature of critical inquiry, Canella and Lincoln (2009) identify three issues that may marginalize and disempower critical inquiry, thus impacting its reception amongst academic and general populations. First, a high level of abstraction and use of difficult language keep the work of critical inquiry away from broader audiences. Second, political forces often attack diversity and discredit critique. Finally, the rise of neoliberalism and hyper-­capitalism suppress critical inquiry and privileges evidence-based, positivistic research. In this article, we have used the five contexts for qualitative research (Cooper & White, 2012) to understand the possibilities for empowerment in critical educational research. In our analysis, Hicks’ (2005) article has provided examples of how teachers can adopt responsive and dialogic pedagogies that “start with close readings of students’ lives and voices” (p. 188). Through her constant reflective, self-­ critical, and participatory methodology, Hicks avoids the potential pitfalls of critical inquiry and, instead, epitomizes the language of possibility in critical inquiry. Thus, the five contexts of Cooper and White (2012) exemplified through Hicks (2005) illustrate the emancipatory potentials of critical educational research by engaging

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“the researched in a democratized process of inquiry characterized by negotiation, reciprocity, [and] empowerment” (Lather, 1986, p. 257).

References Anzaldua, G. E. (1987). Borderlands/La Frontera: The new Mestiza 4th ed., San Francisco, CA: Aunt Lute Books. Bauman, Z. (1997). Postmodernity and its discontents. Cambridge, UK: Polity Press. Bauman, Z. (2005). Work, consumerism and the new poor. Maidenhead, England: Open University Press. Bourdieu, P. (1985). The forms of capital. In J. G. Richardson (Ed.), Handbook of theory and research for the sociology of education (pp.  241-258). New  York: Greenwood. Brunner, D. D. (1994). Inquiry and reflection: Framing narrative practice in education. Albany, NY: SUNY Press. Cannella, G. S., & Lincoln, Y. S. (2009). Deploying qualitative methods for critical social purposes. In N. K. Denzin & M. D. Giardina (Eds.), Qualitative inquiry and social justice (pp. 53-72). Walnut Creek, CA: Left Coast Press. Cooper, K. & White, R.  E. (2012). Qualitative research in the post-modern era: Contexts of qualitative research. New York: Springer. Denzin, N. K. & Lincoln, Y. S. (2005). Introduction: The discipline and practice of qualitative research. In N. K. Denzin & Y. S. Lincoln (Eds.), The Sage handbook of qualitative research, 3rd Ed. (pp. 1-32). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Ellsworth, E. (1989). Why doesn’t this feel empowering? Working through the repressive myths of critical pedagogy. Harvard Educational Review, 59(3), 297-324. Foucault, M. (1982). The subject and power. Critical Inquiry, 8(4), 777-795. Freire, P. (1970). Pedagogy of the oppressed. New York: Seabury Press. Gee. J. P. (2004). Situated language and learning: A critique of traditional schooling. London: Routledge. Giroux, H. (1988). Critical theory amid the politics of culture and voice: Rethinking the discourse of educational research. In R.  Sherman & R.  Webb (Eds.), Qualitative research in education: Focus and methods (pp.  190–210). New York: Palmer. Giroux, H. A. (2000). Postmodern education and disposable youth. In P. P. Trifonas (Ed.), Revolutionary pedagogies: Cultural politics, instituting education, and the discourse of theory (pp. 174-195). New York: Routledge. Giroux, H.  A. (2004). Critical pedagogy and the postmodern/modern divide: Towards a pedagogy of democratization. Teacher Education Quarterly, 31(1), 31-47. Greene, M. (1988). The dialectic of freedom. New York: Teachers College Press. Hicks, D. (2005). Cultural hauntings: Girlhood fictions from working-poor America. Qualitative Inquiry, 11(2), 170-190.

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hooks, b. (1994). Teaching to transgress: Education as the practice of freedom. New York: Routledge. Horkheimer, M. (1972). Critical theory. Toronto: Herder and Herder. Horton, M. & Freire, P. (1990). We Make the Road by Walking: Conversations on Education and Social Change. (Edited by B.  Bell, J.  Gaventa & J.  Peters). Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press. Kincheloe, J. L., & McLaren, P. (2005). Rethinking critical theory and qualitative research. In N.  Denzin and Y.  Lincoln (Eds.), The handbook of qualitative research (pp. 279–313). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications. Kincheloe, J. L., & McLaren, P. (2011). Rethinking critical theory and qualitative research. In K.  Hayes et  al., (Eds.), Key work in critical pedagogy: Joe L. Kincheloe (pp. 285-326). Rotterdam: Sense Publishers. Ladson-Billings, G. J. (1995). But that’s just good teaching! The case for culturally relevant pedagogy. Theory into Practice, 34(3), 159-165. Ladson-Billings, G. J. (1999). Preparing teachers for diverse student populations: A critical race theory perspective. Review of Research in Education, 24, 211-247. Lather, P. (1986). Research as praxis. Harvard Educational Review, 56(3), 257-277. Pinar, W.  F. (1975). Currere: toward reconceptualization. Curriculum theorizing: The reconceptualists, 396-414. Pinar, W. F. (1978). The reconceptualization of curriculum studies. In D. J. Flinders and S.  J. Thornton (Eds.), The curriculum studies reader (pp.  149-157). New York: Routledge Falmer. Robinson, V.  M. J. (1992). Doing critical social science: dilemmas of control. International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education, 5(4), 345-359. Roediger, D. (1993). Race and the working-class past in the United States: Multiple identities and the future of labor history. International Review of Social History, 38, 127-143. Schwandt, T. A. (2007). The Sage dictionary of qualitative inquiry. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications. Tatum, B. D. (1997). “Why are all the Black kids sitting together in the. cafeteria?” And other conversations about race. New York: Basic Books. Tripp, D. (1992). Critical theory and educational research. Issues in Educational Research, 2(1), 13-23.

References Blumer, H. (1969). Symbolic interactionism: Perspective and method. University of California Press. Butler, T. (1998). Towards a hermeneutic method for interpretive research in information systems. Journal of Information Technology, 13(4), 285–300. Collins, H. (2010). Creative research: The theory and practice of research for the creative industries. AVA Publications. Comte, A. (1908). A general view of positivism (Trans. J. A. Bridges). Routledge. Cooper, K., & White, R. E. (2012). Qualitative research in the post-modern era: Contexts of qualitative research. Springer.

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Creswell, J. W. (2013). Research design: Qualitative, quantitative, and mixed methods approaches (4th ed.). Sage. Crossman, A. (2017). What is positivism in sociology? Background and theory of positivism. Retrieved October 25, 2017 from https://www.thoughtco.com/positivism-­sociology-­3026456 Fairclough, N. (2010). Critical discourse analysis: The critical study of language. Prentice Hall. Feyerabend, P. (1975). Against method: Outline of an anarchistic theory of knowledge. New Left Books. Goldkuhl, G. (2012). Pragmatism vs. interpretivism in qualitative information systems research. European Journal of Information Systems, 21(2), 135–146. Henning, E., Van Rensburg, W., & Smit, B. (2004). Finding your way in qualitative research. Van Schaik Publishers. Horgan, J. (1993). Profile: Paul Karl Feyerabend—The worst enemy of science. Scientific American, 268(5), 36–37. Krippendorff, K. H. (2003). Content analysis: An introduction to its methodology. Sage. Marx, K. (1867/2012). Das kapital: A critique of political economy. Regnery Publishing. Miles, M. B., & Huberman, M. A. (1994). Qualitative data analysis: An expanded source book (2nd ed.). Sage. Myers, M., & Avison, D. (2002). An introduction to qualitative research in information systems. In M. Myers & D. Avison (Eds.), Qualitative research in information systems: A reader. Sage. Ong, Y.  S. (2016). Reexamining education research methodologies—Collaborative rather than competitive. Bulgarian Journal of Science & Education Policy, 10(1), 124–141. Orbe, M.  P., & Kinefuchi, E. (2008). Crash under investigation: Engaging complications of complicity, coherence, and implicature through critical analysis. Critical Studies in Media Communication, 25(2), 135–156. https://doi.org/10.1080/15295030802032275 Orlikowski, W.  J., & Baroudi, J.  J. (1991). Studying information technology in organizations: Research approaches and assumptions. Information Systems Research, 2(1), 1–28. Patton, M. Q. (2014). Qualitative research & evaluation methods: Integrating theory & practice (4th ed.). Sage. Polkinghorne, D. (1983). Methodology for the human sciences. Human Sciences Press. Popper, K. R. (1979). Objective knowledge: An evolutionary approach. Oxford University Press. Shusterman, R. (2004). Pragmatism and East-Asian thought. Metaphilosophy, 35(1/2), 13–43. Thomas, V. G., & Madison, A. (2010). Integration of social justice into the teaching of evaluation. American Journal of Evaluation, 31(4), 570–583. https://doi.org/10.1177/1098214010368426 Trauth, E. M. (Ed.). (2001). Qualitative research in IS: Issues and trends. Idea Group. Willis, J. W. (2007). Foundations of qualitative research: Interpretive and critical approaches. Sage. Wilson, W. J. (1987). The truly disadvantaged: The inner city, the underclass, and public policy. University of Chicago Press.

Chapter 3

Hermeneutic Inquiry

You can say that what is silent is far more powerful than what is spoken; what is invisible is so much more powerful than what is visible. David G. Smith, University of Alberta

Introduction In its simplest sense, hermeneutics refers to the study of methodological principles of interpretation in philosophy, as well as in the Social Sciences and Humanities, according to the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (https://plato.stanford.edu/ entries/hermeneutics/). It is to be noted that the term, hermeneutics, appears as a plural noun but is used as singular when employed as an adjective. Hermeneutics is derived from the Greek word ἑρμηνεύω (hermeneuō), meaning to translate or to interpret (Klein, 2000). Hermeneutics is also known as a branch of theology that deals with the principles of biblical interpretation. Coming to the Social Sciences and Humanities by way of biblical exegesis, hermeneutics has been important in interpreting theological scriptures, most notably the Dead Sea Scrolls, ancient Jewish religious manuscripts created between approximately 400  BCE to 300  CE and rediscovered in a cave in France in 1946 and 1947. Multiple additional discoveries occurred through to 1956. It has often been said that any language functions as a code, as it may contain numerous words that may or may not be familiar to the reader. Also, every language contains idioms, which, in and of itself, is a form of code. As far back as Socrates, it was noted that language has the power to conceal or reveal messages, depending Supplementary Information The online version contains supplementary material available at [https://doi.org/10.1007/978-­3-­030-­85124-­8_3]. The videos can be accessed individually by clicking the DOI link in the accompanying figure caption or by scanning this link with the SN More Media App. © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 R. E. White, K. Cooper, Qualitative Research in the Post-Modern Era, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-85124-8_3

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upon the choice of words used in the communication. Given this, at its core, hermeneutics deals with the interpretation of symbols, not least of which is the written word. Thus, hermeneutics considers the interpretation of symbols and of language, which is symbolic at its deepest levels. According to Forster (2007), hermeneutics refers to the theory of interpretation in terms of achieving an understanding of texts, including speech. In fact, texts may now refer to all manner of artefacts from the ubiquitous tome to other items, including the text of the world, itself.

The Biographical Context Professor David G. Smith of the University of Alberta has had an abiding interest in hermeneutics even prior to his career in academia. Born in China to missionary parents, it is unsurprising that young David would be drawn to eventually study hermeneutics at the advanced level.

Professor David G. Smith

In the video-clip that follows, Professor Smith describes some of the origins of hermeneutics. In discussing this topic, he notes that graduate seminars are fertile ground for asking questions about the intricacies of hermeneutic inquiry.

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Video Clip 3.1: Professor David G. Smith (▶ https://doi.org/10.1007/000-­6cq)

Professor Smith notes that the subject matter of his graduate classes frequently concerns interpretive traditions of the human sciences. In order to fashion a response, he returns to Plato and Aristotle, particularly since both of these Ancient Greek philosophers defined the debate between the natural and human sciences. Professor Smith refers to this debate between Plato and Aristotle as a cultural “conversation” that follows the tradition of Greek thought. The point to remember is that language is always more than what is actually said. In short, in any conversation, the sum of the whole is greater than its parts. This may be because people tend to speak in “code,” using oblique reference, metaphor and allusion. A further complication to any conversation held in person is the issue of non-verbal communication—or body language—that may also colour the conversation by adding a new context to the existing language being used in the conversation. Thus, the meaning of language is always more than what is contained in the words. According to Professor Smith, this goes right back to the Greek conception of “logos,” which literally means a word, reason or plan. However, in Greek philosophy and theology, logos refers to the belief in divine reason, which is implicit throughout the universe and which, therefore, gives it form and meaning. The issue of “code” or ambiguity in language was also contained with the operation of the Oracle, the classical Greek mystic, fortune-teller and high priestess. The most important of the Greek Oracles was Pythia, who was priestess to Apollo, the Sun God. Her temple can be found in the ancient sanctuary at Delphi, just outside of Athens, Greece. A second Oracle, that of Dione and Zeus, can be found at Dodona in Epirus, a historic geological region in southeastern Europe, situated between Greece and Albania. Dione can be translated as “Goddess” and is of the same etymological derivation as the name “Zeus;” hence, the Oracle of Dione and Zeus. Apparently, Oracles spoke through metaphor. Because the prophecy was always ambiguous, one would never accept at face value what the Oracle said.

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The oracular prophecy required interpreting. The word “hermeneu,” in Greek culture, means, “to interpret.” Hermes, an Olympian God in Greek mythology and religion was the son of Zeus, and was also an emissary and messenger for the gods. He was also known as a divine trickster, as his messages needed to be interpreted in order to decide whether the message was the truth or a trick. Usually, the word “heremeu” was combined with another Greek word, “mantike,” meaning divination. As a result, claims Professor Smith, hermeneutics begins with the recognition that there is always something below the surface of the words that are used. Meaning never resides on the surface of what is said, as it merely represents a “production” of something that is much deeper and much more complex that lies beneath the surface.

The Explicate and Implicate Order This is where the relationship between explicate and implicate orders comes into play. While the explicate order refers to the observable world that is right at hand, the implicate order refers to everything else that comprises the explicate order. Thus, the implicate order is everything that is not explicit. Professor Smith notes that this is a very important concept to understand, hermeneutically, because the “relationship between the explicit and the implicit is profoundly organic and, in a sense, it’s symbiotic.” It is symbiotic in the sense that it is not a discontinuous relationship. The explicate and implicate orders are very much connected to one another. It is at this point that Professor Smith draws upon Hindu tradition to illustrate his point. He states that, in the concept of voice, the Hindu word, “vash,” is used. It is well understood that the relationship between the implicate and the explicate is not only continuous but is also highly political in that the explicate order is always subordinate to the implicate order. Professor Smith draws out the point that it is also possible to phrase the relationship between the explicate and implicate order in different ways. To illustrate, he notes that one may say that what is silent is far more powerful than what is spoken; or that what is invisible is so much more powerful than what is visible. By way of summary, Professor Smith claims that whatever is at work in the world that remains far beyond human imagination, rationality or even human creativity is so much more powerful than what we see, touch and feel on a daily basis, and it is constantly at work.

The Historical Context Hermeneutics has a long history, reaching back to ancient Greece, and takes its name from Hermes, the messenger of the Greek Gods. Hermes later became known as Mercury, during the days of the Roman Empire. In Ancient Greece, however, Hermes acted as a messenger to the gods, and also as a mediator, not only between

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gods but also between gods and humanity. Hermes also led souls to the Underworld, upon their death. In some instances, he was also perceived to be a liar, a practical joker and a thief. To add to his already numerous character traits, Hermes was also considered to be an inventor of language and an interpreter. As a result, Hermes is an ideal representative of this methodology. Socrates may have been one of the first to notice that messages can be delivered in a multiplicity of ways and can easily lead to ambiguity (Hoy, 1982). Thus, the Ancient Greeks viewed language as consisting of signs that could symbolize either truth or falsity. It was said that Hermes relished the discomfort felt by those who felt that they must interpret his ambiguous messages. Thus, the early usage of this form of interpretation readily placed it within the boundaries of the “sacred” (Grondin, 1994), due to the irrationality or ambiguity of the message, which was received as a kind of divine correspondence, given that Hermes was a god of the Olympian order and son of Zeus. As a result, anyone receiving the message was said to have gone mad unless the receiver was in possession of a rational means of interpretation with which to determine the veracity of the message (Grondin, 1994). Although hermeneutics was initially applied to the interpretation of scripture, it was later broadened to include “questions of general interpretation” (Klein, 2000, p. 344.) and was introduced into philosophy through one of Aristotle’s works, translated into English as On Interpretation (Klein, 2000). This work represents one of the earliest existing philosophical works to deal with the relationship between language and logic in a comprehensive, formal and logical way. Modern hermeneutics arrived alongside the humanist education of the Renaissance (Walter, 1997) as a method by which texts could be decoded and understood. Although a new focus was brought to bear on hermeneutic interpretation, biblical hermeneutics was not extinct, by any stretch of the imagination. The Protestant Reformation downloaded the responsibility for biblical interpretation from the Church to the individual. In this way, up to and during the period known as the Enlightenment, scripture became viewed as secular classical texts by hermeneutic interpreters. Scripture was interpreted as responses to social or historical forces by comparing apparent contradictions and opaque passages to contemporary Christian practices. Due to a number of notable contributors to the development of hermeneutics, this discipline emerged during the 1800s and 1900s as a theory of understanding or, in the German, Verstehen, meaning an intuitive method of interpreting human culture, especially through the understanding of symbolic relationships (https:// www.merriam-­webster.com/dictionary/Verstehen). While there are many names and histories associated with hermeneutics, a few names stand out above many others who have nonetheless contributed to the development of hermeneutics as a qualitative research methodology. Friedrich Schleiermacher (1768–1834), a pastor and professor, attempted to reconcile critiques of the Enlightenment—an intellectual and philosophical movement in Europe during the eighteenth century that dominated the world of ideas— with Protestant Christianity (Palmer, 1969). His work forms part of the legacy of modern hermeneutics. Although Schleiermacher did not publish extensively on hermeneutics during his lifetime, he lectured widely on the field. His published and

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unpublished writings on hermeneutics were collected after his death. Schleiermacher chose to approach interpretation in the more general way that people actually understood texts. One could only properly approach the interpretation of scripture, he believed, once a system of interpretation, applicable to all texts, was available (Schleiermacher, 1998). This approach he referred to as the “act of understanding” (Bernardo, 2016, p. 50). Schleiermacher understood the text as an interaction between text and interpreter, the text being the proxy for the author. Thus, the inner thoughts of the author become outer expressions, requiring that the reader must consider the inner thoughts of the writer as well as the specific use of language in conveying the message, what Schleiermacher called the “grammatical interpretation” and the “psychological [or technical] interpretation” (Schleiermacher, 1998, p. 229). The former deals with the language of the text, the latter with the thoughts and aims of the author This represents “understanding in its highest sense” (p. 228) and is cyclical in that what is understood comes from the author, is expressed through language which is mediated by the author and by the historical contexts of the times. However, the author contributes to the language through new ideas. As such, the interpreter must now attempt to understand how the original audience understood this work (Schleiermacher, 1998). However, we are not finished yet, because understanding is as artful as that of avoiding misunderstanding. Misunderstanding was to be avoided by means of knowledge of grammatical and psychological laws. This leads us to grammatical interpretation. Thus, in order to fully grasp the author’s intent and meaning, it is necessary to explore why a particular work was written, other works by the author in the same genre and other works by the author in a different genre or genres (Schleiermacher, 1998). If the interpreter fully understands the psyche of the author, the work can be understood, in tandem with the grammatical interpretation, in terms of the inner thoughts of the author. Thus, understanding or Verstehen, a psychological and historical process, is the act of experiencing the same thought processes as the author. As such, the employ of hermeneutics is a cyclical endeavour. While true understanding can only be approximated, hermeneutics puts the interpreter in the best possible position to understand a text. Friedrich Schleiermacher influenced hermeneutics greatly. During Schleiermacher’s time, a fundamental shift occurred from a mere understanding of the words and their meaning to understanding the distinctive perspective of the writer. His work marked the debut of hermeneutics as a general field of inquiry (Palmer, 1969). His focus would later be expanded upon to include theories of interpretation of lived experiences by scholars such as Martin Heidegger, Hans-Georg Gadamer and Paul Ricœur. Wilhelm Dilthey (1833–1911), an empiricist at the University of Berlin, was interested in questions relating to scientific methodology and the status of history as an explorable science. His conception of empiricism drew upon ontological and epistemological assumptions taken from German philosophical and literary traditions. Dilthey, who helped to revive interest in the work of Schleiermacher, responded to questions of philosophical legitimation of the human (and presumably,

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social) sciences. From the outset, Dilthey was clear that the move from outer expression to inner understanding is not a function of empathy, which requires identification with the expresser of the communique. Rather, interpretation involves indirect understanding, mediated through human expressions in their historical context. Thus, understanding is not a process of reconstructing the state of mind of the author, but one of articulating what is expressed in his work. Dilthey, argues that ‘scientific explanation of nature’ (erklären) must be completed with a theory of how the world is given to human beings through symbolically mediated practices. To provide such a theory is the aim of the philosophy of the humanities. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ Wilhelm_Dilthey)

Dilthey emphasized “historicality,” in that history is best described as a “history of world views” (Palmer, 1969, p. 117) rather than as a set of artefacts. In short, Dilthey believed that humanity can only be understood through history rather than through objective concepts. Thus, it is this living experience that emphasizes the “intrinsic temporality of all understanding” (Palmer, 1969, pp.  117–118). Understanding, then, becomes dependent on a shared world, replete with past and present worldviews and their subsequent interpretations. Dilthey coined the term “hermeneutic circle,” from Schleiermacher’s reiterative process of interpretive inquiry, which moved between the implicate and explicate order, the particular and the general or the part and the whole. Thus, Dilthey believed that, while the natural sciences explain nature, it is the humanities and social sciences that understand “human expressions of life” (Palmer, 1969, p. 105) through a triangulation between life experience, expression and understanding (Palmer, 1969). In this sense, experience means to feel a situation or thing personally. Dilthey believed that we can grasp the meaning of unknown thought when we try to experience it for ourselves. Expression converts the live experience into meaning for others. Because each saying is an expression, one can always return to an expression, particularly in its written form. Thus, Dilthey claimed, this has the same objective value as an experiment in the natural sciences. It is the possibility of returning that makes scientific analysis possible and, consequently, the humanities can be identified as a science. Additionally, Dilthey contended that an expression may be greater than the sum of its parts because it may elicit meanings beyond the understanding of the individual who coined the expression. For Dilthey, comprehension contains understanding and misunderstanding. To understand is to co-exist within another’s understanding of the same phenomena. Although Dilthey exerted huge influence over Martin Heidegger’s early work, Heidegger eventually became critical of Dilthey’s work, suggesting a more radical “temporalization” of possibilities relating to the interpretation of human existence. Martin Heidegger (1889–1976) helped to shift the focus of hermeneutics to a more existential understanding, rooted within an ontological paradigm, thus allowing for a more direct and, therefore, more authentic way of being, rather than merely knowing (Heidegger, 1962/1927). Heidegger’s approach points out that texts within the social sciences and humanities cannot be studied by utilizing the same methods

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as are relevant for the natural sciences. Because such texts represent the author’s experiences, interpretation of these texts will undoubtedly reveal something of the author’s social context and thus allow a sharing of the author’s experiences, a reciprocation between text and context. Heidegger’s “hermeneutic idealism” (Lafont, 2007, p. 116) has posed difficulties for analytic philosophers working on his philosophy of science. This difficulty arises in attempting to situate Heidegger’s hermeneutic project in debates relating to realism and anti-realism (Lafont, 2007, pp. 116–117). Arguments have been presented both for and against Heidegger’s “hermeneutic idealism,” which contends that meaning determines reference. In short, the claim is made that our understanding of the existence of entities is what determines entities as entities. As for Heidegger’s notion of hermeneutic realism, he presents the thesis that there is a nature in and of itself that science can explain, and that this is compatible with the ontological implications of our everyday practices (Dreyfus, 1991). Hans-Georg Gadamer (1900–2002) was heavily influenced by his teacher, Martin Heidegger, and criticized Dilthey’s approach to hermeneutics as overly aesthetic, as well as being too subjective. He claimed it was method-oriented and overly positivistic (Gadamer, 2006). He believed that Dilthey’s hermeneutics was not concerned sufficiently with ontological truth and did not consider adequately how the interpreter and the subsequent interpretations occupy a particular position within tradition; thus, these interpretations have a temporal horizon. In short, the interpreter and the interpretations exist within a specific time and space, both historical and ahistoric. Building on the work of Heidegger, Gadamer suggested that methodical contemplation exists in opposition to experience and reflection and that one can only access the truth of a thing by understanding the experience. However, our understanding is not fixed, but continues to offer infinitely new perspectives. Thus, the most important thing is to unfold the nature of individual understanding (Gadamer, 2006). For example, the feeling of prejudice represents a specific understanding and is, therefore, not without a certain value. Prejudice, as the term suggests, is a pre-judgement of something one seeks to understand. Prejudices are unavoidable, as it may have been prejudice that helped mankind survive in a primeval world. As such, prejudice, or not understanding a particular tradition, is a condition of our understanding and one can never step outside of one’s tradition. Thus, all one can attain is an attempt to understand the phenomenon, further elaborating the already existing notion of the hermeneutic circle. Paul Ricœur (1913–2005) developed a hermeneutics based on Heidegger’s concepts. His work differs in many ways from that of Gadamer. His greatest contribution to hermeneutic methodology was the combining of phenomenological description with hermeneutics. The topic of phenomenology will be discussed in a later chapter. While his thinking was similar to that of Husserl, the German phenomenologist, it was in this very way that he departed from Gadamer’s work in order to develop the methods of hermeneutic phenomenology. Ricœur expanded textual interpretation to include the domains of mythology, metaphor, psychoanalysis and narrative theory. Narrative inquiry will also be discussed in a future chapter.

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He pointed out that hermeneutics requires an intersection of self and other. Thus, the meaning of self and other is bound up in one’s very existence. Understanding, then, becomes a coming together of the self and an other, either now or in some other time, in some bilaterally meaningful way. Consequently, philosophy will always be a hermeneutic inquiry, since it seeks to discover the meaning of existence through the interpretation of phenomena. Phenomena, according to Ricœur, can be evidenced only through the events that are to be found in the world of culture (Ricœur et al., 1978). This is why philosophy remains a hermeneutics, that is, a reading of the hidden meaning inside the text of the apparent meaning. It is the task of this hermeneutics to show that existence arrives at expression, at meaning, and at reflection only through the continual exegesis of all the significations that come to light in the world of culture. Existence becomes a self—human and adult—only by appropriating this meaning, which first resides “outside,” in works, institutions, and cultural movements in which the life of the spirit is justified. (p. 101)

According to Ricœur, then, the aim of hermeneutics is to recover and restore meaning through interpretation. Regarding the goal of hermeneutics, Ricœur emphasizes self-understanding as the objective of the entire hermeneutic process, revealed in the following quotation: In proposing to relate symbolic language to self-understanding, I think I fulfill the deepest wish of hermeneutics. The purpose of all interpretation is to conquer a remoteness, a distance between the past cultural epoch to which the text belongs and the interpreter himself. By overcoming this distance, by making himself contemporary with the text, the exegete can appropriate its meaning to himself: foreign, he makes it familiar, that is, he makes it his own. It is thus the growth of his own understanding of himself that he pursues through his understanding of others. (Ricœur, 2005, p. 16)

Thus, Ricœur attempts to distinguish the means by which the self is discovered. For him, this can only be accomplished by interpreting that which is signified. A significant contribution to the field of hermeneutics was Ricœur’s intertwining of the hermeneutic process with phenomenology. In this sense, hermeneutics becomes an understanding of the links between the self and the symbol, which is viewed by Ricœur as a dialectical union between the two. Charles Taylor (1931–), a Canadian scholar, developed a philosophy that reacts against the logical positivism and naturalism prevalent in his early career. Taylor’s philosophical outlook can be characterized as engaged hermeneutics (Van Aarde, 2009). His position is made clear in his championing of the works of major figures within the hermeneutic tradition, such as Wilhelm Dilthey, Martin Heidegger, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, and Hans-Georg Gadamer, and is also evident in his own original contributions to hermeneutic and interpretive theory (Taylor, 1985). What began as his critique of naturalism (a theory relating the scientific method to philosophy by affirming that all beings and events are natural and, therefore, all knowledge falls within the aegis of scientific investigation), on empirical grounds was reframed on the basis of there being no distinctly separable grounds between scientific and moral endeavours (Choi, 2009). Taylor’s view of hermeneutics has led to important contributions to nursing research and the philosophy of Charles Taylor

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has been a major source in the development of contemporary hermeneutics, through his ontological and epistemological articulations of the human sciences. Taylor’s hermeneutics provides a substantive moral framework as well as a methodology for examining ethical concerns (Carnevale, 2013). It is widely acknowledged that Taylor’s interpretivism rests on ontological claims about human agency. Taylor’s interpretivism withstands the strongest criticisms made of it, so far, and represents an essential resource for revitalizing the interpretive turn (Blakely, 2013).

The Political Context Because hermeneutics is a methodology of interpretation concerned with problems of dealing with meaningful human actions and the products of those actions, such as texts, hermeneutics offers a means by which the interpretation of human actions, texts and other meaningful material can be accomplished. Due to a significantly long history, the study and practice of hermeneutics, the problems assigned for study, and the instruments of thought that have been designed to help resolve hermeneutic problems have altered significantly with the passing of time. Thus, for the hermeneutic researcher, interpretation becomes ubiquitous, and can be employed when or wherever individuals attempt to understand whatever they deem to be significant. A highly developed practice of interpretation existed in Greek antiquity and attempted to interpret oracles, dreams, myths, philosophical and poetical works, as well as laws and contracts (Tate, 1934). In fact, ancient hermeneutics can be traced back to the exegesis of Homeric epics. The most remarkable characteristic of ancient exegesis featured a method of nonliteral interpretation of authoritative texts, containing claims and statements that appeared to be theologically and morally inappropriate or false (Tate, 1934). Thus, even in ancient Greece, hermeneutics were aimed at a deeper meaning, which lay hidden below the surface of the text itself. “Allegorisis,” the interpretation of written, oral or artistic expression as allegory, developed during the Middle Ages, and was practiced from the sixth century BCE to the Stoic and Neoplatonistic schools, and even later (Scholz, 2016). The first text on hermeneutics was published in 1630 by Johann Conrad Dannhauer (1603–1666), an orthodox Lutheran theologian and teacher, who established the systematic study of hermeneutics within logic, and introduced “the Latin neologism hermeneutica as the title of a general modus sciendi” [scientific method] (Mantzavinos, 2016, n.p.). This work was intended to support earlier works by Aristotle, the subject of which was to distinguish between true and false meanings of any given text, oral or written. In 1654, Johann Clauberg (1622–1665) introduced sophisticated distinctions between the rules of interpretation with respect to their generality and clarified the capturing of the intention of the author as a valuable aim of interpretative praxis (Mantzavinos, 2016). As a result, it is apparent that a general methodology of hermeneutics was extant several centuries prior to Schleiermacher offering his version of hermeneutics at the end of the eighteenth century.

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Consequently, according to Mantzavinos (2016), Schleiermacher’s claim that a hermeneutics did not exist prior to his contribution is definitely in question. As so often occurs with new ways of looking at methodologies, hermeneutics is not without its problem areas. This is a result of the many permutations of hermeneutics. As has been noted above, many scholars helped to develop this methodology and, while their approaches may have some commonalities, their ideas were diverse, if not antithetical to the hermeneutics that was practiced up to that time. Over time, new ideas came to the fore and older ideas were neglected. This has produced a rich tapestry of hermeneutic thought throughout the ages. As so often happens with newer ideas challenging long held beliefs, many scholars not only added their knowledge and ideas to hermeneutic methodology, they also frequently critiqued the work of their predecessors. For example, Jürgen Habermas (1929–2007), who made frequent sorties into the world of hermeneutic thought, critiqued the conservative nature of scholars in the field of hermeneutics, particularly Gadamer, whose focus on tradition, Habermas claimed, undermined possibilities for social criticism and subsequent transformation. Habermas also criticized members of his own neo-Marxist Frankfurt School, as well as Karl Marx, for ignoring the hermeneutical dimension of critical social theory.

The Postmodern Context When new ideas or ways of thinking overtake older ideas, there is often a brief period of readjustment. Then, when the newer perspective is safely ensconced within the culture of the phenomenon, something strange often happens. Instead of disappearing, the old ideas simply get recycled or exist alongside of the new ideas, making the phenomenon under study much more convoluted, intricate and interesting to disentangle. The postmodern era typifies this approach by catching up all the historical ways that hermeneutics was practiced and thought about and lays them alongside new, intriguing ways of thinking about the hermeneutic process. Friedrich Schleiermacher, who was strongly influenced by German Romanticism, which led him to emphasize human emotion and imagination, is associated with Romantic hermeneutics, as well as with methodological hermeneutics, given his describing of the hermeneutic circle. Wilhelm Dilthey made epistemological hermeneutics his life’s work. Martin Heidegger is associated with hermeneutic phenomenology and with transcendental hermeneutic phenomenology. Paul Ricœur delved into the mysteries of hermeneutic phenomenology, as well. Both Martin Heidegger and Hans-Georg Gadamer shared an interest in ontological hermeneutics. Modern hermeneutics includes both verbal and non-verbal communication (McNamara, 1994), as well as the fields of semiotics, presuppositions (found in the study of pragmatics) and pre-understandings (Pinker, 2007). Hermeneutics has been broadly applied in the humanities, especially in law, history and theology. A new form of hermeneutics attempts to understand biblical texts through the approach of existentialism. This “new hermeneutic” (Soulen, 2009) emphasizes the existence of

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language, as well as the fact that language is viewed as an event and is thus “eventualized” in the history of individual life. This new hermeneutic is represented by scholars such as Gerhard Ebeling, Ernst Fuchs and James M.  Robinson (https:// en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_hermeneutic). Marxist hermeneutics is the methodology developed by Walter Benjamin, Fredric Jameson and Ernst Bloch. Radical hermeneutics was developed by Jacques Derrida, while Richard Kearney oversaw the developing diacritical hermeneutics and John Thompson attended to critical hermeneutics. Sir Karl Popper used the term “objective hermeneutics” in his book, Objective Knowledge (1979). Andrés Ortiz-Osés developed symbolic hermeneutics, while Mauricio Beuchot coined the term and discipline that is known as analogic hermeneutics. As can be seen by this list, scholars who delved into the field of hermeneutics tended to leave their fingerprints behind them. While it might be contested that this adds to the confusion of representing this methodology clearly and concisely, others may welcome the richness of having so much choice when it comes to identifying, defining and operationalizing a hermeneutic methodology that seeks to uncover exactly what it is that is under study. Perhaps it is a matter of having the right instrument for the task at hand.

The Philosophical Context In the video-clip that follows, Professor David Smith describes the theory of non-­ contradiction, as understood by Plato and Aristotle.

Video Clip 3.2: Professor David G. Smith (▶ https://doi.org/10.1007/000-­6cp)

Professor Smith makes note that Plato’s vision of language was poetic and was based upon the culture of the Oracle. Aristotle had a very different view of

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language, however. Aristotle’s viewpoint can best be understood through his theories. For example, his theory of substance claims that, “a thing is most itself when it’s separate from every other thing.” Aristotle’s theory of the principle of non-­ contradiction verges on a logical syllogism in that “A” cannot be “B” and still be “A.” In other words, one cannot have “B” inhering in “A” because “A” is “A” and “B” is “B.” According to Professor Smith, this type of philosophical formulation recalls the notion of predictive understanding, which would imply that, if “A” happens, then “B” will follow. Also, according to Professor Smith, Jean Grondin, the most outstanding biographer of Hans-Georg Gadamer, wrote a beautiful essay in his book, entitled Sources of Hermeneutics (1995). This book provides an introduction to the historical sources of philosophical hermeneutics in the work of Heidegger and Gadamer. In this essay, he traces the evolution of hermeneutics in classical times, and raises a very interesting question: “How would the Western tradition be different if Plato had triumphed over Aristotle, instead of Aristotle over Plato?” The Aristotelian notion of analytic logic, predicated on the Aristotelian scientific method, is that you can make a word stick to a thing. For example, Professor Smith uses a pen to illustrate. If a pen is a pen, nothing else needs to be considered. In this sense, one must eliminate all other aspects of what a pen could be in order for the pen to be itself. This, he claims, is the foundation of modern science, which returned to Europe through the Middle East, because it was this culture which translated Aristotle and gave Aristotle back to the West. It was Aristotelianism that then produced metaphysics through medieval scholasticism. Metaphysics refers to the notion that, if one claims that the world is a particular way and is able to make an argument for it, then it is. However, the Platonic perspective would always be that, no matter what, there is always more to be said. No matter what one says, the invisible always trumps the visible and the silent—the unspoken—trumps the spoken. Professor Smith suggests that, unless we’re vigilant with regard to the relationship between the Aristotelian and the Platonic forms of logic, violence will be the inevitable result because, under a metaphysical orientation, one takes certitudes far too seriously. As an example, Professor Smith notes that one tends to take interpretations as definitive. He claims that is what happened in science, until the scientific revolution, in the post-Kuhnian sense, occurred. Thomas Kuhn (1922–1996) proposed the notion that scientific fields undergo periodic “paradigm shifts” and do not necessarily progress in a linear and continuous fashion. Kuhn noted that paradigm shifts allow for new approaches to understanding that, previously, would never have been considered valid. Thus, what passes for scientific truth, at any given moment, cannot be established only by virtue of objective criteria, but must be defined through consensus of the scientific community. Building on Popper’s notion of rational fallibilism (Perkinson, 1978), competing paradigms are frequently incommensurable in that they are competing and irreconcilable accounts of reality. When one theory falls, another theory that answers more of the questions posed by the previous theory replaces the existing theory. Also, when the new theory is unable to answer all of the questions satisfactorily, yet

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another theory that does offer more in the way of answers is brought into play. Each new theory may or may not represent a paradigm shift. After Thomas Kuhn’s perspective regarding paradigm shifts, Professor Smith claims that science became understood in a much more ecological way. However, he also notes that the dogmatism of early science emanated from an Aristotelian understanding of the relationship of language to things. He believes one can trace this right through Western imperialism and its subsequent colonizing practices. Smith claims that European nations, which gave rise to Western imperialist practices, took itself far too seriously in that it took its colonizing land claims to be claims of truth instead of provisional understandings, given under certain circumstances. Consequently, he claims, there’s always more to be said. Even with the advent of hermeneutics, a frequently ignored issue in the disciplines of psychology and linguistics has been the structure of texts. Sentences seldom appear in isolation, but arrive in groups, as in paragraphs. Thus, the meaning of the combination of sentences is greater than the meaning of the individual sentences. Interestingly enough, such meaning combinations may occur within a sentence as well (Schank, 1978). This observation has huge implications for hermeneutic research, and for qualitative research, in general.

Ontology and Epistemology As a result of such intricacies, it is important to distinguish between two levels of analysis, the ontological and the epistemological. Heidegger proposed a hermeneutic phenomenology as a replacement for traditional ontology, the core of which was an existential analysis of human existence. He proposed that, by analyzing human existence, the meaning of “being” could be discovered. Thus, from Heidigger’s perspective, interpretation can be viewed as a non-abstract way of being in the world. Gadamer (2006) partly adopted this view of ontology, and philosophical hermeneutics emerged as a result. Epistemological studies on hermeneutics may or may not share any commitment to ontology. Epistemological approaches may begin with problems of interpretation and may then propose solutions to these problems, independent of any underlying ontological consideration. Even when distinctions between ontological and epistemological levels are conceded, there is significant debate over the advisability of neglecting the constitution and structure of the material when one is engaged in interpretation. In fact, the age-old “Verstehen vs. Erklären” debate is largely about this question: whether there is a distinct method for the apprehension of meaningful material, employable in the social sciences and the humanities (Geisteswissenschaften; Kulturwissenschaften), which deal with such material, i.e., Verstehen (understanding), or whether the general method employed in the natural sciences is successfully employable in the social sciences and humanities as well, i.e., Erklären (explanation). (Mantzavinos, 2016, n.p.)

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Deep within this controversy of whether a general method can be used for the social sciences, as well as for the natural sciences and humanities, is “the methodobject-­argument” (Ricœur, 2003). This argument takes the position that the scientific method must be suited to its object. In this way, the primacy of the object of inquiry is established over the method of inquiry. Normally, either an understanding or an explanation is adopted. However, in either case, ontological and epistemological levels are not necessarily segregated, as with regards to the hermeneutic circle.

The Hermeneutic Circle Scholars, scientists and academics are frequently less than precise when it comes to naming things. For example, terming the various ways by which one may be able to access qualitative research has been termed a “methodology.” Currently, as qualitative researchers develop a more concise vocabulary, the term “research design” is supplanting the older term (Plano-Clark & Creswell, 2015). However, it must have become clear to even the most uncritical of readers that this term, methodology, really does not represent a recipe or process, a way of proceeding with a specific inquiry, so much as offering a lens through which to regard a particular research initiative. Speaking of playing fast and loose with terminology, this is also true of the “crisis of representation,” which, by definition, would occur only once if it were truly a crisis. Perhaps the “problem of representation” would be more apt but less catchy than using the misnomer “crisis.” Also, mixed methods research is often more about mixing qualitative and quantitative paradigms, than it is about mixing methods, such as administering questionnaires and surveys. So it is with the hermeneutic circle. Upon first encountering this term, one may well wonder where the circle is. However, the term “cycle” may be a more appropriate term, since it is reiterative and reciprocal rather than circular, which implies constancy without change. Mantzavinos (2016) notes that the hermeneutic is related to a certain reading of texts, written or otherwise, and that one can only justify this through other readings or texts. This cycle may be in the form of a part-to-whole approach, which ultimately relies on the whole text. Heidegger (1962/1927) suggests that one way to understand this issue is to view the hermeneutic circle as belonging to the structure of meaning, while the phenomenon of understanding is rooted in the existential construction of being in the world. Heidegger notes that, “Being is itself an issue, has, ontologically, a circular structure” (p. 195). Still others have seen the hermeneutic circle as a problem of logic or of methodology, depending on what one means when one speaks of the hermeneutic circle.

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Interpretation of Texts Understanding a text or, more exactly, comprehending a text, hermeneutically, can be a complex activity and should be viewed as a process, perhaps not unlike viewing a painting in an art gallery. The more times one views the painting, the more one sees and understands. Eventually, perhaps, through such an interpretation, one may come to comprehend the artist, the motivation for the painting and the eventual choices of colours, composition and brush strokes. According to Mantzavinos (2016), in order to assist in the comprehension of texts, hermeneutically speaking, Georg Friedrich Meier (1718–1777) postulated the principle of hermeneutic equity as the most general principle of all interpretive rules. Because the process of text interpretation lies at the heart of hermeneutics, such interpretation may take a multiplicity of forms, depending upon the aim of the reader, with respect to the text. However, also according to Mantzavinos (2016), confusion may be avoided if one makes a distinction between the act of interpreting the meaning and the act of critique as a function of the significance of the text. Thus, while the significance may have changed over time, the meaning will not have changed. However, the passage of time may well affect how a particular text is understood in terms of the context of the present day, within which it can now be found. Meaning is that which is represented by a text…it is what the signs represent. Significance, on the other hand, names a relationship between that meaning and a person, or a conception, or a situation, or indeed anything imaginable…. Significance always implies a relationship, and one constant, unchanging pole of that relationship is what the text means. (Hirsch, 1967, p. 8)

Failure to consider this essential distinction has created enormous confusion in hermeneutic theory (Mantzavinos, 2016). Consequently, if the aim of interpretation is to grasp the intent of the author, how can that intent be identified? Wilhelm Dilthey used the term “nexus of meaning” which, when connected with a particular text, is “construed by the author against the background of his goals, beliefs, and other mental states while interacting with his natural and social environment” (Mantzavinos, 2016, n.p.). This construal of meaning is complex, due to the fact that the author uses both conscious and unconscious symbols and involves both the meaning and the significance of the text. The nexus of meaning is central to the methodology of hermeneutics because interpretation in the hermeneutic tradition is a process of reconstructing nexuses of meaning via the hermeneutic circle. Any consensus regarding interpretation must necessarily be of a provisional nature. At the core of this epistemic activity of developing interpretations as a series of reconstructions of nexuses of meaning is how hermeneutic understanding can be best methodologically captured. To assist in this enterprise of understanding, the hypothetico-deductive method is a five-step process that has been promoted in identifying standards in use, when dealing with explanation and issues of interpretation. The five steps are:

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1. Establish interpretative hypotheses or “consequences.” 2. Deduce, along with other statements, hypotheses that can be tested. 3. Observable consequences can be tested with research techniques from the social sciences and humanities. 4. Different interpretative hypotheses are then compared to the evidence. A comparative evaluation will distinguish acceptable from less successful interpretations. Evaluations respect different values, so reconstruction of a nexus of meaning can encompass diverse ideals. 5. A multi-dimensional evaluation of the same hypothesis with regard to different values or sets of hypotheses is possible. This fifth step is important in establishing relevance that can be resolved by employing the best explanation (Lipton, 2004). In true hermeneutic fashion, however, identifying the best explanation remains problematic, since it may not be possible to provide necessary or sufficient conditions of what counts as an explanation. Also, it is assumed there is universal agreement on what constitutes “the best explanation”—both assumptions being, in fact, untenable (Mantzavinos, 2016). Although flawed, the hypothetico-deductive method can assist in establishing hermeneutic objectivity; however, ultimately, it is based on a critical discussion among the participants on the appropriateness of different interpretations regarding fulfillment of the diverse aims of interpretation.

 eature Article: Experience and Interpretation F in Global Times The following article offers a discussion of hermeneutics in terms of the interpretation of special education. Historical and etymological understandings are described prior to the author delving into how hermeneutic understanding has evolved over time. If qualitative research seeks to transform education, two things must happen. The first is to continue to affirm the originating gesture of the human science tradition. The second requirement is to broaden the hermeneutic/interpretive vision of qualitative research. These points are discussed with respect to the globalized times within which we live (See Experience and Interpretation in Global Times: The Case of Special Education).

Summary: The Art of Interpretation Hermeneutic inquiry is defined through the act of interpretation. The term is derived from Hermes, messenger to the ancient Greek gods, as his messages were often ambiguous and contradictory, requiring interpretation. Professor David G.  Smith reminds the reader that the explicate order is that which appears on the surface of

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any text, while the implicate order is that which lies beneath the surface and which contains the real meaning of the communiqué. The historical context sets forth the conditions that favoured the development of hermeneutics, from ancient Greece to the modern era. Socrates, Plato and Aristotle were among the first to understand the importance of interpretation. In the eighteenth century, Friedrich Schleiermacher, pastor and philosopher, developed one of the first comprehensive understandings of hermeneutics. In the nineteenth century, Wilhelm Dilthey refined Schleiermacher’s work and coined the term “hermeneutic circle,” from Schleiermacher’s reiterative process of interpretive inquiry. In the twentieth century, Dilthey’s work drew criticism from Martin Heidegger and Hans-­ Georg Gadamer. Subsequently, Gadamer extended Heidegger’s notion of existentialism in hermeneutics, particularly in terms of his exploration of prejudice. Paul Ricœur added to the understanding of hermeneutics by building on Heidegger’s work on transcendental hermeneutics, although Ricœur’s work differs significantly from Gadamer’s understandings. Ricœur further developed the notion of hermeneutic phenomenology. The politics of hermeneutics is concerned with problems of dealing with meaningful human actions and their products, such as texts. Thus, it offers a means by which the interpretation of human actions, texts and other meaningful material can be accomplished. The first text on hermeneutics was published by Johann Conrad Dannhauer (1603–1666) and was intended to support earlier works by Aristotle. In 1654, Johann Clauberg (1622–1665) introduced sophisticated distinctions between the rules of interpretation and clarified the capturing of the intention of the author as a valuable aim of interpretation. Over time, new ideas came to the fore and older ideas were neglected, producing a rich tapestry of hermeneutic thought through the ages. However, when new ideas or ways of thinking overtake older ideas, there is often a brief period of readjustment. The postmodern era typifies this approach by catching up historical ways that hermeneutics was practiced and lays them alongside new, intriguing ways of thinking about the hermeneutic process. Modern hermeneutics includes both verbal and non-verbal communication, as well as the fields of semiotics, presuppositions and pre-understandings. In clarifying the philosophy relative to hermeneutic study, Professor David Smith describes Plato and Aristotle’s theory of non-contradiction and introduces the reader to philosophical hermeneutics in the work of Heidegger and Gadamer. Thomas Kuhn proposed that scientific fields undergo periodic “paradigm shifts” rather than progressing in a linear fashion, thus availing new approaches to understanding what would not previously have been considered valid. After Thomas Kuhn’s perspective regarding paradigm shifts, science became understood in a much more ecological way. Popper’s notion of rational fallibilism suggests that competing paradigms are frequently incommensurable in that they are competing and irreconcilable accounts of reality. Thus, the dogmatism of early science emanated from an Aristotelian understanding of the relationship of language to things. This can be traced through Western imperialism and subsequent colonizing practices.

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In order to understand the text and put into practice the hermeneutic circle, Georg Friedrich Meier postulated the principle of hermeneutic equity as the most general principle of all interpretive rules. Interpretation may take on a multiplicity of forms, depending upon the aim of the reader with respect to the text. Failure to consider the meaning of the text versus the significance of the text has led to enormous confusion in hermeneutic theory. However, ultimately, hermeneutic understanding is based on a critical discussion among the participants on the appropriateness of different interpretations. An article dedicated to hermeneutics as an interpretive methodology has been included for the reader’s benefit. Suggestions for Further Reading Should the reader wish to read further regarding hermeneutic inquiry, please see the following articles: Peters, M., & Lankshear, C. (1994). Education and hermeneutics: A Freirean interpretation. In P. L. McLaren & C. Lankshear (Eds.). Politics of liberation: Paths from Freire (pp. 173–192). Routledge. Polkinghorne, D. E. (2000). Psychological inquiry and the pragmatic and hermeneutic traditions. Theory and Psychology, 10(4), 453–479. https://doi. org/10.1177/0959354300104002 Seo, S., & Koro-Ljungberg, M. (2005). A hermeneutical study of older Korean graduate students’ experiences in American higher education: From Confucianism to Western educational values. Journal of Studies in International Education, 9(2), 164–187. https://doi.org/10.1177/1028315305274695 Smith, D.  G. (1999). The hermeneutic imagination and the pedagogic text. In Pedagon: Interdisciplinary essays in the human sciences, pedagogy, and culture. Peter Lang. https://www.bookdepository.com/ Pedagon-­David-­Geoffrey-­Smith/9780820427607 Selected Annotated Bibliography Hirsch, E. D. (1967). Validity in interpretation. Yale University Press. This is a carefully reasoned volume, which offers a theoretical foundation for a discipline that is foundational to studies in the humanities and social sciences. In identifying and revealing not only uniformity but also the universality of principles relating to the valid interpretation of verbal texts of any sort, it defines the grounds on which textual interpretation claims objective knowledge. The author is able to defend this claim against a multiplicity of skeptical attitudes, such as historicism and psychologism. The author of this valuable tome attests that much confusion can be avoided if the distinction between meaning and significance, and interpretation and criticism are understood appropriately. It represents one of the first genuinely comprehensive accounts of hermeneutic theory to appear in English, and it is one of the first systematic presentations of the principles of valid interpretation in this language. Viewing the topic of hermeneutics within the subject of literary interpretation, Professor Hirsch traces the origins and development of hermeneutics with brilliant insight.

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Hoy, D. C. (1982). The critical circle: Literature, history and philosophical hermeneutics. University of California Press. This volume reveals the possibility of bringing together numerous European and Anglo-American critical traditions without blurring the distinctness that separates them. With regards to developing an understanding of Gadamer’s relevance to current critical debate, this book is a necessity. Researchers, scholars and students alike will find within its pages a synoptic account of critical theories that have gained prominence in this era. This is an extremely useful compendium describing the nature and status of contemporary debate about the contribution of hermeneutic philosophy. It discusses the interpretation of literary texts with regards to contemporary epistemological puzzles. Although numerous books have been advanced on this topic, this particular volume stands out in its ability to clarify central issues surely and succinctly. Gadamer, H.-G. (2006). Truth and method. Continuum. This volume has become a classic, a staple for hermeneutic methodological interpretation. Not to begin slowly, the book begins with a discussion of transcending the aesthetic dimension and describes the importance of the humanist traditions in the social sciences and humanities. A second chapter is devoted to the ontology of works of art and their significance to the hermeneutic project. This is then expanded to encompass the question of truth to the humanities and social sciences. In this section of the book, Gadamer speaks about the hermeneutic tradition, prior to moving to discuss the ontological shift in hermeneutic endeavour that has occurred and been guided through language. The final chapters of this valuable tome include a discussion about how the concept of language developed in Western thought and how language can be seen as a horizon of hermeneutic ontology. Grondin, J. (1995). Sources of hermeneutics. SUNY. Here is another valuable book that offers an introduction to the history of hermeneutics, as it pertains to the work of Gadamer and Heidegger. This volume is highly regarded in the field of hermeneutics and is considered to be one of the best books by one of the clearest thinkers in the field. Grondin is considered to be the best interpreter of Gadamer. The book offers a direct and well-articulated understanding of the hermeneutics of both Heidegger and Gadamer and is also a very readable text. A cursory look at the table of contents reveals a valid path from the study of metaphysics to hermeneutics. Then, the task of hermeneutics in early philosophy is discussed. The contributions of Husserl and Hegel are noted as the book continues forward in describing these influences on the work of Heidegger, before describing how all of this has affected the work of Gadamer. The hermeneutic limits of rationality and the hermeneutical intelligence of language are the final offerings in this exquisite volume.

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Klein, E. (2000). A complete etymology of the English language: Dealing with the origin of words and their sense development, thus illustrating the history of civilization and culture. Elsevier. During the last 60 years, philology has attained a high degree of development. However, etymology appears to have reached the level of philology as it was at the turn of the century. This dictionary represents the first major work of its kind in the twentieth century. As such, this volume embodies the findings of modern philological scholarship. Full reference is made to Tocharian, the extinct language rediscovered at the end of the nineteenth Century, which provides the key between the Old-Indian and the Indo-European group of languages, to which English belongs. The etymology of words of Semitic origin in the English language is given. Transliteration of Semitic words, based on a concept that renders exactly every consonant, vowel and diacritical sign is offered. Special attention is paid to translations, especially in regard to their passage from one language to another. The dictionary also provides the etymologies of proper and mythological names. Lipton, P. (2004). Inference to the best explanation (2nd Ed.). Routledge. How does one go about weighing evidence, testing hypotheses, and making inferences? According to Inference to the Best Explanation, one works out what to infer from the evidence by thinking about what would actually explain that evidence and then takes the ability of a hypothesis to explain the evidence as a sign that the hypothesis is correct. In Inference to the Best Explanation, Peter Lipton gives this important and influential idea the development and assessment it deserves. The second edition has been substantially enlarged and reworked, with a new chapter on the relationship between explanation and Bayesianism, and an extension and defence of the account of contrastive explanation. It also includes an expanded defence of the claims that our inferences really are guided by diverse explanatory considerations, and that this pattern of inference can guide us towards the truth. This edition of Inference to the Best Explanation has also been updated throughout and includes a new bibliography. Palmer, R. E. (1969). Hermeneutics: Studies in phenomenology and existential philosophy. Northwestern University Press. This book represents the author’s quest for understanding of a term that is at once unfamiliar to most educated people and is also potentially significant to a number of disciplines concerned with interpretation, particularly in the social sciences and humanities This classic volume introduces to English-speaking readers a field which is of increasing importance in contemporary philosophy and theology—hermeneutics, the theory of understanding, or interpretation. Richard E.  Palmer, utilizing largely untranslated sources, situates the conception of hermeneutics enunciated by Heidegger and developed within a “philosophical hermeneutics,” developed by Hans-Georg Gadamer. He provides a brief overview of the field by surveying some half-dozen alternate definitions of the term and by examining in detail the contributions of Friedrich Schleiermacher and Wilhelm Dilthey. In the conclusion of the

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book, Palmer emphasizes the significance of hermeneutics for literary interpretation. Pinker, S. (2007). The stuff of thought: Language as a window into human nature. Penguin Books. This New York Times bestseller is an exciting and fearless investigation of language from the author of Better Angels of Our Nature (2011), The Sense of Style (2015) and Enlightenment (2021). Bestselling author Steven Pinker possesses a rare combination of scientific aptitude and verbal eloquence that enables him to provide lucid explanations of deep and powerful ideas. His previous books, including the Pulitzer Prize finalist The Blank Slate (2003), have catapulted him into the limelight as one of today’s most important popular science writers. In The Stuff of Thought, Pinker presents a fascinating look at how our words explain our nature. There is a theory of time and space embedded in the way we use words. Considering scientific questions with examples from everyday life, The Stuff of Thought is a brilliantly crafted and highly readable work. Popper, K. (1979). Objective knowledge: An evolutionary approach. Oxford University Press. “The phenomenon of human knowledge is no doubt the greatest miracle in our universe. It constitutes a problem that will not soon be solved, and I am far from thinking that the present volume makes even a small contribution to its solution. But I hope I have helped to restart a discussion which for three centuries has been bogged down in preliminaries.” This is the opening paragraph in the preface to this volume. While this is a statement worth pondering for some time, the essays in this volume represent an approach to human knowledge that has had a profound influence on many recent thinkers. Popper breaks with a traditional commonsense theory of knowledge that can be traced back to Aristotle. A realist and fallibilist, he argues closely and in unadorned language that scientific knowledge, once stated in human language, is no longer part of ourselves, but becomes a separate entity that grows through critical selection. Ricœur, P. (2005). The conflict of interpretations: Essays in hermeneutics. Continuum. This collection brings together twenty-two essays by Paul Ricœur, under the topics of structuralism, psychoanalysis and religion. In dramatic conciseness, the essays illuminate the work of one of the leading philosophers of the day. Those interested in Ricœur’s development of the philosophy of language will find rich and suggestive reading. The diversity found among these essays speaks beyond the confines of philosophy to linguists, theologians, psychologists and psychoanalysts. The first section of this volume is devoted to hermeneutics and structuralism, while the second section dedicates itself to hermeneutics and psychoanalysis. Several of the more compelling essays deal with a philosophical interpretation of Freud’s work, as well as one essay on guilt, ethics and religion. This is an important volume for

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researchers, scholars and students who wish to understand hermeneutics at work throughout the social sciences and humanities. Schleiermacher, F. D. E. (1998). Hermeneutics and criticism: And other writings (A. Bowie, Trans. & Edited). Cambridge University Press. This venerable volume represents the founding text of modern hermeneutics. Written by the philosopher and theologian Friedrich Schleiermacher as a method for the interpretation and textual criticism of the New Testament, it develops ideas about language and the interpretation of texts that are, in many respects, still unsurpassed and are becoming current in the contemporary philosophy of language. Contrary to the traditional view of Schleiermacher as a theorist of empathetic interpretation, in this text he offers a view of understanding that acknowledges both the structurally and historically determined aspects of language and the need to take account of the activity of the individual subject in the constitution of meaning. This volume offers the text in a new translation by Andrew Bowie, together with related writings on secular hermeneutics and on language, and an introduction that places the texts in the context of Schleiermacher’s philosophy as a whole. Soulen, R. N. (2009). Sacred scripture: A short history of interpretation. Westminster John Knox Press. How did the Bible’s sixty-six books become sacred Scripture? How have they been understood and interpreted over the last 2000 years? What was it that led to our acceptance of the Bible as the true word of God? For over two millennia, Christians have accepted the importance of the Bible as sacred Scripture, and for as many years they have struggled to comprehend the meaning. Over the centuries the church has expressed the centrality of Scripture in numerous ways, and Christians have studied and interpreted the Bible in a wide variety of faithful approaches. Understanding that process is critical to our ability and our willingness to accept the Bible as sacred and true. As Christian understandings of the Bible have changed and developed throughout history, this volume is useful for theologians and people wishing to understand more about biblical texts. However, it is also an invaluable aid to the hermeneutic scholar who seeks to understand interpretation in any number of its various permutations. Questions for Further Study • How would you define the implicate and the explicate order? • How would you describe hermeneutics as a methodology? • What particular type of hermeneutics would you be interested in and why? • Would you agree or disagree that the field of hermeneutics has been confused or enriched by the development of so many different permutations of this methodology? Why? • Can you attempt to apply hermeneutics to a topic under investigation of your own choosing? What would this study look like using a hermeneutic methodology?

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 xperience and Interpretation in Global Times: The Case E of Special Education David Geoffrey Smith University of Alberta Smith, D. G. (2018). Experience and Interpretation in Global Times: The Case of Special Education. DOI: https://doi.org/10.11575/jah.v0i0.53330 Abstract This paper was delivered as a keynote address at the International Symposium for Qualitative Transformation of the Paradigm of Educational Practice and Special Education, Busan National University, South Korea, April 16, 2006. The symposium was sponsored by The Korean Research Society for Phenomenological and Hermeneutic Practice, and the Research Institute for Special Education of Busan National University. Keywords:  hermeneutics, special education, research theory, invalid

“Special Education” is focussed on the education of those deemed special in some way. In English, the word special has many meanings, such as “outstanding or exceptional,” “specific rather than general,” “for a particular purpose,” “denoting education for children with particular needs, e.g., the handicapped,” “a special person or thing, such as a (police) constable or dish” (Concise Oxford Dictionary, 9th ed.). What may be most relevant to the question of paradigm transformation in education, however may be the connection of the word “special” to the word “species,” from the Latin specialis. If special education is in any way linked to species differentiation, the implication easily slides into considering people regarded as “special” to be a different kind of species than everyone else, than those who make up the norms of society. It is this implication that I wish to address here. It is an implication that cuts deeply into many of the historically derived philosophical assumptions underpinning Western theories of education, such as Aristotle’s Principle of Non-­ Contradiction (A cannot be A and B at the same time), and his Theory of Substance stating that a thing is most itself when it is disconnected from every other thing. The problem with this understanding of specialness is not only that it leaves people in their specialness, literally in their distinctive species categorization; the worse thing is that, in such a condition, special people lose their pedagogical capability, that is their capacity to address the world from a common ground. If you are deaf, you are deaf; if you are blind, you are blind; if you are deranged, you are deranged, gifted - - gifted, but so what? Maybe “normals” can assist you in your deafness, your blindness, your derangement, or even your giftedness to help you to adjust to life with normals, but the fact that you are “species specific” means that there is a line dividing us that cannot be breached. Just as you are most yourself in

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your blindness, your deafness, or your derangement, so the rest of us are “ourselves” in a completely different way. It is this way of thinking that needs to be deconstructed, especially in the context of “global times” wherein the current theory of “Difference” provides a justification for imperial aggression against others seen as a threat to one’s own truth. Being able to see the world as One, as a single reality, is a necessary condition for perceiving how it is that the strong and the weak, the rich and the poor, the healthy and the infirm all participate and share in an organic unity that now requires a new kind of theorization within the various domains of the human sciences including Education. This leads to my second interest in the symposium title, “...the qualitative transformation of the paradigm of educational practice.” We know from the history of research theory that the turn to qualitative methods began around the mid 1970s. There was a reaction against the limits of what could be learned about human life through statistics and the methods of “rigorous science.” The development of the new Human Sciences drew inspiration from the neo-Romanticism of nineteenth century Germany, and philosophers such as Wilhelm Dilthey (1833-1911) and Edmund Husserl (1858-1938), which led to the existentialism of Heidegger (1889-1976) and Sartre (1905-1980), and the hermeneutic/interpretive work of H-G. Gadamer (1900-2002). Dilthey was the first to distinguish between the natural sciences (Naturwissenschaften) and the human sciences (Geistesvissenschaften). “Nature we can explain,” he said, “but human life we must understand (verstehen).” Such understanding should be built on a more concentrated attention to “lived-­ experience,” to how people actually experience their lives in the world before any theorizing about it. Husserl’s famous dictum, “To the things themselves,” was a sort of battle cry against the metaphysical formalisms of Immanuel Kant, whose philosophy of idealism had dominated Europe since the eighteenth century. It is from this root in German Romanticism, then, that phenomenology, as studies of experience, and hermeneutics as interpretation of experience, arose along with later developments in narrative methods, ethnography, and other research approaches now generically termed as “qualitative.” I am trying here to contextualize qualitative research historically because of my conviction that we need to move beyond methodologism if we are to address the most pressing problems in education today, including Special Education. I tell my doctoral students that their most important research commitment should not be to “method” but to “interest.” In other words, what in the world is demanding your interest? Following that interest will, itself, provide at least part of the answer for how it should be investigated. Correct method cannot be determined in advance of an encounter with the subject of interest  – that is a central insight from Gadamerian hermeneutic/interpretive philosophy. Another reason for locating qualitative research in the tradition of German, or European, Romanticism is because there are ethnocentric biases in it that impede an appreciation of a broader understanding of “world” that is necessary in global times. Two biases in particular need naming. One arises from the fact that qualitative research is posed as a binary to quantitative research. In the traditions of strict science, quantitative research operates out of the eighteenth century European

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Enlightenment belief in universal reason. Once things are proven scientifically to be true, they are true for all time, and thence form the basis of the “new” scientific culture. This is still the dream that underwrites techno-industrial culture, and is the foundation of science as the legitimizing basis of Western imperialism as a form of universal truth. “Make the whole world look like America” said George W. Bush. Of course this is nonsense, but all the more frightening because it is backed up by the military and technical apparatuses that science can produce. So, if not universal reason, then what? Well, the binary is qualitative research, or as van Manen (1984) once called it, “a theory of the unique.” Questions about the generalizability, reliability, and validity of qualitative research still permeate the literature, and doctoral examinations of theses approaching research qualitatively. But qualitative research is precisely not interested in generalizability per se; its primary interest is individual. All of the answers given in response to the question of how then qualitative research might be relevant to a broader world have had difficulty in articulating just what it is that gives qualitative research its power, and I think this has something to do with the way any theory of the unique privileges difference over commonality. The best qualitative research might be more like outstanding literature: on reading it, you feel joined to the broader world in new and refreshing ways. Unfortunately, much qualitative research does not achieve this bridging, mainly because, I believe, it has sought its impetus not from the broader world in which it is invested but from an understanding of human subjectivity divorced from politics, philosophy, history, etc. This is ironic, given that qualitative research has its origins precisely in Husserl’s call to return to the world—(Ger. Zu den Sachen selbst). It is this recovery of a broader sense of the world that is what qualitative research needs in order to enhance its relevance. I have read many qualitative dissertations over the years, but even the best ones leave me wanting a more urgent connection to the great issues of our time. More on this later. The second ethnocentric bias of qualitative research as a theory of the unique, or of difference, has been touched on above, and resides in the roots not just of European Romanticism but within the Euro-American tradition generally. This bias has been named by Latin American philosopher Enrique Dussel (1995, 1996) as the problem of subjectivity, and it inhabits the Euro-American imagination at the deepest levels. There is not space here to elaborate Dussel’s historical tracings of the trajectory of European subjectivity. Suffice it to note that so many of the paradigmatic philosophical positions operating in the world today are grounded in an acceptance of the Self as the free and definitive arbiter of experience. This is true whether one refers to Descartes’ “I think therefore I am,” Adam Smith’s logic of “self-interest,” or Darwin’s evolutionism as a justification for “private” enterprise and individual self-development. Dussel’s point is that, in Anglo-American public rhetoric, “freedom” is the primary buzzword, but in actuality, it is subjectivity that is the motive force. This is what accounts for the contemporary inversion of values whereby in the name of freedom, over 500,000 Iraqi children can be murdered by the enactments of British and American foreign policy (McMurtry, 2002). If freedom as an ideal is conflated with my subjective determinations of what is necessary for my survival, then the sacrifice of others has its own legitimacy. Hence, Dussel

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argues that killing and various forms of genocide are precisely the organic obverse of a subjectivist, self-enclosed logic of freedom. This helps to explain how, for example, the Bush Administration, like others before it, can commit gross atrocities throughout the world without any sense of guilt or remorse. This entire discussion now brings me back to my opening remarks about Special Education. If qualitative research is to “transform” the practice of Education, two things have to happen. The first is to continue to affirm the originating gesture of the human science tradition, which is the turn to experience. This certainly was a major breakthrough in terms of providing the means for exploring and articulating what it is like to live in the world in one’s given situation, whether a school, a hospital, or a home. Much has been learned over the last fifty years or so about the day- to-day realities of human life from this contribution. The second requirement is to broaden the hermeneutic/interpretive vision of qualitative research to better elucidate the political, philosophical, and cultural grounds out of which the subjectivity of experience is formed. Without this last gesture, subjective experience remains both self- enclosed and then left dangling helplessly in the winds of broader worldly events. American Zen (Ch’an) writer, Charlotte Joko Beck (1989, p. 28), has said “Unless you are aware, you produce illness.” Without recourse to forms of worldly understanding that might heal the wounds of which it speaks, qualitative research runs the risk of remaining stuck in its (European) Romantic origins. In a way, the designation of “special” as a form of “species” is linked to this challenge. Qualitative research in Special Education cannot rest simply with a detailing of how, for example a deaf person experiences deafness or how a teacher of handicapped children experiences her work. Such studies must continue, but they must also be linked to deeper appreciations, which I will now try to discuss under the topic of “global times.” “Globalization” was a significant topic after the fall of the Berlin Wall and the destruction of the Soviet Union in the late 1980s. The end of the Cold War inspired a frenzied lather of excitement amongst the corporate, political, and military elites of the Anglo-American alliance. They saw their chance at capturing the entire globe within the web of their particular theory of economic determinism, the last residual theory of the European Enlightenment’s dream of universal reason. Hence, 9/11, as a semiotic event, was produced by the US government itself as a pretext for invasion of Iraq, Afghanistan, and now perhaps Iran and Syria (Ahmed, 2002; Chossudovsky, 2003). The fact that the war went badly is a sign of the futility of its original conception, and I believe the world is currently witnessing the death-throes of the last great empire of Western “civilization.” We all need now to be asking about the necessary conditions for shared global futures. My point is that the necessary conditions must include a re-thinking of the basic epistemologies that inspired and nurtured Western culture to its imperial heights but now are revealing their fundamental inadequacies. I have already referred to Aristotle’s Theory of Substance and Principle of Non-Contradiction which privilege separation and difference. Also easily traced are the various philosophies of liberalism that underwrite the concept of the free autonomous person. Another source resides in the Judeo-Christian tradition itself and its concept of divine chosen- ness.

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That story begins with God choosing Abraham and his seed forever to be a “Light to the nations” (Isaiah 51:3-5) implying the rest of the world is in darkness. A later Christian formulation says that “Many are called but few are chosen” (Matthew 22: 13-15), and historically this text has inspired anxiety and neurosis from people’s fear of not being among the chosen. The theology of divine chosen-ness is especially pernicious when it is assumed that physical disabilities may be a sign of not being among the chosen. According to that theory alone, either disabled people, blind people, the deaf, and mentally handicapped all received their shape, character, and situation because they lie outside the plan of divine choice (how could a perfect God make imperfect beings?) or they must wait in hope to one day join the community of the well, but always outside looking in. This same problem resides in Western theories of national and cultural development. Your lack of development is a sign of your exclusion from the club, the club of the chosen. If you want to be selected to join the club you must first take on its ways and manners of being. As Madeleine Albright, Secretary of State during the Clinton administration said to the Harvard graduating class of 1997: “Today I say that no nation in the world need be left out of the global system we are constructing.... Every nation that seeks to participate and is willing to do all it can to help itself will have America’s help in finding the right path” (cited in Spring, 1998, p. 8, italics added). The original biblical words “Many are called but few are chosen” were directed at a poverty-stricken person who received an open invitation to a wedding feast but then was refused admittance because of not wearing the right clothes. Again, the point of all the political references above is to underscore how it is that the way we address Special Education needs to be put in the context of how we understand the broader world in which students, parents, and teachers conduct their lives. So, if Special Education paradigms are constructed mainly through the interpretive frames and languages of the dominant Western tradition, then, when that tradition itself reveals its own pathologies, as it is now doing on a global scale, Special Education, like all academic areas in the same tradition, inevitably is inhabited by problems it cannot solve from within itself. It needs an Other, which can be defined as that which lies “outside” of the limits of what may be known or understood at any particular time. Of course, in terms of the principle that I am promoting here, namely that there is only one world and each of us is connected, or interconnected within it, means that the Other is never actually “outside” anywhere, because there is no “other” place to reside outside of the fullness of life as it fully exists. By extension, what is required of us to heal ourselves is actually fully available to us at all times because it is always present in the world somehow. The fundamental problem pertains to matters of perception, openness, and appreciation, or, in the language of Wisdom traditions, of how to overcome one’s ignorance rooted in illusion or delusion. A common strain of ignorance may interpret disabled people as products of divine choice, which can further intensify their victimhood within normative culture. In Asian traditions, the philosophy of karma can operate in a similar way. “Karma” names the relationship of cause and effect, especially in the moral realm. If bad things happen to you, it is because you did something bad, not necessarily

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five minutes ago, but perhaps many years ago. Indeed, karmic influences can go on for generations. At the University of Alberta, I have developed a graduate seminar called “Teaching as the Practice of Wisdom” in which we study day-to-day encounters through the prisms of the world’s great Wisdom traditions, such as Taoism, Buddhism, Confucianism, Sufism, and Aboriginal spirituality. One day, a student arrived in class, and when I asked, “How are you today?” she broke out in tears. “My husband just left me after eighteen years of marriage,” she said. A Chinese student in the class who had been studying Falun Gung philosophy, based on Taoism, immediately said, “That means you must have done something bad a long time ago!” Not very comforting words for someone feeling deeply betrayed and abandoned. The Asian Law of Karma has its equivalents in the Judeo-Christian tradition through various theologies of divine retribution. God takes vengeance on people when they are unfaithful to their covenant, and this is taken as a reason for illness and catastrophic political events. The consequences of “sin” (which literally means “missing the target”) can be felt into the third and fourth generations (Exodus 20:5). This view is beautifully repudiated in the mythical story of Job, the world’s most godly, faithful man. In spite of his deep faith, he suffered misfortune and illness. He protests to God, claiming his own goodness: “Have I denied anything to the poor...? Have I eaten my food alone, not sharing it with the fatherless?” (Job 31:16). In reply, God refuses such self-justifications, pointing to Job’s ignorance: “Have you ever commanded the morning, or shown the dawn its place?” (38:12). In the end, Job is contrite, accepting the life he has been given, in all its mystery: “I spoke of things I did not understand, too wonderful for me to know” (42:3). The point of this ancient story is that human suffering cannot be reduced to a simple question of “Why?” Far more important is to affirm the goodness of life in spite of all human persuasions to the contrary. Yes, there are profound connections between our actions and their long-term consequences, and it is important to be mindful of this at all times. But to say that we are always ultimately responsible for what happens to us is to place too much faith in the human capacity to correctly interpret human events. Many things that happen in life simply cannot be explained by human interpretation; to argue that they can is a sign of what the great Buddhist scholar and teacher, D.T. Suzuki (in Thompson, 1987), called “the homocentric fallacy” – the idea that the whole cosmos has its centre and reason for existence in humanity alone. So, if Western Reason through its Enlightenment traditions of science, including the qualitative human sciences, is incapable of explaining or even “understanding” the full meaning of human suffering, as embodied by those who come to be known as Special Education students, for example, and the Asian law of karma can unfairly interpret misfortune in a way that actually increases people’s suffering: how shall we approach those sometimes named in English as “invalids?” That word alone points in an important direction that is related to the quantitative/qualitative debate. “Validity” in statistical research design is a measure of the degree to which an instrument actually measures what it is supposed to be measuring. So, does a particular test in math actually measure a student’s math ability, or

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really only his/her test-taking ability? In the context of our discussion here, whether a person is “valid” depends on the construct of what a person is ideally supposed to be. Otherwise they are in-valid; they are invalids (see Jardine, 2000). But such a claim itself is only valid if the original ideal construct itself is justifiable in some way, again relying on a judgement that is necessarily conditioned by time, place, and culture. In the context of what I am proposing here, the world cannot be divided between persons who are valid and those who are invalid. Either we are all valid, or all invalid, and indeed I would argue that we are all invalids. Every one of us fails in some way to live up to any ideal, whether religious or secular, that human beings have been able to construct for themselves. But it is precisely our shared invalidity, our shared experience of falling short, indeed, our shared suffering, that can be the source of a new common bond between persons. This suffering cannot be interpreted precisely, because as the story of Job suggests, it is not for us to know. Our work is to accept life itself as a gift and to appreciate it as such, no matter how difficult it seems to be on the surface. When I am in difficulty, what is most helpful from friends and others is not, so much, advice, interpretation, hard solutions. What is most helpful is simple friendship, arising out of openness, generosity, and for-­ itself goodness. Of course, expertise is often necessary, but not the necessary pre-­ condition, which is compassion, meaning, “suffering with” (> Latin, com- “with”, pati pass- “suffer”). The great Indian social activist, Mahatma Gandhi (1967, p. 112), once said, “Intelligence without compassion is diabolical.” Kindly allow me to relate a short personal story. My first job as a new graduate with a BA degree in Social Science and English Literature was as a Child Care Worker with emotionally disturbed children in a residential treatment centre. Most of the children suffered greatly from the consequences of physical or mental abuse, autism, schizophrenia, and other dis-orders. For me, the most startling revelation was that those workers most effective with the children were not the most educated or sophisticated, but those who simply extended the hand of human friendship to the children, accepting them as brothers and sisters of the same human family. I do not wish to reduce this complex matter to mere sentiment, but I do wish to note that those workers who, with their advanced degrees in Behavioral Psychology or other forms of therapeutic protocol, tried to “bring the children around” to some preconceived normative ideal  – these well-meaning people were less “effective.” It is almost as if the children could intuit an inherent coercion in the practices of behaviour modification (for example), and they resented it, often starting to play different sorts of power games with their assigned staff members. No, we are all invalids; that is why we need each other. Without you, as a living, breathing presence with whom to share a world, I am only half a person. As persons, we need first to feel accepted and welcome in this world before we need to be “interpreted.” Indeed, as a contemporary sage, Wendell Berry (1999, p. 4) has put it, “a preoccupation with interpretation and meaning often gets in the way of simple appreciation.” I think this holds true also in the broader realms of culture and international relations. For example, we must not allow a single, culture-bound interpretation of economic development to rule the whole world, an issue with which I will end my remarks.

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There are two ways of understanding the identification of “global times” referred to in the title of this paper. Most personally favoured is a view that, for the first time in the human story, people from around the world are “facing” each other in unprecedented and creative ways. New possibilities now exist whereby we might better alleviate our invalidity, our collective suffering, through accessing the deep wisdom traditions from around the world, providing visions of what is required at the deepest ethical levels for our mutual survival. This is a vision of “intercivilizational dialogue” over shared human futures (first so named by Pasha & Samatar, 1996). Unfortunately, “global times” are being determined most fully by its second identification, which is not intercivilizational dialogue, but the “clash of civilizations” (Huntington, 1998). The world seems saturated with war and conflict, and this is largely the result of legitimate (in my view) resistances to the over-­ determination of economic liberalism, or neo-liberalism, as a universal recipe for human development. There is not space here to elaborate on this matter, but for a good elucidation of neo-liberalism, see Bourdieu 1998. What is most important is its effects on increasing numbers of people, both in the West and around the world. As philosopher David Loy (1998, p. 17) has said, “Today, the logic of the Market is the world’s first universal religion,” and the consequences of this are, and will increasing be, devastating. This is because reigning free market theory is nothing but an abstract mathematical formulation that provides justification for environmental exploitation, hoarding of personal resources, cutting of public finances for social programs and the heralding of “excellence” culture. Excellence culture is another name for social Darwinism: only the best deserve to survive, and such survival necessarily involves a struggle and war. For those of us in Education, and perhaps especially Special Education, social Darwinism does not look kindly on the weak, the vulnerable, and the infirm. If only the fittest survive, then under the reigning interpretive paradigm, only the most beautiful, the most intelligent, the most wealthy, and the most powerful have a chance. The polarization of the rich and poor of the world is increasing at a rapid rate, with the wealthy now barricading themselves behind ever more sophisticated systems of security against “everyone else.” As educators, what do we have to say about this? Surely “nothing” is an inadequate response, revealing our entrapment within interpretive paradigms that have lost sight of the worldly context of our work. Somehow, I think it means we must denounce at every opportunity, like the resistant children in the residential treatment centre, the dominant social hermeneutic of our time. Instead, let us affirm the fundamental solidarity and commonness of the human condition, sharing our ‘invalidity’ as our most important asset.

References Ahmed, N., & Leonard, J. (2002). The war on freedom: How and why America was attacked on Sept. 11, 2001. Brighton, UK: Progressive Press. Beck, C., & Smith, S. (1989). Everyday zen: Love and work. San Francisco, CA: Harper. Berry, W. (1999). Thy life’s a miracle. Wild Duck Review, 5(2), 3-4.

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Bourdieu, P. (1998). The essence of neoliberalism: Utopia of endless exploitation. Le Monde diplomatique. Available at http://mondediplo. com/1998/12/08bourdieu. Chossudovsky, M. (2000). War and globalization. Toronto, ON, Canada: James Lorimer. Dussel, E. (1995). The invention of the Americas: Eclipse of ‘the Other’ and the myth of modernity (M. Barber, Trans.) New York, NY: Continuum Press. Dussel, E. (1996). The underside of modernity: Apel, Rorty, Taylor and the philosophy of liberation (E.  Mendietta, Ed. & Trans.). Atlantic Highlands, NJ: Humanities Press. Gandhi, M. (1967). The gospel of Swadeshi (A. Hingorani, Ed.). Bombay, India: Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan. Huntington, S. (1998). The clash of civilizations and the remaking of world order. New York, NY: Touchstone Books. Jardine, D. (2000). Learning to love the invalid. In D. Jardine (2000). “Under the Tough Old Stars”: Ecopedagogical essays (pp.  193-200). Brandon, VT: Psychology Press/Holistic Education Press. Loy, D. (1998). The religion of The Market. In H. Coward & D. Maguire (Eds.), Visions of a new earth: Religious perspectives on population, consumption and ecology (pp. 15-28). Albany, NY: State University of New York Press. McMurtry, J. (2002). Value wars: The global market as an ethical system. Toronto, ON, Canada: Garamond Press. Pasha, M., & Samatar A. (1996). The resurgence of Islam. In J. Mittleman (Ed.), Globalization: Critical reflections (pp. 187-201). London, UK: Lynne Reiner. Spring, J. (1998). Education and the rise of the global economy. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Thompson, W. (1987). The cultural implications of the New Biology. In W.  Thompson, (Ed.), GAIA: A way of knowing. Great Barrington, UK: Lindisfarne Press. van Manen, M. (1984). Action research as a theory of the unique. Occasional Paper #32. Department of Secondary Education, University of Alberta, Edmonton, AB, Canada.

References Bernardo, A. M. (2016). Freidrich Schleiermacher’s legacy to contemporary translation studies. In T. Seruya & J. M. Justo (Eds.), Rereading Schleiermacher: Translation, cognition and culture (pp. 41–54). Springer. Blakely, J. (2013). Returning to the interpretive turn: Charles Taylor and his critics. The Review of Politics, 75(3), 383–406. Carnevale, F.  A. (2013). Charles Taylor, hermeneutics and social imaginaries: A framework for ethics research. Nursing Philosopohy, 14(2), 86–95. https://doi. org/10.1111/j.1466-­769X.2012.00547.x

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Choi, N. (2009). Defending anti-naturalism after the interpretive turn: Charles Taylor and the human sciences. History of Political Thought, 30(4), 693–718. Dreyfus, H.  L. (1991). Heidegger’s hermeneutic realism. In D.  R. Hiley, J.  Bohman, & R. Shusterman (Eds.), The interpretive turn: Philosophy, science, culture (pp. 25–41). Cornell University Press. Forster, M. N. (2007). Hermeneutics. In M. Rosen & B. Leiter (Eds.), The Oxford handbook of continental philosophy. Oxford University Press. Gadamer, H.-G. (2006). Truth and method. Continuum. Grondin, J. (1994). Introduction to philosophical hermeneutics. Yale University Press. Grondin, J. (1995). Sources of hermeneutics. SUNY. Heidegger, M. (1962/1927). Being and time. Harper and Row. Hirsch, E. D. (1967). Validity in interpretation. Yale University Press. Hoy, D.  C. (1982). The critical circle: Literature, history and philosophical hermeneutics. University of California Press. Klein, E. (2000). A complete etymology of the English language: Dealing with the origin of words and their sense development, thus illustrating the history of civilization and culture. Elsevier. Lafont, C. (2007). Heidegger and the synthetic a priori. In S.  G. Crowell & J.  Malpas (Eds.), Transcendental Heidegger (pp. 104–118). Stanford University Press. Lipton, P. (2004). Inference to the best explanation (2nd ed.). Routledge. Mantzavinos, C. (2016). Hermeneutics. In E. N. Zalta (Ed.), Stanford encyclopedia of philosophy. Retrieved January 16, 2018, from https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/hermeneutics/ McNamara, J. (1994). From dance to text and back to dance: A hermeneutics of dance interpretive discourse. Ph.D. thesis, Texas Woman’s University. Palmer, R.  E. (1969). Hermeneutics: Studies in phenomenology and existential philosophy. Northwestern University Press. Perkinson, H. (1978). Popper’s fallibilism. A Review of General Semantics, 35(1), 5–19. Pinker, S. (2007). The stuff of thought: Language as a window into human nature. Penguin Books. Plano-Clark, V., & Creswell, J. W. (2015). Understanding research: A consumer’s guide (2nd ed.). Pearson Education. Popper, K. (1979). Objective knowledge: An evolutionary approach. Oxford University Press. Ricœur, P. (2003). The rule of metaphor: Multi-disciplinary studies of the creation of meaning in language. Routledge. Ricœur, P. (2005). The conflict of interpretations: Essays in hermeneutics. Continuum. Ricœur, P., Reagan, C. E., & Stewart, D. (Eds.). (1978). The philosophy of Paul Ricœur: An anthology of his work. Beacon Press. Schank, R. C. (1978). Predictive understanding. In R. N. Campbell & P. T. Smith (Eds.), Recent advances in the psychology of language: NATO conference series, 4b. Springer. Schleiermacher, F. D. E. (1998). Hermeneutics and criticism: And other writings (A. Bowie, Trans. & Edited). Cambridge University Press. Scholz, O. R. (2016). Verstehen und rationalität. Vittorio Klostermann. Soulen, R.  N. (2009). Sacred scripture: A short history of interpretation. Westminster John Knox Press. Tate, J. (1934). On the history of allegorism. Classical Quarterly, 28, 105–114. Taylor, C. (1985). Self-interpreting animals. In C.  Taylor (Ed.), Human agency and language: Philosophical papers (pp. 45–76). Cambridge University Press. Van Aarde, A.  G. (2009). Postsecular spirituality, engaged hermeneutics, and Charles Taylor’s notion of hypergoods. Theological Studies, 65(1), 209–216. https://doi.org/10.4102/hts. v65il.166 Walter, N. H. (1997). Humanism: What’s in the word. Rationalist Press Association.

Chapter 4

Narrative Inquiry

The term narrative inquiry has expanded into many different areas. Our lives are lived out in terms of narrative. Michael Connelly, OISE, University of Toronto

Introduction Perhaps it may seem a bit unusual to begin a chapter on narrative inquiry that opens with a discussion of hermeneutics. However, hermeneutics is at the very heart of this volume and, indeed, any text that seeks to interpret, process and understand a specific topic. As an example, let us make use of a text, a storybook, a work of fiction, if you will. Let us use John Steinbeck’s (1992) beautiful novella, The Pearl. This is the story of Kino, a pearl diver, and the book is an exploration of human nature. Each work of fiction has three operational levels. This small volume offers many levels of interpretation. The protagonist, Kino, is a pearl diver, who lives by the Sea of Cortez in Mexico. Kino discovers a huge pearl and has many offers to buy it. Some, however, claim that such a huge pearl can only bode ill. When the pearl diver refuses to sell his pearl cheaply, men are sent out to destroy his home, find the pearl and take it away from him at any cost. He and his wife and child escape, only to be tracked down. Shots are fired and tragedy ensues. As we can see immediately from the story, the narrative itself is only one level of the text. A second level is the hermeneutic level. Here the story is filled with imagery, both good and evil. The pearl seems to have faces hidden within it that may serve to help or hinder the pearl diver and his wishes. The men sent to capture the Supplementary Information The online version contains supplementary material available at [https://doi.org/10.1007/978-­3-­030-­85124-­8_4]. The videos can be accessed individually by clicking the DOI link in the accompanying figure caption or by scanning this link with the SN More Media App. © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 R. E. White, K. Cooper, Qualitative Research in the Post-Modern Era, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-85124-8_4

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pearl set fire to the village and besiege the couple and their child in the mountainous area outside of the village. The symbolism is not difficult to understand, as the pearl represents both good and evil. Many other symbols abound in this beautifully crafted story. The third level of any story is the allegorical level, where the sacred story can be separated from the mundane (Crites, 1971). Here, the story of the pearl diver and his family can be seen as a retelling, in different form, of a sacred story. In the case of The Pearl, the allegory refers to the Garden of Eden and the pursuit and possession of “forbidden” knowledge. Hermeneutically speaking, the pearl was the forbidden fruit and the burning of the village represents the expulsion from the Garden of Eden. In Genesis, the first book of the Old Testament, after Adam and Eve are sent forth, the garden is blocked by two flaming swords, symbolized by the burning of the village. Kino and his wife Juana represent Adam and Eve, and, alternately, Mary and Joseph. As such, this already powerful little story assumes a much greater stance once it is analyzed with respect to various levels of interpretation. Hermeneutics resolves to offer an exegesis of the symbols or other, deeper meaning within a text, written, spoken or otherwise. Narrative, on the other hand, while operating in a similar manner, strives to analyze the meaning of the story itself, the narrative. As Willis (2007) notes, “Storytelling has much in common with hermeneutic research, but it puts more emphasis on representing the perspectives of the participants in a context of details about the setting or situation” (p. 295). Emeritus Professor Donald Polkinghorne discusses both hermeneutics and narrative, as they often operate within similar spheres of research and, along with phenomenological inquiry, share a number of “family resemblances” (Willis, 2007, p.  185). According to Willis, definitions can often be problematic. He cites Wittgenstein’s (1978) rejection of defining characteristics that precisely define an idea or concept. Instead, claims Wittgenstein, concepts are best defined through “family resemblances,” suggesting that similar concepts may share certain characteristics, although as Bauman and May (2001) attest, one would likely not be mistaken for the other. As such, it can be easily seen that hermeneutics, narrative and phenomenology share family resemblances. In a following chapter, phenomenology will be discussed in terms of its ability to offer deep meaning through description, concentrating on what is consciously and preconsciously observed, including objects of direct experience. This current chapter discusses narrative as a methodology or research design. We will get to that momentarily. Following is a video-clip of Professor Emeritus Donald Polkinghorne discussing hermeneutic analysis.

Emeritus Professor Donald Polkinghorne

In this interview, prior to discussing his understanding of narrative inquiry, Professor Polkinghorne talks about hermeneutics as having developed from the existential writings of clergymen such as Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a German pastor, theologian, spy, anti-Nazi dissident, and founding member of the Confessing Church.

Video Clip 4.1: Emeritus Professor Donald Polkinghorne (▶ https://doi.org/10.1007/000-­6cs)

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Bonhoeffer died in 1945  in Flossenbürg Concentration Camp, Germany. Professor Polkinghorne also notes that the writings of Martin Heidegger were influential, as well. Ironically enough, Heidegger was an enthusiastic member of the Nazi Party until 1945. Much of Professor Polkinghorne’s work on qualitative research began as a result of reading these philosophers, including the journal, Methods of Qualitative Research. His book, Methodology for the Human Sciences (1984), followed some years later. In this book, he claims that working with people is largely qualitative and this must be reflected through the kinds of inquiry that researchers choose. As an example, Professor Polkinghorne has his students spend one hour, simply observing a rose. As the rose is observed, like a work of art, many things that were not apparent previously, things that may not have been evident on the surface, slowly come into view. These previously unseen details are the result of focusing on the rose, as well as the particular type of metaphoric lens that one employs in attending to the task of observation. For Professor Polkinghorne, the lens that tends to work well for him in terms of understanding more about human beings is the lens of language, which tends to incorporate metaphor, analogy, language function and grammar. He agrees that the numeric found in quantitative research is not as good at analyzing the dimensions of what it means to be human. Prior to his discussion of narrative research design, Professor Polkinghorne sees hermeneutics in many of the things that researchers attempt to accomplish. Through analysis and the understanding of language, he claims that hermeneutics serves to demystify or to decode symbols that are used within many forms of communication, including narratives. Historically, he claims, the language of the Bible is and was originally about understanding difficult narrative concepts through the use of metaphor. Consequently, because language is omnipresent in human activities, Professor Polkinghorne sees qualitative research, in general, as a form of hermeneutics, simply because of its attempts at understanding the surface, the narrative, of the story or phenomenon under studty. Hermeneutically speaking, the findings of any qualitative research are a way of seeing a narrative that exposes aspects of the inquiry and brings them to life. As such, he claims, given this postmodern perspective, the lenses that are created as methodologies through which to view phenomena are all hermeneutic, in a sense. Professor Polkinghorne also notes that, on reading good qualitative research, one may become aware of things that had previously gone unnoticed. Thus, the humanities and social sciences researcher attempts to expose aspects of the narrative, of the story that may not be obvious, that exist below the surface of the story or phenomenon under study. He claims that these new understandings remain beyond the conceptual framework of the study because the framework itself must be rendered to expose the depths and parts of what it means to be a person. These are not obvious at first view. Thus, good research offers an “Aha!” moment that forwards one’s understanding of the study, the project, the phenomenon or the narrative being explored.

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The Biographical Context As a precautionary note, please be advised that the following context represents more of a biography of narrative inquiry than a footnote to history regarding innumerable individuals, who have contributed in huge ways to create, modernize and revolutionize emerging and extant methodologies. These and many others, too numerous to name, have helped in the shaping of narrative inquiry. Narrative research has come a long way since Lieblich et al. (1998) noted that “Narrative research, according to our definition, refers to any study that uses or analyzes narrative materials” (p. 2); even though, categorically at least, this is a correct surmise, it is also tautological—a self-evident truth. Only one short decade later, Andrews and Squire (2008) noted that: By focussing on narrative we are able to investigate not just how stories are structured and the ways in which they work, but also who produces them and by what means, the mechanisms by which they are consumed; and how they are silenced, contested or accepted. (pp. 1–2)

Fairly recently, due to the increasing importance of situating the researcher’s perspective while, at the same time, attempting to improve the agency and power of the participants and their communities under study, a more reflective approach to research analysis, compared to more traditional authoritative, objective, or neutral stances, none of which are definitive, appeared on the scene. Thus, some researchers have even attempted to have the participants recount their stories directly. However, as the twenty-first century dawned, major growth in narrative and biographical methods occurred (Creswell, 2014). At this time, individual stories became more popular as a means to study broader, more extensive topics or concepts. Thus, narrative not only offered significant understanding in terms of participants and their contexts but also because it was becoming more widely accepted that “objectivity” was extremely difficult to come by. The attraction of narrative approaches has meant that they are now used far more widely, and have become much more cross-disciplinary, even though they have yet to make advanced inroads into policy development and applied social research. In fact, Beginning in the late 1960s and continuing at a hectic pace, the idea of narrative has penetrated almost every discipline and profession. No longer the sole province of literary scholarship, narrative study now is cross-disciplinary, not fitting within the boundaries of any single scholarly field. (Riessman & Quinney, 2007, p. 392)

Given this, the definition of narrative inquiry has expanded to fill a void that was awaiting exploration. Clandinin and Connelly (2000) speak of three “commonplaces” required to satisfy the conditions of narrative inquiry. These three commonplaces consist of temporality, sociality and place, as it represents “collaboration between researcher and participants, over time, in a place or series of places, and in social interaction with milieus” (Clandinin & Connelly, 2000, p. 20).

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Although narrative inquiry has developed and expanded its reach over the past few decades, according to Riessman (1993), it has emerged as a discipline from within the broader field of qualitative research ever since the early twentieth century. In fact, Harlan Cleveland (1989) made the claim that narrative inquiry developed first in the field of management science and then expanded into the field of knowledge management. According to Cleveland, narrative inquiry focuses on the organization of human knowledge, more so than merely collecting and processing data. Thus, it implies that knowledge is valuable and noteworthy even though it may attract only a small audience. However, a key point to realize with narrative research is that it seeks to transfer, transmute or translate unquantifiable types of knowledge, such as experience. The following section describes a process by which narrative inquiry can be operationalized to transfer various types of knowledge. The first step is to develop a research question that is open-ended. Questions that can be answered with a “yes” or a “no” are closed-ended questions and fare badly when attempting to understand the fuller context of the research. Questions that ask about a process or a reason tend to work much better. The second step is the data acquisition phase. Data can take many forms and, with narrative inquiry, some of the more common forms include structured or semi-­ structured interviews, field notes, participant observations, or surveys. This is not an exhaustive list and is limited only by the researcher’s imagination. The third step is the organization of data, according to a conceptual framework, a theoretical framework or an organizing framework. These three terms are often used interchangeably but each has its own particular use. Donald Polkinghorne suggests that organizing data helps to refine the research question by culling irrelevant or repetitive data in a process he refers to as “narrative smoothing” (Spence, 1986). Data should be organized congruently with the research questions, the interview protocols and the conceptual framework used. If the research questions, the interview protocols and the conceptual framework represent a fairly close fit, there is the likelihood that data collected will be the data that the researcher is looking for. The fourth step refers to the interpreting of the data. Experienced researchers recommend looking for regularities in terms of patterns or themes, as well as irregularities, such as contradictions, contrasts or paradoxes. Now, here, at this point, many researchers, novice and experienced alike, find that it may be wise to tweak the research questions in order to better reflect the data that has been collected. According to Riessman (1993), interpretations are often seen as being co-­constructed between the interviewer and the respondent, due to the fact that the researcher uses the responses from the participant to construct his or her own meaning from the data. Polkinghorne (1995) suggests that the goal of data interpretation is to facilitate the experience of the participant through the narrative form, which can be developed by creating a coherent story from the collected and analyzed data with regard to the existing or modified research questions.

Methods for Data Organization

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Methods for Data Organization What follows are four methods for data organization. William Labov (1972) developed a system of thematic organization, also known as synchronic organization, which is useful for understanding major events as they occur within a narrative and the effect of those events upon the narrative itself. This evaluation model asks (1) what the event is about, (2) an orientation that employs the four “W”s—who, what, when, where, (3) a complicating moment that asks “And then…?” followed by (4) an evaluative “So what?” question. From here, (5) a result is sought in terms of “what finally happened,” followed by a (6) conclusion, which represents the finished narrative. As a cautionary word, the various stages may occur in random order, concurrently or repetitively (Coffey & Atkinson, 1996). Donald Polkinghorne (1936–2018) offers a chronological organization, also known as a diachronic organization, which centres upon the contexts within which the narratives are created. The “embodied nature” of the individual recounting the narrative is uppermost in this procedure. Context, relationships and chronology of events are also attended to. Historical continuity is addressed, as well. Thus, a narrative is constructed with a clear beginning, middle and ending. Shaping the data into a narrative format and analyzing each narrative on its own merits is called narrative reasoning, where the researcher analyzes themes across data that have been cast in the form of narratives (Polkinghorne, 1995). Jerome Bruner (1915–2016) considers the narrative form as a particular branch of storytelling within the narrative methodology, as a rhetorical account that is at once non-neutral and strives to incorporate “illocutionary intentions” (1990, p. 85), which refer to the taxonomy of utterances such as assertions, questions, commands or expressions (Van Vallin & LaPolla, 1997). Given that narrative inquiry attempts to communicate meaning, narrative also offers a functional approach that focuses on what roles narratives serve for separate individuals, as a narrative can be viewed as representative of ways in which individuals construct and understand reality, as well as the ways in which meanings can be created and shared (Bruner, 1991). The emphasis of analysis focuses on the work the narrative does, through shaping chaotic and random events into a coherent story, and in assisting individuals to make sense of their lives by making those events meaningful. Thus, the focus of narrative analysis is to interpret events related to the narratives told by the participant(s) in the research. Consequently and additionally, Bruner’s approach places the narrative within a context of time, so as to “assume an experience of time” (Polkinghorne, 1988, p. 132), rather than marking time through historical references. James Paul Gee (1948–) approaches narrative structural analysis by focusing on how the participant recounts the narrative. Emphasis is placed on the interaction between speaker and listener. Here, language, hesitations, verbal lubrication, discourse markers and other structural aspects of speech allow the narrative to be divided into “stanzas,” with each stanza being analyzed for its own merit, as well as for how it connects to other stanzas in the narrative (Daiute & Lightfoot, 2003).

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Jaber F. Gubrium (1943–) offered a form of narrative ethnography that, in analyzing for narrativity, takes into account the process of storying as much as the story, itself. In the view that Gubrium and his colleague, James A. Holstein, describe, the structure and meaning of texts cannot be understood as separate from their everyday contexts. The two researchers present an analytic vocabulary along with a number of procedural strategies for collecting and analyzing narrative material in everyday contexts, such as in families and care settings. As can be determined from the above contributions from a number of eminent scholars in very diverse fields, there are many ways to organize data for reasons of narrative analysis. Different types of research questions and/or conceptual, theoretical, or organizing frameworks, when combined with the research methodology that represents the “best fit” with the research, should result in a strong collection of useful, timely and pertinent narrative data. Lyons and LaBoskey (2002) suggest that narrative methodologies contain a convergence of imagination and storying in order to better understand human action by allowing the participants to put the data into their own words in order to get at why the actions occurred and the latent meaning behind such actions. In this way, such “interpretive research” (Klein & Myers, 1999) searches for the elusive and subjective “why” and strives to “understand phenomena through the meanings that people assign to them” (p. 69) through a concept of “narrative unity,” which, according to Clandinin and Connelly, “gave us a way to think in a more detailed and informative way about the general construct of continuity in individuals’ lives” (p. 3). As such, narrative analysis can assist in accessing deeper understandings of how individuals organize and derive meaning from lived events (Polkinhorne, 1995), which can be extremely useful for examining how social structures impact individuals and how those structures relate to identity politics (Frost, 2011). Narrative analysis, in this way, has proven useful within numerous disciplines and situations, such as by drawing attention to traditionally marginalized individuals and groups; self-­ regulation, problem solving and self-development, general identity work, individual and social movements, and political practices, and to develop, maintain and expand cultural values and traditions. Narrative inquiry in even its most rudimentary form represents a ubiquitous practice in that humans have lived out and recounted their own and others’ stories since humankind’s earliest days. In this way, we create meaning and also engage with one another in building communities, as well as individual lives. Narrative traditions have been used in novel ways, as well. The Eora tribes of the Australian wilderness have used narratives to identify how far to walk and in which direction (White & Cooper, 2015). When a particular narrative ends, it is time to change direction. The new direction indicates which narrative is to be used to maintain that new direction until the story ends. This is repeated until the destination has been reached. As may be clear, this narrative method would be useful in a featureless desert or in the wilderness of the Australian outback.

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The Historical Context Now, having established, in the introduction to this chapter, that everything, including this volume, is a hermeneutic endeavour, one may now understand why the first chapter of this current work is devoted to hermeneutics. That being said, in this current chapter, Professor Polkinghorne moves on to a discussion of narrative inquiry.

Video Clip 4.2: Emeritus Professor Donald Polkinghorne (▶ https://doi.org/10.1007/000-­6cr)

Donald Polkinghorne begins this discussion by referring to an article he had written several years earlier on the topic of a “second generation” of qualitative research. He notes that the purpose of this article was to place quantitative and qualitative research within an historical context. This, he contends, is reflective of the narrative tradition. Beginning with the sixteenth century, the transformation of research in terms of its authority was an important occurrence. Prior to this time, within the Western culture, that authority was biblical. While this tradition continues to be extant, particularly in terms of Western ecumenical traditions, during the sixteenth century, support for sermons, and all other church work, tended to come from the Bible. After this period, Professor Polkinghorne observes, there occurred a transformation from taking text from the Bible to observation, thanks in part to philosopher scientists such as Rene Descartes, who brought about a revolution in the sciences, as the scientific method began to displace Biblical assumptions. Tools to assist cognition were developed in order to assist people to better develop their arguments,

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their knowledge and their understanding of things and processes. This was a monumental change because it meant that the balance between humans and how they acted within and reacted to nature was in transition. Nowadays, we strive to manage nature, even in the face of global climatic change. Actually, humankind now understands things in nature that were previously unavailable for examination. Unfortunately, even in the face of understanding, humans are slow to take charge of their own futures in the face of increasing climate change. While we are able to understand the development of things like earthquakes and weather patterns, we have also done much to change nature itself, and this has allowed and even encouraged the capacity for international air travel, and incentive for the exploration of outer space, as well. Despite significant scientific advancements, what had been neglected, and perhaps still is, was the study of human beings, fascinating in and of itself. The idea of the human soul remained understudied throughout the seventeenth to nineteenth centuries. The human soul, consciousness or psyche remained a religious notion. As a gift from God, the soul was not able to be studied by methods developed to study nature, because nature seemed “different,” even though the human soul and nature represent true but distinct parts of reality. However, the study of one did not automatically mean that one could study the other. To complicate matters, there was no access, in terms of methods or processes, to study the soul. Then, by the nineteenth century, studies of consciousness in relation to what goes on in the world had been developing. This served to alter the parameters of what one could know, and also represented the inception of modern qualitative research, because one could train people to observe themselves and then recount what was happening. This was in evidence even as early as the 1870s, before human beings began to be studied in terms of consciousness. One now famous originator of psychology, Edward B. Titchener (1867–1927) elaborated a notion of folk psychology for the study of people, depending upon literature and language to investigate this in greater detail. However, when psychology was transported to North America, Titchener’s work was largely ignored. This new brand of psychology was more about the study of mechanical notions and sensory experience, and set the foundations for modern psychological research that remains to this day. So, as a consequence, Professor Polkinghorne notes, when he works with students on their doctoral research, the articles looked at are those that tended to use models from the natural or physical sciences. During the 1920s and ‘30s, more sophisticated statistical instruments became available, even though, compared to current computer driven computations, they were relatively unsophisticated. It was only after the electronic revolution—which some still aver is merely a continuation of the Industrial Revolution, which had already commenced prior to the development of Eli Whitney’s more modern mechanical cotton gin at the end of the eighteenth century—was well under way that models used to research human psychology became much more sophisticated.

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The Political Context Narrative inquiry has emerged as a relatively new qualitative methodology, employed to study lived experiences that can be understood narratively. Riessman and Speedy (2007) point out that not only is narrative inquiry in the field of the humanities and social sciences a twentieth century phenomenon, the field contains numerous different strands, including “realist,” “postmodern” and “constructionist” underpinnings, which have led scholars to disagree on its actual origin, pedigree and definition. However, according to Connelly and Clandinin (2006), People shape their daily lives by stories of who they and others are and as they interpret their past in terms of these stories. Story, in the current idiom, is a portal through which a person enters the world and by which their experience of the world is interpreted and made personally meaningful. Narrative inquiry, the study of experience as story, then, is first and foremost a way of thinking about experience. Narrative inquiry as a methodology entails a view of the phenomenon. To use narrative inquiry methodology is to adopt a particular view of experience as phenomenon under study. (p. 477)

As such, it represents a way of thinking that is a reflexive and recursive process. The “three commonplaces” (Clandinin & Connelly, 2000, p.  20) of temporality, sociality and place may serve as a conceptual framework for the gathering and analysis of data, as “events under study are in temporal transition” (Connelly & Clandinin, 2006, p. 479). Temporality refers to the past, present and future of whatever phenomena are under study. This reframes the view of the experience through a philosophical lens, where the “formal quality of experience through time is inherently narrative” (Crites, 1971, p. 291), since individuals constantly invent and reinvent themselves through their autobiographies (Carr, 1986). Sociality refers to personal and to social conditions. Personal conditions refer to the “feelings, hopes, desires, aesthetic reactions and moral dispositions” (Connelly & Clandinin, 2006, p. 480) of both the researcher and the participant(s), whereas social conditions refer to the conditions under which people’s experiences unfold. These social conditions may be understood in terms of cultural, social, institutional and linguistic narratives. A second dimension of sociality attends to the relationship between researchers and participants because researchers cannot simply extract themselves from that which is researched. As such, some narrative inquirers view their participants as co-composing the inquiry, even as they live out that inquiry. Place is defined as the “specific concrete, physical and topological boundaries of place or sequences of places where the inquiry and events take place” (Connelly & Clandinin, 2006, p. 480) because human identity is linked to particular locales, venues or spaces where these stories are experienced. Attending to these three commonplaces represents a large part of what distinguishes narrative inquiry from other methodologies, furnishes narrative researchers with the ability to study complex relations regarding people’s lived experiences inside, as well as outside of an inquiry and to imagine future possibilities for these lives. Clandinin and Huber (2010) also note that a Deweyian perspective to narrative research is of importance in order to frame a space for narrative inquiry that is at once three-dimensional and metaphorical. This Deweyian perspective, at once philosophical, psychological and

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educational, is also beneficial for the framing of issues of social significance and ethical practice (Clandinin & Huber, 2010). Narrative inquiry is particularly useful in highlighting matters of ethics, or in shaping theoretical understandings of individual experiences. Clandinin and Huber (2010) also point out that narrative inquiry requires careful delineation of terms and assumptions so as to render the eventual research intelligible, cohesive and coherent. To this end, Chase (2005) identifies five diverse approaches for analyzing stories: a psychosocial developmental approach; an identity approach that focuses on how people construct themselves within a variety of contexts; a sociological approach focusing on specific aspects of people’s lives; a narrative ethnographic approach and an auto-ethnographic approach. However, these various approaches may overlap and operate congruently from time to time within any given study.

The Postmodern Context According to many sources, the postmodern era was born in the mid-1970s with the invention of the microchip (Cooper & White, 2012). However, postmodern thinkers abound in any age, regardless of the inventions that swirl around humankind. A conversation with Donald Polkinghorne, captured on the following video-clip, traces a path from post-World War II through the early stages of the current computer age to a consideration of narrative methodology. He notes that, after World War II, particularly during the 1950s, psychological research was highly quantitative and used the instruments of quantitative research.

Video Clip 4.3: Emeritus Professor Donald Polkinghorne (▶ https://doi.org/10.1007/000-­6ct)

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As time passed, however, according to Professor Polkinghorne, the instruments became much more sophisticated. Computers came into fashion; large, air-cooled computers used punch cards that have now been outdated for decades. In fact, many computer users no longer remember this difficult, labour intensive mode of collecting and analyzing data. However, claims Professor Polkinghorne, this was exactly what the study of psychology entailed in those days between World War II and the development of microchip technology. Professor Polkinghorne cites the Vietnam War, commenting upon how that war was about body counts rather than strategic positions gained or lost. This was a war of attrition, he notes, with each side trying to whittle away the power represented by the enemy forces on the other side. The United States considered this a limited victory because winning was represented in terms of enemy deaths, rather than how many American soldiers had to die in order to gain that status. Thus, calculations relating to the cost of war were declared in terms of death. For example, it may cost a hundred American lives in order to claim a victory of a thousand North Vietnamese deaths. Needless to say, sanguinary statistics such as these raised the ire of not only the American public, many of whom had sons and daughters serving overseas in Vietnam, but also the ire of numerous other countries which may have had political, humanitarian or economic issues with this bloody war—a war which changed the face and nature of warfare in the 1970s, now and in the future. In the United States, many young people, some of whom were scheduled to leave to fight in the war, revolted against not only the war itself, but also against the reporting of the war in terms of its casualties. Many citizens believed that making such calculations was not the way to think about people, heroic people, who gave life and limb in order to become little more than a statistic. It became very clear from this that a new way to study people was required that treated them as more than numbers. This new way to understand people’s lives that could not be reduced to a set of statistics or equations was in high demand. This heralded in the view that qualitative research could provide this new perspective. Professor Polkinghorne takes pains to note that the qualitative aspect of this research was not the harbinger of a new age; it was a reaction to a situation that was intolerable due to the fact that the spoils of war, indeed its very success or the lack thereof, were recorded in terms of death counts. Qualitative research provided a suitable alternative to this prevailing attitude. Professor Polkinghorne notes that qualitative research has not yet been perfected and that it remains a “project under development.” However, he states, we are getting somewhat better at studying humankind. Thus, the first generation of (modern) qualitative researchers took it upon themselves to justify a better method for the humanities and social sciences to proceed. Of course, the way forward was still part and parcel of mainstream psychology, and the field of psychology, even today, is still based to a greater or lesser extent, on statistical models. He also notes that these statistical models represented the kind of thinking that had been employed in making choices during the ravages of the Vietnam War. At this point, Professor Polkinghorne introduces Martin Heidegger, an individual who had enormous influence on his own thinking, who stressed the point that human

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beings are better represented by activities rather than as objects. Time, or temporality, is always an issue and is at the heart of any qualitative study. So, the question has now become how one captures individual development, particularly as a function of time. For Professor Polkinghorne, it is this that represents the trajectory of narrative inquiry, as he views narrative inquiry as a form of expression that lends itself to language. Thus, the trajectory is about a specific form—the story. Even visuals, such as advertisements, motion pictures, photographs and beyond, all lend themselves to this vital form of research, and that is what is different, fresh and dynamic about this qualitative methodology. Accordingly, all of one’s lived experiences, memories—and expectations not excluded—are “sedimented” and it is this sedimentation that helps to recreate the individual as a set of activities rather than as something that can be viewed statistically or in other static models. Narrative inquiry is positioned to be eminently capable of capturing these sedimented experiences through its open and engaging format. Often, when one analyzes collected qualitative data, this data can be analyzed in terms of presenting a story—an individual whose story has been researched or, perhaps, about the researcher’s story of the research process, or it may even combine these and several other aspects of the research initiative. This is a flexible medium to work within and the ensuing narrative may result in a story about a person’s views relative to others or it may even result in a discussion of themes relevant to the story, told through the research. However, claims Professor Polkinghorne, nothing is without its problems and this is as true of narrative inquiry as it is of anything extant in the world today. Like many words in qualitative research, the very term “narrative” is problematic, as it can be construed to mean anything that the participant divulges, free from qualification. In short, one could presumably offer a description and refer to that as a narrative. However, there is a more specialized meaning of the term, qualitatively speaking. A true narrative, according to Professor Polkinghorne, is a particular kind of talk that is also about a movement through time and arrives in storied format. It is this temporality that allows for the material to be viewed in a more specialized form, the narrative methodology. While the narrative researcher often does get people’s stories, the researcher also obtains description, explanation and a multitude of other kinds of statements, including questions, rhetorical responses or declarations. Professor Polkinghorne sees value in narratives that represent the outcome of the analysis of data, the results of which become the “story,” or a story that is produced as a result of the production of thematic statements. As can be seen, there are many approaches to the development of a narrative inquiry. One such treatment is a narrative approach to case study. In fact, many methodologies or research designs may benefit from narrative approaches. It may be that a chosen methodology can utilize narrative as a method rather than as a full-­ fledged methodology. Many methodologies or research designs lend themselves to being developed within another methodology as a method that allows the project to move forward rather than becoming bogged down through warring research designs. The ingenuity of the researcher and his/her ability to move between methodologies

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and methods that are identified and used to support the chosen methodology or research design allows for the creation of innumerable interesting, textured and elegant qualitative studies. To return for a moment to the use of narrative in case study research, the narrative, to some extent, has represented a basic tenet of traditional oral history. Through the case study, the researcher often interprets the life stories of his or her participants or subjects to emphasize historical connections. One of the most important considerations, however, regarding any qualitative research is how the participants are presented. As Clifford Geertz (this volume) wryly notes, research tends to “follow the flag.” What he means by this is that much qualitative research has been done by Europeans, or those of European ancestry, in terms of understanding how people, who have been conquered by European empire-builders, have come to be understood by their oppressors. In essence, then, many researchers have explained to numerous populations—many of whom may not be of the same or even similar cultures—how they live. While this may seem unconscionably arrogant, it is wise to remember that history is rarely written by the oppressed. Essentially, the African proverb, “Until the lion tells his side of the story, the tale of the hunt will always glorify the hunter” (Cooper & White, 2012), reminds us that history is most often written by the victors. Research is no different in this respect. After all, where does the word “empirical”—meaning to create a study based on, concerned with, or verifiable by observation or experience rather than theory or pure logic—come from, if not from the word “empire?” As such, there is a desperate need for decolonizing, non-­colonial or postcolonial qualitative methodologies. One such methodology, closely related to narrative inquiry, is Archibald’s (2008) notion of “Storywork.” This methodology positions research participants to work in collaboration with the researcher throughout the entire process of data collection, analysis and creation of the final narrative.

The Philosophical Context Narrative inquiry can become a powerful instrument in terms of transferring or sharing knowledge, given that it is bound up in issues of memory, and is constructed, whether it be actual or perceived. Additionally, practitioners of narrative inquiry may find that, as their study progresses, change becomes a part of the process, occurring as a result of the progression of the study itself. For example, through engaging with participants in their research endeavour, comparing narratives and adjusting identities and practices through the inquiry process, social, cultural, institutional and linguistic identities may shift substantially. Thus, simply because narrative inquiry attempts to capture the emotion of the described moment, it tends to render the event described as active rather than passive and, at the same time, infuses it with latent meaning(s) communicated by the narrator. Consequently, two concepts bound to narrative inquiry—memory and time—recount events found in past time which become re-lived in the present. As

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such, narrative inquiry offers the notion that knowledge can be stored in stories which can then be relayed and, later, retrieved. Narrative inquiry begins with a personal justification within the context of the inquirer’s own experience, as well as with a practical justification, such as a particular educative learning tangle that lends itself to research (Clandinin & Huber, 2010). In addition to personal and practical justifications, researchers must also attend to the “So what?” question, a function of social justification. Social justification can take several forms that may result in either a theoretical justification, such as emerging methodological and/or disciplinary knowledge, a new policy initiative or other pro-social actions and activities. When we retell events, we do not tell the story exactly as it happened. Stories are not always told in linear chronological sequence (Greene, in Cooper & White, 2012) because people’s lives are less than linear and arise from the temporal nature of experience in which people are simultaneously participants in and tellers of their life stories (Carr, 1986). Contemplating a potential narrative inquiry requires considering the three commonplaces of narrative inquiry—temporality, sociality and place—described earlier. This not only allows for the shifting, changing, personal and social nature of the phenomenon being studied, it also challenges the dominant story of the phenomenon as being a fixed and unchanging feature of the inquiry. Furthermore, considering the three commonplaces influences the narrative inquiry as it is currently being lived or re-lived. Framing cogent research questions is also a part of the puzzle and is a necessary part of the process of thinking narratively. Each narrative inquiry is composed around a particular “wonderment” that carries with it “a sense of a search, a ‘research,’ a searching again” and “a sense of continual reformulation” (Clandinin & Connelly, 2000, p. 124). Narrative inquiry can be viewed as a process of entering into the lives of the participants in the study in the midst of each participant’s and each inquirer’s life. This illustrates the importance of acknowledging the ongoing temporality of experience, understood narratively. As a result, it can be said that narrative inquiry always begins within an ongoing experience. By making use of this process, inquirers live their stories synchronously, as they tell these stories of their experiences through time. Inquiries conclude in the midst of living and telling, and in the midst of re-­ living and re-telling of these experiences that comprise inquirers’ and participants’ individual and social lives (Clandinin & Huber, 2010). The process of narrative inquiry, then, becomes a recursive process that includes fieldwork, field notes and texts, as well as the drafting and sharing of research. In much qualitative research, data analysis and data collection are often congruent processes, meaning that they tend to occur at the same time, rather than collecting all of the data before the analysis can begin. However, when it comes to analyzing collected data, most researchers analyze the data at a distance from their participants, even when data checks are a requisite part of the analytical process. Narrative inquirers work to resist this temptation (Clandinin & Huber, 2010) and participants may frequently become de facto researchers in the process.

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Composing research texts from field texts can be a time of tension and uncertainty for narrative inquirers. Given the amount of data, composed with attention to temporality, sociality and place, interim research texts—partial texts that allow participants and researchers to further co-compose storied interpretations—allow narrative inquirers to continue to engage in relational ways with their participants. Interim research texts remain open to (re)negotiation of the indeterminacy and multiplicity of possible meanings. Thus, dialogue with participants around interim research texts can lead to reiterative or recursive moments where the inquirer may return for more intensive work with the participant, should further field texts be required in order to compose more complex accounts of participants’ experiences (Clandinin & Huber, 2010). Ultimately, the final research text may contain only a small amount of the data that has been generated in the process of inquiry. However, finalized research texts may include an array of literary forms, from metaphor, collage, poetry and images that represent the complexity of lived experience while retaining the integrity of that experience. According to Clandinin & Huber (2010), fictionalization in research texts can protect participants’ anonymity if these lives are sensitive to dominant institutions or processes of marginalization. Given these considerations, it is important that the voice of the researcher does not overwrite those of the participants.

Narrative as Genre Versus Narrative as Method Early narrative forms reach as far back as 1500 BCE. These early narratives reflect recorded experience in epic formats and eventually became replaced by folk tales and fables that foreshadowed the genre of the literary novel, beginning around 1200  CE.  New, innovative techniques were developed through these narrative genres and, in tandem with the development of print, allowed greater numbers of readers and writers to indulge their interests in histories, biographies and autobiographies. Over time, the person the story is about tends to become construed in terms of personal development (Bamberg, 2012). All of these representations made use of temporal sequences of lived events for a systematic and self-reflective quest, either for the reader or of the character(s) represented in these quests. En route from the epic via the novel to the biography, narrative has emerged as a new but central formatting device for the organization of self and (modern) identity. It successfully fed the commonly shared belief that who we are, or who we think we are, is realized in the stories we tell about ourselves; everyone not only has a story but also has a right to tell their story. (Bamberg, 2012, p. 79)

Thus, according to Bamberg (2012), not only is the search for self deeply rooted within the history of narrative, the story itself becomes the data to be analyzed. The credit for moving the narrative mode into a special status of sense-making belongs to Jerome Bruner (1915–2016) and Jean-Francois Lyotard (1924–1998), who argued that two types of sense-making models stand in opposition to one another.

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The first is the “logico-scientific” model, and the other is a narrative model, both of which rely on different methods of knowing and procedures for verification. Narrative knowing centres upon the particularity and specificity of what occurred, and the involvement of human agents in bringing about these events (Bamberg, 2012). Thus, narrative as method implies that individuals within their social environments actively confer meaning to those events within that environment and, in so doing, conferring meaning becomes “the primary form by which human experience is made meaningful” (Polkinghorne, 1988, p. 1).

Three Narrative Interview Techniques There are numerous interviewing techniques designed to elicit narrative accounts; some are open-ended and unstructured, while others are semi-structured and guided. For example, Hollway and Jefferson (2008) identified the Free Association Narrative Interview Method. Another interview technique, developed by Wengraf (2006), the Biographic-Narrative Interpretive Method, is an interview technique that leads into personal experience, lived situations and life histories. Additionally, a third technique, the Narrative Oriented Inquiry, was created by Hiles and Cermák (2008). With a number of different techniques available to the narrative researcher, it behooves the inquirer to carefully consider which narrative means may best be utilized in interviewing practices, including focus or brainstorming groups. These three approaches, designed to work with narratives, represent (i) a linguistic-based approach (Hollway & Jefferson, 2008), (ii) a cognitive-based approach that works from the assumption that the story segments are held together by an overarching structure of plot organization (Wengraf, 2006), and (iii) an interactive-based approach that views stories (and their meanings) as local accomplishments among participants (Hiles & Cermák, 2008). However, each of these techniques are less than straightforward simply because analytic orientations begin with differing assumptions about the person, the language and the narrative, and have developed from differing research traditions. However, these three differing approaches may be applied together to modify the data continuously so that all three approaches can speak to the data and to the different questions being pursued. In this way, these techniques may be viewed as practices that are not necessarily in competition but may be employed together (Bamberg, 2012).

Feature Article: A Narrative Approach to Research The following article is written in narrative form and offers a description of a boys’ school in Britain. It has been described as the “worst school in the country.” The author, Patricia Sikes, utilizes narrative inquiry to render the trials and tribulations of the vice-principal, into a format that is at once entertaining and informative.

Summary: Narrative Inquiry in Qualitative Research

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Included in the research design is an analysis of the context and methodological considerations. Interestingly, the student, who is also the vice-principal, uses an auto-ethnographic methodology to represent his forthcoming thesis, rather than a narrative methodology similar to that used by the author. In her description, Professor Sikes notes that the purpose of her narrative was to describe the situation, whereas the purpose of the auto-ethnographic methodology was more analytic in nature (See Storying schools: Issues around attempts to create a sense of feel and place in narrative research writing)

Summary: Narrative Inquiry in Qualitative Research This chapter began with a discussion of hermeneutics as being at the core of every interpretive endeavour. As an example, John Steinbeck’s novella, The Pearl, was used to illustrate the narrative, hermeneutic and allegorical aspects of this novella. At this juncture, a video-clip featured the late Professor Emeritus Donald Polkinghorne discussing hermeneutics and narrative inquiry. While hermeneutics offers an exegesis of meaning within a text, written, spoken or otherwise, narrative inquiry strives to analyze the meaning of the story itself. Beginning with the sixteenth century, the narrative tradition was primarily biblical within the Western culture. However, after this period, a transformation occurred from taking text from the Bible to observation, thanks in part to philosopher scientists such as Rene Descartes. This meant that the balance between humans and how they reacted to nature was in transition. However, despite significant scientific advancements, what was neglected was the study of human beings. The idea of the human soul remained understudied throughout the seventeenth to the nineteenth centuries. By the nineteenth century, studies of consciousness in relation to what goes on in the world had been developing. This new brand of psychology was more about the study of mechanical notions and sensory experience, which set the foundations for modern psychological research. Gradually, more sophisticated statistical instruments became available. After the electronic revolution was under way, models used to research human psychology became much more sophisticated. Fairly recently, due to an increasing importance of situating the researcher’s perspective while, at the same time, attempting to improve the agency and power of the participants and their communities under study, a more reflective approach to research analysis appeared, compared to more traditional authoritative, objective, or neutral stances, none of which are definitive. As the twenty-first century dawned, major growth in narrative and biographical methods occurred. Narrative inquiry offered significant understanding in terms of participants and their contexts as it became recognized that true “objectivity” was impossible to achieve. As Clandinin and Connelly note, three “commonplaces” are required to satisfy the conditions of narrative inquiry; temporality, sociality and place, and may serve as a conceptual framework for the gathering and analysis of data. Narrative research

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seeks to understand non-quantifiable types of knowledge, such as experience. Narrative inquiry can be operationalized through various methods in order to analyze various types of knowledge. Donald Polkinghorne, Jerome Bruner, James Paul Gee and Jaber F. Gubrium offer a series of processes for the analyzing of narrative data. Narrative inquiry in the field of the humanities and social sciences is largely a twentieth century (and beyond) phenomenon, containing different strands, such as “realist,” “postmodern” and “constructionist” underpinnings. This has led scholars to disagree on its actual origin, pedigree and definition. Chase (2005) identifies five diverse approaches for analyzing stories: a psychosocial developmental approach; an identity approach that focuses on how people construct themselves within a variety of contexts; a sociological approach focusing on specific aspects of people’s lives; a narrative ethnographic approach and an auto-ethnographic approach. These approaches may overlap and operate congruently within narrative inquiry. In an additional video-clip, Donald Polkinghorne describes how the Vietnam War paved the way for a more humane way to view human existence, and traces the path of qualitative research, in general, and narrative inquiry, in particular, from the advent of the postmodern era. Narrative inquiry is able to capture “sedimented experiences” through its open and engaging format. However, the very term “narrative” is problematic, as it can mean anything that the participant divulges, free from qualification. A true narrative, according to Professor Polkinghorne, is a particular kind of talk that is also about a movement through time and arrives in storied format Many methodologies can benefit from narrative approaches. It may be that a chosen methodology can utilize narrative as a method rather than as a full-fledged methodology. One of the most important considerations regarding any qualitative research is how participants, particularly minoritized cultures, are represented. One such decolonizing methodology, closely related to narrative inquiry, is Archibald’s (2008) “Storywork.” This methodology positions research participants to work in collaboration with the researcher throughout the entire process of data collection, analysis and creation of the final narrative. Narrative inquiry offers the notion that knowledge can be stored in stories, which can then be relayed and, later, retrieved. The process of narrative inquiry is a recursive process that includes fieldwork, field notes and texts, as well as the drafting and sharing of research. In much qualitative research data analysis and data collection are often congruent processes, meaning that they tend to occur at the same time, rather than collecting all of the data before the analysis can begin. The credit for moving the narrative mode into a special status of sense-making belongs to Jerome Bruner and Jean-Francois Lyotard, who argued that two types of sense-making models stand in opposition to one another; the “logico-scientific” model, and the narrative model, which rely on different methods of knowing and procedures for verification. Thus, narrative as method implies an approach that views the individual within social environments. Three narrative interview techniques, designed to elicit narrative accounts are offered. These three approaches to work with narratives represent (i) a linguistic-­ based approach (Hollway & Jefferson, 2008), (ii) a cognitive-based approach that works from the assumption that the story segments are held together by an

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overarching structure of plot organization (Wengraf, 2006), and (iii) an interactivebased approach that views stories (and their meanings) as local accomplishments among participants (Hiles & Cermák, 2008). However, all of these techniques are less than straightforward simply because analytic orientations begin with differing assumptions about the person, the language, and the narrative and have developed from differing research traditions. A feature article, “Storying schools: Issues around attempts to create a sense of feel and place in narrative research writing” is offered as an example of a successful narrative study. Suggestions for Further Reading Should the reader wish to read further regarding narrative inquiry, please see the following articles: Blumenreich, M. (2004). Avoiding the pitfalls of ‘conventional’ narrative research: Using poststructural theory to guide the creation of narratives of children with HIV. Qualitative Research, 4(1), 77–90. https://doi.org/10.1177/14687941 04041108 https://www.google.com.au/search?client=safari&rls=en&q=doi:+1 0.1177/1468794104041108&ie=UTF-­8 &oe=UTF-­8 &gfe_rd=cr&dcr= 0&ei=TDJ4Wof0EI_p8wfF76Fo Chase, S.  E. (2005). Narrative inquiry: Multiple lenses, approaches, voices. In N. K. Denzin & Y. S. Lincoln (Eds.), The Sage handbook of qualitative research (3rd ed., pp. 651–679). Sage. Connelly, F. M., & Clandinin, D. J. (Eds.). (2006). Narrative inquiry. In J. L. Green, G. Camilli, & P. Elmore (Eds.), Handbook of complementary methods in education research (pp. 477–487). Lawrence Erlbaum. Leong, P. T. M., & Tan, F. B. (2013). Narrative interviews: An alternative method to the study of mentoring adoption by information systems project managers Procedia Technology, 9, 638–645. https://ac.els-­cdn.com/S221201731300 2247/1-­s 2.0-­S 2212017313002247-­m ain.pdf?_tid=9f5325a8-­0 98d-­ 11e8-­9 39e-­0 0000aacb35d&acdnat=1517736630_0ba622824c44e7f1a1d 18666b5f6006e Sandelowski, M. (1991). Telling stories: Narrative approaches in qualitative research. Journal of Nursing Scholarship, 23(3), 161–166. http://academic.son. wisc.edu/courses/N701/week/sandelowski_tellingstories.pdf Skjørshammer, M. (2002). Understanding conflicts between health professionals: A narrative approach. Qualitative Health Research, 12, 915–931. https://doi. org/10.1177/104973202129120359. http://qhr.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/ 12/7/915 Wang C. C., & Geale, S. K. (2015). The power of story: Narrative inquiry as a methodology in nursing research. International Journal of Nursing Sciences, 2(2), 195–198. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijnss.2015.04.014 Selected Annotated Bibliography Andrews, M. & Squire, C. (2008). Doing narrative research. Sage.

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Over the past several decades, narrative inquiry has acquired an increasingly high profile in social sciences and humanities research. However, narrative research is difficult, even though it may be popular and engaging. Unlike many qualitative methodologies, narrative research offers no automatic beginnings or endings. In fact, even the term “narrative” is frequently a topic of debate. Written by experts in the field of narrative research, this popular text considers theoretical underpinnings and practical applications of narrative inquiry. Andrews and Squire take the reader through initial decisions with regard to narrative research, through to more complex issues of reflexivity, interpretation and the research context. Chapters include discussions of narratives and embodiment, visual narratives, narratives and storyworlds, new media narratives and Deleuzian perspectives in narrative research. This book will be invaluable for students, researchers and academics seeking to use narrative methods in their own social research. Bauman, Z. & May, T. (2001). Thinking sociologically. Blackwell Publishing. In this textbook, Bauman and May addresses the problem of thinking sociologically. Through an examination of the underlying assumptions and tacit expectations, which structure people’s view of the world, the authors explore these underlying assumptions and tacit expectations. The authors elucidate key concepts in sociology: for example, individualism versus community, and privilege versus deprivation. While charting a course through sociology’s main concerns, Bauman and May also examine the applicability of sociology to everyday life. This volume offers a panoramic view of a number of issues facing society today and sets the stage for subsequent books to explore segments of these issues in greater depth and detail. This book is a must have for students and scholars alike who wish to understand a variety of social issues in detail. Bruner, J. (1990). Acts of meaning. Harvard University Press. This volume argues that the cognitive revolution, with its current fixation on mind as “information processor;” has led psychology away from the deeper objective of understanding the mind as a creator of meanings. The cognitive revolution has been diverted from its original impulse by the computer revolution. Only by breaking free of limitations imposed by computational models of mind can we grasp the special interactions through which the mind constitutes and is constituted by culture. Bruner argues for a renewal and refreshment of the original revolution, inspired by the conviction that the central concept of human psychology is meaning. This is based on two connected arguments; that humankind’s experiences and acts are shaped by intentional states and that the expression of these states is realized through participation in the symbolic systems of the culture. The shape of one’s life is only understandable by virtue of these cultural systems of interpretation. Clandinin, D. J., & Connelly, F. M. (2000). Narrative inquiry: Experience and story in qualitative research. Jossey-Bass. The literature on narrative inquiry has been, until now, widely scattered and theoretically incomplete. Clandinin and Connelly have created a book that is lucid, fluid, and rich in examples. Students will find a wealth of arguments to support their

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research, and teaching faculty will find everything they need to teach narrative inquiry theory and methods. Understanding experience as lived and told stories, also known as narrative inquiry, has gained popularity and credence in qualitative research. Unlike more traditional methods, narrative inquiry successfully captures personal and human dimensions that cannot be quantified into dry facts and numerical data. In this guide, Clandinin and Connelly draw upon more than 20 years of field experience to show how narrative inquiry can be used in educational and social science research. Tracing the origins of narrative inquiry in the social sciences, they offer new and practical ideas for conducting fieldwork, composing field notes, and conveying research results. Cleveland, H. (1989). The knowledge executive: Leadership in an information society. E. P. Dutton. After surveying the evolution of the leader’s role as a generalist, Cleveland discusses how information has replaced material things as the major resource that must be managed. He also goes on to discuss how attempting to manage information, using techniques developed to manage things, will cause trouble for leaders. He considers some of the social changes that will be necessary for a successful transition to leadership in an information-dominated world and suggests that schooling at all levels must integrate formerly distinct branches of knowledge and emphasize global causes and effects. Harlan Cleveland also suggests further that the best use to which society can put older members of the work force may well be to continue to use their accumulated wisdom. This is a landmark book by one of America’s pre-­ eminent thinkers. Cleveland charts the course ahead for a whole generation of executives and organizational managers. The Knowledge Executive rethinks today’s and tomorrow’s requirements for positive social change. Coffey, A., & Atkinson, P. (1996). Making sense of qualitative data. Sage. Teachers of qualitative research methods courses are frequently at a loss when their students first encounter data analysis. Interpretation of data is as much art as science. At best, we engage students in discussions and hands-on experiences that support systematic ways of thinking about data analysis. However, once the research project has been designed and the data gathered, what is the best way to transform this information? The authors of this practical volume highlight the range of approaches available to qualitative researchers by using a single data set, which they analyze using a number of techniques. With special attention paid to the possibilities in computer-aided analysis, this book will be an invaluable resource for the relatively new qualitative researcher. Thus, any book that proposes to lay bare the intricacies of qualitative data analysis is likely to be of great interest to novices, teachers of qualitative research methods, and experienced researchers curious about how others engage in analysis. Cooper, K., & White, R.  E. (2012). Qualitative research in the postmodern era: Contexts of qualitative research. Springer. Qualitative research, as a result of postmodern influences, is changing. This, in turn, alters the ways in which research is interpreted and understood. This has

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prompted questions about qualitative research: Who is the researcher in this research account? How does the researcher relate to his/her research? How can the researcher who reads qualitative research relate to and understand the nuances and complexities in qualitative research? How can this volume help us to, not only describe, effect and manage change, but also help us to understand, imagine and effect policies, practices and procedures related to research? What can we learn from researchers at the top of their stride who have struggled in order to develop qualitative research? The book includes illustrative interviews with world famous scholars. William Pinar, Norman Denzin, Henry Giroux, Zygmunt Bauman and Maxine Greene invite students to engage reflectively and to figure out the rudiments and connections of research methodology and methods for post-graduate theses. Creswell, J. W. (2014). Research design: Qualitative, quantitative, and mixed methods approaches (4th ed.). Sage. The first edition of this volume pioneered the comparison of qualitative, quantitative, and mixed methods research design. For all three approaches, Creswell includes a preliminary consideration of philosophical assumptions, a review of the literature, an assessment of the use of theory in research approaches, as well as reflections about the importance of writing and ethics in scholarly inquiry. He also presents the key elements of the research process, giving specific attention to each approach. This fourth edition includes extensively revised mixed methods coverage, increased coverage of ethical issues in research, and an expanded emphasis on worldview perspectives. This volume advances a framework, a process and compositional approaches for designing a proposal for qualitative, quantitative and mixed methods research in the humanities and social sciences. Lyons, N., & LaBoskey, V. K. (2002). Narrative inquiry in practice: Advancing the knowledge of teaching. Teachers College Press. This text demonstrates that narrative can serve as a powerful means of inquiry, even as the authors also explore its limitations. Drawing on the experiences of teachers and teacher educators in a variety of settings, who have been researching their own teaching, this book outlines a conceptual framework for considering narrative as a mode of inquiry. It includes narrative practices that teachers and researchers can try in their own settings. It also offers detailed descriptions of exemplars revealing the contexts in which they were developed, an assessment of how they work, and why they may or may not be problematic. This volume also uncovers how narrative, as a mode of inquiry, provides a method for investigating, documenting and representing the scholarship of teaching. It advances ongoing debates about the role of teachers in inquiring into their own practice, engaging in action research, and building a new epistemology of practice. Polkinghorne, D.  E. (1988). Narrative knowing and the human sciences. SUNY Press. This book expands the concept of the nature of science and provides a practical research alternative for those who work with people and organizations. This volume

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also speaks to a controversy that has significance for a variety of fields. Perhaps there is no other text that is as integrative and clarifying of what the issues are and how they came to be. Narrative Knowing and the Human Sciences shows how to use research information organized by the narrative form. This volume includes pertinent exploration on such information as clinical life histories, organizational case studies, biographic material, corporate cultural designs, and literary products. The relationship between the narrative format, classical and statistical and experimental designs is clarified and made explicit. Suggestions for doing research are given, as well as criteria for judging the accuracy and quality of narrative research results. Riessman, C. K. (1993). Narrative analysis. Sage. In recent years, the development of narrative analysis has given life to the study of the narrative as a form of inquiry for social research. This volume, replete with examples and transcriptions from previous narrative studies, is a useful introduction to this growing body of literature. Riessman provides a detailed primer on the use of narrative analysis, its theoretical underpinnings and worldview, and the methods it uses. In the introduction, Riessman locates narrative as data. She moves to theoretical contexts that include narrative as the representation of experience. Practical models illustrate life stories, linked stories and meaning in conversation, as well as poetic structures and meaning making. In the final section of the book, Riessman illustrates various techniques by which narrative analysis can be developed. She also offers information regarding story telling, transcribing, analyzing and validation, and includes a section regarding uses and limitations of narrative analysis. Wittgenstein, L. (1978). Philosophical investigations (G. E. M. Anscombe, Trans.). Oxford University Press. The thoughts published in this volume are the precipitate of philosophical investigations, which have occupied the author for years. They concern many subjects such as the concepts of meaning, of understanding, of a proposition, of logic, the foundations of mathematics, states of consciousness, and other things. Wittgenstein has written down all these thoughts as remarks, short paragraphs, of which there is sometimes a fairly long chain about the same subject. Then, suddenly, a change occurs in which he darts from, topic to topic. Although he intended to bring this together in a book, the form was pictured differently at different times. However, the essential thing is that the thoughts proceed from one subject to another in a natural order and without breaks. After several attempts to weld results together into a single text, Wittgenstein realized the impossibility of the undertaking. The philosophical remarks in this book represent a number of sketches of landscapes, made in the course of these long, involved journeys. Questions for Further Study • How does a narrative methodology differ from a hermeneutic methodology? • Discuss whether you believe that methods appropriate to hermeneutics would be suitable for narrative inquiry. Please explain. • Identify other forms of narrative inquiry, as well as different combinations of methodologies that may be appropriate to narrative inquiry.

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• Please identify any techniques or methods that you have discovered that may be applicable to narrative inquiry. • Discuss the notion of family resemblances as it applies to qualitative research in general and to narrative research in particular.

 torying schools: Issues around attempts to create a sense S of feel and place in narrative research writing Pat Sykes University of Sheffield Sykes, P. (2005). Storying schools: Issues around attempts to create a sense of feel and place in narrative research writing, Qualitative Research, 5(1), 79-94. Abstract Narrative research writing often seeks to create a sense of feel and place. The aim is to convince an audience that the researcher has ‘been there’ and that they could have been there too. This article presents a story about a visit to a secondary special school for boys judged to have emotional and behavioural difficulties, and then goes on to discuss issues around ‘othering’ experienced by the author when writing it. The problems of first visits and the way in which personal identities influence perceptions of research settings are considered with reference to othering. The article concludes with the suggestion that, when the intention has been to work ‘against Othering, for social justice’ (Fine, 1994: 81), maybe one has to recognize that some concerns can probably not be relieved, and to ‘simply attempt to do the best [I] can’ (Smith and Deemer, 2000: 891).

A Visit I’d never been in a sports car before. Low and green and shining, pulling up for me in front of the tube1 station on a cold, wet Friday morning in December. It was the anniversary of my father’s death and here I was, feeling excitement as I snucked into the seat. What a contrast with that morning in the hospital, 11 years ago, holding Dad’s hand and waiting. Jon accelerated down the high street, past the sari shops, the Asian grocers fronted with vegetable stalls, the Divali2 lights on the lampposts. He drove fast, changing gear quickly, well over the speed limit. We turned into a council estate with speed bumps to fly over, traffic calming islands to weave round. He drives like this partly, I think, to get maximum exhilaration, partly to get back to school as soon as possible. He doesn’t want to be away, doesn’t want to miss the action or to fail to deal with something that’s his responsibility. He wants to get me there, to hear what I think. ‘The police are coming in sometime this morning to get the security video

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of the incident I told you about when Zohab3 and his mates made the death threats to me and I’ll probably need to have a word with them, but apart from that I’m doing nothing particular. What I thought was you’ll just be around, talk with Harry, meet the kids, hang out. I do want you to see what it’s like here ‘cus I think it’ll help when you’re reading my stuff. At least you’ll have a bit of a sense of the place and what I do that’ll give you some sort of context to put it in. Is that OK?’ ‘It’s fine.’ And I’m enjoying the ride, the closeness to the road, the sense of being in touch. ‘That’s our field.’ To my right I see a green space: the size of three football pitches or so. We turn in a gate, down a hill. Pink blossom out on the trees lining the drive, ‘I arranged that because you were coming. Welcome to Osbourne.’ I can sense he feels proprietorial and proud. I see a two-storey, seventies building. Flat roofs, big windows, coloured panels. Obviously a school. The grounds are neat, close cut grass, tidy borders. And those blossom trees. In December. We go in through the lobby to the office window/reception hatch where I have to sign in for security purposes. Banter with the secretaries who call him Jonty. He tells them I’m from the university, that I’m his research supervisor, and that I’ve come to see the place that he’s writing about for his dissertation. They say I must have my hands full. The corridor where we are is bright, clean and carpeted. There’s no graffiti on the walls, no scuffmarks on the skirting board, no litter on the floor. And it is very, very quiet. I comment on the quietness and Jon tells me it’s not normally like this but today nearly half of the students are out, on work experience and college placements, and that some of the ‘big players’ incurred short term exclusions the previous day. ‘Let me take you to meet the kids.’ We turn into a corridor with classrooms off to either side, work displayed on the walls. A man comes out of a room. ‘This is Pat.’ I’m introduced to Harry, the principal. He’s a big man, like Jon, but he’s taller. They joke, slagging each other off, showing me their relationship. Harry tells Jon that while he was getting me the police rang to say that they’d just arrested Zohab, then says, ‘You aren’t going to like this but Peter’s coming in later to check you’re ok about the threats. The LEA’s worried about you. They want to look after us so we have to let them.’ He turns to me, ‘See you later. What have you got on your face?’ I get rid of the dirty smudge, feeling foolish, wondering how long I’d been walking around like that, wondering why Jon hadn’t said anything. Jon takes a bunch of keys out of his pocket and starts to open the door. I’m shocked and my words stop him. ‘Why is it locked? What if there’s a fire?’ ‘The doors only lock on the corridor side, they work from inside the room. We’d have a problem if kids could get out of their class and then into others because the one kid absconding could set the whole school off in seconds.’ It’s suddenly noisy. ‘You fucking cunt. You bastard. Your mother is a whore, she’s a whore. Fuck you.’ ‘Don’t you say that about my mother. Your mother’s a cunt. Fuck her.’ There are two big boys, about 15 years old, I’d say, sitting either side of a hessian-covered room divider. They’re shouting at each other and banging about, but they’re still paying some attention to the workbooks on the tables in front of them. Each boy is sitting with a middle-aged adult, who in both cases is telling

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them to attend to their work, to take no notice of what’s been said and to stop shouting. In the middle of all this, Jon simply introduces me as Dr. Sikes, his teacher. I hold out my hand to every individual in the room and both boys stop their invective to take it and say hello. One asks me if it’s really true that I’m Jon’s teacher; the other, if he’s a good student. I say yes. Then they go back to their cursing. Jon has some words to the effect that winding each other up is not a good idea, and it’s quieter as we go out and cross the corridor to a classroom where three boys of 13 or so are sitting round a table with two young women. They’re all cutting out snowflake shapes from white paper. Gratuitously I ask if they’re making Christmas decorations and a fresh-faced child holds up a mile of paper chains they’d made the previous day. His pride and delight remind me of my son when he used to show me things he’d made with his nanny while I was at work. It’s calm, relaxed and purposeful in that room. Easy, like it can be when kids are doing art or craftwork that they enjoy, in the company of teachers they like and trust. It’s not quite so comfortable in the next room. There, four lads are playing a word game with two adults – except one of the boys, Darren, who has headphones on, is listening to music and is emphatically distancing himself from everything and everyone else. Jon asks him to take the headphones off. The boy deliberately turns his back on him. Jon puts his hand on the boy’s shoulder and has a quiet word. ‘It’s time for pizza’, says one of the other kids and everyone gets up. As he slouches towards the door, Darren removes his ‘phones. Then, suddenly, the bangs start. The walls of the corridor are being thumped, hard, so that they shake. There seem to be lots of youth out there, lots of shouting, fucking this and fucking that. I confess I swear but I have never heard cussing like this. ‘They get pizza now if they’ve been ok. Come along and have some.’ A kid bumps into Jon, ‘Watch where you’re fucking going Jonty’, ‘Language, Sam’, ‘Sorry’. The dining hall is in another building. Outside the door stand Jon and Harry. Each boy has to pass by them and something is said to everyone. There’s lots of hugging too. I’ve never seen so much physical contact in a school, not even in a nursery. It’s odd, remarkable, to see these males, lads and teachers, touching each other so much and so naturally. In a mainstream school I’m sure this would provoke homophobic accusation and abuse. Here, it’s what they do. After pizza Jon takes me to see the workshops and the music room. On our way, the Learning Mentor has a word about a lad who is sounding off and getting upset because he wants to go in the music room and he thinks that the member of staff who has to accompany him there isn’t going to. Suddenly the boy himself appears. He’s clearly very wound up and angry. He strides round the hall area we’re in, bashing the walls and the doors, swearing and badmouthing the teacher he believes has let him down. Three or four kids come to their classroom doors, peer through the glass, then go back to whatever they were doing. I’m not sure what to do, where to go. This is outside my experience and truth to tell I’m apprehensive. Jon has started talking to the boy, telling him the teacher will be along shortly, that the music session will happen if he calms down. The boy walks round and round the area, faster and faster, banging away all the time. Jon speaks more, asking him to be reasonable, to remember positive things and suddenly it’s all over as the lad says, ‘I need a

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drink’, and goes over to the drinking fountain and drinks deeply. He returns calm and ok, then, quick as a wink shins up above the door and sits in the heating pipes, waiting for his teacher. Jon tells me later that this is a major advance, that a couple of months ago the anger would have continued to increase until he finally blew totally out of control. Going to the drinking fountain was probably the kid’s way of disrupting or diffusing the situation without losing face and could have been a strategy he’d been taught in the anger management sessions that were part of his programme. We go into the woodwork room. I’m suddenly very conscious of the hammers, chisels and saws. A boy is standing at a bench rhythmically stabbing away with a bradawl. Each time it goes further in until the handle hits the wood and he can’t get it out. ‘Fuck it. Stupid fucking thing.’ ‘What if somebody loses their temper in here?’ I quietly ask the teacher, a man who’s recently moved here from a mainstream school, ‘Isn’t it risky to have these tools out?’ He shrugs, ‘It’s risky anywhere.’ There’s a knock at the door. Jon’s needed to deal with a flare up in a PE lesson. That’s what he spends all of his time doing, fire-fighting he calls it, calming kids down, managing behaviour, very occasionally restraining. I hear the shouting, the kicking and banging. This one takes a long time to defuse and by the time some understanding is reached it’s lunchtime. Back to the dining hall and the hugs and the words to each boy before they go in. Ross, a large lad with complicated braces on his teeth, is teased for never smiling. He stands close to Jon; I think he’s seeking contact. ‘Look, there’s a policeman going into school. What’s he here for?’ Police visits could be bad news for most of the boys and Ross, I’m told, does and deals drugs big time. ‘He’s not a policeman, he’s come to see to the photocopier.’ ‘He’s a policeman. Look at his boots.’ The man is, of course, the copper who has come to pick up the security video. All the school knows about the threats and that there’s a warrant out for the kids who made them. Jon goes off to talk to him. While he’s away, an obviously pregnant teacher comes and tells Harry that David who is now in the dining room has pushed her. He’s brought out and confronted with what he’s done. There’s some bravado but he ends up saying sorry and verbally, at least, acknowledging that he was in the wrong. ‘Come in and eat, the food’s really good here.’ And it is. Ravioli, salad, ice cream, fresh fruit. Jon told me that they care about the food they serve because, as is so often the case these days, many of the kids live on junk. Everything is fresh and as far as possible they ensure that there are no additives or colourings because these can aggravate hyperactivity. As well as lunch and pizza, Harry and Jon come into school at 6.30 and make sure that breakfast is available for those who turn up. Without this there are those who would have nothing to eat in the morning and the number of kids who do not attend school until pizza is served at break time would probably increase. I sit down next to a tall boy who sprawls round his chair and over the table. The staff sit around the room, some together, others with kids. There’s a general and wide-ranging conversation going on that everyone seems free to participate in. The boy next to me shouts his contributions rather than speaks them. He appears to be

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getting excited and gets louder and louder. Suddenly there’s a startling bang as a boy behind me knocks the table nearly right over. It teeters on two legs then crashes down, rocking back and forth a few times. All is momentarily silent and then: ‘Hey Sally, hey Sally! Sally’s got fuck me shoes on. Show us your shoes Sal.’ Sally, who is about 25 and attractive and who teaches drama here and in Wandsworth Prison, laughs and gives back banter. It all seems well meant and harmless, a comment on the style of her footwear rather than anything else. Jon and Harry appear to think so too: at least they say nothing to stop it. In many schools, I know that such talk would be regarded as grounds for suspension.4 ‘Time to get back.’ Harry signals the end of lunch and kids and staff slope off to lessons. The afternoon session is short: school ends at 2.30. Some don’t even make it that far and, in any case, if they’ve done good they’re often allowed to go early. Given the past attendance record of many of the boys, it’s an event to have them come in at all. It’s time for me to hear the story of the school. We go to Harry’s room, a large office, dominated by a picture of Cassius Clay before he was Mohammed Ali, triumphant having beaten Sonny Liston. Harry opens a drawer in his desk and invites me to look inside. There are a number of knives, razor blades fixed to various makeshift handles, a length of bicycle chain, a sharpened screw driver, and a couple of chisels. ‘Look at this. These were all confiscated during my first few weeks here. I keep them to remind me not to get too cocky. Keep them in mind while I’m talking.’ The story goes like this: in January 2001, Osbourne, a residential special school for 11–16-year-old boys with severe emotional and behavioural difficulties (EBD), was put into ‘Special Measures’5 following an Ofsted6 Inspection. What the Inspectors had found and reported made such lurid reading that journalists on the tabloids seeking post-Christmas readers seized the opportunity for sensationalist headlines of the ‘Is this the worst school in England?’ variety. The Ofsted report was immediately removed from the DfES7 web site as it soon began to register an unprecedented number of hits. Those who managed to get there before it was withdrawn learnt of incidents of boys gang-raping other boys on the school premises, of a hanging, of numerous woundings with weapons, of staff who were demoralized or complacent or incapable, of drug taking, of a school population where the majority of pupils had criminal records, and of an all pervasive macho, violent culture. This was an institution where the kids were in control and the teachers, through inexperience, fear, indifference or various reasons of invested interest, were making little or no mark. Faced with this damning report, the LEA8 had decided to close down the school, sack most of the staff, and then re-open it in September 2002 minus the residential unit, under a new name, and with a new regime. Harry was moved from another school in order to lead this renaissance and Jon was appointed vice-principal. When he got the job at Osbourne, Jon was in the second year of a professional doctoral (EdD) programme and at the point where he was required to design a research project to be carried out over two years and to be reported in a thesis of around 50,000 words. Thinking about the time, effort, energy and commitment his new job was likely to demand, he decided to undertake an autoethnographic study

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of his first year in post to be entitled Restarting the ‘Worst’ School in the Country, and I became his supervisor. Autoethnography is, essentially, reflexive ‘ethnographic writing which locates the self as central (and in so doing) gives analytical purchase to the autobiographical’ (Coffey, 1999: 126). Autoethnographers put themselves into their text while also locating these texts in the literatures and traditions of the social sciences (see Ellis and Bochner, 2000; Lather and Smithies, 1997; Richardson, 2000). Jon felt that such research could be helpful to him in that it would encourage him to reflect critically and systematically on his work and, thereby, could potentially lead him to insights and understandings capable of informing his professional activities. In addition, it might even serve as a cathartic outlet for the tensions and stresses he was likely to face. One term into the research he found that it had lived up to its promise. And one term after the start of the new school year, Harry and Jon felt that they were beginning to get somewhere. In essence, their shared vision is to create a caring environment with a culture that provides certainty, constancy and security for boys who have ‘severe and complex needs’ (DfES, 2004), and who for various reasons do not behave in a way that mainstream schools, as they are presently organized and resourced, are able to accommodate. Many of the boys have learning difficulties; some have mental, emotional and psychological disorders, others are hyperactive and/or have attention deficit conditions ‘managed’ by drugs like Ritalin. Most of them come from socially disadvantaged backgrounds, some have been involved in child prostitution, a few have parents who themselves have learning difficulties and a large number have grown up with criminal activity – thieving, prostitution, violence, drug taking – as the norm. All are a potential threat to themselves and usually to other people. Their futures are not promising and, at the time of the Ofsted report, 80 percent of those on roll were involved with the youth justice system with a further 12 percent serving or awaiting custodial sentences. These kids are a complex amalgam of power and vulnerability. In their immediate lives they have power, which they do use, to hurt and damage people and property. Within the wider world though, they are relatively powerless and most even lack the personal characteristics needed to be a ‘successful’ thug and criminal. As children, too, they are incredibly vulnerable, and a number of them are known to have been, or are suspected of being, exploited and abused sexually, physically and emotionally by their parents and/or other adults who should be caring for and protecting them. In some cases this vulnerability is heightened by the adoption, perhaps as a survival strategy, of a hard man persona that is manifested through their demeanour, their clothes, the music they make it known they listen to, and their language. Many parents who teach see their own children in the students they encounter (see Sikes, 1997). For staff at Osbourne who are also parents, this experience is particularly poignant. Jon talks of ‘cutting off the balls and drawing the teeth’ of the monstrous culture that had come to characterize Osbourne before he and Harry arrived. Their mission is to show their students an alternate way of being to that which they have either been socialized into or have come to adopt (and a scary thing for any parent to know

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is that a couple of these boys do come from stable, prosperous, middle-class homes) and which was being reinforced in the school before Ofsted. For themselves, and for their students, this involves the acknowledgement of different types of personal and social power and vulnerability. It means listening to and hearing what the boys have to say about themselves, their lives, their relationships, their aspirations. It means providing unconditional love and a clear framework of ways of behaving based on respect for self and for other people. For many of the boys this is a novelty and they are having an experience that they haven’t had before, either at home or in schools they have attended. Hence the touching  – an obvious demonstration that ‘I care about you’; hence the demand that kids – and staff – reflect on and acknowledge the impact of their actions on other people and themselves; hence the importance given to respect for self and others; hence the emphasis on corporate responsibility and the well-being of all people belonging to the school. They think that it’s beginning to work. Kids have said things that indicate that they like coming to school and attendance levels are certainly up. When a teacher’s purse was stolen, Ross showed Jon where it had been dumped – in a dog shit bin! – because he ‘wanted to help these people and I like the school’. Louis cried and apologized for repeatedly pushing Jon against a door, winding him and lifting him off his feet with each push; and, after Zohab made his threats against Jon (threats the police took seriously knowing the crowd he hung round with), a number of the kids came up afterwards to ask if Jon was OK. But it isn’t all success of course: Wayne, who stole the purse, and Zohab, who said he would kill Jon and get his family, are both pupils of the school. Truancy remains a problem. And, desperate and dreadful though the action is for boys who have nowhere else to go but prison, two permanent exclusions have been made. Nevertheless, Harry and Jon do seem to have begun to make a difference – and an interim report by LEA inspectors suggests that coming out of ‘Special Measures’ now seems a certainty, although not for another year. ‘So what do you think of us then? What’s your impression of Osbourne?’ asked Harry. ‘Nobody told me there were schools quite like this. If I hadn’t been here I couldn’t have imagined it.’ ‘I know what you mean,’ said Jon. ‘When I was at college and even when I was doing my Master’s in Inclusion, I never came across anything in the academic literature that even began to describe what it can be like here. The most you get is something along the lines of “working in these institutions is demanding and requires resilience”. There’s nothing that I’ve seen that gives any sense of the feel of places like Osbourne and there ought to be accounts that do that rather than the stuff there is that either demonizes special schools per se, or focuses on the psychology of individuals, or presents a distanced and sanitized and so called objective picture. And I think there should be stories because, while everybody’s got an idea of what ordinary schools are like, by and large most teachers don’t have a clue about special schools because they’ve never been in one. They might have had a hand in directing kids to them but they’ve never been there themselves. It’s as if we don’t exist or we do exist but we’re beyond the pale. It shouldn’t be like this, especially since inclusion is so high on the agenda at the minute and particularly since we’re always working towards getting our kids back into mainstream where

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that’s feasible. It’s so one sided. You do stories, Pat, why don’t you write one?’ ‘I’ll think about it,’ I said. Over the next few weeks I frequently found myself thinking about Osbourne: about the lives and experiences of the students I’d met, about the work and aims of Jon, Harry and their colleagues, about the ethos, culture and day-to-day happenings of the school. Although I had had some idea of what Osbourne was like from reading Jon’s work, my visit had disturbed me, confronting and disrupting some of my understandings of, and knowledges about, schools. Inevitably too, perhaps, it had led me to difficult questions around the notion and practice of ‘inclusion’. I had begun to wonder whether the way to begin to make sense of my experiences and perceptions was to follow Jon’s suggestion to write a story, since, like many other people, I find that writing can help order and give meaning to the things that happen to me (see Polkinghorne, 1988; Richardson, 1997: 26–9). I had also taken Jon’s point that EBD schools and their work, their students and staff have, generally, been neglected as a focus for sociological study (although see Molinari, 2003, and Phtiaka, 1996, for ethnographic descriptions of EBD schools and pupil referral units respectively9), and that the storied accounts there are have tended to focus on individuals (e.g. Clough, 2002). There would seem to be a gap, so, when I was asked to give a presentation at a conference, I decided to kill a number of birds with one stone and tell a story about my visit to Osbourne.10 It was that story which started this present article. I will now move on to reflect on worries around narrative re-presentation that I experienced having written it, under the headings of: • • • •

Creating a sense of ‘feel’ and ‘place’, ‘Othering’, First encounters, and My place in all this.

Creating a sense of ‘feel’ and ‘place’ When I sat down to write, I was especially concerned to create a sense of feel and place because that was what Jon had said was missing in the literature. Since I was drawing, primarily, on my perceptions and experiences of Osbourne during the very few hours of the day that I was there, this was very specifically located and contextualized snap-shot type writing, and I had no desire to suggest that it was possible to extrapolate from my words to make definitive generalizations about other EBD schools. I was, however, interested in knowing whether I had been successful in evoking and communicating a picture that people familiar with special schools of this kind could recognize. In seeking such people’s opinions on the story, I wasn’t checking for ‘verisimilitude’ (Bruner, 1986), not least because the concept is fundamentally problematic (see Goodson and Sikes, 2001: 50): I simply wanted to know how effective my writing had been. And I wanted to have some confidence that people coming to the paper who had no previous experience of EBD schools would

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not get an exaggerated or erroneous narrative. The first people I showed the paper to all had experience of working in EBD institutions. ‘It took me back. That’s just like it was – especially the dining room. That could have happened in my school. You really evoked the atmosphere.’ (Maureen  – verbal communication) ‘It brought back some (lots!!) of painful/funny/embarrassing/scary memories from my stint in an EBD school. . . For me it was an accurate representation: police visit, swearing and all: my nickname was ‘cockeyed cunt’ and the kids (mostly) liked me!!’ (Andrew – written communication) ‘Oh yes, you’d done the business there. You could almost smell the place. And I have to tell you that as I was reading it I remembered names that I hadn’t thought of for years. I had a kid who could have been that one making the chains. Angelic, beautiful looking lad. Could be sweet and gentle and caring and like a lamb but he would snap over nothing it would seem and there was no controlling him. I wonder what happened to him.’ (Doreen – verbal communication) ‘Day on day it was like that. Firefighting outbreaks, that’s what the guy said and that’s how it was. The changes in atmosphere, the ever so tough but ever so vulnerable youngsters. I couldn’t do it any more. I burnt out and your bloody paper was too close to the bone.’ (Richard – verbal communication) ‘You got it. That was it. Absolutely spot on. I actually showed that paper to my mum and dad and said ‘Read this. This is where I work.’ They said they’d never realized just what it was like but that, if it was like that, they understood some things about me better – whatever that was supposed to mean.’ (Jon Clark – written communication)

‘Othering’ These comments suggested that I had done what I’d set out to do. I’d conjured up, I’d fabricated (MacLure, 2003: 80–104) a ‘persuasive’ (Barone, 1995: 64–5) account that conveyed a realistic impression, a ‘feel’ of an EBD school. Through my writing, through the discourse, the words and constructions I’d used, I felt that I’d managed to meet Clifford Geertz’s (1988) challenge to convince an audience that I’d ‘been there’ and that they could have been there too. Initially I was quite satisfied by my literary and textual achievement, but then reading through the paper and considering how I was going to present it at the conference, I began to worry about what Maggie MacLure describes as ‘the pervasive concern in contemporary research’ (2003: 3): namely, the concern of ‘othering’ the people I had written about (see Fine, 1994, for a discussion of ‘othering’, but essentially here I am using it to mean creating a distance and imputing negative difference between me/us and others/them). Ironically, my worries were grounded in my ‘achievement’, in the ‘realism’ of my writing and, specifically, in the accounts I had given of the boys, of their behaviour and of the things they’d said. I was very conscious that, compared with everyday life in most mainstream secondary comprehensives, what I’d seen and heard and re-presented was extreme, even though by Jon and Harry’s reckoning the day I spent in Osbourne was

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considered to have been a ‘quiet one’ with nothing exceptional or out of the ordinary occurring and no ‘great story’ (Fine et al., 2000: 117) to report. I hadn’t exaggerated anything but I was, nevertheless, conscious that what I had written could – and probably did – make Osbourne, its students and its staff seem distinct and different in a negative sense, from other schools, teachers and pupils. I certainly didn’t want to do this. Conversely, in fact, I wanted to share how my experience of being at Osbourne had brought home to me the way in which, as Mark Neumann puts it, the tension over ‘othering’ is confounded ‘when we acknowledge how much ‘out there’ looks like ‘in here’ (1996: 182). But I began to question if I should have written such a piece at all. Or having written it and got it out of my system as it were, perhaps I should leave it there, not put it out into the public domain, and quickly do something else to meet my conference commitment. But then one of the reasons why I’d written the story was exactly because life in EBD schools has tended to be ignored, marginalized, hidden away and not described (maybe partly because of the difficulties involved in writing about and re-presenting it!). If I didn’t go ahead with the piece, I would be failing Jon and the other people who said there was a need for greater awareness, not least in the interests of any movement towards inclusion, be that in conceptual or practical terms (see Slee, 2001). I wondered whether an explicitly fictionalized approach (see, for example, Banks and Banks, 1998; Clough, 2002; Sparkes, 1995) might not be better because of the anonymizing and distancing effect it could have. On reflection though, I came to the opinion that, in this case, and for me personally, fictionalizing would have been deceptive because I only had limited observations and knowledge on which to base a story; anything else would have been imagination. It seemed more authentic and entirely appropriate to try and tell it as it was for me, re-presented and crafted of course, and with names changed, but without invention. A fictionalized story would, I felt, have made me even more open to charges of ‘othering’ and even demonizing, given the sort of situation I was writing about (see Roorbach, 2001: 5–6, on invention and intention).

First Encounters Then there was the issue around the fact that this was my first encounter with Osbourne. One’s first visit to anywhere is, almost by definition, strange. We don’t know who or what we will see or what will happen next. In order to make sense of novel experiences we tend to compare them with what we know and, in a way, we almost inevitably ‘other’ just through this process of comparison. Knowing this, I was conscious of its potential influence on what I wrote and this was largely why I showed the story to Jon and experienced EBD teachers before I did anything else with it. Their comments did a lot to reassure me. They also put my mind at rest around concerns that I had to do with the snap-shot nature of the piece. These focused on the way in which I was very much an ‘outsider’ to Osbourne, albeit one who knew some of the context and background from

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Jon. My story was primarily intended to raise awareness which could then be followed up. The much longer story that Jon will tell through his autoethnography will be written with insider knowledge and involvement, and will take an in-depth and long-term look at relationships and developments at the school. Our purposes are different: his thrust is analytical, mine is descriptive, and I believe that, given the paucity of research of this kind in this field, this is an appropriate aim.

My Place in all This Writing about the way in which qualitative research has tended to reproduce ‘a colonizing discourse of the “Other”’, Michelle Fine has stressed the importance of examining ‘the hyphen at which Self-Other join in the politics of everyday life, that is, the hyphen that both separates and merges personal identities with our inventions of Others’ (1994: 70). In a similar vein, MacLure remarks, the concern over ‘othering’ that researchers may feel ‘is intimately connected with anxiety about the space between self and other, researcher and researched, and the desire to dissolve, or at least ethically regulate it’ (2003: 3). Researchers’ personal identities and the perspectives, understandings and knowledges, the beliefs and values that go with them shape all aspects of the research process (see Sikes and Goodson, 2003). I went to Osbourne with all of my identities (obviously!). Although there is not space in this article to interrogate the hyphens between my identities and my limited perceptions and experiences of the boys and staff of Osbourne, I suspect those which had the most influence upon what I subsequently wrote were my identities as Jon’s doctoral supervisor, as a researcher who favours auto/biographical and narrative approaches, as an academic with a commitment to social justice, as the mother of a girl and a boy in mainstream schools, as a school governor, as a lecturer who has been involved in initial and in-service teacher education, as a sociologist, and as the director of a professional doctoral programme that has a substantial number of students with jobs in the field of special education. As Denzin reminds us, ‘writing is not an innocent practice (and) in the social sciences there is only interpretation’ (2000: 898): in noting this I am making yet another plea for researchers to acknowledging their place in what they do for and the way in which stories tell us as much about their authors as they do about their subjects.

Finally David Silverman writes: All we sociologists have are stories. Some come from other people, some from us. What matters is to understand how and where the stories are produced, what sort of stories they are, and how we can put them to intelligent use in theorizing about social life. (1998: 111)

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And we also need to think about how the stories that come from us (be ‘we’ sociologists, educational researchers, psychologists, anthropologists, or whatever) and which we use in various ways to make sense of social life, impact upon the people and the institutions they are about. As was noted earlier, when the tabloid press picked up on Ofsted’s report on Osbourne and translated its official language into lurid journalese, considerable interest was provoked. People wanted to know the gory details and, while it is clearly impossible to know what exactly aroused curiosity, prurience and voyeurism provoked by the monstrous, freak show style presentation of the school is likely to have motivated some readers to seek out the full account on the internet. It does seem that, because EBD schools and other institutions, such as prisons, mental hospitals and boarding schools, are outside of most people’s day-to-day experience, they are more at risk of having highly-coloured myths developed and told about them. Conscious of this, I wanted my story to tell what an EBD school could be like in order to counter tales based in and on ignorance. At the same time, I didn’t want to fuel such accounts through my story or to ‘other’ the students, staff and the institution generally. Since I am not convinced by arguments that stories used in social science should, essentially, be left to speak for themselves (e.g. Clough, 2002), I had no intention for mine to stand alone without any commentary or contextual description or discussion. Thus, in my conference presentation, I did explicitly address my concerns in relation to my particular story and also offer an explanation of how and where and why it had been produced, thus stating my intent and providing a context. The field of special education is one full of controversy and disagreement with various debates about the social construction of disability and special need and around the ideologies, theories and the practice of inclusion going on in the UK, Europe, the Antipodes, North America and elsewhere (see Slee, 2001, for an overview). With regard to students who are considered to have emotional and behavioural difficulties, the controversy is particularly acute with considerable argument around the way in which EBD can be used as a convenient diagnosis for young people whose behaviour is ‘simply’ challenging. Although in recent years and in the UK, more attention has been given to the way in which institutional structures and systems may cause or aggravate troublesome behaviour, ‘there resolutely continues a powerful subtext that the real causes of difficult behaviour lie in deficit and deviance in the child’ (Thomas and Loxley, 2001: 46–7). This is not the place, and I am not the person, to advance this discussion except insofar as, in talking and writing about Osbourne, I did want to do something, in however limited a manner, to alert more people to a hidden area of schooling. I am not so naïve as to believe that awareness leads to change in attitude or practice, but I do think that ignorance certainly does not. However grandiose it might sound, in telling this story and in sharing my difficulties, my intention has been, to borrow from Michelle Fine, to work ‘against Othering, for social justice (1994: 81, original emphases), to recognize that some of my concerns can probably not be relieved, and to ‘simply attempt to do the best [I] can’ (Smith and Deemer, 2000: 891).

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Notes 1. The ‘tube’ is the popular name for the underground train system in London. 2. Divali is the Hindu festival of light. In parts of the UK where there are substantial Hindu populations, it has become common for joint Divali/Christmas decorations to be put up in the streets between October and January. 3. All names, with the exception of Pat Sikes and Jon Clark, have been changed. 4. In an ethnographic study of a pupil referral unit, Vivien Molinari (2003) observes that the swearing that characterized student to student and student to teacher conversation would have resulted in suspension in all other schools in the borough. 5. Schools which are inspected by the Office For Standards in Education (Ofsted) and deemed to be failing according to specific criteria are placed in ‘Special Measures’, required to produce a timetabled plan of action for improvement, closely monitored for two years and reinspected. If they fail to achieve an acceptable standard, they can be closed. 6. Ofsted – the Office For Standards in Education – is the non-ministerial government department, headed by Her Majesty’s Chief Inspector of Schools which has responsibility for inspecting schools. 7. DfES – the Department for Education and Skills. 8. LEA – Local Education Authority 9. See also Thomas and Loxley (2001) for a discussion of the problematic nature and status of EBD as a concept and category for educational provision. 10. The conference was the Second International Conference on Discourse, Power and Resistance, University of Plymouth, April 2003, and the paper I gave, in collaboration with Jon Clark, was entitled ‘Nobody Told Me There Were Schools Like These’. Acknowledgements I’d like to thank HT, Jon Clark, Andrew Loxley, Maureen Parker, Hazel Lawson, Jerome Satterthwaite and reviewers of an earlier draft for their constructive and critical comments.

References Banks, A. and Banks, S. (eds) (1998) Fiction and Social research: By Ice Or Fire. Walnut Creek, CA: AltaMira. Barone, T. (1995) ‘Persuasive Writings, Vigilant Readings and Reconstructed Characters: The Paradox of Trust in Educational Story Telling’, in J. Hatch and R.Wisniewski (eds) Life History and Narrative, pp. 63–74. London: Falmer. Bruner, J. (1986) Actual Minds, Possible Worlds. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Clough, P. (2002) Narratives and Fictions in Educational Research. Buckingham: Open University Press. Coffey, A. (1999) The Ethnographic Self. London: Sage.

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Denzin, N. (2000) ‘The Practices and Politics of Interpretation’, in N.K. Denzin and Y.S.  Lincoln (eds) The Handbook of Qualitative Research: Second Edition, pp. 897–922. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. DfES (2004) Removing Barriers to Achievement: The Government’s Strategy of SEN. London: HMSO. Ellis, C. and Bochner, A. (2000) ‘Autoethnography, Personal Narrative, Reflexivity: Researcher as Subject’, in N.K. Denzin and Y.S. Lincoln (eds) The Handbook of Qualitative Research: Second Edition, pp. 733–68. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Fine, M. (2000) ‘Working the Hyphens: Reinventing Self and Other in Qualitative Research’, in N.K. Denzin and Y.S. Lincoln (eds) The Handbook of Qualitative Research: Second Edition, pp. 70–82. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Fine, M., Weiss, L., Weseen, S. and Wong, L. (2000) ‘For Whom? Qualitative Research, Representations and Social Responsibilities’, in N.K.  Denzin and Y.S.  Lincoln (eds) The Handbook of Qualitative Research: Second Edition, pp. 107–31. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Geertz, C. (1988) Works and Lives: The Anthropologist as Author. Cambridge: Polity Press.Goodson, I. and Sikes, P. (2001) Life History in Educational Settings: Learning From Lives. Buckingham: Open University Press. Lather, P. and Smithies, C. (1997) Troubling the Angels: Women Living With HIV/ AIDS. Boulder, CO: Westview. MacLure, M. (2003) Discourse in Educational and Social Research. Buckingham: Open University Press. Molinari, V. (2003) ‘Being Excluded: A Case Study of a Pupil Referral Unit’, unpublished EdD thesis, University of Sussex. Neumann, M. (1996) ‘Collecting Ourselves at the End of the Century’, in C. Ellis and A. Bochner (eds) Composing Ethnography: Alternative Forms of Qualitative Writing, pp. 172–98. Walnut Creek, CA: Alta Mira. Phtiaka, H. (1996) Special Kids For Special Treatment? How Special Do You Need To Be To Find Yourself in a Special School? Lewes: Falmer. Polkinghorne, D. (1988) Narrative Knowing and the Human Sciences. Albany, NY: State University of New York. Richardson, L. (1997) Fields of Play: Constructing an Academic Life. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press. Richardson, L. (2000) ‘Writing: A Method of Inquiry’, in N.K.  Denzin and Y.S. Lincoln (eds) The Handbook of Qualitative Research, pp. 923–48. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Roorbach, B. (2001) ‘Introduction’, in B. Roorbach (ed.) Contemporary Creative Nonfiction: The Art of Truth, pp. 1–8. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Sikes, P. (1997) Parents Who Teach: Stories From Home and From School. London: Cassell. Sikes, P. and Goodson, I. (2003) ‘Living Research: Thoughts on Educational Research as Moral Practice’, in P. Sikes, J. Nixon and W. Carr (eds) The Moral Foundations of Educational Research: Knowledge, Inquiry and Values, pp. 32–51. Buckingham: Open University Press. Silverman, D. (1998) Qualitative Research: Theory, Method and Practice. London: Sage.

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Slee, R. (2001) ‘“Inclusion in Practice”: Does Practice Make Perfect?’, Educational Review 53(2): 113–23. Smith, J. and Deemer, D. (2000) ‘The Problem of Criteria in the Age of Relativism’, in N.K. Denzin and Y.S. Lincoln (eds) The Handbook of Qualitative Research: Second Edition, pp. 877–96. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Sparkes, A. (1995) ‘Physical Education Teachers and the Search for Self: Two Cases of Structured Denial’, in N.  Armstrong (ed.) New Directions in Physical Education Vol. 3, pp. 157–78. London: Cassell. Thomas, G. and Loxley, A. (2001) Deconstructing Special Education and Constructing Inclusion. Buckingham: Open University Press. Pat Sikes is a Senior Lecturer in the School of Education at the University of Sheffield where her main teaching and writing concern is with research methods. Throughout her career, Pat’s chief interest has been in using life history and narrative approaches to study aspects of teachers’ lives and careers. Her recent publications include articles in Teachers and Training: Theory and Practice 10(1) and Gender and Education 15(4), as well as a book co-authored with I. Goodson, Life History in Educational Settings: Learning From Lives (Open University Press, 2001). Address: School of Education, University of Sheffield, 388 Glossop Road, Sheffield S10 2JA, UK. [email: [email protected]]

References Andrews, M., & Squire, C. (2008). Doing narrative research. Sage. Archibald, J. (2008). An indigenous storywork methodology. In J.  G. Knowles & A.  L. Cole (Eds.), Handbook of the arts in qualitative research: Perspectives, methodologies, and issues (pp. 371–384). Sage. Bamberg, M. (2012). Narrative analysis. In H.  Cooper (Ed.), APA handbook of research methods in psychology, Volume 2: Quantitative, qualitative, neuropsychological, and biological (pp. 77–94). American Psychological Association. Bauman, Z., & May, T. (2001). Thinking sociologically. Blackwell Publishing. Bruner, J. (1990). Acts of meaning. Harvard University Press. Bruner, J. (1991). The narrative construction of reality. Critical Inquiry, 18(1), 1–21. Carr, D. (1986). Time, narrative and history. Indiana University Press. Chase, S. E. (2005). Narrative inquiry: Multiple lenses, Approaches, voices. In N. K. Denzin & Y. S. Lincoln (Eds.), The Sage handbook of qualitative research (pp. 651–679). Sage. Clandinin, D. J., & Connelly, F. M. (2000). Narrative inquiry: Experience and story in qualitative research. Jossey-Bass. Clandinin, D. J., & Huber, J. (2010). Narrative inquiry. In B. McGaw, E. Baker, & P. P. Peterson (Eds.), International encyclopedia of education (3rd ed., pp. 436–441). Elsevier. Cleveland, H. (1989). The knowledge executive: Leadership in an information society. E. P. Dutton. Coffey, A., & Atkinson, P. (1996). Making sense of qualitative data. Sage. Connelly, F. M., & Clandinin, D. J. (2006). Narrative inquiry. In J. L. Green (Ed.), Handbook of complementary methods in education research (pp. 477–487). Lawrence Erlbaum. Cooper, K., & White, R. E. (2012). Qualitative research in the postmodern era: Contexts of qualitative research. Springer. Creswell, J. W. (2014). Research design: Qualitative, quantitative, and mixed methods approaches (4th ed.). Sage.

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Crites, S. (1971). The narrative quality of experience. Journal of the American Academy of Religion, 39, 291–311. Daiute, C., & Lightfoot, C. (2003). Narrative analysis: Studying the development of individuals in society. Sage. Frost, D. M. (2011). Stigma and intimacy in same sex relationships: A narrative approach. Journal of Family Psychology, 25(1), 1–10. Hiles, D. R., & Cermák, I. (2008). Narrative psychology. In C. Willig & W. Stainton-Rogers (Eds.), Sage handbook of qualitative research in psychology (pp. 147–164). Sage. Hollway, W., & Jefferson, T. (2008). The free association narrative interview method. In L. Given (Ed.), The Sage encyclopedia of qualitative research methods (pp. 286–315). Sage. Klein, H., & Myers, M. D. (1999). A set of principles for conducting and evaluating interpretive field studies. Management Information Systems Quarterly, 23(1), 67–93. Labov, W. (1972). Some principles of linguistic methodology. Language & Society, 1, 97–120. Lieblich, A., Tuval-Mashiach, R., & Zilber, T. (1998). Narrative research: Reading, analysis and interpretation. Sage. Lyons, N., & LaBoskey, V. K. (2002). Narrative inquiry in practice: Advancing the knowledge of teaching. Teachers College Press. Polkinghorne, D. E. (1984). Methodology for the human sciences: Systems of inquiry. SUNY Press. Polkinghorne, D. E. (1988). Narrative knowing and the human sciences. SUNY Press. Polkinghorne, D. E. (1995). Narrative configuration in qualitative analysis. International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education, 8(2), 5–23. Riessman, C. K. (1993). Narrative analysis. Sage Publications. Riessman, C. K., & Quinney, L. (2007). Narrative in social work: A critical review. Qualitative Social Work, 4(4), 391–412. Riessman, C. K., & Speedy, J. (2007). Narrative inquiry in the psychotherapy professions: A critical review. In D. J. Clandinin (Ed.), Handbook of narrative inquiry: Mapping a methodology (pp. 426–456). Sage. Spence, D. P. (1986). Narrative smoothing and clinical wisdom. In T. R. Sarbin (Ed.), Narrative psychology: The storied nature of human conduct (pp. 211–232). Praeger/Greenwood. Steinbeck, J. (1992). The pearl. Penguin Books. Van Vallin, R. D., & LaPolla, R. J. (1997). Syntax: Structure, meaning, and function. University of Cambridge Press. Wengraf, T. (2006). Interviewing for life-histories, lived situations and personal experience. The biographic- narrative interpretive method (BNIM) on its own and as part of a multi-method full spectrum psychosocial methodology. Retrieved February 2, 2018, from http://www.uel.ac.uk/ cnr/Wengraf06.rtf White, R. E., & Cooper, K. (2015). Democracy and its discontents: Critical literacy across global contexts. Sense. Willis, J. W. (2007). Foundations of qualitative research: Interpretive and critical approaches. Sage. Wittgenstein, L. (1978). Philosophical investigations (G.  E. M.  Anscombe, Trans.). Oxford University Press.

Chapter 5

Phenomenological Inquiry

Whatever you can think of can be studied phenomenologically as long as it is an experience and not an abstraction, not a concept but an experience …. Phenomenology is not interested in cultural meanings but in existential meanings. Max van Manen, University of Alberta

Introduction By now, the reader may have noted that each chapter of this book seems to spend a little time with the dealings of the previous chapter before moving ahead with material that is dedicated to the current chapter. This is intentional. Because the topic of qualitative research is an extremely complex one and no single volume is capable of encompassing all of its intricacies, it may be useful to employ a physical means of revealing the elision that tends to occur within and between methodologies. Thus, the fluid movement of each chapter may be viewed as a visual metaphor. As can be seen in Chaps. Three and Four, both hermeneutic and narrative inquiry share some “family resemblances” (Willis, 2007). This family is completed with the addition of phenomenology, the topic for this chapter. But what is it that is familial about these three methodologies? First of all, they are all interpretive to a certain extent. While hermeneutics depends largely upon interpretation of meaning, texts and symbols, narrative and phenomenology also depend, to a lesser extent, perhaps, upon interpretation. All three methodologies depend upon narrative, which, in turn, depends upon lived experience. Narrative inquiry makes this the primary focus of the methodology to which it lends its name. And, as well, although all three methodologies interact with specific phenomena, phenomenological methodology takes the event, the experience, the phenomenon, as its starting point for qualitative phenomenological inquiry. Supplementary Information The online version contains supplementary material available at [https://doi.org/10.1007/978-­3-­030-­85124-­8_5]. The videos can be accessed individually by clicking the DOI link in the accompanying figure caption or by scanning this link with the SN More Media App. © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 R. E. White, K. Cooper, Qualitative Research in the Post-Modern Era, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-85124-8_5

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But why is it thus? This is where the Five Contexts (Cooper & White, 2012) become very helpful. When one reviews the historical or biographical contexts, one of the points most noticeable is the influence of individual scholars who have left their philosophical thumbprints on these particular methodologies. Scholars such as Martin Heidegger, Hans-Georg Gadamer and Donald Polkinghorne, to mention only a few individuals, have had tremendous influence on the thoughts, attitudes and beliefs of generations of scholars. It is little wonder, then, that, among those methodologies relying on interpreting a narrative, arising as a result of a particular phenomenon, familial resemblances are bound to become apparent. So, at the heart of each of these particular methodologies is an individual or group of individuals who have influenced the research design through their philosophical perspectives. It is a “relative emphasis,” allowing one to choose a particular methodology over those others in order to research a particular aspect of an event that has given rise to the inquiry itself. For example, should one wish to concentrate on the story aspect of a particular inquiry, a solid choice would be some form of narrative methodology. However, if that same individual wished to concentrate on the interpretation of the meaning of the story, or narrative, then hermeneutics would be a reasonable choice. Each methodology or research design will offer a different lens through which to view the same event or set of events. And it all comes back to the philosophy behind the methodology that is chosen. Phenomenology, the topic of this chapter, completes the triad of methodologies that demonstrates observable family resemblances. However, before we move ahead, let us take a moment to consider the following parable, which originated in China sometime during the Han dynasty (202 BC–220 AD): Three Blind Men and an Elephant One day, three blind men happened to meet each other and gossiped a long time about many things. Suddenly one of them recalled, “I heard that an elephant is a queer animal. Too bad we’re blind and can’t see it.” “Ah, yes, truly too bad we don’t have the good fortune to see the strange animal,” another one sighed. The third one, quite annoyed, joined in and said, “See? Forget it! Just to feel it would be great.” “Well, that’s true. If only there were some way of touching the elephant, we’d be able to know,” they all agreed. It so happened that a merchant with a herd of elephants was passing and overheard their conversation. “You fellows, do you really want to feel an elephant? Then follow me; I will show you,” he said. The three men were surprised and happy. Taking one another’s hand, they quickly formed a line and followed while the merchant led the way. Each one began to contemplate how he would feel the animal and tried to figure how he would form an image. After reaching their destination, the merchant asked them to sit on the ground to wait. In a few minutes he led the first blind man to feel the elephant. With outstretched hand, he touched first the left foreleg and then the right. After that he felt the two legs from the top to the bottom, and with a beaming face, turned to say, “So, the queer animal is just like that.” Then he slowly returned to the group.

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Thereupon the second blind man was led to the rear of the elephant. He touched the tail, which wagged a few times, and he exclaimed with satisfaction, “Ha! Truly a queer animal! Truly odd! I know now. I know.” He hurriedly stepped aside.

The third blind man’s turn came, and he touched the elephant’s trunk, which moved back and forth turning and twisting and he thought, “That’s it! I’ve learned.” The three blind men thanked the merchant and went their way. Each one was secretly excited over the experience and had a lot to say, yet all walked rapidly without saying a word. “Let’s sit down and have a discussion about this queer animal,” the second blind man said, breaking the silence. “A very good idea. Very good.” the other two agreed for they also had this in mind. Without waiting for anyone to be properly seated, the second one blurted out, “This queer animal is like our straw fans swinging back and forth to give us a breeze. However, it’s not so big or well made. The main portion is rather wispy.” “No, no!” the first blind man shouted in disagreement. “This queer animal resembles two big trees without any branches.” “You’re both wrong.” the third man replied. “This queer animal is similar to a snake; it’s long and round, and very strong.” How they argued! Each one insisted that he alone was correct. Of course, there was no conclusion for not one had thoroughly examined the whole elephant. How can anyone describe the whole until he has learned the total of the parts?

This parable is useful in reminding one that, while many methodologies abound, there will be a particular methodology that will be most suited for the inquiry at hand. This is not to say that there will be a perfect fit, only a “best fit.” As a result, it is wise to test a variety of methodologies in order to arrive at the most appropriate choice for the eventual study. Otherwise, like the three blind men and the elephant, one might suggest a procedure that is completely at odds with what it is that the project is attempting to resolve. In the case of qualitative inquiry, this could be the research question or the conceptual framework that guides the infrastructure of the study. Using the metaphor of the elephant, one could ask, “How can anyone describe

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the [inquiry] until he (sic) has learned the [value] of the parts?” That is what this chapter attempts to undertake.

Phenomenology As can be seen from the following quotation, phenomenology is concerned with interpretation, as are the two methodologies discussed previously. The difference is in how that interpretation is operationalized. With hermeneutics, interpretation occurs in the attempt to reconcile one’s interpretation of the text with that of the author. With narrative inquiry, interpretation arrives in the form of the creation of a story that serves to illuminate the phenomenon under study. With phenomenology, the interpretive thrust comes in the form of attempting to write in a way that illustrates the phenomenon as precisely as possible, given the inherent imprecision of any language used to convey meaning. According to Willis (2007), phenomenology is: focused on the subjectivity and relativity of reality, continually pointing out the need to understand how humans view themselves and the world around them. Following Kant, phenomenologists distinguished phenomena (the perceptions and appearances from the point of view of a human) from noumena (what things really are). (p. 53)

Immanuel Kant used the term, phenomenology, in various writings. Kant’s theory fused rationalist and empiricist aims, in that what appears to the mind are phenomena, defined as things-as-they-appear or things-as-they-are-represented in a synthesis of sensory and conceptual forms of objects-as-known (Smith, 2016). In 1807, Hegel wrote a book entitled Phänomenologie des Geistes (Phenomenology of Spirit). By 1889, Brentano used “phenomenology” to characterize what he called “descriptive psychology.” Brentano distinguished descriptive psychology from genetic psychology; where genetic psychology seeks the causes of various types of mental phenomena, descriptive psychology defines and classifies the various types of mental phenomena, including perception, judgment and emotion. According to Brentano, every and only mental phenomena – acts of consciousness – are directed toward an object. In 1889, Brentano replaced the term descriptive psychology with “phenomenology,” paving the way for Husserl’s new science of consciousness. In his Logical Investigations (1982), Husserl combined two different theoretical strands; psychological theory from Franz Brentano and from William James, and logical or semantic theory from Bernard Bolzano and Husserl’s contemporaries who founded modern logic. Bolzano had criticized Kant and the classical empiricists and rationalists for rendering phenomena merely subjective. Logic tends to study objective ideas, which, in turn, make up objective scientific theories. Psychology could, by contrast, study subjective ideas. Husserl wanted both within a single discipline. Interestingly enough, both lines of reasoning can be traced back to Aristotle, while also reaching audiences in Husserl’s day and age.

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According to the Merriam-Webster (2018) dictionary, phenomenology refers to the study of the development of human consciousness and self-awareness as a preface to or a part of philosophy. It also refers to a philosophical movement that describes the formal structure of objects of awareness and of awareness itself in abstraction from any claims concerning existence. Phenomenology may also refer to the typological classification of a class of phenomena, such as the phenomenology of religion. Finally, phenomenology may also be considered as an analysis produced by phenomenological investigation. The term was first used around the end of the eighteenth century. Regarding its root meaning, phenomenology is the study of phenomena; literally, appearance as opposed to reality. Husserl was opposed to any reduction of logic, mathematics or science relating to how people happen to think and, by so doing, distinguished phenomenology from psychology. In this sense, “ideal” meaning would be the “engine” of intentionality in acts of consciousness (Smith, 2016). Therefore, in essence, phenomenology is the study of people’s perception of the world they inhabit. This is necessarily different than an attempt to discover what is objectively “real,” since the focus is on understanding from the perspective of the participants in the phenomenological study. Thus, its most prominent feature is its “extreme” subjectivism, based on the premise that there are no universal truths that humans can know beyond the shadow of a doubt. In many ways, phenomenology represents the study of consciousness (Willis, 2007). Thus, Phenomenology uses a specialized vocabulary that helps emphasize its interests. To distinguish between real things (noumena) and our perceptions of them (phenomena), phenomenologists talk about the real thing that exists in the world versus our perception. The focus of phenomenology is the perceived thing. (Willis, 2007, p. 172)

Phenomenological psychology, however, makes no effort to equate perceptions with external reality, simply because phenomenologists understand that the perception of any object external to human perception is necessarily partial, subjective and incomplete. As noted by Giorgi (1995), Phenomenologists use the term “Phenomenon” as a general term, to refer to the actual grasp that one has of the real things and events that exist in the world transcendent…. When one begins to specify “phenomena,” one begins to articulate objects such as precepts, memories, images, cognitions, etc. (p. 30)

Given this, phenomenology strives to understand the meaning that a person ascribes to a particular act or event—a phenomenon—as well as attempting to understand the structure of that consciousness of the phenomenon. Thus, the search is for individual, contextualized understanding rather than for universal cognitive structures (Willis, 2007). A phenomenological model describes the empirical relationship of phenomena to one another, rather than being derived from “first principles,” developed from scientific, objective means. Consequently, phenomenological models eschew any attempt to explain why the variables observed interact as they do and simply describes the relationship, and assumes that the described relationship extends past measured values (Hilborn & Mangel, 1997). Phenomenological models are

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frequently characterized as being completely independent of theories (McMullin, 1968), although many such models incorporate principles and laws associated with theories, even though these models may not be derived from any specific theory. Models can perform two fundamentally different representational functions. On the one hand, a model can be a representation of a selected part of the world (the ‘target system’). Depending on the nature of the target, such models are either models of phenomena or models of data. On the other hand, a model can represent a theory in the sense that it interprets the laws and axioms of that theory. These two notions are not mutually exclusive as scientific models can be representations in both senses at the same time. (Roman & Hartmann, 2012)

To summarize what has been identified so far, phenomenology utilizes a specific methodology to study structural features of experience and of things as experienced. Primarily, it is descriptive in nature and is undertaken largely independent of scientific methods. As such, phenomenology includes causal explanations and accounts relating to the nature of experience. Topics discussed within the phenomenological tradition may include the nature of intentionality, perception, time consciousness, self-­consciousness, body-consciousness and consciousness of others. In order to account for subjective processes of psychology and the ideal objectivity of logic, Husserl developed a theory of intentionality. Through this, he accounted for acts of consciousness and the structure of ideal objects, both, without reducing one to the other. By focusing on the relation or correlation between acts of consciousness and their objects, Husserl wanted to describe the a priori structure of these acts. In so doing, he suspended the metaphysical status of these objects of experience. More specifically, through this process of bracketing metaphysical questions, he attempted to carve out an epistemological position that was neither metaphysically realistic nor metaphysically idealistic, but metaphysically neutral.

The Biographical Context Professor Max van Manen has offered an in-depth view of phenomenology. He has been involved in moving phenomenology from his native Netherlands to a wider North American base and has assisted in generalizing the principles of phenomenology from the scientific arena, specifically medicine, to the social sciences and humanities. In the following video-clip, he talks about experiencing a conversation with his son. While Professor van Manen is preparing an assignment for his university class, his young son walks in and asks what he is doing? Prior to this revelation, he notes that his son is on the secretive side and is reticent to involve others in his “secrets.” The assignment that Professor van Manen is working on asks that his students discuss their attitudes towards their own secrets. He is asking his students if they have ever had any secrets and if they would be willing to write about them. When he asks his own son if he has ever had any secrets, Professor van Manen quickly

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realizes that he has committed an error in judgment. As he describes his son’s reaction, he uses this moment, this phenomenon, as a study point.

Professor Max van Manen

In discussing is son’s reactions, when the boy walks in, he stands beside his father’s desk, as he would frequently do. A short conversation follows before the boy asks what the father is doing. As the question about secrets is formulated, and he witnesses his son’s reaction, Professor van Manen says that he suddenly felt very badly for his son because his face had become “like a mask.” The son’s reaction made the father realize that he had just embarrassed his son. When his son responds in the affirmative, but is unwilling to provide any further information, Professor van Manen realizes that this is really quite fascinating because he claims never to have taught his son about secrets, even though the boy clearly knew and understood the nature of secrets. Professor van Manen notes that this is an example of phenomenological inquiry. This represents an example of the relationship between phenomenology and pedagogy because he was reflecting on an instance in everyday life that one usually doesn’t reflect upon, even though it may still be an intellectual experience.

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Video Clip 5.1: Professor Max van Manen (▶ https://doi.org/10.1007/000-­6cx)

Given this, the experience is “pre-reflective” in that one undergoes the experience before it becomes ponderable. Fascinatingly enough, all experiences have this pre-reflective capacity, in that they are all experienced prior to thinking about them because, at the moment of inception, even if one is thinking, one does not make it a meta-cognitive issue. That is to say, one does not think about the thinking process in the act of experiencing. As a result, in this sense, the experience is pre-reflective. Professor van Manen, in playing the devil’s advocate, asks what this experience of an experience would be called. Would it be a “raw” experience? Does it even qualify as an experience unless one actually thinks about it as an experience? Since these experiences remain unnamed, and because one does not consciously think about this pre-reflective experience, it may be considered to be a “preconscious consciousness,” in that it is a lived experience but it has not yet been articulated. Hence, it is not reflective, but is pre-reflective, pre-theoretical, pre-conceptual and pre-linguistic. It is by naming this preconsciousness of everyday lived experience that it can be brought into the light. However, even by naming it, one also distorts it because language can never be anything more than a proxy for articulating something that is felt or experienced. As soon as the experience becomes articulated, it becomes “damaged” because it is no longer the exact experience that has been lived. The description is a simulacrum (Baudrillard, 1994) of what was lived, even though and especially because it has been named, identified and described. As an example of this, Professor van Manen turns to Hegel for clarification. Apparently, Hegel claimed that, when Adam was given permission by God to name

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all the animals in creation, the very act of naming was tantamount to “damaging” or, in essence, to killing the animals. Professor van Manen notes that, by naming the animals, Adam also killed them at the same time because, in naming, he claims, we kill that what we named. This, for Professor van Manen is at the heart of phenomenology. This is an interesting metaphor in that it is reminiscent of the adage that birth is the first step towards death. Once taken, that first step can never be reversed. To explain the notion of killing what one names, essentially, in language, one is attempting to capture something that is pre-language. By naming it, one makes it a function of language and it is not the same as it was prior to being expressed. Thus, in naming, one is attempting to put into words what we are killing by putting it into words. Consequently, language becomes an impossibility in the sense that it is never able to entirely capture exactly what it strives to capture. For Professor van Manen, this is what makes phenomenology a “weird” type of research, simply because it has become a wonderful and fascinating enterprise. It has been said that there is no such thing as a synonym. That is to say, there is no word that can be used instead of the “correct” word. In short, each word exists because it is slightly different than the word it replaces. The English language has a larger word pool than any other language and this represents a function of both love and hate. Writers may love this because they may find the exact word they are searching for in order to express an emotion as exactly as it is possible to do. However, this is also the problem. On another day, the same writer may hate the language for offering so many words that represent almost the same meaning. Consequently, because the problem of describing an experience exactly as it occurred is so impossible, yet so necessary, phenomenological texts contain strongly embedded language. Like poetry or a novel, one must be very careful, because if one were to change a word, a phrase or a sentence, then the meaning changes and it is no longer the same as it was. However, as Professor van Manen points out, his phenomenological reflections have created in him a person who is different from the way he was before, and that signifies the importance of phenomenology. In Professor van Manen’s words, phenomenology is “not so much the knowledge you produce but the person you produce.” This being said, phenomenology offers one the ability to change oneself, to refashion oneself. In essence, one must know oneself in order to know others and to be able to teach (or even to reach out to) others. For Professor van Manen, phenomenology is interesting because it provides insights into how we live with others in a meaningful society. This, he relates to a phenomenology of practice. Phenomenology, therefore, is a component of a life world where we practice what we are and who we are. In that sense, phenomenological research becomes more an inquiry into the practice of meaning. In a second video-clip, Professor van Manen draws upon his phenomenological roots not only to define phenomenology but also to contextualize it from his own perspective.

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Video Clip 5.2: Professor Max van Manen (▶ https://doi.org/10.1007/000-­6cw)

Professor van Manen describes his own baptism into phenomenological inquiry as a function of Dutch culture. He believes that it is a pervasive “sense of the ordinary” that typifies Dutch culture, which can be found in an attentiveness to ordinary life. As an example, he refers to the seventeenth century art of the Dutch Masters, such as Jan Vermeer (circa 1632–circa 1675), Rembrandt van Rijn (1606–1669), and the family Breughels who painted through almost two centuries, from the mid-­1500s to the early 1700s. Professor van Manen also makes mention of Gerard ter Borch (1617–1681) and notes that it was highly unusual, at that time, for artists to attend to the everyday objects which they depicted in their paintings, if only for the simple fact that they were everyday objects. In keeping with the notion of phenomenology as an “everyday” kind of function, van Manen notes that he recently presented a keynote address on the theme of Dutch art and phenomenology. He believes there is a strong cultural link within the Dutch way of life, in particular, and the European lifestyle, in general, which can trace its phenomenological roots back through time and history. The existence of such a bond turned the conversation towards a discussion of existential thinking. On the topic of existentialism and its relationship to phenomenological thought, Professor van Manen notes that it was during high school, just after World War II, that he became very interested in existentialism. While this was a personal interest, he believes that it was also a part of the culture, given the disaster of war and the postwar rebuilding of the very culture that had been torn apart throughout Europe and around the globe. Two of the major proponents of the existential movement were Jean-Paul Sartre and Albert Camus.

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The Myth of Sisyphus In his book, The Myth of Sisyphus and Other Essays (1991), Camus, after recognizing the devastation created by the war, suggests that God was not a part of this cataclysm in any way and was, in fact, actually absent. As such, abandoned and left to its own devices, humankind, as a result, must learn to depend upon itself. As an adjunct to this, Camus (1991) claims that there is no hope and no purpose in life. However, according to Camus, hope can be manufactured. In order to become hopeful, one must recognize the fact that humanity has survived a catastrophic world war at all is an element of hopefulness. This relates to the existential tenet of subscribing to something greater than oneself, like Sisyphus, condemned to roll the same boulder up a hill only to have it come crashing down again, for all eternity. The boulder, the hill and the vast expanse of eternity conspire to render Sisyphus insignificant in the face of such enormous machinations, absurd though they may be. However, claims Camus, Sisyphus is happy because he enjoys the certainty of this absurdity. In the light of futility, in a world devoid of God, in a life stripped of intelligibility, there is no clarity, truths or values; humankind must accept responsibility for its actions. There is certainty in this perspective. It is in this spirit of existentialism that young Max van Manen was drawn to the writings of Camus and Sartre, as well as to numerous Dutch authors. Hermann Hesse and Franz Kafka figured largely in his library of German symbolist and existentialist authors. Professor van Manen cautions against confusing existential thought with phenomenology, however, even though existential thinking exhibits strong connections to the phenomenological. He believes that phenomenology is existential in the sense that, while it attends to the phenomena of ordinary life, existentialism is really a philosophy of life, perhaps similar to an organizing framework for a thesis. As a philosophy of life, existentialism advocates that people are responsible for themselves and for their valuation of freedom. This is a philosophical idea that suggests that even freedom carries some responsibility with it; as Sartre notes, we are condemned to freedom. As such, we have choice and must take responsibility for that choice. For Zygmunt Bauman, it is the taking of the responsibility for that choice, rather than the choice itself, that represents morality. This is a recurring theme in art and literature, music and dance. Zygmunt Bauman (1993) takes a stand on the issue of morality, claiming that morality is a function of responsibility and, as such, humans have the freedom to choose right or wrong but that true morality exists in taking responsibility for these choices. Along with Camus, Bauman cuts straight to the core of what it means to be an existentialist, although one may not necessarily be a phenomenologist.

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The Historical Context Phenomenological inquiry has an interesting history, if only for the fact that it is intertwined with the two other methodologies examined thus far, hermeneutics and narrative inquiry. As noted previously, while these three methodologies bear family resemblances, it is unlikely that one would mistake one for the others, particularly as phenomenology owes a debt to existentialist thought, popularized by Jean-Paul Sartre (1993) and Albert Camus (1991). Phenomenology derives from as far back as ancient Greece. Husserl’s distinction between appearance (phainomenon in Greek) and reality is a distinction that can also be found in Plato’s The Allegory of the Cave or in Aristotle’s writings. Even the term “phenomenology” comes from a combination of the Greek words phainomenon and logos, which literally means a reasoned account (logos) or a study of the ways that things appear. By the eighteenth century, the term, phenomenology, had become associated with the theory of appearances found in the analysis of the sense of perception of empirical knowledge. It was also appropriated by the philosophers, Kant and Hegel. Franz Brentano (1838–1917) used the term to define a “descriptive psychology.” Husserl was a student of Brentano, and this charismatic teacher exerted significant influence on him. However, due to the centrality of the notion of intentionality (Tanabe, 2015, n.p.) in Husserl’s work, while Husserl is considered to be the father of phenomenology, Brentano is considered to be its main forerunner. The historical pattern of phenomenology is represented primarily by the philosophical tradition launched in the first half of the twentieth century. At that time, the discipline of phenomenology was prized as the proper foundation of all philosophy, although its methods and characterization were widely debated. These debates have continued to the present day. Rene Descartes (1596–1650), in support of subject/object distinction, assisted in the development of the twin traditions of rationalism and empiricism. In promoting this scientific method, however, significant ground was lost in focusing on objective knowledge at the expense of experiential knowledge, which is, at its core, a subjective awareness. Phenomenology, as a consequence, attempted to ameliorate this objectiveness by offering an account of how the subject, who experiences the phenomenon, and the object, that which is experienced, “are not externally related, but internally unified” (Tanabe, 2015, n.p.). It is the phenomenon that is taken as the beginning point for a descriptive analysis. Edmund Husserl (1859–1938), the “father” of phenomenology, was concerned with the study of experience and how objects or artefacts represent themselves as a result of such experience. It is the experience and the various components of that experience that are considered to comprise the “phenomenon.” Thus, phenomenology attempts to describe essential features of a given experience, or of any experience, from the “first person” point of view. A central tenet of phenomenology is the theory of “intentionality” (Tanabe, 2015, n.p.) that upholds the notion that all experience contains some relationship to concrete or abstract objects.

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As a result, when it comes to phenomenology, consciousness is always consciousness of something—an object or, in some cases, a state of affairs. Consequently, one is always related to the world through experience in some way, shape or form. As such, to ignore this point is to deal with ideas, or abstractions, rather than events. Therefore, such “abstractions” are not a part of phenomenological inquiry because, simply put, they are not objects, artefacts or states of anything. They are abstractions, ideas or representations of existing and concrete states. In this way, phenomenology differs from other methodologies in its definitive separation between the subject that experiences and the object of that experience. Husserl, however, remained captivated by issues of epistemology and would write progressively newer introductions to the study of phenomenology. Most of his books were programmatic introductions to phenomenology. However, Husserl’s study of mathematics allowed him to consider several foundational problems in epistemology and theory of science, which resulted in his first major work, Logical Investigations (1900–1901), considered to be the founding text for studies in phenomenology. His next major work Ideas Pertaining to a Pure Phenomenology and a Phenomenological Philosophy, Volume One (1913) marked his departure from the descriptive phenomenology of his earlier work to transcendental phenomenology. His last major work was The Crisis of the European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology (1952). Because he was in the habit of writing down phenomenological reflections each day, Husserl left behind literally tens of thousands of pages of research manuscripts. These manuscripts continue to be published in Husserliana by Springer Publishers and continue to be a major source of phenomenological research. Husserl’s work to establish phenomenology as a rigorous science was further developed through the efforts of noted scholars such as Max Scheler, Martin Heidegger, Jean-Paul Sartre, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Paul Ricœur, Jacques Derrida, and Jean-Luc Marion. Max Scheler (1874–1928), a German philosopher, further developed the methodology associated with phenomenology. It was Martin Heidegger who affirmed that all twentieth century philosophers were indebted to Max Scheler and called him “the strongest philosophical force in modern Germany, nay, in contemporary Europe and in contemporary philosophy as such” (Heidegger, 1984, p. 50). While Scheler was not a student of Husserl’s, he was Husserl’s contemporary. However, things were not easy between the two philosophers. As his relationship with Husserl declined, due to a philosophical departure from Husserl’s phenomenology and development of his own notion of phenomenology, Scheler’s relationship with Heidegger burgeoned, and Scheler’s phenomenological ideas and understanding became more closely aligned with Heideggerian thought. Scheler also postulated that phenomenology could traverse any philosophical terrain, without consideration for certainty or ontological underpinnings. For Scheler, every essence and existence had a value (wert sein) or worth, around which his entire philosophy is constructed.

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Martin Heidegger (1889–1976), a student of Edmund Husserl’s, not only contributed enormously to hermeneutics, phenomenology likewise owes him a great debt. Upon Husserl’s retirement in 1928, Martin Heidegger succeeded him as chair of the philosophy department at Freiburg University. Even though, akin to Husserl, Heidegger remained trapped within ontological questions of the meaning of being, he helped to propel phenomenology to become one of the most significant philosophical movements of the twentieth century. Jean-Paul Sartre (1905–1980), himself a student of Heidegger’s, was a French philosopher, biographer, novelist, playwright, literary critic and political activist. A key developer of the philosophy of existentialism, Sartre also lent a great deal to phenomenology, and this energy continues unabated in these and other disciplines. During World War II, Sartre was captured and imprisoned by German troops, which undoubtedly influenced his views on existentialism. During this time, Sartre read Heidegger’s Time and Being, reprinted in 2008, which was highly influential in his own work on phenomenological ontology. For Sartre, unlike Husserl, the self is nothing more than a sequence of acts of consciousness, including radically free choices. Maurice Merleau-Ponty (1908–1961) was a French philosopher who was strongly influenced by Husserl’s phenomenological work, as well as by the hermeneutic work of Martin Heidegger. In true phenomenological terms, Merleau-Ponty emphasized the constitution of meaning, and viewed perception and being as the lived experiences of the world, which serve as the basis of all knowledge. He believed that perception was foundational to understanding, as well as being of significance in engaging with the world. His work also focused on language and spontaneity of expression, influencing a number of areas of philosophy beyond phenomenological inquiry. As with other phenomenological thinkers, Merleau-Ponty expressed his views in his writing about art and literature, as well as politics and linguistics. Merleau-Ponty viewed the human body as the main portal for knowing the world, an alternative to the Cartesian preoccupation with the scientific method of placing consciousness at the centre of knowledge. Merleau-Ponty’s claim was that the body and that which was perceived by the body could never be disentangled, a concept that eventually led him from phenomenology towards what he termed “indirect ontology.” For Merleau-Ponty, the world and the sense of self are emerging phenomena in an ever-developing sense of “becoming.” The incompleteness of one’s experience and, hence, one’s knowing actually sustains reality rather than diminishing it. This transcendental view is almost akin to Plato’s view from within the cave (Plato, 2017), in that a range of possible perspectives exist. Thus, any object that can be perceived is inherently contextualized within meaningful relationships among objects throughout the world. Each object, as a result, is reflective of another. Therefore, according to Merleau-Ponty, (2017), the perceiver experiences all of these perspectives, conscious, unconscious and potential, which that object has upon the beings around it.

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While Husserl recognized the perspectival nature of human experience, Heidegger and others developed the notion in a variety of ways. However, it was Merleau-Ponty (2017) who developed the perspective relating to how one constitutes one’s perceptual experiences, which are essentially dynamic and perspectival, and which act as a mirror to all other perceptions. Because one’s bodily involvement with things is always provisional, one encounters meaningful things that may be seen in a unified way, however indeterminate. Merleau-Ponty (2017) does not postulate Husserl’s credo that “all consciousness is consciousness of something,” but suggests that “all consciousness is perceptual consciousness,” thus establishing a significant turn in the development of phenomenology. Paul Ricœur (1913–2005), with whom we have become previously acquainted (Chap. Three), was a French philosopher who led the way in combining phenomenology with hermeneutics. In so doing, he lent the descriptiveness of phenomenology to the study of textual interpretation. Ricœur (2004) sees philosophy basically as a hermeneutical activity seeking to uncover the meaning of existence through the interpretation of phenomena, which can only emerge through its embeddedness in the world of culture. Jacques Derrida (1930–2004) was also a French philosopher and is renowned for developing the semiotic analysis known as “deconstruction,” developed within the context of phenomenology (Peters & Biesta, 2009). He acknowledged his debt to Husserl and Heidegger and his work in applied linguistics (Busch, 2012) has helped in advancing the cause of phenomenology. Heidegger condemned Derrida’s attempt to ground meanings constitutive of the world outside all relationality as logocentrism, the tradition of Western science and philosophy that regards words and language as a fundamental expression of an external reality. Derrida argued that, in essence, any philosophical enterprise is logocentric (Lamont, 1987), inherited from patriarchal Judaic and Greek traditions, which, as we have discovered, appear omnipresent within Western thought. By the 1960s, structuralism became touted as the successor to phenomenology. Derrida took a contrarian perspective that proved so influential that it had the effect of reframing the duel in terms of a debate by asking, “Must not structure have a genesis, and must not the origin, the point of genesis, be already structured, in order to be the genesis of something?” (Baofu, 2009, p. 214). In short, every phenomenon has a history, which cannot be understood without understanding that its genesis represents a “default” origin of circular logic. Derrida argued that the entire Western philosophical tradition depends upon arbitrary dichotomous categories, such as sacred versus profane, the signifier versus the signified or mind versus body and that any text contains implicit hierarchies. In this way, an order is imposed on reality and a subtle repression is exercised, since such hierarchies exclude, subordinate and hide potential meanings (Lamont, 1987). The procedure for exposing and disposing of such binaries, Derrida referred to as “deconstruction” (Lawlor, 2016). Jean-Luc Marion (1946–), previously a student of Derrida’s, is a French philosopher, theologian and phenomenologist (Horner, 2005). Much of Marion’s work focuses on Descartes and Derrida, along with phenomenologists such as Heidegger

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and Husserl with a view towards extending future directions for phenomenological research. His book, Étant donné: Essai d’une phénoménologie de la donation (1997), investigates phenomenological givenness (the actuality of being given), the saturated phenomenon and the gifted. Marion attempts to “radically reduce the whole phenomenological project beginning with the primacy of givenness” (Marion, 2002a, p. xxi) that he claims is not only required prior to the illumination of phenomena in the conscious mind but has also been largely ignored. In this way, he strives to defuse the circularity of Derrida’s argument that there must be something before there can be anything. Marion offers this as a new first principle of phenomenology, building on and, at the same time, challenging prior reasonings by Husserl and Heidegger (Marion, 2002a). Marion contends that, although givenness admits to limitation regarding intuition, “as it gives itself…, though only within the limits in which it presents itself…. givenness alone is absolute, free and without condition” (Marion, 2002a, pp. 17–18). By describing the three structures of phenomena from the basis of givenness, Marion claims to have succeeded in describing phenomena that previous metaphysical and phenomenological approaches, such as that advanced by Derrida, have either ignored or excluded.

The Political Context The “saturated phenomenon,” advanced by J-L. Marion, suggests that phenomena can comprise “such overwhelming givenness or overflowing fulfillment that the intentional acts aimed at these phenomena are overrun, flooded—or saturated” (Caputo, 2007, p 164). In Prolegomena to Charity (2002b), Marion deals with the intentionality of love, which is concerned with intentionality and phenomenology. As an example, he explores the notion of human love and its lack of definition; “We live with love as if we knew what it was about. But as soon as we try to define it, or at least approach it with concepts, it draws away from us” (Marion, 2002b, p. 71). The problem with love, then, is that to love another is to love the idea of the other, or the “lived experiences” that arise in the consciousness of another. Consequently, love, loved for itself alone, is inevitably self-love; the phenomenological figure of self-idolatry (Marion, 2002b). Intentionality—the quality of mental states, such as thoughts, beliefs, desires and hopes, which consist in their being directed towards an object, state of affairs or other phenomena claims—Marion avers, is the solution; he then explores the difference between the who, who intentionally sees objects and the me, who is intentionally seen by a counter-consciousness—another—whether the me likes it or not. This position is reminiscent of the subjective/objective stance adopted by Martin Buber (1971) and, in turn, by Jean-Paul Sartre (1993). As can be seen from the above analysis, phenomenology tends to study conscious experience, as experienced from the subjective or first person point of view. In the broadest sense of the phenomenological tradition, phenomenology addresses the meaning things have in our own experience, notably, the significance of objects, events, tools, the flow of time, the self, and others, as these things arise and are

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experienced in our “life-world” (Smith, 2016, n.p.). While phenomenology has been central to the tradition of continental European philosophy throughout the twentieth century, the “philosophy of mind” has also evolved throughout the twentieth century by way of the Austro-Anglo-American tradition of analytic philosophy (Smith, 2016, n.p.). These two traditions overlap and, accordingly, this chapter will attempt to accommodate both traditions. The challenge is to characterize phenomenology in a contemporary view, while also respecting those historical traditions that the “modern” view draws upon. Husserl referred to the structure of these forms of experience as “intentionality,” meaning that consciousness is a consciousness of something. Thus, one’s experience is only represented, directed toward or “intends” things through concepts, thoughts, ideas and/or images, specifically. According to Husserl, these concepts, thoughts, ideas or images comprise the meaning or content of a given experience and are necessarily distinct from what it is that they mean. To confuse things further, the basic intentional structure of consciousness, found in reflection or analysis, involves further forms of experience, developing a rather complex view of what it means to be aware, in time and space, in all its permutations, within the stream of consciousness. Additionally, there are a multiplicity of “enabling” conditions of intentionality, including embodiment, cultural context, and language as just a few examples. Thus, phenomenology leads from conscious experience into conditions that provide intentionality to the experience. Traditional phenomenology focuses on subjective, practical, and social conditions of experience. However, philosophy of mind focuses on the neural substrate of experience, on how conscious experience and mental representation or intentionality are grounded in brain activity…. Cultural conditions thus seem closer to our experience and to our familiar self-understanding than do the electrochemical workings of our brain. (Smith, 2016, n.p.)

In studying conscious experience, one reflects on various experiences as they are experienced, in much the same way that research data is collected and analyzed simultaneously. As such, one proceeds from the first-person point of view. Phenomenological analysis assumes familiarity with the type of experience to be characterized. At the time of the experience, however, one does not normally characterize an experience, but tends to refer to a background of having lived through similar types of experiences. Classical phenomenologists identified and practiced at least three distinguishable methods; from Husserl and Merleau-Ponty, lived experience is a type of experience found in one’s past experience. This, then, allows for a pure description of lived experience. Heidegger combined hermeneutics with phenomenology so that types of experience may be related to relevant contextual features. In this vein, Heidegger and followers reference hermeneutics and the art of interpretation in social and linguistic contexts. In a third model, one analyzes the form of a type of experience. According to Smith (2016), “In the end, all the classical phenomenologists practiced analysis of experience, factoring out notable features for further elaboration” (n.p.).

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While conscious experience may be the starting point of phenomenology, Husserl maintained that one may be only vaguely aware of experiences on the periphery of one’s attention, such as activities that one may be aware of but not included in. Heidegger stressed that one is not explicitly conscious of habitual patterns of action, such as driving to work each day. Furthermore, psychoanalysts have noted that much intentional mental activity is not conscious at all, until one realizes how one feels about one’s own experience. These conscious, semi-conscious and even unconscious mental activities, along with relevant background conditions implicitly invoked in one’s experience, continue to be topics of debate within the ever-­broadening realm of phenomenology. In this way, classifying, describing, interpreting, and analyzing experience and structures of experiences answer to our own lived experience. Throughout, intentionality remains the salient structure of such experience. Thus, one explores structures within the “stream of consciousness.” Furthermore, as one reflects on how these phenomena work, one may turn to the analysis of relevant conditions that allow these experiences to occur, represent or “intend” as they do. The study of phenomenology is complex and closely bound up with a number of philosophies, both related and distant. For example, one must decide on whose version of phenomenology one wishes to subscribe to when one chooses a phenomenological methodology. The fact that existentialism has had enormous influence on phenomenological thought is also a consideration upon looking into the formation of phenomenology. So, hopefully for purposes of clarification, rather than incurring greater confusion, let us return to the interview with Professor Max van Manen, who offers a perspective on the understanding of phenomenological thought in terms of what comprises the core values in this methodology.

Video Clip 5.3: Professor Max van Manen (▶ https://doi.org/10.1007/000-­6cv)

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According to Professor van Manen, one of his own professors at the Utrecht School of Phenomenological Psychology, Martinus J. Langeveld, had once claimed that he was less interested in Husserl’s philosophical “pretensions”—his claims or assertions regarding claims—than in his methods. In interpreting that statement, van Manen believes Langeveld to be saying that he is really interested in the Husserlian attitude, in the way of looking at the world through a phenomenological lens. Of particular interest is Husserl’s “primal impressional consciousness,” and his notion of “retention” and “pretension,” rather than the pretensions, themselves. Simply put, perception is action-oriented. When one perceives something, it is perceived as actionable. That is to say, the phenomenon that is perceived may be perceived as something that can be reached, attained or grasped—or not. As a result, such affordances for potential action shape the way that one actually perceives the world. In Husserl’s analysis, the basic temporal structure of “protention,” or anticipation, of an event, primal impression, and retention characterizes one’s perception as the most basic form of cognition, as well as consciousness in general. Because of this, the structure of perceptual consciousness, as it moves through time, should reflect or enable this “enactive,” or actionable, character in some significant way (Gallagher & Zahavi, 2014). Thus, as Professor van Manen notes, in any moment, the past (retention) is always present. Now, if time or, perhaps more accurately, the passage of time, is recognized as merely a construct, then the future (pretension) is also present. However, in the next moment, that past moment remains present as retention. So, to risk confusion, the past is always present in any future moments. Thus, in every retention is another retention and another and another, and so on. Professor van Manen claims that this is how we are able to remember the melodies of songs and any other products of experience. Nothing has been lost because the past travels alongside the present and into the future. With phenomenology, it is always the present instant that one strives to grasp. However, that moment is impossible to hold onto. One can never quite grasp the moment and hold it because, as Professor van Manen notes, that is the pre-­ consciousness of everyday life that one can never quite grasp. One is always a moment too late. Consequently, one is never really able to be in the present, in the “now” because, as soon as we arrive at the present moment, it has become the past. Professor van Manen notes that this is the point that Derrida makes in deconstructing Husserl. While one travels in the present, one is never really able to remain totally in the present because the present is so very fleeting. In offering a précis of Derrida’s notion, Professor van Manen opines; “Well, yeah, on the one hand you are always, in the now. On the other hand you are never in the now.” He [Derrida] doesn’t quite say it like that but he makes sort of interesting observations that you have to draw this kind of conclusion. (Video-Clip 5.3)

While the rest of us are perhaps still scratching our heads and trying to sort through this apparent contradiction, van Manen offers the opinion that this is wonderful because it makes phenomenology possible. He says that, on one hand, one is always experiencing life as it occurs, while, on the other hand, when one chooses to

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reflect on that experience, the reflection is always a retrospective experience conducted in the present. In offering a further definition of phenomenology, Professor van Manen says that phenomenology tries to reflectively grasp that which is pre-reflective. This is lived experience, in that phenomenology strives to capture a direct understanding of that which is “orginary”—the cause or the source of the lived experience—in everyday life, even though this defies possibility. Another aspect of the definition of phenomenology is the instilling of wonder. Max van Manen attempts to do this with his students by asking them to formulate a question about what an experience is like. He admits that it takes some time for most students to truly begin to wonder about that question. However, when they arrive at that point, they realize that they are not really investigating a problem but, in investigating an aspect of the human condition, are investigating what it is that makes us human. It is this capacity that allows phenomenology, more so than any other qualitative research methodology or design, to access the question of what it means to be human. Max van Manen also notes that phenomenology attempts to articulate what is unique about any phenomenon that makes it different from any other phenomenon. This “singularity” of things is exactly that moment that was discussed above; the idea that no two moments are ever the same. Even the experience of sitting in a chair, he states, is a unique experience, no matter how many times one sits in a chair. Each experience is a unique experience and always will be, simply because no moment in one’s life is the same as any other moment. Professor van Manen asks how one can study something that is not replicable, phenomenologically, and admits that this is the fascinating part of phenomenology. The real challenge is to view phenomenology not merely as a research methodology, replete with techniques and methods but, ultimately, to view it as a matter of writing and in the writing is the reflecting. It is the writing that contains the “gift of meaning.” Professor van Manen points to the great phenomenologists and notes that they were all authors, not merely writers, who developed their own unique powers of description. In this sense, Jacques Derrida, as well as researchers such as Maurice Blanchot, are phenomenologists who write about writing. Professor van Manen also notes that philosophers do not talk about the process of writing, even though they are all involved in the process. Even though they all do this, they do not reflect on it, which Max van Manen considers to be unusual because writing is at the very core of phenomenology—the phenomenology of writing. Professor van Manen returns to Derrida to reveal that Jacques Derrida shows us that one’s everyday experiences—lived experience—are never replicated exactly. Each moment is different for each individual than the one preceding it or following it. It differs from person to person. For example, to observe a work of art, no two people will ever have exactly the same experience. This singularity of experience is one of the hallmarks of phenomenology. Even though that experience is unique, the phenomenologist attempts to say something about it, even though, as van Manen asks, “How can you say something about an experience if it is never the same?” Even as the video-clip ends, the question surrounding this profound contradiction remains.

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The Postmodern Context Even though “modern” phenomenology came into being through Edmund Husserl, phenomenology has been practiced for centuries. From Hindu and Buddhist traditions, through to Descartes, Hume, and Kant and, finally, to Brentano and William James, the phenomenological tradition has left its fingerprints throughout society. And when recent analytic philosophers of mind have addressed issues of consciousness and intentionality, they have often been practicing phenomenology. Even so, with its roots tracing back through the centuries, phenomenology came into full bloom with the work of Husserl. During the first half of the twentieth century, Husserl’s work was followed by a flurry of phenomenological writing. The ensuing diversity produced by these new thoughts eventually resulted in no less than seven types of traditional phenomenology (Encyclopedia of Phenomenology, 1997). Among these permutations of phenomenological inquiry are at least eleven variations: • Naturalistic phenomenology – assuming that consciousness is part of nature, this type of phenomenological undertaking studies how consciousness is constituted in the natural world. • Cognitive Phenomenology – Whatever the precise form of phenomenal character, one might ask how that character is distributed over mental life. Cognitive phenomenology asks what is phenomenal in different types of mental activity. Issues of whether phenomenality is restricted to the “feel” of sensory experience, or if phenomenality is also present in cognitive experiences, such as in thinking, as well as other perspectives, are open to exploration (Bayne & Montague, 2011). • Eco-phenomenology  – can be described as the pursuit of the relationalities of worldly engagement, both human and otherwise (Brown & Toadvine 2003), situated in a space that is neither purely objective nor purely subjective. It is not purely objective because it is reciprocally constituted, or remembered, by diverse lived experiences that motivate the movements of countless individuals or organisms. It is neither truly subjective because it represents a field of material relationships between bodies. Neither is it governed exclusively by causality nor intentionality. In this “in-between” or liminal space, phenomenology can overcome its incipient opposition to naturalism, which claims that rules of nature govern the universe, that everything arises from natural properties and/or causes, and that supernatural/spiritual explanations must be excluded or discounted. • Existential phenomenology – studies human existence, including the experience of free will, choice or action in real situations. However, it was not until Heidegger’s Being and Time (1927/2008) that numerous existential themes were incorporated into phenomenological traditions. Existential phenomenology investigates meaning in the context of lived experience, as ultimate meaning is found in what it means to be, a question that can only be posed in the context of one’s own existence. Heidegger claimed that one’s “average everyday” approach to the world is the ultimate intentional relation upon which all others are grounded. Jean-Paul Sartre’s Being and Nothingness: A Phenomenological

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Essay on Ontology (1993) captured the sentiment that ontology should be considered through a phenomenological description and classification of the ultimate origin and end of meaning in the lives of individuals and the universe as a whole. In addition to two fundamental aspects of being, “in-itself” and “for-­ itself,” equivalent to the non-conscious and consciousness, respectively, Sartre added “for-others,” which examines the social dimension of existence. Existential phenomenology seeks to describe the social construction of group reality by asking about the nature of the reality that holds a concept or phenomenon together. As a result, ontology (the nature and perception of one’s reality) allows one to form epistemologies (how one knows and understands what one knows). Generative historicist phenomenology – addresses how meaning, found in experience, is generated in temporal historical processes of collective experience. Genetic phenomenology – investigates the genesis of meanings of phenomena within one’s experience. Genetic phenomenology is distinct from static phenomenology, which primarily focuses on the fixed intentional relation between an act and an object. It is confined to certain domains of experience and is “static,” as objects of investigation are “frozen” in time. As Husserl (1970) became cognizant of the origin and history of those objects, the experience includes sedimentation or patterns of understanding which colour these experiences. Genetic phenomenology explores the origin and history of this process. Hermeneutic phenomenology  – examines interpretive structures of experience and how one understands and engages with phenomena in the human world. For Heidegger, since understanding always involves an element of interpretation, he characterized his brand of phenomenology as “hermeneutic phenomenology.” Hermeneutic phenomenology examines the structure and interpretation of texts, focusing on language and communication, as well as, recently, additional forms of multimedia data. Interpretation of texts, however, is not merely about grammar, structure and content in the text but also comprises the social/historical/ cultural context in which the text is written and/or received. Realistic phenomenology – interrogates the structure of consciousness and intentionality. This assumes consciousness and intentionality occurs in a world external to consciousness, rather than a world brought into being by consciousness. Realistic phenomenology emphasizes the search for the essential structures of various concrete situations. Heterophenomenology – first arose as a critique of phenomenology. Dennett (2003) criticized phenomenology’s explicit first-person approach as being incompatible with the more scientific third-person approach. Along with coining the term, “autophenomenology,” he contrasted it with his own alternative, which he refers to as heterophenomenology. Neurophenomenology – assumes that conscious experience is grounded within neural activity in embodied action in appropriate surroundings. Pure phenomenology is therefore joined with biological and physical science in a way not entirely satisfactory to traditional phenomenologists. Transcendental phenomenology – considers how phenomena are constituted in “pure” or transcendental consciousness. It focuses on essential meanings of indi-

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vidual experience. In other words, it asks what the core is that holds the phenomena or experiences together. It strives to identify invariant structures of human experiences or of phenomena related to human experience. It resists questions of relationships to the natural world, turning away from any reality beyond the phenomena. This “transcendental turn” is accompanied by the concepts of the epoché and the reduction. The epoché is a methodological shift in one’s attitude from naively accepting certain dogmatic beliefs about the world to “bracketing” or suspending those beliefs in order to discover their true sense. The reduction, used by Husserl, describes the thematization of the relation between subjectivity and the world. Transcendental phenomenology, one of the most controversial and contested aspect of the discipline, is also called constitutive phenomenology. Husserl’s transcendental turn involved the method of epoché (from the Greek skeptics’ notion of abstaining from belief), which required “bracketing” the question of the existence of the natural world around us. In so doing, one attends to the structure of one’s conscious experience, through reflection. There were reactions to this view, as explained by Professor Max van Manen in the video-clip.

Video Clip 5.4: Professor Max van Manen (▶ https://doi.org/10.1007/000-­6cy)

In this video-clip, Professor van Manen defines the idea of primal impressional consciousness as an experience that one may have had in the natural word but which has not been examined. In fact, one may not even notice it. Primal impressional consciousness may not have been reflected upon previously but it can be “brought back,” even though it may not be comprised of anything particularly meaningful. It

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constitutes “merely an experience” like many others, although not exactly the same as those others. However, as one recalls the experience of that phenomenon, that phenomenon now gains significance. By recalling it, it now has meaning ascribed to it, no matter what that meaning may be. As Gadamer would say, notes Professor van Manen, it is now a pattern. He notes that Husserl may say of the same experience of the pattern that the phenomenon is exactly that, created by the focus on it. However, Heidegger, in response to the “bracketing” of the question of the existence of the natural world around us in order to achieve the primal impressional consciousness, would claim that this is not even relevant because one is already thrown into the natural world. One is already there and so, the meaning is already there. Primal impressional consciousness becomes irrelevant to Heidegger because it is already a part of one’s experience and so, it matters not where its origins lie. Professor van Manen makes another point about lived experience. He notes that the term has become so popular that it suffers from “the popularity effect” (Edelsky & Cherland, 2007) and has become synonymous with any experience, not necessarily even a significant experience. However, technically, lived experience really refers to the pre-reflective experience before one reflects upon it. Unfortunately, it is common to hear the term in reference to any significant experience. This linguistic “creep” is not phenomenological. Essentially, suggests Professor van Manen, phenomenology is very simple, as it is merely a study of life as one experiences it. While, conceptually, this presents few intellectual obstacles, as soon as one begins a phenomenological study, all kinds of issues present themselves. For example, to identify a lived experience and to begin to explore this phenomenon requires a phenomenological discourse. One must attempt, as Merleau-Ponty suggests, to get to the point where the discourse itself returns you to the experience as it was lived, as it presented itself. It is at this point that Max van Manen returns to the art of discourse. He notes that at the heart of qualitative inquiry is writing. This is true, he claims, for all qualitative inquiry, not simply phenomenology. Even the newer forms of ethnography, he notes, are becoming more interested in the evocative; so much so, he says, that even that language they use, “evocative ethnography,” is fascinating. Phenomenological terminology is experiencing a diaspora of sorts, it would appear. At this point, professor van Manen refers to an article he once wrote, entitled “From Meaning to Method” rather than from method to meaning because, phenomenologically speaking, he was attempting to recreate the philosophical methodology of phenomenology. It is in this way that one may get at the meaning of things. To his way of thinking, philosophical, reflective phenomenological thinking and inquiry is a crucial aspect of this methodology that is not addressed by the very people who claim to practice it. The conversation becomes lost in “eidetic reduction,” a technique in the study of essences in phenomenology, the goal of which is to identify the basic components of a given phenomena. Professor van Manen notes that these kinds of philosophical notions, while they may be addressed through the philosophical literature, do not discuss the process of writing. They refuse to see, acknowledge or make problematic that, when we perform phenomenological

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inquiry, the writing is the important part of rendering the experience, phenomenologically. That is what should be happening in the writing. Thus, phenomenology holds intention, the particular, the concrete, the singular, the universal, the general, the transcendental, and the reflective. Within these tensions, one can gain phenomenological insights. In essence, then, phenomenological inquiry is about writing. It attempts to describe a phenomenon so accurately that a person reading the account would be able to experience that phenomenon in just the same way as the person who originally experienced it had. This is a noble but impossible endeavour, simply because it is not possible to capture an experience with such an artificial medium as the written or spoken word, or even in media. However, that is the challenge presented to individuals who wish to use this methodology. The challenge is to replicate the emotional, psychological, intellectual experience in words. In a way, then, one may ask whether the study of phenomenology attempts to constantly make copies or if it is making additional originals of lived experience. It is neither! It is not making copies nor making originals because it is attempting to make substantive those preconscious moments of living. Classical phenomenology, according to Max van Manen, ties into various areas of epistemology, logic and ontology, and leads into parts of ethical, social and political theory.

The Philosophical Context Lived experience is pre-reflective in the sense that it is experienced as one experiences it, while not yet reflecting or theorizing about it in order to make sense of it. The phrase “phenomenology of practice” refers to inquiries that address the practices of professional practitioners as well as practices of everyday life. Thus, the phenomenon is the instant of the “now.” In other words, a phenomenon can be seen as a normal moment of everyday life. As such, even without realizing it, one is always in the “now,” in the present moment, even when memories are recalled or a future event is anticipated. However, attempting to grasp the moment is always futile because time marches forward and the instant of the “now” instantly and always becomes the past. However, this is exactly what phenomenological reflection attempts to accomplish. It strives to uncover or reflect upon those primal meanings from the present moment of the “now” which has passed. Through this questioning, this reflecting or this uncovering, one may arrive at a meaningful understanding of the experience or “phenomenon.” There are no finite understandings for the meaning of existence and, so, insights are never final. Because life is essentially complex and ambiguous, therein lies the value of phenomenological inquiry. So, after all is said and done, what is the key question that phenomenology strives to answer? It attempts to answer questions concerning the meaning, the structure and/or the essence of lived experience of any phenomenon for an individual or group of people. While Husserl (1970) discusses phenomenology as a philosophy,

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Polkinghorne (1989) suggests that phenomenology explores structures of consciousness in human experiences. As can be seen, phenomenology takes myriad forms, as developed within the postmodern context, above. Phenomenology attempts to ask originary, or “source,” questions that describe unique lived meaning aspects of human experience. Max van Manen observes that “phenomenology asks for the very nature of a phenomenon for that which makes a some-‘thing’ what it is” (1984, p. 38). He goes on to describe his approach to phenomenological perspectives by stating: From a phenomenological point of view, we are less interested in the factual status of particular instances: whether something happened, how often it tends to happen, or how the occurrence of an experience is related to the prevalence of other conditions and events. For example, phenomenology does not ask, “How do these children learn this particular material?” but it asks, “What is the nature or essence of the experience of learning (so that I can now better understand what this learning experience is like for these children)? (Van Manen, 1990, p. 10)

To regard this phenomenologically, one needs to explore, first of all, the understanding or meaning that people, the study participants, have or make of the reality of the phenomena under study. Then, the subject matter or the experience of the phenomenon is important. In order to get at this understanding, one requires exposure to the participants’ experiences of and interaction with the phenomenon. With a phenomenological study, the researcher may begin by asking participants to describe that experience. The responses may act as prompts to probe further in order to get at the essence of the experience. There is always an assumption that there is a core, an essence, or shared understanding among people that characterizes the phenomenon. Phenomenological research studies tend to follow the generally accepted inductive data analysis format of coding, categorizing, and thematizing. Every statement is analyzed in terms of relevance to the research question(s) of the study in order to create units of meaning, which are then clustered into categories, from which themes can be drawn. Moustakas (1994) developed a specific set of techniques relevant to phenomenological data analysis. Moustakas calls for more collaborative research participation by suggesting that participants become co-researchers in the research. The first stage, Moustakas refers to as the epoché stage. Here one examines one’s assumptions, beliefs and values and sets them aside to free one’s mind in hopes of being as receptive as possible to the experience of others. The methodology is phenomenological in that it reflects on the pre-reflective or lived experience of the participants in the study. This approach is called “phenomenological” reflection because it uses the epoché and the reduction. Epoché means that one attempts to create a space of openness to the experience or phenomenon under study in its pre-reflective sense. Reduction means that, once epoché has been achieved, one attempts to refine the meaning of the phenomenon as it appears in one’s experience or consciousness. Thus, the aim of phenomenological research is to arrive at insights that contribute to one’s thoughtfulness and practical tact by using the methods of epoché and reduction. This process is much more an attitudinal and intuitive practice than an objective application of techniques, codes or methods in an instrumental sense In this

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way, phenomenological inquiry gathers together descriptions of lived experiences, lived through a specific moment in time. As a result, descriptions of lived experiences are always retrospective recollections and can never be purely introspective. Phenomenological endeavours also may utilize specific rhetorical and linguistic practices, known as the vocative dimension of phenomenology. Basically, then, phenomenology studies the structure of various types of experience ranging from perception, thought, memory, imagination, emotion, desire, and volition to bodily awareness, embodied action and social activity, including linguistic activity (Smith, 2016). In further illuminating Moustakas’s data collection and analysis techniques, the following definitions (Creswell, 1998) may be useful. Epoché – Also known as bracketing, this represents the first step in phenomenological reduction. The researcher sets aside, to the greatest extent possible, any preconceived notions about the phenomenon at hand, allowing the researcher to more fully understand the experience from the participant’s point of view. For Heidegger, however, one does not study activities by bracketing the world, because one is already in the world. Rather, one interprets activities and the meaning things have by looking at contextual relations. Horizonalization – This is the second step of data analysis. The researcher lists significant statements relevant to the topic. Each statement, or “horizon” of the experience, is given equal value. The researcher then writes a “structural” description of the experience after the textural description is written. The structural description investigates how the phenomenon was experienced, and attempts to discern all possible meanings and perspectives. The imaginative variation process is employed here, by varying frames of reference and reviewing divergent perspectives. Moustakas (1994) emphasizes intuition, imagination and universal structures in analysis. Therefore, data analysis, for Moustakas, involves horizonalization, reduction and elimination to determine invariant or recurring themes. Clusters of meanings – This third step in phenomenological data analysis requires the researcher to group statements into clusters of similar meaning units or themes. Repetitive and overlapping statements are deleted. Essence – These are the invariant structures. The ultimate goal of the phenomenological researcher is to reduce the meanings of the experience to their essential structure. The researcher uses the textural description to reveal what happened and the structural meanings to reveal how the phenomenon was experienced. Aspects of the experience, universal to all the participants, are invariant structures, or patterns, and reveal the essence of the experience.

Feature Article: Phenomenological Inquiry in Education In order to better observe how some of these components of phenomenological inquiry operate within this tradition, please see the feature article, below, which describes a phenomenological inquiry in the field of education. The article explores the nature of students’ and teachers’ relationship in the context of teacher education,

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focusing on the teacher-student relationship as experienced by lecturers and student teachers in pre-service teacher education programs. The research suggests that educators’ understandings of relationship and relational sensibilities are integral to the relationship. The research accomplished may be considered hermeneutic phenomenology (See Exploring relationships in education: A phenomenological inquiry).

 ummary: Phenomenological Inquiry S and Existentialist Thought Hermeneutic, narrative and phenomenological inquiry share “family resemblances.” Phenomenological inquiry attempts to describe the event, the experience, or the phenomenon. The story of the three blind men and the elephant serve to remind one that methodologies appropriate to any research are subject to a “best fit” trial. While phenomenology is concerned with interpretation, the researcher attempts to illustrate the phenomenon as precisely as possible, even through the impreciseness of the written (or spoken) language, used to convey meaning. As such, phenomenology focuses on the subjectivity and relativity of reality. Scholars who have had an influence on phenomenological thought include Immanuel Kant, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Franz Brentano, Edmund Husserl, Max Scheler, Martin Heidegger, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Paul Ricœur, Jacques Derrida, Jean-Luc Marion and Max van Manen, to name but a few. Phenomenology owes a debt to existentialist thought, as popularized by Jean-Paul Sartre and Albert Camus, even though its roots extend as far back as ancient Greece. In this chapter, Professor van Manen described, in an interview, his understanding of phenomenological inquiry. Phenomenology studies conscious experience from the subjective or first person point of view and attempts to address the meaning things have, the significance of objects, the flow of time, the self and others, as these arise and are experienced. European phenomenology has also evolved throughout the twentieth century by way of the Austro-Anglo-American tradition of analytic philosophy. These two traditions overlap and strive to characterize phenomenology in a contemporary view, while also respecting historical traditions. Classical phenomenologists identified and practiced at least three distinguishable methods. For Husserl and Merleau-­ Ponty, lived experience represents a type of experience found in one’s past experience. In a third model, Heidegger combined hermeneutics with phenomenology in order to analyze the form of a particular type of experience. Professor van Manen defines the idea of primal impressional consciousness as an experience one may have had in the natural word but which has not been examined. Essentially, Max van Manen suggests, phenomenology is quite simple, as it is merely a study of life, as one experiences it. Phenomenological terminology is also experiencing a diaspora of sorts, as many terms are being used within other disciplines of research and in lexicology, as well. Essentially, phenomenological inquiry is about writing, as it attempts to describe a phenomenon so accurately that a person

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reading the account may be able to experience that phenomenon in the same way as the person originally experiencing it. Lived experience is pre-reflective in the sense the phenomenon is the instant of the “now.” Because there are no finite understandings for the meaning of existence, insights are never final. With phenomenology, one strives to grasp the present instant. That moment, however impossible to hold onto, is the pre-conscious experience of everyday life. In offering additional definitions of phenomenology, Professor van Manen avers that phenomenology tries to reflectively grasp that which is pre-reflective, the “lived experience” that is “orginary” in everyday life. Phenomenology is not merely a research methodology, but, ultimately, is a matter of writing that contains the “gift of meaning.” Permutations of phenomenological inquiry include naturalistic cognitive phenomenology, eco-phenomenology, existential phenomenology, generative historicist phenomenology, genetic phenomenology, hermeneutic phenomenology, realistic phenomenology, heterophenomenology and neurophenomenology, as well as transcendental phenomenology. Phenomenological research tends to follow inductive data analysis forms of coding, categorizing, and thematizing. Statements are analyzed in terms of relevance to the research question(s) of the study in order to create units of meaning, which are then clustered into categories, from which themes are drawn. Moustakas (1994) developed a specific set of techniques relevant to phenomenological data analysis that includes epoché, horizonalization, clustering of meanings and deriving the essence of the phenomenon under study. An article by Giles, Smythe and Spence is included in order to view how this research methodology may be used to develop phenomenological research. Suggestions for Further Reading Should the reader wish to read further regarding arts-based inquiry, please see the following articles: Giles, D. (2011). Relationships always matter: Findings from a phenomenological inquiry. Australian Journal of Teacher Education, 36(6), 80–91. http://ro.ecu. edu.au/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1529&context=ajte Miller, C., Veletsianos, G., & Doering, A. (2008). Curriculum at forty below: A phenomenological inquiry of an educator/explorer’s experience with adventure learning in the Arctic. Distance Education, 29(3), 253–267. https://doi. org/10.1080/01587910802395789. http://www.veletsianos.com/wp-­content/ uploads/2008/10/4.pdf Seedat, M., MacKenzie, S., & Mohan, D. (2006). The phenomenology of being a female pedestrian in an African and an Asian city: A qualitative investigation. Transportation Research Part F: Traffic Psychology and Behaviour, 9(2), 139–153. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/ S1369847805000768 Tempo, A. C. (2016). Phenomenological inquiry as a methodology for investigating the lived experience of being critically ill in intensive care. Journal of Intensive and Critical Care, 2(1:8), 1–5. https://doi.org/10.21767/2471-­8505.100017

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van Manen, M. (1996). Childhood’s secrets: Intimacy, privacy and the self reconsidered. Teachers College Press. http://ga-­sforfilm.facecuk.com/book-­2262402-­ childhood-­s-­secrets-­intimacy-­privacy-­and-­the-­self-­reconsidered.aspx van Manen, M. (2006). Writing qualitatively, or the demands of writing. Qualitative Health Research, 16(5), 713–722. http://www.maxvanmanen.com/ files/2011/04/2006-­Writing-­Qualitatively.pdf Selected Annotated Bibliography Baofu, P. (2009). The future of post-human language: A preface to a new theory of structure, context and learning. Cambridge Scholars Press. This book discusses to what extent a universal structure of language for learning exists and whether it is innate or not. As well, under discussion, is whether language learning is mainly context-based. This has implications for questions as to whether the very nature of language delimits one’s mental world. Contrary to conventional wisdom, these apparently plausible perspectives are misleading because the nature of learning has yet to become comprehensively and systematically understood. The virtue of this book is in providing alternatives to better understanding the nature of learning, particularly with respect to language. This inquiry has enormous implications for the larger concern with the nature of thinking, feeling and doing in learning, both with the use of language and beyond it. This seminal work may fundamentally change the way that people think, not just about the nature of language, but also about the nature of learning. Camus, A. (1991). The myth of Sisyphus and other essays (J.  O’Brien, Trans.). Alfred A. Knopf. One of the most influential works of this century, The Myth of Sisyphus and Other Essays is a crucial exposition of existentialist thought. Influenced by works such as Don Juan and the novels of Franz Kafka, these essays begin with a meditation on suicide; the question of living or not living in a universe devoid of order or meaning. With lyric eloquence, Albert Camus brilliantly posits a way out of despair, reaffirming the value of personal existence, and the possibility of life lived with dignity and authenticity. The key, he claims, lies in accepting the pointlessness of being alive. However, rather than despairing, Camus offers an alternative, to choose a purpose. This purpose must necessarily be something greater than the individual. It must be a cause that will offer a structure and a meaning of its own. In essence, it is this cause that provides a reason that, in a world forsaken, will allow the human spirit to not merely prevail but to exhalt in its achievements. Giorgi, A. (Ed.). (1995). Phenomenology and psychological research. Duquesne University Press. This book is not only a theoretical justification of a phenomenological and human scientific approach to psychological research but also represents the most sustained statement to date regarding a phenomenological approach to psychological research, in comparison with mainstream psychology in crucial areas. Phenomenology and psychological research is a further clarification of the

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phenomenological approach to psychological research, along with examples of application in four different content areas: learning, thinking, self-deception and criminal victimization. As such, it informs the reader about the possibilities of phenomenological approaches and offers an opportunity to evaluate them. Those already sympathetic to the approach will find a greater articulation of the theory behind the procedures. The reader will find, in this study, an example of a descriptive and qualitative approach to psychological research that strives to meet both phenomenological and human scientific criteria. Heidegger, M. (1984). The metaphysical foundations of logic: Studies in phenomenology and existential philosophy (M. Heim, Trans.). Indiana University Press. This volume offers a full-scale study of the theory of reality hidden beneath modern logic. The Metaphysical Foundations of Logic originated as a lecture course given by Heidegger in 1928. This text illuminates and underscores the transitional phase in Heidegger’s thought from the existential analysis of Being and Time to the overcoming of metaphysics in his later philosophy. This book affords a searching exposition of the metaphysical problems underpinning Leibniz’s theory of logical judgment. From this, Heidegger establishes that a given theory of logic is rooted in a certain conception of Being. From this vantage point, he explores the significance of Western logic as a system-building technical tool and as a centuries old cultural phenomenon. This volume would be essential reading for scholars and students of philosophy, existentialism, phenomenology and hermeneutics, and is a mainstay of contemporary philosophical thought. Hilborn, R. & Mangel, M. (1997). The ecological detective: Confronting models with data. Princeton University Press. In this volume, Hilborn and Mangel investigate ecological data much the way that a detective would investigate a crime scene. They accomplish this by trying different hypotheses until a coherent picture emerges. The book is not merely a set of statistical procedures but represents an approach to forensic research. The Ecological Detective makes use of computer programming for generating hypotheses, exploration of data, and comparison of different models. Because the authors’ attitude is one of exploration, both statistical and graphical, the background required for understanding is minimal. Thus, students with an undergraduate course in statistics and ecology can add this work to their research library for solving ecological problems. The kinds of questions asked and answered by The Ecological Detective include how to make the field and laboratory coherent, how to link models and data, how to use statistics to help experimentation, and how to integrate modeling with statistics. Horner, R. (2005). Jean-Luc Marion: A theo-logical introduction. Ashgate Publishing. Jean-Luc Marion is one of the leading Catholic thinkers of our time. He is a formidable authority on Descartes and a major scholar in the philosophy of religion. This book presents a concise, accessible and engaging introduction to the theology of

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Jean-Luc Marion. Described as one of the leading thinkers of his generation, Marion’s take on the postmodern is richly enhanced by his expertise in patrology and mystical theology, phenomenology, and modern philosophy. In this first introduction to Marion’s thought, Robyn Horner provides the essential background to Marion’s work, as well as analyzing the most significant themes for contemporary theology. This book serves as an ideal starting point for students of theology and philosophy, as well as for those seeking to further their knowledge of cutting-edge thinking in contemporary theology. It also makes significant contributions to the study of phenomenology. Husserl, E. (1982). Logical investigations. Routledge. Edmund Husserl is generally considered to be the founder of phenomenology, and Logical Investigations represents his most famous work. This volume had a decisive impact on twentieth century philosophy and it remains one of the few works to have influenced both continental and analytic philosophy. Commonly regarded as Husserl’s greatest and most important work, Logical Investigations sketches the basic grammar of conscious experience. In this work, Husserl defends the view of philosophy as an a priori discipline, in contrast to psychology. This makes available to a wider audience a work that remains not only the necessary foundation of Husserl’s copious writings, but offers illuminating insights to those who approach the problems of meaning and the nature of logic from the Anglo-­ American analytic and linguistic tradition. Scholars and students of phenomenological thought and traditions will treasure this volume for its significant contributions to phenomenological inquiry. Merleau-Ponty, M. (2017). Phenomenology of perception (C.  Smith, Trans.). Routledge & Kegan Paul. These are the codified thoughts that afforded Maurice Merleau-Ponty the opportunity to establish himself as a renowned philosopher. Merleau-Ponty arrived on the phenomenological landscape and repudiated some of the most closely held philosophical landmarks of his forebears. The world of philosophy has neglected the body for centuries, if not millennia; Phenomenology of Perception returns one to the most central part of the way we think about it. This book is generally held to be a decisive example of existentialist work. However, existentialism is far from the only influence on this work. As an existential enterprise, this volume brings phenomenology to bear within the very structure of the book. The discerning reader will see echoes of Plato’s forms in Merleau-Ponty’s essences and even an implicit critique of some of Plato’s ideas. This book will be of significant value to those wishing to understand more about the intersections among perception, philosophy, phenomenology and existential thought. Moustakas, C. (1994). Phenomenological research methods. Sage. Clark Moustakas, in this volume, clearly discusses the theoretical underpinnings of phenomenology. Basing his views on the work of Husserl and others, Moustakas takes the reader step by step through the process of conducting a phenomenological study. His concise guide provides numerous examples of successful

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phenomenological studies from a variety of fields including therapy, health care, victimology, psychology and gender studies. The book also includes form letters and other research tools to use in designing and conducting a study. In a time where so much qualitative inquiry remains vague with regards to methods that can be utilized to bring a phenomenological inquiry to a successful close, this volume provides a cogent, coherent and cohesive approach to conducting phenomenological research. Not only will this volume be significant for phenomenological inquiry, it will also be prized in other methodological inquiries for its valuable discussions of research, in general. Peters, M.  A., & Biesta, G. (2009). Derrida, deconstruction, and the politics of pedagogy. Peter Lang Publishing. Jacques Derrida represents one of the foremost philosophers of the humanities and of their place in academia. Throughout his significant career, he was concerned with the humanities’ fate, status, place and contribution. Through his deconstructive readings and writings, Derrida reinvented Western tradition by attending closely to those texts, which constitute it. He redefined its procedures and protocols, questioning and commenting upon the relationship between commentary and interpretation, the practice of quotation, the delimitation of a work and its singularity, its signature and its context. From his early career, Derrida occupied an in-between space that afforded him the freedom to question, to speculate, and to identify new limits to humanitas. With an up-to-date synopsis, review and critique of his writings, this book demonstrates Derrida’s almost singular power to re-conceptualize and reimagine the humanities, and examines his humanism in relation to politics and pedagogy. Sartre, J.-P. (1993). Being and nothingness: A phenomenological essay of ontology (H. E. Barnes, Trans.). Washington Square Press. Born in Paris in 1905, Sartre was a professor of philosophy when he joined the French Army at the outbreak of World War II. Captured by the Germans, he was released, after nearly a year, in 1941. He immediately joined the French resistance, as a journalist. In the postwar era, as a philosopher, critic, novelist and dramatist, Jean-Paul Sartre became one of the most influential men of this century. He died in Paris in 1980. Sartre is widely considered to be one of the greatest philosophers of the twentieth century. Often criticized and all-too-rarely understood, the philosophy of Jean-Paul Sartre encompasses the dilemmas and aspirations of the individual in contemporary society. Being and Nothingness contains the basic tenets of his thought, as well as its more intricate details. A work of inherent force and epic scope, it provides a vivid analysis for all who would understand one of the most influential philosophic movements of any age. This volume represents an exogenesis of existential and phenomenological thought. van Manen, M. (1990). Researching lived experience: Human science for an action sensitive pedagogy. Althouse Press. Max van Manen’s Researching Lived Experience introduces a human science approach to research methodology in education and related fields. The book takes,

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as its starting point, the “everyday lived experience” of human beings in educational situations. Rather than rely on abstract generalizations and theories in the traditional sense, the author offers an alternative that taps the unique nature of each human situation. This book represents a classic of social science methodology and phenomenological research. Researching Lived Experience offers detailed methodological explications and practical examples of inquiry. It shows how to orient oneself to human experience in education and how to construct a textual question, which evokes a fundamental sense of wonder, and it provides a broad and systematic set of approaches for gaining experiential material, which forms the basis for textual reflections. The author discusses the language of educational research and addresses the methodological function of anecdotal narrative in research. Questions for Further Study • How is phenomenology similar to narrative or hermeneutic inquiry? • How does phenomenology differ from hermeneutics and narrative inquiry? • Identify some of the more prominent features of phenomenological inquiry. • What are some of the different kinds of phenomenological inquiry? • If you were to consider phenomenology as a methodology for a project what would that project look like and what type of phenomenological inquiry would you consider? Why?

 xploring relationships in education: E A phenomenological inquiry David Giles Flinders University Elizabeth Smythe & Debra Spence Auckland University of Technology Giles, D., Smythe, E. & Spence, D. (2012). Exploring relationships in education: A phenomenological inquiry. Australian Journal of Adult Learning 52(2), 214-236. Abstract Research that seeks to understand the lived experience of the teacher-student relationship is not prevalent. This article reports on a phenomenological inquiry which explored the nature of this relationship in the context of teacher education. Participant’s lived experiences were hermeneutically interpreted against the philosophical writings of Heidegger and Gadamer. In this way, the research focused on the teacher-student relationship as it is ‘experienced’ by lecturers and student teachers in pre-service teacher education programs, rather than how it might be ‘theorised’. The research found that relationships are essential and matter to the educational experience whether this is recognised or not. Similarly, a teacher’s

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comportment was found to have a communicative aspect that is felt and sensed. Further, relationships are experienced as a play that is lived beyond the rules of engagement. Consistent with critical approaches to education, this research calls for the re-educating of educators towards essential understandings of relationship and the relational sensibilities that are integral to being in relationship.

Introduction Relationships are at the heart of educational encounters. When a teacher stands in front of students, they relate. When a student meets with a teacher, they relate. Remembering teacher-student experiences brings back memories of feeling inspired, bored or perhaps overlooked. Curricula, lesson plans and learning outcomes are long forgotten, but the impact of relationships lives on. How the teacher-student relationship is conceptualised varies considerably. For some, the essential aspect of this relationship is what happens between the teacher and student, as if the relationship comprises an interpersonal space across which the teacher and student traverse (Hartrick Doane 2002; Metcalfe & Game 2006). What lies between those relating is variously described as a space, a gap, or an opening, which allows room for relational happenings. Inter-actions occur as trans-actions exchanged from one person to the other. Buber (1996, 2002) describes relationships that accentuate differences between those relating as “I-it” relationships. These relationships tend to objectify the participants, the relationship, and the transactional nature of the relationship. Palmer’s (1999) concern is that relationships that are reduced to such an objectified form of relating privilege technique and efficiency over relationship. For others, relationship speaks about a connectedness that exists, a connectivity that is basic to our humanity (Bennett 1997). Relational connectedness emphasises holistic relationship rather than the space between those relating. This view of relationship shifts the attention from the functionality of the space between people to an inherent connectedness that is integral to relationship (hooks 2003; Gibbs 2006). Educational processes that value relational connectedness seek to nurture the wholeness of students through a genuine concern for the teacher-student relationship (Miller & Nakagawa 2002). Re-framing relationships within the context of a community draws attention to the inter connectedness of the many shared relationships that co-exist in everyday experiences (Palmer 1997). The many relationships within a particular context resemble a ‘web of communal relationships’ (Palmer 1998: 95). While there is value in theorising from empirical data about relationship, it is equally important that educational research consider the ‘lived experiences’ of relationships in education as this draws us towards essential understandings of the relationship.

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Research Foundations This research inquiry was underpinned by the philosophical writings of Heidegger and Gadamer (Giles 2008). Their works were vital to an ongoing understanding of the ontological nature of phenomenology and its quest for exploring the a priori nature of everyday experiences in the lifeworld (Caelli 2001; Koch 1996). The aim of phenomenological research is to establish a renewed contact with original experience, prior to theorising about it, and to bring to ‘light the meanings woven into the fabric’ (Raingruber 2003: 1155) of the experience. ‘The lifeworld, the world of lived experience, is both the source and object of phenomenological research … [indeed] the starting point and end point’ (van Manen 1990: 36, 53). There were two central understandings of this research. Firstly, it is phenomenological, in the sense that the inquiry explores a particular phenomenon, the teacher-­ student relationship; secondly, the inquiry is hermeneutic, in the sense that the inquiry seeks to lay open prior and variable understandings of things, disclosing essential meanings of the phenomena in the process (Annells 1996). Hermeneutic phenomenological research is a thinking and writing activity. ‘Research and writing are aspects of one process’ (van Manen 1990: 7). Upon hearing the recount of lived experiences, the researcher writes and re-writes from the stories until they consider their interpretation captures the nature of the experience. The importance of phenomenological writing cannot be understated as phenomenological research is the ‘bringing to speech of something’ (van Manen 1990: 32). In most research approaches, researchers write up his/her understandings. In phenomenological research, the researcher writes to understand. In the experience of writing, the researcher contemplatively articulates essential understandings and meanings, letting meanings come that they have not seen before. The process of being-in hermeneutic phenomenology is like a journey of thinking that weaves through the reading-writing-contemplation of the inquiry (Smythe, Ironside, Sims, Swenson, & Spence 2008). The research is experienced as a ‘felt’ and uncertain journey where new possibilities arise, a kind of being-in-the-play of researching. The process of hermeneutical reflection involves a to and fro circling movement towards ‘ontologically positive significance’ (Gadamer 1994: 226), that is, the essential meanings of the phenomenon being researched.

Research Method Phenomenological research brings together philosophical foundations and methodological considerations in an ongoing dialogue. The paths or methods, suggests van Manen (1990: 29), ‘cannot be determined by fixed signposts. They need to be discovered or invented as a response to the question at hand’. In this way, the phenomenological method is not understood as a set of investigative procedures but rather as methods that are contingent upon the phenomenon in question; informed by

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philosophical literature, the insights of previous phenomenological researchers, and lived through experiences as researcher (Ironside 2005). In summary, the phenomenological methodology is a turning towards a phenomenon rather than a preoccupation with research techniques (Gadamer 1994).

Participants The participants in this study were student teachers and lecturers from five different pre-service teacher education providers within New Zealand who were engaged in pre-service teacher education as a student teacher or as a lecturer. Seventeen participants agreed to take part in this study. They represent a sample of lecturers and student teachers in teacher education programs in New Zealand. Nine of the participants were lecturers and eight were student teachers. Three participants identified themselves as Maori, one identified as Pasifika, one as Malaysian; all the remaining participants identified themselves as Pakeha. Pākehā is a Māori term for New Zealanders of predominantly European heritage. Fourteen of the seventeen participants were female. The participants were aged between 20 and 60 years.

Data Collection The first stories that were gathered in this research inquiry were David’s. The stories became a text for an exploration of his prejudices and pre-assumptions in relation to the phenomenon. We were aware that the problem of phenomenological inquiry ‘is not always that we know too little about the phenomenon we wish to investigate, but that we know too much’ (van Manen 1990: 46). An interview was recorded, transcribed and interpreted as a way of making more explicit how David was towards the phenomenon at the initial stages of this research. van Manen suggests that raising awareness of one’s own experience of a phenomenon can provide ‘clues for orienting oneself to the phenomenon and thus to all the other stages of phenomenological research’ (1990: 57). Exploring relationships in education oneself to the phenomenon and thus to all the other stages of phenomenological research’ (1990: 57). A phenomenological interview process gathered thick descriptions of the participant’s everyday experiences of the teacher-student relationship. Once each transcript was completed David followed a process similar to that described by Caelli (2001). He began by reading the typed transcript alongside handwritten notes and highlighted words. Using the participant’s words, he then reconstructed or crafted stories in a chronological and/or logical order. The words and meanings that described the experience were kept, while additional and superfluous words were

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deleted. Each participant was sent their set of stories for their verification, clarification, addition or, if preferred, deletion. Having crafted one hundred and nineteen stories and completed a description and several interpretations for every story, we believed we had sufficient data. We were satisfied that new stories were largely re-telling an essential meaning that had been previously expressed in an interpretation. At this point, the gathering of stories was suspended so that David could move to a deeper interpretative appreciation of the stories in relation to the phenomenon under inquiry. The stories and their interpretations became the basis of dialogue with others. During this time, the quality of the interpretive writing was discussed, interpretations were challenged, and prejudices became a matter of debate. Having reached this stage, David began engaging extensively with the philosophic literature, focusing particularly on the writings of Heidegger and Gadamer. David carried into his reading of this literature, the interpretive writing that had been completed on the stories. In this way, conducting a search for ontological understandings that could further illuminate the analysis was initiated. The purpose was to find phenomenological themes in a whole sense rather than themes relating to each participant; themes that van Manen describes as having ‘phenomenological power’. Van Manen (1990: 107) notes that the ‘essential quality of a theme … [is that we] … discover aspects or qualities that make a phenomenon what it is and without which the phenomenon could not be what it is’.

Trustworthiness Research endeavours need to be trustworthy and have rigour; standards that have been set by the philosophers of this research approach. Smythe et al. (2008) suggest that the trustworthiness of a study is known first by researchers themselves, who test out their thinking by engaging in everyday conversations with those who are living the phenomenon. The trustworthiness of this research project can be seen in the transparent manner in which the interpretive writing was laid open for consideration on a regular basis with scholars, researchers, research seminars and conference presentations. On numerous occasions, the resonance of others during a dialogue provided a hallmark of trustworthiness.

Findings The findings of this research are presented under three themes. The first describes how teachers and students are always in relationship, the second explores the nature of comportment and the third reveals the play of relating. While they are presented as separate themes, they are nevertheless all part of the dynamic, inter-related whole.

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Always in relationship When the relationship matters, teachers’ and students’ relational experiences are engaged, connected and respectful of the other. This aspect of the phenomenon reveals that, while variously experienced, the relationship matters. A teacher whose relationships with students matter recalls the following story. The story describes two very different experiences between the teacher and students across consecutive classes: About three weeks ago on the second last day before the semester break, out of the blue one student said, ‘We really enjoy your classes’. It was funny that on that day I was teaching beyond the finish time of 4 pm but it didn’t feel like it. The next day I had the same class on the last day of term. I had a lot to teach. I was feeling pressurised. They did not seem interested. I said, ‘Now look here, I’ve got things I’ve got to finish’. They were a bit uptight. After a while, I drew them into a discussion. I carried on and taught to 4 pm. In spite of this, they still said, have a good break. When I left the class, I looked around the campus and there was no one around. I should have just said I know there are times when I can trust you to go home and look through these readings. I should have just accepted that this was the last day, accommodate that, and say, I trust you. I was very troubled and went and shared this with a colleague. I went home and went out for dinner. Throughout the whole dinner I was thinking about this class. It spoiled my holiday.

In this story the relationship matters to everyone. The students show their care through their informal comments to the teacher about the course and in their farewells prior to vacation (Rayle 2006). This teacher mattered to the students before, during and beyond the classroom experiences. The teacher reveals a different kind of mattering. The teacher recalls feeling pressured by time and the tasks to complete in the lesson. Concerned by the movement and pace of the lesson, the teacher works to keep the students on-task. The teacher is so focused on ensuring the students receive the content they need, that she overlooks their more human needs, to get away for a holiday. What mattered initially then for this teacher was different to what mattered for the students. As the teacher reflects on the lesson, she is concerned that she prioritised the completion of the tasks when she should have recognised the implications of the vacation. On this occasion, the teacher senses a conflict about what matters most. As the students departed, they remind the teacher of their relationship and how the teacher mattered in the relationship (Frymier & Houser 2000). Similarly, as the teacher notices the absence of other people on campus, the teacher is reminded again of ‘her mattering’ of the relationship. The teacher’s concern for the students continues to matter as the events of the lesson are shared with a colleague and then carried into an evening meal, a holiday, and beyond. Thus the relational experience of being-with these students is not over for the teacher. It affects the teacher’s professional and personal life. Lessons do not end with the clock times. They live on in the teacher’s and student’s historicity as endless and open to further understanding. There are also occasions when the teacher-student relationship does not appear to matter. In these situations, there seems to be a lack of care and an attempt to subordinate the other. The teacher in the next story appears to be such a teacher:

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5  Phenomenological Inquiry My maths teacher was very abrupt and thought that his way was right—the only way. He came in and said, this is what you have got to be able to do. If you can’t do this, then you are going to fail. This is how you do it. Arrrrggghhhh! He got worse. He actually yelled at some people and I was thinking, am I back in school? He would totally humiliate people. A couple of people challenged him because he was so rude. He would never back down or apologise. He would just get really blown up about it. It was disgusting. It was like school. He was yelling at us. And I thought, hello, we’re adults. I still don’t know why he was yelling at us. It was horrible. I was thinking, how can this guy be in this institution? Who’s let him in? He wasn’t there for us in any way. He didn’t care about us at all. Some classes we had were in the morning, what a bad way to start the day. Actually a couple of times, we showed up and he didn’t.

The student in this story experiences a teacher who appears to care little about their relationship. The student questions the teacher’s way of relating. Why must this teacher be this way? Why must the experience of relating with this teacher be so difficult? The absence of care is noticeable. This teacher is with the student but not for the student; present in the teacher-­ student space but not towards the student. The teacher’s way of relating was less of a being-to-being relating and more of an objectified I-it relating (Buber 1996). This type of relationship can be seen in the way the teacher does not welcome any appearance of the student as a person, as an individual. Hultgren suggests ‘the response-ability that we have as … educators is to create such a space … so that … students realize the power of their own insights and the beauty of their own voices’ (1992: 237). These students seemed to have little or no ability to defend themselves and, in the absence of a meaningful and reciprocal relationship, this student loses hope in the relationship. The student is also concerned with the teacher’s right to be-with the students at all. After all, this was a program that should be staffed by experienced teachers whose way of being should be exemplary. This student felt distant from the teacher and somewhat ‘lost’ in an experience where the meaning and ‘way’ was difficult to fathom. The student and teacher are always in relationship. While the student or teacher might appear to ‘break’ this relationship, this is in fact not possible. The ontological nature of the relationship means that the relationship is always-already an integral part of both the teacher’s and the student’s everyday worlds. When the relationship does not matter to the teacher, the character of this experience is of concern to the student. Relational experiences can also carry ‘dis-ease’ about the closeness of the relationship. In the story that follows, a teacher experiences this with a student: Karen was a student who used to be so uptight. She felt the ‘system’ had wronged her because she already had experiences and skills and knew how to manage children. She was good at her practice and yet she had to go through this retraining course. In the process, we had to encourage her to go through some personal counselling. The following year, Karen requested to be in my class again. She actually wrote this in a letter. She said I understand her, I am there for her; I understood her problems and her issues. During this period of time, Karen would take a lot of my time. She was like that. I needed to step back because I was getting too involved with her.

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In this story a teacher recalls a student who was completing her academic study under duress. The need to retrain is interpreted as an injustice by the student, given the extent of the student’s prior knowledge and experience. A mutual deepening of the teacher-student relationship reaches a point where the teacher becomes uncomfortable. Not only has the student taken a lot of time, but the student wants to continue in a similar manner in the next semester. The request to take this student again enables the teacher to realize that she has been too giving, and her involvement has become too close. The relationship appears to have a compulsion and exclusivity that has the teacher feeling isolated and trapped by the student. How close should the teacher-student relationship be and/or become? This relationship matters differently to the teacher and the student. The student is keen to continue their relating, the teacher less so. Teachers can feel as if certain students are abusing the trust within their relationship. Concerned by the lack of honesty, teachers wonder about how they relate with the students. Somehow the boundaries of comfort and safety are challenged, raising an alert in situations where students’ way-of-being can feel too familiar or even intrusive. The stories in this theme suggest that we are always in relationship and that relationships matter. The primordial nature of being human is one of being-with-others in a relational co-existence that is essential to the world we share with others. Once a student has enrolled in a particular course, the teacher and student are ‘always’ in relationship; ontologically, they cannot exist in any other way. While human beings have some influence as to the ‘nature’ of the relating, we is integral to being human.

Comportment Teachers’ and students’ comportment is sensed by others and show how they are. While this comportment has a temporality, the comportment also has the familiarity of a particular stand that shows what is most integral to the person. This familiarity is experienced relationally in how the teacher and student comport. In the following story, a student describes a very knowledgeable teacher who does not appear to have a breadth of experience in the subject she is teaching. The student senses a lack of experience in the way the teacher comports towards their teaching. There was one lecturer … I don’t know that they had worked in a school. I think they had their academic qualification but I don’t know how much experience they actually had. Things can be OK in theory but in practice, that’s not always how it happens. She really knew her academic information, the theories, the right answers, the academic side of things but I felt that somewhere there was something missing in her practical knowledge. I don’t know how I knew that but it was just something. She’s the sort of person that you wished you had her head on your shoulder when you were trying to write your assignments because she knew the right things to say.

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5  Phenomenological Inquiry She did come and visit me when I was on a practicum in a school. She was very positive and she was very specific with her praise, but some of the comments she made, I felt, were made from a perspective of someone not having been on the floor teaching herself, not quite knowing how it is to be there. Lecturers need to have the experience on the floor teaching, how can you teach when you haven’t done it yourself?

The teacher in this story responds appropriately in an academic sense but appears to lack personal experience of the topic she is teaching. The teacher’s comportment makes an impression upon the student’s being. The student feels that ‘somewhere there was something missing in her practical knowledge’ as if the teacher did not have an experiential knowledge from having worked with children. This student is unsure how she knows this ‘but it was just something’. Something in the way the teacher comports, speaks to the student of someone ‘not quite knowing how it is to be there’ with children. Had the teacher been experienced, her comments and interactions would have been different, and shown in the way she comports herself. The teacher’s comportment influences the way this student stands in her relationship with the teacher moment by moment (Heidegger 2001). It is in the way that the teacher is with the student that the student feels a ‘knowing’ about who this teacher is. Who this teacher is comes across to the student on different occasions, such is the nature and influence of the teacher’s comportment (Dreyfus 1991). Who this teacher is and how she is with the student is integral to the teaching-learning experiences. Unless the student can trust that a teacher’s knowing comes from and is rooted in experience, then confidence in the teacher’s practical wisdom is undermined. For some teachers how they are inspires the students they teach. The teacher, in the story that follows, comports in a way that shows a deep respect for the student. One teacher asked us for ideas and listened to us. She was interested in us. She wasn’t interested in just telling us; she wanted to get our thoughts. She wasn’t teaching anything significantly different, but she just put it into a way that was useful. It made such a big ­difference. We had our class in the music room. We had no desks or any tables. There were heaps of us; too many for the seats in the class. For a lot of the lecturers, we were treated like we were kids in a class. They said we’re all colleagues but a lot of them didn’t treat us like that. Whereas this teacher managed to teach us without actually making us feel like we were children. It made a big difference.

This student describes a teacher who expects reciprocity in relating with the students. The teacher comports an openness that calls for engagement as ‘she wanted to get [the student’s] thoughts’. The teacher communicates an attunement towards the students regardless of the limitations of the physical environment. It is the people within the space that the teacher is attuned to, rather than the problems of the space. The teacher’s stand towards the student is regularly experienced as this is how this teacher was. Learning, for this teacher, requires engagement with another and sharing ideas in dialogue. The roles of teacher and learner are shared through actively listening to how the students are relationally. The expression of each person’s voice in the reciprocity of dialogue releases the potentiality of learning. These students feel as if they are an integral part of their teacher’s learning. In the process the teacher’s way-of-being releases this student to learning about the what and how of teaching and learning.

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Other stories show how a teacher’s comportment can have students dread the thought of further encounters. I had a lecturer in my first year who treated me like a kid. The way she spoke to me, the way she asked another student to stop talking; I mean it was probably even more derogatory than the way I asked my kids to stop talking. I wouldn’t even talk to the kids in my class like that, because they’re too old for that. She spoke right down to me. She was scary. I wasn’t the only one that was scared of her. She was scary. I never had a scary teacher when I was at school but I learnt what one was like. She noticed absolutely everything. I got a letter from the department saying how well I had done an assignment in her course. I don’t remember her ever saying, oh, that was well done.

This student feels belittled by a teacher whose behaviour is ‘scary’. This teacher communicates messages about the nature of relating and the ‘place’ that this student has. By speaking to the student as an object, this teacher lets the students know that they are not equals. In fact, the student feels less than a child, spoken down to and without any affirmation. This student endures a passion-less and frustrating position. Absent from the teacher’s comportment is an acceptance of this student as a ‘particular’ person with particular interests. The teacher does not want to listen to the student, indicative of comportment that is not open to being-with the student. Rather than finding voice, the student is silenced. Comportment is our ‘mode of being’ and relates to how we are in the world. Every comportment is always already in a certain attunement. The accessibility of another’s comporting occurs within the ontological experience of relating.

In the play The relationship between a teacher and a student is always in play. The play’s movement has the teacher and student continuously engaged in the immediate and concrete situation (Macintyre Latta & Hostetler 2003). Immersed in dynamic and unpredictable relating, the teacher and student move and become in each situation. Previously learned theoretical knowledge about relating gives way to a direction that is found in the phronesis of the situation (Dunne 1997). While the techne (the knowledge that informs the ‘know-how’ of relating) might be useful to the situation, it is the lived experience of relating that has the unpredictability. This theme shows how teachers and students experience being-in-the-play of relating and the phronesis (practice wisdom) of being-in the relational play. In the following story, a teacher describes a student whose contribution to a classroom discussion is very different from the way the conversation had been unfolding. I was teaching one morning around underachievement in schools. How can teachers meet the needs of some students with regard to assessment? In the course of the discussion, we were talking about going that little bit extra to form a relationship with students and give a little bit of extra time to those who weren’t doing OK. Was there something outside of the classroom or the structured lesson that you could do that would help them achieve more? One particular student said, well, that sounds really nice and very idealistic but why am I

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going to give an extra hour or three hours a week to that student if I’m not getting paid for it? He instantly blew me away. Where are you coming from on this? Before I had time to react, one of the other students openly challenged him and said, if you’ve got that attitude, if you’re just in it to fill in hours and take home wages, why do you want to be a teacher? Isn’t teaching about helping people, of going that extra distance, of making a difference? And he said, yeah, as long as I’m getting paid for it. He was absolutely serious. He was straight up. Where’s this guy coming from on that? He’s no longer a face among the students.

Amid a conversation exploring the support that might be offered to students who are struggling with their learning, this particular student expresses a concern for his salary in providing such support. Other students had been offering their thoughts but what caught this teacher’s attention was the student’s apparent self-interest at a time when the support for under-achieving students was being explored. This particular moment influences the movement of how this teacher and student relate. This teacher is concerned, attuning herself to the relational play that is unfolding between the teacher, the student, and the other students in the class. The teacher finds herself feeling ‘blown away’, thrown by the student’s comments and struggles to understand where this student is coming from; who is this one who speaks? The thrownness is a reminder that, as Heidegger (1996) states, we are literally situated in the midst of a world of interplays beyond our control. For Heidegger, our thrownness is not a ‘finished fact’ (1996: 179); rather, being thrown into an already existing world, we project onto an always-already present world from within our thrownness. Hostetler, Macintyre Latta and Sarroub suggest that perhaps ‘a first step for teachers in pursuit of meaning is to acknowledge their thrownness’ (2007: 234). The teacher is not ready and able to relate differently; she is searching for meaning in the play. This teacher might choose to remove herself from the experience but instead she finds herself caught, if not ‘trapped’, in the relational play. The teacher’s experience of relating with the student is one of wrestling for a ‘way-to-be’ amid the uncertainty of a very present and fluid reality. This story reveals the seriousness and the frailty of the relationship between a teacher and a student. The seriousness is seen in the delicate opening and closing of relationship within a classroom dialogue. Brought together for an educational endeavour, the relationship moves and ‘becomes’ in the play. This becoming is experienced in moments that change the nature and movement of the relating between a teacher and student. Being in such experiences is an embodied moment, filled with anxiety and carrying the participants in the play, that is the relationship. The following story shows various aspects of phronesis that are primordial to being in the play of relating. Within the story, the phronesis is shown in terms of its resoluteness, techne, tact, pedagogical thoughtfulness, moral knowing and attunement. This story focuses on an interaction between Tania, a student teacher with experience in early childhood contexts, and her lecturer. Tania had been out there working in the field for six years and knew everything there was to know. I went out to assess her teaching practice and was concerned. I could hear a lot of her voice and not a lot of the children’s. I started talking to her about this and she said to me, well, what am I supposed to talk to them about? Well, what can you talk about with chil-

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dren? What did you do this morning? What did they do when they got up this morning? Wouldn’t that be a starting point? She said, I don’t know whether I can do that. So I just sat with the children and started talking to them about driving up to their town on that day and what I’d seen on the road driving up there that day. I saw this really really cute sheep. It was so little and so fluffy and I just wanted to get out and hold it. Then someone said, I’ve got a bear at home and he’s soft. She could see what I was doing. Then I said to her, now you go and sit with them, you share something with them. They were all over her. She couldn’t get a word in edge ways. She was almost in tears because she was staggered at how much they were telling her. She hadn’t realised. She’s a totally different person. It had such an effect on her.

In this story, a lecturer finds that talking with a student about her concerns is met with questions and uncertainty. Responding to the moment, the lecturer sits with the children and engages them in such a way that a reciprocity of relating begins. She did not come to this experience expecting to be engaging with the children first-hand. This is not a show by the teacher. The sincerity of the teacher’s relating with the children opens a very different dialogue. These children were ‘playing’ freely in dialogue with the teacher. This teacher leapt in, uncertain of what might transpire but with an improvisation that is in the student’s best interests. An exclusive focus on the techne of this moment (e.g. the lesson plan) might ‘squeeze out the self in teaching as the “who” is sidelined and silenced by the “what”’. The wisdom in the teacher’s actions change how this teacher and student experience the play of their relating. This situation is not hopeless for the student as she can now see how the teacher was interacting differently. Accepting the opportunity to be with the children in a different way, this student is overwhelmed and moved. Field and Latta (2001) suggest that some experiences re-member us, causing us to be a different person in a different place. In this story, the teacher’s phronesis opens the possibility of the student’s learning. The moment calls for the student to be in the uncertainty of the relational play with children. Both teacher and student teacher experience the unrehearsed to-and-­ fro movement of being in-the-play of relating. This theme has focused on the play that is relating. The players take for granted the moments and movement of the play. The unpredictability and uncertainty of the play is opened in the moment in response to the play. Such practical wisdom, or indeed the absence of such, is not engendered as a cognitive act but rather a person’s sensitised attunement to the movement of the play. The creative process of being in the play draws upon the person’s practical knowledge for the immediate and particular situation.

Conclusion Relationships are essential to the educational experience whether they are recognised or not. When the relationship between a teacher and a student is good we seldom attend to the relationship. While the relationship matters to the experience,

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the relationship lies out of sight and is largely taken for granted. Indeed, there does not appear to be any thinking or wondering about the relationship or the ability of the teacher and student to relate. On other occasions, the assumption that relationships matter is called into question. In these times, the teacher-student relationship concerns the student and is stressful for the teacher. In these moments, the concern over the relationship foregrounds the teaching-learning experience for those involved. While relationships can be incorrectly assumed to matter, it is critically important that educators become more attentive to how their relationship is with their students individually and collectively. Educators need to have the ability to relate to their students, as well as remain attuned to recognise how these relationships are mattering. Student-teacher relationships are felt and interpreted by those involved, whether they are consciously aware of this or not. This research inquiry found that when the teacher-student relationship matters, this can be seen and felt in each person’s way-of-being. An educator’s dispositions and sensibilities towards relationships are essential to the educational endeavour. Inspiring teachers, having such dispositions and sensibilities, leap into relational experiences and avail themselves of the relational moment and its movement. They become increasingly adept at reading the relationship and living phronesis in the moment. Foregrounding relationships in education has the potential for humanising educational praxis in the face of powerful and dominant educational discourses that have taken the teacher-student relationship for granted for the sake of the system that ought to serve it.

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Frymier, AB & Houser, ML (2000). ‘The teacher-student relationship as an interpersonal relationship’, Communication Education, 49(3): 207–219. Gadamer, HG (1994). Truth and method (2nd revised ed.) (J.  Weinsheimer & D. G. Marshall, Trans.), New York: Continuum. Gibbs, CJ (2006). To be a teacher: Journeys towards authenticity, Auckland, New Zealand: Pearson Education. Giles, DL (2008). ‘Exploring the teacher-student relationship in teacher education: A hermeneutic phenomenological inquiry’, unpublished doctoral thesis, Auckland University of Technology, Auckland, New Zealand. Hartrick Doane, GA (2002). ‘Beyond behavioral skills to human involved processes: Relational nursing practice and interpretive pedagogy’, Journal of Nursing Education, 41(9): 400–404. Heidegger, M (2001). Zollikon seminars: Protocols, conversations, letters (F. Mayr & R. Askay, Trans.), Illinois: Northwestern University Press. hooks, b (2003). Teaching community: A pedagogy of hope, London: Routledge. Hultgren, FH (1992). ‘The transformative power of “being with” students in teaching’, in Peterat, L. & Vaines, E. (eds.), Lives and plans: Signs for transforming practice (Vol. Home Economics Teacher Education Yearbook 12), Mission Hills, CA: Glencoe: 221–242. Ironside, PM (2005). ‘Introduction: Thinking beyond method’, in Ironside, PM (ed.), Beyond method: Philosophical conversations in healthcare research and scholarship, Madison: University of Wisconsin Press: ix–xx. Koch, T (1996). ‘Implementation of a hermeneutic inquiry in nursing: Philosophy, rigour and representation’, Journal of Advanced Nursing, 2: 174–184. Macintyre Latta, MA & Hostetler, KD (2003). ‘The call to play’, International Journal of Education of Education and the Arts, 4(3), http://ijea.asu.edu/v4n3/. Metcalfe, A & Game, A (2006). ‘The teacher’s enthusiasm’, The Australian Educational Researcher, 33(3): 91–106. Miller, JP & Nakagawa, Y (2002). Nurturing our wholeness: Perspectives on spirituality in education, Brandon, VT: Foundation of Educational Renewal. Palmer, PJ (1997). ‘The heart of a teacher: Identity and integrity in teaching’, Change, 29(6): 14–21. Palmer, PJ (1998). The courage to teach: Exploring the inner landscape of a teacher’s life, San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. Palmer, PJ (1999). ‘The grace of great things: Reclaiming the sacred in knowing, teaching and learning’, in Glazer, S. (ed.), The heart of learning: Spirituality in education, New York: Tarcher/Putnam: 15–31. Raingruber, B (2003). ‘Video-cued narrative reflection: A research approach for articulating tacit, relational, and embodied understandings’, Qualitative Health Research, 13(8): 1155–1169. Rayle, AD (2006). ‘Mattering to others: Implications for the counseling relationship’, Journal of Counseling & Development, 84: 483–487. Smythe, EA, Ironside, PM, Sims, SL, Swenson, MM & Spence, DG (2008). ‘Heideggerian hermeneutic research: As lived’, International Journal of Nursing Studies, 45(9): 1389–1397.

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van Manen, M (1990). Researching lived experience: Human science for an action sensitive pedagogy, Albany, NY: SUNY Press. David Giles is Dean of the School of Education at Flinders University. His research interests focus on the relational nature of pedagogy, educational leadership, and organizational cultures. Hermeneutic Phenomenology and Appreciative Inquiry are his preferred research methodologies. For David, the relational and moral imperative of education is essential to our praxis. Elizabeth Smythe is an Associate Professor in the Health Faculty at Auckland University of Technology. Her research expertise is mainly related to Heideggerian hermeneutic methodology. She supervises doctoral students across a wide range of disciplines as they seek to reveal more of the experience of ‘being human’. Her own discipline background is nursing and midwifery. Deb Spence is joint Head of Nursing in the Faculty of Health at Auckland University of Technology. She supervises and researches using hermeneutics and phenomenology. Her background is in nursing and education.

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Hilborn, R., & Mangel, M. (1997). The ecological detective: Confronting models with data. Princeton University Press. Horner, R. (2005). Jean-Luc Marion: A theo-logical introduction. Ashgate Publishing. Husserl, E. (1970). The crisis of the European sciences and transcendental phenomenology. (D. Carr, Trans. Northwestern University Press. Husserl, E. (1982). Logical investigations. Routledge. Lamont, M. (1987). How to become a dominant French philosopher: The case of Jacques Derrida. American Journal of Sociology, 93(3), 584–622. Lawlor, L. (2016). Jacques Derrida. In E. N. Zalta (Ed.), The Stanford encyclopedia of philosophy. (n.p.). Retrieved February 21, 2018 from https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2016/entries/ derrida/ Marion, J. -L. (2002a). In excess: Studies of saturated phenomena (R. Horner, Trans.). Fordham University Press. Marion, J. -L. (2002b). Prolegomena to charity: Perspectives in continental philosophy (S. E. Lewis, Trans.). Fordham University Press. McMullin, E. (1968). What do physical models tell us? In B. van Rootselaar & J. F. Staal (Eds.), Logic, methodology and philosophy of science III. North-Holland Publishing Co. Merleau-Ponty, M. (2017). Phenomenology of perception (C.  Smith, Trans.). Routledge & Kegan Paul. Merriam-Webster dictionary online. Retrieved February 23, 2018., from https://www.merriam-­ webster.com/dictionary/phenomenology Moustakas, C. (1994). Phenomenological research methods. Sage. Peters, M. A., & Biesta, G. (2009). Derrida, deconstruction, and the politics of pedagogy. Peter Lang Publishing. Plato. (2017). The allegory of the cave (B. Jowett, Trans.). Enhanced Media Publishing. Polkinghorne, D.  E. (1989). Phenomenological research methods. In R.  S. Valle & S.  Halling (Eds.), Existential-Phenomenological perspectives in psychology: Exploring the breadth of human experience (pp. 41–60). Plenum Press. Ricœur, P. (2004). The conflict of interpretations: Essays in hermeneutics. Continuum. Roman, F., & Hartmann, S. (2012). Models in science. In E. N. Zalta, The Stanford encyclopedia of philosophy. (n.p.). Retrieved February 14, 2018, from https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/ spr2017/entries/models-­science/ Sartre, J. -P. (1993). Being and nothingness: A phenomenological essay of ontology (H. E. Barnes, Trans.). Washington Square Press. Smith, D. W. (2016). Phenomenology. In E. N. Zalta, The Stanford encyclopedia of philosophy. (n.p.). Retrieved February 23, 2018, from https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2016/entries/ phenomenology/ Tanabe, R. (2015). Phenomenology. New world encyclopedia. Page version ID: 987427. Retrieved February 20, 2018 from http://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/p/index.php?title=Phenomeno logy&oldid=987427 van Manen, M. (1984). Practicing phenomenological writing. Phenomenology +. Pedagogy, 2(1), 36–69. van Manen, M. (1990). Researching lived experience: Human science for an action sensitive pedagogy. Althouse Press. Willis, J. W. (2007). Foundations of qualitative research: Interpretive and critical approaches. Sage.

Chapter 6

Ethnographic Inquiry

Anthropology tends to follow the flag, as we say.... It was a time when, again, anthropology grew up. There has been a lot of discussion on this. It grew up in a colonial period when, you know, again, the people were just objects…. The Javanese or the Moroccans, or so on, were not part of the discourse. They were just quoted. Clifford Geertz, Princeton University

Introduction Anthropology and ethnography appear to be joined at the hip. According to the online Oxford dictionary (2013), anthropology refers to the study of humans and human behaviour and societies, past and present. As such, anthropology is concerned with the comparative study of societies and human diversity, and asks interpretative questions about behaviour, meaning, development and value between different societies and cultures. It is also known as cultural or social anthropology in order to differentiate itself from physical anthropology, the study of human biological and physiological characteristics and their evolution. Clifford Geertz has suggested that all anthropological writings are interpretations of interpretations. So, perhaps it stands to reason that, if anthropology is about the study of people and cultures, ethnography is about the writing with regards to people and cultures. And this leads us to ethnographic inquiry. Ethnography had its inception with comparative cultural anthropology conducted by such early twentieth-century anthropologists as Franz Boas, Bronislaw Malinowski, Alfred Radcliffe-Brown, and Margaret Mead. According to Atkinson Supplementary Information The online version contains supplementary material available at [https://doi.org/10.1007/978-­3-­030-­85124-­8_6]. The videos can be accessed individually by clicking the DOI link in the accompanying figure caption or by scanning this link with the SN More Media App. © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 R. E. White, K. Cooper, Qualitative Research in the Post-Modern Era, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-85124-8_6

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and Hammersley (1994), although these early researchers took the natural sciences as an initial model for their research, their brand of research differed significantly from those who used traditional scientific methodologies in that the early ethnographers collected data through firsthand accounts of existing “primitive” cultures. It was not too much later, however, that a group of sociologists, Robert E. Park, John Dewey, and George Herbert Mead, all from the University of Chicago, during the 1920s and throughout the 1930s, strove to adapt anthropological field methods to the study of cultural groups in the United States (Bogdan & Biklen, 1992). Since then, volumes describing a variety of methods of ethnographic research methodologies have proliferated. Let us pause for a moment to revisit some of the biographical highlights of the “coming of age” of ethnography. Ethnography, from one of the world’s leading ethnographers, Professor Clifford Geertz (1973), refers to the systematic study of people and cultures. It is designed to explore cultural phenomena, where the researcher observes society from the point of view of the subject of the study; hence, the somewhat cryptic nature of the epigraph, above. While anthropology may comprise the study of peoples and culture, it appears that ethnography attempts to study and explain cultural phenomena. As such, then, anthropology may concern itself with how people live and may end up explaining a way of life to the very people who live it. Ethnography, on the other hand, attempts to explore a phenomenon within the culture, rather than to explain the culture itself. The term, ethnography, derives from the Greek “ethnos,” meaning people, folk, or nation, and “graphos,” to write. Thus, ethnography is a means to represent, anthropologically speaking, a written account of the culture, or of a phenomenon within that culture, of a group of people. Typically, ethnographers are chiefly concerned with examining shared patterns of behaviour, beliefs and language (Creswell & Poth, 2016) within and among cultures or societies of people. Also, typically, the number of participants is generally larger than samples involved in other qualitative inquiry. This is so because the unit of analysis is represented by the entire cultural group or society with whom the researcher works. Ethnography, thus, is essentially a type of qualitative methodology in which researchers describe and interpret shared patterns of values, behaviours, beliefs, and language of a particular group (Harris, 1968). Michael Agar (2008) suggests that ethnography is both a process and a product of inquiry and, as such, is not only a way of studying a “culture-sharing” group but is also the final, typically written, product of that inquiry. The “process” of ethnography usually involves extended observations of the selected group, typically through participant observation. In this way, the researcher immerses him- or herself in the daily comings and goings of the individuals within that group, observing and interviewing group members. Thus, ethnographic researchers study and interpret the meaning of behaviours, the language, and the interactions among individuals within the culture-sharing group.

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The Biographical Context There have been many influences on the way in which ethnographic inquiry has developed. Many individuals from many differing disciplines helped to shape ethnography into its current form. Franz Boas (1858–1942), A German American anthropologist, has been referred to as the “Father of American Anthropology” (Stocking, 1960). It can be safely said that Boaz was a pioneer of modern anthropology. After Boas was awarded a doctorate in 1881, he ventured forth on a geographical expedition to Canada, where he became entranced with the culture and language of the Inuit people of the north. In 1899, Boas became a professor of anthropology at Columbia University where he profoundly influenced American anthropology. Ruth Benedict and Margaret Mead were among his most successful students (Moore, 2009). Boas was among the most prominent opponents of the then-popular ideologies of “scientific racism” (Collins, 2000), the position that race is a biological concept and human behaviour can best be understood through the typology of biological characteristics (Gossett, 1997). Boas demonstrated that human behavioural differences were not determined by innate biological dispositions but result from cultural differences acquired through social learning. In this way, Boas introduced culture as the primary concept for describing differences in behaviour between human groups and as the central analytical concept of anthropology (Moore, 2009). Boas also refuted the prevailing “evolutionary approach” to the study of culture that claimed all societies moved through the same progression on their way to “civilization,” as evidenced by European societies. Boas was instrumental in forwarding the notion of “cultural relativism” that claims that cultures cannot be ordered hierarchically, or that cultural values may be measured against a “model” culture. Boas argued that culture developed historically through the interactions of groups of people and the diffusion of ideas, and that, consequently, there was no process towards continuously "higher" cultural forms. This insight led Boas to reject the "stage-based” organization of ethnological museums, instead preferring to order items on display based on the affinity and proximity of the cultural groups in question (Days, 2017). In essence, Boas claimed that humans view the world through their own cultural lens, according to their own culturally acquired norms, beliefs and values. Boas was successful in uniting the fields of anthropology, archaeology, ethnology and linguistics and, in so doing, helped to create these four fields of modern American anthropology that became prominent in the twentieth century (Moore, 2009). George Herbert Mead (1863–1931) was an American psychologist, philosopher and sociologist at the University of Chicago. As a pragmatist (James, 2002) Mead is considered to be a major developer of symbolic interactionism, the view of social behaviour that emphasizes the role of language, and of the Chicago sociological tradition (Mead, 1982). Much of his work focused on the development of the self and the objectivity of the world within the social realm.

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For pragmatists, reality does not exist in the real world but is created as we act within the world (Pearce, 1995). Thus, the focus is on the interaction between the actor and the world, simply because people tend to base their knowledge on what has been successful for them. This is a dynamic process, as one defines what is encountered in the world by the use that can be made of the artefacts encountered. Finally, understanding what people actually do is related to an individual ability to interpret the social world. Thus, consciousness and action are interactive. Mead’s theories were transmitted to graduate students at the University of Chicago, who then went on to establish symbolic interactionism. Mead, like Emile Durkheim, the French sociologist, believed that the individual is a product of the ongoing, pre-­ existing social interaction that is contained within a society. For Mead, existence precedes consciousness. One must first take part in a society and utilize the experience gained in order to realize the perspectives of others and to become “self” conscious. Bronisław Malinowski (1884–1942), a contemporary of Boas, is considered one of the most important twentieth-century anthropologists (Young, 2004). Originally an economist, Malinowski analyzed patterns of exchange in aboriginal Australia through studying ethnographic documents. By the beginning of World War I, he was stranded in New Guinea due to the fact that he was an Austrian citizen and, therefore, was considered to be an enemy to the British Commonwealth. With funds from Australia, Malinowski remained in Melanesia, studying the Indigenous culture. His subsequent book, Argonauts of the Western Pacific, first published in 1922, established his reputation as an anthropologist. By World War II, Malinowski was in the United States, where he remained at Yale University for the rest of his life. Malinowski was an excellent fieldworker and his texts were foundational to early anthropologists. He coined the term “participatory observation” and approached social theory through an amalgam of psychological functionalism, observing how social and cultural institutions serve basic human needs. Malinowski’s approach, a direct outgrowth of Darwinian thought, focused on the utility and purpose of human behaviour, modified over millennia of human existence, stands in stark contrast to Radcliffe-Brown’s structural functionalism that emphasised how social institutions function in relation to the entire society (Young, 2004). Alfred Radcliffe-Brown (1881–1955), a British social anthropologist, developed the theory of structural functionalism and co-adaptation. The following quotation reveals his attitude to the work of Malinowski, to which he was vehemently opposed: Malinowski has explained that he is the inventor of functionalism, to which he gave its name. His definition of it is clear; it is the theory or doctrine that every feature of culture of any people past or present is to be explained by reference to seven biological needs of individual human beings. I cannot speak for the other writers to whom the label functionalist is applied by the authors, though I very much doubt if Redfield or Linton accept this doctrine. As for myself I reject it entirely, regarding it as useless and worse. As a consistent opponent of Malinowski’s functionalism I may be called an anti-functionalist. (Radcliffe-Brown, 1949, pp. 320–321)

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Radcliffe-Brown’s extensive fieldwork in Australia and in the Andaman Islands in the Bay of Bengal contributed extensively to anthropological ideas regarding kinship, and criticized the alliance theory forwarded by Claude Lévi-Strauss (1908–2009). Radcliffe-Brown also produced several analyses of myths, based on the concept of binary distinctions and dialectical opposition, an idea later endorsed by Lévi-Strauss (Radcliffe-Brown, 1951). Critiques of his work, however, cite his failure to consider the effect of historical changes in the societies he studied, especially those changes brought about by colonialism. Despite this, he is considered, along with Malinowski, to be one of the founding fathers of modern social anthropology (New World Encyclopedia, 2016). Margaret Mead (1901–1978) was a respected but controversial American cultural anthropologist who popularized anthropology in modern American and Western culture (Dillon, 2001). Her book, Coming of Age in Samoa: A Psychological Study of Primitive Youth for Western Civilization influenced an entire culture during the 1960s. She was a proponent of broadening sexual mores within a context of traditional Western religious life and, over the years, Mead often tackled controversial social issues. She also wrote a column for Redbook magazine and was a popular interviewee on a wealth of topics. She continued to work for the American Museum of Natural History until 1969 and was an adjunct professor at Columbia University. Clifford Geertz (1926–2006) has probably done more than any other researcher in helping to modernize and expand ethnographic inquiry. Throughout his distinguished career, Professor Geertz assisted in recasting ethnography and also influenced the entire paradigm of qualitative research through recognizing the researcher as the major instrument of interpretation in the collection and analysis of data. He is given credit for developing Gilbert Ryle’s concept of “thick description” (Cooper & White, 2012, p.  7). He also shares some of the credit for recognizing that much previous ethnographic research was of a decidedly colonial flavour. Clifford Geertz also wrote about “blurred genres” (1980), and recognized that; [T]he methods used to research societal issues, question, or problems were not up to the task of describing what it was that they needed to describe. Contemporary quantitative methods that were valued at the time were not useful in helping to describe a culture. In fact, Clifford Geertz was one of the first researchers to recognize that it was the researcher who was one of the major vehicles through which research was engaged. This led to a reevaluation and redefinition of traditional methods, honoured by such powerful ethnographers as Margaret Mead, of conducting sociological research such as anthropology and ethnographic research. In short, Professor Geertz was responsible, at least in part, for helping to shift the paradigm of sociological research in general, and ethnographic research in particular, to a more qualitative type of research through his methods of “thick description.” (Cooper & White, 2012, p. 125)

Just four months prior to his untimely death, Professor Geertz granted an interview with the authors of this volume. The video-clips that follow show him in his office at Princeton University. Professor Geertz’s office is located just down the street from the home of Albert Einstein, who lived in Princeton until his death in 1955.

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Professor Clifford Geertz

In the video-clip that follows, Professor Geertz reflects upon his beginnings in terms of his education and his subsequent fieldwork in Indonesia.

Video Clip 6.1: Professor Clifford Geertz (▶ https://doi.org/10.1007/000-­6d0)

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In this video-clip, Professor Geertz reflects upon his childhood, growing up in Marin County, California, prior to the onset of World War II. Young Clifford was conscripted and served his country until the end of the war, when the GI bill, an American program for returning veterans, came into effect. This allowed young Geertz access to Antioch College in Ohio, where he studied religion and philosophy but not anthropology, as it was not a subject that was taught at that institution. When he was in graduate school at Harvard University, he enrolled in the social relations department, where anthropology was combined with sociology, psychology, and clinical and social psychology, as opposed to courses in archaeology It was here that he encountered and joined a group research project that was planning to set out for Indonesia in order to study the Indigenous cultures of the area. Here, he would stay for the next two and a half years, as he says, in a small town in central Java doing a community study, the result of which became his doctoral thesis. Looking back on what he considers to be a charmed life, Professor Geertz was happy that he had been able to do what he wanted, while being well supported as he was doing it. While he does admit to having a few regrets and would have done some things differently, he sees his current writings about Bali and Java as connecting two major themes of his career. Because he has not been in the field recently, he has no recent data to analyze and, so, at the tender age of 80, he is compiling his works and offering a retrospective view of “what has been going on.”

The Historical Context Over time, definitions of ethnography have transformed, elided and matured. According to Malinowski, writing in the early part of the previous century, ethnography has an explicit goal that ethnographers must not lose sight of. This goal is, briefly, to grasp the native’s point of view, his [sic] relation to life, to realise his vision of his world. We have to study man, and we must study what concerns him most intimately, that is, the hold life has on him. In each culture, the values are slightly different; people aspire after different aims, follow different impulses, yearn after a different form of happiness. In each culture, we find different institutions in which man pursues his life-­ interest, different customs by which he satisfies his aspirations, different codes of law and morality which reward his virtues or punish his defections. To study the institutions, customs, and codes or to study the behaviour and mentality without the subjective desire of feeling by what these people live, of realising the substance of their happiness—is, in my opinion, to miss the greatest reward which we can hope to obtain from the study of man. (Malinowski, 1922/2014, p. 24)

Forty years later, little had changed. Perhaps Lévi-Strauss is somewhat more succinct, but he really adds little that is new to the definition. The focus is still upon explaining the culture of the Indigenous populations to the greater, presumably European, world. Although Malinowski notes that the aim of the ethnographer is to understand the natives’ point of view and their relation to life, it is still viewed relative to the dominant Euro-culture. Lévi-Strauss attempts to ameliorate this by suggesting that “human groups” can be viewed as entities, rather than objects, while the researcher is still outside of and distant to the culture under study:

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Ethnography consists of the observation and analysis of human groups considered as individual entities (the groups are often selected, for practical and theoretical reasons unrelated to the nature of the research involved, from those societies that differ most from our own). Ethnography thus aims at recording as accurately as possible the perspective modes of life of various groups. (Lévi-Strauss, 1963, p. 2)

It is only as late as this century that the study of ethnography was recognized as a doubly inscribed undertaking. Sanjek (2002) described ethnography as both a process and a product. Sanjek notes that, while the product depends upon the process, it is not a simple binary construction, because both product and process are shaped by previous understandings, fallible or not, and by current theory. The word ‘ethnography’ has a double meaning in anthropology: ethnography as product (ethnographic writings—the articles and books written by anthropologists), and ethnography as process (participant observation or fieldwork). The product depends upon the process, but not in any simple A-B relationship. In constructing ethnographies, anthropologists do more than merely ‘write up’ the fieldnotes they record as part of the process of doing fieldwork. If ethnographies can be seen as the building blocks and testing grounds of anthropological theory, ethnographies and the ethnographic process from which they derive are also shaped and moulded by theory.... As a written account, an ethnography focuses on a particular population, place and time with the deliberate goal of describing it to others. (Sanjek, 2002, p. 193)

Several years later, Hobbs (2006) describes the research methodology of ethnography as being the province of both sociologists and anthropologists. He identifies a multiplicity of methodologies associated with the process of ethnographic research but notes that it is not about merely reporting on what makes a society tick. Ethnography requires a personal engagement with subjects within the culture in order to understand a segment of a specific culture. As ever, description is a key element of the process, requiring that the product reflects the varying perspectives of members of the culture under study. Hobbs describes ethnography as a method of investigation: A research method located in the practice of both sociologists and anthropologists, and which should be regarded as the product of a cocktail of methodologies that share the assumption that personal engagement with the subject is the key to understanding a particular culture or social setting. Participant observation is the most common component of this cocktail, but interviews, conversational and discourse analysis, documentary analysis, film and photography, life histories all have their place in the ethnographer’s repertoire. Description resides at the core of ethnography, and however that description is constructed it is the intense meaning of social life from the everyday perspective of group members that is sought. (Hobbs, 2006, p, 101)

The Myth of the “Lone Ethnographer” One of the more interesting considerations relating to the history of ethnographic inquiry is the myth of the “Lone Ethnographer.” This concept is essentially caught up in ethnographic romanticism and invokes a Malinowski-type of image,

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whereupon the Lone Ethnographer “parachutes” into a “new” civilization and strives to understand it in all its intricacies and then reports the findings to the rest of the world. The plight of the Lone Ethnographer is marked by loneliness, despondency and isolation (Shlomit, 2013). Invoking the iconic adage from “Star Trek” to “boldly go where no man [sic] has gone before,” the Lone Ethnographer is encouraged to venture forth into “new” locales, alone, armed only with numerous versions of ethnographic research models and to return with data that has the potential to transform people’s narratives, performances and experiences into some form of two-dimensional media. Accordingly, should the Lone Ethnographer survive long enough to publish on this topic, (s)he has proven his/her worth as an ethnographer. As such, the concept is outdated and serves only as a reminder of bygone rites of passage. What remains are overtures of colonialism, objectivism and monumentalism: The sacred bundle the Lone Ethnographer handed his successors includes a complicity with imperialism, a commitment to objectivism, and a belief in monumentalism. The context of imperialism and colonial rule shaped both the monumentalism of timeless accounts of homogeneous cultures and the objectivism of a strict division of labor between the “detached” ethnographer and “his native”. The key practices so bequeathed can be ­subsumed under the general rubric of fieldwork, which is often regarded as an initiation into the mysteries of anthropological knowledge. The product of the Lone Ethnographer’s labors, the ethnography, appeared to be a transparent medium. It portrayed a “culture” sufficiently frozen to be an object of “scientific” knowledge. This genre of social description made itself, and the culture so described, into an artefact worthy of being housed in the collection of a major museum. (Rosaldo, 2001, p. 31)

Since the days when ethnographic research was in its infancy, a lingering question concerns itself with how one reconciles this anthropological creation myth with the more modern, formalized, community-based collaborative methods training. According to Lassiter (2005), ethnography is collaborative by definition. In performing ethnographic research, we all collaborate at some point, in some way, shape or form, even though this is not always recognized. This returns us to Clifford Geertz’s point that the ethnographer must engage with people in order to accomplish any form of ethnographic research. It is the participants in that research that have been objectified through the mythic operation of the Lone Ethnographer, who has never really been alone, after all. Geertz’s (1973) comment about how ethnographic research is performed implies that, while conducting ethnographic research may be a lonely endeavour, it is not a sole endeavour in the sense that one is isolated form others. Quite the opposite is frequently true. One is frequently surrounded by others, albeit perhaps of an ethnicity that is new and unusual to the ethnographer. Geertz (2008) frames it eloquently: What the ethnographer is in fact faced with—except when (as, of course, he must do) he is pursuing the more automatized routines of data collection—is a multiplicity of complex conceptual structures, many of them superimposed upon or knotted into one another, which are at once strange, irregular, and inexplicit, and which he must contrive somehow first to grasp and then to render. And this is true at the most down-to-earth, jungle field work levels of his activity; interviewing informants, observing rituals, eliciting kin terms, tracing property lines, censusing households...writing his journal. Doing ethnography is like trying to

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read (in the sense of “construct a reading of”) a manuscript—foreign, faded, full of ellipses, incoherencies, suspicious emendations, and tendentious commentaries, but written not in conventionalized graphs of sound but in transient examples of shaped behavior. (p. 34)

While the Lone Ethnographer may be a romantic notion of how an ethnographer approaches fieldwork, it is essentially mythic, devoid of reality except, perhaps, at the most superficial level. And, as a myth, it remains a function of colonialism and serves only to “other” its participants through objectifying not only their culture but themselves, as well. In the following video-clip, Professor Geertz describes his early experience in the field and how he eventually published his work in a volume of ethnographic writing.

Video Clip 6.2: Professor Clifford Geertz (▶ https://doi.org/10.1007/000-­6cz)

In this video-clip, Professor Geertz describes the social context in which he was immersed. As a young scholar, having just returned from active duty in the Second World War, young Geertz notes that the world’s superpowers, at the time, the United States and Russia, had embarked upon the “Cold War.” It was at this time, he claims, that the United States was interested in attempting to understand other cultures, particularly those of the “developing” world, most notably South East Asia, Indonesia and India. More westerly, ethnographic interests lay in North West Africa and the Middle East, particularly in countries such as Morocco. Research funding was at an all-time high and signaled an “outer” worldview, rather than the more protectionist, isolationist stance that has recently typified American relations with the rest of the world. He notes that, nowadays, the American nation may be moved to help but has issues of its own to deal with. The perfect time for ethnographers,

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according to Professor Geertz, was during the 1950s and 1960s when money was readily available for those willing to live in Africa or Asia and conduct ethnographic research. At this point Professor Geertz acknowledges his own naïveté in noting that he did not know the difference between Indonesia and China, as was common on this side of the Pacific Ocean. Even so, money was available and, in “tangent” with a group of economists from the University of Chicago, Clifford Geertz was as interested in finding out what the economists were up to as they were in discovering what it was that the ethnographers were uncovering. Interestingly enough, Professor Geertz observes that it has become more difficult to justify qualitative research than previously. He waxes nostalgic in speaking of this period as a golden age for ethnographic inquiry.

The Political Context Risjord (2007) has noted that numerous scholars of the past several decades, notably the late twentieth century, have subjected ethnographic research to scathing critique. The problem, it appears, is connected to the notion of “culture.” One major debate concerns the “explanation versus understanding” of whether the social sciences require methods of generating knowledge about various cultures and societies that are distinct from methods utilized in the natural sciences. The natural sciences offer a “scientific methodology” aimed at explaining a culture, rather than utilizing a social science approach that promotes understanding of a culture. This rather cyclic problem has plagued ethnographic inquiry since its inception, due to the longstanding tradition that ethnographic research makes use of interviews, participation and linguistic analysis, first introduced by Franz Boas in the early part of the previous century. The second major issue concerning ethnography is its heritage, which is a subset of the previously identified concern. “Methodological individualism” (Risjold, 2007), as opposed to methodological holism (Watkins, 1952), suggests that views of an entire society can be arrived at through facts relating to individuals who act as spokespeople for those cultures. This may appear logical due to the idea that societies are composed of individuals, their personal properties and their relationships to one another and to the societies within which they live. Detractors remind the ethnographer that social structures and their attending entities are really and only a collection of individuals and their attendant behaviours. Thus, any accurate social explanation must be derived from “scientific” facts that can be reduced to statements about individuals, their properties and relations. For example, social generalizations must be derivable from general facts about individuals. Given the nature of the culture being discussed, this may be a difficult task, particularly since some cultures tend to offer information that they believe the ethnographer is seeking, rather than the actual information, which may stand in contradiction to the proffered information. This was the case in point with the famed Sir John Franklin expedition that perished in Canada’s Arctic around 1847.

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Searchers despaired of finding the remains of the expedition because the Indigenous “witnesses” told the searchers what they believed the searchers wanted to know, rather than details of the tragedy (Stefansson, 1939). This methodological individualism relates to an additional problem with ethnography, and also relates to its heritage. Ethnography grew out of imperialism and empire building. As a product of colonial encounter, Clifford Geertz notes that anthropology, and presumably ethnography, as well, “follows the flag” (this volume). As Risjord (2007) notes, ethnographic research, past and present (to a certain extent), requires the sanction of colonial authorities. Consequently, ethnographers were placed in the extremely difficult position of researching within a dominating culture that tended to exploit Indigenous or non-European cultures. In a final video-clip, Professor Geertz discusses the political climate of modern ethnographic research.

Video Clip 6.3: Professor Clifford Geertz (▶ https://doi.org/10.1007/000-­6d1)

In this video-clip, Professor Geertz suggests that it is “culture” that most anthropologists are trying to understand and clarify for their audiences. Upon his arrival in the field, Professor Geertz notes that there was a “cake of custom” [sic] notion of culture. The “cake of culture” term was initially coined by Walter Bagehot, who used it in his volume, Physics and Politics (1872/2006). This term, as it is used here, is taken to mean that the entire field of anthropology was still feeling its way forward in a kind of trial and error, hit or miss basis. At that time, anthropologists tended to believe that culture was comprised only of learned behaviour. While this is not necessarily incorrect, it is at least inaccurate. However, many people still nurture that notion, even though it may be somewhat simplistic.

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The issue, Professor Geertz states, is that, if learned behaviour and culture are interchangeable terms, learned behaviour then becomes euphemized as culture. This conceptualization of culture is simply so very broad and diffuse that anthropologists of Clifford Geertz’s day set out to make the field a little bit more explicit and to narrow the focus of the entire discipline. As he notes, Professor Geertz believes that there needs to be more than one concept in place in order to describe something as intricate as the notion of culture. In describing earlier extant ethnographic monographs, Professor Geertz found they were categorically written from the third person point of view. This is problematic, he notes, as it tends to objectify the “participants” who are involved in providing data for the research. To state that one culture does things this way and another culture does things differently does little to humanize a people, since they seem to be reduced to a series of activities, actions and very little else in this “cake of custom.” Like many scholars in his early career, Professor Geertz attempted to define culture in a more “distributed” manner, as if through a lens with multiple focal points, due to the fact that culture is never an integrated whole, consistent across the entire culture of any civilization. Divisions between one culture and another were not easily discernable because they were not sharply differentiated and, so, tended to fuse into one another. In turning to the need for a more specific conceptualization of culture, Professor Geertz believed that the answer lay within the problem of meaning. He began to think of culture as the symbolic structures that give meaning to peoples’ lives, influenced, perhaps, by his earlier religious studies courses. Numerous religions and ethnicities were present in Java, where he was working at the time. Hinduism, Islam and various animistic elements—the religious belief that objects, places and creatures all possess a distinct spiritual essence—were well represented but existed in varying proportions. Young Clifford Geertz attempted to catalogue, sort and integrate these into his thesis and subsequent book on the topic of Javanese culture. By this time, it was becoming clear that individuals were not necessarily culture bound. As Professor Geertz notes, “You could no longer say things like, ‘Culture made him do it.’” To this end, young Geertz claims that he really had to think about how meaning structures were assembled or taken apart, how they clashed, and other intricacies of a culture that is not a cake of custom—as in a culture that is simply taken-for-granted. Different views are to be expected because others may have different perspectives on what culture is really all about. Although this view has been much discussed and debated, Professor Geertz claims that this point offers a concept that has some clarity to it as it is not generally as diffuse as it has been in the past. Professor Geertz notes that a sea change in anthropology came just after World War II, when anthropologists, who had been working with very primitive tribal people, were suddenly confronted with large civilizations and countries becoming independent. At this point Professor Geertz refers to a thematic year at Princeton University’s Institute for Advanced Study, culminating in an attempt to bring people together to study what has occurred within developing countries over the past 50  years. The Bandung Conference, to which he refers, was the first large-scale

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Asian-African conference of newly independent states. It took place in Bandung, Indonesia in 1955. The 29 countries participating represented almost one quarter of the Earth’s land surface and a total of almost 1.5 billion people, over 50% of the world’s population, at the time. Conference aims were to promote Afro-Asian economic and cultural cooperation and to oppose encroaching (neo)colonialism. A movement resulting from this conference was the Non-Alignment Movement, a group of states not formally aligned with or against any major power bloc. As of 2019, the movement has over 30 member countries. Not only is the world in constant motion, various cultures of innumerable societies are changing, in tandem. This makes it harder to do anthropology, in Clifford Geertz’s estimation. One issue that he notes is the procedural nature of much of the work that is done in the social sciences, possibly in an attempt to justify qualitative research quantitatively. There has always been the suspicion that qualitative research is unscientific. This, Professor Geertz refers to as a kind of “spiritual hypochondria.” Professor Geertz identifies the example of obtaining release forms from participants in research activities. One cannot work that way, he claims, because many people will simply refuse to sign any type of release appeal. The preferred method is to talk with people first and to make friends in order to get to the point of working together on the research project. Otherwise, it is difficult to convince people to join. More recently, ethics review panels and the details that will allow one to pursue fieldwork, neither of which is a negative value because it allows for consistent monitoring of research variables, have encouraged anthropologists to become more self-­ conscious about what they are doing and about the validity of what they are researching. In a sense, like the triple crisis of representation, the anthropological moment now upon us is not to speak for others, but to have previously silenced cultures speak for themselves. As a caveat, Professor Geertz notes that one has to be self-conscious about research, but there is little room for “spiritual hypochondria,” as it is an excess that is simply unneeded. While he is quite willing to justify the work he does in contemporary moral terms, he is wary of over-reflections that paint world issues in unrealistic terms. Additionally, to be over-neglectful is also problematic. Moral dilemmas, common in this field of research, may be very real but may be ignored. As such, Professor Geertz claims that anthropology is a “morally perilous enterprise.” By this, he comes to the critical question of justification of intent. Questions range from upon what grounds the research is to be done to what the role of the researcher is in terms of the interpretation of what is said or conveyed. All one can do, he claims is to face it and try to do the best work one can. His own solution has been to clarify his thoughts through his writing. Professor Geertz eschews the third person point of view but also does not always write in the first person, either. His intent is to write in a recognizable style that makes it clear who is talking. The rest is about interpretation of what it is that was said. He claims he is not an omniscient narrator, but his method is, as he claims, “a little bit closer to being honest.” In identifying political issues, Professor Geertz notes that, right after WWII, the United States was much more interested in what other people thought. This was also

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the time of the “Third World,” as new countries were establishing themselves. Although this has diminished over the years since WWII, the United States was still intent on adapting the world to its own image. His discontent with this is the obvious point that this process is less about understanding a people than it is about imperialism and neocolonialism. He points to the situation in Iraq as a study note. The American presence in Iraq was conducted with very little knowledge of the difference between Shiites and Sunni’s, even though a great deal of information had been available to the American forces at the time. As ever, one of the major political issues that arises in the field of anthropology is the question of validity in terms of scientific objectivity. This hearkens back to the paradigmatic notion that all research should be scientific and that which is not is simply not scientific enough. Verification of sources of information thus becomes important, as does the evidence for which the words of participants serve as a sort of proxy. Professor Geertz identifies the real problem as ascertaining that one’s interpretation is valid and that it is verifiable. At issue is the concern about what a good interpretation looks like, as there is no “gold standard” to measure interpretations against. To write about the issue allows for a greater degree of self-reflection. Professor Geertz refers to the great British anthropologist, Sir Edward Evan Evans-­ Pritchard, and states that, while most monographs of that day were written from an omniscient third person perspective, Evans-Pritchard, he claims, never worried about his press. His decisiveness serves not only as an anecdote but also as an antidote. In his estimation, Professor Geertz claims that one really must state, “I talked to X and X said this and, then, Y said that, which wasn’t the same thing and … you work at it that way in a much more … sensitive way.” This continues to point to the rift between anthropology and the social sciences, and between those who want to make anthropology into a natural science, and people like Professor Geertz who sees the researcher as the main instrument of data interpretation. Each discipline, he suggests, and each methodology, has its own standards and ways of doing things, and one must justify those standards and ways of doing by being as clear and as explicit as possible. Professor Geertz notes that anthropology “tends to follow the flag,” particularly during its infancy within the past colonial period, where civilizations under the microscope tended to be objectified. He uses the metaphor of the ventriloquist to underline this objectification. Societies like the Javanese or Moroccans were not a part of the world discourse in that day and age, but they broke into the world discourse through becoming independent, through a variety of civil wars and revolutions. When they became independent, they began to speak with their own voices, so one can no longer adopt a colonial stance with them. Now, the task is to enlarge that discourse so that it is not consigned to the West. Newly independent countries are legitimate actors on the world stage, but it was not anthropology that accomplished this feat. In terms of today’s issues with newly minted countries, Professor Geertz notes that, previously, before conditions changed, it was difficult to get access to work in these countries from one’s own government. However, now, the issue is to get permission from the newly independent

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government where the research will take place. Now, one must convince these countries of the significance of the research, first. In Morocco and Indonesia, it is currently very difficult to obtain permission to research in these places. Now, the army is frequently involved and the whole situation has changed around anthropology. Before WWII, anthropologists just went to some previously colonized island, arrived unbidden, and asked people questions. Although the actuality was never that simple, this was the accepted process. Currently, the change in political conditions has tended to become more radical and even perilous in places like the Middle East, at the moment. As the world changes, the ethnographer must change with it. Although some people still work with very isolated groups, and this is a very valuable thing to do because these small enclaves are disappearing, this work stands in sharp contrast to Clifford Geertz’s work, which was conducted with very lively and politically independent societies. In working in Morocco and Indonesia shortly after their independence, Professor Geertz found himself immersed in a political maelstrom, where he had to figure out how to operate, using all new ground rules. He notes that it was very much less clear-cut than in a colonial situation.

The Postmodern Context As with most things, there is always something new and modern. This is as true of ethnographic inquiry as it is with anything else. Because qualitative methodologies are so very fluid, it is always an easy task to adapt an existing methodology to a new and customized application. Following are but a few of the permutations that have transpired with ethnographic inquiry. Dorothy E. Smith (1926–), pursuant to a distinguished career in Marxist feminist sociology, reinvented herself as an institutional ethnographer. Institutional ethnography (IE) is a permutation of ethnographic inquiry that explores the social relations that structure people’s everyday lives, including observing how people interact with one another in the context of social institutions, abstract or concrete, such as education, marriage and employment. The institutional ethnographer attempts to understand how interactions within those establishments are institutionalized. It may best be understood as an ethnography of “interactions which have been institutionalized,” rather than as an ethnographic study of specific companies, sectors or organizations. In this sense, daily activity provides the site for the investigation of any social organization. Institutional ethnography is frequently utilized by researchers in the social sciences, education, human services and policy research as a method for mapping trans-local relations that orchestrate human activity within institutions. John Van Maanen (1943–), not to be confused with Max van Manen, the eminent phenomenologist, is an American researcher who has contributed a great deal to “realist” and organizational ethnography. His research has included longitudinal studies of numerous work groups and individuals. As well, his publications include methodological studies on writing organizational ethnographies. One of his books,

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Tales of the Field on Writing Ethnography (1988) is a classic text for numerous doctoral programs in management. Realist ethnography, a traditional approach used by cultural anthropologists, features an objective account of the situation and is typically written in the third person perspective. Thus, the ethnographer remains in the background, as an omniscient reporter of facts. The researcher may provide details of everyday life among the people studied and uses standard categories, such as family life, communication networks, work life, social networks, and/or status systems, for cultural description. Consequently, the ethnographer strives to reproduce participants’ viewpoints through their quotations but retains the final word regarding how the culture is to be interpreted and/or presented. Harry F.  Wolcott (1929–2012) was professor emeritus at the University of Oregon and a leading qualitative researcher in anthropology and research methods. His major works include numerous anthropological studies of American education. He also wrote extensively on fieldwork and writing. Wolcott’s early contributions investigated the work of individuals, such as the public school principal. In utilizing a sample of a single individual, Walcott argued the merit of particularization, rather than large samples that better allowed for generalizability. One of his major themes strove to question the notion of “validity” in qualitative research, a topic that inspired strong and mixed reactions and, at the same time, posed difficult questions about how one might address the issue of validity in qualitative inquiry. In addition to this, he also did a great deal of exploration regarding how qualitative researchers conduct research, how one engages with participants, and ethics involved in conducting qualitative inquiry. D.  Soyini Madison, a researcher at Northwestern University in Illinois, USA, applies a critical approach to ethnographic inquiry. This melding focuses on implicit values inherent in ethnographic research in order to lay bare unacknowledged biases resulting from such implicit values. This approach seeks to discover and understand symbolic mechanisms, to extract ideology from action, and to understand the cognition and behaviour of research subjects within historical, cultural and social frameworks. As such, critical ethnography uses an advocacy perspective and makes use of reflexive inquiry as a “crisis” of truth in order to position researchers as being linked to their study participants and, therefore, inseparable from the context within which the study is conducted. Critical Ethnography, thus, strives to recognize and articulate the researcher’s own perspective in addition to speaking on behalf of subjects. In this way, the researcher is able to acknowledge any biases that their own limitations, histories, and institutional standpoints bring to bear on their work. In addition, critical ethnography is inherently both political and pedagogical in its approach. Little attempt is made at being detached or clinically objective in method or reporting. While conventional ethnography tends to describe the actuality of any situation, critical ethnography also asks what could be done in order to disrupt tacit power relationships and perceived social inequalities (Carspecken & Apple, 1991; Madison, 2005) in current society, where systems of power, prestige, privilege, and authority serve to marginalize individuals from different classes, races, and genders. Critical ethnography advocates for their emancipation. The major components of critical ethnography include a value-laden orientation, the empowerment of people by providing

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them more authority, challenging the status quo, and redressing issues of power and control. Collaborative Ethnography trains students in the history and philosophy of collaborative work. The problem that collaborative ethnography articulates for the discipline is the potentially exploitative relationship between ethnographer and “informant,” where the participant may provide cultural knowledge and contacts, but has no conscious, active voice regarding the final ethnography. At the heart of collaborative work, typified by a written document extracted from long term research, usually born of complex webs of intimate relationships, is the question of how to honour the intimacy of these relationships and critically balance the assumed role of the ethnographer as sole authoritative voice. Other Approaches – Recently, neo-scientific approaches to ethnography have expanded to include numerous “schools” or subtypes of ethnography which contain different theoretical orientations and aims, such as structural functionalism, symbolic interactionism, cultural and cognitive anthropology, feminism, Marxism, critical theory, ethnomethodology, cultural studies, and postmodernism, which has led to a perceived lack of orthodoxy in ethnography and has resulted in a multiplicity of pluralistic approaches (Atkinson & Hammersley, 1994). Additional types of ethnographies include confessional ethnography, life history, auto-ethnography, duo-ethnography, feminist ethnography, ethnographic novels, and the visual ethnography found in photography and video, as well as in electronic media (LeCompte et al., 1992; Van Maanen, 1988).

The Philosophical Context As with any qualitative methodology, there are no specific methods by which to proceed. What follows is but one way to conduct an ethnographic research study. However, there are many current volumes, such as Harry Wolcott’s Ethnography: A way of seeing (2008), available to offer guidance. In performing either realist or critical ethnography, the following steps may prove useful. First of all, it is important to assess the fit between the topic of study and the methodology of study. An ethnographic study is determined by its purpose. If the purpose is to describe how a culture works, or to explore a society’s beliefs, values, language and behaviour, an ethnographic study is a natural choice. When issues of power, dominance and resistance to domination are a part of the study, then it would seem natural to apply a critical approach to the ethnographic study. Extant literature may be unavailable or the group may be one that has not previously been a focal point for study. Typically, the group will have been around for a long period of time, so their habits, values, beliefs and culture, including language and attitudes, will be relatively well established, with fairly clear behaviour patterns. This may also represent a group within an existing and well-known society or culture, where this particular group may have been marginalized or targeted by the dominant culture. Whatever the case, the ethnographer must find a way into the culture, perhaps

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through making friends or offering something that will benefit powerful individuals or the particular culture, as a whole. Key individuals may assist in representing or identifying participants for the study. In choosing themes to research, the ethnographer may choose to include the participants in identifying specific cultural issues to investigate. Enculturation, learning, socialization, cognition, domination, inequality or child and adult development (LeCompte et al., 1992) may be examples of suitable choices. The ethnographer may then begin the study by observing individuals interacting in ordinary situations, allowing the discerning of pervasive behaviours (Fetterman, 1998). Words and actions, potential and real tensions between participants, and artefacts may all be functions of the culture within which the society is embedded (Spradley, 1980). From here, attempts are made to describe the group’s history, religion, politics, economy and environment. Special attention is often paid to cultural concepts, such as social structure, kinship, political structure, and social relations that function among members of the group (Fetterman, 1998). It is at this point that the particular type of ethnographic study may be chosen, or revised, if need be. For example, a critical ethnography may choose to expose abuses of power, identify problems of hegemony or to advocate for smaller groups within the larger culture. This is the point at which fieldwork becomes important. Wolcott (2008) suggests that information regarding where the group lives and works is especially valuable. Of course, this means that the lives and the individuals themselves will be duly respected, partly in order to obtain data that is as valid as possible. Casting a net as wide as possible will always bring un-useful items, but it will also offer valuable insights that one would not ordinarily be able to gain access to. It is recommended that ethnographers bring a certain sensitivity to their fieldwork; respect, reciprocity, possession of data, ethical behaviour and the like are all important considerations in the collecting of sensitive and personal data (Hammersley & Atkinson, 1995). In addition, how the researcher represents him- or herself is also crucial to the accessing and presentation of the data. There are numerous useful methods, such as observations, tests, measures, surveys, interviews, content analysis, elicitation methods, audiovisual methods, spatial mapping, and network research (Schensul et al., 1999), whereby one may obtain, store and archive data. Then, from the enormous amount of information acquired, the researcher analyzes the data in order to compile a detailed description of the group that is being researched, perhaps focusing on a single event, on a number of activities, or on the entire group over a prolonged period of time. Then, the ethnographer analyzes patterns in terms of themes or topics relating to how the cultural group lives. The final product will likely offer a fairly holistic perspective of the views of the participants, as well as the views of the researcher. This final product may advocate for the needs of the society and offers the reader information, knowledge and an interpretation about the society from the perspective of the participants and the researcher. However, it is possible that the final product may appear in some form other than a monograph. In fact, some ethnographies may be developed into poems, theatre productions or novels of historical fiction.

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Feature Article by Clifford Geertz Perhaps there is no one more qualified than Clifford Geertz to describe and discuss numerous issues, processes and procedures that dominate the field of anthropology. Ethnographic writing is characterized by the concept of “thick description,” a term coined by Gilbert Ryles and further developed by Clifford Geertz, as previously noted. Professor Geertz is also given credit for recognizing that anthropological study can never be fully objective, since it is the ethnographer, him- or herself, who is the major instrument of data analysis and interpretation. Through his considerable volume of work, Clifford Geertz has also helped qualitative research to gain a sort of independence from the paradigm of quantitative research. This work continues through the development of methodologies, vocabulary building and arcane processes and procedures relevant to qualitative research practices (See Thick description: Toward an interpretive theory of culture).

Summary: On Ethnography as Process and Product As can be seen from the above, ethnographic writing has its own set of challenges. The ethnographer must have a certain grounding in cultural anthropology, the significance of the socio-cultural system under scrutiny and an understanding of concepts typically explored by ethnographers. Another important consideration is the amount of time required to collect data. Good data collection, like any good work, takes a significant amount of time in the field as well as a significant amount of time to produce the final product. The final product, itself, is not without its issues, as it may be represented in a number of different ways. Many ethnographies are written as narratives, involving either the third or first person, frequently both. Others may be told in the form of a story, which may be a challenge for the researcher to produce. Other authors may disseminate their work more traditionally, in a traditional social sciences and humanities type of format. It is also possible for the researcher to lose his/her perspective and come to see things as the people within the culture do. While this loss of objectivity may not hamper the final result of the study, it may very well influence the study during production. As a final point, the ethnographer would benefit immensely from developing a sensitivity to the individuals who are the study participants and not only needs to acknowledge his/her impact on those individuals who take part in the study, but also to acknowledge the ways in which the study has helped to change the perspectives of the ethnographer. Although anthropology refers to the study of humans and human behaviour and societies, past and present, ethnography refers to the writing about people and cultures. Ethnography originated with the comparative cultural anthropology conducted by such early twentieth-century anthropologists as Franz Boas, Bronislaw Malinowski, Alfred Radcliffe-Brown, and Margaret Mead. Even though these early searchers took the natural sciences as an initial model for their research, their brand of research differed significantly from traditional scientific methodologies in that

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they collected data through firsthand accounts of existing “primitive” cultures. From the 1920s and throughout the 1930s, scholars strove to adapt anthropological field methods to the study of cultural groups in the United States. The term, ethnography, derives from the Greek “ethnos,” meaning people, folk, or nation, and “graphos,” to write. Thus, ethnography is a means to represent, anthropologically speaking, a written account of the culture, or of a phenomenon within that culture, of a group of people. The “process” of ethnography involves extended observations of the selected group, typically through participant observation. Clifford Geertz was interviewed for the purpose of this volume and has contributed much to the field of ethnographic inquiry. As time passed and the ethnographic field began to take shape, definitions changed, and some of the myths that populated the field began to die out. One such tradition was the myth of the “Lone Ethnographer,” which implied that the ethnographer went into uncharted, isolated territories to emerge triumphant with a monograph of a newly discovered primitive culture. The fact that the ethnographer may be lonely but is never alone and is always surrounded by people points to the objectification of so-called “primitive” cultures and reveals the colonial roots of anthropologic study. This is not without its political issues and has led to the charge that “anthropology follows the flag.” Consequently, anthropological study, and by extension, ethnography, is highly politically charged. Much debate has occurred around what is meant by “culture” and around issues of ethics and objectification of individuals and groups under study. However, there are also newer and more modern versions of ethnography, such as institutional ethnography, “realist” and organizational ethnography, critical and collaborative ethnography, and recently, neo-scientific approaches to ethnography. Additional types of ethnographies include confessional ethnography, life history, auto-ethnography, duo-­ ethnography, feminist ethnography, ethnographic novels, and the visual ethnography found in photography and video, and electronic media. While there is no specific procedure required to pursue an ethnographic inquiry, some basic points to bear in mind are that respect of the group being studied is paramount. The proper conduct of fieldwork is highly important as this provides a great deal of background information for the eventual ethnography. A feature article by Clifford Geertz is presented in order to develop the notion of “thick description” and to illustrate an example of an ethnographic venture. Finally, some of the challenges associated with ethnographic inquiry are identified. Suggestions for Further Reading Should the reader wish to read further regarding ethnographic inquiry, the following may be of some usefulness: Goldstein, T. (2004). Performed ethnography for anti-homophobia teacher education: Linking research to teaching. Canadian Online Journal of Queer Studies in Education, 1(1). Retrieved May 7, 2018, from http://jqstudies.oise.utoronto.ca/ journal/viewarticle.php?id=13&layout=html Tedlock, B. (1993). The observation of participation and the emergence of public ethnography. Journal of Anthropological Research, 47(1), 69–94. Retrieved May 7, 2018, from http://www.jstor.org/stable/3630581

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Selected Annotated Bibliography Agar, M. H. (2008). The professional stranger: An informal introduction to ethnography (2nd ed.). Emerald Group. This second edition of Michael Agar’s classic introductory text brings ethnography up to date. Agar shows how the fundamentals endure even as they adapt to a world unimagined more than 100 years ago. This new edition integrates classical scientific notions with new concepts such as narrative and interpretation. Agar updates the contrast between the researcher’s apprenticeship to knowledgeable informants and the hypothesis-testing mode that still dominates social science, while demonstrating the complementarity of the two. Drawing extensively from his own research experience, he illustrates the stages of the ethnographic process from inception through the emergence of a focus, and toward a subsequent formalization of methods and analysis. In the process, he illustrates several approaches designed to reconcile the contradictory demands of the scientific process and human behaviour. This is a volume that will be valued by students of ethnography and practising ethnographers, alike. Atkinson, P., & Hammersley, M. (1994). Ethnography and participant observation. In N.  K. Denzin & Y.  S. Lincoln (Eds.), Handbook of qualitative research (pp. 248–260). Sage. Ethnography can be viewed as both a methodological paradigm, and as a method. This brings into focus the twin concepts of exploration versus hypothesis testing; characterized by unstructured data; small numbers of cases and an analysis of data involving explicit interpretations of meanings and functions of human actions, the product of which are formed in verbal descriptions and explanations. Of interest is the participant versus non-participant observation, complete observation, observer as participant, participant as observer, complete participant, which are all dependent on collective knowledge of the topic and by whom, who is observing, what activities are performed or remain unperformed by the researcher and how this impacts how people, the observer, and the setting interrelate. This article describes, in very specific terms, how the researcher orients him- or herself to the topic under study in terms of positionality and reflexivity. Bagehot, W. (1872/2006). Physics and politics. Dodo Press. Walter Bagehot lived during a time when the world was changing at an unprecedented pace. Due to the Industrial Revolution, new scientific ideas were helping to reshape the world, and every field of human inquiry was affected. There was renewed interest in providing full explanations for the history of everything in existence. In this work, first published in 1872, Bagehot applies scientific ideas, like survival of the fittest, to the development of nations and government. He further discusses the effect of scientific and technological advancements on politics, like the invention of stronger and more deadly weapons. Bagehot, as editor of The Economist, was among the first to discuss the concept of the business cycle. He is also the author of The English Constitution

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(1873) and The Postulates of English Political Economy (1885). This volume offers a rare insight into the world of centuries past. Collins, P. H. (2000). Black feminist thought: Knowledge, consciousness, and the politics of empowerment (2nd ed.). Routledge. Despite the double burden of racial and gender discrimination, African-American women have developed a rich intellectual tradition that is not widely recognized or commonly known. In Black Feminist Thought, originally published in 1990, Patricia Hill Collins explores the words and ideas of Black feminist intellectuals and writers, both within the academy and without. In this volume, Collins offers an interpretive framework for the work of such prominent Black feminist thinkers as Angela Davis, bell hooks, Alice Walker, and Audre Lorde. Drawing from fiction, poetry, music and oral history, the result is a superbly crafted and revolutionary book that offers one of the first overviews of Black feminist thought and its canon. This volume would be prized by students and researchers interested in developing or updating their understandings of current Black female authors and related issues. Creswell, J.  W., & Poth, C.  N. (2016). Qualitative inquiry and research design: Choosing among five approaches. Sage. In this revised edition of his best-selling text, John Creswell has introduced a new co-author, Cheryl N.  Poth, as they explore the philosophical underpinnings, history, and key elements of five qualitative inquiry approaches: narrative research, phenomenology, grounded theory, ethnography, and case study. This volume preserves Creswell’s signature writing style, as the authors compare the methodologies and relate research designs to each of the traditions of inquiry. The book is written in a highly accessible manner. It also features new content, articles, pedagogy, references, and expanded coverage of ethics throughout. This volume is an ideal introduction to the theories, strategies, and practices of qualitative inquiry. For students and scholars alike, this volume offers a wide-ranging readable account of five of our most commonly utilized qualitative research methodologies. Geertz, C. (1973). The interpretation of cultures: Selected essays. Basic Books. While some have called this a difficult and dense volume, it lays out Clifford Geertz’s theory of culture and how it might be interpreted. He is a gifted writer and writes with a grace and style that conjures up a beautiful, almost lyrical account of complicated theories. However, one should also have a reasonable understanding of many of the schools of thought that are referenced. Geertz comes to his subject at a time when the social sciences were being attacked for being less than scientific. From this volume, what is clear is that Geertz has little interest in theories that are not closely aligned with the subject from which they are derived. He says quite eloquently that anthropology is only a description or dialogue, and that it is neither predictive nor should be. A favourite part of the book is the description of Bali because the Balinese approach to life is so different, their conception of time is fluid, their naming system has five rungs and interpersonal behaviour is governed by the fear that one might not do the ceremony justice.

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Lassiter, L. E. (2005). The Chicago guide to collaborative ethnography. Chicago University Press. Although collaboration between ethnographers and subjects has long been a product of the close, intimate relationships that define ethnographic research, increasingly, collaboration can no longer be viewed as a consequence of fieldwork. Collaboration now preconditions and shapes research design as well as its dissemination. As such, ethnographic subjects are shifting from being informants to becoming consultants. The emergence of collaborative ethnography highlights this relationship between consultant and ethnographer, moving it to center stage as a calculated part, not only of fieldwork but also of the writing process itself. This volume presents an historical, theoretical, and practice-oriented road map for this shift from incidental collaboration to a more conscious and explicit collaborative strategy. Lassiter charts the history of collaborative ethnography from its earliest implementation to its contemporary emergence in fields such as feminism, humanistic anthropology, and critical ethnography. Lévi-Strauss, C. (1963). Structural anthropology. Basic Books. For the past decade and a half, particularly since his death in 2009, Claude Lévi-­ Strauss has been the most influential anthropological theorist in France. The “structural method” was first established in this history-making book, as it served to change the face of social anthropology. This classic volume introduces readers to Levi-Strauss’s understanding of man and society in terms of individuals, kinship, social organization, religion, mythology and art. He has attracted a large following in Europe and evoked wide interest in North America. This book was first published in France in 1958 as a collection of papers, written between 1944 and 1957, which constitute what Lévi-Strauss regards as his most representative work. Each paper is a self-contained whole in which he applies the structural method to particular problems and data. Lévi-Strauss is primarily concerned with universals such as basic social and mental processes of which cultural institutions are the concrete external projections or manifestations. Malinowski, B. (1922/2014). Argonauts of the Western Pacific: An account of native enterprise and adventure in the archipelagoes of Melanesian New Guinea. Routledge. Bronislaw Malinowski’s trail-blazing volume, Argonauts of the Western Pacific, is both a detailed account of exchange in the Melanesian islands and a manifesto of a modernist anthropology. Malinowski contends that the goal which the ethnographer should never lose sight of is “to grasp the native’s point of view, his relation to life, to realize his vision of his world.” Through vivid evocations of Kula life, including the building and launching of canoes, fishing expeditions and the role of myth and magic amongst the Kula people, Malinowski brilliantly describes an inter-island system of exchange. Exchange items range from gifts from father to son to swapping fish for yams. A classic of anthropology that did much to establish the primacy of painstaking fieldwork over the earlier anecdotal reports of travel writers, journalists and missionaries, it is a compelling insight into a world now largely lost from view. This is one book that every ethnographer, would-be or practising, should have on his or her bookshelves.

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Moore, J. D. (2009). Visions of culture: An introduction to anthropological theories and theorists. AltaMira. This classic textbook offers anthropology students a succinct, clear, and balanced introduction to theoretical developments in the field. The key ideas of 25 major theorists are described and, unique within this textbook, are linked to the biographical and fieldwork experiences that helped shape their theories. Thus, the impact of each scholar on contemporary anthropology is presented, along with numerous examples, quotations from the theorists’ writings, and a description of the broader intellectual setting in which these anthropologists worked. Moore has updated many of the profiles to take into account recent scholarship and changing views of their significant contributions. The book is written in such a way as to encourage the fullest intellectual engagement for students. However, not only students will benefit from this magnificent tome, scholars of anthropology will also find it an invaluable addition to their collection. Wolcott, H. F. (2008). Ethnography: A way of seeing. AltaMira Press. One of anthropology’s leading writers on ethnographic methods, Harry Wolcott discusses the fundamental nature of ethnographic studies. Tracing its development from its disciplinary origins in sociology and anthropology, Wolcott points out what is distinctive about ethnography and what it means to conduct research in the ethnographic tradition. In this engaging and thought-provoking book, Wolcott distinguishes ethnography as more than just a set of field methods and practices, separating it from many related qualitative research traditions as “a way of seeing” through the lens of culture. For both beginning and experienced ethnographers in a wide range of disciplines, Wolcott’s book will provide important ideas for improving research practice. The 13 chapters include topics ranging from “Ethnography in the Good Old Days,” over much rugged ethnographic terrain, to the final chapter where he looks backwards and forwards over where we have been and to where we are headed. Young, M. (2004). Malinowski: Odyssey of an anthropologist, 1884–1920. Yale University Press. Bronislaw Malinowski was a colourful and charismatic social scientist through the early part of the twentieth century. His contributions as a founding father of social anthropology and his complex personality earned him international notoriety and near-mythical status. This landmark book presents a vivid portrait of Malinowski’s early life, from his birth in Kracow, Poland, to his departure in 1920 from the Trobriand Islands of the South Pacific. By age 36, he had already created the innovative fieldwork methods and techniques that would secure his intellectual legacy. Drawing on an exceptionally rich array of primary documents, including Malinowski’s letters and unpublished diaries and manuscripts, Michael Young provides significant new information about the anthropologist’s personality, private life and career. The author describes Malinowski’s restless life of travel, connections with intellectuals and artists, a Nietzschean belief in his own destiny, and legendary fieldwork.

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Questions for Further Study • What are some of the important traditions related to ethnographic inquiry? • Who are some of the important names associated with ethnographic inquiry and what significant accomplishments have these individuals achieved? • How has the field of anthropology changed over the course of history? • Is anthropology a science? Should it be? Please justify your position. • Imagine an ethnographic study you may wish to conduct. How would you go about developing this study? What are the important steps to be taken prior to your data collection? Afterwards?

Thick description: Toward an interpretive theory of culture Clifford Geertz Princeton University Geertz, C. (1973). Thick description: Toward an interpretive theory of culture. In C. Geertz, The Interpretation of Cultures: Selected Essays (pp. 3-30). New York, NY: Basic Books.

I In her book, Philosophy in a New Key, Susanne Langer remarks that certain ideas burst upon the intellectual landscape with a tremendous force. They resolve so many fundamental problems at once that they seem also to promise that they will resolve all fundamental problems, clarify all obscure issues. Everyone snaps them up as the open sesame of some new positive science, the conceptual center-point around which a comprehensive system of analysis can be built. The sudden vogue of such a grande idee, crowding out almost everything else for a while, is due, she says, “to the fact that all sensitive and active minds turn at once to exploiting it. We try it in every connection, for every purpose, experiment with possible stretches of its strict meaning, with generalizations and derivatives.” After we have become familiar with the new idea, however, after it has become part of our general stock of theoretical concepts, our expectations are brought more into balance with its actual uses, and its excessive popularity is ended. A few zealots persist in the old key-to-the-universe view of it; but less driven thinkers settle down after a while to the problems the idea has really generated. They try to apply it and extend it where it applies and where it is capable of extension; and they desist where it does not apply or cannot be extended. It becomes, if it was, in truth, a seminal idea in the first place, a permanent and enduring part of our intellectual armory. But it no longer has the grandiose, all-promising scope, the infinite versatility of apparent

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application, it once had. The second law of thermodynamics, or the principle of natural selection, or the notion of unconscious motivation, or the organization of the means of production does not explain everything, not even everything human, but it still explains something; and our attention shifts to isolating just what that something is, to disentangling ourselves from a lot of pseudoscience to which, in the first flush of its celebrity, it has also given rise. Whether or not this is, in fact, the way all centrally important scientific concepts develop, I don’t know. But certainly this pattern fits the concept of culture, around which the whole discipline of anthropology arose, and whose domination that discipline has been increasingly concerned to limit, specify, focus, and contain. It is to this cutting of the culture concept down to size, therefore actually insuring its continued importance rather than undermining it, that the essays below are all, in their several ways and from their several directions, dedicated. They all argue, sometimes explicitly, more often merely through the particular analysis they develop, for a narrowed, specialized, and, so I imagine, theoretically more powerful concept of culture to replace E. B. Tylor’s famous “most complex whole,” which, its originative power not denied, seems to me to have reached the point where it obscures a good deal more than it reveals. The conceptual morass into which the Tylorean kind of pot-au-feu theorizing about culture can lead, is evident in what is still one of the better general introductions to anthropology, Clyde Kluckhohn’s Mirror for Man. In some twenty-seven pages of his chapter on the concept, Kluckhohn managed to define culture in turn as: (1) “the total way of life of a people”; (2) “the social legacy the individual acquires from his group”; (3) “a way of thinking, feeling, and believing”; (4) “an abstraction from behaviour”; (5) a theory on the part of the anthropologist about the way in which a group of people in fact behave; (6) a “storehouse of pooled learning”; (7) “a set of standardized orientations to recurrent problems”; (8) “learned behaviour”; (9) a mechanism for the normative regulation of behavior; (10) “a set of techniques for adjusting both to the external environment and to other men”; (11) “a precipitate of history”; and turning, perhaps in desperation, to similes, as a map, as a sieve, and as a matrix. In the face of this sort of theoretical diffusion, even a somewhat constricted and not entirely standard concept of culture, which is at least internally coherent and, more important, which has a definable argument to make is (as, to be fair, Kluckhohn himself keenly realized) an improvement. Eclecticism is self-­ defeating not because there is only one direction in which it is useful to move, but because there are so many: it is necessary to choose. The concept of culture I espouse, and whose utility the essays below attempt to demonstrate, is essentially a semiotic one. Believing, with Max Weber, that man is an animal suspended in webs of significance he himself has spun, I take culture to be those webs, and the analysis of it to be therefore not an experimental science in search of law but an interpretive one in search of meaning. It is explication I am after, construing social expressions on their surface enigmatical. But this pronouncement, a doctrine in a clause, demands itself some explication.

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II Operationalism as a methodological dogma never made much sense so far as the social sciences are concerned, and except for a few rather too well-swept corners— Skinnerian behaviorism, intelligence testing, and so on—it is largely dead now. But it had, for all that, an important point to make, which, however we may feel about trying to define charisma or alienation in terms of operations, retains a certain force: if you want to understand what a science is, you should look in the first instance not at its theories or its findings, and certainly not at what its apologists say about it; you should look at what the practitioners of it do. In anthropology, or anyway social anthropology, what the practitioners do is ethnography. And it is in understanding what ethnography is, or more exactly what doing ethnography is, that a start can be made toward grasping what anthropological analysis amounts to as a form of knowledge. This, it must immediately said, is not a matter of methods. From one point of view, that of the textbook, doing ethnography is establishing rapport, selecting informants, transcribing texts, taking genealogies, mapping fields, keeping a diary, and so on. But it is not these things, techniques and received procedures, that define the enterprise. What defines it is the kind of intellectual effort it is: an elaborate venture in, to borrow a notion from Gilbert Ryle, “thick description.” Ryle’s discussion of “thick description” appears in two recent essays of his (now reprinted in the second volume of his Collected Papers) addressed to the general question of what, as he puts it, “Le Penseur” is doing: “Thinking and Reflecting” and “The Thinking of Thoughts.” Consider, he says, two boys rapidly contracting the eyelids of their right eyes. In one, this is an involuntary twitch; in the other, a conspiratorial signal to a friend. The two movements are, as movements, identical; from an I-am-a-camera, “phenomenalistic” observation of them alone, one could not tell which was twitch and which was wink, or indeed whether both or either was twitch or wink. Yet the difference, however unphotographable, between a twitch and a wink is vast; as anyone unfortunate enough to have had the first taken for the second knows. The winker is communicating, and indeed communicating in a quite precise and special way: (1) deliberately, (2) to someone in particular, (3) to impart a particular message, (4) according to a socially established code, and (5) without cognizance of the rest of the company. As Ryle points out, the winker has not done two things, contracted his eyelids and winked, while the twitcher has done only one, contracted his eye lids. Contracting your eyelids on purpose when there exists a public code in which so doing counts as a conspiratorial signal is winking. That’s all there is to it: a speck of behavior, a speck of culture, and voila!—a gesture. That, however, is just the beginning. Suppose, he continues, there is a third boy, who, “to give malicious amusement to his cronies,” parodies the first boy’s wink, as amateurish, clumsy, obvious, and so on. He, of course, does this in the same way the second boy winked and the first twitched: by contracting his right eyelids. Only this boy is neither winking nor twitching, he is parodying someone else’s, as he takes it, laughable, attempt at winking. Here, too, a socially established code exists (he will

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“wink” laboriously, overobviously, perhaps adding a grimace—the usual artifices of the clown); and so also does a message. Only now it is not conspiracy but ridicule that is in the air. If the others think he is actually winking, his whole project misfires as completely, though with somewhat different results, as if they think he is twitching. One can go further: uncertain of his mimicking abilities, the would-be satirist may practice at home before the mirror, in which case he is not twitching, winking, or parodying, but rehearsing; though so far as what a camera, a radical behaviorist, or a believer in protocol sentences would record he is just rapidly contracting his right eyelids like all the others. Complexities are possible, if not practically without end, at least logically so. The original winker might, for example, actually have been fake-winking, say, to mislead outsiders into imagining there was a conspiracy afoot when there in fact was not, in which case our descriptions of what the parodist is parodying and the rehearser rehearsing of course shift accordingly. But the point is that between what Ryle calls the “thin description” of what the rehearser (parodist, winker, twitcher . . .) is doing (“rapidly contracting his right eyelids”) and the “thick description” of what he is doing (“practicing a burlesque of a friend faking a wink to deceive an innocent into thinking a conspiracy is in motion”) lies the object of ethnography: a stratified hierarchy of meaningful structures in terms of which twitches, winks, fake-winks, parodies, rehearsals of parodies are produced, perceived, and interpreted, and without which they would not (not even the zero-form twitches, which, as a cultural category, are as much nonwinks as winks are nontwitches) in fact exist, no matter what anyone did or didn’t do with his eyelids. Like so many of the little stories Oxford philosophers like to make up for themselves, all this winking, fake-winking, burlesque-fake-winking, rehearsed-­ burlesque-­fake-winking, may seem a bit artificial. In way of adding a more empirical note, let me give, deliberately unpreceded by any prior explanatory comment at all, a not untypical excerpt from my own field journal to demonstrate that, however evened off for didactic purposes, Ryle’s example presents an image only too exact of the sort of piled-up structures of inference and implication through which an ethnographer is continually trying pick his way: The French [the informant said] had only just arrived. They set up twenty or so small forts between here, the town, and the Marmusha area up in the middle of the mountains, placing them on promontories so they could survey the countryside. But for all this they couldn’t guarantee safety, especially at night, so although the mezrag, trade-pact, system was supposed to be legally abolished it in fact continued as before. One night, when Cohen (who speaks fluent Berber), was up there, at Marmusha, two other Jews who were traders to a neighboring tribe came by to purchase some goods from him. Some Berbers, from yet another neighboring tribe, tried to break into Cohen’s place, but he fired his rifle in the air. (Traditionally, Jews were not allowed to carry weapons; but at this period things were so unsettled many did so anyway.) This attracted the attention of the French and the marauders fled. The next night, however, they came back, one of them disguised as a woman who knocked on the door with some sort of a story. Cohen was suspicious and didn’t want to let “her” in, but the other Jews said, “oh, it’s all right, it’s only a woman.” So they opened the door and the whole lot came pouring in. They killed the two visiting Jews, but Cohen managed to barricade himself in an adjoining room. He heard the robbers planning to burn him alive in

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6  Ethnographic Inquiry the shop after they removed his goods, and so he opened the door and, laying about him wildly with a club, managed to escape through a window. He went up to the fort, then, to have his wounds dressed, and complained to the local commandant, one Captain Dumari, saying he wanted his ‘ar—i.e., four or five times the value of the merchandise stolen from him. The robbers were from a tribe which had not yet submitted to French authority and were in open rebellion against it, and he wanted authorization to go with his mezrag-holder, the Marmusha tribal sheikh, to collect the indemnity that, under traditional rules, he had coming to him. Captain Dumari couldn’t officially give him permission to do this, because of the French prohibition of the mezrag relationship, but he gave him verbal authorization, saying, “If you get killed, it’s your problem.” So the sheikh, the Jew, and a small company of armed Marmushans went off ten or fifteen kilometers up into the rebellious area, where there were of course no French, and, sneaking up, captured the thief-tribe’s shepherd and stole its herds. The other tribe soon came riding out on horses after them, armed with rifles and ready to attack. But when they saw who the “sheep thieves” were, they thought better of it and said, “all right, we’ll talk.” They couldn’t really deny what had happened—that some of their men had robbed Cohen and killed the two visitors—and they weren’t prepared to start the serious feud with the Marmusha a scuffle with the invading party would bring on. So the two groups talked, and talked, and talked, there on the plain amid the thousands of sheep, and decided finally on five-hundred sheep damages. The two armed Berber groups then lined up on their horses at opposite ends of the plain, with the sheep herded between them, and Cohen, in his black gown, pillbox hat, and flapping slippers, went out alone among the sheep, picking out, one by one and at his own good speed, the best ones for his payment. Cohen got his sheep and drove them back to Marmusha. The French, up in their fort, heard them coming from some distance (“Ba, ba, ba” said Cohen, happily, recalling the image) and said, “What the hell is that?” And Cohen said, “That is my ‘ar.” The French couldn’t believe he had actually done what he said he had done, and accused him of being a spy for the rebellious Berbers, put him in prison, and took his sheep. In the town, his family, not having heard from him in so long a time, thought he was dead. But after a while the French released him and he came back home, but without his sheep. He then went to the Colonel in the town, the Frenchman in charge of the whole region, to complain. But the Colonel said, “I can’t do anything about the matter. It’s not my problem.”

Quoted raw, a note in a bottle, this passage conveys, as any similar one similarly presented would do, a fair sense of how much goes into ethnographic description of even the most elemental sort—how extraordinarily “thick” it is. In finished anthropological writings, including those collected here, this fact—that what we call our data are really our own constructions of other people’s constructions of what they and their compatriots are up to—is obscured because most of what we need to comprehend a particular event, ritual, custom, idea, or whatever is insinuated as background information before the thing itself is directly examined. (Even to reveal that this little drama took place in the high lands of central Morocco in 1912—and was recounted there in 1968—is to determine much of our understanding of it.) There is nothing particularly wrong with this, and it is in any case inevitable. But it does lead to a view of anthropological research as rather more of an observational and rather less of an interpretive activity than it really is. Right down at the factual base, the hard rock, insofar as there is any, of the whole enterprise, we are already explicating: and worse, explicating explications. Winks upon winks upon winks.

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Analysis, then, is sorting out the structures of signification—what Ryle called established codes, a somewhat misleading expression, for it makes the enterprise sound too much like that of the cipher clerk when it is much more like that of the literary critic—and determining their social ground and import. Here, in our text, such sorting would begin with distinguishing the three unlike frames of interpretation ingredient in the situation, Jewish, Berber, and French, and would then move on to show how (and why) at that time, in that place, their copresence produced a situation in which systematic misunderstanding reduced traditional form to social farce. What tripped Cohen up, and with him the whole, ancient pattern of social and economic relationships within which he functioned, was a confusion of tongues. I shall come back to this too-compacted aphorism later, as well as to the details of the text itself. The point for now is only that ethnography is thick description. What the ethnographer is in fact faced with—except when (as, of course, he must do) he is pursuing the more automatized routines of data collection—is a multiplicity of complex conceptual structures, many of them superimposed upon or knotted into one another, which are at once strange, irregular, and inexplicit, and which he must contrive somehow first to grasp and then to render. And this is true at the most down-to-earth, jungle field work levels of his activity: interviewing informants, observing rituals, eliciting kin terms, tracing property lines, censusing households . . . writing his journal. Doing ethnography is like trying to read (in the sense of “construct a reading of”) a manuscript—foreign, faded, full of ellipses, incoherencies, suspicious emendations, and tendentious commentaries, but written not in conventionalized graphs of sound but in transient examples of shaped behavior.

III Culture, this acted document, thus is public, like a burlesqued wink or a mock sheep raid. Though ideational, it does not exist in someone’s head; though unphysical, it is not an occult entity. The interminable, because unterminable, debate within anthropology as to whether culture is “subjective” or “objective,” together with the mutual exchange of intellectual insults (“idealist!”—“materialist!”; “mentalist!”— “behaviorist!”; “impressionist!”—“positivist!”) which accompanies it, is wholly misconceived. Once human behavior is seen as (most of the time; there are true twitches) symbolic action—action which, like phonation in speech, pigment in painting, line in writing, or sonance in music, signifies—the question as to whether culture is patterned conduct or a frame of mind, or even the two somehow mixed together, loses sense. The thing to ask about a burlesqued wink or a mock sheep raid is not what their ontological status is. It is the same as that of rocks on the one hand and dreams on the other—they are things of this world. The thing to ask is what their import is: what it is, ridicule or challenge, irony or anger, snobbery or pride, that, in their occurrence and through their agency, is getting said.

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This may seem like an obvious truth, but there are a number of ways to obscure it. One is to imagine that culture is a self-contained “super organic” reality with forces and purposes of its own; that is, to reify it. Another is to claim that it consists in the brute pattern of behavioral events we observe in fact to occur in some identifiable community or other; that is, to reduce it. But though both these confusions still exist, and doubtless will be always with us, the main source of theoretical muddlement in contemporary anthropology is a view which developed in reaction to them and is right now very widely held—namely, that, to quote Ward Goodenough, perhaps its leading proponent, “culture [is located] in the minds and hearts of men.” Variously called ethnoscience, componential analysis, or cognitive anthropology (a terminological wavering which reflects a deeper uncertainty), this school of thought holds that culture is composed of psychological structures by means of which individuals or groups of individuals guide their behavior. “A society’s culture,” to quote Goodenough again, this time in a passage which has become the locus classicus of the whole movement, “consists of whatever it is one has to know or believe in order to operate in a manner acceptable to its members.” And from this view of what culture is follows a view, equally assured, of what describing it is—the writing out of systematic rules, an ethnographic algorithm, which, if followed, would make it possible so to operate, to pass (physical appearance aside) for a native. In such a way, extreme subjectivism is married to extreme formalism, with the expected result: an explosion of debate as to whether particular analyses (which come in the form of taxonomies, paradigms, tables, trees, and other ingenuities) reflect what the natives “really” think or are merely clever simulations, logically equivalent but substantively different, of what they think. As, on first glance, this approach may look close enough to the one being developed here to be mistaken for it, it is useful to be explicit as to what divides them. If, leaving our winks and sheep behind for the moment, we take, say, a Beethoven quartet as an, admittedly rather special but, for these purposes, nicely illustrative, sample of culture, no one would, I think, identify it with its score, with the skills and knowledge needed to play it, with the understanding of it possessed by its performers or auditors, nor, to take care, en passant, of the reductionists and reifiers, with a particular performance of it or with some mysterious entity transcending material existence. The “no one” is perhaps too strong here, for there are always incorrigibles. But that a Beethoven quartet is a temporally developed tonal structure, a coherent sequence of modeled sound—in a word, music—and not anybody’s knowledge of or belief about anything, including how to play it, is a proposition to which most people are, upon reflection, likely to assent. To play the violin it is necessary to possess certain habits, skills, knowledge, and talents, to be in the mood to play, and (as the old joke goes) to have a violin. But violin playing is neither the habits, skills, knowledge, and so on, nor the mood, nor (the notion believers in “material culture” apparently embrace) the violin. To make a trade pact in Morocco, you have to do certain things in certain ways (among others, cut, while chanting Quranic Arabic, the throat of a lamb before the assembled,

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undeformed, adult male members of your tribe) and to be possessed of certain psychological characteristics (among others, a desire for distant things). But a trade pact is neither the throat cutting nor the desire, though it is real enough, as seven kinsmen of our Marmusha sheikh discovered when, on an earlier occasion, they were executed by him following the theft of one mangy, essentially valueless sheepskin from Cohen. Culture is public because meaning is. You can’t wink (or burlesque one) without knowing what counts as winking or how, physically, to contract your eyelids, and you can’t conduct a sheep raid (or mimic one) without knowing what it is to steal a sheep and how practically to go about it. But to draw from such truths the conclusion that knowing how to wink is winking and knowing how to steal a sheep is sheep raiding is to betray as deep a confusion as, taking thin descriptions for thick, to identify winking with eyelid contractions or sheep raiding with chasing woolly animals out of pastures. The cognitivist fallacy—that culture consists (to quote another spokesman for the movement, Stephen Tyler) of “mental phenomena which can [he means “should”] be analyzed by formal methods similar to those of mathematics and logic”—is as destructive of an effective use of the concept as are the behaviorist and idealist fallacies to which it is a misdrawn correction. Perhaps, as its errors are more sophisticated and its distortions subtler, it is even more so. The generalized attack on privacy theories of meaning is, since early Husserl and late Wittgenstein, so much a part of modern thought that it need not be developed once more here. What is necessary is to see to it that the news of it reaches anthropology; and in particular that it is made clear that to say that culture consists of socially established structures of meaning in terms of which people do such things as signal conspiracies and join them or perceive insults and answer them, is no more to say that it is a psychological phenomenon, a characteristic of someone’s mind, personality, cognitive structure, or whatever, than to say that Tantrism, genetics, the progressive form of the verb, the classification of wines, the Common Law, or the notion of “a conditional curse” (as Westermarck defined the concept of ‘ar in terms of which Cohen pressed his claim to damages) is. What, in a place like Morocco, most prevents those of us who grew up winking other winks or attending other sheep from grasping what people are up to is not ignorance as to how cognition works (though, especially, one assumes, it works the same among them as it does among us, it would greatly help to have less of that too) as a lack of familiarity with the imaginative universe within which their acts are signs. As Wittgenstein has been invoked, he may as well be quoted: We...say of some people that they are transparent to us. It is, however, important as regards this observation that one human being can be a complete enigma to another. We learn this when we come into a strange country with entirely strange traditions; and, what is more, even given a mastery of the country’s language. We do not understand the people. (And not because of not knowing what they are saying to themselves.) We cannot find our feet with them.

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IV Finding our feet, an unnerving business which never more than distantly succeeds, is what ethnographic research consists of as a personal experience; trying to formulate the basis on which one imagines, always excessively, one has found them is what anthropological writing consists of as a scientific endeavor. We are not, or at least I am not, seeking either to become natives (a compromised word in any case) or to mimic them. Only romantics or spies would seem to find point in that. We are seeking, in the widened sense of the term in which it encompasses very much more than talk, to converse with them, a matter a great deal more difficult, and not only with strangers, than is commonly recognized. “If because speaking to someone does not seem mysterious enough.” Looked at in this way, the aim of anthropology is the enlargement of the universe of human discourse. That is not, of course, its only aim instruction, amusement, practical counsel, moral advance, and the discovery of natural order in human behavior are others; nor is anthropology the only discipline which pursues it. But it is an aim to which a semiotic concept of culture is peculiarly well adapted. As interworked systems of construable signs (what, ignoring provincial usages, I would call symbols), culture is not a power, something to which social events, behaviors, institutions, or processes can be causally attributed; it is a context, something within which they can be intelligibly—that is, thickly—described. The famous anthropological absorption with the (to us) exotic Berber horsemen, Jewish peddlers, French Legionnaires—is, thus, essentially a device for displacing the dulling sense of familiarity with which the mysteriousness of our own ability to relate perceptively to one another is concealed from us. Looking at the ordinary in places where it takes unaccustomed forms brings out not, as has so often been claimed, the arbitrariness of human behavior (there is nothing especially arbitrary about taking sheep theft for insolence in Morocco), but the degree to which its meaning varies according to the pattern of life by which it is informed. Understanding a people’s culture exposes their normalness without reducing their particularity. (The more I manage to follow what the Moroccans are up to, the more logical, and the more singular, they seem.) It renders them accessible: setting them in the frame of their own banalities, it dissolves their opacity. It is this maneuver, usually too casually referred to as “seeing things from the actor’s point of view,” too bookishly as “the verstehen approach,” or too technically as “emic analysis,” that so often leads to the notion that anthropology is a variety of either long-distance mind reading or cannibal-isle fantasizing, and which, for someone anxious to navigate past the wrecks of a dozen sunken philosophies, must therefore be executed with a great deal of care. Nothing is more necessary to comprehending what anthropological interpretation is, and the degree to which it is interpretation, than an exact understanding of what it means—and what it does not mean—to say that our formulations of other peoples’ symbol systems must be actor-oriented.1

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What it means is that descriptions of Berber, Jewish, or French culture must be cast in terms of the constructions we imagine Berbers, Jews, or Frenchmen to place upon what they live through, the formulae they use to define what happens to them. What it does not mean is that such descriptions are themselves Berber, Jewish, or French—that is, part of the reality they are ostensibly describing; they are anthropological—that is, part of a developing system of scientific analysis. They must be cast in terms of the interpretations which persons of a particular denomination subject their experience, because that is what they profess to be descriptions of; they are anthropological because it is, in fact, anthropologists who profess them. Normally, it is not necessary to point out quite so laboriously that the object of study is one thing and the study of it another. It is clear enough that the physical world is not physics and A Skeleton Key to Finnegan’s Wake not Finnegan’s Wake. But, as, in the study of culture, analysis penetrates into the very body of the object—that is, we begin with our own interpretations of what our informants are up to, or think they are up to, and then systematize those—the line between (Moroccan) culture as a natural fact and (Moroccan) culture as a theoretical entity tends to get blurred. All the more so, as the latter is presented in the form of an actor’s-eye description of (Moroccan) conceptions of everything from violence, honor, divinity, and justice, to tribe, property, patronage, and chiefship. In short, anthropological writings are themselves interpretations; and second and third order ones to boot. (By definition, only a “native” makes first order ones: it’s his culture.)2 They are, thus, fictions; fictions, in the sense that they are “something made,” “something fashioned”—the original meaning of fictio—not that they are false, unfactual, or merely “as if” thought experiments. To construct actor-oriented descriptions of the involvements of a Berber chieftain, a Jewish merchant, and a French soldier with one another in 1912 Morocco is clearly an imaginative act, not all that different from constructing similar descriptions of, say, the involvements with one another of a provincial French doctor, his silly, adulterous wife, and her feckless lover in nineteenth century France. In the latter case, the actors are presented as not having existed and the events as not having happened, while in the former they are represented as actual, or as having been so. This is a difference of no mean importance; indeed, precisely the one Madame Bovary had difficulty grasping. But the importance does not lie in the fact that her story was created while Cohen’s was only noted. The conditions of their creation, and the point of it (to say nothing of the manner and the quality) differ. But the one is as much a fictio—“a making”—as the other. Anthropologists have not always been as aware as they might be of this fact: that although culture exists in the trading post, the hill fort, or the sheep run, anthropology exists in the book, the article, the lecture, the museum display, or, sometimes nowadays, the film. To become aware of it is to realize that the line between mode of representation and substantive content is as undrawable in cultural analysis as it is in painting; and that fact in turn seems to threaten the objective status of anthropological knowledge by suggesting that its source is not social reality but scholarly artifice.

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It does threaten it, but the threat is hollow. The claim to attention of an ethnographic account does not rest on its author’s ability to capture primitive facts in faraway places and carry them home like a mask or a carving, but on the degree to which he is able to clarify what goes on in such places, to reduce the puzzlement— what manner of men are these?—to which unfamiliar acts emerging out of unknown backgrounds naturally give rise. This raises some serious problems of verification, all right—or, if “verification” is too strong a word for so soft a science (I, myself, would prefer “appraisal”), of how you can tell a better account from a worse one. But that is precisely the virtue of it. If ethnography is thick description and ethnographers those who are doing the describing, then the determining question for any given example of it, whether a field journal squib or a Malinowski-sized monograph, is whether it sorts winks from twitches and real winks from mimicked ones. It is not against a body of uninterpreted data, radically thinned descriptions, that we must measure the cogency of our explications, but against the power of the scientific imagination to bring us into touch with the lives of strangers. It is not worth it, as Thoreau said, to go round the world to count the cats in Zanzibar.

V Now, this proposition, that it is not in our interest to bleach human behavior of the very properties that interest us before we begin to examine it, has sometimes been escalated into a larger claim: namely, that as it is only those properties that interest us, we need not attend, save cursorily, to behavior at all. Culture is most effectively treated, the argument goes, purely as a symbolic system (the catch phrase is, “in its own terms”), by isolating its elements, specifying the internal relationships among those elements, and then characterizing the whole system in some general way— according to the core symbols around which it is organized, the underlying structures of which it is a surface expression, or the ideological principles upon which it is based. Though a distinct improvement over “learned behaviour” and “mental phenomena” notions of what culture is, and the source of some of the most powerful theoretical ideas in contemporary anthropology, this hermetical approach to things seems to me to run the danger (and increasingly to have been overtaken by it) of locking cultural analysis away from its proper object, the informal logic of actual life. There is little profit in extricating a concept from the defects of psychologism only to plunge it immediately into those of schematicism. Behavior must be attended to, and with some exactness, because it is through the flow of behavior—or, more precisely, social action—that cultural forms find articulation. They find it as well, of course, in various sorts of artifacts, and various states of consciousness; but these draw their meaning from the role they play (Wittgenstein would say their “use”) in an ongoing pattern of life, not from any intrinsic relationships they bear to one another. It is what Cohen, the sheikh, and “Captain Dumari” were doing when they tripped over one another’s purposes—pursuing trade, defending honor, establishing dominance that created our pastoral drama, and that is what

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the drama is, therefore, “about.” Whatever, or wherever, symbol systems “in their own terms” may be, we gain empirical access to them by inspecting events, not by arranging abstracted entities into unified patterns. A further implication of this is that coherence cannot be the major test of validity for a cultural description. Cultural systems must have a minimal degree of coherence, else we would not call them systems; and, by observation, they normally have a great deal more. But there is nothing so coherent as a paranoid’s delusion or a swindler’s story. The force of our interpretations cannot rest, as they are now so often made to do, on the tightness with which they hold together, or the assurance with which they are argued. Nothing has done more, I think, to discredit cultural analysis than the construction of impeccable depictions of formal order in whose actual existence nobody can quite believe. If anthropological interpretation is constructing a reading of what happens, then to divorce it from what happens—from what, in this time or that place, specific people say, what they do, what is done to them, from the whole vast business of the world—is to divorce it from its applications and render it vacant. A good interpretation of anything—a poem, a person, a history, a ritual, an institution, a society— takes us into the heart of that of which it is the interpretation. When it does not do that, but leads us instead somewhere else—into an admiration of its own elegance, of its author’s cleverness, or of the beauties of Euclidean order—it may have its intrinsic charms; but it is something else than what the task at hand— figuring out what all that rigamarole with the sheep is about—calls for. The rigamarole with the sheep—the sham theft of them, the reparative transfer of them, the political confiscation of them—is (or was) essentially a social discourse, even if, as I suggested earlier, one conducted in multiple tongues and as much in action as in words. Claiming his ‘ar, Cohen invoked the trade pact; recognizing the claim, the sheikh challenged the offenders’ tribe; accepting responsibility, the offenders’ tribe paid the indemnity; anxious to make clear to sheikhs and peddlers alike who was now in charge here, the French showed the imperial hand. As in any discourse, code does not determine conduct, and what was actually said need not have been. Cohen might not have, given its illegitimacy in Protectorate eyes, chosen to press his claim. The sheikh might, for similar reasons, have rejected it. The offenders’ tribe, still resisting French authority, might have decided to regard the raid as “real” and fight rather than negotiate. The French, were they more habile and less dur (as, under Mareschal Lyautey’s seigniorial tutelage, they later in fact became), might have permitted Cohen to keep his sheep, winking—as we say—at the continuance of the trade pattern and its limitation to their authority. And there are other possibilities: the Marmushans might have regarded the French action as too great an insult to bear and gone into dissidence themselves; the French might have attempted not just to clamp down on Cohen but to bring the sheikh himself more closely to heel; and Cohen might have concluded that between renegade Berbers and Beau Geste soldiers, driving trade in the Atlas highlands was no longer worth the candle and retired to the better-governed confines of the town. This, indeed, is more or less what happened, somewhat further along, as the Protectorate moved toward genuine

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sovereignty. But the point here is not to describe what did or did not take place in Morocco. (From this simple incident one can widen out into enormous complexities of social experience.) It is to demonstrate what a piece of anthropological interpretation consists in: tracing the curves of a social discourse; fixing it into an inspectable form. The ethnographer “inscribes” social discourse; he writes it down. In so doing, he turns it from a passing event, which exists only in its own moment of occurrence, into an account, which exists in its inscriptions and can be reconsulted. The sheikh is long dead, killed in the process of being, as the French called it, “pacified”; “Captain Dumari,” his pacifier, lives, retired to his souvenirs, in the south of France; and Cohen went last year, part refugee, part pilgrim, part dying patriarch, “home” to Israel. But what they, in my extended sense, “said” to one another on an Atlas plateau sixty years ago is—very far from perfectly—preserved for study. “What,” Paul Ricoeur, from whom this whole idea of the inscription of action is borrowed and somewhat twisted, asks, “what does writing fix?” Not the event of speaking, but the “said” of speaking, where we understand by the “said” of speaking that intentional exteriorization constitutive of the aim of discourse, thanks to which the sagen—the saying—wants to become Aus-sage—the enunciation, the enunciated. In short, what we write is the noema [“thought,” “content,” “gist”] of the speaking. It is the meaning of the speech event, not the event as event.

This is not itself so very “said”—if Oxford philosophers run to little stories, phenomenological ones run to large sentences; but it brings us anyway to a more precise answer to our generative question, “What does the ethnographer do?”—he writes.3 This, too, may seem a less than startling discovery, and to someone familiar with the current “literature,” an implausible one. But as the standard answer to our question has been, “He observes, he records, he analyzes”—a kind of veni, vidi, vici conception of the matter—it may have more deep-going consequences than are at first apparent, not the least of which is that distinguishing these three phases of knowledge-seeking may not, as a matter of fact, normally be possible; and, indeed, as autonomous “operations” they may not in fact exist. The situation is even more delicate, because, as already noted, what we inscribe (or try to) is not raw social discourse, to which, because, save very marginally or very specially, we are not actors, we do not have direct access, but only that small part of it which our informants can lead us into understanding.4 This is not as fatal as it sounds, for, in fact, not all Cretans are liars, and it is not necessary to know everything in order to understand something. But it does make the view of anthropological analysis as the conceptual manipulation of discovered facts, a logical reconstruction of a mere reality, seem rather lame. To set forth symmetrical crystals of significance, purified of the material complexity in which they were located, and then attribute their existence to autogenous principles of order, universal properties of the human mind, or vast, a priori weltanschauungen, is to pretend a science that does not exist and imagine a reality that cannot be found. Cultural analysis is (or should be) guessing at meanings, assessing the guesses, and drawing explanatory conclusions from the better guesses, not discovering the Continent of Meaning and mapping out its bodiless landscape.

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VI So, there are three characteristics of ethnographic description: it is interpretive; what it is interpretive of is the flow of social discourse; and the interpreting involved consists in trying to rescue the “said” of such discourse from its perishing occasions and fix it in perusable terms. The kula is gone or altered; but, for better or worse, The Argonauts of the Western Pacific remains. But there is, in addition, a fourth characteristic of such description, at least as I practice it: it is microscopic. This is not to say that there are no large-scale anthropological interpretations of whole societies, civilizations, world events, and so on. Indeed, it is such extension of our analyses to wider contexts that, along with their theoretical implications, recommends them to general attention and justifies our constructing them. No one really cares anymore, not even Cohen (well...maybe, Cohen), about those sheep as such. History may have its unobtrusive turning points, “great noises in a little room”; but this little go-round was surely not one of them. It is merely to say that the anthropologist characteristically approaches such broader interpretations and more abstract analyses from the direction of exceedingly extended acquaintances with extremely small matters. He confronts the same grand realities that others historians, economists, political scientists, sociologists— confront in more fateful settings: Power, Change, Faith, Oppression, Work, Passion, Authority, Beauty, Violence, Love, Prestige; but he confronts them in contexts obscure enough—places like Marmusha and lives like Cohen’s—to take the capital letters off them. These all-too-human constancies, “those big words that make us all afraid,” take a homely form in such homely contexts. But that is exactly the advantage. There are enough profundities in the world already. Yet, the problem of how to get from a collection of ethnographic miniatures on the order of our sheep story—an assortment of remarks and anecdotes—to wall-­ sized culturescapes of the nation, the epoch, the continent, or the civilization is not so easily passed over with vague allusions to the virtues of concreteness and the down-to-earth mind. For a science born in Indian tribes, Pacific islands, and African lineages and subsequently seized with grander ambitions, this has come to be a major methodological problem, and for the most part a badly handled one. The models that anthropologists have themselves worked out to justify their moving from local truths to general visions have been, in fact, as responsible for undermining the effort as anything their critics—sociologists obsessed with sample sizes, psychologists with measures, or economists with aggregates—have been able to devise against them. Of these, the two main ones have been: the Jonesville-is-the-USA “microcosmic” model; and the Easter-Island-is-a-testing-case “natural experiment” model. Either heaven in a grain of sand, or the farther shores of possibility. The Jonesville-is-America writ small (or America-is-Jonesville writ large) fallacy is so obviously one that the only thing that needs explanation is how people have managed to believe it and expected others to believe it. The notion that one can find the essence of national societies, civilizations, great religions, or whatever

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summed up and simplified in so-called “typical” small towns and villages is palpable nonsense. What one finds in small towns and villages is (alas) small-town or village life. If localized, microscopic studies were really dependent for their greater relevance upon such a premise—that they captured the great world in the little— they wouldn’t have any relevance. But, of course, they are not. The locus of study is not the object of study. Anthropologists don’t study villages (tribes, towns, neighborhoods...); they study in villages. You can study different things in different places, and some things—for example, what colonial domination does to established frames of moral expectation—you can best study in confined localities. But that doesn’t make the place what it is you are studying. In the remoter provinces of Morocco and Indonesia I have wrestled with the same questions other social scientists have wrestled with in more central locations—for example, how comes it that men’s most importunate claims to humanity are cast in the accents of group pride?—and with about the same conclusiveness. One can add a dimension—one much needed in the present climate of size-up-and-solve social science; but that is all. There is a certain value, if you are going to run on about the exploitation of the masses in having seen a Javanese sharecropper turning earth in a tropical downpour or a Moroccan tailor embroidering kaftans by the light of a twenty-watt bulb. But the notion that this gives you the thing entire (and elevates you to some moral vantage ground from which you can look down upon the ethically less privileged) is an idea which only someone too long in the bush could possibly entertain. The “natural laboratory” notion has been equally pernicious, not only because the analogy is false—what kind of a laboratory is it where none of the parameters are manipulable?—but because it leads to a notion that the data derived from ethnographic studies are purer, or more fundamental, or more solid, or less conditioned (the most favored word is “elementary”) than those derived from other sorts of social inquiry. The great natural variation of cultural forms is, of course, not only anthropology’s great (and wasting) resource, but the ground of its deepest theoretical dilemma: how is such variation to be squared with the biological unity of the human species? But it is not, even metaphorically, experimental variation, because the context in which it occurs varies along with it, and it is not possible (though there are those who try) to isolate the y’s from x’s to write a proper function. The famous studies purporting to show that the Oedipus complex was backwards in the Trobriands, sex roles were upside down in Tchambuli, and the Pueblo Indians lacked aggression (it is characteristic that they were all negative—“but not in the South”), are, whatever their empirical validity may or may not be, not “scientifically tested and approved” hypotheses. They are interpretations, or misinterpretations, like any others, arrived at in the same way as any others, and as inherently inconclusive as any others, and the attempt to invest them with the authority of physical experimentation is but methodological sleight of hand. Ethnographic findings are not privileged, just particular: another country heard from. To regard them as anything more (or anything less) than that distorts both them and their implications, which are far profounder than mere primitivity, for social theory.

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Another country heard from: the reason that protracted descriptions of distant sheep raids (and a really good ethnographer would have gone into what kind of sheep they were) have general relevance is that they present the sociological mind with bodied stuff on which to feed. The important thing about the anthropologist’s findings is their complex specificness, their circumstantiality. It is with the kind of material produced by long-term, mainly (though not exclusively) qualitative, highly participative, and almost obsessively fine-comb field study in confined contexts that the mega-concepts with which contemporary social science is afflicted—legitimacy, modernization, integration, conflict, charisma, structure,...meaning—can be given the sort of sensible actuality that makes it possible to think not only realistically and concretely about them, but, what is more important, creatively and imaginatively with them. The methodological problem which the microscopic nature of ethnography presents is both real and critical. But it is not to be resolved by regarding a remote locality as the world in a teacup or as the sociological equivalent of a cloud chamber. It is to be resolved—or, anyway, decently kept at bay—by realizing that social actions are comments on more than themselves; that where an interpretation comes from does not determine where it can be impelled go. Small facts speak to large issues, winks to epistemology, or sheep raids to revolution, because they are made to.

VII Which brings us, finally, to theory. The besetting sin of interpretive approaches to anything—literature, dreams, symptoms, culture—is that they tend to resist, or to be permitted to resist, conceptual articulation and thus to escape systematic modes of assessment. You either grasp an interpretation or you do not, see the point of it or you do not, accept it or you do not. Imprisoned in the immediacy of its own detail, it is presented as self-validating, or, worse, as validated by the supposedly developed sensitivities of the person who presents it; any attempt to cast what it says in terms other than its own is regarded as a travesty—as, the anthropologist’s severest term of moral abuse, ethnocentric. For a field of study which, however timidly (though I, myself, am not timid about the matter at all), asserts itself to be a science, this just will not do. There is no reason why the conceptual structure of a cultural interpretation should be any less formulable, and thus less susceptible to explicit canons of appraisal, than that of, say, a biological observation or a physical experiment—no reason except that the terms in which such formulations can be cast are, if not wholly nonexistent, very nearly so. We are reduced to insinuating theories because we lack the power to state them. At the same time, it must be admitted that there are a number of characteristics of cultural interpretation which make the theoretical development of it more than usually difficult. The first is the need for theory to stay rather closer to the ground than tends to be the case in sciences more able to give themselves over to

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imaginative abstraction. Only short flights of ratiocination tend to be effective in anthropology; longer ones tend to drift off into logical dreams, academic bemusements with formal symmetry. The whole point of a semiotic approach to culture is, as I have said, to aid us in gaining access to the conceptual world in which our subjects live so that we can, in some extended sense of the term, converse with them. The tension between the pull of this need to penetrate an unfamiliar universe of symbolic action and the requirements of technical advance in the theory of culture, between the need to grasp and the need to analyze, is, as a result, both necessarily great and essentially irremovable. Indeed, the further theoretical development goes, the deeper the tension gets. This is the first condition for cultural theory: it is not its own master. As it is unseverable from the immediacies thick description presents, its freedom to shape itself in terms of its internal logic is rather limited. What generality it contrives to achieve grows out of the delicacy of its distinctions, not the sweep of its abstractions. And from this follows a peculiarity in the way, as a simple matter of empirical fact, our knowledge of culture...cultures...a culture...grows: in spurts. Rather than following a rising curve of cumulative findings, cultural analysis breaks up into a disconnected yet coherent sequence of bolder and bolder sorties. Studies do build on other studies, not in the sense that they take up where the others leave off, but in the sense that, better informed and better conceptualized, they plunge more deeply into the same things. Every serious cultural analysis starts from a sheer beginning and ends where it manages to get before exhausting its intellectual impulse. Previously discovered facts are mobilized, previously developed concepts used, previously formulated hypotheses tried out; but the movement is not from already proven theorems newly proven ones, it is from an awkward fumbling for the most elementary understanding to a supported claim that one has achieved that and surpassed it. A study is an advance if it is more incisive—whatever that may mean— than those that preceded it; but it less stands on their shoulders than, challenged and challenging, runs by their side. It is for this reason, among others, that the essay, whether of thirty pages or three hundred, has seemed the natural genre in which to present cultural interpretations and the theories sustaining them, and why, if one looks for systematic treatises in the field, one is so soon disappointed, the more so if one finds any. Even inventory articles are rare here, and anyway of hardly more than bibliographical interest. The major theoretical contributions not only lie in specific studies—that is true in almost any field—but they are very difficult to abstract from such studies and integrate into anything one might call “culture theory” as such. Theoretical formulations hover so low over the interpretations they govern that they don’t make much sense or hold much interest apart from them. This is so, not because they are not general (if they are not general, they are not theoretical), but because, stated independently of their applications, they seem either commonplace or vacant. One can, and this in fact is how the field progresses conceptually, take a line of theoretical attack developed in connection with one exercise in ethnographic interpretation and employ it in another, pushing it forward to greater precision and broader relevance; but one cannot write a “General Theory of Cultural Interpretation.” Or, rather, one can, but there appears

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to be little profit in it, because the essential task of theory building here is not to codify abstract regularities but to make thick description possible, not to generalize across cases but to generalize within them. To generalize within cases is usually called, at least in medicine and depth psychology, clinical inference. Rather than beginning with a set of observations and attempting to subsume them under a governing law, such inference begins with a set of (presumptive) signifiers and attempts to place them within an intelligible frame. Measures are matched to theoretical predictions, but symptoms (even when they are measured) are scanned for theoretical peculiarities—that is, they are diagnosed. In the study of culture the signifiers are not symptoms or clusters of symptoms, but symbolic acts or clusters of symbolic acts, and the aim is not therapy but the analysis of social discourse. But the way in which theory is used—to ferret out the unapparent import of things—is the same. Thus we are lead to the second condition of cultural theory: it is not, at least in the strict meaning of the term, predictive. The diagnostician doesn’t predict measles; he decides that someone has them, or at the very most anticipates that someone is rather likely shortly to get them. But this limitation, which is real enough, has commonly been both misunderstood and exaggerated, because it has been taken to mean that cultural interpretation is merely post facto: that, like the peasant in the old story, we first shoot the holes in the fence and then paint the bull’s-eyes around them. It is hardly to be denied that there is a good deal of that sort of thing around, some of it in prominent places. It is to be denied, however, that it is the inevitable outcome of a clinical approach to the use of theory. It is true that in the clinical style of theoretical formulation, conceptualization is directed toward the task of generating interpretations of matters already in hand, not toward projecting outcomes of experimental manipulations or deducing future states of a determined system. But that does not mean that theory has only to fit (or, more carefully, to generate cogent interpretations of) realities past; it has also to survive—intellectually survive-—realities to come. Although we formulate our interpretation of an outburst of winking or an instance of sheep-raiding after its occurrence, sometimes long after, the theoretical framework in terms of which such an interpretation is made must be capable of continuing to yield defensible interpretations as new social phenomena swim into view. Although one starts any effort at thick description, beyond the obvious and superficial, from a state of general bewilderment as to what the devil is going on—trying to find one’s feet—one does not start (or ought not) intellectually empty-handed. Theoretical ideas are not created wholly anew in each study; as I have said, they are adopted from other, related studies, and, refined in the process, applied to new interpretive problems. If they cease being useful with respect to such problems, they tend to stop being used and are more or less abandoned. If they continue being useful, throwing up new understandings, they are further elaborated and go on being used.5 Such a view of how theory functions in an interpretive science suggests that the distinction, relative in any case, that appears in the experimental or observational sciences between “description” and “explanation” appears here as one, even more relative, between “inscription” (“thick description”) and “specification”

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(“diagnosis”)—between setting down the meaning particular social actions have for the actors whose actions they are, and stating, as explicitly as we can manage, what the knowledge thus attained demonstrates about the society in which it is found and, beyond that, about social life as such. Our double task is to uncover the conceptual structures that inform our subjects’ acts, the “said” of social discourse, and to construct a system of analysis in whose terms what is generic to those structures, what belongs to them because they are what they are, will stand out against the other determinants of human behavior. In ethnography, the office of theory is to provide a vocabulary in which what symbolic action has to say about itself —that is, about the role of culture in human life—can be expressed. Aside from a couple of orienting pieces concerned with more foundational matters, it is in such a manner that theory operates in the essays collected here. A repertoire of very general, made-in-the-academy concepts and systems of concepts—“integration,” “rationalization,” “symbol,” “ideology,” “ethos,” “revolution,” “identity,” “metaphor,” “structure,” “ritual,” “world view,” “actor,” “function,” “sacred,” and, of course, “culture” itself—is woven into the body of thick description ethnography in the hope of rendering mere occurrences scientifically eloquent.6 The aim is to draw large conclusions from small, but very densely textured facts; to support broad assertions about the role of culture in the construction of collective life by engaging them exactly with complex specifics. Thus it is not only interpretation that goes all the way down to the most immediate observational level: the theory upon which such interpretation conceptually depends does so also. My interest in Cohen’s story, like Ryle’s in winks, grew out of some very general notions indeed. The “confusion of tongues” model—the view that social conflict is not something that happens when, out of weakness, indefiniteness, obsolescence, or neglect, cultural forms cease to operate, but rather some thing which happens when, like burlesqued winks, such forms are pressed by unusual situations or unusual intentions to operate in un usual ways—is not an idea I got from Cohen’s story. It is one, instructed by colleagues, students, and predecessors, I brought to it. Our innocent-looking “note in a bottle” is more than a portrayal of the frames of meaning of Jewish peddlers, Berber warriors, and French proconsuls, or even of their mutual interference. It is an argument that to rework the pattern of social relationships is to rearrange the coordinates of the experienced world. Society’s forms are culture’s substance.

VIII There is an Indian story—at least I heard it as an Indian story—about an Englishman who, having been told that the world rested on a platform which rested on the back of an elephant which rested in turn on the back of a turtle, asked (perhaps he was an ethnographer; it is the way they behave), what did the turtle rest on? Another turtle. And that turtle? “Ah, Sahib, after that it is turtles all the way down.”

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Such, indeed, is the condition of things. I do not know how long it would be profitable to meditate on the encounter of Cohen, the sheikh, and “Dumari” (the period has perhaps already been exceeded); but I do know that however long I did so I would not get anywhere near to the bottom of it. Nor have I ever gotten anywhere near to the bottom of anything I have ever written about, either in the essays below or elsewhere. Cultural analysis is intrinsically incomplete. And, worse than that, the more deeply it goes the less complete it is. It is a strange science whose most telling assertions are its most tremulously based, in which to get somewhere with the matter at hand is to intensify the suspicion, both your own and that of others, that you are not quite getting it right. But that, along with plaguing subtle people with obtuse questions, is what being an ethnographer is like. There are a number of ways to escape this—turning culture into folklore and collecting it, turning it into traits and counting it, turning it into institutions and classifying it, turning it into structures and toying with it. But they are escapes. The fact is that to commit oneself to a semiotic concept of culture and an interpretive approach to the study of it is to commit oneself to a view of ethnographic assertion as, to borrow W.  B. Gallie’s by now famous phrase, “essentially contestable.” Anthropology, or at least interpretive anthropology, is a science whose progress is marked less by a perfection of consensus than by a refinement of debate. What gets better is the precision with which we vex each other. This is very difficult to see when one’s attention is being monopolized by a single party to the argument. Monologues are of little value here, because there are no conclusions to be reported; there is merely a discussion to be sustained. Insofar as the essays here collected have any importance, it is less in what they say than what they are witness to: an enormous increase in interest, not only in anthropology, but in social studies generally, in the role of symbolic forms in human life. Meaning, that elusive and ill-defined pseudoentity we were once more than content to leave philosophers and literary critics to fumble with, has now come back into the heart of our discipline. Even Marxists are quoting Cassirer; even positivists, Kenneth Burke. My own position in the midst of all this has been to try to resist subjectivism on the one hand and cabbalism on the other, to try to keep the analysis of symbolic forms as closely tied as I could to concrete social events and occasions, the public world of common life, and to organize it in such a way that the connections between theoretical formulations and descriptive interpretations were unobscured by appeals to dark sciences. I have never been impressed by the argument that, as complete objectivity is impossible in these matters (as, of course, it is), one might as well let one’s sentiments run loose. As Robert Solow has remarked, that is like saying that as a perfectly aseptic environment is impossible, one might as well conduct surgery in a sewer. Nor, on the other hand, have I been impressed with claims that structural linguistics, computer engineering, or some other advanced form of thought is going to enable us to understand men without knowing them. Nothing will discredit a semiotic approach to culture more quickly than allowing it to drift into a combination of intuitionism and alchemy, no matter how elegantly the intuitions are expressed or how modern the alchemy is made to look.

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The danger that cultural analysis, in search of all-too-deep-lying turtles, will lose touch with the hard surfaces of life—with the political, economic, stratificatory realities within which men are everywhere contained—and with the biological and physical necessities on which those surfaces rest, is an ever-present one. The only defense against it, and against, thus, turning cultural analysis into a kind of sociological aestheticism, is to train such analysis on such realities and such necessities in the first place. It is thus that I have written about nationalism, about violence, about identity, about human nature, about legitimacy, about revolution, about ethnicity, about urbanization, about status, about death, about time, and most of all about particular attempts by particular peoples to place these things in some sort of comprehensible, meaningful frame. To look at the symbolic dimensions of social action—art, religion, ideology, science, law, morality, common sense—is not to turn away from the existential dilemmas of life for some empyrean realm of de-emotionalized forms; it is to plunge into the midst of them. The essential vocation of interpretive anthropology is not to answer our deepest questions, but to make available to us answers that others, guarding other sheep in other valleys, have given, and thus to include them in the consultable record of what man has said. ENDNOTES 1 Not only other peoples’: anthropology can be trained on the culture of which it is itself a part, and it increasingly is; a fact of profound importance, but which, it raises a few tricky and rather special second order problems, I shall put to the side for the moment. 2 The order problem is, again, complex. Anthropological works based on other anthropological works (Levi-Strauss’, for example) may, of course, be fourth order or higher, and informants frequently, even habitually, make second order interpretations—what have come to be known as “native models.” In literate cultures, where “native” interpretation can proceed to higher levels—in connection with the Maghreb, one has only to think of Ibn Khaldun; with the United States, Margaret Mead—these matters become intricate indeed. 3 Or, again, more exactly, “inscribes.” Most ethnography is in fact to be found in books and articles, rather than in films, records, museum displays, or what ever; but even in them there are, of course, photographs, drawings, diagrams, tables, and so on. Self-consciousness about modes of representation (not to speak of experiments with them) has been very lacking in anthropology. 4 So far as it has reinforced the anthropologist’s impulse to engage himself with his informants as persons rather than as objects, the notion of “participant observation” has been a valuable one. But, to the degree it has lead the anthropologist to block from his view the very special, culturally bracketed nature of his own role and to imagine himself something more than an interested (in both senses of that word) sojourner, it has been our most powerful source of bad faith. 5 Admittedly, this is something of an idealization. Because theories are seldom if ever decisively disproved in clinical use but merely grow increasingly awkward, unproductive, strained, or vacuous, they often persist long after all but a handful of

References

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people (though they are often most passionate) have lost much interest in them. Indeed, so far as anthropology is concerned, it is almost more of a problem to get exhausted ideas out of the literature than it is to get productive ones in, and so a great deal more of theoretical discussion than one would prefer is critical rather than constructive, and whole careers have been devoted to hastening the demise of moribund notions. As the field advances one would hope that this sort of intellectual weed control would become a less prominent part of our activities. But, for the moment, it remains true that old theories tend less to die than to go into second editions. 6 The overwhelming bulk of the following chapters concern Indonesia rather than Morocco, for I have just begun to face up to the demands of my North African material which, for the most part, was gathered more recently. Field work in Indonesia was carried out in 1952-1954, 1957-1958, and 1971; in Morocco in 1964, 1965-1966, 1968-1969, and 1972.

References Agar, M. H. (2008). The professional stranger: An informal introduction to ethnography (2nd ed.). Emerald Group. Atkinson, P., & Hammersley, M. (1994). Ethnography and participant observation. In N. K. Denzin & Y. S. Lincoln (Eds.), Handbook of qualitative research (pp. 248–260). Sage. Bagehot, W. (1872/2006). Physics and politics. Dodo Press. Bogdan, R.  C., & Biklen, S.  K. (1992). Qualitative research for education: An introduction to theory and methods. Allyn & Bacon. Carspecken, P. F., & Apple, M. W. (1991). Community schooling and the nature of power: The battle for Croxteth Comprehensive School. Taylor & Francis. Collins, P.  H. (2000). Black feminist thought: Knowledge, consciousness, and the politics of empowerment (2nd ed.). Routledge. Cooper, K., & White, R. E. (2012). Qualitative research in the postmodern era: Contexts of qualitative research. Springer. Creswell, J. W., & Poth, C. N. (2016). Qualitative inquiry and research design: Choosing among five approaches. Sage. Days, G. (2017). The collapse of the African American family. Dorrance Publishing. Dillon, W. S. (2001). Margaret Mead (1901–1978). Prospects, 31(3), 447–461. Fetterman, D. M. (1998). Ethnography: Step by step. Sage. Geertz, C. (1973). The interpretation of cultures: Selected essays. Basic Books. Geertz, C. (1980). Blurred genres: The refiguration of social thought. The American Scholar, 49(2), 165–179. Geertz, C. (2008). Thick description: Toward an interpretive theory of culture. In T. S. Oakes & P. L. Price (Eds.), The cultural geography reader (pp. 29–39). Routledge. Gossett, T. (1997). Race: The history of an idea in America. Oxford University Press. Hammersley, M., & Atkinson, P. (1995). Ethnography: Principles and practice (2nd ed.). Routledge. Harris, M. (1968). The rise of anthropological theory: A history of theories of culture. AltaMira Press. Hobbs, D. (2006). Ethnography. In V. Jupp (Ed.), The SAGE dictionary of social research methods (pp. 57, 102, 120, 121). Sage. James, W. (2002). The meaning of truth. Dover Publications.

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Lassiter, L. E. (2005). The Chicago guide to collaborative ethnography. Chicago University Press. LeCompte, M.  D., Millroy, W.  L., & Preissle, J. (Eds.). (1992). The handbook of qualitative research in education. Academic Press. Lévi-Strauss, C. (1963). Structural anthropology. Basic Books. Madison, D. S. (2005). Critical ethnography: Method, ethics, and performance. Sage. Malinowski, B. (1922/2014). Argonauts of the Western Pacific: An account of native enterprise and adventure in the archipelagoes of Melanesian New Guinea. Routledge. Mead, G.  H. (1982). The individual and the social self: Unpublished essays by G.  H. Mead (D. L. Miller, Ed.). University of Chicago Press. Moore, J. D. (2009). Visions of culture: An introduction to anthropological theories and theorists. AltaMira. New World Encyclopedia. (2016). Alfred Radcliffe-Brown. Retrieved March 24, 2018, from http:// www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Alfred_Radcliffe-­Brown Oxford Dictionaries. (2013). Anthropology. Retrieved March 24, 2018, from https:// en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/anthropology Pearce, S. M. (1995). On collecting: An investigation into collecting in the European tradition. Routledge. Radcliffe-Brown, A.  R. (1949). Functionalism: A protest. American Anthropologist, 51(2), 320–321. Radcliffe-Brown, A. R. (1951). The comparative method in social anthropology. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain & Ireland, 81(1/2), 15–22. Risjord, M. W. (2007). Ethnography and culture. In S. P. Turner & M. W. Risjord (Eds.), Philosophy of anthropology and sociology (pp. 399–428). Elsevier. Rosaldo, R. (2001). Culture and truth: The remaking of social analysis. Beacon Press. Sanjek, R. (2002). Ethnography. In A. Barnard & J. Spencer (Eds.), Encyclopedia of social and cultural anthropology (pp. 193–198). Routledge. Schensul, S.  L., Schensul, J.  J., & LeCompte, M.  D. (1999). Essential ethnographic methods: Observations, interviews and questionnaires. AltaMira Press. Shlomit, D. (2013). Footwork and fieldwork: The myth of the lone ethnographer and other magic. Retrieved April 30, 2018, from http://daniellashlomit-­blog.tumblr.com/post/60762625337/ the-­myth-­of-­the-­lone-­ethnographer-­and-­methods Spradley, J. P. (1980). Participant observation. Wadsworth Cengage Learning. Stefansson, V. (1939). Unsolved mysteries of the Arctic. The MacMillan company. Stocking, G.  W., Jr. (1960). Franz Boas and the founding of the American Anthropological Association. American Anthropologist, 62, 1–17. Van Maanen, J. (1988). Tales of the field on writing ethnography. University of Chicago Press. Watkins, J. W. N. (1952). Organization in science and society. Ethics, 62, 201–204. Wolcott, H. F. (2008). Ethnography: A way of seeing. AltaMira Press. Young, M. (2004). Malinowski: Odyssey of an anthropologist, 1884–1920. Yale University Press.

Chapter 7

Case Study Research

The experiential account that we get from a case study or qualitative research of a similar vein is just so necessary. How things happen over time and the degree to which they are subject to personality and how they are only gradually perceived as tolerable or intolerable by the communities and the groups that are involved is so important. Robert Stake, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign

Introduction As a footnote to the previous chapter, there is such a beast known as the ethnographic case study. Ethnographic case study has found its way into this chapter rather than into the previous one because of grammatical considerations. Simply put, the “case study” part of the phrase is the noun (with “case” as an adjective defining what kind of study it is), while the “ethnographic” part of the phrase is an adjective defining the type of case study that is being conducted. As such, the case study becomes the methodology, while the ethnography part refers to a method, mode or approach relating to the development of the study. Many such permutations abound, as has already been noted in chapters previous to this one. Perhaps this is one of the reasons why qualitative research, in general, has been viewed from many perspectives as being complex, messy and altogether confusing. And these charges may very well, in certain circumstances, ring true. However, if one is to bear in mind that the adjective used to describe the noun resonates with a method or an approach that will be utilized in order to develop the methodology, things may appear to be marginally less confusing. As we move into a consideration of case study research, this and other permutations of case study research will be revisited. Please note that, as we proceed through Supplementary Information The online version contains supplementary material available at [https://doi.org/10.1007/978-­3-­030-­85124-­8_7]. The videos can be accessed individually by clicking the DOI link in the accompanying figure caption or by scanning this link with the SN More Media App. © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 R. E. White, K. Cooper, Qualitative Research in the Post-Modern Era, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-85124-8_7

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various discussions of numerous methodologies, we encourage the reader to engage in a dis-entanglement, of sorts, among not only the various methodologies but also among the attendant variations relating to the methodologies themselves. Should you find that you are not yet confused, please continue reading. The term “case study” refers to both a specific research design or methodology, and a method of analysis for examining a problem. Mills et al. (2010) note that case study, both as a methodology and as a method—unlike many qualitative methodologies—is frequently used to generalize across populations. While this is definitely a function of purpose and possibility, qualitative research, in general, has resisted the tendency to generalize as a function of its qualitative nature and the fact that it seeks to understand a specific event or experience. While quantitative research tends to generalize across and within categories— the how, what or why of things studied—qualitative research, as the term suggests, is much more interested in description of qualities expressed by a particular phenomenon, event or effect. Thus, generalizability continues to be a contentious point within and between quantitative and qualitative paradigms of research. In order to bring some sense of clarity to this, one may consider the context within which the research is being conducted. This may allow some inkling as to the extent that any research, including case study research, can be generalized among and within specific methodologies and/or across paradigms. This sense of paradox between the particular and the generalizable is central to case study research, since the case itself is a concrete, bounded object existing within a complex, fluid context. This flexible boundary between context and case is the nexus where the researcher works, with research questions evolving as the study progresses. As Robert Stake notes, “Case and context are infinitely complex and the phenomena are fluid and elusive. In a flood of happenings, the researcher grasps for something to hold onto” (Stake, 1995, p. 33). Once again, according to Mills et al. (2010), case study research may examine an individual person, place, event, organization, action, phenomenon, or other type of subject or topic, existing within a specific time and place (Rolls, 2005). Case study is suitable for identifying key themes and introducing recommendations that may help to predict trends, to illuminate hidden issues applicable to practice, and/or to provide a means for understanding a research problem—or “learning tangle” — with greater clarity. While case studies may examine a single subject of analysis, they may also be designed as comparative investigations that reveal relationships between two or more subjects or topics (Swanborn, 2010). This approach encourages researchers to compare dimensions horizontally, vertically, and temporally (Bartlett & Vavrus, 2017). The methods used to study a case can rest within a quantitative, qualitative, or mixed-method investigative paradigm (Creswell, 2013). The “case,” itself, may be any subject or topic that lends itself to a close, in-depth, detailed investigation of virtually any subject or topic, including attending related contextual decisions. Case study research has held an important position in many disciplines and professions, ranging from psychology, anthropology, sociology, and political science to education, clinical science, social work, and administrative science (Yin, 2014).

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Thus, case study, defined as a research design, implies an empirical inquiry, study or research endeavour that investigates a phenomenon within a “real life “context.” Case study research may explore bounded single or multiple cases, and relies on multiple sources of evidence, such as observations, interviews, audiovisual material, documents and reports, and may also include quantitative evidence, and may incorporate benefits from prior theoretical propositions (Rolls, 2005). Several programs (a multi-site study) or a single program (a “within-site” study) may be selected for study. At any rate, the case study may also represent a research approach, situated between concrete, data-taking techniques and methodological paradigms (Demetriou, 2017).

The Biographical Context Case study methodology largely gained credence with social scientists through its usefulness in psychological circles as a result of the work of Sigmund Freud, as well as through case analyses in medicine, case law, and case reports in political science. As such, case study research can boast of a long and distinguished history due to its exposure through numerous disciplines. Following is a brief biographical synopsis of some of the key figures that have assisted in the development of case study research. Pierre Guillaume Frédéric Le Play (1806–1882), a French sociologist, used the concept of case studies to perform research on families. Le Play first introduced the case study method into the social sciences in 1829 as a handmaiden to statistics in his studies of family budgets (Healey, 1947). He was interested in the natural sciences and, at l’Ecole des Mines, in Paris, became chairman of the standing committee on mining statistics and, later on, a professor of metallurgy. This is significant because, for almost 25 years, as he traveled around Europe, he collected vast amounts of data regarding the social and economic conditions of the working classes. In 1855, he published Les Ouvriers Européens: La Méthode d’Observation, a series of case studies on selected topics, relating to typical families from a wide range of industries. In 1856, Le Play founded the Société Internationale des Études Pratiques D’économie Sociale, which strove to study and improve the social conditions of some of the most marginalized people in that society. The society’s journal, La Réforme Sociale (1881) continues to be published bi-weekly. Sigmund Freud (1856–1939), an Austrian neurologist, was the founder of psychoanalysis. Freud established a clinical practice in Vienna in 1886, left it to escape the Nazis, and died in exile in the United Kingdom. Freud helped to develop and advance the concept of case studies. Medical fields continue to use his approach. Case studies are widely used in psychology and among the best known were ones carried out by Freud. William I. Thomas (1863–1947) and Florian Znaniecki (1882–1956) conducted a study of Polish peasants throughout the 1950s, resulting in the five-volume publication of The Polish Peasant in Europe and America  (1918–1920)  (1996). This

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volume of work, considered to be a classic in the realm of sociology, is generally viewed as antecedent to qualitative case study research. It was formatted in a style that would eventually become known as the case study format and was based on personal stories, letters and documents—such as brochures, newspaper articles, parish and court documents—of Polish immigrants in the United States. Although Thomas was the principal investigator for this study and initially intended this work to be a collection of translated and annotated primary documents, Znaniecki convinced him to extend this into a larger work with a more detailed analysis of the topic, methodology and theory. With Znaniecki’s knowledge of philosophy, methodology and the subject matter of Polish society serving as complementary to Thomas’s expertise in sociology, social psychology, and the Polish American community in Chicago, this five-volume work, which could not have been created by either of these men individually, is considered a classic of empirical sociology. Martin Bulmer (1986) described this as a “neglected classic...landmark because it attempted to integrate theory and data in a way no American study had done before” (p. 45). Zaretsky (1996), editor of this five volume book, views this valuable publication as a “founding work” (p. ix) in American sociology, due to the fact that this work was responsible for shifting sociological inquiry from theoretical analysis to research that relied on empirical data, a model for future exploration. Bulmer (1986) considers The subsequent use in sociological research of personal documents, such as life histories, letters, diaries, and other first-person material, may in large measure be traced back to the influence of The Polish Peasant. The life story of Władek was the first systematically collected sociological life history. (p. 54)

In many senses, this volume, so important to modern audiences, remains a classic in terms of foreshadowing the eventual case study process. Bronislaw Malinowski (1884–1942) is chiefly known for his remarkable experiences in the Trobriand Islands, out of which emerged his book, Argonauts of the Western Pacific. Although Malinowski is noted mostly for his work in ethnographic circles, he has also influenced case study research. For example, Hamel, Dufour, and Fortin (1993) trace the origins of modern social science case studies through anthropology and sociology, and cite Malinowski’s study of the Trobriand Islands native population. Robert Stake (1927–) is credited with systematically establishing processes for case study research. More recently, Robert Stake (2005) has explored multiple case study analysis and presents a methodological rationale for this type of research. Additionally, he suggests that the case study researcher makes an important choice in determining his/her role in the research, deliberately and/or intuitively, either as participant or observer, and this is an ethical choice dictated by the circumstances of the research. Stake also asserts that interpretation is central to the function of the case study researcher. The depth of experience possessed by the expert case researcher is key to determining the appropriate role, derived from “intimate knowledge of several thousand concrete cases” (Flyvbjerg, 2004, p. 421). This, Flyvbjerg identifies, is the “virtuoso researcher” (p. 421).

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Robert K. Yin (1941–), an American social scientist and president of COSMOS Corporation, is well known for his work on case study research. Yin (2014) advocates quantitative, as well as qualitative approaches to case study research. His exposure to case study research began during his years as an urban planner and analyst at the New  York City RAND Institute, where he conducted studies on declining conditions in city neighbourhoods, urban services and civic participation. Thirty years of field-based and statistical studies followed, with the intent of providing methodological advances and guidelines for the rigorous application of case study research in education, nursing and urban planning. He suggests that any methodological advances in the area of rigour are to be valued, since the craft of case study research has been derided as “primitive” (Yin, 1991, p. 299). At COSMOS, Dr. Yin actively leads a variety of research projects, often those utilizing a case study methodology. He has authored numerous books and peer-reviewed articles, including Applications of Case Study Research (2012) and Case Study Research (2014).

The Historical Context According to Professor Emeritus, Robert Stake, case study analysis did not arrive upon the scene fully formed. Neither was it immediately accepted by its detractors. Among the issues is the age-old tension between qualitative and quantitative research, regarding what counts as research. Case study research, like so many qualitative research methodologies, has often been viewed as not rigorous enough to be considered “scientific.” Professor Stake is relatively at ease with this, as he uses case studies in a number of different ways. Upon first arriving at the University of Illinois, Robert Stake was interested in conducting instructional research. However, in the “post-sputnik” era of the Cold War between the United States and Russia, there was a push to revamp existing curricula. What was required was a way to evaluate new curricular innovations. Much to his surprise, the standard processes of evaluation were insufficient, as they “answered all too few of the questions” that had been posed by curriculum developers and their sponsors. Professor Stake believed that the answer lay in qualitative, rather than in quantitative inquiry. Accordingly, he began to study the work of Clifford Geertz and other ethnographers. This, he found to be quite taxing and time-­ consuming. Gradually, however, the light dawned and Robert Stake recognized the direction in which he needed to travel. In terms of classroom observation, he felt that the discipline of ethnography was not yet enough a part of him to be able to utilize ethnography effectively.

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Professor Emeritus Robert Stake

In the following video-clip Professor Stake describes how he came to case study research.

Video Clip 7.1: Professor Emeritus Robert Stake (▶ https://doi.org/10.1007/000-­6d3)

This led to his using case studies as an alternate means of discovery. Professor Stake refers to the case study as a “stepping stone” for part of the requisite evaluations. However, he claims, this took a very long time to come to fruition. Inspiration was found in the person of Professor Lee Cronbach, the developer of the quantitative construct known as Cronbach’s alpha, who commented that what was needed was a social anthropologist. Professor Stake admits that it took him a long time to figure out exactly what Professor Cronbach meant. Robert Stake notes that, although he did not become a social anthropologist, he gravitated towards the kind of sensitivity and perspective that he detected and admired among social psychologists, cultural anthropologists and researchers in curriculum studies.

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In visualizing case study research, Professor Stake sees the case study as an “episode,” a stepping-stone or a building block. Using a phenomenological term, he refers to the episode as a “lived experience” to describe the “bit of happening” that can be studied and amplified. Also, the “case” can be aggregated and interpreted. As has been noted in previous chapters, interpretation is a key procedure for much qualitative research inquiry. Professor Stake compares this interpretive turn to a qualitative “trade off,” differing from quantitative researchers who attempt to understand their research in terms of the variables involved. Case studies, however, are more concerned with less complex comparisons but with higher qualities of description. However, he claims, case studies are just as valuable in quantitative research even though they may be viewed as a qualitative concept. As such, case studies, in bridging quantitative and qualitative research endeavours, represent an example of cooperation or coordination between the two paradigms. One may utilize case studies to refine metric analysis and measurement, as well as to look for correlations between and among cases. Robert Stake validates this unabashed comment by stating that we are already in the quantitative world, hearkening back to a paraphrase of Martin Heidegger’s point that hermeneutic interpretation is circular, as we are already “in the world”—a clear example of “realist” thinking. As such, Professor Stake notes that quantitative researchers rely on variables but, in qualitative research, the stepping-stones are instances, happenings or episodes. Because of the work of these dedicated individuals and others too numerous to mention here, the case study writer of today has an array of texts and approaches from which to choose (Creswell, 2017). However, it was not always thus. The history of case study methodology has been both eclectic and practical. First making an appearance during the traditional period (early 1900s) in the area of anthropology, as field studies of other cultures, case study methodology was eventually adopted by the Chicago School of Sociology as a way to study contemporary society in a university setting. Following World War II, the method fell out of favour when logical positivism took hold as the dominant research philosophy and the social science camp became divided between positivists and anti-positivists. By the 1950s, although logical positivism had faded, “within the social sciences the methodology of the natural sciences was still emulated…. This was a consequence of a fear of not being scientifically acceptable” (Johansson, 2003, p. 6). By the late 1960s, a second-generation case study methodology emerged (the inductive methodology of Grounded Theory), merging qualitative field study methods with quantitative data analysis methods. The next step was taken by Yin in the 1980s and 1990s, who “transferred experimental logic into the field of naturalistic inquiry and combined it with qualitative methods” (Johansson, 2003, p.  7). Yin (1981) attempted to reaffirm the case study as a systematic and acceptable research tool not only for student researchers but also for funders of social science research who review proposals for case study research. He positioned the case study as the “implicit companion” to qualitative analysis and asserted there was confusion between types of data (qualitative), data collection methods (ethnography) and

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research strategies due to the simple fact that some critics were interpreting qualitative data and case studies as being interchangeable. Yin (2014) argues that case study methodology and methods can follow a rigorous path, establish a database for analysis and stand up to scrutiny by the development of an airtight chain of evidence that can be traced from hypothesis and research questions through to concluding assertions and back again. As champions of case study research, Stake and Yin exhibit the stance, noted by Flyvbjerg, of the virtuoso researcher. They embrace alternative perspectives, acknowledge the eminence of worthy opponents and, using evidence gained from their “intimate knowledge of several thousand concrete cases” (Flyvbjerg, 2004, p. 421), demonstrate, with relish, the flawed logic of detractors of the methodology. In his defense of case study research as an acceptable craft, Yin raises the possibility of a “case study crisis” (Yin, 1981, p. 58). He then points out, in a logical argument supported by evidence, how Matthew Miles (1979) had confused qualitative data with case study research by intermingling types of evidence, data collection methods and research strategies in his argument. In the video-clip, Robert Stake clarifies his position with respect to case study analysis.

Video Clip 7.2: Professor Emeritus Robert Stake (▶ https://doi.org/10.1007/000-­6d2)

In this clip, Professor Stake says that, when he thinks of case study, he thinks of studying the case itself, in terms of the intrinsic interest in the case, rather than in the supporting paraphernalia encompassing the case study. He claims that this is what it is that we actually care about in much the same way that we would care about a prospective client. At this point, he draws a parallel between researching the case study and the practice of nursing, vis-à-vis the patient who, at this point, is representative of the client in the case study. The same parallel can be drawn regarding social work and the clients that are referred to the caseworker. This is an important perspective because, as Professor Stake avers, many sociologists are inclined to wonder what the prospective situation is “a case of?”

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In response to the question of generalizability, a major question frequently occurs regarding how this case will assist one in understanding other cases and in understanding how this “traditional social science” can be utilized in promoting understanding of larger systems. However, as has been noted previously, generalizability tends to be the province of quantitative research, whereas qualitative research tends to focus more on the particulars of specific cases, phenomena and the like. While case study findings may be generalizable, it is not essential for them to be so. From the perspective of a person who grew up in a small town, Professor Stake claims that the ability to generalize from a specific case is not nearly so important, nor as challenging, as understanding the individual within the case or the individual case itself, whether it be a child, a teacher or an entire national medical or educational system. The purpose of case study analysis, then, is not to generalize specifics from one case to other cases, but to particularize an individual case in terms of its complexity or the situational reality of that specific case.

The Teachings of Robert Stake In his teaching, Professor Stake notes that the majority of his students want to either choose or be assigned to a case that is suitable to their respective committees, in terms of the particular discipline within which the students find themselves. At the same time, these students want to study important educational questions, whether social work or history. These students want something that their field considers to be as respectful within research-oriented campuses as can be. It is this type of case study that Robert Stake refers to as an instrumental case study, which he frequently uses as a concept in his classes and in the advisement work that he conducts with his students. Professor Stake encourages students to think about the intrinsic case, in part, because of its value in relation to their general research thinking. He claims that, if the students merely subordinate a case to a general research question, they are much less likely to recognize special fields, such as that of the biographer, or the special concern of the social worker. Consequently, case study research, from the instrumental perspective, attempts to understand the case from the point of view of the caseworkers, themselves. In defining a case, Robert Stake identifies the case as being “something with boundaries” replete with an integrity and internal operation of some sort. A case, then, may arrive complete with goals and aspirations of some description. There is often an amorphous sense of the researcher questioning whether (s)he is “on the right track,” which tends to reinforce a sense of self-reflection. However, a curriculum, for example, or an innovation within a school district may also represent a case. Professor Stake also notes, however, that it may be difficult to identify qualities that allow the circumstance to be viewed as a case. Thus, the boundaries of the case study appear to be somewhat porous. Even so, as, Professor Stake suggests, while some individuals may oppose or advocate for the case study approach,

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ultimately the deciding factor will be the feelings, experiences and mental conditions that can be investigated in order to understand the case. This is also true even with an abstract case. In order to proffer an example of such an issue, Robert Stake uses an illustration from his classroom. Professor Stake recounts how he had his students critique a case study where there existed a conflict between the Superintendent of Public Instruction in Wisconsin, who was attempting to wrest responsibility from the College of Education, University of Wisconsin at Madison. The superintendent claimed that the law requires that the state decide upon standards for teacher education. His contention was that, while communication had been in abundance, the processes in place for teacher education were not sufficiently rigorous. As a result, the superintendent wanted to take some of that responsibility back. Now, Professor Stake surmises that the matter came to a head, at least in part, due to the personality of the state commissioner. However, despite this circumstance, it turned out to be a high-quality case study that he had his doctoral students explore. As it transpired, however, the students experienced difficulty with “finding” the case, even though the author identified the conflict as the case. It turned out that the students were uncomfortable with the abstract quality of the case. As such, it would have been easier if the case revolved around an adolescent girl, for example, or a police officer seconded by the school district to provide some sort of drug awareness training. A group of people, or a faculty, perhaps, would offer a more obvious case. Why was this particular case chosen above more obvious examples? Professor Stake suggests that the students would learn more from this exemplar case by struggling with the nature of the case itself, rather than a case that revolves around a person of a group of individuals. In this way, the students can come to understand the idiosyncrasies of cases that are not quite so clear cut as those that may involve individuals, rather than a specific conflict. As the video-clip ends, Professor Stake notes that, when he wrote the book, The Art of Case Study Research (1995), he was just beginning to get some of those ideas in mind. He notes that, although he is still happy with the book, his ideas relating to case study analysis are in flux, as they are always changing, evolving and improving. As can be seen from the above video-clip, qualitative case studies can be identified and distinguished by several factors. One such factor may concern the boundaries, or the size, of the case. For example, the case may involve one individual, several individuals, a group, an entire program, or an activity. Additionally, the case may also be identified by the intent of the case analysis, whether it be an instrumental, multiple or intrinsic case (Creswell & Poth, 2017). Interestingly enough, according to Creswell and Poth (2017), narrative inquiry, ethnography and case study research may bear similar characteristics when the subject of analysis is one individual. However, key to understanding qualitative research in general terms is the recognition that, while a researcher may investigate the individual using any of the methodologies at his or her disposal, the type of methodology chosen will influence the type of data collected. Additionally, the analysis of the collected data would also differ significantly. Creswell and Poth (2017) offer the example of the narrative researcher who focuses on stories told by the individual

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who may arrange the story in chronological or non-chronological order. By comparison, the ethnographer attempts to set the individual’s story within the context of the individual’s culture. Finally, in case study research, the investigator chooses the case, compiling a detailed description of the case setting, to illustrate an issue. Robert Yin (2012) notes that the case study methodology is chosen when the researcher wishes to cover contextual conditions that may be pertinent to the phenomenon that has been selected for study. Thus, an in-depth study of a bounded system, a single case, or multiple cases may be best treated as a case study. Within a qualitative paradigm, case study research arises from the desire to understand complex social phenomena and may be utilized in numerous arenas of social science and applied disciplines, such as psychology, sociology, anthropology, environmental studies, political science, business, education, nursing, social work and economics. Case study methodology is frequently used as a teaching instrument in law, education, business and psychology. Its methodological personality is, in a word, sophisticated. This may be due to its non-interventive, empathic, patient and reflective nature that allows for multiple viewpoints or perspectives to emerge. As such, case study research strives to understand how the actors and/or the programs studied view their multiple realities and allows for contradictory perspectives. As a bounded “object” or system that contains working “parts” organized around “issues,” the case study presents an integrated system that is at once purposive and which also contains a distinctive and concrete identity. Even when its component parts do not appear to work well together, or when its purpose appears irrational, it remains a unique system worth studying and understanding both for its particularity and its commonality with other cases (Stake, 1995). Essentially, case study research eschews sampling, as sampling is frequently redundant for the simple matter that the actors, or participants, involved in the case have already been chosen. As a result, a case is not studied primarily in order to understand other cases. This returns us to the notion of generalizability. One tends to examine a case in order to understand the particular case itself for its revelations about a particular social phenomenon within its context. It is not required to be “typical.” In fact, “atypical” cases may be beneficial in revealing or resurrecting overlooked data and attendant issues. Robert Stake offers assistance in helping one to understand the role of the case study researcher by ascribing various personas to that role. He uses the personas of the teacher, the advocate, the evaluator, the interpreter and the biographer (Stake, 1995). For example, as a biographer, the case study researcher literally documents the life of an individual, a phase in this life, or some such instance. The challenge for the researcher is not to fall into the trap of writing to fit a stereotype. Of all the roles available, Professor Stake contends that the case study researcher, as an interpreter, is central to the research and serves to construct or develop new qualitative knowledge, as a craftsperson or an artist would, rather than attempting to discover the “truth,” much as a scientist would. In “clarifying descriptions and sophisticating interpretations” (Stake, 1995, p. 102), case study research depends upon the thick description of ethnography and the “emic” interpretations of issues that are constituted from within a social group, or from the perspective of the subject, arising from the scrutiny of a unique case.

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The Political Context While numerous types of case studies abound, one of the greatest debates addresses concerns relating to the legitimacy of the case study as a methodology. Many scholars, including Robert Stake himself, see the case study as a method and as a methodology, depending upon the circumstances involved. In his interview, Professor Stake intimates that he really sees the case study as compiling a number of methods, but that a methodology is more complex than a set of methods. According to other scholars, however, this may be merely a matter of semantics. Robert Stake, in describing case study methodology, notes: I don’t think of case study as a method and certainly not as elegant or elevated as a methodology. I think a methodology is barely short of a paradigm. It is the study of lots of methods all into one.

While this may be true, other scholars regard this set of methods as a case study methodology in its own right. In fact, case study research is contextualized by the recognition of a number of types of case study inquiry methods. Perhaps, as Robert Stake opines, case study is both method and methodology.

Types of Case Studies Regarding types of case study, Ridder (2017) distinguishes among four common case study approaches. Firstly, the “no theory first” type of case study design is closely connected to grounded theory’s methodological work. The second type of research design explores “gaps and holes,” and follows Yin’s guidelines regarding positivist assumptions. A third design deals with the “social construction of reality” represented by Stake. Finally, case study research can also identify “anomalies.” These types of qualitative case studies can be distinguished by the size, or scope, of the bounded case, or by the intent of the case study analysis, which will identify the case study as either a single instrumental case study, a collective/multiple case study, or an intrinsic case study. The Instrumental Case When choosing a single instrumental case study, the researcher focuses on an issue or concern and, then, selects one bounded case to illustrate this (Stake, 1995). As such, the issue becomes the focal point for the research. In an instrumental case study, the researcher selects a small group of subjects in order to examine a certain pattern of behaviour; for instance, to see how tertiary level students study for examinations. In a collective case study, the researcher coordinates data from several different sources, such as schools or individuals. Unlike intrinsic case studies, which seek to resolve specific issues related to an individual case, instrumental and

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collective case studies may allow for the generalization of findings to a larger population. The Collective or Multiple Case The case study is the process, whether a method or a methodology, by which the issue is illuminated. This remains true in selecting a collective or multiple case study. Although a single issue or concern is once again selected with the collective case study, the researcher chooses multiple case studies to illustrate the issue. The selection may consist of any number of programs from any number of research sites or it may consist of multiple programs from within a single site. The purpose for selecting multiple cases is, typically, to reveal differing perspectives on the same issue (Creswell & Poth, 2017). Generally speaking, qualitative researchers are reluctant to generalize from one case to another, simply because the contexts of each case differs. In order to generalize, however, the researcher selects representative cases to include in the qualitative study. In this way, Robert Yin (2012) considers the collective or multiple case study design as a vehicle for the logic of replication. In this instance, the researcher replicates the procedures for each case. It is this procedure that allows for some level of generalization regarding case study analysis. The multi-case study is a collection of cases bound together by a single category or target phenomenon—the “quintain”—a term borrowed by Robert Stake (2005) from the world of knighthood and jousting, where a common object such as a shield on a pole, referred to as the quintain, was used for target practice. The quintain of case study methodology may contain several embedded cases or mini-cases, each constrained by its unique relationship to the quintain and studied for its individual in-depth relevance, complexity and representation of diversity across the cases. To understand the quintain more deeply, one may study a set of single or multiple cases, sites or manifestations, in order to determine similarities or differences about the cases with the objective of better understanding the target phenomenon. Stake identifies a procedural dilemma of the multi-case study as being the identification of what is most worth knowing within both the collective quintain and the specific cases. The researcher is simultaneously pulled toward attending to the pieces and to the whole (Stake, 2005). The Intrinsic Case The final type of case study design is an intrinsic case study, in which the focus is on the case itself. Issues to be considered for an intrinsic case study may be related to evaluating a program or may range as far afield as studying a student having difficulty with a particular aspect of his or her schooling (Stake, 2005). In an intrinsic case study, a researcher examines the case for its own sake. Each case presents an unusual or unique situation. Although this may superficially resemble the focus of

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other selected qualitative methodologies, such as narrative inquiry, for example, the case study is chiefly concerned with developing a detailed description of the case and setting it within its context or surroundings.

The Political Role of Case Study Research Both Robert Stake and Robert Yin have been influenced by changes in social and political contexts and by a postmodern shift towards more qualitative research methodologies. Robert Stake refers to the commencement of his work in the field of curriculum evaluation as the “Post-Sputnik” era of the 1960s, when a more ethnographic, responsive and personal approach was required to investigate the experience and context of curriculum and teaching, with the aim of improving it. In his interview, segments of which are included in this volume, he notes: When I got here [University of Illinois], the action was “Post-Sputnik” curriculum reform— new mathematics, new English, new physics and the like. And they needed evaluation help, or at least the government, the National Science Foundation, particularly, required some involvement in evaluation. And, much to my surprise, the evaluation kinds of things that came to my mind from the background in testing, answered all too few of the questions the curriculum developers and sponsors wanted from the evaluation work.

Perhaps the most political role of case study research is its ultimate purpose and audience, and its ability to advocate for and influence changes in social practices and policies. Yin’s first qualifier for an exemplary case study is that it be of general public interest and its underlying issues be of national importance “either in theoretical terms or in policy or practical terms” (Yin, 2014, p. 185). Robert Yin bridged the gap between quantitative and qualitative case studies by merging experimental field research methods in psychology and urban studies. In this, he has carefully preserved an aspect of rigour so that case study can be defended as an acceptable research methodology. His work in advancing the quality of case study methodology in nursing practice and health services research has, as its ultimate purpose, the need to understand the complex “mega-systems” of managed care systems. He notes: [T]he systems’ rules are in a high-flux state, continually and rapidly changing…important corporate affiliations and motivations are extremely difficult to track, much less understand. All of these conditions favor the use of case studies, over other empirical methods, to gain insight into these mega-systems and to assess them. (Yin, 1999, p. 1209)

An interesting example of case study research, intentionally tied to social policy change, is the “At Home” study on homelessness in Canada, funded by the Mental Health Commission of Canada. This research documented 47 video case studies of homeless people participating in a controlled study, with the cases shared via an interactive web-based platform. At the end of the study, data was tabulated and published, and the findings were used to advocate new ways of dealing with mental illness and homelessness (National Film Board of Canada, 2012). Thus, case study research involves the study of an issue explored through one or more cases within a

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bounded system, often represented by a setting or context. Although Stake (2005) states that case study research is not a methodology but a choice of what is to be studied, a case within a bounded system, other scholars present it as a strategy of inquiry, a methodology, or a comprehensive research strategy (Denzin & Lincoln, 2005; Merriam, 1998; Yin, 2012). Professor Stake comments on this in the video-clip.

Video Clip 7.3: Professor Emeritus Robert Stake (▶ https://doi.org/10.1007/000-­6d4)

In this video-clip, Professor Stake addresses the difficulty of popularizing the concept of case study as a methodology because, as he attests, there is an appetite for answers and explanations for improving systems; however, using case study research may or may not be appropriate to the task at hand. Professor Stake entertains no doubts regarding the notion that a policy maker, board or executive committee may be better served with an examination of case studies, whether they are done by a researcher or not. However, questions such as “What are the transactions? What is going on now? What are the problems? and Why can’t we get them solved?” continue to abound. Perhaps such questions persist as a function of issues regarding the overall generalizability of the case study, itself. While case study researchers continue to have a great deal to offer, it remains difficult to promote the idea that—by sticking closely to an individual case, attempting to record the system or the context as soon as it becomes evident, and endeavouring to achieve a more thorough understanding of how the situation is causing things to be the way they are—case study research has mastered the issue of validity. Unfortunately, case study results are unlikely to be transportable or generalizable, simply because case studies, by their very nature, tend to be particularistic. Consequently, the “right” answer, the magic bullet that will resolve the issues, may be found elsewhere. According to Robert Stake, the issue of generalizability is paradoxical. So, the questions remains—what can a person generalize from this kind of research?

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The answer is complex. The answer, with case study research, does not lie within a specific tactic that either seems to be working or preventing good work within any given situation; it is the idea of a confluence of community, personal, political and economic influences that all play upon the situation. Such details are not replicable. However, the complexity of these forces is replicable. Professor Stake notes that this complexity may be found in quantitative research, as well. It is not the issue that quantitative researchers are incapable of drawing direction from these forces, because they do. They manage to establish a diversity of cases in their research that is extremely valuable for understanding both the limitations and the power of generalization. The experiential account that one may obtain from a case study, however, is very necessary. How things happen over time, the degree to which they are subject to personality and how they are only gradually perceived as tolerable or intolerable by the communities and groups involved is extremely important. Robert Stake believes that case study researchers have a great deal to share with other researchers. He uses the example of a biographer who is able to capture some of the same “something” represented in case study research, simply because he or she is actually, in fact, doing case studies, even though it may be identified by a different name. Rules relating to case study research may be imposed for these researchers, but such rules are sensitive to phenomena that the case study strives to represent. As a caveat, Professor Stake notes that, in defining a case study, he is very reticent to include a phenomenon as a possible case. As an example, he suggests that teacher professional development, either on an individual or collective basis, is not what he would consider appropriate for a case study, given the methods attached to this particular methodology. For this endeavour, there are other methods that could be considered superior. However, if one were to take a particular situation, perhaps that of a professional person participating in professional development or a professional development program that is defined in space and time, and in terms of personalities, this may represent a possibility for a case study. The differences may be subtle, but the chief difference lies within the particularity of the instance. The general phenomenon, however, is more likely to be generalizable, even though the case remains particular. This is a major source of criticism for case study research. Professor Stake paraphrases the critique in saying that case study researchers are not adequately proffering explanations as to how valuable an understanding of case study research may be. The rationale, he claims, remains poorly expressed and may, in fact, be impossible to express explicitly, simply because it represents such a natural part of people’s lives. An irony exists in claiming that case study is really powerful when it has not been seen to be powerful in a way that can be appreciated. However, this task may become less difficult when one begins with an example, such as a portfolio. Using such an example, one may be able to say, “Look at this case on this child with autism.” Such particular cases may reveal how the actions of the mother’s and the teacher’s shift in perspective have allowed the child to be mainstreamed, whereas a year or two ago that possibility was nonexistent.

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By making use of dramatic cases such as this, people may conclude that this is what teachers’ stories in newspapers are for. This begs the question of why one would require an academic methodology to do what an expert reporter can accomplish. As a result, case study researchers strive to identify what it is about the more disciplined, less entertaining case study while ironically believing that case studies need to be engaging and entertaining. Professor Stake believes that case study researchers have not yet made an adequate case in support of this methodology. He claims that this is the responsibility of the researcher, not the audience nor the critics, to attest to the justifiability of case study research. Robert Stake contemplates whether he has changed with respect to presenting a substantive rationale for case study or making the case better for a research enterprise that accepts impressions, conceptualizations or stories that people recount. Even when the quantitative notion of triangulation is not observed, Professor Stake claims that he wants something to be included in the case studies that legitimizes or re-legitimizes the case by including the perspectives of individuals represented by the case even if, in other circumstances, the individual may believe something entirely different. What was said in this particular instance of the case stands. Although Professor Stake concedes that researchers may have gotten better at framing matters in this way, there is ample room for improvement. There is a strong correlation among people who choose case studies. There is a significant consistency among case researchers who try to obtain these impressions that constitute the data regarding these experiences of the individuals within their cases. This being said, Professor Stake is inclined to maintain his original definition of the case as being anything that is looked at in great detail. This may be as elementary as inspecting a ball bearing or as sophisticated as viewing the university campus in terms of the number of students from in-state, as opposed to those who are from out of state. Another example refers to the faculty in terms of whether or not they are trained to teach, or not trained to teach. Case study research seeks to categorize many things, but the most important task of the case study researcher is to strive to understand the research task in terms of a case study that may be independent of impressionistic and situational considerations; in short, free of particularities – at least, insofar as possible.

The Postmodern Context Aligned with Zygmunt Bauman’s (2000) concept of “liquid modernity,” human life intersects with the fluid postmodern context, pushing against it, reshaping it. The case study, while it is a solid, knowable object or episode, studied within an ever-­ changing environment, also possesses some of the characteristics of postmodern consumer culture. The exemplary case study, according to Yin (2009) is not only engaging, it is also enticing and seducing. It is significant in the sense that the case must characteristically be unusual, revelatory and/or of general public interest. The

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case study’s issues may be nationally important, either in theoretical, political or practical terms. The case study must be complete in that the boundaries between the circumstance and its context are given explicit attention. As a result, exhaustive effort is expended in collecting evidence. The case study is mature in anticipating, considering and embracing alternative perspectives and rival propositions, including those perspectives that may seriously challenge the assumptions of the study. Thus, case study research is thorough in that it displays sufficient, valid and relevant evidence to reach independent judgments regarding the merits of the analysis. Finally, case study research is composed and written in an engaging manner. Case study research is transportable between paradigms. Robert Yin (2012), for example, advocates qualitative and quantitative approaches to case studies. He also proposes several types of case studies for qualitative research. In addition to intrinsic and instrumental case studies, Yin (2012) also considers the explanatory, exploratory, and descriptive case studies.

Variations Within Case Studies Explanatory case studies, commonly used in quantitative research, examine the data closely, at the surface and at a deeper level in order to explain the circumstance in the data. Explanatory cases are frequently deployed for causal studies where pattern matching can be used to investigate certain circumstances in complex and multivariate cases. With regards to the explanatory case study, three conditions must be met. The researchers must, first, ensure they have no means of control over the project, event or situation that is being viewed as a case; secondly, the project, event or situation must be a contemporary one, rather than, say, an historical artefact, event or situation; and, thirdly, in examining the project or circumstance, the researcher must attempt to explain how or why that particular event or circumstance occurs. The exploratory case study, on the other hand, investigates a distinct project, event or situation that is characterized by a lack of detailed preliminary research that can be tested, or by a particular research environment that limits the choice of research methodology. Exploratory case studies set out to explore any data serving as a point of interest to the researcher. This type of case study allows for the exploration and understanding of complex issues and can be considered a robust research method, particularly when a holistic, in-depth investigation is required. For example, a pilot study may be considered an example of an exploratory case study (Yin, 2014) and is crucial in determining the protocol that will be used for the ensuing study. The basic function of the exploratory case study is to help identify questions and select types of measurement prior to the main investigation. The primary pitfall of this type of study is that initial findings may appear convincing enough to be prematurely released as conclusions. Descriptive case studies describe natural phenomena, events or situations that occur within the data in question. The goal, set by the researcher, is to describe the data as they occur. The challenge of the descriptive case study is that the researcher

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must begin with a descriptive theory to support the description of the ensuing story. Should this fail, there is the possibility that the description lacks rigour and that problems may occur during the project. An example of a descriptive case study may be a journalistic description of a political scandal, for instance. In such a case, descriptive theory may be used to examine the depth and scope of the case under study. Although single case study research is not a strong basis for generalization to a larger population of cases, much can be learned from the method. In juxtaposition to propositional or explicated generalizations (also called assertions), naturalistic generalizations derived from single case study analysis are those based on tacit knowledge and personal experience. While assertions may represent confident statements derived from the findings of the case study, naturalistic generalizations represent “conclusions arrived at through personal engagement in life’s affairs or by vicarious experience so well constructed that the person feels as if it happened to themselves” (Stake, 1995, p. 85). Both types of generalizations can be made by case study researchers, although naturalistic generalizations can also be made by the reader. The exemplary case study is included as a theoretical framework since it goes beyond the pragmatic approach to case study design and method crafted by Yin (2009). As Yin notes, by simply mastering the techniques and protocol of case study research, one may still not produce an exemplary case study or be considered a virtuoso researcher. However, insights into human and social processes produced by expert researchers offer lasting contributions to social science research. Ideally, however, a single case study involves the use of multiple sources of data in order to achieve a sense of “completeness” that Yin proposes as being an essential quality of an exemplary case study. Other researchers, such as McDonough and McDonough (1997), mention other categories of case study; interpretive and evaluative case studies. Through interpretive case studies, the researcher strives to interpret the data by developing conceptual categories, supporting or challenging the assumptions made regarding them. In evaluative case studies, the researcher goes further by adding his/her judgment to phenomena found in the data. Robert Yin (2014) offers a note of caution regarding attempts to separate these categories or to conceive of them as a hierarchical structure or construct. One of the more commonly occurring case studies is the ethnographic case study, identified at the beginning of this chapter. As previously noted, this particular type of case study makes use of some of the principles of ethnographic research. Other types of case study, such as the narrative case study, exhibit equally broad interdisciplinary backgrounds. Additional types of case study research include illustrative case studies, cumulative case studies and critical instance case studies, each of which is customarily selected for use, depending upon the goals of the investigator. Illustrative case studies are primarily descriptive studies. They typically utilize one or two instances of an event to reveal the existing situation, serving primarily to make the unfamiliar familiar and to provide a common language about the topic in question. Cumulative case studies, akin to collective case studies, serve to aggregate

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information from several sites collected at different times. The collection of past studies may allow for greater generalization without additional cost or time being required for new, possibly repetitive studies. Critical instance case studies examine one or more sites for the purpose of either examining a situation of unique interest with little to no interest in generalization, or to call into question a highly generalized or universal assertion. This method is useful for answering cause and effect questions (Davey, 1991). Case study research is personal, in-depth research. The concrete case, whether it is an individual, a group of individuals or a program, is bounded within social, political, cultural and historical contexts. The places where the case and the context meet are what case study research reveals, and these revelations may challenge previously held assumptions and generalizations. The quality and utility of the research is not based on its reproducibility but on whether or not the meanings generated, by the researcher or the reader, are valued…. The exercise is partly commiseration, partly celebration, but always intellectualization, a conveying, a creating of meaning. (Stake, 1995, p. 135-6)

The Philosophical Context The philosophical context is an interesting venue to discuss procedures for any particular methodology. While the procedures themselves may not wax particularly philosophical, the philosophies underlying not only the procedures (methods) but also the methodologies themselves are of import. It is always significant that the various methodologies, while they may share some similar attributes, all have differing philosophies that determine perspective, context and course of action. Procedures for conducting a case study vary, depending on the context of the case, itself. Robert Stake (1995) offers suggestions. First of all, he notes, one must determine if the case study approach is appropriate for the research problem. The case study is an appropriate choice if the circumstance chosen for the case exhibits clearly identifiable boundaries and if the investigator seeks to further a detailed understanding of the case(s) or a comparison of several cases. A case study is a good approach when the inquirer has clearly defined cases within determined boundaries and seeks to provide an in-depth understanding of the cases or a comparison of more than one case. From this point, the researcher identifies the case(s) that will serve to provide data. The case may concern one or more individuals or an event, activity or program. From this point the researcher may consider what type of case study would be most appropriate, either as a single, collective, single-site or multi-­ site study. Whether using a single or multiple case approach, some general guidelines may make the process easier. Creating a case study database will increase the reliability of the entire case study. Raw data are gathered during the study and are available for independent inspection in a separate database apart from the case study report (Yin, 2014). With the ease of electronic data storage, a separate database can become an

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institutionalized practice so that external investigators can review the evidence directly and not be restricted to reading the written report. Establishing a chain of evidence allows initial research questions to be traceable to conclusions and back again (Yin, 2014). This chain should be tight enough that no evidence can be lost through carelessness or bias, thus increasing reliability of information in the case study, addressing methodological problems of construct and design validity, and improving the overall quality of the case study. Progressive focusing is another tactic that may take place as the researcher draws understanding from the case study. Using this strategy, issues or questions gradually become assertions, then “petite” generalizations (within a single case) and occasionally “grand” generalizations (in multi-case study research). Issue questions can evolve within a case as new discoveries are made: they are etic (the researcher’s external issues) and emic (issues of the “actors” who are internal to the case). Regarding within-case and cross-case analyses, it is useful to employ systematic approaches such as thematic coding, tabulation of data, categorization and establishing of an evidence database. The researcher’s observations are used to make assertions, a summary of interpretations or claims that can influence policy, procedures and future research (Stake, 1995). Logic model analysis is an evaluative model that stipulates a complex chain of cause and effect events over an extended period of time. A linear sequence of dependent and independent variables in a cause-effect logic pattern, most often depicted graphically in a flow chart, matches empirically observed events to theoretically predicted events. In collecting data, regardless of sources of evidence, the researcher may find the development and use of a case study protocol extremely useful, if not essential. Typical protocols consist of a set of questions to be addressed while collecting the case study data: Importantly, the questions in the protocol are directed at the researcher, not at any field participant. In this sense, the protocol differs entirely from any instrument used in a conventional interview or survey. The protocol’s questions in effect serve as a mental framework, not unlike similar frameworks held by detectives investigating crimes, by journalists chasing a story, or by clinicians considering different diagnoses based on a patient’s symptoms. In those situations, a detective, journalist, or clinician may privately entertain one or more lines of inquiry (including rival hypotheses), but the specific questions posed to any participant are tuned to each specific interview situation. Thus, the questions as actually verbalized in an interview derive from the line of inquiry (e.g., mental framework) but do not come from a verbatim script (e.g., questionnaire). (Yin, 2012, p. 14)

Data collection is typically intensive and draws on multiple sources of information, such as direct and participant observations, interviews, and documents, including multi-media, archival records and physical artefacts, as appropriate (Yin, 2012). Through this data collection, a detailed description of the case emerges in which the researcher details aspects of the case, such as the history of the case, the chronology of events, or a rendering of the daily activities of the case. After this description of “relatively uncontested data” (Stake, 1995, p. 123), the researcher may choose to analyze themes or select one or more significant points to focus on. This is not for the purpose of generalization, but to gain a deeper understanding of complexities relating to the case (or cases), itself. Where multiple cases have been selected, a

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typical process is to provide a detailed description of each case and the themes found within each case, called a within-case analysis, followed by a thematic analysis across all selected cases, called a cross-case analysis, as well as assertions regarding the case(s) or an interpretation of the meaning of the case(s). This analytic strategy, proposed by Yin (2012), allows the researcher to identify issues within each of the cases in a multiple case study and then to look for common themes that transcend the cases. Analysis of the data may be holistic in terms of the entire case or embedded within a particular aspect of the case (Yin, 2012). In the interpretive phase, the final phase of case study research, the researcher reports on the meaning of the case, whether instrumental or intrinsic. Analysis can begin by organizing data into hierarchical relationships, matrices, or other arrays (Miles & Huberman, 1994), such as a word table. Given this or other arrays, several different analytic techniques, such as pattern matching, explanation building, and time-series analysis, can then be used. In multiple-case studies, in addition to these techniques used within each single case, a replication logic, the fourth technique, would then follow should the researcher choose to duplicate the case. As ever, case study research is not without its challenges. One such challenge, frequently hammered home, regards the lack of generalizability across common cases. Simply because a case study typically deals with only one person, event or group, one can never truly ascertain whether conclusions drawn from a particular case apply elsewhere. The results of the study are not generalizable because one can never know whether the investigated case is representative of a larger body of “similar” instances. However, as Robert Stake attests, this is not the goal of case study inquiry. Case study inquirers examine a case for its particularity, its uniqueness within larger contexts, and whatever truths reveal themselves through this process. As Robert Stake claims, “We seek an accurate but limited understanding. Seldom are we primarily trying to generalize to other cases. Still, some comparison with other cases is inevitable” (1995, p. 134). Also, case studies have often been accused of lack of rigour (Yin, 2014). Additionally, case studies may be time consuming and difficult to replicate.

Challenges to and Benefits of Case Study Research Campbell and Stanley (1966), however temporarily, claimed that case study research is based on illusory knowledge and, as such, exhibits a total lack of control. Campbell and Stanley aver that case study methodology has no scientific value and that it is, in fact, unethical as a method for educational research. As this type of research gradually became more acceptable to the scientific community, such unyielding recrimination gradually began to disappear. Eventually, Campbell recanted his uncompromising position to become a proponent of the methodology, claiming that naturalistic observation was “the only route to knowledge—noisy,

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fallible and biased though it be” (Campbell, 1975, p. 179). Undaunted by this conversion, Matthew Miles (1979) delineated three essential weaknesses in the methodology. According to Miles (1979), within-case analysis was not only primitive and unmanageable, it also relied too heavily on intuition. Unfortunately, cross-­case analysis was even less reliable, and case study results elicited far more objections from respondents than survey results, often resulting in legal action against the research team (Yin, 1981). Thus, the major critiques of case study research are that it offers a weak basis for generalization from a single case, it is too subjective and prone to researcher bias in data interpretation, and lacks scientific rigour. Finally, case studies are often conceived of as being too long and difficult to conduct, and produce massive amounts of documentation (Yin, 2014). While that is the bad news, there is also some good news relating to case study research. First of all, the examination of data is most frequently conducted within the context of its use (Yin, 2014); that is, within the situation in which the activity takes place. The researcher, for example, observes the participant or subject within his or her environment, in contrast with experimentation, which deliberately attempts to isolate a phenomenon from its surroundings in order to study it more objectively. Additionally, case studies allow for both qualitative and quantitative treatments and analysis of data (Yin, 2014). Finally, detailed qualitative accounts produced in case studies explore or describe the data in real-life environments, as well as assisting in explaining complexities relating to these real-life situations, which may not be easily captured through experimental or survey research. In short, case study methodology tends to bring with it a magnifying glass, as opposed to other types of inquiry that require a collecting apparatus that prevents researchers from examining data at the micro-level. Thus, case studies can be a practical solution when a large sample population is difficult to obtain. In addition, case study research can capture knowledge gained through both observation (propositional) and experience (tacit), which can build new, richer understandings. It also enables naturalistic generalizations to be developed from such experience and tacit knowledge. While intuitive and empirical in nature, these naturalistic observations can eventually pass into propositional knowledge. Case study research is fluid and evolving, allowing for emic issues to arise during the course of the research. Seawright and Gerring (2008) suggest that the identification of a case to investigate remains much more involved than choosing an issue to research. A case study encompasses a problem contextualized around the application of in-depth analysis, interpretation and discussion, often resulting in specific recommendations for action or for improving existing conditions (Seawright & Gerring, 2008). While practical considerations, such as time and access to information can influence case selection, such issues should not constitute the sole factors used in assessing the methodological justification for identifying a particular case to study. Typical questions addressed in assessing the suitability of case study methodology include whether or not the case represents an unusual or atypical example of a research problem requiring in-depth analysis. Such cases may be representative of prior investigations because the case study methodology may offer new ways of

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understanding the research concern. A second question concerns whether the in-­ depth analysis of a case can offer important new insights or illuminates issues that were previously hidden. As a caveat, it is wise to bear in mind that a thorough literature review may influence assumptions about new insights or previously hidden problems that are valid and evidence-based. Additional questions surround the issue of whether the case offers a counter-­ point to prior or prevailing knowledge or assumptions. It is a sad fact that research on any topic may, over time, develop assumptions based on “common sense” or outdated information. This may offer an opportunity to “set the record straight” by challenging old assertions and offering new and valid information. Such a contrarian stance may offer an important way to develop new knowledge and understandings. A more practical question concerns whether the case offers opportunities for an agenda to pursue social action leading to a problem resolution. A final question revolves around whether the case offers new directions for future research. In this sense, case study can be utilized for exploratory research pointing to a need for further examination of the research problem. Thus, a case study methodology can be used where few studies exist that predict an outcome or establish a clear understanding about how best to proceed in addressing a particular issue. In an attempt to reveal a series of misconceptions that surround case study research, Bent Flyvbjerg (2004) notes that general, theoretical, or context-­ independent knowledge is often viewed as more valuable than concrete, practical, context-dependent knowledge. He also notes that it is erroneous to suppose that one cannot generalize on the basis of an individual case and, therefore, that the case study cannot contribute to scientific development. Flyvbjerg also contends that the common assumption that the case study is most useful for generating hypotheses is ill-founded. He notes that it is also unfounded that the case study is biased toward verification; that is, a tendency to confirm the researcher’s preconceived notions, also known as bias confirmation. Finally, he condemns the notion that it is often difficult to summarize and develop general propositions and theories on the basis of specific case studies. However, one may strengthen the validity and reliability of case study research by clarifying issues of case selection, testing and challenging of existing assumptions, interpreting key findings, and summarizing case outcomes. Flyvbjerg (2004) thinks of case study research as a complete, in-depth recounting about specific properties and key characteristics of the subject of analysis applied to a research problem. As always, when conducting qualitative research, or any research for that matter, there are issues to be mindful of and to avoid. Overgeneralization is just one such entanglement. Because cases studies are based on the analysis of descriptive data, much depends on the interpretation placed on the acquired data. This means there is potential for observer bias, as subjective opinions may intrude into the assessment of what the data means. Since one of the goals of a case study is to lay a foundation for understanding broader trends and issues applied to similar circumstances, drawing conclusions from case studies must be evidence-based and grounded in the results of the study. Otherwise, it is mere speculation. Another issue revolves around a failure to document limitations pertaining to the case under study. Simply because

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no single case will reveal everything about a research problem, the researcher must identify the specific limitations inherent within the research study. Finally, a failure to extrapolate research implications will assuredly lead to questions of the validity of the entire analysis. Case study research, as with all research, demands that the researcher be thorough in considering all possible outcomes or recommendations derived from the findings. Thus, it behooves the researcher, when designing the case study, to ensure that all aspects of the issue be thoroughly addressed in order to prevent gaps in the analysis. Case knowledge is central to human learning. However, as Flyvbjerg (2004) asserts, staying at the level of analytical rationality and context-independent facts and rules will limit the researcher to the beginner’s level. Thus, case study research contributes to the body of context-­ dependent knowledge needed for humans and human social systems to improve and evolve. As a final word, case studies in research differ from their use in teaching. While teaching case studies have been a highly popular pedagogical format in many fields, ranging from business education to science education, the principles involved in doing case study research contrast with those involved in doing case studies for teaching. Research in business disciplines is usually based on a positivistic epistemology (Chua, 1986), holding that reality is objective and can be discovered and understood by scientific examination of empirical evidence. However, organizational behaviour cannot always be easily reduced to simple tests that prove something to be true or false. Because reality may be objective, but is understood and interpreted by people who act upon it, critical realism, which addresses the connection between the natural and social worlds, is a useful basis for analyzing events within and the environment of an organization (Bhaskar & Danermark, 2006). A critical case can be defined as having strategic importance relative to a general problem. Case studies in management, however, are frequently used to interpret strategies or relationships, to develop sets of “best practices,” or to analyze internal or external interactions of a firm (Klonoski, 2013). Case study methodology may also prove effective for generalizing, using Sir Karl Popper’s (2002) falsification theory, which forms part of critical reflexivity. Falsification offers one of the most rigorous tests to which a scientific proposition can be subjected. If just one observation does not fit the proposition, it is considered invalid and must be revised or rejected.

Feature Article: A Case in Case Study Methodology The following article offers a comprehensive view of case study methodology. This perspective comes from the researcher’s point of view and states that there are relatively few requirements that guide case study research. Identified as both a strength and a weakness, there is a particular need in case studies to be explicit about the methodological choices one makes. This article illustrates these decisions through a

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case study of two mergers in the financial industry in Norway (See A Case in Case Study Methodology).

Summary: Case Study as Methodology and Method Qualitative research, in general, has been viewed from many perspectives as being complex, messy and altogether confusing. “Case study” refers to both a specific research design, or methodology, and a method of analysis for examining a problem. While not conducive to generalization, in many cases, a sense of paradox between the particular and the generalizable is central to case study research. Case study research may examine an individual person, place, event, organization, action, phenomenon, or other type of subject, existing in a specific time and place. While case studies may examine a single subject of analysis, they may also be designed as comparative investigations that reveal relationships between two or more subjects or topics. Case studies have held an important position with regard to many disciplines and professions, ranging from psychology, anthropology, sociology, and political science to education, clinical science, social work and administrative science. Case study research can boast of a long and distinguished history due to its exposure through numerous disciplines. Le Play first introduced the case-study method into the social sciences in 1829. Sigmund Freud helped to develop and advance the concept of case studies. Thomas and Znaniecki mounted a study of Polish peasants throughout the 1950s, resulting in the five-volume publication of The Polish Peasant in Europe and America (1918–1920). Hamel, Dufour, and Fortin (1993) trace the origin of modern social science case studies through Malinowski’s study of the Trobriand Islands native population. Robert Stake has explored multiple case study analysis and presents a methodological approach to this type of research. Robert Yin advocates quantitative, as well as qualitative, approaches to case study research. As champions of case study research, Stake and Yin exhibit the stance, noted by Flyvbjerg, of the virtuoso researcher. A series of video-clips, featuring Professor Emeritus Robert Stake, addresses some of the finer features of case study research and analysis. In case study research, the investigator chooses the case, compiling a detailed description of the case setting, to illustrate an issue. Thus, an in-depth study of a bounded system, a single case, or multiple cases may be best treated as a case study. As a bounded “object” or system that contains working “parts” organized around “issues,” the case study presents an integrated system that is at once purposive and which also contains a distinctive and concrete identity. The challenge for the researcher is not to fall into the trap of writing to fit a stereotype. Professor Stake contends that the case study researcher, as an interpreter, is central to the research and serves to construct or develop new qualitative knowledge, as a craftsperson or an artist would, rather than attempting to discover the “truth,” much as a scientist would. While numerous types of case studies abound, one of the greatest debates addresses concerns relating to the legitimacy of the case study as a methodology.

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Ridder (2017) distinguishes among four common case study approaches, distinguished by the size, or scope, of the bounded case, or by the intent of the case study analysis, which will identify the case study as either a single instrumental case study, a collective or multiple case study, or an intrinsic case study. The multi-case study is a collection of cases bound together by a single category or target phenomenon, the “quintain,” which may contain several embedded cases or mini-cases, each constrained by its unique relationship to the quintain and studied for its individual in-depth relevance, complexity and representation of diversity across the cases. An irony exists in claiming that case study is really powerful when it has not been seen to be powerful in a way that can be appreciated. Although Robert Stake concedes that researchers may have gotten better at framing matters in this way, there is ample room for improvement. One of the more commonly occurring case studies is the ethnographic case study. This particular type of case study makes use of some of the principles of ethnographic research. Other types of case study, such as the narrative case study, exhibit equally broad interdisciplinary backgrounds. Additional types of case study research include illustrative case studies, cumulative case studies and critical instance case studies, each of which is custom selected for use, depending upon the goals of the investigator. Whether using a single or multiple case approach, some general guidelines may make the process easier. Case studies allow for both qualitative and quantitative treatments and analysis of data. Case studies can offer a practical solution when a big sample population is difficult to obtain. A feature article offers a comprehensive view of case study methodology through a case study of two mergers in the financial industry in Norway. Suggestions for Further Reading Should the reader wish to read further regarding case study inquiry, the following may be of some usefulness: Hebert, T. P., & Beardsley, T. M. (2001). Jermaine: A critical case study of a gifted Black child living in rural poverty. Gifted Child Quarterly, 45(2), 85–103. Stake, R. E. (2005). Case studies. In N. K. Denzin & Y. S. Lincoln (Eds.), Handbook of qualitative research (3rd ed., pp. 443–454). Sage. Stake, R.  E. (2008). Qualitative case studies. In N.  K. Denzin & Y.  S. Lincoln (Eds.), Strategies of qualitative inquiry (pp. 119–149). Sage. Annotated Bibliography Bartlett, L., & Vavrus, F. (2017).  Rethinking case study research: A comparative approach. Routledge. Case studies in general, and comparative case studies, in particular, offer an effective qualitative tool for researching the impact of policy and practice in various fields of social research, including education. Developed in response to the limitations of traditional case study approaches, comparative case studies are more highly effective due to their ability to synthesize information across time and space. In Rethinking Case Study Research: A Comparative Approach, Bartlett and Vavrus describe, explain and illustrate horizontal, vertical and transverse axes of

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comparative case studies. This volume would be of great value to anyone interested in the field of comparative case study research. Replete with examples and activities from anthropology, development studies and policy studies, this volume is written for researchers and graduate students in the fields of education and the interpretive social sciences. Bulmer, M. (1986). The Chicago school of sociology: Institutionalization, diversity, and the rise of sociological research. University of Chicago Press. Martin Bulmer has written a fascinating history of the Chicago School of sociological research during the first half of the past century. He offers more than the usual series of biographies of outstanding scholars, but also admits that focusing on an institution, rather than on its key members, is challenging and problematic. This challenge is addressed through his reassessment of the Chicago School. Using the school as a case study, Bulmer considers how the institutional framework of sociology developed. As well, the text reveals a sub-plot running throughout—the interdisciplinary nature of social science at Chicago. Thus, the link between the sociology department and other social science departments at the University of Chicago, notably politics, is explored. A wide range of original documentary sources is employed, as are standard secondary sources. In so doing, the author of this volume provides an excellent historical account of the work of sociologists and others at the University of Chicago to 1940. Campbell, D.  T., & Stanley, J.  C. (1966). Experimental and quasi-experimental designs for research. Houghton Mifflin. This volume constitutes a survey drawn from science research and deals with correlational, true experimental, and quasi-experimental designs. This book also proposes a number of methodological recommendations. The survey is drawn from the sciences in general and, as such, the broad methodological recommendations are correspondingly appropriate. A number of experimental designs, in which variables are manipulated, are explored with respect to common threats to valid inferences. It bodes well for the researcher to distinguish and understand the particular role of this volume. It is not a volume on experimental design, which claims the experimenter has complete mastery of the processes involved and can schedule treatments and measurements for optimal statistical efficiency. This book deals with the complexity of experimental and quasi-experimental design emerging from the intransigency of the environment because of the experimenter’s lack of complete control. Hamel, J., Dufour, S., & Fortin, D. (1993). Case study methods. Sage. Although case study methods currently and historically remain a controversial approach to data collection, case study methodology is widely recognized in many social science studies. This remains particularly true when in-depth explanations of social behaviour are sought. In this introduction to understanding, researching and doing case studies in the social sciences, Hamel, Dufour and Fortin outline a number of differing traditions of case study research, including the Chicago School of

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Sociology, the anthropological case studies of Malinowski, and the French Le Play school tradition. He shows how each has been developed, adjusted and practiced over time. Suggestions regarding the practice of case studies are made for the novice reader. An additional feature is the extensive bibliography on case study methods in social science that allows for further exploration of the topic. This volume is useful for both the advanced researcher and student of case study methodology alike. McDonough, J., & McDonough, S. (1997). Research methods for English language teachers. Routledge. This book offers a lively introduction to the research methods and techniques available to English language teachers wishing to investigate aspects of their own practice. Although designed explicitly for English language instructors, this volume addresses qualitative and quantitative research methods and includes sections on observation, introspection, diary studies, experiments, interviews, questionnaires, numerical techniques and case study research. Each method is illustrated with examples in language teaching contexts. Techniques of data collection and analysis are also introduced. The authors focus particularly on research in the classroom, on tests, materials, the effects of innovations and discuss methods appropriate to research in various collaborative modes. The book is ideal for teachers on initial training and post-experience courses, students on degree programs in applied linguistics and TEFL and, of course, practicing teachers with an interest in research methods in language teaching. Merriam, S. B. (1998). Qualitative research and case study applications in education. Jossey-Bass. This volume represents an invaluable resource that promises to open up the conceptual world of qualitative research and provide step-by-step directions needed to translate those concepts into practice. Over the past several decades, significant advances in the field of qualitative research have transpired. To meet the demand for a book that reflects these important changes, Merriam has completely revised and updated her classic work. As a timely, authoritative and approachable volume, Qualitative Research and Case Study Applications in Education is a practical resource that offers the information and guidance needed to manage all phases of the qualitative and case study research process. This book is recommended for anyone seeking knowledge about qualitative research and case study analysis. This book exhibits the author’s mastery of the explanation of new terms, so that novice readers do not need to struggle to understand jargon. The author has provided an array of further reading materials to consult. Popper, K. (2002). Conjectures and refutations: The growth of scientific knowledge. Routledge. Conjectures and Refutations is one of Sir Karl Popper’s most wide-ranging and popular works, notable not only for its acute insight into the way scientific knowledge grows, but also for applying those insights to politics and to history. It provides one of the clearest and most accessible statements of the fundamental ideas that

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guide his work. Not only our knowledge, but also aims and standards, grow through an unending process of trial and error. First published in 1963, this book contains a collection of Popper’s lectures and papers that summarize his views on the philosophy of science. Popper suggested that all scientific theories are, by their very nature, conjectures and are, therefore, inherently fallible. Refutation of old theory is the paramount process of scientific discovery simply because, should any new theory survive such refutations, it would represent greater plausibility and, therefore, would appear to be closer to the “truth.” Rolls, G. (2005). Classic case studies in psychology. Hodder Education. This collection of case studies provides a compelling insight into the human mind. Some are well-known case studies that have informed clinical practice, while others are relatively unknown. For this edition, Rolls has added recent research findings on each case study, plus four brand new cases. No prior knowledge of psychology is required. For those who wish to use this book as part of their studies, or who are keen to learn more, multiple choice questions, further reading, helpful web links, and self-assessment questions are all available. Prepare to be amazed! Among case studies presented in this volume are narratives about a man who lived with a hole in his head, a boy raised as a girl, a woman with multiple personalities, and a man with no brain. This fascinating collection of human stories is an excellent reference book, as well as a fascinating read that scholars, researchers and the general public alike will appreciate. Stake, R. E. (2005). Multiple case study analysis. Guilford Press. Researchers in education and social science have pondered for many years over how to employ multiple cases and come up with viable conclusions. Robert Stake’s careful analysis lays out problems and pitfalls of such an enterprise. He offers masterful, amply illustrated, easily understood, and reproducible solutions. For those who study multiple sites, this is an enormous gift that analyzes and teaches, simultaneously. Robert Stake takes a murky research problem, such as how to integrate multiple case studies that may or may not have a common subject, and shows us how to solve it. This book would be excellent supplementary reading for a course in qualitative research methods. It has the capacity to provide students with an appreciation of the difficulties and possibilities of drawing conclusions from words. This book fills a major gap in the qualitative research and evaluation literature. Although multi-case studies are a commonly used strategy, no published work provides such a comprehensive, in-depth and practical guide to the conduct of such studies. Swanborn, P. G. (2010). Case study research: What, why and how? Sage. This volume joins the collection of scholarly resources available to students, researchers and practitioners interested in doing case studies. The book offers precise advice regarding case study design, steps to be followed in conducting case study research, and a secure epistemological/methodological space in which appropriate strategies lead to resolution. Although the author does not position himself within any particular research epistemology, this text is firmly embedded within an

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empirical/analytical paradigm. The author notes that, while this book does not represent a handbook on qualitative methods, it is useful for graduate courses with a strong emphasis on quantitative research. For this reason, this volume may be of special interest to readers who would like to compare qualitative and quantitative approaches to case study research. Thomas, W. I., & Znaniecki, F. (1996). The Polish peasant in Europe and America: A classic work in immigration history. University of Illinois. Thomas and Znaniecki’s The Polish Peasant in Europe and America emphasises the importance of people representing their own lives. It is written as autobiographical life histories revealed through letters and other correspondences. This volume emphasizes Thomas and Znaniecki’s conceptualization of the self around ideas of “social becoming,” as revealed by the relational and sequential nature illustrated in letters and correspondences. The ways in which people represent themselves and their lives in circumstances of social change and mass migration provide an index to the times and represent what “self” is and becomes under such conditions. Thomas and Znaniecki’s notion of self is a socially embedded, relational, situational and temporally located self, which reflects the outer world of happenings and situations. “Self” is constructed and eventuates in situational, relational and responsive ways, with the representational forms of life writing providing the key to analysis. Yin, R. K. (2014). Case study research: Design and methods (5th ed.). Sage. Robert Yin’s Case Study Research: Design and Methods continues to be a seminal text for researchers and students engaged in case study research. Since the book’s first release, case study research has gained considerable acceptance as a research methodology, as a result of Yin’s unyielding position that case study be considered a separate and all-encompassing methodology with its own research design. This current edition is influenced by significant advances in case study research and remains a definitive guide to designing rigorous and methodologically sound case studies. In this volume, Yin links theory and practice by presenting the breadth of case study research and its historical significance at a practical level. Ultimately, Yin argues that case study research is a challenging endeavour that hinges upon the researcher’s skills and expertise. As such, this edition includes analysis of difficult concepts to guide researchers and students in carrying out more rigorous case study research. Questions for Further Study • What differences exist between case study methodology and other research methodologies that you have studied to date? • Identify some of the different types of case studies and discuss their applicability to specific circumstances. • Identify strengths and limitations of case study analysis. • Reflect on the historical facets of case study research. How have these assisted or limited case study research? • How do you view the future of case study analysis?

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A Case in Case Study Methodology Christine Benedichte Meyer Norwegian School of Economics and Business Administration Meyer, C.  B. (2001). A Case in Case Study Methodology. Field Methods 13(4), 329-352. Abstract The purpose of this article is to provide a comprehensive view of the case study process from the researcher’s perspective, emphasizing methodological considerations. As opposed to other qualitative or quantitative research strategies, such as grounded theory or surveys, there are virtually no specific requirements guiding case research. This is both the strength and the weakness of this approach. It is a strength because it allows tailoring the design and data collection procedures to the research questions. On the other hand, this approach has resulted in many poor case studies, leaving it open to criticism, especially from the quantitative field of research. This article argues that there is a particular need in case studies to be explicit about the methodological choices one makes. This implies discussing the wide range of decisions concerned with design requirements, data collection procedures, data analysis, and validity and reliability. The approach here is to illustrate these decisions through a particular case study of two mergers in the financial industry in Norway. In the past few years, a number of books have been published that give useful guidance in conducting qualitative studies (Gummesson 1988; Cassell & Symon 1994; Miles & Huberman 1994; Creswell 1998; Flick 1998; Rossman & Rallis 1998; Bryman & Burgess 1999; Marshall & Rossman 1999; Denzin & Lincoln 2000). One approach often mentioned is the case study (Yin 1989). Case studies are widely used in organizational studies in the social science disciplines of sociology, industrial relations, and anthropology (Hartley 1994). Such a study consists of detailed investigation of one or more organizations, or groups within organizations, with a view to providing an analysis of the context and processes involved in the phenomenon under study. As opposed to other qualitative or quantitative research strategies, such as grounded theory (Glaser and Strauss 1967) or surveys (Nachmias & Nachmias 1981), there are virtually no specific requirements guiding case research. Yin (1989) and Eisenhardt (1989) give useful insights into the case study as a research strategy, but leave most of the design decisions on the table. This is both the strength and the weakness of this approach. It is a strength because it allows tailoring the design and data collection procedures to the research questions. On the other hand, this approach has resulted in many poor case studies, leaving it open to criticism, especially from the quantitative field of research (Cook and Campbell 1979). The fact that the case study is a rather loose design implies that there are a number of choices that need to be addressed in a principled way.

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Although case studies have become a common research strategy, the scope of methodology sections in articles published in journals is far too limited to give the readers a detailed and comprehensive view of the decisions taken in the particular studies, and, given the format of methodology sections, will remain so. The few books (Yin 1989, 1993; Hamel, Dufour, & Fortin 1993; Stake 1995) and book chapters on case studies (Hartley 1994; Silverman 2000) are, on the other hand, mainly normative and span a broad range of different kinds of case studies. One exception is Pettigrew (1990, 1992), who places the case study in the context of a research tradition (the Warwick process research). Given the contextual nature of the case study and its strength in addressing contemporary phenomena in real-life contexts, I believe that there is a need for articles that provide a comprehensive overview of the case study process from the researcher’s perspective, emphasizing methodological considerations. This implies addressing the whole range of choices concerning specific design requirements, data collection procedures, data analysis, and validity and reliability.

WHY A CASE STUDY? Case studies are tailor-made for exploring new processes or behaviors or ones that are little understood (Hartley 1994). Hence, the approach is particularly useful for responding to how and why questions about a contemporary set of events (Leonard-­ Barton 1990). Moreover, researchers have argued that certain kinds of information can be difficult or even impossible to tackle by means other than qualitative approaches such as the case study (Sykes 1990). Gummesson (1988:76) argues that an important advantage of case study research is the opportunity for a holistic view of the process: “The detailed observations entailed in the case study method enable us to study many different aspects, examine them in relation to each other, view the process within its total environment and also use the researchers’ capacity for ‘verstehen.’ ” The contextual nature of the case study is illustrated in Yin’s (1993:59) definition of a case study as an empirical inquiry that “investigates a contemporary phenomenon within its real-life context and addresses a situation in which the boundaries between phenomenon and context are not clearly evident.” The key difference between the case study and other qualitative designs such as grounded theory and ethnography (Glaser & Strauss 1967; Strauss & Corbin 1990; Gioia & Chittipeddi 1991) is that the case study is open to the use of theory or conceptual categories that guide the research and analysis of data. In contrast, grounded theory or ethnography presupposes that theoretical perspectives are grounded in and emerge from firsthand data. Hartley (1994) argues that without a theoretical framework, the researcher is in severe danger of providing description without meaning. Gummesson (1988) says that a lack of preunderstanding will cause the researcher to spend considerable time gathering basic information. This preunderstanding may arise from general knowledge such as theories, models, and concepts or from

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specific knowledge of institutional conditions and social patterns. According to Gummesson, the key is not to require researchers to have split but dual personalities: “Those who are able to balance on a razor’s edge using their pre-understanding without being its slave” (p. 58).

DESCRIPTION OF THE ILLUSTRATIVE STUDY The study that will be used for illustrative purposes is a comparative and longitudinal case study of organizational integration in mergers and acquisitions taking place in Norway. The study had two purposes: (1) to identify contextual factors and features of integration that facilitated or impeded organizational integration, and (2) to study how the three dimensions of organizational integration (integration of tasks, unification of power, and integration of cultures and identities) interrelated and evolved over time. Examples of contextual factors were relative power, degree of friendliness, and economic climate. Integration features included factors such as participation, communication, and allocation of positions and functions. Mergers and acquisitions are inherently complex. Researchers in the field have suggested that managers continuously underestimate the task of integrating the merging organizations in the postintegration process (Haspeslaph & Jemison 1991). The process of organizational integration can lead to sharp interorganizational conflict as the different top management styles, organizational and work unit cultures, systems, and other aspects of organizational life come into contact (Blake & Mounton 1985; Schweiger & Walsh 1990; Cartwright & Cooper 1993). Furthermore, cultural change in mergers and acquisitions is compounded by additional uncertainties, ambiguities, and stress inherent in the combination process (Buono & Bowditch 1989). I focused on two combinations: one merger and one acquisition. The first case was a merger between two major Norwegian banks, Bergen Bank and DnC (to be named DnB), that started in the late 1980s. The second case was a study of a major acquisition in the insurance industry (i.e., Gjensidige’s acquisition of Forenede), that started in the early 1990s. Both combinations aimed to realize operational synergies though merging the two organizations into one entity. This implied disruption of organizational boundaries and threat to the existing power distribution and organizational cultures. The study of integration processes in mergers and acquisitions illustrates the need to find a design that opens for exploration of sensitive issues such as power struggles between the two merging organizations. Furthermore, the inherent complexity in the integration process, involving integration of tasks, unification of power, and cultural integration stressed the need for in-depth study of the phenomenon over time. To understand the cultural integration process, the design also had to be linked to the past history of the two organizations.

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DESIGN DECISIONS In the introduction, I stressed that a case is a rather loose design that requires that a number of design choices be made. In this section, I go through the most important choices I faced in the study of organizational integration in mergers and acquisitions. These include: (1) selection of cases; (2) sampling time; (3) choosing business areas, divisions, and sites; and (4) selection of and choices regarding data collection procedures, interviews, documents, and observation. Selection of Cases There are several choices involved in selecting cases. First, there is the question of how many cases to include. Second, one must sample cases and decide on a unit of analysis. I will explore these issues subsequently. Single or Multiple Cases Case studies can involve single or multiple cases. The problem of single cases is limitations in generalizability and several information-processing biases (Eisenhardt 1989). One way to respond to these biases is by applying a multi-case approach (Leonard-Barton 1990). Multiple cases augment external validity and help guard against observer biases. Moreover, multi-case sampling adds confidence to findings. By looking at a range of similar and contrasting cases, we can understand a single-case finding, grounding it by specifying how and where and, if possible, why it behaves as it does. (Miles & Huberman 1994)

Given these limitations of the single case study, it is desirable to include more than one case study in the study. However, the desire for depth and a pluralist perspective and tracking the cases over time implies that the number of cases must be fairly few. I chose two cases, which clearly does not support generalizability any more than does one case, but allows for comparison and contrast between the cases as well as a deeper and richer look at each case. Originally, I planned to include a third case in the study. Due to changes in management during the initial integration process, my access to the case was limited and I left this case entirely. However, a positive side effect was that it allowed a deeper investigation of the two original cases and in hindsight turned out to be a good decision. Sampling Cases The logic of sampling cases is fundamentally different from statistical sampling. The logic in case studies involves theoretical sampling, in which the goal is to choose cases that are likely to replicate or extend the emergent theory or to fill theoretical categories and provide examples for polar types (Eisenhardt 1989). Hence, whereas quantitative sampling concerns itself with representativeness, qualitative sampling seeks information richness and selects the cases purposefully rather than randomly (Crabtree and Miller 1992).

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The choice of cases was guided by George (1979) and Pettigrew’s (1990) recommendations. The aim was to find cases that matched the three dimensions in the dependent variable and provided variation in the contextual factors, thus representing polar cases. To match the choice of outcome variable, organizational integration, I chose cases in which the purpose was to fully consolidate the merging parties’ operations. A full consolidation would imply considerable disruption in the organizational boundaries and would be expected to affect the task-related, political, and cultural features of the organizations. As for the contextual factors, the two cases varied in contextual factors such as relative power, friendliness, and economic climate. The DnB merger was a friendly combination between two equal partners in an unfriendly economic climate. Gjensidige’s acquisition of Forenede was, in contrast, an unfriendly and unbalanced acquisition in a friendly economic climate. Unit of Analysis Another way to respond to researchers’ and respondents’ biases is to have more than one unit of analysis in each case (Yin 1993). This implies that, in addition to developing contrasts between the cases, researchers can focus on contrasts within the cases (Hartley 1994). In case studies, there is a choice of a holistic or embedded design (Yin 1989). A holistic design examines the global nature of the phenomenon, whereas an embedded design also pays attention to subunit(s). I used an embedded design to analyze the cases (i.e., within each case, I also gave attention to subunits and subprocesses). In both cases, I compared the combination processes in the various divisions and local networks. Moreover, I compared three distinct change processes in DnB: before the merger, during the initial combination, and two years after the merger. The overall and most important unit of analysis in the two cases was, however, the integration process. Sampling Time According to Pettigrew (1990), time sets a reference for what changes can be seen and how those changes are explained. When conducting a case study, there are several important issues to decide when sampling time. The first regards how many times data should be collected, while the second concerns when to enter the organizations. There is also a need to decide whether to collect data on a continuous basis or in distinct periods. Number of data collections. I studied the process by collecting real time and retrospective data at two points in time, with one-and-a-half- and two-year intervals in the two cases. Collecting data twice had some interesting implications for the interpretations of the data. During the first data collection in the DnB study, for example, I collected retrospective data about the premerger and initial combination phase and real-time data about the second step in the combination process. Although I gained a picture of how the employees experienced the second stage of the combination process, it was too early to assess the effects of this process at

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that stage. I entered the organization two years later and found interesting effects that I had not anticipated the first time. Moreover, it was interesting to observe how people’s attitudes toward the merger processes changed over time to be more positive and less emotional. When to enter the organizations. It would be desirable to have had the opportunity to collect data in the precombination processes. However, researchers are rarely given access in this period due to secrecy. The emphasis in this study was to focus on the postcombination process. As such, the precombination events were classified as contextual factors. This implied that it was most important to collect real-time data after the parties had been given government approval to merge or acquire. What would have been desirable was to gain access earlier in the postcombination process. This was not possible because access had to be negotiated. Due to the change of CEO in the middle of the merger process and the need for renegotiating access, this took longer than expected. Regarding the second case, I was restricted by the time frame of the study. In essence, I had to choose between entering the combination process as soon as governmental approval was given, or entering the organization at a later stage. In light of the previous studies in the field that have failed to go beyond the initial two years, and given the need to collect data about the cultural integration process, I chose the latter strategy. And I decided to enter the organizations at two distinct periods of time rather than on a continuous basis. There were several reasons for this approach, some methodological and some practical. First, data collection on a continuous basis would have required use of extensive observation that I didn’t have access to, and getting access to two data collections in DnB was difficult in itself. Second, I had a stay abroad between the first and second data collection in Gjensidige. Collecting data on a continuous basis would probably have allowed for better mapping of the ongoing integration process, but the contrasts between the two different stages in the integration process that I wanted to elaborate would probably be more difficult to detect. In Table  1 I have listed the periods of time in which I collected data in the two combinations.

Table 1  Periods of Time for Studying the Two Combinations Announcement of intention to merge/ acquire Government approval First data collection Second data collection

Bergen Bank–DnC October 1989

Gjensidige-Forenede December 1991

February 1990 Autumn 1991/Winter 1992 Spring 1994

June 1992 Winter 1993/Spring 1994 Autumn 1995

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Sampling Business Areas, Divisions, and Sites Even when the cases for a study have been chosen, it is often necessary to make further choices within each case to make the cases researchable. The most important criteria that set the boundaries for the study are importance or criticality, relevance, and representativeness. At the time of the data collection, my criteria for making these decisions were not as conscious as they may appear here. Rather, being restricted by time and my own capacity as a researcher, I had to limit the sites and act instinctively. In both cases, I decided to concentrate on the core businesses (criticality criterion) and left out the business units that were only mildly affected by the integration process (relevance criterion). In the choice of regional offices, I used the representativeness criterion as the number of offices widely exceeded the number of sites possible to study. In making these choices, I relied on key informants in the organizations.

SELECTION OF DATA COLLECTION PROCEDURES The choice of data collection procedures should be guided by the research question and the choice of design. The case study approach typically combines data collection methods such as archives, interviews, questionnaires, and observations (Yin 1989). This triangulated methodology provides stronger substantiation of constructs and hypotheses. However, the choice of data collection methods is also subject to constraints in time, financial resources, and access. I chose a combination of interviews, archives, and observation, with main emphasis on the first two. Conducting a survey was inappropriate due to the lack of established concepts and indicators. The reason for limited observation, on the other hand, was due to problems in obtaining access early in the study and time and resource constraints. In addition to choosing among several different data collection methods, there are a number of choices to be made for each individual method. Interviews When relying on interviews as the primary data collection method, the issue of building trust between the researcher and the interviewees becomes very important. I addressed this issue by several means. First, I established a procedure of how to approach the interviewees. In most cases, I called them first, then sent out a letter explaining the key features of the project and outlining the broad issues to be addressed in the interview. In this letter, the support from the institution’s top management was also communicated. In most cases, the top management’s support of the project was an important prerequisite for the respondent’s input. Some interviewees did, however, fear that their input would be open to the top management without disguising the information source. Hence, it became important to communicate how I intended to use and store the information. To establish trust, I also actively used my preunderstanding of the context in the first case and the phenomenon in the second case. As I built up an understanding of

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the cases, I used this information to gain confidence. The active use of my preunderstanding did, however, pose important challenges in not revealing too much of the research hypotheses and in balancing between asking open-ended questions and appearing knowledgeable. There are two choices involved in conducting interviews. The first concerns the sampling of interviewees. The second is that you must decide on issues such as the structure of the interviews, use of tape recorder, and involvement of other researchers. Sampling Interviewees Following the desire for detailed knowledge of each case and for grasping different participant’s views the aim was, in line with Pettigrew (1990), to apply a pluralist view by describing and analyzing competing versions of reality as seen by actors in the combination processes. I used four criteria for sampling informants. First, I drew informants from populations representing multiple perspectives. The first data collection in DnB was primarily focused on the top management level. Moreover, most middle managers in the first data collection were employed at the head offices, either in Bergen or Oslo. In the second data collection, I compensated for this skew by including eight local middle managers in the sample. The difference between the number of employees interviewed in DnB and Gjensidige was primarily due to the fact that Gjensidige has three unions, whereas DnB only has one. The distribution of interviewees is outlined in Table 2. The second criterion was to use multiple informants. According to Glick et al. (1990), an important advantage of using multiple informants is that the validity of information provided by one informant can be checked against that provided by other informants. Moreover, the validity of the data used by the researcher can be enhanced by resolving the discrepancies among different informants’ reports. Hence, I selected multiple respondents from each perspective. Table 2  Distribution of Interviewees

Level of organization Top management/board Middle management Union representative and employees Organizational affiliation Acquirer Acquired company Neither Locales Oslo Bergen Trondheim Locales outside headquarter cities Total

DnB Phase 1 Phase 2

Gjensidige Phase 1 Phase 2

Total

13 4 3

7 10 3

10 8 11

5 2 2

35 24 19

10 9 1

7 11 2

15 12 2

4 5 0

36 47 5

13 6 0 1 60

12 2 0 6 20

11 0 10 8 29

3 0 3 3 9

39 8 13 18 78

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Third, I focused on key informants who were expected to be knowledgeable about the combination process. These people included top management members, managers, and employees involved in the integration project. To validate the information from these informants, I also used a fourth criterion by selecting managers and employees who had been affected by the process but who were not involved in the project groups. Structured versus unstructured. In line with the explorative nature of the study, the goal of the interviews was to see the research topic from the perspective of the interviewee, and to understand why he or she came to have this particular perspective. To meet this goal, King (1994:15) recommends that one have “a low degree of structure imposed on the interviewer, a preponderance of open questions, a focus on specific situations and action sequences in the world of the interviewee rather than abstractions and general opinions.” In line with these recommendations, the collection of primary data in this study consists of unstructured interviews. Using tape recorders and involving other researchers. The majority of the interviews were tape-recorded, and I could thus concentrate fully on asking questions and responding to the interviewees’ answers. In the few interviews that were not tape-recorded, most of which were conducted in the first phase of the DnB-study, two researchers were present. This was useful as we were both able to discuss the interviews later and had feedback on the role of an interviewer. In hindsight, however, I wish that these interviews had been tape-recorded to maintain the level of accuracy and richness of data. Hence, in the next phases of data collection, I tape-recorded all interviews, with two exceptions (people who strongly opposed the use of this device). All interviews that were tape-recorded were transcribed by me in full, which gave me closeness and a good grasp of the data. Documents When organizations merge or make acquisitions, there are often a vast number of documents to choose from to build up an understanding of what has happened and to use in the analyses. Furthermore, when firms make acquisitions or merge, they often hire external consultants, each of whom produces more documents. Due to time constraints, it is seldom possible to collect and analyze all these documents, and thus the researcher has to make a selection. The choice of documentation was guided by my previous experience with merger and acquisition processes and the research question. Hence, obtaining information on the postintegration process was more important than gaining access to the due-­ diligence analysis. As I learned about the process, I obtained more documents on specific issues. I did not, however, gain access to all the documents I asked for, and, in some cases, documents had been lost or shredded. The documents were helpful in a number of ways. First, and most important, they were used as inputs to the interview guide and saved me time, because I did not have to ask for facts in the interviews. They were also useful for tracing the history of the organizations and statements made by key people in the organizations. Third, the documents were helpful in counteracting the biases of the interviews. A list of the documents used in writing the cases is shown in Table 3.

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Table 3  Documents Used in Analysis of the Combinations Gjensidige Strategic plan for 2000 Reports from the integration project groups Report from the recruiting committee

DnB McKinsey reports from the premerger phase Reports from the integration project groups Guidelines for selecting and positioning in 1990 Internal letters Minutes from top management integration groups Letters to the Norwegian authorities Written submissions for the government approval application Declaration of intent Merger prospect Internal job announcement magazines Articles from the press Report from employee survey Internal newsletters Annual reports Internal newsletters Publications and documents from the banking crisis projects Articles from the press Annual reports Union magazines Publication from the Association of Norwegian Insurance Companies

Observation The major strength of direct observation is that it is unobtrusive and does not require direct interaction with participants (Adler and Adler 1994). Observation produces rigor when it is combined with other methods. When the researcher has access to group processes, direct observation can illuminate the discrepancies between what people said in the interviews and casual conversations and what they actually do (Pettigrew 1990). As with interviews, there are a number of choices involved in conducting observations. Although I did some observations in the study, I used interviews as the key data collection source. Discussion in this article about observations will thus be somewhat limited. Nevertheless, I faced a number of choices in conducting observations, including type of observation, when to enter, how much observation to conduct, and which groups to observe. The are four ways in which an observer may gather data: (1) the complete participant who operates covertly, concealing any intention to observe the setting; (2) the participant-as-observer, who forms relationships and participates in activities, but makes no secret of his or her intentions to observe events; (3) the observer-asparticipant, who maintains only superficial contact with the people being studied; and (4) the complete observer, who merely stands back and eavesdrops on the proceedings (Waddington 1994). In this study, I used the second and third ways of observing. The use of the participant-­as-observer mode, on which much ethnographic research is based, was rather limited in the study. There were two reasons for this. First, I had limited time

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available for collecting data, and in my view interviews made more effective use of this limited time than extensive participant observation. Second, people were rather reluctant to let me observe these political and sensitive processes until they knew me better and felt I could be trusted. Indeed, I was dependent on starting the data collection before having built sufficient trust to observe key groups in the integration process. Nevertheless, Gjensidige allowed me to study two employee seminars to acquaint me with the organization. Here I admitted my role as an observer but participated fully in the activities. To achieve variation, I chose two seminars representing polar groups of employees. As observer-as-participant, I attended a top management meeting at the end of the first data collection in Gjensidige and observed the respondents during interviews and in more informal meetings, such as lunches. All these observations gave me an opportunity to validate the data from the interviews. Observing the top management group was by far the most interesting and rewarding in terms of input. Both DnB and Gjensidige started to open up for more extensive observation when I was about to finish the data collection. By then, I had built up the trust needed to undertake this approach. Unfortunately, this came a little late for me to take advantage of it.

DATA ANALYSIS Published studies generally describe research sites and data-collection methods, but give little space to discuss the analysis (Eisenhardt 1989). Thus, one cannot follow how a researcher arrives at the final conclusions from a large volume of field notes (Miles and Huberman 1994). In this study, I went through the stages by which the data were reduced and analyzed. This involved establishing the chronology, coding, writing up the data according to phases and themes, introducing organizational integration into the analysis, comparing the cases, and applying the theory. I will discuss these phases accordingly. The first step in the analysis was to establish the chronology of the cases. To do this, I used internal and external documents. I wrote the chronologies up and included appendices in the final report. The next step was to code the data into phases and themes reflecting the contextual factors and features of integration. For the interviews, this implied marking the text with a specific phase and a theme, and grouping the paragraphs on the same theme and phase together. I followed the same procedure in organizing the documents. I then wrote up the cases using phases and themes to structure them. Before starting to write up the cases, I scanned the information on each theme, built up the facts and filled in with perceptions and reactions that were illustrative and representative of the data.

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The documents were primarily useful in establishing the facts, but they also provided me with some perceptions and reactions that were validated in the interviews. The documents used included internal letters and newsletters as well as articles from the press. The interviews were less factual, as intended, and gave me input to assess perceptions and reactions. The limited observation was useful to validate the data from the interviews. The result of this step was two descriptive cases. To make each case more analytical, I introduced the three dimensions of organizational integration—integration of tasks, unification of power, and cultural integration— into the analysis. This helped to focus the case and to develop a framework that could be used to compare the cases. The cases were thus structured according to phases, organizational integration, and themes reflecting the factors and features in the study. I took all these steps to become more familiar with each case as an individual entity. According to Eisenhardt (1989:540), this is a process that “allows the unique patterns of each case to emerge before the investigators push to generalise patterns across cases. In addition it gives investigators a rich familiarity with each case which, in turn, accelerates cross-case comparison.” The comparison between the cases constituted the next step in the analysis. Here, I used the categories from the case chapters, filled in the features and factors, and compared and contrasted the findings. The idea behind cross-case searching tactics is to force investigators to go beyond initial impressions, especially through the use of structural and diverse lenses on the data. These tactics improve the likelihood of accurate and reliable theory, that is, theory with a close fit to the data (Eisenhardt 1989). As a result, I had a number of overall themes, concepts, and relationships that had emerged from the within-case analysis and cross-case comparisons. The next step was to compare these emergent findings with theory from the organizational field of mergers and acquisitions, as well as other relevant perspectives. This method of generalization is known as analytical generalization. In this approach, a previously developed theory is used as a template with which to compare the empirical results of the case study (Yin 1989). This comparison of emergent concepts, theory, or hypotheses with the extant literature involves asking what it is similar to, what it contradicts, and why. The key to this process is to consider a broad range of theory (Eisenhardt 1989). On the whole, linking emergent theory to existent literature enhances the internal validity, generalizability, and theoretical level of theory-building from case research. According to Eisenhardt (1989), examining literature that conflicts with the emergent literature is important for two reasons. First, the chance of neglecting conflicting findings is reduced. Second, “conflicting results forces researchers into a more creative, frame-breaking mode of thinking than they might otherwise be able to achieve” (p. 544). Similarly, Eisenhardt (1989) claims that literature discussing similar findings is important because it ties together underlying similarities in phenomena not normally associated with each other. The result is often a theory with a stronger internal validity, wider generalizability, and a higher conceptual level. The analytical generalization in the study included exploring and developing the concepts and examining the relationships between the constructs. In carrying out this analytical generalization, I acted on Eisenhardt’s (1989) recommendation to use a

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broad range of theory. First, I compared and contrasted the findings with the organizational stream on mergers and acquisition literature. Then I discussed other relevant literatures, including strategic change, power and politics, social justice, and social identity theory to explore how these perspectives could contribute to the understanding of the findings. Finally, I discussed the findings that could not be explained either by the merger and acquisition literature or the four theoretical perspectives. In every scientific study, questions are raised about whether the study is valid and reliable. The issues of validity and reliability in case studies are just as important as for more deductive designs, but the application is fundamentally different.

VALIDITY AND RELIABILITY The problems of validity in qualitative studies are related to the fact that most qualitative researchers work alone in the field, they focus on the findings rather than describe how the results were reached, and they are limited in processing information (Miles and Huberman 1994). Researchers writing about qualitative methods have questioned whether the same criteria can be used for qualitative and quantitative studies (Kirk & Miller 1986; Sykes 1990; Maxwell 1992). The problem with the validity criteria suggested in qualitative research is that there is little consistency across the articles as each author suggests a new set of criteria. One approach in examining validity and reliability is to apply the criteria used in quantitative research. Hence, the criteria to be examined here are objectivity/intersubjectivity, construct validity, internal validity, external validity, and reliability. Objectivity/Intersubjectivity The basic issue of objectivity can be framed as one of relative neutrality and reasonable freedom from unacknowledged research biases (Miles & Huberman 1994). In a real-time longitudinal study, the researcher is in danger of losing objectivity and of becoming too involved with the organization, the people, and the process. Hence, Leonard-Barton (1990) claims that one may be perceived as, and may even become, an advocate rather than an observer. According to King (1994), however, qualitative research, in seeking to describe and make sense of the world, does not require researchers to strive for objectivity and distance themselves from research participants. Indeed, to do so would make good qualitative research impossible, as the interviewer’s sensitivity to subjective aspects of his or her relationship with the interviewee is an essential part of the research process (King 1994:31). This does not imply, however, that the issue of possible research bias can be ignored. It is just as important as in a structured quantitative interview that the findings are not simply the product of the researcher’s prejudices and prior experience. One way to guard against this bias is for the researcher to explicitly recognize his or her

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presuppositions and to make a conscious effort to set these aside in the analysis (Gummesson 1988). Furthermore, rival conclusions should be considered (Miles & Huberman 1994). My experience from the first phase of the DnB study was that it was difficult to focus the questions and the analysis of the data when the research questions were too vague and broad. As such, developing a framework before collecting the data for the study was useful in guiding the collection and analysis of data. Nevertheless, it was important to be open-minded and receptive to new and surprising data. In the DnB study, for example, the positive effect of the reorganization process on the integration of cultures came as a complete surprise to me and thus needed further elaboration. I also consciously searched for negative evidence and problems by interviewing outliers (Miles & Huberman 1994) and asking problem-oriented questions. In Gjensidige, the first interviews with the top management revealed a much more positive perception of the cultural integration process than I had expected. To explore whether this was a result of overreliance on elite informants, I continued posing problem-oriented questions to outliers and people at lower levels in the organization. Moreover, I told them about the DnB study to be explicit about my presuppositions. Another important issue when assessing objectivity is whether other researchers can trace the interpretations made in the case studies, or what is called intersubjectivity. To deal with this issue, Miles & Huberman (1994) suggest that: (1) the study’s general methods and procedures should be described in detail, (2) one should be able to follow the process of analysis, (3) conclusions should be explicitly linked with exhibits of displayed data, and (4) the data from the study should be made available for reanalysis by others. In response to these requirements, I described the study’s data collection procedures and processing in detail. Then, the primary data were displayed in the written report in the form of quotations and extracts from documents to support and illustrate the interpretations of the data. Because the study was written up in English, I included the Norwegian text in a separate appendix. Finally, all the primary data from the study were accessible for a small group of distinguished researchers. Construct Validity Construct validity refers to whether there is substantial evidence that the theoretical paradigm correctly corresponds to observation (Kirk & Miller 1986). In this form of validity, the issue is the legitimacy of the application of a given concept or theory to established facts. The strength of qualitative research lies in the flexible and responsive interaction between the interviewer and the respondents (Sykes 1990). Thus, meaning can be probed, topics covered easily from a number of angles, and questions made clear for respondents. This is an advantage for exploring the concepts (construct or theoretical validity) and the relationships between them (internal validity). Similarly, Hakim (1987) says the great strength of qualitative research is the validity of data obtained because individuals are interviewed in sufficient detail for the results to be taken as true, correct, and believable reports of their views and experiences.

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Construct validity can be strengthened by applying a longitudinal multicase approach, triangulation, and use of feedback loops. The advantage of applying a longitudinal approach is that one gets the opportunity to test sensitivity of construct measures to the passage of time. Leonard-Barton (1990), for example, found that one of her main constructs, communicability, varied across time and relative to different groups of users. Thus, the longitudinal study aided in defining the construct more precisely. By using more than one case study, one can validate stability of construct across situations (Leonard-Barton 1990). Since my study only consists of two case studies, the opportunity to test stability of constructs across cases is somewhat limited. However, the use of more than one unit of analysis helps to overcome this limitation. Construct validity is strengthened by the use of multiple sources of evidence to build construct measures, which define the construct and distinguish it from other constructs. These multiple sources of evidence can include multiple viewpoints within and across the data sources. My study responds to these requirements in its sampling of interviewees and uses of multiple data sources. Use of feedback loops implies returning to interviewees with interpretations and developing theory and actively seeking contradictions in data (Crabtree & Miller 1992; King 1994). In DnB, the written report had to be approved by the bank’s top management after the first data collection. Apart from one minor correction, the bank had no objections to the established facts. In their comments on my analysis, some of the top managers expressed the view that the political process had been overemphasized, and that the CEO’s role in initiating a strategic process was undervalued. Hence, an important objective in the second data collection was to explore these comments further. Moreover, the report was not as positive as the management had hoped for, and negotiations had to be conducted to publish the report. The result of these negotiations was that publication of the report was postponed one-and-a-­ half years. The experiences from the first data collection in the DnB had some consequences. I was more cautious and brought up the problems of confidentiality and the need to publish at the outset of the Gjensidige study. Also, I had to struggle to get access to the DnB case for the second data collection and some of the information I asked for was not released. At Gjensidige, I sent a preliminary draft of the case chapter to the corporation’s top management for comments, in addition to having second interviews with a small number of people. Beside testing out the factual description, these sessions gave me the opportunity to test out the theoretical categories established as a result of the within-case analysis. Internal Validity Internal validity concerns the validity of the postulated relationships among the concepts. The main problem of internal validity as a criterion in qualitative research is that it is often not open to scrutiny. According to Sykes (1990), the researcher can always provide a plausible account and, with careful editing, may ensure its coherence. Recognition of this problem has led to calls for better documentation of the processes of data collection, the data itself, and the interpretative contribution of the

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researcher. The discussion of how I met these requirements was outlined in the section on objectivity/subjectivity above. However, there are some advantages in using qualitative methods, too. First, the flexible and responsive methods of data collection allow cross-checking and amplification of information from individual units as it is generated. Respondents’ opinions and understandings can be thoroughly explored. The internal validity results from strategies that eliminate ambiguity and contradiction, filling in detail and establishing strong connections in data. Second, the longitudinal study enables one to track cause and effect. Moreover, it can make one aware of intervening variables (Leonard-Barton 1990). Eisenhardt (1989:542) states, “Just as hypothesis testing research an apparent relationship may simply be a spurious correlation or may reflect the impact of some third variable on each of the other two. Therefore, it is important to discover the underlying reasons for why the relationship exists.” Generalizability According to Mitchell (1983), case studies are not based on statistical inference. Quite the contrary, the inferring process turns exclusively on the theoretically necessary links among the features in the case study. The validity of the extrapolation depends not on the typicality or representativeness of the case but on the cogency of the theoretical reasoning. Hartley (1994:225) claims, “The detailed knowledge of the organization and especially the knowledge about the processes underlying the behaviour and its context can help to specify the conditions under which behaviour can be expected to occur. In other words, the generalisation is about theoretical propositions not about populations.” Generalizability is normally based on the assumption that this theory may be useful in making sense of similar persons or situations (Maxwell 1992). One way to increase the generalizability is to apply a multicase approach (Leonard-Barton 1990). The advantage of this approach is that one can replicate the findings from one case study to another. This replication logic is similar to that used on multiple experiments (Yin 1993). Given the choice of two case studies, the generalizability criterion is not supported in this study. Through the discussion of my choices, I have tried to show that I had to strike a balance between the need for depth and mapping changes over time and the number of cases. In doing so, I deliberately chose to provide a deeper and richer look at each case, allowing the reader to make judgments about the applicability rather than making a case for generalizability. Reliability Reliability focuses on whether the process of the study is consistent and reasonably stable over time and across researchers and methods (Miles & Huberman 1994). In the context of qualitative research, reliability is concerned with two questions (Sykes 1990): Could the same study carried out by two researchers produce the same findings? and Could a study be repeated using the same researcher and respondents to yield the same findings?

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The problem of reliability in qualitative research is that differences between replicated studies using different researchers are to be expected. However, while it may not be surprising that different researchers generate different findings and reach different conclusions, controlling for reliability may still be relevant. Kirk and Miller’s (1986:311) definition takes into account the particular relationship between the researcher’s orientation, the generation of data, and its interpretation: For reliability to be calculated, it is incumbent on the scientific investigator to document his or her procedure. This must be accomplished at such a level of abstraction that the loci of decisions internal to the project are made apparent. The curious public deserves to know how the qualitative researcher prepares him or herself for the endeavour, and how the data is collected and analysed.

The study addresses these requirements by discussing my point of departure regarding experience and framework, the sampling and data collection procedures, and data analysis.

DISCUSSION Case studies often lack academic rigor and are, as such, regarded as inferior to more rigorous methods where there are more specific guidelines for collecting and analyzing data. These criticisms stress that there is a need to be very explicit about the choices one makes and the need to justify them. One reason why case studies are criticized may be that researchers disagree about the definition and the purpose of carrying out case studies. Case studies have been regarded as a design (Cook and Campbell 1979), as a qualitative methodology (Cassell and Symon 1994), as a particular data collection procedure (Andersen 1997), and as a research strategy (Yin 1989). Furthermore, the purpose for carrying out case studies is unclear. Some regard case studies as supplements to more rigorous qualitative studies to be carried out in the early stage of the research process; others claim that it can be used for multiple purposes and as a research strategy in its own right (Gummesson 1988; Yin 1989). Given this unclear status, researchers need to be very clear about their interpretation of the case study and the purpose of carrying out the study. This article has taken Yin’s (1989) definition of the case study as a research strategy as a starting point and argued that the choice of the case study should be guided by the research question(s). In the illustrative study, I used a case study strategy because of a need to explore sensitive, ill-defined concepts in depth, over time, taking into account the context and history of the mergers and the existing knowledge about the phenomenon. However, the choice of a case study strategy extended rather than limited the number of decisions to be made. In Schramm’s (1971, cited in Yin 1989:22–23) words, “The essence of a case study, the central tendency among all types of case study, is that it tries to illuminate a decision or set of decisions, why they were taken, how they were implemented, and with what result.”

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Table 4  Choices and Steps in Case Study Design 1. Selection of cases

2. Sampling time

3. Selection of data collection procedures

Single or multiple sampling Unit of analysis Number of data collections When to enter Interviews

Documents Use of documents

Sampling interviewees Structured versus unstructured Use of tape recorder Sampling documents Use of documents Choosing method When to enter How much Which groups

Hence, the purpose of this article has been to illustrate the wide range of decisions that need to be made in the context of a particular case study and to discuss the methodological considerations linked to these decisions. I argue that there is a particular need in case studies to be explicit about the methodological choices one makes and that these choices can be best illustrated through a case study of the case study strategy. As in all case studies, however, there are limitations to the generalizability of using one particular case study for illustrative purposes. As such, the strength of linking the methodological considerations to a specific context and phenomenon also becomes a weakness. However, I would argue that the questions raised in this article are applicable to many case studies, but that the answers are very likely to vary. The design choices are shown in Table 4. Hence, researchers choosing a longitudinal, comparative case study need to address the same set of questions with regard to design, data collection procedures, and analysis, but they are likely to come up with other conclusions, given their different research questions.

References Adler, P. A., and P. Adler. 1994. Observational techniques. In Handbook of qualitative research, edited by N. K. Denzin and Y. S. Lincoln, 377–92. London: Sage. Andersen, S. S. 1997. Case-studier og generalisering: Forskningsstrategi og design (Case studies and generalization: Research strategy and design). Bergen, Norway: Fagbokforlaget.

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Blake, R. R., and J. S. Mounton. 1985. How to achieve integration on the human side of the merger. Organizational Dynamics 13 (3): 41–56. Bryman, A., and R. G. Burgess. 1999. Qualitative research. London: Sage. Buono, A. F., and J. L. Bowditch. 1989. The human side of mergers and acquisitions. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. Cartwright, S., and C. L. Cooper. 1993. The psychological impact of mergers and acquisitions on the individual: A study of building society managers. Human Relations 46 (3): 327–47. Cassell, C., and G.  Symon, eds. 1994. Qualitative methods in organizational research: A practical guide. London: Sage. Cook, T. D., and D. T. Campbell. 1979. Quasi experimentation: Design & analysis issues for field settings. Boston: Houghton Mifflin. Crabtree, B.  F., and W.  L. Miller. 1992. Primary care research: A multimethod typology and qualitative road map. In Doing qualitative research: Methods for primary care, edited by B. F. Crabtree and W. L. Miller, 3–28. Vol. 3. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Creswell, J. W. 1998. Qualitative inquiry and research design: Choosing among five traditions. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Denzin, N.  K., and L.  S. Lincoln. 2000. Handbook of qualitative research. London: Sage. Eisenhardt, K. M. 1989. Building theories from case study research. Academy of Management Review 14 (4): 532–50. Flick, U. 1998. An introduction to qualitative research. London: Sage. George, A. L. 1979. Case studies and theory development: The method of structured, focused comparison. In Diplomacy: New approaches in history, theory, and policy, edited by P. G. Lauren, 43–68. New York: Free Press. Gioia, D. A., and K. Chittipeddi. 1991. Sensemaking and sensegiving in strategic change initiation. Strategic Management Journal 12:433–48. Glaser, B. G., and A. L. Strauss. 1967. The discovery of grounded theory: Strategies for qualitative research. Chicago: Aldine. Glick, W.  H, G.  P. Huber, C.  C. Miller, D.  H. Doty, and K.  M. Sutcliffe. 1990. Studying changes in organizational design and effectiveness: Retrospective event histories and periodic assessments. Organization Science 1 (3): 293–312. Gummesson, E. 1988. Qualitative methods in management research. Lund, Norway: Studentlitteratur, Chartwell-Bratt. Hakim, C. 1987. Research design. Strategies and choices in the design of social research. Boston: Unwin Hyman. Hamel, J., S. Dufour, and D. Fortin. 1993. Case study methods. London: Sage. Hartley, J. F. 1994. Case studies in organizational research. In Qualitative methods in organizational research: A practical guide, edited by C. Cassell and G. Symon, 209–29. London: Sage. Haspeslaph, P., and D. B. Jemison. 1991. The challenge of renewal through acquisitions. Planning Review 19 (2): 27–32.

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King, N. 1994. The qualitative research interview. In Qualitative methods in organizational research: A practical guide, edited by C. Cassell and G. Symon, 14–36. London: Sage. Kirk, J., and M.  L. Miller. 1986. Reliability and validity in qualitative research. Qualitative Research Methods Series 1. London: Sage. Leonard-Barton, D. 1990.Adual methodology for case studies: Synergistic use of a longitudinal single site with replicated multiple sites. Organization Science 1 (3): 248–66. Marshall, C., and G.  B. Rossman. 1999. Designing qualitative research. London: Sage. Maxwell, J. A. 1992. Understanding and validity in qualitative research. Harvard Educational Review 62 (3): 279–99. Miles, M.  B., and A.  M. Huberman. 1994. Qualitative data analysis. 2d ed. London: Sage. Mitchell, J. C. 1983. Case and situation analysis. Sociology Review 51 (2): 187–211. Nachmias, C., and D.  Nachmias. 1981. Research methods in the social sciences. London: Edward Arnhold. Pettigrew, A. M. 1990. Longitudinal field research on change: Theory and practice. Organization Science 1 (3): 267–92. ___. (1992). The character and significance of strategic process research. Strategic Management Journal 13:5–16. Rossman, G. B., and S. F. Rallis. 1998. Learning in the field: An introduction to qualitative research. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Schramm, W. 1971. Notes on case studies for instructional media projects. Working paper for Academy of Educational Development, Washington DC. Schweiger, D. M., and J. P. Walsh. 1990. Mergers and acquisitions: An interdisciplinary view. In Research in personnel and human resource management, edited by G. R. Ferris and K. M. Rowland, 41–107. Greenwich, CT: JAI. Silverman, D. 2000. Doing qualitative research: A practical handbook. London: Sage. Stake, R. E. 1995. The art of case study research. London: Sage. Strauss, A. L., and J. Corbin. 1990. Basics of qualitative research: Grounded theory procedures and techniques. Newbury Park, CA: Sage. Sykes, W. 1990. Validity and reliability in qualitative market research: A review of the literature. Journal of the Market Research Society 32 (3): 289–328. Waddington, D. 1994. Participant observation. In Qualitative methods in organizational research, edited by C. Cassell and G. Symon, 107–22. London: Sage. Yin, R. K. 1989. Case study research: Design and methods. Applied Social Research Series, Vol. 5. London: Sage. ___. 1993. Applications of case study research. Applied Social Research Series, Vol. 34. London: Sage. Christine Benedichte Meyer is an associate professor in the Department of Strategy and Management in the Norwegian School of Economics and Business Administration, Bergen-Sandviken, Norway. Her research interests are mergers and acquisitions, strategic change, and qualitative research. Recent publications include:

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“Allocation Processes in Mergers and Acquisitions: An Organisational Justice Perspective” (British Journal of Management 2001) and “Motives for Acquisitions in the Norwegian Financial Industry” (CEMS Business Review 1997).

References Bartlett, L., & Vavrus, F. (2017). Rethinking case study research. Routledge. Bauman, Z. (2000). Liquid modernity. Polity Press. Bhaskar, R., & Danermark, B. (2006). Metatheory, interdisciplinarity and disability research: A critical realist perspective. Scandinavian Journal of Disability Research, 8(4), 278–297. Bulmer, M. (1986). The Chicago School of sociology: Institutionalization, diversity, and the rise of sociological research. University of Chicago Press. Campbell, D. T. (1975). Degrees of freedom and the case study. Comparative Political Studies, 8(1), 178–191. Campbell, D.  T., & Stanley, J.  C. (1966). Experimental and quasi-experimental designs for research. Houghton Mifflin. Chua, W. F. (1986). Radical developments in accounting thought. The Accounting Review, 61(4), 601–632. Creswell, J. W. (2013). Research design: Qualitative, quantitative, and mixed methods approaches (4th ed.). Sage. Creswell, J. W., & Poth, C. N. (2017). Qualitative inquiry and research design. Sage. Davey, L. (1991). The application of case study evaluations. Practical Assessment, Research, & Evaluation 2(9). Retrieved May 28, 2018, from http://PAREonline.net/getvn.asp?v=2&n=9 Demetriou, H. (2017). The case study. In E.  Wilson (Ed.), School-based research: A guide for education students (pp. 124–138). Sage. Denzin, N. K., & Lincoln, Y. S. (2005). The Sage handbook of qualitative research. Sage. Flyvbjerg, B. (2004). Five misunderstandings about case-study research. In C. Seale, G. Gobo, J. F. Gubrium, & D. Silverman (Eds.), Qualitative research practice (pp. 420–433). Sage. Hamel, J., Dufour, S., & Fortin, D. (1993). Case study methods. Sage. Healy, M.  E. (1947). Le Play’s contribution to sociology: His method. The American Catholic Sociological Review, 8(2), 97–110. Johansson, R. (2003). Case study methodology. [Keynote speech]. In International Conference “Methodologies in Housing Research.” Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm, September 2003 (pp. 1–14). Klonoski, R. (2013). The case for case studies: Deriving theory from evidence. Journal of Business Case Studies, 9(31), 261–266. McDonough, J., & McDonough, S. (1997). Research methods for English language teachers. Routledge. Merriam, S. B. (1998). Qualitative research and case study applications in education. Jossey-Bass. Miles, M.  B. (1979). Qualitative data as an attractive nuisance: The problem of analysis. Administrative Science Quarterly, 24(4), 590–601. Miles, M.  B., & Huberman, A.  M. (1994). Qualitative data analysis: An expanded sourcebook (2nd ed.). Sage. Mills, A. J., Durepos, G. & E. Wiebe (Eds.) (2010). What is a case study? Encyclopedia of case study research, Volumes I and II. Sage. National Film Board of Canada. (2012, April). Here at home: In search of the real cost of homelessness. [Web documentary]. Retrieved February 9, 2020, from http://athome.nfb.ca/#/ athome/home Popper, K. (2002). Conjectures and refutations: The growth of scientific knowledge. Routledge.

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Chapter 8

Arts-Based Research

Aristotle once said or, at least, was said to have said, man by nature seeks to know. Research, in the broadest sense, is an effort to know and I believe that the forms of knowing vary enormously…. – Elliot Eisner, Stanford Graduate School of Education

Introduction In its purest form, art may be simultaneously immediate and eternal: immediate in its ability to grasp one’s attention, to provoke or inspire; eternal in its ability to create deep and permanent impressions. Responses to art may be visceral, emotional or psychological by turns or even together. As such, a work of art may possess almost unlimited potential to educate (Leavy, 2017). Although a pursuit of matters artistic may be a worthy pursuit for its own sake, the arts also represent invaluable opportunities across all research disciplines. As such, arts-based research exists at intersections between art and science. According to McNiff (2008), both arts-based research and science involve the use of systematic experimentation with the goal of gaining knowledge about life. Although art and science have historically been polarized, both art and science bear striking similarities in their attempts to explore, illuminate and represent aspects of human life within the social and natural worlds of which we are a part. Arts-based research strives to capture and meld creative impulses and intents between artistic and scientific practice (Leavy, 2017). It is applied in various disciplines, including health, psychology, education, and anthropology. Perhaps a defining quality of arts-based researchers is a willingness to begin work with questions, along with an enthusiasm to design methods respectful to the particular situation under study. This can be contrasted with a general tendency within human sciences Supplementary Information The online version contains supplementary material available at [https://doi.org/10.1007/978-­3-­030-­85124-­8_8]. The videos can be accessed individually by clicking the DOI link in the accompanying figure caption or by scanning this link with the SN More Media App. © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 R. E. White, K. Cooper, Qualitative Research in the Post-Modern Era, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-85124-8_8

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to fit the question into a fixed research methodology. Thus, the art of the arts-based researcher extends to the very creation of the process of inquiry, itself (McNiff, 2008). As such, arts-based research, in its broadest sense, seeks to explore, understand and represent human action and experience. It utilizes artistic forms and expressions to explore, understand, represent and even challenge human experiences (Wang et al., 2017). Wang and colleagues identify three major categories for classifying arts-based research; art as research, art in research and research about art. Additionally, they identify five major forms of arts-based research; visual art, sound art, literary art, performing art and new media. This classification framework may serve to provide artists and researchers with a general introduction to arts-based research and may assist in better positioning artists, researchers and others within the field of arts-based research. With all of this being said, it is possible that no one has contributed more to the development of arts-based research than the late Professor Elliot Eisner. However, along with contemporaries such as Tom Barone, Maxine Greene and others, visionary scholars have ensured that arts-based research has carved a niche for itself within the realm of qualitative research methodologies. As this chapter strives to ascertain, arts-based research has had a difficult and complicated birth, perhaps because of its very nature, given the overwhelming tendency for many current societies to seek scientific solutions to methodological issues. This chapter works to develop a view of arts-based research that serves to situate inquiry into the arts as both a product and as a process. This mode of research is less direct and perhaps, arguably, more convoluted than a number of other types of qualitative research. Perhaps the reason for this lies in the notion that the arts, in general, and arts-based research, in particular, have their origins in more divergent ways of thinking than depicted by other qualitative research methodologies. First and foremost, arts-based research is not just one thing. By its very nature, it is interdisciplinary. Secondly, it is a relative latecomer to the realm of qualitative methodology. Additionally, there are several terms, or labels, that are commonly used in association with or in place of arts-based research. Professor Eisner suggests that the distinction between what one tends to value as research and that which is considered to be non-research is too sharp, due to his belief that much of the work that is currently being accomplished in the social sciences and humanities bear numerous features that can be termed “artistic” features. As an example, in the creation of composite characters in ethnography, in the building of a story in terms of the attention to plot and character, or even in the selective process of historical events, there can be seen evidence of art, artistic treatments and the arts, in general. Wherever there is construction, art and artistic treatments can be found. Even such features as benign neglect, constructive neglect, imaginative extrapolation and any number of artistically engaged and engaging processes point to an implicit, and frequently explicit, recognition of arts-based or arts-informed research.

The “Meaning” of Art

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The “Meaning” of Art Before one can begin a discussion relating to arts-based research, it may be prudent to first discuss what is meant by the term, “art.” As has so often been averred, art can be anything that one deems it to be. Any process or procedure, including more traditional forms of science and scientific investigation can be raised to an art form. This does not detract from the qualities that make a particular phenomenon, artefact or event a scientific one, but adds or overlays a quality or qualities of artistic endeavour. In fact, to view things as either scientific or artistic is very much a binary and it is sufficient to suggest that, like the symbol of yin and yang, that graces the first chapter of this volume, in every endeavour, there is always a bit of the artistic influence, just as in every artistic endeavour, there is always evidence of other forms of inquiry. In a more traditional vein, painting, sculpture, music, theatre and dance, regardless of their execution, have long been considered art forms, simply because of the particular form of representation that they encompass. According to Sinner et al., arts-based forms of educational inquiry…include narrative writing, autobiography, dance and movement, readers theatre, multi-media, hypertext, visual arts, photography, music, poetry, and creative non-fiction (among others). Arts-based research incorporates the processes, forms (or structures), and approaches of creative practices in academic scholarship. (Sinner et al., 2006, p. 1226)

While forms associated with arts-based research may typically be non-literary, novels, short stories and other forms of fiction, along with some forms of non-fiction, can all be considered as forms of art. “Art” may also be defined through works that are valued by the society at large, as they represent a display of excellence. However, it must also be noted that many non-excellent displays may also subscribe to the genre of art. Perhaps it suffices to say that, at its core, art involves and invokes creation—the process of bringing something into existence that was not present prior to that process. Also, it may not be such a stretch as to presume that all things may have some artistic influence attached to them in some way, shape or form. Additionally, this begs a question regarding what some of the typical features of art may be or which may exist that conveniently allows one to ascertain that which is art from that which is not art. Works of art tend to illuminate or illustrate those things that may exist on the fringes of one’s consciousness, thus making visible that which is obscure or preternaturally illogical. Works of art also make a connection to the individual viewer. This is what makes empathy a possibility when viewing art that does not and cannot occur with other forms of inquiry, particularly those within a more scientifically determined paradigm. Works of art also tend to identify in particularistic form that which is of general importance and significance to the wider society. Thus, art can be informative by taking a general point of view and making that perspective individualistic. As well, works of art can also make the particular into a general or universal statement. Art tends to be creative in terms of its ability to draw connections between or among things that are unique and, through this, allow new perspectives to emerge. As an

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example, the work by the German symbolist author, Hermann Hesse, particularly in his novel, The Glass Bead Game (Das Glasperlenspiel, 2002), a fascinating tale of the complexity of modern life as well as a modern literary classic, points to the notion that all ideas have already been identified and noted. What remains to the creative soul, then, is to arrange these ideas in ways that have not been arranged previously. The creativity of each new arrangement allows for the art of the process in terms of new perspectives gained and the ability to meditate and learn from these new arrangements of old ideas. Thus, a work of art tends to possess a certain sense of organic unity that can best be described as a “wholeness” or a “coherence” that allows for a sense of aesthetic experience and a type of credibility, even within the willing suspension of disbelief. According to Denzin and Lincoln (2008), arts-based research comprises a practice that facilitates a unique view of the world. When complemented with other methodologies and practices, such as phenomenology, ethnography or grounded theory, for example, arts-based research contributes to furthering a more comprehensive understanding of the phenomenon under investigation. A general definition of arts-based research, offered by McNiff (2008), suggests that Arts-based research can be defined as the systematic use of the artistic process, the actual making of artistic expressions in all of the different forms of the arts, as a primary way of understanding and examining experience by both researchers and the people that they involve in their studies. (p. 29)

Additionally, Knowles and Cole (2008) state that arts-based research represents “an unfolding and expanding orientation to qualitative social science that draws inspiration, concepts, processes, and representation from the arts, broadly defined” (Knowles & Cole, 2008, p. xi). Such a broad definition may be difficult to consider when examining the aesthetics within arts-based research. Elliot Eisner (2008) adds to this definition of arts-­ based research by understanding it as a form of knowledge that offers a unique role in enlarging human understanding by utilizing a range of senses that engage individuals emotionally and experientially. As such, he notes that the arts “provide access to qualities of life that literal language has no great power to disclose” (Eisner, 2008, p. 7). This form of inquiry also offers various permutations of expression and representation, opening up possibilities relating to vicarious participation, connection to a diversity of audiences, and public dissemination at deep metaphoric levels. His pithy comment that, “Science states meaning, art expresses it,” (Eisner, 2008, p. 6), is a more than adequate summation of the meaning of art. Arts-Based research, or ABR for short, according to Leavy (2015) and McNiff (2015), is, by its very nature, a trans-disciplinary approach to knowledge generation that combines elements of the creative arts within a research context. Arts-Based research practices may be viewed as “methodological instruments” used by researchers across disciplines, during any or all phases of research, including problem generation, data or content generation and analysis, as well as interpretation and representation (Leavy, 2015). Such instruments as these may be brought into play in order to adapt the tenets of the creative arts in order to address research

The Biographical Context

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questions. Consequently, the process of inquiry involves engaging in art-making as a way of knowing (McNiff, 2015) that may draw upon any form of art. In concert with this notion, Alan S. Gerber (2012) asserts that arts-based research acknowledges truths, that it values pre-verbal and non-verbal ways of knowing and includes multiple knowledges, such as sensory, kinesthetic and imaginary knowing. An arts-based research methodology, therefore, requires a unique approach to discovering or uncovering data sources, data collection and analysis. The ways in which these are addressed, along with a critique of these methods (Knowles & Promislow, 2008), allow emerging scholars and academic researchers, alike, to access this methodology to illustrate how an arts-based methodology may offer a framework for a thesis or dissertation. Shared qualities, including a multiplicity of forms and a multi-layered approach to research challenge conventional ideas about academic knowledge and knowing. Knowles and Promislow identify potential obstacles to arts-based research at the individual and institutional level. They conclude that there is no dominant model of arts-based research and that this relatively emerging methodology offers considerable opportunity for researchers to draw upon the arts, both subjectively and objectively. Given the multiplicity of forms and interpretations that the arts afford, it is unsurprising that shifts in emphasis within the qualitative research paradigm have been generated. As Cole and Knowles (2008) note; The central purposes of arts-informed research are to enhance understanding of the human condition through alternative (to conventional) processes and representational forms of inquiry, and to reach multiple audiences by making scholarship more accessible…. Researchers working in this way might explicitly ground the processes and representational forms in one or several of the arts. (p. 59)

The Biographical Context Although many scholars and other creative individuals have helped to shape arts-­ based research, perhaps no one has championed the development of this methodology more than Elliot Eisner. Elliot Wayne Eisner (1933–2014), one of the foremost advocates for arts-based research, was a professor of Art and Education at the Stanford Graduate School of Education. Born in Chicago to Russian Jewish immigrant parents, Eisner promoted discipline-based art education through supporting myriad forms of representation in education. For example, Professor Eisner had a well-known debate with Howard Gardner (of Multiple Intelligences fame) as to whether a work of fiction, such as a novel, could be submitted as a dissertation. This debate has now become an historical footnote, as the presentation of a novel for a successful thesis dissertation has occurred. Professor Elliot Eisner is featured in the following video clip. He speaks hesitatingly, as a result of medication for Parkinson’s Disease. Below, the late Professor Eisner, speaks about his life and connections to arts-based research.

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Professor Elliot W. Eisner

In this video clip, Professor Eisner notes the impact that the arts had upon him, even as a child. While this provided a great deal of satisfaction, it also influenced his thinking. In addition to this, he also discovered the joy of political debate and the intellectual process in his home with his family. Upon graduation from secondary school, he enrolled in the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, prior to his becoming a commercial artist. Young Elliot later received a degree from Roosevelt

Video Clip 8.1: Professor Elliot W. Eisner (▶ https://doi.org/10.1007/000-­6d6)

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University in art, as well as in education because, as he claims, he enjoyed issues being discussed in the educational field. From here, Professor Eisner became a public school teacher in Chicago. This went well for a time but, deciding that he needed more education, he enrolled at the University of Chicago in order to further his own understanding of art and culture. Instead of an autobiographical commentary, Professor Eisner acknowledges characteristics that come into play when he employs arts-based research; My encounter with the social sciences at Chicago and my long-standing engagement in art, both as a painter and a teacher of art, forced me to confront the tension between my desire to understand and cultivate what is individual and distinctive and my wish to grasp what is patterned and regular (1993, p. 5).

Thus, it emerged that confronting tensions between the desire to understand and cultivate the individual and distinctive, combined with the patterned and the regular, ultimately emerged as a concept and practice, derived from the interaction between art and the social sciences. Although the focus for this began with the artistic process, arts-related research has developed and been transformed into many different forms, of which some are defined and explained on the pages of this chapter. The arts-based researcher uses media to create artefacts, which are then used as a means for understanding and examining the experiences of participants and researchers involved in arts-based research. The idea is to create, examine and interpret art in ways that illustrate both the artistic process and the impact of arts and issues on peoples’ lives. Consequently, arts-related research focuses not only on the end point and final representation, it also focuses on the process and expression of the work within a specific context. This awareness is crucial when working within an arts-informed research methodology (Cole & Knowles, 2008) because the autobiographical location of the researcher within the research is as necessary as the artistic autobiographical location of the researcher within the research. Accordingly, Cole and Knowles assert that, as in most qualitative research, the subjective and reflexive presence of the researcher is evident in the research text in varying ways depending on the focus and purpose of the inquiry. In arts-informed research, however, the researcher’s artistry is also predominant. By artistry, we include conceptual artistry and creative and aesthetic sensibilities, not only technical skills or an externally sanctioned title of “artist.” Extending the idea from qualitative inquiry of “researcher as instrument,” in arts-informed research the “instrument” of research is also the researcher-as-artist (2008, p. 61).

For the arts-informed researcher, this “doubling” of the autobiographical context can be daunting. However, Sinner et al. (2006) point out that arts-based research often forges a path towards transformation; “researchers are immersed in a journey of discovery, of learning about themselves as well as learning about themselves in relationship to others” (2006, p. 1242). Such changes, activated in researchers, may cause them to re-evaluate their identities as artists or their talents in arts-related fields. Arts-Informed research and the subsequent data representations that are created “are not intended as titillations but as opportunities for transformation, revelation, or some other intellectual and moral shift” (Cole & Knowles, 2008, p.  66). Elliot Eisner weighs in on this topic in the video-clip.

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Video Clip 8.2: Professor Elliot W. Eisner (▶ https://doi.org/10.1007/000-­6d5)

The Historical Context Arts-based research came to the forefront of educational researchers’ consciousness through the tireless work of Elliot Eisner, among others, in the mid-1980s and was encapsulated in his address to the American Educational Research Association in 1993; Not everything can be “said” with anything. Poetic meaning requires poetic forms of thought and poetically treated form. Visual art requires forms of thought that address the import of visual imagery. How we think is influenced by what we think about and how we choose or are expected to represent its content. (p. 7)

In emerging within the qualitative paradigm, arts-based research was developed from the practice of creative arts therapy that was currently taking place in the fields of psychiatry and psychology. Creative arts therapist, Shaun McNiff (2008), states, “creative arts therapies...promoted themselves as ways of expressing what cannot be conveyed in conventional language” (p. 11). Drawing upon art therapy, researchers began to apply this line of thinking to qualitative research (McNiff, 2008). Since being coined “arts-based research” in the early 1990s, this methodology and its attendant permutations have developed into a major methodological genre, with some scholars considering it a paradigm in its own right. However, according to Leavy (2017), prior shifts, occurring decades earlier, set the stage for arts-based research. Among such shifts were advances in the study of arts and learning, particularly in neuroscience and brain-based learning, as well as in developments in qualitative research, in general. The development of art therapy as a field is of significance—because this represents a hybrid discipline—grounded primarily in the fields of psychology and the arts.

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While harnessing the healing and therapeutic power of the arts is not a new concept, the field of creative art therapy emerged from the 1940s through to the 1970s (Malchiodi, 2017), and major growth occurred in the 1960s and 1970s (McNiff, 2005). Lakoff and Johnson (2003), in their now-classic book, Metaphors We Live By, first published in 1980, have been pivotal in suggesting that metaphor is not only a characteristic of language but is pervasive in human thought and action. Turner (1996) suggested that not only is “the literary mind…the fundamental mind” but also that “story is a basic principle of mind” (p. v). In fact, science supports the view that art has a unique impact on the human brain. As noted by Leavy (2017), Over the past few decades, developments in the practice of qualitative research have also led many social researchers to explore ABR. This can be attributed to factors, including the narrative turn, the emergence and growth of creative nonfiction inside and outside of the academy, and researchers with arts backgrounds leading the charge in delineating the synergies between artistic and qualitative practice. (p. 8)

Because writing is a foundational element in the presentation of research, most of the beginning works of arts-based research focused “on the use and analysis of literary art forms in the human sciences with nods to music and the visual arts” (Cahnmann-Taylor, 2008, p. 6). As these research methods began to draw attention from other fields, arts therapists began asking “whether or not we [were] ready to use our unique methods of artistic inquiry to shape a new vision of research” (McNiff, 2008, p. 11). This new vision of research was picked up most notably by Elliot Eisner and Tom Barone when, in 1997, they introduced the concept of “arts-­ based educational research” as a chapter in the book, Complementary Methods for Research in Education, published by the American Educational Research Association. Their chapter “focused largely on contributions of the literary arts in educational research...and laid out a theoretical framework for arts-based research, describing the qualities of arts-based texts” (Cahnmann-Taylor, 2008, p.  8). This was seminal in recognizing four notable and significant “turns” in arts-based research—narrative, non-linguistic forms and blurred genres, arts-related research as evolving inquiry, and emergence, acceptance and disruption.

The Narrative Turn Between 1950 and 1970, new approaches in research began to emerge and social scientists appreciated that traditional techniques for conducting research were not adequate for answering the many questions being asked, particularly from diverse perspectives. However, researchers typically continued to conduct their research using quantitative approaches. Arguably it was from the 1970s onwards which saw researchers adopting more diverse forms of inquiry, including narrative and hermeneutic approaches that borrowed from other disciplines and were arts-based and reflexive (Denzin & Lincoln, 2008).

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The narrative turn in the fields of education and social science developed largely from the rise of literary theory (Polkinghorne, 1988), from the fields of ethnography (Geertz, 1973), and from scholars such as Dewey and Bruner (Savin-Baden & Major, 2012). Tierney (1999) suggested the existence of a “representational straightjacket that social scientists have been in for most of this century” (p. 309). Thus, the shift towards the narrative afforded intellectual prominence to the construction of stories and expressive forms of language, and offered researchers approaches that could more adequately convey and represent the complexity of human life, thus providing a rich source of insight (Geertz, 1988). Even though post-positivist modes of knowing focused primarily upon categorizations and comparisons about an event, narrative knowledge was viewed as a means of examining the complexity of human lives, rather than adopting research approaches that sought to reach firm conclusions. The narrative turn in arts-related research is largely linked to Elliot Eisner, who, in the late 1980s and throughout the 1990s, with graduate students at Stanford University and support from the American Educational Research Association (AERA), advocated for artistic forms of knowing, grounded in art criticism and connoisseurship—a means of developing an arts-based research methodology for conducting inquiry into educational research (Cahnmann-Taylor, 2008). Eisner explored how the practice of connoisseurship, or art appreciation, could function to develop a research approach guided by aesthetic features (Eisner, 1991). Eisner’s work and ideas about art and art research gained interest and, as a result, societies, such as the Arts Based Research Institute and Arts Based Educational Research (ABER), came into being (Eisner, 1991). Around the mid-1990’s, Tom Barone, recognizing the importance of expressive forms of language and the aesthetic story, built upon art criticism to develop “narrative construction” (Barone & Eisner, 1997) and “narrative storytelling.” Touching Eternity (Barone, 2001) depicts Barone’s research journey from educational criticism to narrative storytelling. The 1980s and 1990s saw linguistic forms of artsbased research as the main focus of arts-based research inquiry, while less attention was given to music and the visual arts (Cahnmann-Taylor, 2008). Despite a growing adoption of arts-based methods by qualitative researchers, tensions continued to exist in the field towards embracing the arts. There were few, if any, explicit references to the arts in research before 1980 (Cahnmann-Taylor 2008). Yet, education researchers and others within the social sciences were undeterred and ignored “the science-over-art hierarchy” (Barone & Eisner, 2012, p. x). Instead, increasing numbers of researchers and scholars turned to alternative forms of data representation, such as symbolic and interpretative forms, as in narrative and visual data, and to approaches firmly rooted in the arts and humanities (Suppes et al., 1998).

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Non-linguistic Forms and Blurred Genres This second turn embraced experimentation regarding non-linguistic forms of the arts as an alternative means of representing research data. Researchers had become disenchanted, according to Barone (2001), with the idea of truth, objectivity and absolute knowledge, and artist researchers and social science researchers sought meanings that were partial, incomplete, even contradictory and originating from multiple perspectives (Barone, 2001). During this period, those involved in arts-­ related research undertook a critical philosophical move, which was essentially an epistemological turn, representing a shift in how knowledge was conceptualized. Thus, arts-related research offered opportunities to present alternative and innovative ways of capturing, documenting, representing and reflecting upon experience. This shift challenged the monopoly of technical rationality, with the assumption that precise measurement was the only way to know (Eisner, 2002). Arts-related research recognized that what counted as knowledge depended on perspective, time, interest and various forms of representation. As a result, during the 1990s and into the 2000s, arts-related researchers continued to pioneer the use of the arts, taking risks, working within the genres of poetry, painting and drama. During this period, arts-based research emerged from art therapy in the fields of psychiatry and psychology. For Shaun McNiff (2009), artistic and scientific knowing represented complementary approaches for generating creative intelligence, fostering more open and diverse ways of perceiving problems and dislodging ingrained perspectives, and allowing for an empirical approach responsive to the unexpected. Resulting from these changes, arts-related researchers were able to convey relationships between research questions, research participants, data, and art in order to reveal what was intended (Eisner, 2008, p. 7) by the researcher. In addition to researchers using the arts and crossing disciplinary borders—hybrid forms of blurred genres (Denzin & Lincoln, 2008)—in the 2000s, ScolARTistry and a/r/tography were embraced by social science researchers through integrating arts-based methods and methodologies (Cahnmann-Taylor, 2008). Johnny Saldaña’s (2015) work as a qualitative researcher with experience in both traditional representations of data, as well as ethno-dramatic work, demonstrates how methodological approaches can meet and blend. Saldaña’s use of theatre performance offers a means of representing research participants’ experiences along with the researcher’s interpretations of the inquiry process.

Arts-Related Research as Evolving Inquiry The third critical turn is comprised of two major shifts, characterized by opposing forces. Finley (2005) suggests two key issues, which created the space for arts-­ related inquiry to emerge; the first arose through the increasing need for qualitative

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research to address the interpersonal, political, emotional, moral and ethical relational skills that develop and are shared between the researcher and the researched. Secondly, issues relating to the reporting of research were required, along with the need to consider alternate forms of representation and dissemination for an expanding audience from beyond the academy (Finley, 2005). The need to develop methods and build theories and models to enhance research practice that is theoretically and methodologically robust contended with the desire for arts-related research to remain undefined, non-paradigmatic and discipline-free (Sullivan, 2006). Gray (1996) suggests these differences have a number of defining features, such as the primacy of the creative experience, the desire to build epistemologies of practice, the need to improve both the practice and theoretical understandings of creative practice, and the opportunity to embrace the complex and emergent conditions under which practice-led researchers operate. It is evident that creative practice and education research methodologies, such as a/r/tography, continue to develop and to examine issues of process, application and potential (Irwin, 2014). Clearly, a range of perspectives proliferates around ways in which arts-­ related research should evolve. However, it would appear that a clear message is emerging about research practice within the arts, which centres on the desire to retain the uncertainty and playfulness of the creative process, while ensuring that theoretical and philosophical perspectives draw upon the substantial history and frameworks of meaning that underpins the creative arts practice.

Emergence, Acceptance, Disruption The 1980s and 1990s were therefore critical in shaping and directing the course of evolving arts-related research. Researchers followed their own creative process as their research method, letting research and creativity unfold (Savin-Baden & Major, 2012, p.  289). As interest in arts-related methodologies has grown, the field has become much broader and more complex. Whereas arts-related and collaborative research methods have originally been viewed at the margins, approaches are becoming more mainstream, as evidenced within the research literature (Knowles & Cole, 2008). The current turn in arts-based research locates the field in contemporary practice. Termed third space methodologies (O’Toole & Beckett, 2010), arts-based research methodologies afford a disruption of conventional and taken-for-granted ways of thinking about knowledge and research, and enable exploration of research questions, dilemmas, issues or experiences that touch upon the liminal nature and complexities of research. Barone (2001) drew attention to the continuing value of arts-informed research through his exploration of educational issues. He describes the enormously complex, wide ranging, highly ambiguous, profoundly personal, unquestionably social, intrinsically political and inevitably subjective nature of the outcomes of teaching and learning. Nevertheless the process of searching for these answers may offer the

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pleasantly unexpected; the appearance of additional questions quite numerous and splendid. (Barone, 2001, p. ii)

Although traditions of the arts as teaching and investigative tools resonate throughout history, the use of creative arts as a formal methodological approach to academic research remains a relatively new development. Debate continues about ways of theorizing and locating arts-related research. By way of summary, the essence of arts-based research can be found within the primary role of the arts in qualitative research, as a basis for research questions, as a source of data, as a model for research practice, or as a means to represent findings. In the years since Eisner first advocated for an artistic lens through which to conduct and examine research, arts-based research specializations have arisen. Numerous qualitative researchers following in the wake of research by Elliot Eisner, such as Tom Barone and Johnny Saldaña, to name but a few scholars, have brought their artistic backgrounds to bear in order to flesh out synergistic proclivities between qualitative and artistic practice. Artistic practice and qualitative research practices are holistic and dynamic, involving reflection, description, problem formulation and problem solving, as well as the ability to tap into, identify, and explain the role of intuition and creativity in the research process (Leavy, 2015). Although some scholars consider arts-based research as an emerging methodology (Leavy, 2017), it has been growing rapidly and steadily across social sciences and humanities disciplines, and its influence has also impacted the very art forms from which it originally emerged. Knowles and Promislow (2008) examine arts methodology use in theses and dissertations and note that it is a conscious choice rather than a default mechanism. Because of the extensive commitment of energy required, arts-inspired inquiry is something researchers choose to do; they do not take it up by default as the single available methodological possibility (as was often the case in the past with conventional, empirical research). (p. 13)

As many art forms carry with them an historical resonance, perhaps it is accurate to state that an historical context, such as that which Knowles and Promislow (2008) explore, is implicit in the traditions of art used to represent data, rather than art acting as the major site of inquiry. Historical voices offer material and forms from which arts-based research borrows and expands upon. Thus, arts-based research may appear, historically speaking, as a synergistic process, reiterative and transcendent. For example, within the specificity of arts-informed research, an inclination towards historical artefacts may be employed to represent research findings. Cole and Knowles (2008) refer to Kathryn Church’s installation, entitled Fabrications: Stitching Ourselves Together, which is comprised of 22 wedding dresses sewn by her mother over a 50-year period. The historical implications of the task in Church’s project elicit questions of an interpretivist nature, as well as overlapping political, gender and economic inquiries. To a significant extent, then, the historical context of arts-informed research lies within the artefacts, documents and materials being used to represent the data.

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In the following video-clip, Professor Elliot Eisner refers to discipline-based art education and how this concept was developed and came to fruition. He speaks of four domains—production, criticism, art history and aesthetics—that require attention in order to develop a curriculum, based on the ideals of arts-based inquiry.

Video Clip 8.3: Professor Elliot W. Eisner (▶ https://doi.org/10.1007/000-­6d7)

The Political Context Knowles and Promislow (2008) engage with the political context of arts-based inquiry, as they refer to Christina Marin’s thesis that demonstrates “how forms of theatre and performance give voice and agency to populations often marginalized and discounted” (p. 5). Knowles and Promislow also speak to supportive groups that may enable or empower arts-based qualitative research; An artful thesis may be developed within the context of any university—and be sanctioned by it—where there are enough advocating or sympathetic scholars to comprise a supervising and examining committee. Such conditions exist at numerous universities within Canada, the United States, Australia, Great Britain, and Ireland, for instance (2008, p. 7).

These geographical boundaries, within which are located the most nurturing proponents of arts-based research, represent primarily Commonwealth countries; countries with similar political and economic goals and makeup, formerly governed by the British Empire prior to and since the middle of the nineteenth century. Thus, within these geographic locations exist points of similarity, as Westernized, primarily white Anglo-Saxon imperialist traditions have exerted significant power and

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influence around the world. It appears that arts-based research also follows the flag (Geertz, this volume). This geographic perspective may be expanded to include geo-political practitioners who recognize the political potential of arts-based methodology, as “Arts-based researchers in education contend that the creative arts are a mode of inquiry and representation that provides significant perspectives for making decisions regarding pedagogical theory, policy, and practice” (Sinner et al., 2006, p. 1226–1227). Thus, it is not only the inquiry itself but also the nature of the inquiry that tends to entertain and contain political elements, regardless of its presence within the arts or any other field, in terms of what is or is not being studied, who or who is not doing the studying, and to what explicit or implicit ends the research is being conducted. Maxine Greene (1993) feels similarly, and she couches the options available to scholars for qualitative arts-based research within a political context, emphasizing democracy as well as autonomy; Thinking of beings like that, many of those writing today and painting and dancing and composing no longer have single-focused, one-dimensional creatures in mind as models or as audiences. Rather, they think of human beings in terms of open possibility, in terms of freedom and the power to choose. (Greene, 1993, p. 213)

According to Leavy (2017), arts-based research also brings to the fore a propensity for description, exploration, discovery and problem-solving that may also be present in other research designs to a greater or lesser degree, but which functions differently within this particular methodology. This particular form of research is particularly useful for research projects that require attention to processes. Because of the innate capability of the arts to capture process, it allows for the mirroring of the unfolding nature of social life. Consequently, there is a significant congruence between subject matter and method. Also, according to Leavy (2017), arts-based research is also often employed in “problem-centered or issues-centered projects, in which the problem at the center of research dictates the methodology” (p. 9). Patricia Leavy catalogues the qualities of arts-based research, and includes its ability to forge micro–macro connections. She notes that arts-based research may be particularly useful for exploring, describing or explaining connections between individual lives and the larger contexts in which the society lives and strives. This is a benefit of arts-based research that is particularly appealing to researchers in that it is a suitable vehicle to theorize and to understand social science-related disciplines such as communication, social work, sociology and women’s or gender studies (Leavy, 2017). Additionally, arts-based research is holistic, particularly as it was developed in a trans-disciplinary environment where methodological and theoretical borders become crossed, blurred, and expanded (Leavy, 2017). Further, these research strategies have the ability to integrate and to expand upon existing disciplines and synergies between and across disciplines (Chilton & Leavy, 2014). Arts-based research practices may also serve as part of a holistic or integrated approach to research (Knowles & Cole, 2008). This process-oriented view represents a perspective in which a research topic may be considered comprehensively, different phases of the research project are linked explicitly, and theory and practice are conjoined (Chilton & Leavy, 2014) to become mutually inclusive domains. Arts-­ based research is also evocative and provocative. As noted by Patricia Leavy,

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The arts, at their best, can be emotionally and politically evocative, captivating, aesthetically powerful, and moving. Art can grab people’s attention in powerful ways. The arresting power of “good” art is intimately linked with the immediacy of art. These are some of the qualities that researchers are harnessing in their ABR projects, and what makes the arts very different than other forms of expression. (Leavy, 2015, p. 23)

Given this recommendation, it can be seen that, as a representational form, the arts can be a highly effective form for communicating emotional aspects of life (Leavy, 2015). In addition to its effectiveness as a medium of communication, artsbased research may also be a useful instrument for raising awareness and empathy, as it may expose people to new perspectives, ideas, stories, or images, particularly in the service of cultivating social consciousness. As social justice issues move once again to public consciousness, arts-based research can become social justice-oriented research, revealing destructive power relations, building coalitions across groups and challenging dominant ideologies (Leavy, 2017). In this way, arts-based research can assist in disrupting ingrained stereotypes, and may be useful in helping to include identity work, such as bringing marginalized voices and perspectives into the open and into the mainstream. Additionally, through its ability to be inclusive rather than exclusive, arts-based research can become participatory. It may be chosen for use in projects where participants may be treated as full and equal collaborators. Arts-based research is, according to Finley (2008), “uniquely positioned as a methodology for radical, ethical, and revolutionary research that is futuristic, socially responsible, and useful in addressing social inequities” (p. 71). In concert with this, arts-based research also values non-hierarchical relationships and has the capacity to bring others into the process as actors or audience, reprising the notion of this methodology as characterizing both a process and a product. Because of this, it may also exhibit a multiplicity of meanings, a distinct departure from claims of authority that may be found in other forms of research, both qualitative and quantitative. In so doing, Leavy asserts that this type of research can “democratize meaning making and decentralize academic researchers as ‘the experts’” (2017, p. 10). Additionally, Leavy (2017) contends that arts-based research is understandable in terms of being jargon-free, making this form of research more accessible to public audiences.

The Postmodern Context Maxine Greene, in an article on diversity and inclusion (1993), states that, today, [W]e are far more likely, in the mode of John Dewey and existentialist thinkers, to think of selves as always in the making. We perceive them creating meanings, becoming in an intersubjective world by means of dialogue and narrative. We perceive them telling their stories, shaping their stories, discovering purposes and possibilities for themselves, reaching out to pursue them…. (p. 213)

The postmodern era has allowed for questions, for never-ending questions, for “a hundred visions and revisions” (Eliot, 1961), as arts-based research demonstrates.

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First of all, arts-based research provides possibilities for new insights and learning (Leavy, 2017) on a wide variety of subjects by offering entry to experiences, concrete and abstract, that would otherwise be inaccessible. In this way, arts-based research may allow for connections and interconnections that are otherwise out of reach. It may ask and/or answers new research questions, or even explore older research questions in new ways. Arts-based inquiry may also represent research in different ways to broader audiences. Thus, this form of research “carries the potential to jar people into seeing and/or thinking differently, feeling more deeply, learning something new, or building understandings across similarities or differences (Leavy, 2017, p. 9). Needless to say, the qualitative researchers’ acts regarding arts-based research call upon a significant range of individual knowledge and experience and also demand the “support of peers and supervising faculty within their institutions” (Knowles & Promislow, 2008, p. 6) in order to sanction the postmodernist belief in diverse wisdoms representing a range of voices. Furthermore, such interrelationships and cross-sectoral knowledge-sharing characterize a postmodern attitude desirable in arts-based qualitative researchers. Knowles and Promislow identify attributes required in an arts-based qualitative research project and note that “Risk taking, courage, openness to unknowing, and tolerance for ambiguity—on the part of both emerging scholars and their supervisors—are prerequisites” (2008, p. 15). As may already have become apparent, there are challenges in conducting this type of research. Among other hurdles, Knowles and Promislow (2008) identify becoming confident about stepping into the unknown; melding research methods with processes and representations; developing related artistic skills and knowledge; and having the energy, time, skill, and technical and, perhaps, financial means associated with the work. As if this is not daunting enough, there are also institutional obstacles, including locating a suitable supervisor who resonates with arts-­ related approaches who can, perhaps, suspend judgment and trust the process; and negotiating real and imagined institutional constraints such as perceptions that the form, structure, and medium for graduate theses (Knowles & Promislow, 2008) are somehow inviolate. Even epistemological repercussions are possible, as choice may not “serve to reduce uncertainty after all, but instead serves to question the ultimate validity of the choices which confront individuals on a daily basis” (Cooper & White, 2012, p. 96). Within arts-based research, the representation of data may be expressed through a variety of art forms, primarily existing under the umbrella of arts-informed research and performative research. Cole and Knowles (2008) define arts-informed research as both a mode and a form of qualitative research that is influenced by the arts. They feel this term minimizes issues around it being mistakenly situated exclusively within the range of performative, literary and visual modes of art. Arts-­ informed research is also a research approach adopted by numerous disciplines, most notably within the social sciences and humanities areas. Chilton and Leavy (2014) offer a partial lexicology of terms useful to arts-based research. Among these are a/r/tography, aesthetically-based research, arts-based social research, arts-based educational research, arts-informed inquiry/research,

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performative inquiry, performative social science, poetic science, research-based art, scholARTistry, and transformative inquiry through art, to mention but a few possibilities. One of the most powerful representations of arts-based research emerged in the form of a/r/tography (Irwin & de Cosson, 2004), as an arts- and education practice-based research methodology that positions artist, researcher and teacher in a collective relationship of creating, exploring and understanding. These points of view promote a multi-dimensional perspective that allows for subjectivity and objectiveness at the same time (Irwin et al., 2006). Thus, a central focus of A/R/ Tography involves managing tensions between living inquiry, artistic knowing and praxis (Springgay et  al., 2005). Irwin and colleagues refer to this process as the “rhizomatic relations of a/r/tography” (Irwin et al., 2006, p. 70), which promotes trans-disciplinary knowledge generation through “renderings.” Not to be confused with methods, renderings refer to coming closer to an idea through the process of art-making These renderings may be utilized as conceptual organizers to assist in the interpretation of qualities observed within the creative process. Renderings focus on • Contiguity, or the liminal spaces between art, education and research • Living Inquiry, which refers to complexities and contradictions within and among human relations, things, and understandings of life experiences • Openings in and through dialogue and discourse • Metaphor and metonymy uncover new connections and intertwined relationships • Reverberations refer to shifts in new meanings, awareness, and discoveries • Excess embodies that which lies outside the acceptable (Irwin & Springgay, 2008, pp. xxvii–xxxi) ScholARTistry is yet another permutation of arts-based research. Behar (2007) utilizes blurred genres with ethnography, and draws upon poetry and filmmaking to explore knowledge and meaning makings. Behar’s work strives to validate the role of imagination in scholarly inquiry by drawing upon theories from art, politics, feminist theory and religious studies, combined with an artful creativity. In this way, the intellectual voice is extended through the creative, personal, observational and textual voice. Arts-Inquiring Pedagogy, a term that has been extended to include practice-based research, is represented by the use of inquiry within the teaching of art to ensure that students develop critical abilities. This may represent striking similarities to other pedagogic approaches, such as problem-based learning, where the starting point for learning is a problem, challenge or issue, which guides the students to seek out what it is that they do not know in order to solve or manage the problem set (Savin-Baden & Wimpenny, 2014). Arts-inquiring pedagogy focuses on higher order thinking through exploring challenges and issues. This approach prompts students to question and critique in order to identify learning gaps and to gain new information through practice-based inquiry. Staff may serve as challengers and/or discussants. Additionally, arts-inquiring pedagogy may also describe a form of learning where students decide their own questions emanating from the artistic process. This

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approach may also be referred to as practice-based research, not to be confused with practice-led research, which focuses on understanding and advancing knowledge about practice. As such, practice-led research appears to share some similarities with action research (Savin-Baden & Wimpenny, 2014).

The Philosophical Context Clearly, arts-based researchers are developing new instruments and forging new forms of knowledge through re-imagining what research is and can become. However, simply because arts-based research, in broad terms, continues to grow and evolve as a set of theories, concepts and methods, like most methodologies, there is no rigid set of skills to be perfected. Further to this, “any given project may require experience in one or more specific art forms, as well as other research techniques that may be quantitative, qualitative, community-based, or involve mixed methods. Each project is structured differently based on its goals” (Leavy, 2017, p. 11). As a result, skills and skillsets, experience and expertise, and capacities and dispositions may not necessarily be similar for every inquiry project. Among those skills, expertise and capacities intrinsic to this type of research, Leavy (2015) notes that flexibility, openness and intuition are essential for greater spontaneity. Saldaña (2011) adds to this by identifying a propensity for thinking conceptually, symbolically and metaphorically in the development of projects, which allows for understanding what has been discovered and transforming this essence into coherent expression. Although all research benefits from a rigorous ethical and values structure, this may be even more an issue with arts-based research, given that it may be vulnerable to misinterpretation and misunderstanding, particularly in its more abstract forms. Part of this sensibility to ethics may be due, at least in part, to the fact that arts-­ based research can be publicly accessible, that it may also be collaborative and resistive, as well as intellectually stimulating and emotional. As such, there is great potential to contribute to research in a variety of fields. Leavy (2017) identifies these areas broadly as identity politics, political justice work and research in caring and compassion. This form of arts-based research has been referred to variously as “a people’s pedagogy” (Finley, 2008, p. 73) and as a “public, moral enterprise” (p. 75), as it views researchers, participants, and audience as equal collaborators; respects the views of street critics and artists; focuses on issues of diversity and inclusion; and remains open to all art forms (Leavy, 2017). Remaining open to all art forms necessitates thinking the way an artist thinks, attending to the aesthetics or craft (Saldaña, 2011) and to its ultimate utility (Leavy, 2015), as well as thinking like a public intellectual. This may require one to bear in mind the audience that will be targeted, as well as potential personal, emotional and financial costs. This chapter would be incomplete without a brief mention of arts-based research being viewed as a paradigm in its own right, rather than as a methodology within the qualitative paradigm (Leavy, 2015). While this may be of import, the focus of this

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volume remains on methodological treatments and we prefer to leave this debate to those more philosophically inclined; yes, even within this, the philosophical context. Indeed, although it may be paradigmatic as it encourages alternate perspectives, creative interpretation and emotional investment, this remains beyond the boundaries of this volume. However, in order to not dismiss philosophical underpinnings, entirely, Knowles and Promislow (2008) examine arts-based research from an existentialist perspective. Because humans continue to acquire experiences as they grow, existentialists claim that all human beings are in flux, developing new knowledge from new experiences and interweaving these with memories of existing experiences. At least two of the most renowned arts-based educational philosophers, Elliot Eisner and Maxine Greene, confirm an existentialist outlook as they support and applaud the increasing visibility of the arts within qualitative research. As such, Chilton et al. (2015) consider that philosophical beliefs form an “aesthetic intersubjective paradigm,” which draws upon “sensory, emotional, perceptual, kinesthetic, embodied, and imaginal ways of knowing” (p. 3).

Data Sources, Collection and Analysis At the methodological level, although arts-based researchers hesitate to be prescriptive, there are many diverse arts-based methods in use. Although examples of data are provided in numerous summaries of theses and dissertations employing an arts-­ based methodology, a thorough rendering of what such data sources could be identified, effective methods for their collection and strategies for analysis may be useful for those embarking on an arts-based methodology. Knowles and Promislow (2008) conclude that there exist “myriad examples of innovative work completed and not acknowledged here. There is no one model to follow…. The paths taken by arts-­ related researchers are largely idiosyncratic” (p.  19). However, a comprehensive rendering of the methodological process is discussed by Cole and Knowles (2008). These authors delve into subtopics such as “Defining Elements and Form,” “Ways and Means of Finding Form,” and “Qualities of Goodness in Arts-Informed Research” (2008), although idiosyncrasy is observed and preserved in that a list of preferred data sources is not provided. Knowles and Promislow (2008) frame concerns around the nature of art-related work, environments supportive of such research, whether or not to use an arts methodology and its feasibility, supervisory duties, worries and inhibitions, and the final heading, “Creation Completed?” (p. 19), indicating that the authors, as well as the researchers, constantly reflect on their work and whether it has achieved its stated goals. As has been often claimed, a work of art is never completed; it is just that the artist has chosen a point at which to end the process in order to achieve a product.

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Considerations of Arts-Based Research It has been noted that there are certain challenges pertaining to assessing unique theses and dissertations employing an arts-based methodology; the very nature of the presentation, in some instances, may be synchronic where a performance or reading fulfills this role. Though a written document may accompany such moments, an encore performance or restaged reading may not be easily repeated. Other considerations revolve around the availability of resources or artistic locations, such as studios, performance spaces, or workshops, and specialized equipment, supplies or tools. A researcher using an arts-based methodology has the potential to employ these for his or her data analysis or representation, but access to materials can be and often is inequitable. Being unable to draw upon sophisticated artistic environments to produce an artistically pleasing thesis or dissertation may compromise the integrity of the investigation, especially if the subject or data are represented inadequately or lesser substitutions occur that compromise effective qualitative research practice. Lastly, an arts-informed research methodology may prove too cumbersome with respect to conventional qualitative research methodology and methods, and an abrupt shift into an artistic representation of the data may hamper the reception of the research.

Arts-Based Research and Aesthetics Aesthetics continues to be central in the production and evaluation of arts-based texts. Leavy (2015) suggests two primary avenues for addressing aesthetics in arts-­ based research, theoretical and methodological. The research is also guided by a moral commitment, which tends to place arts-based research in a critical role with respect to social issues. Additionally, the research and related artefacts may offer and promote personal transformation both for the artist-researcher and the viewer. Consequently, knowledge is generated through the work, although it is rarely initially clear to the artist, as researcher, how such knowledge might be generated. Revelations may occur in terms of what the work evokes for others or it may present a sociocultural change to those who encounter the work. At other times, knowledge may be generated by the artist/researcher for themselves through their creation(s). Additionally, there is a strong focus on reflexivity; the presence of the artist is evident through the work. However, simply because of the complexity of arts-based disciplines and the nature of art itself, this sense of reflexivity may be enhanced, compared with other research methodologies. As well, enhanced reflexivity is not merely a characteristic of this methodology, but central to it, through its critical stance towards the world, as well as itself. Thus, for arts-based researchers, moral stance and sense of interruption through art are central to this form of research (Savin-Baden & Wimpenny, 2014).

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Also, according to Savin-Baden and Wimpenny (2014), accessibility is a necessary focal point because the work must have the potential to challenge and transform but also it must be available and accessible to a wide and possibly diverse audience. In order to understand, engage with and relate to arts-based work, audiences may benefit from recognizing that good art is also good research. However, as defined and discussed by Elliot Eisner, earlier in this chapter, quality is difficult to define and manage in arts-based research. Of note, though, regardless of quality, the art, as used, must support the research goals, whilst its quality, in terms of aesthetics, must hold meaning. Yet at the same time there also needs to be a quality of coherence, which reflects the relationship between the purpose of the research and the means of undertaking it. (Savin-Baden & Major, 2012, p. 293)

Finally, in arts-based research, be it research or work of art, there must be a sense of authenticity. Savin-Baden and Major (2012) once again phrase this concern adroitly; The work and research must be intertwined and mutually shaping so there is sense of integrity about the art and the research. This is perhaps the most central feature of arts-based research, which is related to the idea of trustworthiness or plausibility in other forms of qualitative inquiry. (p. 293)

Also, according to these researchers, authenticity is essential so that the work of art or research inquiry demonstrates consistency and rigour, thus characterizing the relationship between the research and the artwork (Savin-Baden & Major, 2012).

Eisner’s Connoisseurship Model Eisner’s connoisseurship model represents a qualitative approach to evaluation through considering concepts of educational connoisseurship and educational criticism. Evaluation, of course, refers to the process by which the value or merits of a work of art are judged, depending largely on audience and purpose. Connoisseurship, rooted in the arts, is described as being well informed in a certain area, being able to discriminate among subtleties in the art of appreciation, such as the ability to appreciate what one encounters, and having awareness and an understanding of the experience, in order to arrive at a judgment. Connoisseurship has little interest in measuring variables, but represents an important ability to discern what is subtle but significant in a situation. Nyasulu (2019) notes that, while connoisseurship is private, the attendant criticism is public. Connoisseurs may simply need to appreciate what they encounter, but critics must elucidate the artful use of critical disclosure. The first and foremost tenet of the connoisseurship model is that it must, by the nature of the work of art, itself, be qualitative in nature. Eisner believed the same concept of connoisseurship, used in art, would also function well in educational evaluation. Too many set rules and standards, when it comes to curriculum evaluation, limit the creativity of students. As such, curriculum should, like the arts, be evaluated through appreciation and criticism. Thus, the

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educator would benefit from structuring the learning environment so that learners may discover knowledge on their own. The second tenet of the connoisseurship model is interpretation, comprised of four aspects: qualities, characteristics or attributes; the social meaning; analysis and synthesis to explain affiliations and configurations; and external consideration. Finally, according to Nyasulu (2019), the final dimension of criticism, of course, is evaluation. The connoisseurship model exhibits numerous strengths. First and foremost, it allows for individual preferences and differences. However, this model is imperfect, as it can be strenuous and cumbersome for researchers and creators, alike. Additionally, even excellent connoisseurs may be challenged in terms of their expertise, and it may also prove uncomfortable for the creator to have his or her creative work placed under scrutiny. A final consideration may be the translation of art experiences into descriptive language, which presents a number of challenges to the art-based researcher (McNiff, 2008), not least of which is the inherent contradiction at the core of arts-based knowing by even attempting verbal descriptions (Merleau-Ponty, 1962) of an artistic experience.

Arts-Based Research as a Pedagogical Tool Arts-based research or arts-based inquiry can also be applied as a formidable pedagogical tool. By utilizing the inquiry process as arts-informed inquiry, art in all its various forms may be applicable as both a vehicle and a site for teaching and learning. Thus, an inquirer or group of inquirers may view arts-based, arts-related and other forms of arts-based research as practice led-research (Savin-Baden & Wimpenny, 2014). While arts-based inquiry concerns the use of the artistic process – the making and doing of art as a means of understanding experience – arts-­ informed inquiry focuses on the use of art to inform the ways in which the research is undertaken. Thus, researchers and participants using arts-based inquiry may utilize art for personal exploration in order to understand a specific problem or medium. As such, the research and the artistic process overlap. Thus, a clear method that can be described and then implemented straightforwardly, which can also be replicated by other researchers, is an essential starting point (McNiff, 2008). Not one to shy away from inherent contradictions, McNiff (2008) also notes that despite being complex and difficult, it is important that arts-based inquiry is conveyed to others through text in order to reach a wider audience. As such, arts-based inquiry represents both process and product, focusing on the end point or final representation, as well as the process or expression of the work in context. However, researchers using arts-informed inquiry, perhaps one of the most well-­ known forms of arts-based research, rely on two forms, using arts-informed inquiry as a means of representing findings or as a means of representing a response to the situation being studied (Savin-Baden & Wimpenny, 2014). For example, Schratz and Walker (1995), in adding to Shaun NcNiff’s claim that art should be conveyed

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through text (2008), suggested that pictures should not be used instead of words, or to replace the written word in any way, but should be used to prompt discussion about the nature of the context. As an example of this, photo and digital story telling have become more common of late and have been successfully used to bring together visual narratives through the use of arts and images. Arts-engaging inquiry, on the other hand, is frequently employed to bring together communities, marginalized groups, and diverse and different audiences. The focus of this typology is to engage members of a specific community with the aim of provoking change. (Savin-Baden & Wimpenny, 2014) Theatre has been used widely in promoting this form of inquiry, as has other forms of captivating imagery, such as billboards and posters, murals and installations. The audience, thus, becomes central to the performance, whereby these scenes have been created specifically for the audience to identify and empathize with in order to promote engagement is some form of action, social or otherwise. Arts-Related evaluation employs the artistic process to undertake, represent and disseminate evaluation. This form of seeing and using evaluation is strongly holistic and serves as an alternative to more traditional forms of evaluation. As Simons and McCormack (2007) state, “Artistic knowing in evaluation creates new opportunities for evaluators to express their creativity, for participants to overcome barriers to participation, and for both to advance the sophistication of evaluation practice” (p. 308). Through arts-related evaluation, the importance of the creative process is central to understanding an issue by engaging with the entire person or group of people or performers. The values that may be hidden implicitly in the performance or work of art become explicit, through the creative process, which then enables the evaluator to form an evaluation.

 eature Article: Applying Arts-Based Research to Bedouin F Women’s Drawings The following article provides an example of how arts-based research can serve as a narrative instrument, a pedagogical instrument and an evaluative instrument, as well as an instrument for therapy. Ephrat Huss, at the time of the writing of this article was a doctoral student at Ben Gurion University. A certified art therapist and teacher of art interventions for social workers at Ben Gurion University of the Negev, she is currently a lecturer in the Social Work department at Ben Gurion University. Julie Cwikel, PhD, is Head of the Center for Women’s Health Studies and Promotion, Ben Gurion University of the Negev, Beer-Sheva, Israel (See Researching Creations: Applying Arts-Based Research to Bedouin Women’s Drawings).

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Summary: Arts-Based Research and Its Variants Arts-based research methodologies offer an artistic, authentic or creative lens through which to regard qualitative research. However, arts-related research methodologies, even today, enjoy a notoriety of sorts, as much debate and conflict swirls around their acceptance as “legitimate” research methodologies (Cahnmann-Taylor, 2008, p. 7). Arguably, this tension represents challenges regarding boundary spanning, prompting questions about the efficacy of art as an accepted mode of inquiry. Debate also continues around what contexts art is applicable to, according to Finley (2005), as new methods of art-based research come of age and also become available. Arts-based research is poised to diminish the divide between art and science, and between differing kinds, types and styles of research. Thus, arts-based research is adaptable, in terms of its variety, to focus on research by systematically examining and imagining phenomena in whatever ways that address the needs of the particular situation (McNiff, 2008). This chapter has offered a synthesis of arts-based research along with selected video-clips of an exclusive interview with Professor Elliot Eisner. In addition, a feature article is included to illustrate how arts-based research may appear in text form. Finally, an annotated bibliography and questions for further study are included. Suggestions for Further Reading Should the reader wish to read further regarding arts-based inquiry, please see the following articles: Butler-Kisber, L. (2002). Artful portrayals in qualitative inquiry. Alberta Journal of Educational Research, 48(3), 229–239. Eisner, E. W. (1995). What artistically crafted research can help us understand about schools. Educational Theory, 45(1), 1–6. Springgay, S. (2002). Arts-based research as an uncertain text. Alberta Journal of Educational Research, 48(3), 1–30. Selected Annotated Bibliography Barone, T. & Eisner, E. W. (2012). Arts-based research. Sage. Arts-Based Research is a volume that is ideal for students, researchers, and practitioners. This unique book provides a framework for broadening the domain of qualitative inquiry in the social sciences by incorporating the arts as a means of better understanding and rethinking important social issues. Authors Tom Barone and Elliot W. Eisner address key aspects of arts-based research, including its purpose and fundamental ideas, controversies that surround the field and the politics and ethics involved. The volume also offers key criteria for evaluation. This book is designed to be used as a class text and as a resource for researchers and practitioners. Arts-Based Research provides a framework for those who seek to broaden the domain of qualitative inquiry in the social sciences by incorporating the arts as forms that represent human knowing.

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Eisner, E. W. (2002). The arts and the creation of mind. Yale University Press. Although the arts are often believed to be closer to the margins of education than to its centre, the arts in all of its forms remain a surprisingly important means for the development of complex and subtle aspects of mind. This is a major point that Elliot Eisner acknowledges in this engrossing book. In this volume, he describes how various forms of thinking are evoked, developed and refined through the arts. These forms of thinking are helpful in dealing with the ambiguities and uncertainties of daily life. Offering a rich array of examples, the author describes different approaches to the teaching of the arts and describes the virtues that each form possesses. Particularly nettlesome issues pertaining to the assessment and evaluation of performance in the arts is described and discussed. Most importantly, Eisner offers a fresh and iconoclastic perspective as to what the arts can contribute to education, specifically a new vision as to its aims and means. Kalmanowitz, D., Lloyd, B., & McNiff, S. (Eds.) (2005). Art therapy and political violence: With art, without illusion. Routledge. The impact of political violence, war, civil war and acts of terrorism on individuals involved can be extensive. Art therapy can provide an effective means of expressing the resulting experiences of fear, loss, separation, instability and disruption. This volume brings together contributions from all over the world and from diverse theoretical backgrounds. With contributions from Northern Ireland, Kosovo, Israel and South Africa, the book includes numerous clinical examples to vividly illustrate the main issues affecting art therapy. The practical issues involved are also discussed, including subjects such as the importance of working with both the internal and external worlds of the individual and sensitivity to cultural issues. Art therapists, psychotherapists and other mental health professionals, particularly those working in the context of political violence or in countries of refuge, will find the experiences recounted in this book thought provoking and will welcome the wealth of information provided. Knowles, J.  G., & Cole, A. (Eds.). (2008). Handbook of the arts in qualitative research: Perspectives, methodologies, examples, and issues. Sage. The Handbook of the Arts in Qualitative Inquiry represents an unfolding, enfolding and expanding orientation to qualitative social science research that draws inspiration, concepts, processes and representational forms from the arts. In this defining work, Gary Knowles and Ardra Cole bring together a number of top scholars in qualitative research methods in order to provide a comprehensive overview of the past, present, and future of arts-based research. This Handbook provides an accessible and stimulating collection of theoretical arguments and illustrative examples that delineate, define and explore the role of the arts in qualitative social science research. It also presents an analysis of classic and emerging methodologies and approaches that employ the arts in the qualitative research process.

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Lakoff, G., & Johnson, M. (2003). Metaphors we live by. Chicago University Press. The now-classic Metaphors We Live By has not only shifted our understanding of metaphor and its role in language and the mind but identifies just how pervasive this figurative device is within the society in which we live. Metaphor, the authors explain, is a fundamental mechanism of mind, one that allows us to use what we know about our physical and social experience to provide understanding of countless other subjects. Because such metaphors structure our most basic understandings of our experience, they are “metaphors we live by;” that is, metaphors that can shape our perceptions and actions without our ever noticing them. In this updated edition of Lakoff and Johnson’s influential book, the authors supply an afterword surveying how their theory of metaphor has developed within the cognitive sciences to become central to the contemporary understanding of how we think and how we express our thoughts in language. Leavy, P. (Ed.). (2017). Handbook of arts-based research. The Guilford Press. Bringing together interdisciplinary leaders in methodology and arts-based research, this comprehensive handbook explores the synergies between artistic and research practices and addresses issues in designing, implementing, evaluating and publishing arts-based research studies. Coverage includes the full range of arts-­ based research genres, including those based in performance, music; visual arts; and audio-visual and multi-method approaches. Each genre is described in detail and brought to life with robust research examples. Team approaches, ethics and public scholarship are discussed, as are innovative ways that arts-based research is used within creative arts therapies, psychology, education, sociology, health sciences, business and other disciplines. The companion website includes selected figures from the book in full color, additional online-only figures and links to online videos of performance pieces. McNiff, S. (2015). Imagination in action: Secrets for unleashing creative expression. Shambala Publications. Shaun McNiff spent a career helping people access their creative potential and, now, he is sharing the secrets that he has learned from observing his own creative process, as well as that of others—both those who identify as artists and those who do not. The result is nothing less than an advanced class in creativity by one of the great creative theorists—and practitioners—of our time. “This is intended as a practical text,” the author says, “a creativity primer, striving to capture the essential things that have been of use to me and others.” The wealth of instruction provided in these essential understandings will be indispensable to artists of all stripes, as well as to all who strive to express themselves with honesty and authenticity using any of the media that life makes available. This is a valuable book for any and all researchers, artists or readers who wish to understand some of the inner workings of the artistic process.

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Saldaña, J. (2015). The coding manual for qualitative researchers. Sage. Johnny Saldaña’s unique and invaluable manual demystifies the qualitative coding process with a comprehensive assessment of different coding types, examples and exercises. This volume represents an ideal reference for students, teachers and practitioners of qualitative inquiry. It is essential reading across the social sciences. This volume guides one through the multiple approaches available for coding qualitative data. Its wide array of strategies, from the more straightforward to the more complex, is skillfully explained and carefully exemplified, providing a complete toolkit of codes and skills that can be applied to any research project. For each code, Saldaña provides information about the method’s origin, gives a detailed description of the method, demonstrates its practical applications and sets out clearly illustrated examples with analytic follow-up. Now with a companion website, the book is supported by journal articles showing coding being applied to real research. Savin-Baden, M., & Wimpenny, K. (2014). A practical guide to arts-related research. Sense. This text presents a rich, creative, exciting, yet complex field of inquiry, which discusses issues of theoretical positioning, methodology and methods, when conducting robust and reputable arts-based research. It also includes reflections from key experts in the field. This book outlines the principles and practices of arts-­ related inquiry and provides suggestions about conducting research in the field, as well as case study examples. The ideas presented here have emerged from the authors’ own experiences of undertaking arts-related research and the challenges of implementing these approaches. The book, therefore, draws on personal research, practice and experience to address the concerns academics increasingly appear to be voicing about developing the scholarship and practice of arts-related research. There is a need for greater attention to, and clarity about, issues of theoretical positioning, methodology and methods when conducting robust and reputable arts-related research, which this book provides. Schratz, M., & Walker, R. (1995). Research as social change: New opportunities for qualitative research. Routledge. Social research offers the possibility of involvement in projects that are informative, revealing, and enjoyable. This book shows us that teaching, learning and research are essentially social and deeply personal activities. While not a conventional text, this book speaks to ways that research can be used by those in various areas of professional practice. It is mainly concerned with qualitative research, action research and case study methods. It goes back to first principles, arguing for research that is concerned with the nature of personal memories and perception, the use of drawings and photographs, the emotional relationships implicit in any kind of research, and the context of the contemporary workplace. The authors develop new directions and new possibilities for research, and find ways of bringing together theory and practice, the personal and the social, organizations and their clients. This

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resource is important for all who are interested in doing research but remain skeptical of most currently available studies. Springgay, S., Irwin, R. L. C., Leggo, C., & Gouzouasis, P. (Eds.). (2007). Being with a/r/tography. Sense Publishers. Being with A/r/tography is a collection of essays that explains and exemplifies the arts-based research methodology called a/r/tography. Edited by four scholars who are artists, researchers and teachers, this book is a methodology book for practitioners in arts-based educational research. In addition to an introductory essay, which contextualizes and theorizes the methodological framework of a/r/tography, the book is divided into three main thematic sections that are integral to a/r/tographical research: (1) self-study and autobiography; (2) communities of a/r/tographic practice; (3) ethics and activism. The book concludes with a consideration of issues related to assessment, validity and interpretation. Being with A/r/tography is a text for graduate courses that focus on arts-based educational research, as well as a valuable text in pre-service teacher education programs. The book will also be significant for qualitative research courses in all the social and health sciences. Turner, M. (1996). The literary mind: Origins of thought and language. Oxford University Press. We usually consider literary thinking to be peripheral and dispensable, an activity for specialists such as poets and prophets. Certainly, we seldom think of the literary mind as a basis of the mind. We think of stories and parables from Aesop’s Fables, Alice in Wonderland or The Thousand and One Arabian Nights, for example, as exotic tales set in strange lands, with spectacular images, talking animals, and fantastic plots—wonderful entertainments, often insightful, but far removed from logic and science, and entirely foreign to the world of everyday thought. However, Mark Turner argues that this common wisdom is wrong. The literary mind—the mind of stories and parables—is not peripheral but basic to thought. Story is the central principle of our experience and knowledge. Parable—the projection of story to give meaning to new encounters—is an indispensable tool of everyday reason. Literary thought makes everyday thought possible. This book claims that the basic issue for cognitive science is the nature of literary thinking. Questions for Further Study • How does Arts-Based research differ from other forms of inquiry? • Would you consider arts-based research to be a method, a methodology or a paradigm in its own right? Please explain. • Describe an arts-based research project that you have been involved in. • If money, time or space were not limitations to your artistic sensitivities, please describe an artistic adventure that you would like to become involved in. • Discuss the future of arts-based research. What do you think it will look like in 10 years, 25 years, or a century from now?

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 esearching Creations: Applying Arts-Based Research R to Bedouin Women’s Drawings Ephrat Huss Julie Cwikel Ben Gurion University of the Negev, Beer-Sheva, Israel Huss, E. & Cwikel, J. (2005). Researching creations: Applying arts-based research to Bedouin women’s drawings. The International Journal of Qualitative Methods 4(4), 44-62. All problem solving has to cope with an overcoming of the fossilized shape … the discovery that squares are only one kind of shape among infinitely many. —Rudolf Arnheim, 1996, p. 35

Abstract In this article, the author examines the combination of arts-based research and art therapy within Bedouin women’s empowerment groups. The art fulfills a double role within the group of both helping to illuminate the women’s self-defined concerns and goals, and simultaneously enriching and moving these goals forward. This creates a research tool that adheres to the feminist principles of finding new ways to learn from lower income women from a different culture, together with creating a research context that is of direct potential benefit and enrichment for the women. The author, through examples of the use of art within lower income Bedouin women’s groups, examines the theoretical connection between arts-based research and art therapy, two areas that often overlap but whose connection has not been addressed theoretically. Keywords: art-based research, art therapy, researching women from a nondominant culture

Introduction: Why use the arts in research? While I am talking with Bedouin women about their drawings, the tin hut in the desert that is the community center in which we work sometimes reverberates with lively stories and emotional closeness, and sometimes I, as a Jewish Israeli art therapist and researcher, and they, as a Bedouin Israeli women’s empowerment group, are lost to each other: When I suggest that we summarize the meaning of the art therapy sessions for the women, they nod their heads politely and thank me, and ignore my questions. My aim in this article is to see how art-based research literature and art therapy literature can jointly contribute to both working with and understanding women from a different culture.

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Art as communication (rather than as therapy) can be defined as the association between words, behavior, and drawing created in a group setting. McNiff (1995), a prominent art therapist and one of the pioneers of art-based research, suggested that art therapy research should move from justification (of art therapy) to creative inquiry into the roles of the art itself. I will first review arts-based research in an effort to understand the use of art as research. I will then survey art therapy’s practice-based knowledge concerning working with art with women from a different culture, and third, I will apply both of these knowledge bases to Bedouin women’s drawings and words from within my case study.

Art as a form of inquiry The aim in arts-based research is to use the arts as a method, a form of analysis, a subject, or all of the above, within qualitative research; as such, it falls under the heading of alternative forms of research gathering. It is used in education, social science, the humanities, and art therapy research. Within the qualitative literature, there is an “explosion” in arts-based forms of research (Mullen, 2003). How does arts-based research help us to understand women from a different culture? It seems that classic verbal methods of interviewing or questionnaire answering are not effective forms of inquiry with these women. Bowler (1997) described the difficulties she found in using questionnaires and interviewing, both of which stress Western-style verbal articulation, as research methods with lower income Asian women. She found that the women try to give the “right” answer or to be polite. In-depth interviewing was also conceived of as a strange and foreign way of constructing and exploring the world for these women (Bowler, 1997; Lawler, 2002; Ried, 1993). The women are often mistakenly conceived of as “mute” because they do not verbalize information along Western lines of inquiry (Goldberger & Veroff, 1995). The search for a method that “gives voice” to silenced women is a central concern for feminist methodologies. De-Vault (1999) analyzed Western discourse as constructed along male content areas and suggested that we “need to interview in ways that allow the exploration of un-articulated aspects of women’s experiences … and explore new methodologies” (p.  65). Using art as a way of initiating self-­ expression can be seen as such a methodological innovation. The arts-based paradigm states that by handing over creativity (the contents of the research) and its interpretation (an explanation of the contents) to the research participant, the participant is empowered, the relationship between researcher and research participant is intensified and made more equal, and the contents are more culturally exact and explicit, using emotional as well as cognitive ways of knowing. Mason (2002) and Sclater (2003) have suggested that drawing or storytelling, or the use of vignettes or pictures as a trigger within an interview, already common in

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work with children, could also help adults connect ideological abstractions to specific situations, using both personal and collective elements of cultural experience. Thus, culture and gender unite in making Western research methods insufficient for understanding women from a different culture. Using visual data-gathering methods, then, can be seen as a movement offering alternate avenues of self-­ expression for women from traditional cultures. The arts are considered “soft,” female ways of knowing; they tend to be used as a counterpoint to the seriousness of words (Mason, 2002). Alternatively (and mistakenly), as in photography, arts are considered a depiction of absolute reality (Pink, 2001). Silverman (2000) argued that research must access what people do, and not only what people say. Art brings “doing” into the research situation. However, the inclusion of arts in research poses many methodological difficulties, described by Eisner (1997) in the title of his article as “The Promises and Perils of Alternative Research Gathering methods.” Denzin and Lincoln (1998) described personal experience methods as going “inwards and outwards, backwards and forwards” (p. 152). The art product by definition creates more “gaps” and entrances than closed statements or conclusions (this is what enables so many different people to connect to one picture!). The art process also includes moves between silences, times of doing, listening, talking, watching, thinking, and different gaps and connections between the above. For example, Mason (2002), a qualitative researcher, described how research participants agonize about where to put whom when drawing a genogram or family diagram. She claimed that this process of “agonizing,” or creating the genogram, is an important component of the finished genogram and should not be left out.

Issues in arts-based research Sclater (2003) explored the above-described complications of defining the “contours” of art-based research, as difficulties in defining issues related to the quality of art, to the relationship with the research participant, and to the relationship between art and words in arts based research. Defining issues related to the quality of art Mullen (2003) concluded that art-based research is focused on process as expressing the context of lived situations rather than the final products disconnected from the context of its creation. Mahon (2000) argued, through the concept of embedded aesthetics, that the aesthetic product is not inherent from within but is always part of broader social contexts, which both transform and are transformed by the art product and around which there is always a power struggle over different cultural meanings (see also Barone, 2003). At the same time, Mahon claimed that art includes elements and aesthetic languages that are specific to itself and that

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cannot be translated into action research or communication, or understood as direct translations of social interactions. The boundaries of quality are seen as marginalizing whoever does not conform to them, as in folk, vernacular, and outsider forms of art. In art-based research, elitism is replaced by art as communication, whereby reactions to the art work are more important than the quality of the art in terms of external aesthetic criteria. Within this paradigm, the criteria of communication and social responsibility predominate over craftsmanship (Finley, 2003; Mullen, 2003; Sclater, 2003). Defining issue related to the relationship with the research participant Another consideration for arts-based research is the setting of standards or limits around the roles of artist, researcher, and facilitator of creative activities. Mullen (2003) suggested, We need to find ways not just to represent others creatively, but to enable them to represent themselves. The challenge is to go beyond insightful texts, to move ourselves and others into action, with the effect of improving lives. (p. 117)

Therefore, multiple or blurred roles are advantageous, as they reflect the complexity of reality within any research situation. By handing over creativity and its interpretation to the research participant, and including these elements within the research, the relationship between researcher and research participant is intensified, eliciting emotion and facilitating transformation. Thus, the blurring of the contours or roles of the researcher and research participant is seen as advantageous. For example, cameras were given to lower income rural Chinese women, who, through photography, were able to communicate their concerns to policy makers with whom they would not engage in a direct verbal confrontation (Wang & Burris, 1994). Defining issues related to the relationship between art and words in arts-based research Art-based research literature addresses the problematic issue of how to work with the relationship between the verbal and nonverbal elements of the data, the art form, and its interpretation within a research context. Within research, the theoretical framework of understanding a work of art is harnessed to the reason art was used within the research puzzle (Mason, 2002). The use of verbal and nonverbal elements can be seen as a triangulation of data. It is important to understand why we are including art and to think about how the use of visual contents will help solve the “puzzle” of the research (Davis & Srinivasan, 1994; Finley, 2003; Mason, 2002). Save and Nuutinen (2003) defined the relationship between drawing\ and words (after researching a dialogue between the alternate use of pictures and words) as “creating a field of many understandings, creating a ‘third thing’ that is sensory, multi-interpretive, intuitive, and ever-changing, avoiding the final seal of truth” (p. 532).

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Connections between art therapy and arts-based research Art therapy, or any therapy, aims to connect, integrate, and transform experience and behavior. Art-based research also aims to transform, in that it can “use the imagination not only to examine how things are, but also how they could be” (Mullen, 2003, p. 117). It aims to connect and empower by creating something together with the research participants rather than the classic research orientation that takes information away from them (Finley, 2003; Sclater, 2003). Sarasema (2003), a qualitative researcher, discussed the therapeutic advantages of storytelling for widowed research participants, claiming that art-based research is a way of creating knowledge that “connects head to heart” (p. 603). Both art therapy and arts-based research involve the use of dialogue, observation, participant observation, and heuristic, hermeneutic, phenomenological, and grounded techniques of interpretation. Both relate to the ethical issues of art and interpretation ownership and a relational definition of art, including the skills of working simultaneously with both visual and verbal components (Burt, 1996; Mason, 2000; B. Moon, 2000; H. Moon, 2002; Talbot Green, 1989). The difference between the two fields could be defined as art therapy implementing a theoretical psychological metaframework that organizes the therapeutic relationship while using the inherent qualities of different art materials and processes (Kramer, 1997). However, within art therapy, there are researchers who wish to discard these psychological metaframeworks and to focus more on “art-based” art therapy. For instance, in feminist, and studio or community art therapy, art is used both as an expression and a critique of society (Allen, 1995; B.  Moon, 2000). Savneet (2000) claimed that art with women from the Developing World, such as the Bedouin women, can serve as a decolonizing tool by giving voice to women holding a polytheistic view of the world, as long as the interpreters of the art are the women and not an external interpreter. The nonverbal image should speak for itself, reducing the possibility of the artist-client’s being spoken over (Hogan, 1997). In addition, the image can be subversive, creating a narrative or counternarrative additional to the dominant one of words. The distancing or intermediating element of art can be helpful in interactions of inequality or of conflict (Dokter, 1998; Liebmann, 1996).

Art-based research, art therapy, and culture Arts-based research literature focuses on art as a way to connect different people and to express different cultures, giving voice to nondominant narratives. The culture of the viewer of the art will influence or interact with how the art is understood (Denzin & Lincoln, 1998). Another possibility is to accept that art does not define cultures from the outside but enables multiple and complex views of that culture (Eisner, 1997; Pink, 2001).

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Art therapy literature also stresses the ability of art to help make cultural issues manifest within pictures by the fact that each picture shows differing understandings and conceptions of the content drawn, rendering new perspectives (Gerity, 2000). Quiet people can create “loud” art work. Art connects to individual-­subjective rather than generalized and stereotyped levels of experience. Thus, we see that factors inherent in the art language help integrate the individual with the culture (Campanelli, 1991; Campbell, 1999; Hiscox & Calisch, 1998). Art therapy literature also addresses the complexity of art as a culturally embedded vessel in itself. Hocoy (2002) has argued that art as self-expression is a deeply Western construct, not necessarily suited to people from different cultures. Acton (2001) warned against being a “color blind” art therapist, ignoring the cultural differences and approaches to healing of different people and their manifestations within art. Hogan (2003) stressed that art therapists can claim to be culturally sensitive but actually dominate the participants by offering an art process or interpretation that is alien and strange to them (Acton, 2001). Conversely, Hocoy (2002) pointed out that assuming that everything is a cultural difference can also create misunderstandings of pictures. Cultural possibilities for misunderstanding are, on the one hand, bridged by the third object—the artwork—but, on the other, intensified by it. Thus, art is not a “magic” way of overcoming cultural differences but has the potential to enable the multifaceted nature of different cultural identities. The analyses of the art, and the relationship, are harnessed to the therapeutic aims, taking culture into account. In general, art therapy literature supplies much practice-­ based knowledge of how to take culture into account while focusing on harnessing the artwork and relationship to the therapeutic goals of the interaction. Having briefly summarized and created a connection between the central issues within arts-based research, and within art therapy with a different culture, I will now apply them to some drawings by the Bedouin women from my research, as a set of relevant data on which to continue examining the above concepts.

The context of the Bedouin women My aim is to outline briefly the levels of change and stress that some women in this culture are currently experiencing. Meir (1997) has suggested that under the influence of the dominant Israeli culture (and despite ongoing political friction between the Israeli government and the Bedouins’ claim to the right to continue a traditional nomadic lifestyle), Bedouin society is undergoing change from a collective to an individualistic culture, and from a nomadic lifestyle to fixed settlements. This has resulted in the devaluation of women and children, who no longer work in the fields and tend animals as part of the economic support system, as well as changes in the traditional role of elders. In addition, the loss of the traditional Bedouin tribal supportive roles with an externalization of these responsibilities to state authorities, who invest limited resources and cultural relevance, has resulted in the decline of collective family support and funds.

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These changes are creating high levels of stress (Abu-Rabia-Abu-Kuider, 1994; Meir, 1997). The status of Arab women in Israel can thus be defined as doubly oppressed, both by their patriarchal society and by the Israeli political regime. Paradoxically, Bedouin women’s dependence on the males in their family has sometimes increased due to perceptions of women’s exposure to work, education, and individualism as a threat to tradition. Indeed, Bedouin women in the Negev were found to be intensely affected by poverty and the interconnected social and health problems that this entails (Cwikel, 2002; Cwikel, Wiesel, & Al-Krenawi, 2003). Conversely, Arab feminists Hijab (1988) and Sabbagh (1997) have differentiated between issues of concern for Western women in Western society and those for Arab women. In the West, concerns focus on issues such as reproductive rights, legal equity, expression of self through work and art, and sexual freedom; for Arab women, concerns center on education, health, and employment opportunities as well as legal reform and political participation. Power is measured in relation to other women and not in relation to men (Hijab, 1988; Sabbagh, 1997). We have found that there are many difficulties for Western female researchers who are not from within the Bedouin communities to understand the diverse concerns of Bedouin women. Bedouin middle- class women will also be from a different “culture” from that of Bedouin working-class women. We see that there is a paramount need to find alternative research methods that can enable outsiders to “hear” the concerns of the Bedouin women and that can enable the Bedouin women to communicate those concerns first to themselves and then to the dominant culture.

Using art as a research method: The Bedouin women’s drawings The following examples of drawings are from three ongoing groups, in which the art activity was introduced for a few sessions, aiming to enrich, reflect on, or enhance the existing self-defined concerns of the group rather than to present an external study objective or research agenda. The three groups were all of poor Bedouin women living in a township in the Negev, including a group of single mothers meeting as a support group, a group of women undergoing vocational training to open early childhood centers within their homes for extra income, and a group of women without writing skills, wishing to learn arts and crafts as enrichment and eventually to make products to sell. The art activity in all the groups and meetings divided into set stages, although the contents were in accordance to the group’s wishes. The meetings were undertaken by means of a Bedouin social worker learning art therapy, so as to enhance cultural suitability and to enable the women to talk in Arabic. As stated, the aim of the art was two pronged. The first direction is art as empowerment, enrichment, or self-expression. This is in accordance with feminist research that aims to be of direct benefit to the participants (especially as the aims of the group and the contents were defined by them).

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The second direction is art as a research method, or a way to understand the concerns of the women (which is a preliminary step to any type of empowering or enriching intervention). Following is a detailed explanation of the art stages and examples of each of the stages from the different case studies. The intent is not to present a full case study but to examine the interaction between arts-based research and art as empowerment, and lower income Bedouin women. From a bird’s eye overview, the method of using art described within this article undergoes the following stages, which can be repeated, refining, redefining, deepening, or enriching the contents through doing, observing, and talking. 1. Participant interacts with art making (within the context of the group leader and group). 2. Participant interacts with art and group and group leader simultaneously. 3. Participant observes the pictures as a group exhibition. 4. Participant re-interacts with the above stages of art making, discussing, and observing, over an issue that arose in the former “wave.” Step 1: The art-making stage Each participant draws a picture in oil pastels, or makes a clay statue of a subject agreed on in the initial discussion and connected to the overall aim of the group: • Oil pastels with different sizes of paper, and clay are offered. Oil pastels enable both lines and areas to be created quickly with minimal mess. Clay might be a more familiar medium for Bedouin women. • Drawing can be used in a combination of directive and nondirective forms, similar to different levels of structuring an interview. • The type of art making is process rather than product oriented, termed diagrammic art within art therapy (Liebmann, 1996), which helps access and raise an issue rather than working on a product that exists independent of the creator, as in an art class. This means not that the art does not “lead” the artist but that the products are relational, used to communicate rather than to display talent (Hogan, 2003). In the sketch shown in Figure 1, the black circle (left) symbolizes the drawer, the red (vertical) oblong, her picture, and the arrows, the mutual influence of her on the picture and the picture, on her. The brown circle (right) is the context within which Fig. 1

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this reflective activity takes place, created by and observed by the group leader or researcher, symbolizing the dominant culture. The question of whether to suggest a topic to draw can be seen as analogous to decisions concerning the level of structure of an interview. I chose to suggest a few topics, so as to make the drawing less threatening for people not used to drawing. Oil pastels include the elements of color and line, encouraging a “story” to be told. On the other hand, clay might be a more familiar medium for some women, and three-dimensionality evokes different types of storytelling. Time is then given to work individually or in pairs (according to what is preferred by the women) on the subject. The assumption is that the engagement in the art process creates a novel interaction with the subject matter, showing differing perspectives and enhancing a connection between the emotive and the cognitive which in turn promotes a process of reflection and prioritizing elements to be included in the art. This creates a silent prestage of creative organization of personal data from inside onto the empty page, before or together with translating it to the group and to the researcher-observer. Each type of art assignment embodies a different “culture” within the room in terms of collectivist or individualist interactions. Dosamantes-Beaudry (1999) showed how cultural self construal is depicted by working individually or in pairs in dance therapy. The use of time, space, materials, and so on are all expressions of power and will influence the type of discussion that emerges, enacted both physically and symbolically within the organization of the arts behavior. An additional question arises if the group leader or researcher, beyond becoming an observer and student of the participant’s pictures, also draws so as to make transparent and clarify her position. According to arts-based research, the aim is to “blur the boundaries” of the (unequal) relationship between researcher and research participant. According to art therapy, this point is much disputed, with some advocating the above and others considering the danger of taking the client-drawer’s space, or intimidating or influencing the client. All of these considerations become the research context. They need to be examined reflexively as they express the researcher’s cultural bias. For example, I was certain that oil pastels were the most flexible medium, perhaps being the closest to a writing tool, which is the dominant medium within my culture, but the older Bedouin women responded immediately to clay. One single mother, an abandoned first wife and an older Bedouin woman did not draw but, when I included clay, immediately made a clay ashtray before bursting into tears. She explained that the ashtray was like an older woman, an empty and discarded container. A mundane clay ashtray thus becomes an object of intense meaning and communication illustrating the communicative rather than aesthetic quality of art. As Finley (2003) stated, within this paradigm, the reactions to the poem are more important than the poem itself. The above example also illustrates how the visual stimuli initiated associations that were not decided on in advance, and that were influenced by the material and by the context of the group. An example of a woman’s interaction with her art was an older woman from the single mothers’ group, who did not speak at Figure 2 all at the beginning but repeated

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Fig. 2 Fig. 3

a schema of squares within each meeting. In one meeting, she stated that it was a house. It is not clear if the squares were an illustration of the house, the idea of a house emerged from the graphic shape of the squares, or the idea of a house emerged from within the context of the things other women said, or all of the different elements combined together. Arnheim (1996) stressed the inherent dynamics of an art gestalt that influences the observer (rather than just being a neutral vessel for projection (Figure 2). The example in Figure 3 illustrates how the dialogue between art and the individual can be transforming in itself. One young third wife, whose husband is in jail for violence, said of her picture of a house with flowers, that her father did not allow her to plant flowers by the house and did not allow her to play with other children, and he chose her husband for her. About the picture, she said, “I want a house; I want to build a house of my own. Most important, I want to plant a garden by the house.” The picture contained past and future in a causal narrative, based on a specific instant that gained symbolic meaning. The narrative is poetically organized, with three elements from the past and three from the future, corresponding to the three pictures. The dialogue was transformative, in that it allowed the drawer “to use

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imagination to examine how things are, but also how they could be otherwise” (Finley, 2003, p. 292). This exemplifies the arts-based paradigm that has as an aim to “go beyond insightful texts, to move ourselves and others into action, with the effect of improving lives” (Mullen, 2003. p. 117). Another example was when an older woman, who was silent in all the meetings, made a cow, saying that a women is like a cow: When she has no milk left, she is discarded. A younger woman made a horse, saying that a woman is like a horse, strong and able to carry many burdens. Here, the art “answered” the art. Another woman made an ashtray, and while describing how tired she was of managing as a single mother with no money, she broke the ashtray into many tiny bits in nervous movements creating, a physical embodiment of her emotional state. When the women talked to her and suggested solutions, she started sticking all the pieces together again. She looked at her hands and laughed, noticing this. One woman ignored the two directives and decided to draw, first in pencil Figure 2, Figure 3 and then in paint, a stylized sunset picture she had once seen in a magazine. She worked quickly and carefully, begging for a few more minutes at the end. I framed the picture for her. She stated that she wanted to execute a picture like that to decorate her house, as she could not afford to buy one. She had worked hard and was proud of the result (Figure 4). Although for me, as a Western-oriented art therapist, the discussion or individualized creativity of the product is most important (rather than copying a preexisting picture), for this woman, activating the will power and concentration to execute or copy a picture that she could not afford to buy, so as to have the product, was an empowering experience that connected her intensely to the art experience. It seems that the autonomy and intimacy inherent in the exclusive interaction between the drawer and her drawing enabled the woman to pursue her aims rather than to comply with our directives (Hogan, 1997). The woman’s self-directedness is a good example of a negotiation of power as against the dominant culture represented by our suggestions. Although for me, as a Western-oriented art therapist, the discussion or individualized creativity of the product is most important (rather than copying a preexisting picture), for this woman, activating the will power and concentration to execute or Fig. 4

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copy a picture that she could not afford to buy, so as to have the product, was an empowering experience that connected her intensely to the art experience. It seems that the autonomy and intimacy inherent in the exclusive interaction between the drawer and her drawing enabled the woman to pursue her aims rather than to comply with our directives (Hogan, 1997). The woman’s self-directedness is a good example of a negotiation of power as against the dominant culture represented by our suggestions. Another example of the complex interplay of power between the researcher and women follows. For example, although each of the women in the early childhood training group had 5 to 10 children and were very knowledgeable about early childhood, when I asked them what they would like to focus on in the drawings, they answered with questions conveying helplessness, such as what should be done with a crying child, what games to play, how to connect to the children, and what to feed them. Conversely, they were very clear and confident about the contents of their drawings in relation to early childhood. The art seemed to be express power and knowledge, whereas their words expressed helplessness. Perhaps the drawing enabled a simultaneous double transference: Words were used to express helplessness toward representatives of the dominant culture, but confidence and knowledge were expressed through their drawings. The multifaceted component of the drawing and then talking about it, simultaneously expressed and overcame the disempowerment of learning within the context of the dominant culture. The discussion stage After completing the artwork, we laid them out in a circle on the floor at the drawers’ feet, facing toward the group, both clearly connected to their creator, and also creating a group exhibition. The participants ask one another questions about their art work, and the women explain or connect to other’s art work in a free discussion. The following sketch illustrates the complexity and multiple interactions that occur simultaneously in this situation. Thus, the art work, group interaction, and so on cannot be analyzed separately, out of context with the other elements. For example, one young woman was too shy to talk about her drawing of a black circle (Figure 5). Fig. 5  “I think you are drawing that you feel closed in a circle you can’t get out of because there are so many people in your small house.” (Friend)

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Her friend sitting next to her said that she thought the girl was sad there were so many people in her small house that is like a closed circle that one cannot get out of. The woman nodded in agreement. The interaction between the two friends is similar to Shvadren’s (1992) analogy of observing an art work as two people, (the creator and the observer) gazing into a lighted window and both seeing new things within the room. Within feminist theory, this emphatic understanding of another person has been termed a relational form of interaction that focuses on empathy and is characteristic of female interactions (Goldberger & Veroff, 1995). Feminist theory suggests that words, as power structures that define reality, are created by men and thus do not describe women’s experiences within this male-dominated world. For example, De-Vault (1999), a feminist theorist, claimed that we “need to interview in ways that allow the exploration of unarticulated aspects of woman’s experiences” (p. 65). The black circle described above and its ensuing dialogue might be such an “interview.” In terms of the art product, we see a simple black circle that is not rich in terms of crafts or in terms of Western art but is an art form used in art therapy, focusing on receptive or connective elements that emphasize thoughts, emotions, and relationships. An intercultural term for this emotional understanding is Steinberg and Bar-On’s (2002) concept of a dialogic moment. Observing Arab-Jewish conflict resolution groups, they noted that these moments of empathy and understanding between Jewish and Arab students occur when a specific story or personal detail is expressed rather than when generalized ideologies are expressed. Drawing seems to encourage the description of a specific or personal instant and a specific way of “telling” or interpreting that instant, creating, in Abu-Lughod’s (1991) terms, “ethnographies of the particular … [that] capture the cultural and social ‘forces’ that are only embodied in the actions of individuals in time and space” (p. 156). The visual stimuli themselves can also encourage engagement beyond the areas of conflict. For example, the Bedouin social worker who facilitated art with the group of single mothers stated in her summary of the experience that for the first time (with many years experience working with the women), she felt flooded and disturbed by their suffering. This might be what Finley (2003) defined as the purpose of arts-based inquiry, to contribute to deeper relationships between researcher and research participant. Within the context of the group discussion, the picture creates a concrete anchor (to use yet another metaphor!) that can be related to on many different levels of language, with everyone seeing or reacting to the same trigger (the picture being discussed). It becomes a transitional space that is a useful mediator for people from different cultures, who formulate their stories along different types of narrative. The meanings of the picture can be negotiated and clarified through both people’s observing the same object. Drawing, and then discussing the drawings, serves as a form of self-interpretation, or validation, of the subject drawn, that is important with intercultural communication. In terms of art therapy, it is congruent with the feminist and phenomenological stands that stress the artist’s understandings of the art work. For example, one woman drew a cupful of flowers (a traditional subject in Islamic art), then said that her life is empty and boring, not like the flowers, expressing an

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opposite relationship to the picture. Alternatively, another woman drew a fish in a stormy sea (Figure 6) to express her loneliness, far from her maternal family, using a metaphor from the natural world—expressing silence, loneliness, and the turbulence of her circumstances. Another woman used a metaphor of a black cloud, stating that that was the feeling of being a Bedouin woman without a husband. One woman took this feeling as a confrontation, asking “Why did God give us [women] hands, if hen does not allow us to use them?” She then drew a picture of the modern and the traditional women holding hands and making a connection, stating that the modern women is pulling the traditional women in her direction, as can be seen in her picture (Figure 7). Another woman drew a television and said that all day she sits crying in front of the TV, bored and lonely, thus creating a metonym (Figure 8). One woman, whose shack is going to be pulled down because she does not have a building permit, drew a steep slope, with a house at the end. She said that she feels the energy needed to keep her house is too steep a slope for her to climb, juxtaposing a concrete situation and a metaphor. The above words describe different personal and cultural “entrances” to the pictures. Discussing the contents of the pictures thus helps clarify the participant’s stand toward her picture. The art directive itself can also disclose cultural differences. For example, we asked all the participants to draw a symbol of themselves as an introduction (a common exercise in art therapy). However, they all drew a wish, something that they wanted, or something abstract. At first, it seemed that they had not understood or ignored the request for a symbol of self. However, a wish can also be understood as an abstract symbol of self extended into time and space outside or beyond the self. This might relate to collective identity, which extends beyond the individual, and to the aesthetics of Islamic art, aiming to cheer and express wishes for a better future. We see that basic concepts, such as symbols, constitute different formulations or “shapes” within different cultures. The concrete element of drawing makes the specific characteristics of concepts such as a symbol, wish, or moment less abstract and thus more overt. The dual activity of both concretely drawing or enacting these concepts, and then explaining them as they appear in the picture helps access these subtle differences that are lost in verbal interaction, where we can mistakenly assume that by using the same concept (such as a symbol) we mean the same thing. Bhaba’s (1994) statement that concepts, such as death, mothering, and aging, cannot be translated, having different values and meaning different things in different cultures. Thus, it is not possible to “translate” one culture into another. Art can contain different elements simultaneously. One young woman said about the blue-and-white abstract silkscreen made in the arts and crafts group, that the brooch’s colors reminded her of the sea, with a boy standing in the distance. Everyone laughed and she said that she wanted to get married, although marriage is the end of freedom: You stay at home and do not go to the sea anymore. Thus, the picture enabled a dialogue of ambivalence. When people live in more than one culture and are undergoing acculturation, the ability to integrate different cultural or personal understandings, or even opposing feelings as part

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Fig. 9 and 10  Examples of the Magen David (A woman’s wishes). “I wish for a house.” (Below) “I wish for peace.”

of a whole, is considered beneficial to the acculturation process. Talking in a linear sequence seems to invite a more unified dialogue, as each point has to come after the last, rather than being shown simultaneously. The art as a trigger for discussion enabled a complex version of reality that is not reduced to one truth. Another example is of a young teenage girl from this group with no head cover wearing jeans and a large Jewish and national symbol that is currently part of the teen fashion in necklaces in Israel, who drew a picture of a Bedouin tent and said that she liked the traditional Bedouin culture best (perhaps also expressing a wish for less complicated times in terms of identity). This is similar to Abu-Lughod’s (1991) suggestion that specific, individual examples negate cultural stereotypes. For instance, she describes a woman swearing and citing from the Koran in the same sentence, thus refusing to be reduced to one truth (Abu-Lughod, 1991). One woman drew a picture of a bus (driving accidents are a major problem within Israel in general and within the Bedouin villages and townships in particular). She described how, after many failures, she had just completed her driving theory test but must now find the money for driving lessons; otherwise, the theory would be out of date. She stated that, like the traffic light, when there is war, one needs to stop. She continued about how important her driving license was for her, as it would enable her to take the children to different places. She said her brothers were helping her to pay for the lessons, because she had left school at the age of 8 to look after them. She had written the words “derech shalom-ve lo lemilhama” above the bus, “a journey of peace and not war.” She explained, “I want there to be peace—inside me, between people, and between countries.” This is an example of

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the multiple levels of future and present, particularity and generalness, concreteness and abstractness, that can be contained within one picture, making it especially suitable for people undergoing cultural (and physical) transitions within their lives, incorporating different cultures. To summarize, the reflective dialogue between drawer and drawing, and the interactive elements of the group dynamics combine to create a triangular situation with many different types of interactions, for instance between a drawer and her own drawing, between a drawer and other people’s drawings, and between a drawer and other people. In the following section, I illustrate the complexity and multiple interactions of this situation, showing the different types of interactions between the words and the art, and explaining the art creates a multifaceted level of content that refuses to be reduced to a simple entity. Group stage, the whole picture The third stage can be observing the art works as a unified exhibition or group statement. Recurring themes become overt both to the group itself and to an outsider, such as the researcher (Campbell, 1999; Hiscox & Calisch, 1998). Cultural stands or beliefs are often so embedded that we are usually not aware of them ourselves. Observing the meanings within the drawings of other people from the same culture strengthens and defines these messages, creating a type of critical pedagogy. For example, when observing all the pictures of “what a child needs,” we noticed that the children always played outside and were depicted in rich color. The caretakers inside were depicted without color and in minimal pencil lines. Thus, outside was defined as the focus for exploration—having implications for creating a culturally sensitive early childhood curriculum for Bedouin children (Dosmantes-­Beaudry, 1999). This is also congruent with feminist group therapy, which defines problems as outside the individual, related to context, and experienced by anyone within that context (rather than defined as a personal pathology). In terms of art therapy, art work can become “embodied” with meanings that hold symbolic meaning for the whole group. For example, houses were a strong theme with the single mothers, and we devoted a session to drawing more houses so as to understand their implications. This led to the following, last stage of this method. Validating or deepening understandings through additional words or drawings The fourth stage of the drawing process entails re-viewing pictures and re-­ drawing issues that it is felt need more clarification. In terms of arts-based research, this serves as a type of validating mechanism, in that the group exhibition gives a chance for themes to be discussed and verified on the spot through the multiple voices or comments of the group. One of the advantages of drawings is that they are constant and permanent fixtures that can be re-­ viewed and additional meanings gained with each viewing. At the same time, the meanings can constantly shift, enabling different words or associations at different viewings (just as we enjoy observing a work of art again and again, giving it additional or different meanings).

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Within art therapy, the observation of former pictures is used as a way to enhance self-reflection and emotive involvement with (or projection onto) the picture. Schaverien (1992) has discussed how a picture can become temporarily infused with much emotional meaning for the viewer, whereas at a later stage, the picture as a talisman is relinquished.

Summary In this article, I attempted to combine the theories of art therapy and of art-based research concerned with working with a different culture. Canclini (1996) stated that we are used to the fusion of different cultural elements, such as modern art books sitting together with crafts books on our coffee tables, to multimedia reproductions of “high” culture, to foods that combine different cultural traditions, but that we mistakenly shy away from creating “hybrid” mixes of academics and of clinical practice. This article can be seen as a double meeting between art as therapy or empowerment, and art as research, and between Bedouin women and Jewish Western art therapy. This combination was used to create an art activity that, I hope, is both informative as research and empowering as self-expression and enrichment. It seems that art as research can enhance understanding between the Bedouin women and the dominant Israeli culture by offering a complex, multifaceted expression of the Bedouin women’s concerns, together with their understanding of these concerns. Feminist researchers have stated, “to hear women’s perspectives accurately, we have to learn to listen in sterio, receiving both the dominant and the muted channels clearly, and understanding the relationship between them” (Anderson & Jack, 1991, p. 11). Similarly, art as therapy or empowerment can offer the transformative, enriching, and empowering elements of creating art, making it a worthwhile endeavor for the women. Both uses do not exclude the need for constant reflexivity in understanding the cultural meanings implied by different art interventions. Thus, the research context becomes of direct potential benefit to the women, uniting research and therapy aims—observation and self-observation, action and reaction. Spivak addresses the difficulty in “admitting non-Western cultural production into the Western academy without side-stepping its challenges to metropolitan canons and thus perpetuating the ‘subalterization’ of third world culture” (p. 254). This difficulty in accepting different forms of art—both Bedouin women’s art, such as crafts, and art within psychology, such as in art therapy (rather than art as diagnostics) and art within research (rather than words only)—challenges Western classic conceptions of art and its roles (and, thus, of Bedouin women, of psychology, and of research). The limitation of this article is that I did not fully explore the meanings of the art experience for the women. Another limitation is the paradox built into the method, and mentioned above, of trying to access non-Western experience, through Western methods.

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When working with art materials, the narrative is developed through the interaction of doing and reflecting on one’s actions, in a constantly modifying activity. For example, wet paint makes the paper too wet, and so pencil can be tried, but then the shapes are too defined and have lost their essence and vitality. Oil pastels can be used as a compromise, although this might result in the loss of some of the essence of both vitality and definition, and so on, until a “good enough” solution is created. This constant negotiation and renegotiation of actions and their meanings seems an inherent part of any intercultural communication made concrete and visible through using art.

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Cwikel, J., Wiesel, R., &Al-Krenawi, A. (2003). The physical and psychosocial health of Bedouin Arab women of the Negev area of Israel. Violence Against Women, 9(2), 240-257. Davis, L., & Srinivasan, M. (1994). Feminist research within a battered women’s shelter. In E.  Sherman & W.  Reid (Eds.), Qualitative research in social work (pp. 347-348). New York: Columbia University Press. Denzin, K., & Lincoln, Y. (1998). Collecting and interpreting qualitative materials. London: Sage. De-Vault, M. (1999). Liberating method: Feminism and social research. Philadelphia: Temple University Press. Dokter, D. (1998). Arts therapists, refugees and migrants: Reaching across borders. London: Jessica Kingsley. Dosamantes-Beaudry, M. (1999). Divergent cultural self-construals: Implications for the practice of dance/movement therapy—The psychology of control in America and Japan. Arts in Psychotherapy, 26(4), 225-231. Eisner, E. (1997). The promises and perils of alternative forms of data representation. Educational Researcher, 26(6), 4-20. Finley, S. (2003). Arts based inquiry in QI: Seven years from crises to guerrilla warfare. Qualitative Inquiry, 9(2), 281-297. Gerity, L. (2000). The subversive art therapist: Embracing cultural diversity in the art room. Journal of the American Art Therapists Association, 7, 35-46. Goldberger, N., & Veroff J. (1995). Culture and psychology reader. New  York: New York University Press. Hijab, N. (1988). Women-power: The Arab debate over women and work. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Hiscox, A., & Calisch, C. (1998). Tapestry of cultural issues in art therapy. London: Jessica Kingsley. Hocoy, D. (2002). Cultural issues in art therapy theory. Journal of the American Art Therapy Association, 19(4), 141-146. Hogan, S. (1997). Feminist approaches to art therapy. London: Routledge. Hogan, S. (2003). Gender issues in art therapy. London: Jessica Kingsley. Kramer, E. (1971). Art therapy with children. New York: Schoken. Lawler, M. (2002). Narrative in social research. In T. May (Ed.), Qualitative research in action (pp. 242-259). London: Sage. Liebmann, M. (1996). Arts approaches to conflict. London: Jessica Kingsley. Mahon, M. (2000). The visible evidence of cultural producers. Annual Review of Anthropology, 29, 467-492. Mason, J. (2000). Qualitative researching. London: Sage. Mason, J. (2002). Qualitative interviewing: Asking, listening and interpreting. In T. May (Ed.), Qualitative research in action (pp. 225-242). London: Sage. McNiff, S. (1995). Art based research. Boston: Shambhala. Meir, A. (1997). As nomadism ends. Boulder, CO: Westview. Moon, B. (2000). Ethical issues in art therapy. Springfield, IL: Charles Thomas. Moon, H. (2002). Studio art therapy. London: Jessica Kingsley.

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Mullen, C. (2003). A self fashioned gallery of aesthetic practice. Qualitative Inquiry, 9(2), 165-182. Pink, S. (2001). Doing visual ethnography. London: Sage. Ried, P. (1993). Poor women in psychological research: Shut up and shut out. Psychology of Women Quarterly, 17, 133-150. Sabbagh, S. (1997). Arab women. Brookline, MA: Olive Branch. Sarasema, T. (2003). Bereavement and the healing power of arts and writing. Qualitative Inquiry, 9(4), 603-621. Save, I., & Nuutinen, K. (2003). At the meeting place of word and picture: Between art and inquiry. Qualitative Inquiry, 9(4), 515-535. Savneet, T. (2003). Decolonization: Third World women and conflicts. In S. Hogan (Ed.), Gender issues in art therapy (pp. 185-193). London: Jessica Kingsley. Schaverien, J. (1992). The revealing image: Analysitcal art psychotherapy in theory and in practice. London: Routledge. Sclater, D. (2003). The arts and narrative research. Qualitative Inquiry, 9(4), 621-625. Silverman, D. (2000). Doing qualitative research: A practical handbook. London: Sage. Spivak, G. (1987). In other worlds: Essays in cultural politics. New York: Methuen. Steinberg, S., & Bar-On, D. (2002). An analysis of the group process in encounters between Jews and Palestinians using a typology for discourse classification. Pergamon, 26, 199-214. Talbot Green, M. (1989). Feminist scholarship: Spitting into the mouths of the gods. Arts in Psychotherapy, 16(4), 253-261. Wang, C., & Burris, M. (1994). Empowerment through photo-novella. Health Education Quarterly, 21, 172-185.

References Barone, T. (2001). Touching eternity: The enduring outcomes of teaching. Teachers College Press. Barone, T., & Eisner, E.  W. (1997). Arts-based educational research. In R.  M. Jaeger (Ed.), Complementary methods for research in education (pp.  95–109). American Educational Research Association. Barone, T., & Eisner, E. W. (2012). Arts-based research. Sage. Behar, R. (2007). Ethnography in a time of blurred genres. Anthropology & Humanism, 32(2), 145–155. Cahnmann-Taylor, M. (2008). Arts-based research: Histories and new directions. In M. Cahnmann-­ Taylor & R. Siegesmund (Eds.), Arts-based research in education: Foundations for practice (pp. 3–15). Routledge. Chilton, G., Gerber, N. & Scotti, V. (2015). Towards an aesthetic intersubjective paradigm for arts based research: An art therapy perspective. Critical Approaches to Arts-based Research, 5(1), 1–27. Retrieved December 24, 2018, from; https://www.researchgate.net/publication/308971008_Towards_an_aesthetic_intersubjective_paradigm_for_arts_based_research_ An_art_therapy_perspective

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Chilton, G., & Leavy, P. (2014). Arts-based research practice: Merging social research and the creative arts. In P. Leavy (Ed.), The Oxford handbook of qualitative research (pp. 403–422). Oxford University Press. Cole, A., & Knowles, J. G. (2008). Arts-informed research. In J. G. Knowles & A. Cole (Eds.), Handbook of the arts in qualitative research: Perspectives, methodologies, examples, and issues (pp. 55–70). Sage. Cooper, K., & White, R. E. (2012). Qualitative research in the postmodern era: Contexts of qualitative research. Springer. Denzin, N.  K., & Lincoln, Y.  S. (2008). The discipline and practice of qualitative research. In N. K. Denzin & Y. S. Lincoln (Eds.), Collecting and interpreting qualitative materials, Volume 4 (pp. 1–42). Sage. Eisner, E. W. (1991). The enlightened eye: Qualitative inquiry and the enhancement of educational practice. Merrill. Eisner, E. W. (1993). Forms of understanding and the future of educational research. Educational Researcher, 22(7), 5–11. Eisner, E. W. (2002). The arts and the creation of mind. Yale University Press. Eisner, E. W. (2008). Art and knowledge. In J. G. Knowles & A. Cole (Eds.), Handbook of the arts in qualitative research (pp. 3–12). Sage. Eliot, T. S. (1961). The love song of J. Alfred Prufrock. In M. Mack, L. Dean, & W. Frost (Eds.), Modern poetry (Vol. VII, 2nd ed., pp. 130–134). Prentice-Hall. Finley, S. (2005). Arts-based inquiry: Performing revolutionary pedagogy. In N.  K. Denzin & Y. S. Lincoln (Eds.), Handbook of qualitative research (3rd ed., pp. 681–694). Sage. Finley, S. (2008). Arts-based research. In J. G. Knowles & A. Cole (Eds.), Handbook of the arts in qualitative research: Perspectives, methodologies, examples, and issues (pp. 71–82). Sage. Geertz, C. (1973). The interpretation of culture: Selected essays. Basic Books. Geertz, C. (1988). Works and lives: The anthropologist as author. Polity Press. Gerber, A. S. (2012). Field experiments: Design, analysis and interpretation. W. W. Norton. Gray, C. (1996). Inquiry through practice: Developing appropriate research strategies. Retrieved, December 27, 2018, from: http://carolegray.net/Papers%20PDFs/ngnm.pdf Greene, M. (1993). Diversity and inclusion: Toward a curriculum for human beings. Teachers College Record, 95(2), 211–221. Hesse, H. (2002). The glass bead game/Das Glasperlenspiel. Picador Books. Irwin, R. L. (2014). Turning to a/r/tography. KOSEA Journal, 15(1), 1–40. Irwin, R. L., Beer, R., Springgay, S., Grauer, K., & Xiong, G. (2006). The rhizomatic relations of A/R/Tography. Studies in Art Education, 48(1), 70–88. Irwin, R. L., & de Cosson, A. (2004). A/R/Tography: Rendering oneself through arts-based living inquiry. Pacific Educational Press. Irwin, R.  L., & Springgay, S. (2008). A/r/tography as practice-based research. In S.  Springgay, R. L. Irwin, C. Leggo, & P. Gouzouasis (Eds.), Being with A/r/tography (pp. xix–xxxiii). Sense Publishers. Knowles, J.  G., & Promislow, S. (2008). Using an arts methodology to create a thesis or dissertation. In J. G. Knowles & A. Cole (Eds.), Handbook of the arts in qualitative research: Perspectives, methodologies, examples, and issues (pp. 511–526). Sage. Lakoff, G., & Johnson, M. (2003). Metaphors we live by. Chicago University Press. Leavy, P. (2015). Method meets art: Arts-based research practice (2nd ed.). The Guilford Press. Leavy, P. (2017). Introduction to arts-based research. In P. Leavy (Ed.), Handbook of arts-based research (pp. 3–22). The Guilford Press. Malchiodi, C.  A. (2017). Creative arts therapies and arts-based research. In P.  Leavy (Ed.), Handbook of arts-based research (pp. 68–87). The Guilford Press. McNiff, S. (2005). Foreword. In D. Kalmanowitz, B. Lloyd, & S. McNiff (Eds.), Art therapy and political violence: With art, without illusion (pp. xii–xvi). Routledge. McNiff, S. (2008). Art-based research. In J. G. Knowles & A. Cole (Eds.), Handbook of the arts in qualitative research: Perspectives, methodologies, examples, and issues (pp. 29–40). Sage.

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Chapter 9

Grounded Theory

GT is multivariate. It happens sequentially, subsequently, simultaneously, serendipitously, and scheduled. Barney Glaser (1998)

Introduction Grounded theory may perhaps be one of the most widely known methodologies used to conduct qualitative research in the social sciences and beyond. Introduced by sociologists Barney Glaser and Anselm Strauss (Glaser & Strauss, 1967), grounded theory suggests that procedures once thought to be unacceptable with regards to traditional qualitative research have become perfectly acceptable, if not desirable and required. The methodology also provides justification for regarding qualitative research as a legitimate and rigorous form of inquiry (DePoy & Gitlin, 2016). Grounded theory research is nonlinear, as it does not proceed in an orderly manner through a predetermined number of steps, as the theory tested and the questions asked may change dramatically in unpredictable ways throughout the study. The process is also recursive or (re)iterative because it often goes back to issues that seemed settled but may subsequently require renewed attention. Thus, grounded theory allows a researcher to begin with a general topic or with unformed questions and then refine questions and answers as the study progresses (Willis, 2007). Unlike many qualitative research methodologies, whereby the researcher identifies research questions first and then employs a theoretical or conceptual framework in conjunction with a research methodology in order to develop a theory, in grounded theory, the theory is “grounded” in the data, meaning that the theory emerges from the data collected. The emergent theory is intended to clarify and/or explain specific Supplementary Information The online version contains supplementary material available at [https://doi.org/10.1007/978-­3-­030-­85124-­8_9]. The videos can be accessed individually by clicking the DOI link in the accompanying figure caption or by scanning this link with the SN More Media App. © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 R. E. White, K. Cooper, Qualitative Research in the Post-Modern Era, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-85124-8_9

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social processes and their consequences. In this process, it is the data that guides the research, rather than the exploration relying upon an exoskeleton of research questions, guiding frameworks and research methodologies. Upon completion of the data collection process, which may be an iterative process in and of itself, the researcher seeks patterns within the data, generally accomplished through an examination of the extant variables and relationships that occur within the study. Identification of variables and/or relationships then leads to coding of the information, which then results in the identification of categories and concepts. It is these categories and concepts that form the matrix for the eventual theory to arise. Thus, grounded theory can be defined as the systematic development of a theory from research data; it also tends to differ from other qualitative research designs in that it is more highly structured and more investigator-directed than many qualitative research methodologies. The main purpose of this methodology is to develop or “ground” a theory in the context in which the phenomenon under study occurs (DePoy & Gitlin, 2016), rather than the testing of an extant theory. Due to the systematic nature of the methodology, the emerging theory is necessarily linked to the data that the theory seeks to explain. As a result, the process of theory construction tends to be inductive in nature, as this process surfaces concepts, constructs, relationships and principles in understanding and explaining an observed phenomenon. Grounded theory tends to adopt three major strategies of data coding, memo writing, and theoretical sampling (DePoy & Gitlin, 2016). As with many qualitative methodologies, with grounded theory, data collection and analysis are simultaneous processes, which tend also to be iterative, as they are cyclical in nature, requiring numerous repetitions until saturation is achieved. Although grounded theory is usually considered to be a research methodology, the term can be used in a number of ways (Scott, 2009); as a research process, a research methodology, and as a product—the theory, itself. As a research process, the researcher is never certain of the outcome, or even of what (s)he is studying until a significant amount of data has been amassed and analyzed (Scott, 2009). According to Glaser and Strauss (1967) and Strauss (1987), grounded theory represents a methodology by which theory is developed through qualitative data analysis. While this may seem to some to be a “cart before the horse” type of arrangement, researchers who utilize this methodology make use of “successive waves” (Willis, 2007, p. 306) of data collection and analysis in order to arrive at a theory. As noted above, this is an iterative move, as the researcher may view a particular wave of data, formulate a tentative theory and then return to the data or proceed to collect additional data in order to explicate the theory more fully. Providing the tentative theory continues to be supported by the existing data or the new data, the researcher proceeds to the next data wave. Should the theory no longer fit the data, the theory is modified to fit the new and existing data. The theory is then checked against new or incoming data. This process continues until the theory remains unchanged or the data sources have been exhausted. Thus, the goal of grounded theory research is to establish a theory that is supported by all data sets. Consequently, the ensuing theory, unlike many qualitative theories, is frequently generalizable to other contexts (Willis, 2007).

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The Biographical Context The following video-clip features Professor Barney Glaser, who, along with Anselm Strauss, first developed the concept of grounded theory. In this video-clip, Professor Glaser notes that his own personal history acted as a precursor to the evolution of grounded theory.

Professor Barney Glaser

According to his personal story, young Barney Glaser was raised in a wealthy environment. Although he claims that his parents routinely ignored his presence, the support staff that served the family was wonderful to him. As a result of this early experience, Professor Glaser believes that he escaped from the normal parental evaluation that parents tend to visit upon their children. This evaluation may be positive or negative, or both, depending upon the circumstances. As a consequence of this lack of “appraisal,” young Barney was never subjected to evaluation, but was allowed to pursue his own thoughts and designs. It was this that had a profound effect upon his future. In effect, he believes that this parental “omission” was key to his eventual recognition of the power of grounded theory. In essence, because he was free from the fear of negative appraisals and, therefore, free from performance anxiety, young Barney was comfortable in

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experimenting with ideas that were less than mainstream. Professor Glaser also contends that, for the most part, he was responsible for his own education and, following a hilarious anecdote of how he “discovered” schooling, he notes that he was always in control of where he attended school. His path led him, variously, to Stanford and to France, where he became fluent in French and was even drafted into the French army for a year. In this capacity, he translated for commissioned officers and was privy to a lot of “secret stuff” that he remains somewhat ambivalent about. After a year in the French army, young Barney returned to the United States but was fearful of joining the American army, as it represented a foreign entity, compared to his experiences in France.

Video Clip 9.1: Professor Barney Glaser (▶ https://doi.org/10.1007/000-­6d9)

Meanwhile, as his fascination with French literature and the way of life began to fade, Professor Glaser notes that he became engrossed in the “world of preconceived happenings,” to which he struggled to relate. Possibly, these happenings related to a (re)structuring of life, of sorts. However, it was during this time that, while he was studying, that he recognized a pattern. This pattern represented what he had found throughout his life; his own tenuous control, or lack thereof, over the very things that he wished to control. As he notes in this interview, “I was asked to learn things that didn’t relate to reality. On a grounded theory basis, it related to a reality, but not the reality of reality….”

The Historical Context

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Barney Glaser’s thesis refuted the work of Robert Merton, an eminent sociologist at Columbia University, who developed such notable concepts as “unintended consequences,” “reference group,” “role model” and “self-fulfilling prophecy” (Merton, 1936). While social roles were a key component of Merton’s theorizing, he maintained that individuals assume a “status set” within the existing social structure that requires a specific set of expected behaviours (Holton, 2004). Contending that Merton’s concept of recognition was deeply flawed, Barney Glaser recognized, in retrospect, that he was struggling with the beginnings of grounded theory. It was at this point that he met Anselm Strauss. Young Glaser soon began to work with Strauss and, when Glaser noted that what one was expected to find was simply irrelevant, Strauss was elated by the realization that this way of thinking about qualitative research represented something new.

The Historical Context The historical context is very much a continuation of the personal awakening to the concept of grounded theory as expounded by Professor Barney Glaser. In a second video-clip, Professor Glaser describes how the concept was formulated and operationalized.

Video Clip 9.2: Professor Barney Glaser (▶ https://doi.org/10.1007/000-­6d8)

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He notes that, when the first book on the topic, Awareness of Dying (1965/2005), was published, the reading public and scholars, alike, were amazed, simply because no one had previously considered the importance of the context of awareness and the connections to social interactions, which related to Anselm Strauss’s work on what Strauss referred to as the “Dying Project.” What followed represents a stroke of sheer brilliance. Upon being questioned about how the book was developed, Professor Glaser suggested that he and Professor Strauss write a book together that explored a methodology that dealt with the awareness of death and dying. The data was at the ready and, so, Glaser and Strauss worked up a methodology that explained the process of the development of the project on dying. The book, The Discovery of Grounded Theory (1967), was immediately successful. As time passed, the concept of grounded theory became more defined and refined. As Professor Glaser claims, grounded theory, in essence, was developed from simply paying attention to reality and to being able to control the reality and responding to it. In further commenting on the conceptualization of grounded theory, Professor Glaser notes that it is not specifically a qualitative methodology, but represents a general methodology that can be brought to bear on any number of situations, including scientific, philosophical and interpretive contexts. He goes on to note that grounded theory illuminates three distinct dimensions. Firstly, it represents a methodology. Secondly, it affords a product that is responsive to its audience and environment and, thirdly, it offers a jargon that is at once grounded and contributive. The jargon associated with grounded theory, Glaser claims, is actually the most important contribution to the conceptualization of this particular methodology. In defense of this last statement, Professor Glaser notes that there appears to be a plethora of grounded theory simulacra that abound in scholarly circles. However, he notes that these are not true representations of actual grounded theory because they do not avail themselves of the essential jargon associated with the methodology, itself. As a result, the methodology cannot be applied systematically, as prescribed by its originators. The results produce, in Merton’s (1936) terms, “unintended consequences,” simply because unaware practitioners use the jargon to decide what to do rather than using it to describe what they do—an apparent reversal of how grounded theory was intended to operate. Consequently, such practitioners “twist” the jargon in constructing a version of “the horse before the cart” methodology that represents a view that is constructed rather than interpreted.

The Political Context Grounded theory came into prominence as the result of a wave of criticism towards fundamentalist and structuralist theories that were deductive and speculative in nature. One of the more interesting points regarding grounded theory is that it represents a “bottom up” methodology, rather than the typical “top down” models that are prevalent in qualitative research. By this, what is meant is that the data are collected without a predominating view of what it is that the data are striving to reveal.

The Political Context

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Thus, the data collected are “about” a particular topic, rather then being collected to illuminate a particular research question. Consequently, as Professor Glaser notes in his interview, it is important to keep a conceptual stance readily available. Pattern recognition is in evidence at this juncture and it is this cognizance that allows the researcher to move from the accumulation of data to the recognition of patterns to the conceptualization of these patterns in an attempt to formulate a theory—in essence, a theory grounded within a conceptualization of the observed patterns. However, grounded theory does combine a number of diverse sociological traditions, drawing from both positivism and symbolic interactionism, making it methodologically dynamic (Ralph,  Birks & Chapman, 2015). While positivism may seem like a far stretch for such an inductive methodology as grounded theory, it was Barney Glaser’s positivistic training that assisted him in coding qualitative responses in the data he was collecting through the “Dying Project” by researching the active role of the study’s participants. Consequently, grounded theory, while it is highly inductive, also demonstrates some deductive qualities, as well. The developers of this research methodology have been critiqued (Haig, 2010) for advocating a return to an outdated Baconian inductivism, which suggests that observations are neither theory nor concept dependent. However, Glaser and Strauss (1967) disavow this, noting that the researcher requires a theoretical perspective in order to see and abstract patterns from the data (Haig, 2010). Thus, in order to obtain emergent, diverse categories at different levels of abstraction, Glaser and Strauss maintain that the researcher must hold potentially relevant facts and theories in the background for some time. According to DePoy and Gitlin (2016), this procedure is a type of bracketing, rather than a tabula rasa conception of inquiry. In his book, Qualitative Analysis for Social Scientists (1987), Anselm Strauss mentions the notion of abduction in his discussion of inductionism. However, he does not take this concept further. Peirce (2011) notes that inductive and abductive inferences are ampliative, or content-increasing, because any conclusions that are derived contain more information than is contained in their premises (Haig, 2010), although the type of ampliation differs with each conclusion that is arrived at. It may be worthwhile to note that inductive arguments tend to be descriptive in nature, as they arrive at conclusions concerning the attributes in their premises. By contrast, however, abductive arguments move to explanatory conclusions (DePoy & Gitlin, 2016), such as in medical diagnoses, where one views symptoms in order to identify underlying causes. While Anselm Strauss recognized the richness of their qualitative research pertaining to social processes and the complexity of social life, it was Barney Glaser who developed the systematic analysis of data through line-by-line analysis, generation of codes and their categories and properties (Aldiabat & Le Navenec, 2011a). Thus, the strategy of grounded theory is to interpret the meaning(s) in social interactions in order to examine interrelationships between the subjects’ perceptions of meaning and their actions. In this way, through the meanings inherent in symbols, such as language, researchers are able to interpret the world of their subjects and those who interact with them. Grounded theorists take this to new levels by translating and discovering new understandings relating to human behaviours

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(Aldiabat & Le Navenec, 2011b). This, in essence, is a definition of symbolic interactionism—a view that social behaviour emphasizes linguistic or gestural communication and its subjective understanding—just in reverse. With the use of symbolic interactionism as a basis for the building of grounded theory, it can be readily observed that grounded theory researchers strive to generate knowledge relevant to socially shared meanings that form the reality and the behaviours of research participants (Aldiabat & Le Navenec, 2011b). Validity, in the traditional sense, is not an issue in grounded theory, as it can be measured, instead, by its fit, relevance, workability and modifiability (Glaser & Strauss, 1967), generating a theory to fit the data that has been collected and analyzed. After co-authoring The Discovery of Grounded Theory (1967), Glaser and Strauss disagreed on the nature of grounded theory. When Strauss and Corbin’s Basics of Qualitative Research: Grounded Theory Procedures and Techniques (1990) was published, Glaser believed Strauss and Corbin’s book presented a version of grounded theory that was too prescriptive, particularly with regard to the definition of a research question as a statement identifying the phenomenon to be studied (Strauss & Corbin, 1990), as it did not facilitate the emergence of theory from data and, instead, forced description rather than allowing conceptualization to emerge. Glaser published Basics of Grounded Theory Analysis: Emergence vs. Forcing (1992) by way of response, asserting that the practice espoused by Strauss and Corbin tended to interfere with, rather than facilitate, the process of discovery (Willig, 2013). Instead, he [Glaser] proposed that the focus of the research emerges in the early stages of the research itself. Glaser also disagreed with Strauss and Corbin’s coding paradigm, particularly axial coding. Glaser argued that Strauss and Corbin’s approach to coding introduces preconceptions into the analysis that are incompatible with the spirit of grounded theory. (Willig, 2013, p. 82)

In addition to this significant rift, Glaser proposed that verifying the relationships between categories of emerging theories was irrelevant to grounded theory methodology, while Strauss and Corbin maintained that verification work is built into the research process itself. Further to this, Glaser preferred a purely inductive approach in contrast to Strauss and Corbin’s (1990) incorporation of deductive analysis, as well as an acknowledgement of the role that existing theories play in sensitizing grounded theory researchers. According to Barney Glaser (1992); If you torture the data enough it will give up! The data is not allowed to speak for itself, as in grounded theory, and to be heard from infrequently it has to scream. Forcing by preconception constantly derails it from relevance. (p. 123)

In Basics of Grounded Theory Analysis (1992), Barney Glaser highlighted differences between the two forms of grounded theory. His claim is that the Strauss and Corbin (1990) version is more akin to qualitative data analysis than to true grounded theory. While Anselm Strauss brought Chicago School pragmatism, symbolic interactionism and field research to grounded theory, Barney Glaser capitalized on his training in survey research to give the methodology a systematic approach, a positivistic proclivity and associated procedural language. In essence, grounded theory,

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according to Glaser, emphasizes induction or emergence and the individual researcher’s creativity within a clear frame of stages, while Strauss is more interested in validation criteria and a systematic approach (Kelle, 2005). The grounded theory approach, according to Strauss, consists of a series of steps, the careful execution of which should guarantee development of a strong theory that may be evaluated on the process by which it is constructed. While it has become abundantly clear that there are major differences between grounded theory as advocated by Glaser and by Strauss and Corbin, respectively, the question remains as to whether the two versions of grounded theory constitute separate methodologies (Glaser, 1992) or variations on a single theme (Strauss & Corbin, 1990). At the heart of the matter is grounded theory as a research methodology that offers clearly defined and agreed upon procedures, or as a set of methods based on key strategies for conducting inquiry (Charmaz, 2006). However, whichever version of grounded theory one subscribes to, the goal is to incorporate the perspectives of the actors, or participants, as they construct their particular social worlds. Grounded theory helps to explicate the relation of actions to settings and can be used to develop typologies of relevant phenomena. It can also be utilized in identifying patterns in complex systems of inquiry, although, like many qualitative methodologies, grounded theory does not mesh well with more positivistic paradigms that seek to test hypotheses or evaluate outcomes due, in particular, to its open-ended and inductive nature. In spite of this delimiter, grounded theory is a useful application for textual materials, such as documents, interview transcripts, and the like. Additionally, the process allows for large amounts of data to be coded (Potter, 1998).

The Postmodern Context In summary, grounded theory, originating in the work of Glaser and Strauss (1967), is a systematic qualitative methodology of inquiry, shaped by the desire to discover or uncover social and psychological processes (Gibbs, 2010a, b). Consequently, a study employing grounded theory typically begins with a question or with the collection of data, depending on the researcher’s valuation of Strauss’s or of Glaser’s differing perspectives. The goal of grounded theory involves the construction of theories through methodical gathering and analysis of data (Martin & Turner, 1986) in order to discover or uncover themes of behaviour or thought patterns “based on the substance of the data, a theory takes shape as a consequence of that data” (Campbell, 2011, n. p.). This is accomplished through the process of context analysis and inductive coding, in contrast to the hypothetico-deductive approach. Strauss and Corbin (1990) recommend using actual phrases or words from participants, in order to maintain authenticity. Once a significant amount of data has been acquired, the researcher reviews the data collected. Repeated ideas, concepts or elements may quickly become apparent, and are tagged with codes extracted from the data.

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The coding process strives to identify or discover emergent themes or patterns, rather than attempting to prove or implant a theme or pattern. Finding themes can be managed either by visually studying the data, or by using software such as MAXQDA, creating a codebook to keep track of findings and looking for relations between themes. In vivo coding, underlining or highlighting text, allowing a theme or pattern to emerge, may be used individually or in combinations in order to achieve deductive coding. At this point, the researcher may combine major themes with linking minor themes. As more data is collected and re-reviewed, codes may be grouped into themes, concepts and then into categories. These categories then become the basis for a new theory. Memoing, the process of keeping running notes of each of the concepts identified, is a prevalent method for recording relations among themes (Bernard, 2000). Grounded theory, thus, differs significantly from traditional models of research in which the researcher chooses an existing theoretical framework and only then collects data to show how the theory does or does not apply to the phenomenon under study (Allan, 2003). Because of these significant differences from deductive qualitative methodologies, and since its inception in the field of health and wellness, grounded theory has become prominent in such diverse areas as manufacturing industries, business leadership and management, education and drama (Fletcher-­ Watson, 2013).

Variations of Grounded Theory Grounded theory was originally developed to allow for new, contextualized theories to emerge directly from data and represented a reaction against the prevalent hypothesis-testing and application of existing theories to new data. Grounded theory was designed to minimize the researcher imposing his/her own categories of meaning upon the data during the research process. A number of variations of grounded theory have emerged over the years, including the “classical” (Glaserian) version, Strauss and Corbin’s more structured approach, and Charmaz’s (2006) social constructivist version. The major issues around which debates have revolved in grounded theory research concern the role of induction, discovery versus construction, and social processes versus individual experience. Given the differences in philosophical underpinnings relating to the developers of grounded theory, it is not surprising to find numerous variations on these themes. For example, Professor Glaser is a proponent of objectivist grounded theory. In Glaser’s “classical” version, objectivist grounded theory views the world as an external reality and presumes the researcher is a neutral observer. The researcher identifies categories derived from the data, rendering the representation of data and topics or subjects non-problematic. Strauss and Corbin, however, advocate a more subjective view of grounded theory by proposing a “coding paradigm” involving “conditions, context, action/interactional strategies and consequences” (Strauss & Corbin, 1990, p.  96). As the

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methodology became more infused with detailed, step-by-step guides, grounded theory became more prescriptive. The coding paradigm required the researcher to seek manifestations of particular patterns in the data, thus adding a deductive element to grounded theory. This development was in direct contrast to taking the data as a starting point for categories to emerge. The coding paradigm identified dimensions of interest and explored data in light of these parameters, sensitizing the researcher to aspects of the data considered to be essential to understanding social phenomena. The coding paradigm consisted of: • Phenomenon – the concept that holds the bits together. • Causal conditions – a set of causes and their properties; the events or variables that lead to development of the phenomenon. • Context – a set of conditions influencing the action/strategy indicating the specific locations or values of background or moderating variables. • Intervening conditions – Similar to context but with mediating variables. • Action strategies – the purposeful, goal-oriented activities performed in response to the phenomenon and intervening conditions. • Consequences  – Refer to consequences of the action strategies, intended and unintended, although grounded theorists are less interested in consequences than in the phenomenon itself. Strauss and Corbin’s (1990) axial coding paradigm, for example, was designed to sensitize the researcher to the role of “process.” As they note, “unless the analyst is made keenly aware of the need to identify process, to build it into the analysis, it is often omitted or done in a very narrow or limited fashion” (p. 143). Strauss and Corbin also recommend a “conditional matrix” to introduce higher-level constructs such as class, gender, race and power into the analysis (Willig, 2013). Social constructivist grounded theory, on the other hand, prioritizes the study’s phenomenon above the methods used to study it. In this version of grounded theory, the methods used are viewed as instruments rather than as being prescriptive. Categories and theories are constructed by the researcher through interaction with the data (Willig, 2013). The researcher’s role in interpreting data and creating categories is acknowledged by Charmaz (1990), “The researcher creates an explication, organisation and presentation of the data rather than discovering order within the data. The discovery process consists of discovering the ideas the researcher has about the data after interacting with it” (p. 1169, emphasis in the original). This version of grounded theory is rooted in pragmatism and relativist epistemology, and assumes that data and theories are constructed by the researcher as (s)he conducts the research, rather than “discovering” data or theories (Charmaz, 2000). As Willig (2013) suggests, “Those who subscribe to the earlier, less prescriptive version of grounded theory are concerned that such a deductive element undermines the original purpose of grounded theory (i.e. the emergence of theory from data) by imposing researcher-defined categories…” (p.  77). In order to retain its creative potential, suggests Willig, grounded theory must maintain the openness of its original formulation. It must be responsive to the data. Highly prescriptive procedures and coding frames are incompatible with such flexibility (Willig, 2013).

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Critical Realist Grounded Theory A critical realist version of grounded theory was developed in order to generate mechanism-based explanations for social phenomena (Kempster & Parry, 2011). Bhaskar’s (1998) version of grounded theory calls for a structured, differentiated account of reality, whereby difference, stratification and change is central to theory development and combines a realist ontology with an interpretivist epistemology, which can be viewed as a “retroductive stager” for identifying causes and conditions of incidents related to grounded theory. As such, the “real” (structures and mechanisms), “actual” (events) and “empirical” (experiences and perceptions) dimensions of this version of grounded theory become highlighted (Bhaskar, 1998). Engaged Theory Engaged theory has been promoted as an alternative to grounded theory, as it emphasizes fieldwork linked to analytical empirical generalization. Unlike grounded theory, engaged theory resides within critical theory and determines a variety of levels of abstraction (James, 2006). Grounded Theory in Other Research Methods Grounded theory has also helped to provide a basis for research known as the data percolation methodology (Mesly, 2015). While this version of grounded theory accepts the notion relating to formulation of hypotheses, it also strongly recommends that the researcher first immerse him/herself in grounded research free of preconceived ideas or biases. From this point, steps are proposed that leads the research to meaningful results through allowing the data to “percolate.” Dissimilar from traditional grounded theory in any of its incarnations, the percolation method supports formulation of an emerging model, which evolves as the researcher moves from a grounded approach to a hypothetico-deductive method back to testing the emerging model in the research field again. Like grounded theory, however, this method of data percolation has been effective in social sciences, as well as in analyzing functional psychopathy (Mesly, 2015). Although grounded theory, in any of its renditions, has been found to be of use in any number of social and psychological disciplines, it has also been used to advantage in software engineering, law, medicine and economics, as well as in nursing, business, information technology and education. It has also been used, to a lesser degree, in disciplines such as social welfare, psychology, sociology and art (Gibbs, 2010a, b). As such, grounded theory has been recognized for its versatility in that it focuses more on procedural points rather than being focused within a specific discipline.

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Grounded Theory and Phenomenology Although grounded theory shares some common features with phenomenological research, in grounded theory, social processes are contextualized to a greater degree. Grounded theory also represents a more dynamic process in that the researcher seeks to identify and map social processes, relationships and the consequences in order to focus on participants’ individual experiences. Thus, grounded theory tends to be more psychologically focused, as the researcher is more concerned with participants’ internal landscapes, as opposed to social contexts. It could be argued, however, that a complete understanding of any social psychological phenomena may require social and internal contexts in order to encapsulate the lived experiences of participants.

The Philosophical Context Grounded theory is a “general framework” (Willis, 2007, p.  306) that guides a research process and includes detailed and specific frameworks that deal with data analysis and which are commonly associated with this form of research. Professor Glaser speaks to this in his interview, which can be viewed.

Video Clip 9.3: Professor Barney Glaser (▶ https://doi.org/10.1007/000-­6da)

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According to Professor Glaser, while it may be a simple matter to instruct researchers to simply use the “constant comparative method,” it is not quite as straightforward as it sounds. By using the constant comparative method, one may expect patterns to emerge, as if of their own accord. However, identifying patterns may be much easier to say than to do. There are numerous factors and conditions that interfere with recognizing patterns. Such things as life circumstances may promote or delay issues relating to the recognition of patterns. Other distractions or limitations that researchers bring to the methodology, according to Professor Glaser, may encompass human variables such as supervisors, colleagues or spouses, who may inadvertently influence the project at hand. Other issues, as noted by Glaser, may include, but are not limited to, a shortfall in terms of the researcher’s ability to detect patterns or to follow the methodology correctly. Additionally, he points to a common failing when it comes to understanding the “big picture” as it relates to grounded theory—that is, the tendency to short-circuit the conceptualization of the patterns presented in favour of reverting to description, so typical of many interpretive approaches to qualitative research methodologies. Typically, however, one strives to immerse oneself in the data, constantly comparing nascent pattern structures and searching to identify variables that may assist in the explanation or exploration of the phenomenon under study. At issue here is the problem of conceptualization, or conceptual description. Professor Glaser notes that a successful conceptualization of data may take numerous chapters in order to do justice to the specific concept. Grounded theory, claims Professor Glaser, must be followed rigourously in order to “liberate” concepts from the data that have been collected. He notes that it appears to be an almost paradoxical approach in that, by following the methodology with rigour, one can expect to become free to be very creative with the findings. However, he notes, researchers frequently become bogged down in qualitative description, simply because qualitative description is a hallmark of many qualitative research methodologies. Professor Glaser is among the first to admit that all research is grounded. However, typically, the grounding emanates from the choice of methodologies, the research questions advanced at the beginning of the study and the conceptual, theoretical or organizing frameworks. As previously noted, while grounded theory is often used with qualitative research, it can be used with any type of research simply because it can be used with any type of data. In short, the key to grounded theory is in the way the data is grounded because, no matter where one looks, there are always patterns that can be conceptualized. Just as inaction may be a form of action, even the absence of a pattern implies a pattern. But to be frank, Professor Glaser avers that a plethora of patterns abound in any given social situation. Social life is rife with patterns. Because of this, whenever a phenomenon related to social life is studied, patterns can be detected, whether the vehicle employed is quantitative, qualitative or even visual data. So, who would typically employ a grounded theory methodology? Apparently, the list is almost limitless. As Professor Glaser opines, the people who typically make use of this methodology possess the ability to conceptualize and, once they recognize that ability, they are hooked. Rigour, then, becomes a part of the process and different studies by disparate researchers reveal diverse levels of rigour.

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However, the two, possibly related, characteristics of successful researchers who practice grounded theory are the innate condition of having the ability or the intellect to conceptualize, as well as the proclivity to do so. As Colleen Capper (1993) notes, one must have not only the capacity but also the disposition. It is these twin traits, in tandem, that are essential to any meaningful articulation of research. It is at this point that Professor Glaser refers to the interchangeability of indicators. He states that when a pattern appears, based on indicators, one can recognize that pattern. Then, when one changes the indicators, the pattern, if indeed it is a valid pattern, will remain intact. Reversing the process and picking up other indicators should further validate the pattern. In a way, this is not dissimilar to Sir Karl Popper’s (1979) notion of rational fallibility. In his work on falsifiability, Popper’s basic scientific principle defines the inherent testability of any scientific hypothesis. According to Popper, no theory is ever proven to be a law until such time as it proves to be immune to falsifiability. That is, all theories work until such time as a new element proves the theory to be incomplete. At this time a new theory or a new rendition of the old theory must replace the existing one. The new theory must answer the question(s) that caused the old theory to become inaccurate or obsolete. This is the principle of falsification and only when a theory is unable to be falsified can it be considered to be a law. In a sense, the interchangeability or reversal of indicators operates in a similar fashion to Popper’s (1979) model of rational fallibility. Essentially, the reversal of indicators is akin to a litmus test of the validity of the theory that arises from the data.

The Research Process Grounded theory, like other qualitative research methodologies, merges data collection and analysis. As the researcher moves back and forth between the two, (s)he attempts to “ground” the analysis in the data in order to arrive at theoretical saturation. Grounded theory encourages the researcher to continuously review earlier stages of the research and to change direction, or to alter the research question, as necessary. By identifying the phenomenon under study at the outset of the research, the research question becomes progressively focused through the research process. Perhaps it may change, subsequent to the development of emerging categories.

The Research Question The initial research question should be open-ended and identify the phenomenon of interest, or incident, without making assumptions. Through the research process, the research question may be more narrowly focused, facilitated through theoretical sampling and the development of theoretical sensitivity. Once theoretical saturation is achieved, the initial research question may have changed beyond its original specification.

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Data Collection Grounded theory may employ a wide range of data collection techniques, such as (but not limited to) semi-structured interviews, participant observation, focus groups, or documents that generate data. Once the researcher collects a certain amount of data, open codes the data, establishes links between categories, (s)he returns to collect more data, which are progressively focused and informed by the emerging theory. This allows the researcher to seek manifestations of categories, negative cases and opposites, until category development is dense, detailed and differentiated. This assures the researcher that theoretical saturation has been approached. There are four apparent stages that are requisite in research that utilizes the grounded theory methodology. They are: • Coding – Identifying key points in the collected data. • Conceptualizing  – Collecting codes of similar content to allow for grouping of data. • Categorizing – Determining groups of similar concepts to be employed to generate theory. • Theorizing  – Collecting categories that explain the theory emerging from the research. There are other methods, too numerous to discuss, common to many qualitative research methodologies that are also available to the grounded theory researcher. Participant observation, interviewing and collecting of artefacts and documents are all well-established methods of collecting and accumulating data.

Data Analysis Unlike most cases, the researcher begins with a single sample where (s)he gathers information. When all the data has been collected and no new data exists within the sample, theoretical saturation has been approached and the researcher chooses a new sample. From this point, coding takes place and the researcher has a profound understanding of the data. The data are then connected to a core element, category or variable in order for the data to relate a story. Before writing the final report on the findings, the researcher makes theoretical memos, which allows the recording of important information. This may be assisted by the use of computer applications such as NUDIST, developed to address grounded theory notions (Potter, 1998). Initial open coding involves the development of descriptive labels that establish categories. Linkages between categories advance them into higher-order analytic categories. A coding paradigm sensitizes the researcher to ways categories may be linked, thus promoting the arrangement of categories in a meaningful, hierarchical way, with some categories constituting the “core” and others the “periphery.”

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Strauss (1987) suggested a coding paradigm, referred to as “axial coding,” focused on “process” and “change” (Strauss & Corbin, 1990), while Glaser argues against such a paradigm, as he claims it pre-supposes the relevance of particular constructs such as “process” or “change” to the data. He claims that, instead, the data themselves remain the best source of relevant theoretical codes. Suffice it to say that grounded theory is not conducted in exactly the same way by different researchers, who will typically tailor their research processes to suit themselves (Morse & Niehaus, 2009). Coding The first phase of data analysis begins with coding the data. This serves to conceptualize the data by identifying categories within which they fit. The coding process has three phases: open coding, axial coding, and selective coding (Haig, 2010). The strategy is to focus on single units of data and their possible meanings. This tends to encourage the development of theoretical sensitivity, wherein the researcher interacts with the data by asking questions, making comparisons and looking for opposites, and may require returning to the source for further data (Willig, 2013) in order to gain new ideas regarding the eventual emerging theory. This process also assists in preventing the data from being forced into existing categories (Haig, 2010). As data are collected, everything is coded in order to find out about the problem and how it is being resolved. Because theorizing begins with the very first bits of data that are collected, useful concepts are identified and named, as key words or phrases are identified and conceptualized line by line. This process of open coding (Strauss & Corbin, 1990), substantive coding (Holton, 2010), or initial coding (Charmaz, 2006) is repeated and always foreshadows the next level of analysis, as it renders data into conceptual components that may eventually be linked to larger, more developed concepts. This phase may prove tedious because every incident reported in the data must be conceptualized and this tends to yield a great many concepts. Data are compared as more data are coded, merged into new concepts and, eventually, renamed and reorganized. As the researcher moves back and forth while comparing data, the developing theory becomes more clearly defined. This involves the constant comparative method, which continues throughout the process, up to and including the development of fully-fledged theories. Maintaining an inventory of codes in a codebook may be useful and, as codes are developed, memos or code notes can add greater coherence to the codes, which can, later, be developed into reports. Following open coding, the next step is referred to as selective coding, in which the researcher systematically identifies categories and themes, articulating a coherent understanding of the phenomenon under study that relate to the core variable, or core category, tentatively chosen as the “heart” of the emerging theory. The core variable is therefore central to development of the emergent theory (Haig, 2010). Once the core variable is chosen, coding continues in much the same vein, but only data germane to the core variable are selected. This selective sampling is referred to

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as theoretical sampling (Glaser, 1998) and represents a deductive process concerned with the refinement and, ultimately, saturation of existing and increasingly analytic categories (Willig, 2013). As a caveat, Professor Glaser warns of contracting what he terms “Core Fever.” Core fever occurs when the implications of the work are so profound that the researcher begins to see the application of grounded theory everywhere. While it may look like it applies to all and sundry, the theory may not apply because it must always be grounded in the reversibility of indicators. This can become a confusing process for the researcher as well as for others involved in this process. However, after a time of immersion in the data and adhering to the process of grounded theory, as Barney Glaser notes, it suddenly becomes clear. He notes this because, as he claims, preconscious processing can be very rapid and very strong, much faster than conscious processing. Preconscious processing occurs when coding and comparing is recognized and ideas are registered, serendipitously, about the ongoing study. Serendipitously enough, it was sociologist Robert Merton (1968) who referred to the “serendipity pattern” (a pattern also endorsed by the National Quilters Association) as a common experience of observing unanticipated, anomalous and strategic data which then may become an occasion for developing a new theory or extending an existing theory. Merton further developed the idea of serendipity as a scientific “method,” as opposed to the notion of purposeful discovery through experimentation (Merton & Barber, 2004). Selective coding accelerates the process of coding, as it is purposive, in order to generate concepts that are abstractions of people, time and place. The purpose of selective coding is to develop a “story” around previously coded data to create a core concept, adhering to the notion that such a concept has always existed. Selective coding can be accomplished either by retracing field notes or memos that have already been coded at an earlier stage or by coding newly gathered data (Glaser, 1998). From this process, the researcher may move to developing theoretical codes. Theoretical coding, developed by applying a theoretical model to the data, weaves the concepts created by the coding process into hypotheses together and begins to create an integrated theory that tentatively explains the major concerns of the participants. As noted previously by Barney Glaser (1992), it is of significant importance that this model not be forced beforehand, but emerges during the constant comparative process. So, theoretical codes, as with open coding (Strauss & Corbin, 1990), substantive coding (Holton, 2010), or initial coding (Charmaz, 2006), should necessarily emerge from the process of constantly comparing the data in field notes and memos. As if the whole notion of coding is not confusing enough, Strauss (1987) maintains that, once a full array of categories has been identified through the process of open and selective coding, axial coding is introduced. Strauss and Corbin (1990) define axial coding as “a set of procedures whereby data are put back together in new ways after open coding, by making connections between categories.” Axial coding follows the intensive open coding process, whereby the researcher brings together the identified categories into groupings or themes that generally represent new ways of understanding the phenomenon under study. Along the way, theoretical

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notes or memos are introduced, which identifies something in the text or codes that relates to the research literature. The final theory usually is the result of the integration of theoretical memos from the core category. Thus, a grounded theory is the study of the core category that has been developed into a concept and, ultimately, into a theory. The core category is the concept to which all other concepts relate; its discovery signals the end of the open coding stage (Scott 2009). The major issue at this point is that the researcher cannot know what is being studied until a significant amount of analysis has been accomplished. Memoing Once the issue of coding has been attended to, the process of “memoing” may begin, if it has not already been introduced through the collection of field notes and other artefacts. Memoing may also occur throughout the coding process, as well (Savin-Baden & Major, 2013). Memos written with regard to data codes and theoretical ideas enable the researcher to identify gaps that require the collection of further data. Theoretical sampling, in contrast with traditional representative sampling, assists with this process. Decisions regarding what data to collect, code, analyze and interpret are directly related to the emerging theory. Relevant events, activities and populations may be sampled and comparisons between them help to increase the conceptual density and integration of the emerging theory. When the additional gathering and analysis of data no longer contribute to the understanding of a concept or category, a point of theoretical saturation is reached. At this point, the researcher stops collecting data with respect to a particular category and moves onto consideration of another category or concept (Haig, 2010). Theoretical memoing represents the core of grounded theory methodology and, according to Glaser (1998), “Memos are the theorizing write-up of ideas about substantive codes and their theoretically coded relationships as they emerge during coding, collecting and analyzing data, and during memoing” (p.  177). Memo-­ writing may occur at any stage of the research process; however, it frequently takes place between the coding of data and writing the initial draft. Memos identify, develop and keep track of theoretical ideas. Where relevant, they are recorded, recalled and reworked to produce new theoretical memos. Memo writing becomes more systematic, focused, and intense as a theory of greater density and coherence is developed (Haig, 2010). Theoretical memos refine and track ideas as they develop in comparing incidents and concepts to other concepts, as the theory begins to evolve. Accordingly, Glaser (1998) has noted that, in the absence of memos, the concepts generated cannot be particularly original nor can the theory be other than superficial. He likens memoing to a bank of ideas about concepts that will, later, become the written theory, and how they relate to one another. Barney Glaser views memoing as total creative freedom without rules of writing, grammar or style (Glaser, 1998) and represent an instrument for the outflow of ideas, nothing more.

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As previously mentioned, notes, or memos, on concepts represent an intermediate stage of the process, between coding and the first draft of the complete analysis. “Memoing” represents observations and insights about the concepts that have been developed, beginning with the initial identification of concepts and continues throughout the process, as the researcher renders text and creates theories. Memos will reveal directional changes in the analytic process as well as in emerging perspectives. It may also afford insights into the validity of the research question. As a result, memos may offer information about all aspects of the research process, as well as the study’s findings. All memos, regardless of length, level of abstraction or form, however, are dated, identified by a heading and state the sections of data from which they derive. Sorting and Conceptualizing Sorting refers to the sorting of memos into a conceptual outline of the emergent theory, showing relationships between concepts. This process may encourage development of further memos and, sometimes, more data collection. As memoing becomes more or less complete, the next step is to sort the memos into categories, through which the eventual theory will take shape. Sorting re-associates fractured data and allows new ideas to emerge, which are also memoed. It is this sorting that helps organize the conceptualizing of data into an emerging theory. Memo sorting is a requisite step in order to connect concepts that will eventually be linked to theory development. From this point, the process becomes more intensive, as the concepts are integrated, refined and developed into theoretical models around a central category, utilizing the constant comparative method. It is here that the cases that do not confirm the emerging theoretical model may be analyzed, incorporated or discarded. Sir Karl Popper’s (1979) theory of rational fallibility, noted earlier in this chapter, may be of significance at this juncture. The model must work from the inception of the first datum to the final piece of the data collection in order to ascertain the validity of the emergent theory. Thus, theorizing becomes an iterative process, required to build the stages and test the theory as it emerges from the data (Bernard & Ryan, 2010). Hypothesizing Because grounded theory may utilize both inductive and deductive thinking, one approach is to formulate a hypothesis from the conceptual stage (Strauss & Corbin, 1990, 1994). Additionally, one may strive to verify generated hypotheses through the constant comparative method of scrutinizing conceptualized data deductively, by employing differing levels of abstraction (Glaser, 2001). This process may include, but is not limited to, discovering the major concerns of participants and attempting to resolve these issues, as in Glaser and Strauss’s (1965/2005) book, Awareness of Dying.

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These concerns may be answered by one or more of the core variables and attending properties. In any case, the researcher must always formulate the hypothesis from the data in order to maintain the groundedness of the theory (Glaser & Strauss, 1967). As such, grounded theory is not a descriptive methodology but strives to generate explanatory or illustrative concepts about how people resolve their concerns, independent of time and place. Unlike most other behavioural research, where the participants become the units of analysis, grounded theory makes use of the incident, rather than the individual(s), themselves. Consequently, numerous incidents may be analyzed due to the fact that many participants report numerous incidents (Glaser & Strauss, 1967). When comparing incidents, emerging concepts and their relationships are de facto probability statements about the relationship between concepts, although, typically, neither statical methods nor tables of figures are employed. As a result, grounded theory represents a general methodology that can make use of virtually any kind of data (Glaser, 1998, 2001). Consequently, validity in its traditional sense is no longer an issue; however, validity may be ascertained by fit, relevance, workability, and modifiability (Glaser & Strauss, 1967; Glaser, 1978, 1998). Definitions for these terms are provided, below; • Fit  – Concepts are closely connected to the incidents they are representing, related to the thoroughness of the constant comparison of incidents to concepts. • Relevance –Deals with real concerns of participants, captures attention and is of practical, popular interest beyond academic interest. • Workability – The theory explains how the problem is resolved. A significant amount of variation may occur. • Modifiability – A modifiable theory can be altered when new relevant data are compared to existing data. As a consequence, grounded theory cannot be considered either right or wrong, as its validity is a function of fit, relevance, workability and modifiability (Hernandez Blanco & Alas-as, n.d.). Perhaps the reason that grounded theory can be considered neither right nor wrong, is because, as Barney Glaser notes, “All is data” (Glaser, 2007). In this sense, data may be generated from field notes, informal interviews, lectures, seminars, expert group meetings, newspaper articles, Internet mailing lists, even television shows, selfinterviews and/or conversations with friends (Ralph et al., 2014). Writing and Literature Review The sorting process results in categories of memos and the writing up of these memos, once completed, constitutes a first draft of the theory. The different categories are now related to each other and the core variable. Concepts are described in words, tables or figures so that the final product is literate and the theory is close to the written product. Once the theory is relatively intact, it is now cogent to integrate relevant literature into the theorizing in order to maximize a scholarly context. From this point, the draft may be revised and polished into a final product.

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Criteria for Judging the Efficacy of the Theory There are five criteria in common use that can be brought to bear on the efficacy of the eventual theory (Glaser & Strauss, 1967). These include; • Parsimony  – The simplest, most straightforward explanation is the most meaningful. • Scope – The theory must be broad enough to be applied to a variety of contexts. • Explanatory Power – Identification of the boundaries of the theory, as developed. • Generalizability – The theory must be useful when applied to similar situations. • Internal Consistency – The theory must be able to hang together consistently and coherently, by means of the logical interrelationship of the various components. (Willis, 2007) Although these characteristics are sought after, they may also not be apparent in every theory that is developed through grounded theory. Basically, three of the above five criteria relate to generalizability and the remaining two relate to the overall consistency of the theory, meaning that the criteria support internal and external validity. As Willis (2007) notes, this list does not stray very far from post-positivist sentiments. As a result, these criteria may not always offer appropriate ways to judge the efficacy of the theory. Some theories may be narrow and austere or rich and complex, and, as such, these criteria serve as guidelines rather than essential characteristics of a successfully developed theory. As in all things, caveat emptor serves as a reasonable rule of thumb. Justification of the criteria, when used, should be a function of the theory, regardless of whether these characteristics are brought into service or other characteristics have been proven useful. Finally, as Willis (2007) notes, the constant comparative method is not the sole property of grounded theory but can be seen in a variety of qualitative research methodologies and in the natural sciences, as well, even when the purpose of the endeavor is not theory development.

The Constant Comparative Method Grounded theory may be distinguished from other methodologies by its structured data-gathering and analytical process called the constant comparative method. Using this method, each datum is compared to others to determine similarities and differences in order to code, analyze, recode, and produce a theory from narratives obtained through the chosen data collection strategies (DePoy & Gitlin, 2016). The constant comparative method is a blend of systematic coding, data analysis and theoretical sampling which enables the researcher to interpret diverse patterns in the data by developing theoretical ideas at a higher level of abstraction than the initial data descriptions (Haig, 2010). This method allows the researcher to build up categories and to break them down again into smaller units of meaning. By doing this,

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the complexity and diversity of the data can be appreciated, and any homogenizing impulse can be counteracted. The ultimate objective of this method is to link and integrate categories so that all instances of variation are captured by the emerging theory (Willig, 2013). There are commonly six steps associated with the constant comparative method found in conjunction with Grounded Theory Methodology (Strauss & Corbin, 1994), as identified by Glaser (1978). These steps are; • Begin collecting the data. • Organize the data into convenient units such as sentences, events, paragraphs or other methods that satisfy issues of data organization. • Associate similar units and identify categories for the data. • Seek links, relationality and associations between the categories. • Develop broad, general explanations from the categories and their relationships. • Repeat the above steps until saturation occurs. Although these are greatly oversimplified here, they do represent the link between theory and data to the extent that it is the data that drives the development of the theory by allowing categories, derived from data points that share common characteristics, to emerge from the data (Willis, 2007). Once the categories have been identified, the relationships among the categories emerge, allowing a tentative theory to be developed. As Willis notes, “Theories are general explanations that are specific enough to generate hypotheses that can be tested by being applied to additional data” (2007, p.  307), thus establishing the constant comparative method, which, as more data is collected, allows for the hypothesis to be tested and the theory to be modified, as necessary.

Anomalies and Caveats Contrary to many qualitative methodologies, with grounded theory, pre-research on the topic, audio- or video taping of interviews, and discussion of theories is unnecessary and may even be limiting in terms of eventual theory development (Charmaz, 2006). The freedom to generate new concepts regarding human behaviour is optimized when the researcher refrains from studying the literature prior to collecting the data. In this way, preconceptions are avoided. Instead, literature is incorporated at the sorting stage, allowing it to become akin to more data to code and to eventually compare with the data that has been coded to date. Likewise, taping of interviews is considered to be counter-productive, as the researcher may wish to delimit data through field-notes regarding interviews with the eventual aim of generating concepts that are relevant and fit the data. However, some researchers may wish to return to more traditional methods of transcribing, coding, and re-coding in development of the theory (Charmaz, 2006). Additionally, as Glaser (1998) notes, discussing the theory before it is written is draining, diminishing the necessity for memoing that develops and refines both

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concepts and the eventual theory, itself. This freedom from pre-research, audio- or video taping and discussion liberates the researcher and allows for ecological validity and greater novelty. Ecological validity is the extent to which the research findings represent reality and, as such, grounded theories are generally ecologically valid as they are generated from the data upon which they are established. As well, because grounded theories remain independent of pre-existing theories, they are more likely to be fresh and are able to present greater opportunities for innovation (Charmaz, 2004). Furthermore, grounded theories tend to be parsimonious (Glaser & Strauss, 1967) in that they present the most elegant explanation of complex phenomena. Elegant, in this sense, refers to the simplicity and effectiveness of grounded theory to provide explicit, sequential guidelines for conducting research, to offer specific strategies for the analytic phases of inquiry, to streamline and integrate data collection and analysis, and to legitimize qualitative research as scientific inquiry (Charmaz, 2004).

Limitations of Grounded Theory Grounded theory, however, is not without its critics. Thomas and James (2006) quibble with the terms “grounded” and “theory,” questioning what the so-say theory is grounded in and if the product is truly a theory. However, the most provocative point they make is that the claim to developing and using inductive knowledge is overstated. Among other points raised is the impossibility of not only freeing oneself of preconceptions in terms of the collection and analysis of data to the extent necessary, but also that grounded theory methods are too formulaic and are, therefore, incongruent with the notion of freedom of interpretation, as presented. Despite significant criticism by scholars such as Goldthorpe (1997), grounded theory has seen a flurry of debate as to its validity as a methodology on both sides of the question of scope and context. Mjøset (2005) claims that Goldthorpe’s criticism is merely a side effect of an attempt to synthesize two standard notions of theory, leading to an unbridgeable and unsustainable division, in the case of grounded theory, between theory and context. Mjøset notes that, “Grounded theory is not committed to such a divide and can thus solve one of Goldthorpe’s main problems, which is that he cannot establish any theory (and thus not explain) without some ‘delimitation of scope’ or context” (p. 379). Other critics note that grounded theory can be reductive in its search for general patterns, that selective coding does not cover contextual issues, that it relies too heavily on empirical data in that fieldwork, as a source of theory, sets it against consideration of previous theories (Parker & Roffey, 1997). Addition critique has been leveled at Strauss’s interpretation of grounded theory in that the hypotheses, variables, reliability and replicability is contradictory with qualitative research (Tolhurst, 2012). Additionally, Tolhurst claims that it is inappropriate to ignore existing theories by paying less attention to the literature review, also noting that grounded theory suffers from a complex methodology and confusing terminology.

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Perhaps because of its beginnings in psychology and health research, grounded theory may represent a more positivistic qualitative methodology, epistemologically speaking, than some researchers are comfortable with. In addition to this perceived limitation, grounded theory has been criticized as being too narrow a methodology, given its focus on revealing social processes. Originally, grounded theory was intended to work inductively, so that new theories could emerge from data. However, one consideration was that the researcher becomes more or less invisible, as it was expected that data would speak for themselves, even though any observation is developed from a specific perspective. Consequently, the observation depends upon the observer(s), regardless of how they claim to be positioned. This is inherently a cyclical process, as the data is always theoretically informed, even as it informs the theory, because the process is guided by research questions emerging from the data. Categories do not simply emerge from the data; ultimately, they are constructed through the research, by the researcher. As a result, the question of what grounds grounded theory has been considered a serious limitation of this methodology (Stanley & Wise, 2002). However, as noted by Dey (1999), there are very likely as many versions of grounded theory as there are grounded theorists. The major issue, it seems, focuses on the notion of reflexivity. As noted by Pidgeon and Henwood (2009), reflexivity can be increased and improved by careful documentation during each phase of the research. Accordingly, this precaution may help to reveal how the researcher’s assumptions, values, sampling decisions, analytic technique, interpretations of context, and so on, have shaped the research. The suitability of grounded theory for qualitative psychological research has come under fire. As Willig (2013) notes, applied to questions about the nature of experience, as opposed to the unfolding of social processes, grounded theory is reduced to a method for systematic categorization. When studies, concerned with capturing the meanings that a particular experience holds for an individual, tend to use single interviews, transcribed and coded using the principles of grounded theory, the result is a systematic concept and category map used to make sense of participant experience. Such a map, according to Willig (2013), does not constitute a theory because such mappings represent a description rather than an explanation geared towards the development of a theory. As such, research into the nature of experience may be more suitable to a phenomenological methodology. Thus, grounded theory’s positivist tendencies limit the development of a social constructionist version of the methodology. Further to this, while the researcher is expected to act as a witness (Charmaz, 1990), striving to be objective rather than imparting assumptions and expectations into the analysis, social constructionist versions of grounded theory view the researcher as more than a witness (Willig, 2013). In this incarnation of grounded theory, the researcher actively constructs an understanding of the phenomenon under investigation and, as such, grounded theory does not capture social reality but is a social construction of reality (Charmaz, 1990). In this instance, the respondent’s understanding of “what causes what” is taken as truth. Thus, the respondent or participant is viewed as the inside expert and the ensuing theory becomes nothing more than the model created by the participant with assistance from the researcher.

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 eature Article: Grounded Theory and Negotiating F Breast Cancer Grounded theory has frequently been incorporated in examining participant understandings of their lived experiences and the relation of these experiences to their specific social context. The following article studies breast cancer survivors who completed a treatment program. This inquiry illuminates basic social processes related to negotiating emotions that create a decision to take action (See Negotiating emotional order: a grounded theory of breast cancer survivors).

Summary: Grounded Theory from Multiple Perspectives Grounded theory, introduced by Barney Glaser and Anselm Strauss, is a widely known methodology employed to conduct qualitative research in the social sciences and beyond. Interview footage with Professor Barney Glaser is included on our accessible website. This chapter offers a discussion of grounded theory and its variations. It delves into the coding, sorting, conceptualizing process and hypothesis development, and describes the utility of grounded theory regarding other research. Specific details regarding the implementation of the literature review are included in this chapter, as are a number of anomalies, caveats and limitations of grounded theory. The constant comparative method is described at length and the research methodology is detailed. A comparison of grounded theory and phenomenology is included in this chapter. Criteria for judging the efficacy of the eventual theory is the penultimate section, occurring prior to the feature article that uses a grounded theory methodology to examine how breast cancer survivors negotiate their respective situations. Suggestions for Further Reading Should the reader wish to read further regarding grounded theory, please see the following: Bryant, A., & Charmaz, K. (Eds.). (2007). The Sage handbook of grounded theory. Sage. Dey, I. (2007). Grounded theory. In C. Seale, G. Gobo, J. F. Gubrium & D. Silverman (Eds.). Qualitative research practice: Concise paperback edition, (pp. 80–94). Sage. Gubrium, J.  F., & Holstein, J.  A. (2001). The handbook of interview research: Context & method. sage. Gubrium, J. F., Holstein, J. A., Marvasti, A., & McKinney, K. (Eds.). (2012). The Sage handbook of interview research: The complexity of the craft. Sage. Henwood, K. L., & Pidgeon, N. F. (2012) Grounded theory. In G. M. Breakwell, J. A. Smith & D. B. Wright (Eds.). Research methods in psychology (4th ed., pp. 461–484). Sage.

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Melia, K. M. (1996). Rediscovering Glaser, Qualitative Health Research (Special Issue: Advances in Grounded Theory), 6(3), 368–378. Pidgeon, N. F., & Henwood, K. L. (1997). Using grounded theory in psychological research. In N.  Hayes (Ed.). Doing qualitative analysis in psychology (pp. 245–274). Psychology Press. Selected Annotated Bibliography Bernard, H.  R., Wutich, A., & Ryan, G.  W. (2016). Analyzing qualitative data: Systematic approaches (2nd ed.). Sage. This volume is a fully updated second edition, which presents systematic methods for analyzing qualitative data in a clear and comprehensive fashion. The first half of the book contains an overview of the basics, beginning with choosing a topic and then proceeding to data collection and coding to finding themes. The second part of the volume covers different methods and methodologies of analysis, including grounded theory, content analysis, analytic induction, semantic network analysis, ethnographic decision modeling, and more. Examples are drawn from social science and health literature, along with carefully crafted exercises at the end of each chapter, which will hopefully allow readers to master key techniques and apply them to their own disciplines. Interestingly enough, this volume does not contain a chapter on mixed methods, as the authors believe that mixed methods represents a natural way of proceeding. Charmaz, K. (2014). Constructing grounded theory (2nd ed.). Sage. In this important and essential new textbook, the author introduces the reader to grounded theory applications in social science research, providing a clear, step-by-­ step guide for those new to the field. Using examples throughout the volume, this book maps out an alternative vision of grounded theory put forward by its founding thinkers, Glaser and Strauss. To Charmaz, grounded theory must move forward from its positivist origins in order to incorporate many of the methods and questions posed by constructivists over the past several decades. Through this evolutionary move, grounded theory may be poised to become a more nuanced and reflexive practice. This volume presents a definitive guide to doing grounded theory from a constructivist perspective and introduces cutting edge examples and practical tips, including how to effectively focus on data collection, how to use data for theorizing, and conducting and analyzing interviews. There is also a new chapter on symbolic interactionism and grounded theory. Corbin, J. M., & Strauss, A. L. (2014). Basics of qualitative research: Grounded theory procedures and techniques (4nd ed.). Sage. Offering immensely practical advice, Basics of Qualitative Research, Fourth Edition presents methods that enable researchers to analyze, interpret and make sense of their data, and ultimately build theory from it. Authors Juliet Corbin and Anselm Strauss walk readers step-by-step through the research process—from the formation of the research question through several approaches to coding, analysis, and reporting. Packed with definitions and illustrative examples, this highly

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accessible book concludes with chapters that present criteria for evaluating a study, as well as responses to common questions posed by students of qualitative research. A new end-of-chapter “Insider Insights,” contributed by qualitative researchers, offers a sense of what it is like to work in the field. Significantly revised, the Fourth Edition is a landmark volume in the study of qualitative methods. This volume is a useful reference for scholars and students, alike. Glaser, B.  G. (2001). The grounded theory perspective: Conceptualization contrasted with description. The Sociology Press. This book addresses numerous ideas in grounded theory that researchers may not have yet considered or realized. It will also assist the novice researcher to deal with questions and concerns of individuals who have been trained in other qualitative and quantitative methodological perspectives. All will benefit from the book’s focus on the distinction Professor Glaser articulates between conceptualization and description. Without a doubt, many graduate students—especially those who do not have a mentor skilled in the classic grounded theory design—are concerned about doing studies or dissertations using the classic grounded theory design for fear of doing them incorrectly. While there is extant literature in the field of classic grounded theory, a clear and simple how-to does not exist. This book strives to put grounded theory into perspective among many qualitative methodologies and to keep Professor Glaser’s genuine view of orthodox grounded theory on track by elaborating on its distinctiveness from other methodologies. Glaser, B. G., & Strauss, A. L. (1965/2005). Awareness of dying. Routledge. Death can be viewed as a social ritual, representing the final turning point in human existence. However, prior to this classic work, the process of dying had been subjected to little scientific study. Awareness of Dying uses a highly original theory of awareness. This volume examines the dying patient and those about him/her in social interaction, providing not only a language, but also tools of analysis for understanding dying, the circumstances and the difference it makes. The authors use their finely detailed observations to develop theoretical constructs that will be of use in many other interactions and situations. Awareness of Dying was the first study of dying in hospitals, and has proven a useful handbook for chaplains, social workers, nurses, and doctors in confronting the many ethical and personal problems that arise in the dying situation. Now available in paperback, it is destined to reach new audiences interested in this key part of all life. James, P. (2006). Globalism, nationalism, tribalism: Bringing theory back in. Sage. Globalism, Nationalism, Tribalism establishes a new basis for understanding the changing nature of polity and community, and offers unprecedented attention to these dominant trends. Paul James charts the contradictions and tensions we all encounter in an era of increasing globalization, from genocide and terrorism to television and finance capital. Globalism tends to be an uneven and layered process of spatial expansion, not simply one of disorder, fragmentation or rupture. Nor is it simply a force of homogenization. Nationalism is taken seriously as a continuing

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and important formation of contemporary identity and politics. The book rewrites modernist theories of the nation-state without devolving into the postmodernist assertion that all is invention or surface gloss. Tribalism is given the attention it has long warranted and is analyzed as a continuing and changing formation of social life, from the villages of Rwanda to the cities of the West. Merton, R. K., & Barber, E. (2004). The travels and adventures of serendipity: A study in sociological semantics and the sociology of science. Princeton University Press. From names of cruise lines and bookstores to an Australian ranch and a nudist camp outside of Atlanta, Georgia, the word serendipity—that happy blend of wisdom and luck by which something is discovered not quite by accident—is ubiquitous. This book traces the word’s event-filled history from its 1754 coinage into the current century, chronicling much of the natural and social sciences along the way. The book charts where the term went, with whom it resided, and how it fared. We traverse oceans and academic specialties and meet those people, both famous and now obscure, who have used and abused serendipity. We encounter a linguistic sage, walk the illustrious halls of the Harvard Medical School, attend the (serendipitous) birth of penicillin, and meet someone who “manages serendipity” for the U.S. Navy. Beautifully written, the book is permeated by the prodigious intellectual curiosity and generosity that characterized Merton’s influential On the Shoulders of Giants. Morse, J. M., & Niehaus, L. (2009). Mixed method design: Principles and procedures. Left Coast Press. Mixed method design, related to the use of a combination of methods, usually quantitative and qualitative, is increasingly being used for investigating complex phenomena. A distinctive feature of this approach, resembling grounded theory, is the consideration of mixed methods design out of a core and a supplemental component. In order to define these components, the authors emphasize the overall conceptual direction of the project in terms of the theoretical drive, which is either inductive or deductive, an echo of the Strauss/Glaser grounded theory design. The synchronization of the two components is either performed simultaneously or sequentially. This volume highlights reflections of methodological approaches related to consideration of the risk of validity threats in mixed methods design, issues regarding building mixed method design on the binary of inductive versus deductive designs, issues related to “theory” and trends in methodological development, such as a tendency to focus on generic qualitative research. Peirce, C. S. (2011). Philosophical writings of Peirce. Dover. Charles S. Peirce was a thinker of great originality and power. Although unpublished in his lifetime, he was recognized as an equal by such men as William James and John Dewey. Since his death in 1914, Peirce has come to the forefront of American philosophy. This volume is a carefully balanced exposition of Peirce’s complete philosophical system, as set forth in his own writings. The 28 chapters interweave appropriate sections of Peirce’s work into a brilliant selection that

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reveals his essential ideas, covering epistemology, phenomenology, cosmology, and scientific method. Of special interest are his views on the theory of signs, pure chance versus pure law in the universe, symbolic logic, common sense, pragmatism (of which he was the founder), and ethics. It is very significant to have this collection of Peirce’s most important work within the covers of a single substantial volume. This volume was edited posthumously by Professor Justus Buchler. Stanley, L., & Wise, S. (2002). Breaking out again: Feminist ontology and epistemology. Routledge. Breaking Out is one of the classics of feminist sociology. In this new edition, the authors review the main developments in feminist thinking on research issues. First published in 1983, feminist consciousness and research continues to be widely studied around the world. Breaking Out Again discusses the theory, counterpoised and challenged by the actuality of feminist research, which should neither be compartmentalized nor analytically unpacked via disparate intellectual means, as the precise content of oppression faced by women varies between and among women. The term, “oppression,” encompasses a variety of means, due to time, place and circumstance, by which women fight back. This volume argues that feminist research would benefit from greater sophistication, and that feminist social science needs to be empirically grounded. Additionally, the book argues for a more nuanced and sympathetic consideration by feminist social scientists. Willig, C. (2013). Introducing qualitative research in psychology (3rd ed.). Open University Press. Introducing Qualitative Research in Psychology is a vital resource for students new to qualitative psychology. It offers a clear introduction to the topic by taking six different approaches to qualitative methods and explains when each one should be used, the procedures and techniques involved, and any limitations associated with such research. Throughout the new edition, material has been re-organized and updated to reflect developments in the field; however, Carla Willig’s style of writing, popular with students and lecturers alike, remains unchanged. The book also examines reflexivity and ethics, including the benefits of different approaches and comparisons. Appropriate ways of writing up research are also included between the pages of this volume. This edition contains numerous interactive exercises and tasks that will help students understand what they are learning, as well as three qualitative research reports with annotations, highlighting key issues for novice researchers. Questions for Further Study • In what ways does grounded theory differ from other qualitative research methodologies? What makes grounded theory distinctive? • Formulate a research topic and interview protocol that would be suitable for a grounded theory inquiry. What would you require in order to begin this study? • From the question above, what are some of the potential sources of data and directions of inquiry?

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• Choose an article about a news event or situation. Using the article, code the article, using grounded theory. What are the results of the coding exercise? Does the coding exercise reveal any new information and, if so, what is revealed? • Of the numerous versions of grounded theory that are available, which version do you prefer and under what circumstances would this be your methodology of choice?

 egotiating emotional order: a grounded theory of breast N cancer survivors Jennifer A. Klimek Yingling Klimek Yingling, J. A. (2018). Negotiating emotional order: A grounded theory of breast cancer survivors. Grounded Theory Review: An International Journal 17(1), 12-27. Abstract In this article, classic grounded theory captures the processes of 12 women who had completed initial treatment for breast cancer. The qualitative data analysis reveals the basic social process of negotiating emotional order that describe how breast cancer survivors perceive their illness and decide to take action. From the data, five stages of the process of negotiating emotional order emerge: 1) Losing Life Order, 2) Assisted Life Order, 3) Transforming 4) Accepting, and 5) Creating Emotional Order. This study may help healthcare providers who care for breast cancer survivors understand the depth of perpetual emotional impact that breast cancer survivors endure. This study will potentially serve as a path for future research and aid in the understanding of the psychological impact that breast cancer has upon survivors. Keywords: breast cancer, survivor, chemotherapy, emotional order

What Sparked This Research I cared for a patient who I had gotten to know as her child often visited the emergency department due to hemophilia. She was a pleasure to work with, strong, level headed, and upbeat. On this particular day she was the patient. Her complaint was simple: a cough and she clearly wasn’t herself emotionally. I was surprised to discover, when I took her past medical history, that she was a breast cancer survivor. After I discussed her chest x-ray results I sensed she was still upset and filled with uncertainty. Then the lightbulb went on. I asked her directly if she was concerned if the cancer was recurring. She said yes and her tears flowed. I do believe if I had not dug a little deeper into her emotional state she would have left the emergency department with much of the

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same emotional duress that she initially had. This interaction sparked my research as it was clear that breast cancer survivors endure a process after treatment ends. For these survivors the treatment is over but the emotional aspect of breast cancer is not. It also became evident to me that health care providers need to know more about this process on order to be able to treat patients holistically.

 egotiating Emotional Order: A Grounded Theory of Breast N Cancer Survivors Breast cancer is the most prevalent cancer found in women worldwide (American Cancer Society [ACS], 2016; Ferlay et al., 2104). In the United States, it is estimated that 3.5 million women have been diagnosed with breast cancer; 245,000 will be newly diagnosed; and, approximately 40,000 women will succumb to breast cancer annually (ACS, 2016; Breastcancer.org, 2016). Early detection and improved treatment is credited to the rising population of women who are breast cancer survivors (Howlader et al., 2015; McCloskey, Lee, & Steinburg, 2011). Concerns about the psychosocial ramifications of chronic illness have a long history. The Institute of Medicine (2009), American Cancer Society (2015), and the American Society of Clinical Oncology (2015) resonate concern about psychosocial hindrances regarding cancer patients, citing them as a critical area needing improvement within the nation’s health care system. The literature suggests breast cancer survivors endure psychological stressors after the completion of treatment including the following: loneliness (Marroquin, Czamanski-Cohen, Weihs, & Stanton, 2016; Rosedale, 2009), anxiety and depression (Walker, Szanton, & Wenzel, 2015), uncertainty (Dawson, Madsen, & Dains, 2016; Mishel et al., 2005), and fear of recurrence (McGinty, Small, Laronga, & Jacobsen, 2016). The phenomenon of breast cancer survivorship has been identified with qualitative methods, yet is lacking explanatory theory (Allen, Savadatti & Levy, 2009; Pelusi, 1997). Qualitative analysis uses inductive rather than deductive investigation of a clinical phenomenon for capturing themes and patterns within subjective perceptions to generate an interpretive account to inform clinical understanding. Inductive methods are used by the researchers to discover and generate theory (Artinian, Giske, & Cone, 2009; Glaser, 2008). Therefore, grounded theory was chosen to study the process of survivorship in women who have completed treatment for breast cancer.

Method A Glaserian grounded theory design was chosen to explore the process of transition survivorship in women who have completed treatment for breast cancer. Grounded theory allows the researcher to explore a phenomenon and build theory from concepts going through processes and transitions (Glaser & Strauss, 1967; Glaser,

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2008). The ACS defines cancer survivor as “anyone with a history of cancer, from the time of diagnosis through the remainder of their life” (ACS, 2016, p. 3). This definition was used for inclusion criteria for this project. Prior to commencement of the research, approval from the university’s institutional review board was secured. A purposive sample was sought and participants were self-identified breast cancer survivors in a suburban community in Northeast United States. A presentation was made at a local breast cancer survivorship group. Flyers were posted in community centers, libraries, and public places including areas that reach numerous individuals. Based on these recruitment efforts, 12 women were interviewed during a four-­ month period.

Data Collection All participants received written and verbal information about the study and gave informed consent. Data were collected by completing the following: a demographic data form, approximately one-hour individual in-depth interviews, observational notes, and field notes. All of the data was handled in a confidential manner. Each interview session lasted approximately one hour in length. Broad open-ended questions were used to stimulate discussion of thoughts and feelings about extended survivorship. Focused questions and prompts were used to elicit more specific information from participants about their actions to attain and maintain psychosocial health after the completion of breast cancer treatment. The focus questions also elicited information about processes used to modify and maneuver through adversities after completion of treatment. Each participant was asked to describe situations when she knew something had changed in her health and psychosocial status after the completion of treatment for breast cancer. Participants were asked to answer the questions until they felt they had no information to add to the topic.

Data Analysis Data analysis took a Glaserian approach in which data collection, analysis, and memoing were ongoing and concurrent throughout the research. Each interview was digitally taped and transcribed. Atlas.ti software was used as a depository to code, store, and memo during analysis. Data was coded line by line to fracture the data into nouns formed from a verb or gerund. The interviews were re-coded on three different occasions. After the initial interview was coded, the second interview was coded in a similar fashion and the data were examined for common constructs that were clustered. Subsequent interviews were open-coded and compared with ideas and relationships described in the researcher’s memos. As the categories unfolded, some categories were re-coded or combined with other categories. At the conclusion of the last interview, all codes were sorted to certify fit. Once a core

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variable or category was identified, coding became selective. The researcher continued the interviews and coding until saturation of the core variable was achieved. On saturation, theoretical coding was used to intersect categories within the data. Exploration of the literature for substantive codes that were significant was conducted each day. Extensive memo taking was used via manual notes and also as freehand drawn visuals created by the researcher to capture the researcher’s mind set.

Trustworthiness For the purpose of this paper, a conglomerate of trustworthiness criteria grounded from the recommendations of Glaser (1978, 1998, 2001) was employed. The researcher who conducted this study had scant exposure to extended breast cancer survivors in her personal and professional realm. Techniques to establish credibility included prolonged engagement and peer debriefing. Theoretical sampling and constant comparison took place when data, analytic categories, interpretations, and conclusions were discussed and tested with study participants throughout the interview process. Prolonged engagement developed rapport and participant trust. To address transferability, the following groups of data were included in an audit trail: 1) raw data, 2) data reduction and analysis notes, data reconstruction and synthesis products, 3) process notes, 4) materials related to intentions and dispositions, and 5) preliminary development information. The researcher kept a reflexive journal to record methodological decisions and the rationale for the decisions, the planning and management of the study, and reflection upon the researcher’s own principles, feelings, and interests. Lastly, external audits were conducted by several researchers not involved with the research process on several occasions.

The Theory of Negotiating Emotional Order The main concern of the women is the struggle for emotional order. The meaning inherent in the basic social process of Negotiating Emotional Order is that women who have been diagnosed with breast cancer strive for emotional order by negotiating control of the negative feeling of threats to their mortality and to live their daily lives. The process described in the theory of Negotiating Emotional Order changes as the situation of the breast cancer survivors changes. As time passes, the women move from discovering an abnormality to a time after treatment ends. This process is dynamic and perpetual in nature because the threat of cancer recurrence remains until the end of the breast cancer survivor’s life. For some women, negotiating emotional order is achieved even when the cancer recurs or metastasizes. The participants’ actions and decisions illuminate the perpetual struggle to negotiate emotional order. For some, order is compartmentalizing negative thoughts and emotions that they could not control. For others, they accept the fact that they

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cannot control cancer but project order onto other aspects of their lives. The struggle for emotional order is present from the time the survivor found the abnormality into long-term survivorship and at times is cyclic. Five stages of the process of negotiating emotional order emerges from the data: 1) Losing Life Order, 2) Assisted Life Order, 3) Transforming, 4) Accepting, and 5) Creating Emotional Order. Losing Life Order During this time period, the realization of the threat of breast cancer disrupts emotional order with intense fear and uncertainty of the future. The breast cancer survivor often makes decisions and acts on her instincts to placate the immediacy that she feels prior to starting treatment, often seeks information from the Internet, popular literature, media and from others who have experienced breast cancer. Unfortunately, their need for immediacy is often not met by the health care community, so they take matters into their own hands and act. Many of the participants voice that this time period is difficult, as they have multifaceted family roles as wives, mothers, and children of parents of their own causing additional emotional turmoil. The participants continue or attempt to continue with their family roles by working, caring for children, and maintaining their households. The breast cancer survivors voice that they don’t have time to let cancer get in the way emotionally as they are too busy with family and work responsibilities. The participants speak of emotional duress when they see their families react to their illness and chose to protect their families by concealing their emotions. One participant talked about why she concealed her emotions: “The emotional impact it had on my family was horrible . . . I felt like I had to be strong for them . . . I would not show any emotions about being sick.” Losing order encompasses two properties of disorder: losing emotional order and losing physical order. Upon discovering an abnormality, and then confirming breast cancer, the breast cancer survivors report loss of control of their bodies, which causes emotional duress. This stage marked the survivors’ first sense that cancer cannot be controlled. Loss of emotional order is represented by feelings of sadness, anger, immediacy, loneliness, fear, and uncertainty. This stage is hallmarked by emotional chaos and decision making. Approaches the women use in this stage are: taking matters into own hands and concealing to maintain family order. Assisted Life Order Surprisingly, although treatment is a physically draining endeavor, the breast cancer survivors voice that it is a time of respite when they focus on physical well-being rather than the emotional disruption that is occurring. During this phase, the women are often consumed with treatments of surgery, chemotherapy, and/or radiation. The participants state they feel proactive and protected while under the frequent care of health care providers. This participant’s narrative exemplifies the feeling of being

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assisted emotionally and physically by health care providers: “While you’re getting chemotherapy, you think you’re doing something to kill off any additional cancer that the surgery didn’t get. You have certain protection.” The breast cancer survivors verbalize feeling lonely, despite having much social and family support, and purposely seek out other women who endured breast cancer for emotional support. Breast cancer survivors seek emotional support from formal and informal support persons. The participants also discuss a phenomenon where other breast cancer survivors would approach them after hearing about their diagnosis and come to their assistance to provide support. The importance of this camaraderie is evident in this narrative: “I didn’t know people that have been through this…people came out of the woodwork. People that I had known that I didn’t know that had cancer who shared their stories with me.” Some of the breast cancer survivors express the need to have a connection with someone who has experienced breast cancer. Some women seek formal support groups for this need and continue to use them after treatment is completed. The second stage of negotiating emotional order is assisted life order that occurs when the breast cancer survivor enters treatment and focuses all of her energy into physical well-being. At the same time, survivors entrust their life order into the hands of health care providers and rely on social support to carry them through the time that they are in treatment. During this time, the breast cancer survivor keeps physically and emotionally occupied with the routine of appointments and treatment. During this time, the women feel treatment is a sanctuary and they express that during this time they feel lonely in their current experience. During the second period, they engage with others with formal training or personal experience with breast cancer to establish emotional order. Transforming At this stage of the process, the breast cancer survivors report a cutting point or a crossroads and make a change in thought process. They are autonomously responsible for their physical and emotional well-being. This autonomy is a sharp contrast to their behavior while in treatment, where they live day to day and do not think about the future. Once treatments end, survivors must take the wheel and navigate into their life and the future. It does appear that this cutting point is an emotionally charged timeframe: the temporary sanctuary of treatment ends and many survivors feel the need to take subjective responsibility of their emotional order. The survivors speak about the need to reach inward to claim emotional order to live their lives beyond breast cancer. During this stage, the threat changes from the fear of the diagnosis of cancer to the fear of cancer. The fear of cancer can be recurrence of breast cancer, occurrence of a new cancer, and/or cancer metastasis. The process of beginning to move on from the emotional effects of the diagnosis of breast cancer begins shortly after the end of treatment. Fear is initially intense then becomes manageable over time for many. Several women note the recurrent fear abates somewhat after the first year

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and even more after five years. The fear of recurrence also can return many years after the completion of treatment. This dread is especially true if the breast cancer survivor discovers new symptoms or abnormalities that lead her to believe the cancer has returned. Often waiting for the results of diagnostics causes extreme anxiety and fear of recurrence. The interviewed participants ranged from three months to twenty-four years post treatment. Despite the variation of time since the ending of treatment, all of the participants discussed levels of fear of recurrence. Often, the fear of recurrence affects their daily lives initially until they set cancer apart from living their present life. Several of the participants state it is not so much an inherent process rather than an active decision to take control of their feelings of fear and move onward. In this stage, the turning point is the active decision to leave breast cancer in the past and focus on the present and future. Another participant, who is thirteen years post treatment, discussed this decision: “I told myself, I have to make a move here. You can curl up in a ball and die or I can move on. I started moving on.” When the breast cancer survivors leave treatment, they are at a crossroad in which feelings of loss and confusion are produced. After adjuvant treatment ends, the breast cancer survivors must remap their lives and begin to strive for a new normalcy in their lives. The threat at this stage changes from the diagnosis of cancer and is replaced with the fear of recurrence. The breast cancer survivors often revisit their own mortality during this time and these feelings can cause loss of emotional order. During this time the breast cancer survivor transforms, remapping their life course and also moving on from fear. Accepting Uncertainty of the future also causes emotional distress for breast cancer survivors. The reality that none can control their own mortality, or cancer, is an aspect of the emotional trajectory that the breast cancer survivors struggle with initially. Once breast cancer survivors make this realization, they can then subjectively gain order of their emotions. This action is autonomous as no one else but the breast cancer survivor can complete this task. One participant spoke about this decision: “There are things that I can change and there are things that I am powerless over. It’s distinguishing and I do have control over what I’m thinking.” Although the breast cancer survivor attempts to control her emotions, she often will come to the realization that she can keep her emotions in order rather than control them so that she can move on in her life and get serenity with the past diagnosis of breast cancer. Several of the participants state the turning point occurs when they realize they cannot control cancer or their feelings, and thus accept order versus control. As the threat of recurrence is no longer an issue, they accept their mortality and are living in the present day. A participant reflection on this concept: “We’ll all go some day. It’s just my time might come sooner than expected. A part of life.” Feelings of emotional loss of control can be triggered by reminders after treatment ends. Reminders include physical reminders, body image reminders,

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diagnostics, and society cancer awareness. Although gaining realization of their own mortality, living with reminders forces the breast cancer survivors to cope on a daily basis with the fear of recurrence as they are reminded by physical and cognitive aftermath of breast cancer. Additionally, diagnostics and health care visits can elicit feelings of fear. Breast cancer survivors also voice that breast cancer or cancer awareness activities in the community and media also trigger feelings of fear. The impact of reminders is showcased by one participant’s remarks: “I worry about it all the time. Every ache and pain I have. When my bones hurt I wonder if it is bone cancer. Every time I have to have a mammogram, I pray it’s not there.” Creating Emotional Order Inherently, human beings have emotions. One of these emotions is fear in response to a threat. As the threat of cancer recurrence has a perpetual quality in women who have been diagnosed with breast cancer, the emotional aspect of cancer recurrence is long-standing. Since she cannot fully control her emotions, the breast cancer survivor will compartmentalize negative feelings of uncertainty and fear to achieve emotional order. To protect themselves emotionally, several of the participants speak about triaging these emotions to the back of their heads and putting these feelings away. One participant illustrates this behavior: “It’s probably because I pushed it to the back of my head because I don’t want to deal with those emotions.” Once the breast cancer survivor accepts the fact that there are aspects of her life she can control and there are aspects over which she has no power, she will begin to create emotional order. Having control over actions and or parts of her life allows the breast cancer survivor to have emotional order. During times of emotional distress, they also increase their attempts to distract themselves from their emotions. This increase in activity temporarily increases with times of stress. Often, after the breast cancer survivor feels well, she redefines the actions in which she participates. Survivors express themselves by participating in activities that they enjoy or want to experience but did not have the courage to do so prior to diagnosis. Breast cancer survivors also talk about controlling their family roles and home environment. The breast cancer survivor might demonstrate control by creating a household routine or enumerating familial activities. Distracting self with other aspects of life also is a way that breast cancer survivors create emotional order. By immersing themselves back into their daily routines of work, marital, household, and family roles, survivors limit the amount of time they have available to think about the fear of recurrence, which is similar to using activity to occupy time during the assisted life order stage. Social comparison through self-evaluations is another way that these participants achieve emotional order. Breast cancer survivors use social comparison as a method to create emotional order by viewing their experience as better than others who experienced poor outcomes. As a defense mechanism, if the breast cancer survivor views her experience as positive then she reaffirms she is a survivor. Social comparison is evident almost unanimously in the data. Participants speak often of reflecting

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on the experience they endured and feel lucky. While exploring this code the researcher asked the participants what they meant by luck or being lucky. Consistently the participants talk about luck as comparing outcomes as better or worse. For example, when asked what she meant by having better luck, a participant replied: “Well I was thinking someone maybe had the same surgery as me, did better than me.” Here is an example of a breast cancer survivor socially comparing her experience as worse than another person’s experience. In addition to evaluating the actual treatment outcomes and evaluating the way that they physically dealt with treatment, the breast cancer survivors also evaluate the entire experience of breast cancer by reflection. The ability to reflect onto the past experience to find benefits and assign positive outcomes related to the cancer allow the survivor to make sense of the experience and create emotional order. In many ways, the survivors feel everything that they endured was worth what they became. Many reflect back and feel they gained knowledge of self-meaning knowing their bodies and emotions and realized they have abilities to endure adversity that they did not know before the experience of breast cancer. The breast cancer survivors reflect back in awe of the emotional stamina that they had during adversity and were proud of their accomplishments. One participant states: “It is amazing. Yeah if someone had told me I could write a book, become a massage therapist and learn the body the way I have. I would have said no way.” “I feel like I know these people. You have been through what they have been through.” This participant’s narrative sums up the transparent common bond the participants feel with other cancer survivors. To create emotional order, the breast cancer survivors help others as a way to help themselves emotionally. Planned helpfulness allows the breast cancer survivor to create emotional order by gaining satisfaction through assisting others. Often breast cancer survivors employ ambiguousness until they are ready to disclose their survivorship status. This opacity allows them to experience empowerment and also allows them life choice—a common theme throughout the interviews. Breast cancer survivors plan and decide how they would help others; many are grateful for the acquaintance disclosure and guidance they receive early in their disease trajectory and want to pay forward some type of comfort to others who are enduring cancer. Once survivors accept the fact that they cannot control their mortality and cancer, the breast cancer survivor creates social order to protect herself emotionally. Breast cancer survivors are acutely aware that their actions do not guarantee that cancer will not return, but in this stage they want to maintain a status of being physically and emotionally healthy. One participant communicates: “What work do I need to do. I am a survivor and want to be a survivor for a long time.” Although reminders often trigger fear, the survivors often use methods to create emotional order, to find balance and not allow feelings of fear to overcome them. Breast cancer survivors protect themselves by controlling their actions, compartmentalizing negative feelings, using social comparison and/or engaging in planned helpfulness. Creating Emotional Order allows breast cancer survivors to transcend the fear of recurrence by controlling their actions, compartmentalizing negative feelings, and using social comparison and planned helpfulness. Although they cannot control

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their emotions or control cancer, they can control the way they react to emotions and take control of their life actions. Many of the participants shelve their negative emotions in order not to let the psychological aspect of breast cancer interfere in their daily lives. The participants show evidence that the survivors can regress between stages of this theory, but after their initial passage through the stages progress forward quickly and resiliently.

Limitations There are several limitations in this research. First, the researcher attempted to recruit a variety of participants from diverse social and demographic backgrounds through flyers posted in public places. Despite this attempt to obtain a diverse population, all the participants are White and hold high school education or equivalency and most of the sample had three or more years of college education. Most of the participants are married or partnered. Economic and insurance status information is not included in the demographic data. Expanding the demographic sample might have allowed modifiability of the theory to explore additional relationships between these variables and the process of survivorship. Finally, grounded theory analyses are population specific. This research represents the primary step in theory development. The aim of grounded theory construction is to hone and develop a theory in the attempt to produce formal theory. Testing the applicability of this theory may be appropriate in other populations who face severe illnesses, for example individuals as they face the aging process, individuals who are facing a terminal illness, veterans returning from war diagnosed with post-­traumatic stress disorder, men facing prostate cancer, and/or women facing infertility.

Discussion The aim of this study is to contribute to the knowledge of breast cancer survivorship. This research contributes to the literature as a lack of holistic research exists on the process of extended survivorship that involves the fragments of the process of survivorship. Breast cancer is a significant and prominent healthcare challenge for many women in the United States. Negotiating emotional order is identified as the core category allowing women to survive emotionally after completing treatment for breast cancer. Five stages were identified including the following: Losing Life Order, Assisted Life Order, Transforming, Accepting, and Creating Emotional Order. The grounded theory of negotiating order integrates and highlights the importance of recognizing emotional health in breast cancer survivors. This research challenges a staple in cancer survivorship literature that is reported by Mullan (1985) in several ways. First, in the current study, breast cancer survivors described the process of survivorship beginning before diagnosis with the discovery

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of an abnormality. This variation in the genesis of process of survivorship is different from Mullan’s (1985) model in which the process of survivorship is said to begin with diagnosis. Second, a new stage that represented transitional survivorship or Stage III: Transforming is described in the current study as the period immediately following the completion of treatment. Third, Mullan (1985) described extended survivorship as ending once the survivor enters remission. Although most breast cancer survivors interviewed for this study entered remission, several experienced recurrences or metastatic breast cancer so Mullan’s model excluded the process that these individuals endured. Lastly, in this study extended survivorship appeared to be a continuous state rather than a conduit to permanent survivorship as Mullan (1985) described in his model. Mullan (1985) stated permanent cancer survivorship begins once the person is considered cancer free and can successfully return to their normal physical and emotional abilities prior to the cancer diagnosis. The survivors in this study describe extended survivorship to have a perpetual nature rather than being permanently cured physically or emotionally. They also challenge the fact they would return to “normal.” One of the participants states, “It was a rough road. Trying to figure out who I was, where I belong. Because they say your life goes back to normal, there is no normalcy. I don’t feel I am normal today.” This idea is significant as many breast cancer survivors may feel the need to feel “normal” due to the extensive publication of Mullan’s (1985) model. The use of Mullan’s (1985) model by many credible cancer authorities may prove to be confusing and frustrating to breast cancer survivors who lack the feeling of normalcy after treatment is completed and into extended survivorship. The theory of Negotiating Emotional Order supports several existing theories that describe how individuals handle severe illnesses beyond cancer. This work complements several authors who described survivorship beyond the biomedical model that psychosocial and environmental factors influence (Collins, 1995; Festinger, 1954; Folkman & Greer, 2000; Taylor, 1983; Walker, Jackson, & Littlejohn, 2004). The construct of control can be found in the literature in multiple patient populations including breast cancer (Warren, 2010), cardiac disease (Svansdotti et  al., 2012), patients with obsessive compulsive disorder (Kang, Namkoong, Yoo, Jhung, & Kim, 2012), diabetes (Hughes, Berg, & Wiebe, 2012), and sexual assault (Frazier, Morlensen, & Steward, 2005). In this study, loss of emotional control is important, as it serves as a catalyst shaping the decisions and actions of the participants. Additionally, controlling actions were used later by the participants as a means to cope, thus creating emotional order. This theme is analogous with Folkman’s (1984) description of control as a dynamic coping mechanism with shifting appraisal as result of a stressful encounter or environment. Benefit finding and planned helpfulness that are reported are consistent with Taylor’s (1983) proposed theory of cognitive adaptation in response to threatening events as both are displays of a search for meaning in the experience and attempts of mastery to restore self-esteem. It may also be noted that Taylor (1983) linked an individual’s sense of control to positive cognitive adaptation. Lastly, social comparison is evident in this group. This observation echoes Festinger’s (1954) work

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hypothesizing that social comparison is done to promote self-normalcy. Social comparison in this population is a mechanism to negotiate emotional order by improving the survivors’ positive perception of their situation and is consistent with the work Collins (1995) reported.

Implications for Practice This research affords a glimpse into the experience of survivorship from the perspective of women who have completed treatment for breast cancer and how they survived emotionally from the detection of an abnormality into extended survivorship. This work aids in the development of a broad understanding of the processes that individuals endure when faced with a serious health status alteration. This information might aid health care providers to understand the immediacy that breast cancer survivors experience during the disease trajectory and the concept that the fear of recurrence can last perpetually and be an issue that is important to survivors until the end of their lives. A lesson that can be taken away from this work is that women are continuously attempting to create emotional order and this clearly indicates they need support to continue well after treatment ends. In terms of theory, the identification of the process used by breast cancer survivors to negotiate emotional order may be helpful for health care providers who care for, educate, and design nursing interventions for this population. This study of survivorship after breast cancer establishes the beginning process of generating a formal grounded theory on survivorship that could, through further theoretical sampling, be extended beyond this patient population. Building on existing theory, this qualitative data analysis may help explain the mechanisms used by populations who have experienced a life-threatening illness personally or while supporting a loved one.

Acknowledgements I would like to thank the breast cancer survivors who shared their personal survivorship journey for this research. I also thank Dr. Elise Lev, Dr. Karen D’Alonzo, Dr. Claudia Beckman, Dr. Louise Dean Kelly and Naomi Tobes for their encouragement and invaluable contributions to this work.

Declaration of Conflicting Interests The author declares no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship and/or publication of this article.

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Funding This research is supported by the Rita C. Koph Memorial Research Award generously given by the Foundation of New York State Nurses, Cathryne A. Welch Center for Nursing Research

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Glaser, B. G. (2001). The grounded theory perspective: Conceptualization contrasted with description. The Sociology Press. Glaser, B.  G. (2007). All is data. Grounded Theory Review: An International Journal, 2(6) Retrieved May 21, 2019, from: http://groundedtheoryreview.com/2007/03/30/1194/ Glaser, B. G. & Strauss, A. L. (1965/2005). Awareness of dying. Routledge. Glaser, B. G., & Strauss, A. L. (1967). The discovery of grounded theory: Strategies for qualitative research. Routledge. Goldthorpe, J.  H. (1997). A response to the commentaries. Comparative Social Research, 16, 121–132. Haig, B. D. (2010). Abductive research methods. In P. Peterson, R. Tierney, E. Baker, & B. McGaw (Eds.), International encyclopedia of education (3rd ed., pp. 77–82). Elsevier. Hernandez Blanco, H. J. & Alas-as, T. C. (n.d.). Grounded research methods. Retrieved May 21, 2019, from.: https://www.scribd.com/presentation/362248809/Grounded-­theory-­ppt Holton, G. (2004). Robert K. Merton. Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society, 148(4), 505–517. Holton, J.  A. (2010). The coding process and its challenges. Grounded Theory Review: An International Journal, 1(9) Retrieved May 21, 2019, from: http://groundedtheoryreview. com/2010/04/02/the-­coding-­process-­and-­its-­challenges/ James, P. (2006). Globalism, nationalism, tribalism: Bringing theory back in. Sage. Kelle, U. (2005). “Emergence” vs. “forcing” of empirical data? A crucial problem of “grounded theory” reconsidered. Forum: Qualitative Social Research, 6(2), Art 27. Retrieved, May 21, 2019, from: https://cdn.uclouvain.be/public/Exports%20reddot/spri/documents/FQS_2005_A_ Crucial_Problem_of_Grounded_Theory_Reconsidered.pdf Kempster, S., & Parry, K. W. (2011). Grounded theory and leadership research: A critical realist perspective. The Leadership Quarterly., 22(1), 106–120. Martin, P. Y., & Turner, B. A. (1986). Grounded theory and organizational research. The Journal of Applied Behavioral Science, 22(2), 141–157. Merton, R.  K. (1936). The unanticipated consequences of purposive social action. American Sociological Review, 1(6), 894–904. Merton, R. K. (1968). Social theory and social structure. The Free Press. Merton, R. K., & Barber, E. (2004). The travels and adventures of serendipity: A study in sociological semantics and the sociology of science. Princeton University Press. Mesly, O. (2015). Creating models in psychological research. Springer. Mjøset, L. (2005). Can grounded theory solve the problems of its critics? Sosiologisk Tidsskrift, 13, 379–408. Retrieved May 23, 2019, from: https://ieri.org.za/sites/default/files/Text_-­_Building_ Social_Science_on_case_studies_lessons_for_BRICS.pdf Morse, J.  M., & Niehaus, L. (2009). Mixed method design: Principles and procedures. Left Coast Press. Parker, L.  D., & Roffey, B.  H. (1997). Methodological themes: Back to the drawing board: Revisiting grounded theory and the everyday accountant’s and manager’s reality. Accounting, Auditing & Accountability Journal, 10(2), 212–247. Peirce, C. S. (2011). Philosophical writings of Peirce. Dover. Pidgeon, N., & Henwood, K. (2009). Grounded theory. In M.  Hardy & A.  Bryman (Eds.), Handbook of data analysis (pp. 625–648). Sage. Popper, K. R. (1979). Objective knowledge. Oxford University Press. Potter, J.  A. (1998). Qualitative and discourse analysis. In A.  S. Bellack & M.  Hersen (Eds.), Comprehensive clinical psychology (Vol. 3, pp. 117–144). Pergamon. Ralph, N., Birks, M., & Chapman, Y. (2014). Contextual positioning: Using documents as extant data in grounded theory research. Sage Open, 4(3). https://doi.org/10.1177/2158244014552425 Ralph, N., Birks, M., & Chapman, Y. (2015). The methodological dynamism of grounded theory. International Journal of Qualitative Methods, 1–6. https://doi.org/10.1177/1609406915611576 Savin-Baden, M., & Major, C. (2013). Qualitative research: The essential guide to theory and practice. Routledge.

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Chapter 10

Action Research

No action without research, no research without action –Kurt Lewin (1946)

Introduction Of all the methodologies that have, thus far, been discussed between the pages of this volume, perhaps none is more practical than action research. In fact, it is often referred to as “practitioner research,” “teacher research’ or “participatory action research.” Herr and Anderson (2005) claim that action researchers may occupy multiple positions, even simultaneously, as insiders and/or outsiders, depending on social or ideological constructs such as race, religion, political affiliation, social class, gender or sexual orientation. These affiliations (or exclusions) may also significantly influence the reality as captured through action research. As such, action researchers may greatly benefit from interrogating and identifying their multiple positionalites in order to understand and articulate tensions stemming from underlying roles and stances, and to “avoid the blind spots that come with unexamined beliefs” (Herr & Anderson, 2005, p. 44). While appellations such as “practitioner research,” “teacher research’ or “participatory action research” may not be entirely interchangeable, the names, themselves, remain strong indicators of the process by which action research may be performed or accomplished. Sagor (2000) identifies three distinct, yet compatible purposes for action research; developing the reflective practitioner and action researcher, researching and gaining knowledge regarding school, hospital or institutional priorities and building professional learning cultures or “communities of practice” (Wenger, 1999). Supplementary Information The online version contains supplementary material available at [https://doi.org/10.1007/978-­3-­030-­85124-­8_10]. The videos can be accessed individually by clicking the DOI link in the accompanying figure caption or by scanning this link with the SN More Media App. © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 R. E. White, K. Cooper, Qualitative Research in the Post-Modern Era, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-85124-8_10

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Meyer (2000) maintains that action research’s strength lies in its focus on generating solutions to practical problems and its ability to empower practitioners by getting them to engage with research and its ensuing development or implementation activities. At its core, action research strives to create transformational change by simultaneously engaging in change strategies while taking action based on those strategies. The glue that holds these two disparate functions together is critical reflection. According to Burns (2015), action research is the “superordinate term for a set of approaches to research which, at the same time, systematically investigate a given social situation and promote democratic change and collaborative participation” (p. 99). In order to address issues of democracy within the action research project, Meyer (2000) suggests that participants be seen as equals and that the researcher works to facilitate change. Participants and researcher consult not only on the action process, itself, but also on how that process will be evaluated. An important benefit to this is that the research process and outcomes become more meaningful to practitioners because findings are returned to participants for validation and outcomes are based in the reality of their daily practice. As Meyer (2000) maintains, because action research draws on a practitioner’s situation and experience, it can generate findings meaningful to researchers and participants. Because of this, contributions to knowledge that arise from action research are different from other, more conventional forms of research. Thus, it is important that action researchers describe their work in rich contextual detail (Meyer, 2000). The impetus for action research is a perceived gap or problem between actuality and the participants’ desire for change. Instead of viewing participants and/or their behaviours as problems, however, the term “problematic” reflects a desire on the part of participants to “problematize” a given situation through questioning, clarifying, understanding and providing meaning. Consequently, action researchers can be viewed as change agents “interested in resolving, reformulating or refining dilemmas, predicaments or puzzles in their daily lives through systematic planning, data-­ gathering, reflection and further informed action” (Burns, 2015, p. 100). Researchers simultaneously become critical participants in the action while they are also researchers of the action, thus making action research both an exploratory procedure and a decision-generating process (Burns, 2015). Needless to say, given the parameters of this type of research, one’s epistemological and ontological views may influence one’s research as well as the chosen research methods (Koshy, 2010). As a general caveat, Guba and Lincoln (1990) remind researchers that, when conducting research of any kind, considering one’s philosophical stance or worldview remains important. While action research can be initiated by individual researchers, it may also be undertaken by organizations or institutions, assisted or guided by professional researchers to improve strategies, practices and knowledge of environments within which they practice. As designers and stakeholders, researchers may also work with others to propose new courses of action to help their communities improve work practices (O’Brien, 2001). In this sense, action research is not necessarily “critical” in terms of transforming social issues, but may become so should the society, as a whole or in part, benefit from the research. Reason and Bradbury (2001) refer to this as “living knowledge” (p. 2).

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Action researchers strive to reflect critically upon their actions and practices, as well as their beliefs, assumptions and questions, in order to understand and improve social practices (Boog et al., 1996). As such, action research tends to be oriented towards social issues and, hence, becomes a critical practice, designed to create three levels of change (Chisholm, & Elden, 1993); the first of these is the researcher’s own transformation as a result of performing the research, the second is the collective process of understanding change within a particular institution through creating a democratic sharing of voice, and the third is the process of sharing findings with the community of researchers.

The Biographical Context One of the major contributors to the development of action research is Emeritus Professor Stephen Kemmis. Professor Kemmis was interviewed at the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign, where he was visiting a long-time friend and associate, Professor Robert Stake. At first, it may strike one as unusual that the developers of two very powerful, albeit very different, qualitative research methodologies would be so closely connected. Perhaps, however, the reason is not only obvious but it is found through historical and geographical roots, as both men arrived in the same place at the same time but with differing agendas vis-à-vis their commitments to qualitative research. In the following video-clip, Professor Kemmis talks about his early years and his developing interest in social issues, the nature of which spurred his interest in what was to become action research.

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As Professor Kemmis notes, he grew up in Sydney, Australia, in a comfortable middle-class society. Due to his father’s interest in matters of social justice, particularly as it pertained to the consideration for others, large or small, young Stephen internalized this appreciation for fairness and reflection that later gestated into a recognition of the need for greater equity within society. While his father was fairly agnostic, young Stephen’s mother and his older siblings were religious. Although Stephen did not view himself as Christian, he internalized his father’s social justice perspectives. As was common at the time, Stephen attended an all-boys private school, where he showed promise, even though he did not like school. These two influences, his father’s sense of fairness and consideration, and Stephen’s own dislike of schooling, eventually were to come together in a recognizable form—action research. In school, young Stephen felt bored, uncomfortable and insecure. However, rather than internalizing this and supposing that he might be the source of the problem, young Kemmis took a more forward-thinking approach and decided that it was the school that required reformation, not the students. Part of his issue with schooling was with the teachers and the authoritarian way in which the students were treated. Although many of the teachers made little impact on young Stephen’s academic prowess, there were some who did have a great influence on his learning and understanding of the world. It was during this time that Stephen discovered the guitar and folk music which, in turn, led him to singing protest songs about the then devastating Vietnam War (1955–1975). Although he considered his music to be an avocation, he realized that university would play a dominant role in his future life and, in his own words, “scraped” into the University of Sydney. Here, he claims, he continued his fascination with the guitar and folk music. This was, in large part, due to the burgeoning civil rights movement in the United States, which affected Australian social life in major ways. Professor Kemmis describes this as a formative experience for him, at the time.

Video Clip 10.1: Emeritus Professor Stephen Kemmis (▶ https://doi.org/10.1007/000-­6dc)

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Another considerable influence on young Kemmis was the growth of the women’s movement toward the end of the Vietnam War. Even as the feminist spirit began to gain ground at the University of Sydney, Stephen Kemmis notes that it was an uphill battle, due to a very masculinist culture in Australia. Although he was a beneficiary of this culture, young Stephen was quick to realize that men and women were treated very differently in the universities, as well as in the general society. For example, capable males were quick to move ahead while women, no matter how gifted, were less likely to make their mark in academia and, instead, were more frequently consigned to the role of tutor, as it was not expected that they would become academics. Unequal and unjust as it may be, this was a prevalent attitude around the globe, as women were expected to marry and become mothers and everyone, more or less, was secure in the knowledge that this was as much as any self-respecting woman could hope for. Fortunately, times have changed—somewhat. As a result of these influences and despite his significant privilege, combined with the reality of being in the “right place” at the right time, Professor Kemmis remained troubled by the inequity and inequality of the times. He claims that these formative experiences did not arrive without an emotional impact and that this was his crucible, from which he emerged a better person, particularly in terms of social justice initiatives. This repudiation, he notes, helped nurture his interest not only in terms of social justice but also in interpreting and understanding social and historical events, and, eventually, in developing an interest in educational research, as well.

The Historical Context Educational research is a vast topic and, as such, it is action research that is of prime interest, particularly as it relates to this chapter. There have been numerous influences on action research over the years. Typically, action research can be viewed as three broad movements that have taken place during the last 60 years. These are the technical-scientific model, which comprises a technically motivated, stepwise process that seeks basic improvements to researchers’ practice; the practical-­ deliberative model, which is also a solution-oriented approach, but with application to morally problematic situations; and the critical-emancipatory model, an empowering approach embedded in critical theory that addresses broader socially constituted educational structures at the local level (Burns, 2015). Action research originated with the work of innumerable different scholars from so many different backgrounds that “there is no single generally accepted narrative of its origins” (Charles & Ward, 2007, p. 2). However, John Dewey and Kurt Lewin were key to establishing the foundations of action research. John Dewey (1859–1952), an educational philosopher, viewed experiences as constant interactions between people; these experiences were not stagnant but constantly changing (Maksimovic, 2010). Dewey also made significant contributions to the structure of action research, even though his “demystification, domestication and

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democratization of the scientific method was a direct challenge to the professionalization of research” (McTaggart, 1991, p. 2). According to Koshy (2010), Kurt Lewin researched extensively on social issues, and is considered a founding father of action research as a methodology. Lewin’s work was followed by that of Stephen Corey, and others in the United States, who applied action research to educational issues. One of the most influential proponents of action research in the United Kingdom was Lawrence Stenhouse (1926–1982), who endorsed action research for studying the theory and practice of teaching, pedagogy and curriculum. Stenhouse’s “central message for teachers was that they should regard themselves as researchers, as the best judges of their own practice and then the natural corollary would be an improvement of education” (McNiff, 1988, p. 25). As it evolved, educational action researchers, such as John Elliott (1991), have also influenced action researchers in healthcare settings. Following is an all-­ too-­brief summary of some of the scholars who have influenced the course of action research over the past decades. Kurt Lewin (1890–1947), a German American psychologist, became known as a developer and promoter of organizational and applied psychology. Lewin contributed to the development of action research, as well as applied research and group communication. It was Lewin who coined the term “action research” in 1944. He is frequently recognized, along with Margaret Mead, as a founder of social psychology (Haggbloom et al., 2002; Owens & Valesky, 2015). Originally, Lewin studied behavioural psychology prior to engaging with the “gestalt” school of psychology and the Psychological Institute of Berlin, lecturing on philosophy and psychology until 1933, when he emigrated to the United States (Smith, 2001). Eventually, as director for Group Dynamics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, when asked to explore ways to combat religious and racial prejudice, he conducted a “change” experiment, thus laying the foundations for sensitivity training (Lasch-­ Quinn, 2017; Owens & Valesky, 2015). Kurt Lewin went on to assist in the founding of the Tavistock journal, Human Relations, which is still in publication through Sage Journals. Lewin proposed the interactionism formula, B = ƒ(P, E), to explain how both nature and nurture interact to explain behavioural patterns (Forsyth, 2019; Owens & Valesky, 2015). As an applied researcher, Lewin eventually coined the term, action research (Lewin, 1946, 1948; Owens & Valesky, 2015; Rogers, 1994), describing it as ‘a comparative research on the conditions and effects of various forms of social action and research leading to social action’ that uses ‘a spiral of steps, each of which is composed of a circle of planning, action, and fact-finding about the result of the action.’ (O’Brien, 2001)

Lewin’s “force field analysis” approach to social situations, in which understanding one’s life space derives from individual perceptions of reality, rather than from an objective viewpoint, was a significant contribution to the social sciences, particularly psychology, organizational development, and management (Lewin, 1943; Owens & Valesky, 2015).

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An early model of change, often ascribed to Lewin, is characterized as a three-­ stage process, involving “unfreezing,” “changing” and “(re)freezing.” When faced with a dilemma, the individual or group senses a need to change, or “unfreeze,” in order to overcome inertia and dismantle existing mindsets. “Changing” occurs as the dilemma or situation is diagnosed and new models of behaviour are explored and tested. This is typically a period of confusion and transition, before entering the third and final stage, called “freezing,” (Lewin, 1947) or “refreezing” (Owens & Valesky, 2015), where the new mindset or new behaviour is evaluated and, if approved, it is adopted. At this stage the new “way” begins to crystallize and is routinized as comfort levels begin to return to previously established levels. Although Lewin’s three-step process is regarded as foundational for creating change in organizations, Cummings, Bridgman and Brown (2016) assert that Lewin did not develop this model and it actually formed following his death from a massive heart attack in 1947. Fig. 10.1 illustrates Lewin’s original model of action research. Jürgen Habermas (1929–2007) was a German sociologist and philosopher, associated with the Frankfurt School, known for his theories on communicative rationality in the public sphere. Habermas, a critical theorist, was primarily concerned with the creation of a political philosophy, based on recognizing the communicative capacities of rational human beings (Weng, 2014). Born with a cleft palate, Jürgen Habermas affirmed that this invoked his interest regarding the importance of communication (Clifford Simplican, 2009). Habermas studied philosophy and sociology under critical theorists Max Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno, influential philosophers associated with the Frankfurt School. Habermas’s thesis comprised a detailed social history of bourgeois society from its origins up to its transformation through capitalist mass media (Calhoun, 2002). Habermas eventually became Director of the Max Planck Institute in Munich and, later, returned to Frankfurt as Director of the Institute for Social Research. He was

Fig. 10.1  Kurt Lewin’s Action Research Model. (Lewin, 1958)

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presented with the Prince of Asturias Award in 2003. This is an annual prize awarded to individuals or organizations from around the world, who make notable achievements in the sciences, humanities or public affairs. Habermas constructed a comprehensive framework of philosophy and social theory, drawn from a variety of scholarly traditions. However, his major contribution, inspired by such luminaries as Ludwig Wittgenstein, George Herbert Mead, Jean Piaget and others, remains his development of the concept and theory of communicative rationality that promotes the objective of human emancipation. Calhoun (2002) notes that Habermas’s work can be situated within the traditions of Kant and the Enlightenment. While he has cited the Enlightenment, an intellectual and philosophical movement in Europe spanning the 17th to 19th centuries, as an “unfinished project” (Calhoun, 2002, p. 351), Habermas claims it must be corrected and complemented, rather than being discarded. This is a deviation from the accepted rhetoric of the Frankfurt School and today’s postmodern stance in that Habermas critiques these more recent positions due to their perceived pessimism, radicalism and hyperbole (Calhoun, 2002). Habermas’s defense of modernity and civility is a major philosophical alternative to poststructuralism. Habermas believes that, while communicative competence has evolved through time, in contemporary society it has been suppressed and weakened by neoliberal thought to the extent that the logic of the “system” supplants that of the lifeworld (Calhoun, 2002). In his book, The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere (1991), Habermas sought to expose the deceptive nature of “free” institutions in the West (Blanning, 1998). This erosion of the public sphere was due, in part at least, to the development of mass media, which transformed a critical public into consumers, and the welfare state, which merged state and society so thoroughly as to turn the public sphere into self-interested competition (Habermas, 1985, 1991). He claims that democracy cannot develop in public life unless important issues are discussed by the citizenry (Calhoun, 2002; Habermas, 1985). Such a course of action requires an “ideal speech situation” (Habermas, 1985; Payrow Shabani, 2003, p. 49), where participants have similar capacities of discourse and social equality, where the communication is just and true, in that it is not infused with ideology, and is error-free (Calhoun, 2002; Habermas, 1985). Paulo Freire (1921–1997), a leading advocate for critical pedagogy, is renowned for his foundational text, Pedagogy of the Oppressed (1970/2000). Freire espoused that there is no neutrality in education; that it is, at its heart, intensely political, facilitating either conformity at one end of the educational spectrum, or freedom, at the other end. Freire’s philosophy of education incorporated Platonic and Marxist perspectives, and emphasized the necessity of championing the provision of education to allow marginalized minorities to improve their plight by playing a role in their own liberation. Freire recognized that education of any sort is intensely political, especially since teaching and learning comprise political acts in terms of what is taught, how it is taught, what and how things are learned, and for what purpose. Thus, students and teachers, alike, must recognize the political nature of education (Kincheloe, 2008). In order to accomplish this, however, teachers must become aware of their own pedagogy. In so doing, teachers need to reconsider how the “transmission

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model,” also known as the “banking model,” of education commodifies learning and inhibits the creativity of students. This banking model assumes that the teacher has an arcane body of knowledge that is transferrable, intact, to the student, who is viewed as being devoid of knowledge. The work of Paulo Freire echoed John Dewey’s (1897/2019) critique of the transmission of mere facts as the goal of education, placed it within the context of contemporary theories and practices of education, and laid the foundation for what would later become critical pedagogy. Paulo Freire also developed and promoted participatory action research (PAR), built upon his concept of critical pedagogy, thus creating a methodology that allows for significant intervention, change and development within and among groups and communities, most notably among education and health care (Koshy, 2010). Participatory action research has found its way into a variety of community organizations, development agencies and universities, locally, nationally and internationally (Rahman, 2008). Viewed as a response to the “transmission model” of education, participatory action research was further developed in adult education in Colombia, through the work of Orlando Fals-Borda (Fals-Borda & Rahman, 1991). This form of research will be expanded upon further in this chapter.

Stephen Kemmis and Action Research According to Professor Stephen Kemmis, the beginnings of action research, for him, began with his meeting and developing friendship with Robert Stake (see Chap. 7), an individual who was instrumental to the development of case study research.

Video Clip 10.2: Emeritus Professor Stephen Kemmis (▶ https://doi.org/10.1007/000-­6db)

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Professor Robert Stake, at this point, had been deeply involved in transactional psychology at Princeton University and had written a brilliant doctoral thesis on psychometrics and parameters of learning curves as measures of intelligence. Interestingly enough, this meeting between Stephen Kemmis and Robert Stake seemed to occur just as the latter was losing faith with psychometrics and was searching for new methodological endeavours. Stephen Kemmis was searching beyond statistics and exploring how people, social groups and even societies can be understood in a more qualitative way. Having grown up through an empiricist positivist view of science, Professor Kemmis claims this was a massive departure from the way he, and society in general, understood reality. This question, for Stephen Kemmis, was profoundly philosophical because he was also questioning his own directions and was considering whether evaluation of any sort that does not involve self-evaluation can be considered scientific. Professor Kemmis uses the metaphor of having the furniture of his brain moved around, aptly symbolic of the magnitude of this process. As things were juggled and pushed aside, he notes, the experience was wonderfully liberating. Learning is like this. In order for new knowledge to rest comfortably alongside established knowledge, an entire process of schema shifting takes place. The first movement is the creation of cognitive dissonance, where the individual is confronted with new information that contradicts previously held information, not unlike Sir Karl Popper’s notion of rational fallibility, where a new theory must replace an older one that no longer explains a construct accurately. Much learning is incremental, so large shifts in thinking are not entirely common, although they do occur periodically. As Professor Kemmis attests, he has had such an experience perhaps half a dozen times in his life, the outcome of which is to relinquish a current worldview in order to access a new reality. In order to gain a deeper understanding of this new perspective on the world, Professor Kemmis began delving into Wittgenstein (1889–1951), the Austrian philosopher who worked in the area of language and logic (Monk, 1992). Reading Wittgenstein represented yet another assault on Kemmis’s, by now, archaic view of the world. It was, in his own words, “another massive challenge to my accepted ways of understanding the world.” And, it was at this juncture that, while at the University of East Anglia, Stephen began to ponder questions of theory and practice. Always interested in the creation of a just society, Professor Kemmis notes that was what the War in Vietnam was supposed to be about. A just society, he avers, is also about authenticity in governmental policy making; unmaking decisions that have been made by governments, both past and present, that lead to obfuscation and opacity, ultimately leading the citizenry to misread and to misunderstand the society within which they live. Thus, a great nagging doubt became replaced by a great nagging question—could there be a science that could accomplish exactly this? The answer to this question arrived in the form of Wilfred Carr, a long-time friend and associate. Professor Kemmis replaced Wilfred Carr at Deakin University, upon the former’s return to Australia. Together, they conceived and published a book about action research in education. Using Jürgen Habermas’s theory of human interest as a foundation for this volume, Becoming Critical: Education Knowledge

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and Action Research, first published in 1986, turned out to have a huge impact that surprised both of its authors, and has never been out of print since its first publishing. It is an odd circumstance for a book to have such a lengthy history and Professor Kemmis concedes that it may be somewhat dated, as a similar book, written today, would have to be a completely different sort of book, although it would still contain the transition between what passes as theory and what constitutes knowledge. Educational research, in general, and action research, in particular, constitute technical patterns or models that assist in the resolution of problems, issues and procedures. In addition to this, Professor Kemmis confirms, there is much educational research of a very practical nature that strives to inform, illuminate and educate. Altogether, these kinds of research, such as action research or case study research to mention but a few, serve to bring people’s lives into the light. In general, qualitative research strives to engage what Professor Kemmis refers to as “otherness,” the observation of oneself in relation to others, an intersubjective experience. Through this reaching out and engagement with others, it may become possible to make sense, to understand, to interpret the world and one another, something that Stephen Kemmis claims to be completely incomprehensible to “a positivistic, behaviouristic, empiricist social science.”

The Political Context Action research may be viewed as a markedly political methodology with respect to the collaborative and democratic means through which it may be carried out, its utility to challenge or re-inscribe traditional power hierarchies, and its contemporary social justice and educational goals. Griffiths (2009) argues that action research, with respect to social justice, a complex cluster of related concepts that include redistribution, action, provisionality, locality, voice, recognition, and fluid identities, forms a coherent way of understanding the world. It is, thus, a moral and/or political obligation for action researchers to address the aspect of social justice in their research endeavours. In its most democratic form, action research disrupts hierarchical relationships by destabilizing historically established positionalities of the researcher, as well as the subjects of research. Participatory action research (PAR) for example, according to Herr and Anderson (2005), is done by “true collaborations among insiders and outsiders” (p. 30). However, as Herr and Anderson also point out, PAR can raise important questions about how knowledge is validated, and how power and control over the research process is distributed. Herr and Anderson (2005) attest that action research emerged from the work of Kurt Lewin into the group dynamics movement of the 1940s. Here, it maintained an implicit political agenda due to its insistence on worker participation because action research critiqued historically prevalent tenets of Taylorism that espoused hierarchy, bureaucracy, direct supervision, and other mechanistic forms of worker control. Although early studies using action research had the potential to democratize workplaces and challenge inequitable institutional power, management frequently used it

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as a technique to gain worker buy-in. During following decades, action research continued to be employed throughout the United States to improve performance and efficiency, even though, at its core, was the notion of organizational change (Herr & Anderson, 2005).

Participatory Action Research Participatory Action Research (PAR) and other, more overtly political methods or approaches are worthy of consideration too. Participatory action research (PAR) has been utilized widely in such service industries as health care and health care research. Here, it differs from most other approaches to public health research because it is based on reflection, data collection and agenda for action that strives to improve health and reduce health inequities through involving the people who, in turn, take actions to improve their own health (Baum et al., 2004). Participatory action research reflects upon the nature of knowledge and the extent to which knowledge, particularly experiential knowledge, can lead to a legitimate form of knowledge that influences practice. This represents a form of research sympathetic to the participatory nature of adult learning. Such a perspective was strongly supported by the work of Freire (1970), who used PAR to encourage poor and deprived communities to examine and analyze structural reasons for their oppression. From these roots, PAR grew as a methodology enabling researchers to work in partnership with communities in a manner that leads to action for change (Baum et al., 2004). At its core, PAR is a collective, self-reflective inquiry that researchers and participants undertake so they can understand and improve upon the practices in which they participate. The reflective process is directly linked to action, influenced by understandings of history, culture and local context, and embedded in social relationships. The process of PAR should be empowering and lead to people having increased control over their lives. PAR draws upon approaches such as critical theory and constructivism and may use a range of qualitative and quantitative methods. Thus, PAR differs from conventional research in three significant ways: • PAR focuses on research, the purpose of which is to enable action, achieved through a reflective cycle, whereby participants collect and analyze data to determine what action should follow. The resultant action is then further researched and an iterative reflective cycle perpetuates data collection, reflection and action in a “corkscrew” action, spiralling upwards to create positive results. • PAR pays attention to power relationships, advocating for power to be shared between researchers and the researched, blurring these lines until the researched become the researchers. The researched become partners in the research process and select the research topic, data collection and analysis, and decide upon actions resulting from the research findings.

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• PAR contrasts with less dynamic approaches that remove data and information from their contexts. Additionally, PAR advocates that those being researched should be actively involved in the process to the extent that this is possible and the extent to which the participants are willing. PAR was mainly used in developing countries for needs assessment (De Kroning & Martin, 1996) and planning and evaluating health services (Wallerstein et al., 2017). Work by Howard-Grabman (1996) provides a typical description of developing a community plan to tackle maternal and neonatal health problems in rural Bolivia. The project built on and strengthened extant women’s networks. Staff took on the role of facilitators rather than educators and a community action cycle was developed in which issues were identified and prioritised, joint planning took place, and the plan was implemented and then evaluated in a participatory way. The project developed innovative and engaging ways for staff and community members to work together effectively. PAR is also being used more frequently in wealthier countries. In mental health research, for example, PAR has been used in response to the survivor’s movement, demands for a voice in planning, running services and to stimulate choices and alternative forms of treatment. PAR principles also form the basis of “empowerment evaluation” (Fetterman et al., 1996) that argue that the evaluation of health promotion should include those whose health is being promoted. While debate about the distinctiveness of empowerment evaluation continues, it strives to be more democratic, to build capacity, to encourage self-determination and to make evaluation more personal and less expert driven. In addition, PAR is increasingly becoming recognized as useful in Indigenous health research, offering the potential to reduce the negative—and colonizing—effects that conventional research has had on Indigenous people. As far as academics are concerned, PAR may be seen to be problematic because it is time consuming and unpredictable, unlikely to lead to a high production of articles in refereed journals and its somewhat “messy” nature means it is less likely to attract research funding (Kavannagh et al., 2007). The global research community is already being urged to adapt its grant assessment methods and its assessment of research performance to ensure that the engaged processes typical of PAR are valued and encouraged (McCoy et al., 2004). As an additional stressor, PAR may require researchers to work in partnership with policy makers and practitioners, requiring each actor to learn to work together effectively and to manage different and sometimes competing agendas (Baum et al., 2004). In the following video-clip, Stephen Kemmis talks about the process of developing the methodology associated with performing action research. Interestingly enough, this emancipatory methodology known as participatory action research has been appropriated by teachers and other educational practitioners, and, as noted previously, is often referred to as “teacher research” or “practitioner research.”

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Video Clip 10.3: Emeritus Professor Stephen Kemmis (▶ https://doi.org/10.1007/000-­6dd)

For Stephen Kemmis, the question was about discovering ways to operationalize emancipatory action research. When The Theory of Communicative Action (Habermas, 1985) was first published, Jürgen Habermas’s theme was a hugely powerful, new way of seeing. And, like many new journeys, it created interesting new questions, as well. Circumstances today are very different than they were at that point in the history of action research and the task, of course, was to create examples of action research that were successful representations of this powerful methodology. In order to bring his ideas to fruition, Stephen Kemmis notes that he wrote lists of what he considered to be key features of this exciting new methodology. However, after an inexhaustible supply of lists had been created, he was still unsure as to whether he had captured the essence of action research. In retrospect, he notes that what he was seeking was the crucial notion that action research, at its core, is participatory. Basically, this means that the participants in the research study are also researchers in the study. In this way, hierarchies of power are flattened as the boundaries between the researcher and the researched become blurred. In Stephen Kemmis’s own words, “No one does action research on anybody else, so the actor is the researcher. The teacher is the researcher, the social worker, community persons; it is participatory.” It was this realization that led to the notion that a major issue with the “educational research industry” was that there tends to be far too much attention given to the relationships between theorists’ theories and practitioners’ practices when one really should reverse that duality. According to Kemmis, it makes far more sense to talk much more about theorists’ practices and practitioners’ theories. He claims that

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things change only by changing practitioners’ theories; thus, the necessity for action research to be as participatory as possible. What this entails, then, in order to be able to render action research as faithfully as possible, is the gathering of data, which represents the evidence that one must reflect upon. Then, as one puts the reflections into a plan of action, it is important to anticipate the consequences of one’s actions. Further to this is the recognition of the consequences of those actions; that is, the recognition of causality. From this point, one must strive to capture and represent the process in some meaningful way. Thus, the consequences of action research must be mobilized, gathering further data or evidence about the nature and consequences of one’s actions in order to create lasting, positive social change. Given that this is a fairly complex set of procedures, particularly as it involves numerous participant-researchers, the process can become emancipatory or, at least transformative for the individuals and the groups working within this methodology. Although Professor Kemmis concedes that, while action research is done by individuals, either isolated or working alongside one another, social practices are socially constructed. As a result, to change social practice, it is necessary to not only modify what the teacher does but also what the student does. Further to this, it is not just about the alterations that teacher and students engender but also the ways in which parents and school authorities view the change, as well as the relationship between researcher and participants, that is important. Simply because people tend to live within social networks, when one changes action, a domino effect tends to be created. When one creates change, the relationships among various kinds of stakeholders are necessarily adjusted. These people, who are inextricably linked with the action that has created the change, require engagement and this engagement must occur in a “self-understanding way” within the research process. With action research, then, the objective is to create change, to transform not only processes and procedures, but to transform people, as well. At this point in the video-clip, Professor Kemmis offers a list of transformative processes that have helped in the process of metamorphosis. As a result of the action research process, participants and researchers alike become “culturally and discursively more sustainable.” What Professor Kemmis means by this is that they become more rational and more authentic in terms of their various practices. They also tend to become less ideologically driven. Consequently, they are also socially, politically and morally more sustainable in that they are not unjust. The cascade effect continues in that, with social justice uppermost, harm or suffering are lessened as participants become materially and economically more sustainable. This transformation means, to Stephen Kemmis, that the participants are not destructive, wasteful or unproductive. As a result, they practice greater ecological sustainability in environmental terms, and become more conscious of whether they are using up the Earth’s resources. Additionally, they come to understand that they are more sustainable in terms of individual human beings, and their resilience and capacity to live, rather than wasting, deforming or disfiguring their lives, is improved.

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For Stephen Kemmis, then, action research is responsible for creating an emancipatory impulse geared towards generating fewer of those unsustainabilities. However, in a moment of reflection, Professor Kemmis has his doubts. He claims that he used to be more hopeful that humanity had the capacity to make change, in terms of group dynamics, towards greater rationality and the like. However, he now believes that “we sort of have to climb crab-like out of our holes, away from the darkness of irrationality; away from the darkness of injustice; it’s away from the negatives we try to get.” By way of explaining this caveat, Professor Kemmis notes that, once we begin to believe that we have achieved a positive stance we become “Utopian.” So, for Stephen Kemmis, action research is less a form of engaged research than it is a form of collective and collaborative research. The constant early search for the “essence” of action research, for the “one true method” of action research created its own difficulties. Professor Kemmis notes that this search was conducted in a very certain and well-defined way. His search for “beautiful,” “pure,” and “unsullied” action research that represents an embodiment of thoughtfulness can be likened to a search for the Holy Grail of qualitative methodologies. However, if such a form of action research were ever to be discovered or were ever to exist in real terms, he notes that it would likely not have the spiral of self-contained cycles of planning, acting and observing, and reflecting. It would be so because the spiral concept commonly associated with action research really never quite works according to plan or the way that people expect it to work. While it does work effectively, it is driven by data, so it really only ever works in a fairly general sense, according to Kemmis. Kemmis and McTaggart (2000) maintain that, in reality, the process may not be as neat as these spiral stages suggest. The process is likely to be more fluid, open and responsive; characteristic of this form of qualitative research—the plan, act, observe, reflect spiral is, by necessity, iterative and appealing, as it allows for an opportunity to re-envision the phenomenon at progressively higher levels of understanding (Koshy, 2010). In fact, as Koshy (2010) explains, excessive reliance on a particular model, or following the stages or cycles of a model too rigidly, may adversely affect the emerging nature and flexibility that are the hallmarks of action research. Although action research may not necessarily function in terms of social justice issues, it does tend to focus on matters of social justice. This tends to occur because, as Stephen Kemmis attests, the world is so overly structured in terms of systems, governmentality, performativity, accountability demands, compliance, regulations, and rampant policy making. For an action researcher, research always tends to become influenced by what he calls, “endless, reckless, policy making and regulation.” As a result, then, the social world appears to roll over us like a juggernaut. For Professor Kemmis, however, one of action research’s most important aims is to identify that community of spaces where people can encounter one another and think together in that particular mode that Habermas refers to as communicative action, where individuals and groups of individuals seek out innocent intersubjective agreement, mutual understanding and consensus about how to proceed regarding any given situation or series of events. Because action research is so very tightly

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bound to real life issues, as such, Professor Kemmis finds Habermas’s system of micro-theory useful in attempting to understand the way that action research theories actually do work. He notes that these three things—agreement, understanding and consensus—require a vehicle, such as action research, in order to create the conditions by which this may be accomplished. Accordingly, for Stephen Kemmis, action research attempts to look into the society, through its participants, in order to understand issues within society and the consequences of those issues. He laments the fact that this rarely happens, due to the very mechanisms that slow the process, such as proposal writing, funding and, eventually, getting to the actual research itself. These things not only take time but researchers do not ordinarily think about their research projects in terms of proposals that will capture the essence of the research, itself. Increasingly, he is beginning to think of action research as a kind of restless, subversive quest to “understand things together and to understand together why things are going wrong” because he worries that issues within the society are going wrong and they are continuing to go wrong in ever-increasing magnitude. Consequently, the responsibility claimed through action research is to discover ways to begin and sustain necessary conversations in order for people to understand one another and to gain some modicum of peace and contentment because consensus may be easily achieved allowing conflict and disagreement to be readily conquered. Therefore, given this responsibility, very different kinds of education are needed and, to Professor Kemmis, an action research project is a means to engage people by bringing them together to overcome these afore-mentioned irrationalities and issues that plague society. In questioning whether it involves a form of self-transformation for the groups involved, Professor Kemmis believes it does, as has been observed in Australia’s Northern Territory, where he and a research team worked a number of years ago. This transformation tends to occur as a result of data collection, as action research involves people in collecting all kinds of data, historical and otherwise, in order for them to interpret their own reality, to write their story and to develop different ways of understanding that story. Thus, action research lends itself to systematic inquiry that is eventually made public simply through people working, writing and connecting with one another. However, he cautions, it will not look like an action research project at the time, and it will not appear like a proposal that incorporates a set number of steps that are then written up and sent off to one academic journal or another for publication. Action research, Professor Kemmis claims, is really about changing the world; and that is what engaged research is really all about. It is not about changing words; it is about refashioning the environment and the world around us. In fact, he notes, great scientific breakthroughs are not the ones that appear on the pages of a journal, somewhere, which only a few “arcane specialists” will read; the great breakthroughs are about solving the issues surrounding Indigenous education in Australia, for example, or resolving problems relating to international relations. Because it is in the world that we want to see these changes made, it requires “working with people, not working on them.”

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Thus, as Professor Kemmis opines, action research that does make a difference helps people find alternative ways of understanding their world. For example, he notes, the entire Freirian movement towards conscientization in which migrant farm workers were taught to become more literate. Through their growing understanding of social issues that oppressed them, personally (Freire, 2000), they simultaneously learned to understand the social world. However, he points out, the mechanism that allows this process to occur spontaneously is quite invisible to them. Their condition was taken for granted, the process inscrutable, and it was Freire and others who helped them and many others besides to understand their own specific social location and their language, together. This was extraordinarily liberating and earns Paulo Freire, along with Kurt Lewin, the honour of being one of the founding fathers of action research. As he ends this interview, Professor Kemmis notes that many of us are good at doing research but are not as good at being engaged with the world. So, when we ask ourselves what changes we want to make and how we are going to go about his process, it is a call to action research, but it is not a call that the academy ordinarily favours. Part of the academy’s resistance to action research is the notion of validity, largely due to its apparent methodological limitations (Ellis, 2010). These criticisms relate to a perceived lack of scientific rigour, replicability and generalizability. In humble defense, all such critiques are more commonly associated with quantitative research and, particularly, the notion of generalizability has never been within the purview of qualitative research, in general. In response to this, and due to the need for qualitative research to develop its own vocabulary, distinct from quantitative research, Zeichner and Noffke (2001) recommend the term “trustworthiness,” referring to the analysis of data and whether reports and interpretations represent an honest and authentic construction of the knowledge that is generated through the research inquiry. Greenwood and Levin (2007) use the term “credibility” (p. 67) in two ways; internal credibility refers to knowledge created that is meaningful to the participants generating it, and external credibility refers to those uninvolved in the research but for whom the outcomes must be plausible.

The Postmodern Context The current postmodern period has added to the complexity of doing research by pointing to the multiplicity of ways that research may be performed, represented, and interpreted. LeCompte (1995) notes that the postmodern context shifts the locus of power in collaborative research by giving voice to those who have not yet been heard, and by seeking to legitimize ideas that have previously been denied. As ever, when it comes to discussing any qualitative methodology, there are always significant differences between the methodology as written and the methodology as lived and performed. As has been mentioned previously, in preceding chapters, when it comes to qualitative research, there may very well be as many different

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methodological twists and turns as there are researchers involved with any given methodology. Action research is no different. Thus, depending upon those who are involved in action research, there is a multiplicity of ways to describe the permutations of action research. In fact, according to Burns (2015), there are approximately 30 typical representations of action research that utilize a three- or four-stage spiral approach, such as planning, action, observation and reflection. These spirals are interwoven, fluid and repeated throughout the inquiry, encouraging the researcher(s) to prepare themselves for unexpected and unanticipated variations and reiterations in the research process. In fact, O’Brien (2001) notes that, by the mid-1970s, the field had evolved, revealing four current types of action research that had emerged—traditional (from Kurt Lewin), contextual or action learning (reconstituting structural relations), radical (emancipation and overcoming power imbalances), and educational action research (from John Dewey). To add to the mix, the terms “collaborative” and “participatory” action research are frequently used interchangeably. However, in collaborative action research, the emphasis is placed upon the collaboration or the process, rather than, as in participatory action research, the emphasis being placed upon the participants, themselves. Youth action research, a subset of participatory action research, based on Freire’s method of praxis (Cammarota, 2011), is clearly focused on providing “young people the opportunity to think critically about their social and economic conditions and engage in actions to address these conditions” (p. 829) in order to transform their lived experience for the better and to provide opportunities to grow intellectually and acquire the skills necessary to handle a variety of challenges. The model is collaboratively designed and is directly aimed at addressing issues of social justice that students themselves have identified. Collective action research identifies participants as a collection of individuals, possibly from very different walks of life. Community-based action research, as the name implies, focuses on a community or a geographical location and may very well include components of collective-type action research. According to Bob Dick (1997), action learning is a variant of action research, which can be defined as a process in which a group of people come together on a regular basis in order to assist one another to learn from their lived experiences. Frequently, this process is used across several different organizations, where participants typically emanate from disparate organizations in order to learn about a common theme. Most commonly, however, this has taken the form of managers, within a single organization, participating in action learning that may be somewhat comparable to professional learning communities (Wenger, 1999) in their truest form. Typically, also, the team is constituted of participants who have a common goal in mind, possibly accompanied by a facilitator. Participatory action learning, as the name suggests, prioritizes core values, such as inclusiveness, to cultivate participatory approaches to knowledge production and exchange, as well as to explore systems dynamics and power relations, thus allowing participatory action learning—like its namesake, participatory action research— to become a catalyst for transformative social change and development. However,

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the key difference resides in the point that participatory action learning is committed to the process of learning, rather than to systems of external accountability (Action Evaluation Collaborative, 2016). Another permutation of action research is termed “living theory action research” (Whitehead, 2009, p. 85). This form of action research establishes how individuals may generate living theories from action research as explanations for their educational influences in learning. These explanations afford an understanding of the epistemological significance of such influences, explored in terms of energy and values that may drive questions, such as “How do I improve what I am doing?” Textual limitations in expressing meanings of the explanatory principles can be overcome by adopting a perspective of inclusivity and through multi-media explanations focusing on the embodied knowledges of action researchers (Whitehead, 2009). As well as methodological approaches to and variations of action research, numerous methods are available that align well with action research. Essentially, data collecting frequently takes traditional forms, such as observing and recording, and asking for viewpoints or opinions. As with all forms of research, the research question, methodology, conceptual framework and data collection methods should be well co-ordinated with one another. Although uncommon, action research may also be quantified through percentages, rankings, or ratings (Burns, 2015). Qualitative action research, as an umbrella term, may include, but is not limited to • Appreciative Inquiry  – beginning with what is working well and then using action research to improve it. • Lesson Study – teaching a shared lesson as the action with a set of protocols for understanding the outcomes. • Practitioner Research  – need not be action research since practitioners can engage in any form of qualitative or quantitative research. • Teacher Research – like practitioner research, this 0may be any kind of research performed by teachers, including action research, but not limited to it. • Reflective Practice/Self Study  – uses action research but does not require the practitioner to publish or share results. • Action Inquiry  – draws upon action research through recasting evaluation research to better understand collective leadership. • Improvement Science  – is designed explicitly to accelerate learning-by-doing from a more user-centered and problem-centered approach to improve teaching and learning. As can be seen, these approaches illustrate the enormous variations in action research that people, working in various professions and employment situations, have of conceptualizing these terms. Action research, in all of its varieties, is also gaining acceptance in applied linguistics studies as an empirical approach, as well as to engage practitioners in their personal professional growth through reflective practice and local practical inquiry (Burns, 2015).

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The Philosophical Context As with any form of qualitative research, the process by which action research is performed is as much an art form as it is with any other qualitative research methodology. Proper ethical considerations and research design assure the equity, quality, and value of action research in enhancing social situations. Burns (2015) asks three important ethical questions: whose permission is required, who will be affected by the research, and how should the results be disseminated? Because action research tends to involve continual decisions and challenges, an ethical position is needed in order to strengthen the quality, trustworthiness and credibility of the action research inquiry (Burns, 2015). At its heart, action research remains an interactive inquiry process, balancing collaborative problem-solving initiatives with data-driven analysis, also collaborative, in order to realize underlying causes that allow for future predictions, relative to personal and/or organizational change (Reason & Bradbury, 2001). Within action research, there have been a multitude of methods that have been developed over the past half century, or so. These methods have evolved to adjust the focus of the methodology in order to concentrate more on actions involved with the research, or more on the research angles of the endeavour that tend to result from the reflective understanding of the actions taken. According to Reason and Bradbury (2001), tensions exist between researchers driven either by the research agenda or by the participants within the research project, and by those motivated to realize goals associated with the research project, or by personal, organizational or societal transformations. In other words, this tension exists between a personal perspective regarding the research, as opposed to more scholarly research aimed at creating theory or developing large-scale change (Reason & Bradbury, 2001). As such, action research has the capacity to move beyond reflective knowledge, created by “experts,” to active and immediate theorizing occurring in the midst of emergent structures or methods. In this way, action research maintains the ability to challenge traditional social science and, because it represents a problem-based investigation by practitioners into their own practice, it can be considered to be an empirical practice in that it creates and shares knowledge within the social sciences. However, regardless of the aim of action research, a number of theoretical approaches to action research have been developed. John Heron (1928–)  – renamed and, in effect, rebranded collaborative action research as “cooperative inquiry” (1996). This was later broadened and further developed by Peter Reason (2001). The objective of cooperative inquiry is to emphasize full involvement by all participants in the action research inquiry, hence the term, “cooperative.” This changes the relationship between the researchers and participants so that the participants become co-researchers with those facilitating the project. In so doing, cooperative inquiry creates research cycles among four differing kinds of knowledge: • Propositional – typically found in contemporary science and which may represent arcane knowledge or suppositions about that knowledge;

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• Practical – knowledge obtained by enacting the proposed research; • Experiential – information obtained from interaction with the environs; and, • Presentational – the process, artistic and rehearsed, through which new practices may be developed. (Reason & Bradbury, 2001) With each iteration of the cooperative research cycle, each of these four stages are enacted and, due to the spiral nature of these iterations, experience and knowledge are broadened and deepened as a result of the initial process and/or from the development of new propositions or practices. Chris Argyris (1923–2013) – maintained that humans design their actions to attain specific consequences. As such, they are governed by environmental variables, which dictate key differences between single- and double-loop learning. Single-loop learning is used when the current goals, values and strategies are sound, not questionable and the emphasis is on techniques and their effectiveness. On the other hand, double-loop learning is used when strategy is reviewed and the emphasis is on learning and reviewing previous situations. (Mihăiloaie, 2014).

Thus, when actions are taken to achieve intended consequences, single-loop learning occurs. However, when actions are designed with the object of transformation in mind, double-loop learning follows. It is possible to have both single-and double-­loop learning occurring within the same study, providing that both of the above noted objectives guide the study. Single-and double-loop learning concepts can be applied not only to personal behaviours but also to organizational behaviours. This differs from research in which environmental variables are controlled and researchers try to discern cause and effect within an isolated environment (Argyris, 1999).

Single-Loop, Double-Loop, and Triple-Loop Learning Based on the work of Chris Argyris and Donald Schön (1974), in particular, Single-­ Loop Learning is about making adjustments in order to correct a mistake or to fix a problem. The focus for this type of learning is on following the procedures or by “doing things right.” Causality in rarely an issue with this type of learning. Double-­ Loop Learning, however, is concerned with causality, particularly in terms of identifying and understanding the issue at hand and then taking steps to resolve or “fix” a specific issue. This type of learning is less focussed on “doing things right” than on “doing the right things.”

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There is a third type of learning, as well. This is referred to as Triple Loop Learning, which tends to explore values and reasons for existing systems and processes. This third type of learning strives to understand the process of decision-making.

Single-Loop Learning Single-Loop learning is considered to be a relatively conservative learning strategy because there is no opportunity for questioning or creating change. Single-Loop learning is really about following the process from start to finish in order to find out where the problem lies. One overused example relates to the concept of the thermostat which operates in one mode, thanks to a bi-metallic strip that identifies when a room is too cold or too hot. This is an automatic and limited reaction. When addressing single-loop learning in real life situations, little insight is required and even less learning takes place. A better example may be a typical organization where hierarchical processes, procedures and practices occur. Single-Loop learning is in evidence when anomalies are detected and these situations are dealt with in order to return to “normal.” The reasons for these anomalies are rarely explored. Typically, single-loop learning results in small fixes and minor adjustments. When the error detected and corrected permits the organization to carry on its present policies or achieve its presents objectives, then that error-and-correction process is single-loop learning. Single-loop learning is like a thermostat that learns when it is too hot or too cold and turns the heat on or off. The thermostat can perform this task because it can receive

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10  Action Research information (the temperature of the room) and take corrective action. Double-loop learning occurs when error is detected and corrected in ways that involve the modification of an organization’s underlying norms, policies and objectives. (Argyris & Schön, 1978, p. 2–3)

Double-Loop Learning With double-loop learning, the game is changed by adjusting the rules that are currently in play. This type of learning may occur as a result of single-loop learning that has identified a departure from traditional or historical approaches to an issue or problem. This approach seeks the cause for the anomaly in the first place and then seeks to make adjustments. Double-Loop Learning aims to not only make assumptions explicit, but to change them, thus creating a new space where what is already known can be viewed from new perspectives. Double-loop learning requires a certain amount of creativity and innovative thinking in order to detect the cause of the issue at hand in order to understand the effect of potential solutions. As ever, the objective is to (re)solve an issue or to achieve a specified goal. If single-loop learning is characterized by fixing or avoiding errors, double-loop learning may be characterized by attending to the underlying causes of the issue at hand. In many cases, the culprit may be traced to the organization’s culture, or to policies requiring review, working conditions, or even traditional beliefs and values that are problematic. Double-loop learning tends to lead to organizational learning.

Triple-Loop Learning There is a third type of learning, called, triple-loop learning, that strives to understand the process by which solutions are developed and understood (McNamara, 2006). Thus, this type of learning is more about the process of learning than it is about the process of problem resolution. So, if single-loop learning is about making certain that the rules are followed, and double-loop learning is about understanding the cause of the problem in order to resolve it, triple-loop learning questions the purpose of the practice, itself, whether it refers to rules, processes or policies. Thus, triple-loop learning is existential at its core because it questions the need for, the verity or the value of the particular point in question. Triple-loop learning allows for self-reflection with regard to beliefs regarding a particular phenomenon, as well as allowing for social exploration and reflection as multiple ideas may be considered. Therefore, triple-loop learning is frequently concerned with self-reflexive and socially constructed meaning-making (Corlett, 2012).

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The Action Research Process as an Agent of Change Action research can be engaged in by a single individual, a group of colleagues or by an entire system, whether it be a school (Sagor, 2000), a hospital or a commercial institution. However, according to Sagor (2000), action research always involves the same iterative seven-step process: • • • • • • •

Selecting a focus Clarifying theories Identifying research questions Collecting data Analyzing results Reporting results Taking informed action

These seven steps, while discreet and separate form one another, can easily be condensed into a typical action research spiral. Thus, the integrity of the single-loop, double-loop or triple-loop learning can be preserved in whatever form or direction that the action research project may take. As noted by Burns (2015), however, action research can be deliberately interventionist, as it takes aim directly at the status quo. Consequently, researchers and participants alike may find themselves confronting threatening or distasteful realities in ways that they had not anticipated or even entertained. Despite such disturbing eventualities, educational aims continue to be at the centre of most forms of action research, as it endeavours to develop and augment participant and researcher relationships within and among each group. Illuminating how relationships and ethical principles were mediated in relation to the various research cycles provides a level of research integrity. Because action researchers may not merely be participants but may also assume the role of facilitators, as well, at some times they may be expected to be in charge of a classroom; the social situation within which they may find themselves is likely to be dynamic. It is for this reason that research parameters, such as scope and intent of the project, need to be realistic and justified (Burns, 2015), and are closely tied to the educational concept that practice and theory inform one another reciprocally.

Action Research in Organizational Development Action research, conceptualized by Kurt Lewin, has been further developed and expanded upon by numerous social scientists. Lewin’s basic tenet was that motivation was intrinsically related to action. Lewin related such action to permanent, effective social change. Thus, he noted, if people are involved in the change process, the likelihood of permanent, positive change is enhanced. He claimed that if “rational social management” (Lewin, 1958) were to be realized, it would proceed in

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Fig. 10.2  Lewin’s action research spiral in Organizational Development. (Smith, 2001)

terms of spiraling steps (Fig. 10.2), each of which is comprised of “a circle of planning, action and fact-finding about the result of action” (p. 201). French and Bell (1973) used action research to define organizational development. Below is a representation of the action research cycle, as appropriated by behaviouralists involved in organizational development. Figure  10.3 summarizes the steps and processes involved in planned change through action research, depicted as a cyclical process of change. Note the differences between this model, adapted for organizational development and the original model developed by Lewin (Figs. 10.1 and 10.2). As so frequently occurs with any type of qualitative research methodology, permutations abound. Although the systems model of action research may be useful for organizational development, it does not mean that the original Lewin model is insufficient for the task. In fact, numerous organizations opt for the original model in order to move their organizational project along. A third type of model is presented below, Fig.  10.4. This model is a simplified version of a typical action research cycle that is frequently used by smaller groups and individual researchers. As can be seen, the action loops continue to spiral and remain cyclical. The vocabulary is more appropriate to individuals and small groups and is a beneficial model where time and resources may be limited. As major adjustments or re-evaluations in any of these models occur, the cycle tends to revert to the first step of the planning stage. Thus, the organizational development or individual development project would exhibit the basic change that has initiated that reversion—or revision—as it were. The action stage of any of these models signals a period of change, often resulting in new behaviours that can result

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Fig. 10.3  A systems model of the action research process. (French & Bell, 1973)

Fig. 10.4  Riel (2019)

in improved understanding of issues within the system and, thus, may indicate ways of better coping with these issues. Of course, these steps and cycles are not mutually exclusive domains, as there is always some overlap and, in reality, borders between stages are not clearly defined. Gaps and overlaps are a natural occurrence in this continuously evolving process. Action research is not only participant- or problem-­ centered, it is also oriented towards action in an attempt to provide identification of problems, a diagnosis of issues, and an active direction-taking which tends to

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recycle and transform incrementally until an appropriate solution materializes that serves to resolve the issue(s) that invoked the application of action research to begin with.

 eature Article: Action Research in an Urban F Elementary School The following article explores how action research can be used in a collaborative environment. This was first written in 2006 and has been reprinted several times since. The authors of this volume have chosen to reprint this article to illustrate that action research is not only theoretical but it is also immensely practicable. The topic concerns a Grade Three classroom and the idea that even very complex ideas, particularly about social issues, such as literacy, can be shared with very young children, providing that the vocabulary is appropriate to the age group (See Action Research in practice: Critical literacy in An urban grade three classroom).

Summary: Action Research in a Participating Society Action research represents a flexible and inclusive qualitative research methodology. Researchers strive to understand and articulate tensions stemming from participants’ underlying roles and stances in order to create transformational change by simultaneously engaging in change strategies while taking action. A major contributor to the development of action research is Emeritus Professor Stephen Kemmis, who speaks of his interest in social issues, which in turn spurred his interest in action research. Action research originated with many different scholars from various backgrounds. John Dewey and Kurt Lewin created the foundations of action research. Paulo Freire echoed Dewey’s critique of the transmission model of education and laid the foundation for what would later become critical pedagogy. Chris Argyris, John Heron and Peter Reason broadened and further developed the action research process. Action research is markedly political with respect to its utility in challenging or re-inscribing traditional power hierarchies, as well as contemporary social justice and educational goals. Criticisms relate to a perceived lack of scientific rigour, replicability and generalizability. There are perhaps thirty typical representations of action research that utilize the interwoven, fluid and iterative spiral approach of planning, action, observation and reflection throughout the inquiry. An ethical positioning strengthens the quality, trustworthiness and credibility of the action research inquiry. Within action research, a multitude of methods have evolved to adjust the focus of the methodology to concentrate more on actions involved with

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the research, or more on the research angles of the endeavour. This chapter concluded with an article featuring the development of critical literacy through action research. Suggestions for Further Reading Should the reader wish to read further, regarding action research, please refer to the following: Altrichter, H., Posch, P. & Somekh, B. (1993). Teachers investigate their work: An introduction to the methods of action research. Routledge. Burnaford, G., Fischer, J. & Hobson, D. (Eds.) (2001). Teachers doing research: The power of action through inquiry (2nd edition). Lawrence Erlbaum. Edge, J. (Ed.). (2001). Action research. TESOL. Selected Annotated Bibliography Argyris, C. (1999). On organizational learning. Blackwell. In this book Argyris discusses vital topics of current management research, reflecting the evolving field of organizational learning. This volume is essential for anyone who needs to understand how organizations work, evolve and learn. This new edition brings together the thinking of one of the world’s leading management thinkers in the area of action learning. Focusing on learning and organizational politics, the book addresses key issues such as organizational learning and action science, organizational effectiveness, organizational development, and usable knowledge and how it is inhibited. This volume sheds light into boardroom processes by bringing together the literature on organization behaviour and that of boardroom process to model learning capability. Board process is primarily viewed as a learning process whereby individual members with their knowledge, skills and external networks engage in a collective learning process that culminates in a “shared understanding” about the problems and respective solutions and increased “board social capital.” Dewey, J. (1897/2019). Moral principles in education and my pedagogic creed by John Dewey. Myers Education Press. Contemporary political and socioeconomic conditions that are largely characterized by corruption and inequity have added new urgency to recurring calls for reorienting public schools to their historic purpose; that is, educating a citizenry both equipped and motivated to serve as the ultimate guardians of democracy. In this significant volume, John Dewey reminds readers of public schools’ original purpose, which was to identify specific educational principles and practices that either promote or undermine their essential democratic goals. As Dewey states, “There cannot be two sets of ethical principles, one for life in the school, and the other for life outside of the school.” In these works and through such caveats, Dewey offers readers not only the motivation to engage in the struggle for a new emphasis on educating for democratic citizenship but also the guidance necessary to translate his theory into effective practice.

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Elliott, J. (1991). Action research for educational change. Open University Press. Conceived in instrumental terms, practical knowledge is set against theoretical knowledge. This work strives to legitimate a conception of action research which privileges practice over theory and redefines the relationship between theory and practice. This book is concerned with action research as a form of teacher professional development. In it, John Elliot traces the historical emergence and current significance of action research in schools. He examines action research as a cultural innovation with transformative possibilities for both the professional culture of teachers and teacher educators in academia and explores how action research can be a form of creative resistance to the technical rationality underpinning government policy. He explains the role of action research in the specific contexts of the national curriculum, teacher appraisal and competence-based teacher training. This book is a valuable source of information for educators wishing to become change agents in the educational setting. Fals-Borda, O., & Rahman, M.  A. (1991). Action and knowledge: Breaking the monopoly with participatory action research. Rowman & Littlefield. Action and Knowledge draws upon years of experience with the techniques and philosophy of participatory action-research (PAR), an innovative approach to economic and social change, which goes beyond usual institutional boundaries in development by actively involving the people in generating knowledge about their own condition and how it can be changed. PAR requires a strong commitment by participating social scientists to de-professionalize their expertise and share it, while recognizing that the communities involved have a critical voice in determining the direction and goals of change. PAR originated in the work of social scientists, who sought new ways to empower the oppressed by helping them acquire reliable knowledge on which to construct countervailing power. Since then, it has spread throughout the world, as reflected in this book. PAR is not static and fixed but dynamic and enduring, as the case studies and the theoretical chapters that precede and follow the case studies amply reveal. Habermas, J. (1962/1991). The structural transformation of the public sphere: An inquiry into a category of bourgeois society. MIT Press. Jürgen Habermas’s The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere is an immensely rich and influential book that has had major impact in a variety of disciplines. It has also received detailed critique and promoted extremely productive discussions of liberal democracy, civil society, public life and social changes in the twentieth century. Few books have been so seriously discussed in so many different fields and continue to generate productive controversy and insight. Although Habermas’s thought took several crucial philosophical turns after the publication of his first major book, he has provided detailed commentary on The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere in the 1990s and has returned to issues of the public sphere and democratic theory in his monumental work Between Facts and Norms. Hence, concern with the public sphere and the necessary conditions for a

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genuine democracy can be seen as a central theme of Habermas’s work that deserves respect and critical scrutiny. Kemmis, S. & Carr, W. (1986/2002). Becoming critical: Education knowledge and action research. Routledge Falmer. The growing movement to extend the professionalism of teachers has resulted in greater opportunities for them to engage in greater theorizing and educational research. Some examples of this include school-based curriculum development, research-based in-service education and professional self-evaluation projects. The teacher as researcher impetus is a response to a variety of social conditions, political pressures and professional aspirations. This volume offers a theoretical rationale by outlining a philosophical justification supporting the role of teachers as researchers through the development of educational research as a form of critical social science. By exposing and critically assessing key philosophical positions in educational research, this book offers teachers access to the language that allows them to adopt a research stance in their educational practice. This book also questions the conformist view upon which many beliefs about education continue to rest. Kincheloe, J. L. (2008). Critical pedagogy primer (2nd Ed.). Peter Lang. This second edition of the Critical Pedagogy Primer introduces the topic of critical pedagogy and also provides a vision for the future of critical pedagogy. Kincheloe’s notion of an “evolving criticality” ensures that critical pedagogy will continue to be a vibrant and creative force that makes a powerful difference in education and in the world in general. As it prepares readers for the challenges of the future, it focuses on the traditions and individuals who have helped to construct the discipline. This attention to the past and future provides readers with an introduction unlike most initiations into academic disciplines. In a richly textured but direct manner, Kincheloe captures the spirit of critical pedagogy in a language accessible to diverse audiences. Both the uninitiated and those with experience in critical pedagogy can learn from this unique and compelling perspective on the field. Joe L. Kincheloe was Canada Research Chair in Critical Pedagogy at McGill University and was founder of The Paulo and Nita Freire International Project for Critical Pedagogy. Lewin, K. (1958). Group decision and social change. Holt, Rinehart & Winston. This classic volume describes numerous experiments regarding group decision-­ making that have been conducted in the past. At the time, group decision-making did not allow for definite conclusions. This volume addresses the nature of the problems and the main factors concerned. Also addressed are the various concepts through which the author attempted to integrate cultural anthropology, psychology and sociology into one social science. Scientifically speaking, many of the questions related to group decision-making lie at the intersection of many basic problems of group life and individual psychology. This volume addresses the relationship of motivation to action and the effect of a group setting on an individual’s readiness to change or to maintain the status quo. Thus, it is related to a fundamental problem

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of action research; how to change group conduct so that recidivism is minimized. Within this wider setting of social norms and social management, group decision-­ making is viewed as a means of social change. McTaggart, R. (1991). Action research: A short modern history. Deakin University Press. For serious practitioners of participatory action research, it is helpful to identify its principles. This volume outlines principles of participatory action research derived from theory and practice in both Western and cross-cultural contexts. Participatory action research is identified with critical social theory and is exemplified with two perspectives from participatory action research in Northern Australian Aboriginal communities. The core idea of action research is that there should be an intimate relationship between inquiry and practical or political activities. Research must be treated as operating on the same plane as any other activity, but the relationship between research and the action that is anticipated as its result will always be less than isomorphic, and this creates the possibility of systemic tensions, which may be ameliorated by subordinating inquiry, or by making it primary. Both avenues are legitimate, although attempting to treat the two components of action research as equal may engender significant contradiction. Monk, R. (1992). Wittgenstein: The duty of genius. Penguin. According to Ray Monk, Ludwig Wittgenstein, the philosopher and reluctant Cambridge don, was driven by spiritual matters, as much as by intellectual concerns. Wittgenstein exchanged academia for solitude whenever possible and was drawn to brilliant younger men. Monk does a magnificent job of illuminating the twin journeys of Wittgenstein’s extraordinary mind and soul. This volume is remarkable for the interweaving of the philosophical and the emotional aspects of Wittgenstein’s life. Ray Monk’s reconnection of Wittgenstein’s philosophy with his life exemplifies Wittgenstein’s work, allowing the reader to view it in new ways. Monk’s biography of Wittgenstein is brilliant and deeply intelligent. Monk’s rendition of Wittgenstein’s life represents a marvelous philosophical biography, for which the author was awarded the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize and the Duff Cooper Prize. He is also the author of Robert Oppenheimer and a two-volume biography of Bertrand Russell. Reason, P., & Bradbury, H. (2001). Handbook of action research: Participative inquiry and practice. SAGE. This book represents a truly significant work in the reframing of action research. Action research has reached maturity and, in the context of postmodern constructionist debates, its scope has been dramatically expanded, its conceptual underpinnings deepened, and its forms of practice enormously enriched. This is an excellent book for understanding the inter-relationship between researchers, participants and the greater society. In this exciting handbook, Reason and Bradbury have produced a number of significant writings in this new and developing sphere of participative inquiry, representing a valuable resource for researchers and for research methods

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courses, as it draws together the different strands of action research, demonstrating their diverse applications and showing their interrelations. This volume is an essential resource for scholars and professionals engaged in social and political inquiry, organizational research and education. Stenhouse, L. (1975). An introduction to curriculum research and development. Heinemann. This is a classic text that has been very influential in the development of practitioner and action research. Stenhouse proposes a model for curriculum as an enquiry-based process so that teachers, students, parents and the local community can work together to plan, evaluate and develop the content, learning experiences and outcomes of schooling to foster a rich education for all those involved. The model is led primarily by objectives or learning outcomes. Stenhouse’s model is radical in that it positions teachers as practitioner researchers and also because it offers an alternative to prescribed content-heavy transmissive curriculum. Stenhouse argues that teachers need to be research-informed but also be involved in educational research. At the end of this book, he concludes that researchers and teachers need to collaborate in order to develop strong learning and research skills. Stenhouse notes that communication is less effective than community when it comes to the utilization of knowledge. Questions for Further Study • What similarities exist between action research and other qualitative methodologies? • How does action research differ from other qualitative methodologies? • What are some of the benefits derived from the process of doing action research? • What particular type of action research are you particularly drawn to and why? • Can you attempt to apply action research to a topic of your own choosing? What would this study look like using an action research methodology?

 ction Research in practice: Critical literacy in an urban A grade three classroom Karyn Cooper Ontario Institute for Studies in Education of the University of Toronto Robert E. White St. Francis Xavier University Cooper, K. & White, R. E. (2006). Action research in practice: Critical literacy in an urban grade 3 classroom. Educational Action Research 14(1), 83-99. Abstract This action research project on critical literacy in a high poverty area in Toronto, Canada becomes the practical backdrop for examining how critical literacy can be

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developed and applied in regular classroom situations. Educators identifying patterns within classrooms that prevent students from participating fully in all aspects of a democratic society may find models presented in this article useful for making curricula more inclusive. Literacy failure leads to poor overall academic performance, immense loss of self-esteem and an accumulating lack of basic literacy skills needed for self-support and for making an economic contribution to society. While literacy can be defined in many ways in today’s society, it is reading failure that is currently the most significant issue along the literacy spectrum. Reading failure and educational change are inextricably intertwined. In order to bolster literacy capacity, a prime place to begin is in the arena of educational reform. Education has undergone profound changes in the past few years as ministries of education, faculties of education, and school boards prepare teachers to respond to the needs of “all” children. In the province of Ontario, Canada, for example, all Grade Three students now participate in the Education Quality and Accountability Office (EQAO) Standardized tests. As well, a public school board in Ontario has compiled a Learning Opportunities Index (Toronto District School Board, 2001) which serves to indicate a “relative level of need” for over 450 elementary schools under its prevue. This Opportunities Index correlates with literacy scores from EQAO Tests and is used by the school district to profile low literacy levels for early learners from urban schools (Brown, 2001). Despite significant public expenditure on education, being part of the reading world is not a reality for many urban inner city children in lower socio-economic areas. While these learners are Ontario’s at-­ risk students, their situation has global parallels. Although local practices and global practices differ around the world, literacy requires a re-imaging in this era of reconstruction and development (Janks, 2000). This issue, then, is an international one: how can elementary teachers in urban schools best help at-risk learners in literacy education and thus their chances for future success in education and life? One of those hundreds of urban elementary schools in this Canadian school board is the Sir Simon George Elementary School. This K-5 school has over 650 students, 48% female and 52 % male, with 12% born outside of Canada and 66% for whom English is not their primary language. Because Sir Simon George Elementary School scored poorly on the Board’s Learning Opportunities Index, the staff at Sir Simon George Elementary School recently has begun to come to come to grips with the issue. The staff has embraced a new vision for this school. In order to implement this vision, the school staff established several important changes in the hopes of reversing this school’s low educational ranking. Professional development for classroom teachers on administering the Developmental Reading Assessment (DRA) constituted another significant change. By utilizing this assessment procedure, the school was able to obtain literacy baseline scores for all of its students. Furthermore, a school district primary literacy consultant, in concert with the school staff, designated a daily school-wide, two-­ hour time block for implementation of an early literacy program. Literacy research is replete with accounts indicating that early intervention with at-risk students can effectively increase levels of literacy skills and comprehension.

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Such research suggests that a key to successful intervention is to provide students with programs that emphasize critical thinking strategies (Anyon, 1980; Gunning, 2000; Slavin, 1998). Critical literacy can be separated from the notion of critical thinking in the following way. Luke (1997) notes that critical approaches to literacy involve “a shift away from psychological and individualistic models of reading and writing towards those approaches that use sociological, cultural and discourse theory to reconceptualise the literate subject, textual practices, and classroom pedagogy” (143). He goes on to state that: Critical approaches are characterized by a commitment to reshape literacy education in the interests of marginalized groups of learners, who on the basis of gender, cultural and socioeconomic background have been excluded from access to the discourses and texts of dominant economics and cultures (Luke, 1997, p.143).

This definition of critical literacy is supported by Gee (1996) and Edelsky and Cherland (2006). Although critical literacy and critical thinking are not necessarily the same thing, Luke (1997) suggests that “shared across contemporary approaches to critical literacy is an emphasis on the need for literates to take an interventionist approach to texts and discourses of all media” (critical literacy) and also requires “a commitment to the capacity to critique, transform and reconstruct dominant modes of information” (critical thinking) (p. 150). Teachers and researchers, therefore, need to understand the complex relationship between language and power. Research indicates that teacher-generated research provides teachers with a strong feeling of ownership of both the process and results, and increases their own professional development (Carson & Sumara; 1997; Hannay, 1989, 1995; McNiff, 1993). However, despite all the attention given to strategic skill development for at-risk learners and attention given to the ways in which teachers acquire their professional knowledge, teachers’ reflections upon the teaching and learning process has received little attention. In spite of much of the rhetoric on school reform, it is painfully apparent that we do not actively value the insights and interpretations of teachers, and it is precisely these insights and interpretations that can effectively improve not only literacy levels as well as comprehension but critical literacy strategies as well. For these reasons, the staff approached this research team for assistance in the development of a critical literacy action research project.

The critical literacy action research project In the Fall of 2001, Sir Simon George Elementary School staff invited the research team to participate in a multi-year action research project, the focus of which was school wide literacy improvement. The research team consisted of the co-authors, a graduate research assistant, a school literacy co-ordinator and a school district primary literacy consultant. The role of this research team was to act as facilitators to

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work together with teachers to develop critical literacy capacity among the teachers and the entire research team. After the initial and obligatory staff meeting in which the research team was introduce and the project was addressed, the non-school based researchers worked together with teachers to design the process. From this, in conjunction with the school district primary literacy consultant, one teacher volunteered to design and incorporate lesson plans to address issues of critical literacy in her grade three classroom. This paper reports on the action research project on critical literacy that grew out of this initiative. The impact of this project on the teacher and researchers are reported on later in this paper. The action research project reported here offers promise for on-going collaborative research into critical literacy for urban students who continue to be at a disadvantage as it pertains to literacy, comprehension and critical thinking. The purposes of this project were to: • Design a Steps to Action Plan (Mills, 2000) enabling them to effect positive educational change. • Assess the effects on student literacy levels of teaching the students critical literacy strategies, • Evaluate the effects of an action research strategy on teacher learning and professional development. As a corollary to the purposes of the project the staff and administration, in conjunction with the research team, determined the objectives for this project as being: • To develop critical literacy strategies for both early at-risk learners and their teachers, • To improve literacy teachers’ professional judgment, • To implement, assess, and evaluate specific strategies of literacy teaching • To enhance elementary in-service teacher training to support school-wide literacy improvement, critical literacy strategies, and life-long learning. The significance of this study lies not only in its school-initiated origins, but also in its potential to contribute to two interrelated areas: • Critical literacy strategies, by reflecting on how critical thinking and critical literacy is developed by a teacher, in concert with the research team, in an actual classroom for at-risk children; • Action research, particularly an in-depth look at one school’s effort to improve early literacy for at-risk students. In the first year of this project much time was invested in outlining the parameters of the research project, including serious school-wide discussion, culminating in a joint initiative on the methods of literacy instruction for primary students (kindergarten through grade three) in the school. The program of research was based on the action research methodology loop, “act-reflect-revise” (Mills, 2000), with teachers and their students as they engaged in action research to select and implement suitable and appropriate practices for critical literacy, as defined by the teachers themselves.

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At the school level, all research members participated in sessions to decide upon the foundations for the research project based on suitable and appropriate practices for building critical literacy capacities relating to primary urban students and their teachers (Comber, Thomson, Wells, 2001). All stages in the process were developed through consensus, with the research team acting as facilitators for the process. The teacher and the school district primary literacy consultant designed the lessons. Learning strategies such as KWL (Thompkins, 1998) and other reflective practices were included. The “K-W-L” (what we KNOW—what we WANT to learn—what we have LEARNED) strategy for reflective thinking (Thompkins, 1998) is outlined below.

K What we KNOW (One’s preconceptions) Based on my experience, I believe critical literacy can be described as..... I am now thinking.....

W What we WANT to learn I wonder..... What would happen if..... It’s funny how my students..... How can I.....

L What we have LEARNED Developing critical literacy capacities of students and teachers Practice or strategy for developing critical literacy capacities within this component..... When students are engaged in developing critical literacy capacities, it looks like..... When students are engaged in developing critical literacy capacities, it sounds like..... Perhaps (specific student) demonstrates the best response to this strategy because..... Perhaps (specific student) demonstrates the weakest response to this strategy because... For this student to assess his/her critical literacy capacity, what needs to happen? The opportunity for revision (“Are revisions needed to be made to the action plan itself at this time?”) follows this reflection, which in turn produces a new action plan.

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At the end of the first year of the study, the research participants reflected upon the action research project and planned for revision to the research process for the next year. The previously described K-W-L strategy provided the basis for the structure of the focus group reflections within the project. The Debbie Miller (2002) book, Reading with Meaning, was chosen by the participants in this project for its attention to establishing a framework for creating a culture and climate for critical literacy. This book is written by a teacher-researcher and reflects goals similar to the objectives of this critical action research project, providing goals both for teachers and students regarding how to think more deeply while at the same time working towards esteem-building and social agency (Luke, 1997). After the grade three teacher in the project highly endorsed the book, everyone in the project read sample chapters and agreed that it fit into an operative framework for beginning the project. The research team particularly liked the way in which Miller (2002) worked at enabling her students to become more experienced at making meaningful and thoughtful connections to the stories of their own lives so that they might become more adept at reading the broader context within which they live. Like Miller, it was the group’s belief, that the only way to develop responsibility in students is to allow them to practice it. With the first year of the project behind them, the critical literacy action research project began in earnest. The staff felt comfortable with the planning process, and in September, the following questions were asked of the students of the grade three teacher who was part of the research team: “Why do people read?” “What do you see readers doing?” “Where do you see people reading?” These questions and other questions were used to establish connections with students’ lives and to develop a greater understanding of their own reading worlds in order to make the context of the project relevant to them. Brainstorming with the large group and recording students’ thinking was an appropriate way to address the first question. In this way, the school district primary literacy consultant in collaboration with the grade three teacher and the research team began to outline the project with the grade three students. These questions, which framed the beginning work with students, revealed much about the children’s perspectives about reading and also assisted in the selection of relevant teaching materials. By October, focus meetings followed the K-W-L format as previously described. For purposes of framing the discussion, one example from each KWL strategy for reflective thinking is presented below.

“ K” Represents the Research Team’s Current Understanding of Critical Literacy The collective research team realized early on that they needed to establish an understanding of the term “critical literacy”. The research team’s first discussion regarding preconceptions of what critical literacy means was timely, given Edelsky

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and Cherland’s (2006) concern about the popularization and appropriation of the term “critical” and the tendency to trivialize what critical literacy—and critical thinking—really means. From the first meeting: On the meaning of critical literacy, it became clear that the research team in general was using a variety of definitions of critical literacy. The researchers referred the team to Luke (1997): Jamilla: Whatever we are doing needs to be important to us and our belief structures. Otherwise, what are we doing it for? There needs to be some connection to ourselves for it to be meaningful practice. Karyn: Critical literacy is a way to view the world. It’s a key to a democratic education. It’s basic in terms of being critical oneself. Jamilla: We all have different ideas of things in our own heads.... We might think that we are talking about the same thing, but we’re talking about different things altogether. Dianne: ...sharing ownership and trusting...and trusting the students to be able to be responsible and to think Suzanne: If teachers don’t ask themselves why, then how do they expect students to ask why? Many of the students in this particular situation are ESL students. We have had grade three students whom teachers were bringing forth as having difficulties. They were Canadian-born but were receiving ESL instruction and couldn’t be considered ESL students any more. We’re masking a problem that could be deeper than we realize. This passage, taken from the first discussion concerning the need to define a critical literacy stance, points to the notion that “critical literacy” needs to be understood in terms of the dynamics of identity, context and teaching practices employed. Jamilla acknowledges how one’s own belief structures are connected to classroom practice. In speaking about her own identity as a young black teacher, she can begin to see traces of her identity rooted in and through her teaching practices in both explicit and implicit ways. Dianne connects this thought to the all-important roles that teachers play in helping to construct their students’ identities through the beliefs they carry about who the students are and what they believe the students are capable of. Suzanne reminds us of the need to understand the politics of the ‘local’ literacy context when she states that, “Many of our students in this particular situation are ESL students”. Suzanne speaks to the idea that the cultural and political run deep in literacy and that teachers need to be aware of these factors, particularly if they are concerned with all students, including “minority” students, gaining a chance to define themselves. Through this discussion, the team began to consider more deeply just how literacy practices used in educational settings serve to affirm or disaffirm a student’s sense of identity and ultimately a student’s chances for “success” in society. This initial discussion reveals an important question relevant to a critical literacy stance: How do we, as teachers, learn to become more experienced so that we might learn to step outside of ourselves and our own identities to allow multiple identities in? Perhaps this entails the commitment to be continually vigilant concerning what

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conditions truly support literacy, particularly for children of poverty or for those who have been labeled “at-risk.” These are of course ideological considerations and cannot be dealt with in short order. However, through beginning with our own teaching practices, and acting locally, we believed that we might move from our local position to more global issues relevant in literacy education today. At this point, it may be helpful to briefly look at how literacy has been constructed historically. The following definitions illustrate that literacy is storied according to changing economies, cultures, institutions and possible worlds. • A literate person is a person who can, with understanding, both read and write a short, simple statement on his everyday life (UNESCO, 1951). • Functional literacy is the ability to engage effectively in all those reading activities normally expected of a literate adult in his community (Hunter & Harman, 1979). • [Literacy is] using print and written information to function in society, to achieve one’s goals, and to develop one’s knowledge and potential (Southam Literacy, 1987). These definitions show that literacy is dynamic and that historical interpretations have driven and continue to drive what represents literacy. Thus what represents literacy is historically driven and both traces and influences our definitions of literacy and how we use it. As teachers/educators of literacy then, is it not incumbent upon educators to consider their role(s) in shaping the ‘construct’ of what it is that literacy embodies? Is it to ask, “Who is deemed to be a ‘literate’ individual, and by whom”, particularly in these times of a pluralistic milieu in the twenty-first century? If so, then it would seem that definitions must be chosen well. This re-evaluation of what constitutes literacy and, by extension, critical literacy, is driven by dramatic local and global change. Globalization has resulted in the domination of English (Janks, 2000) and Cummins (1995) has addressed questions raised by the cultural politics of English as an international language. The issue is at once global and local as so many of our students are English as a Second Language (ESL) learners, as borne out by the number of ESL students in this study. Chambers adds another dimension to the discussion: To inhabit the multiplicity of cultural borders, historical temporalities and hybrid identities calls for a state of knowledge, an ethics of the intellect, an aperture in politics, able to acknowledge more than itself; a state of knowledge that is prepared to suffer modification and interrogation by what it neither possesses nor can claim as its own…and permits us to lend our ears to what is unsaid in the discourses we employ (Chambers, 1996, 50).

Chambers’ term, “ a state of knowledge” suggests a growing critical awareness of the need to acknowledge multiple identities within any enclosed system, including educational systems. The Chambers quotation is particularly important when considering a critical literacy stance because it embodies key elements of identity and context while considering a state of knowledge capable of “lending our ears to what is unsaid in the discourses [or teaching practices] we employ.”

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In this particular school research context, the research team felt that policy-­ makers do not always define the rich cultural diversity of the children and parents in their school community favourably. While on the surface, multiculturalism is touted to be beneficial to student learning; there may be issues of prejudice and discrimination still hiding in the light. Sonia Nieto (1994) points to patterns that encourage students to move beyond mere tolerance in multicultural education. A quotation from one of the team members may best express this: Suzanne: With talking about what you think and see with students, particularly impoverished students like those in our multicultural school, they’re often written off for various reasons. Another team member expressed a similar idea in the following way: Dianne: Our children are incredibly capable but there is somehow a mismatch between the school’s version of intelligence and what is occurring at home. The dispositional nature of critical thinking was described: Karyn: I’ve had students in Special Education who are very intelligent in terms of the way they use higher order thinking or critical literacy, but it is situational. Perhaps the key is to make critical thinking more dispositional than situational, thereby developing critical learning capacities that are derived from critical literacy. Putting critical literacy into practice takes thought and hard work and the full time teacher is the one charged with the responsibility of being, accountable, effective and efficient. Shutz (2000) places this thought in context: ...what we are led to believe about ourselves, what we learn about how we are supposed to act, the ways we are taught to frame “problems” and even the tools of reason that we use to solve these problems, do not simply represent neutral skills but are in fact ways of forming us into particular kinds of subjects. ‘Power’ in this vision does not merely suppress or restrict but actually produces actions and desires (216).

If critical literacy is to promote democracy, social justice and equity in schools, then what circumstances need to arise in schools for an increase in democracy and shared power? Banks (1999) describes a pattern of four levels of multicultural curriculum that parallel the adoption of a critical literacy curriculum. It is often referred to as a critical literacy curriculum because its definition has expanded to include all students who tend to be marginalized socially or physically. The curriculum pattern tends to become increasingly more inclusive as the approach moves through the inclusion of ethnic heroes into the existing unchanged curriculum to an approach that includes all elements of the transformative approach but also requires students to make decisions and take action related to the concept, issue, or problem they have studied.

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“ W” Represents the Action Research Plan: What the Research Team is Seeking to Know The grade three teacher on the project, Jamilla, wanted to examine the provincial language arts curriculum with an eye towards understanding patterns of how critical literacy is understood, mentioned and factored into the grade three Language Arts curriculum. She began by looking at specific and “global” expectations within sections of the Ontario Language Curriculum (1997). As the following example suggests, the language curriculum document consisted mainly of decontextualized skills. In fact, it was difficult to find language directly relevant to critical literacy practices. In particular, the section under reasoning and ‘critical’ thinking was problematic because, the skills were not only decontextualized, the term “critical” had been co-opted and misapplied (Edelsky and Cherland, 2006). The term “critical” no longer meant critical in many senses of the word. The following example from the grade three Language Arts curriculum, recently in use states:

 verall Expectations – Grade 3 Reading. By the end of Grade 3, O students will: • read a variety of fiction and non-fiction materials (e.g., chapter books, children’s reference books) for different purposes; • read independently, using a variety of reading strategies; • express clear responses to written materials, relating the ideas in them to their own knowledge and experience and to ideas in other materials that they have read; • select material that they need from a variety of sources; • understand the vocabulary and language structures appropriate for this grade level; • Use conventions of written materials to help them understand and use the materials. Patterns of critical approaches to curriculum range from the encouragement of students to engage in explicit criticism of cultural, economic, and political structures to more neutral approaches which affiliate literacy with individuals’ “thinking skills” and the weighting of information (Luke and Walton, 1994). It is these “thinking skills”, rather than the “explicit criticism of cultural, economic and political structures” that tend to be emphasized in curriculum guides. In the example below, critical thinking has been largely reduced to data organization.

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 xpectations in Specific Areas. By the end of Grade 3, E students will:

Reasoning and Critical Thinking: • identify and restate the main idea in a piece of writing, and cite supporting details; • identify and describe some elements of stories (e.g., plot, central idea, characters, setting); • distinguish between fact and fiction; • begin to make inferences while reading; • use familiar vocabulary and the context to determine the meaning of a passage containing unfamiliar words; • begin to develop their own opinions by considering some ideas from various written materials; Understanding of Form and Style: • identify and describe different forms of writing (e.g., poems, stories, plays); • use their knowledge of the organization and characteristics of different forms of writing as a guide before and during reading (e.g., chapters in an adventure story often end with cliff-hangers; menus usually list the items of food on the left and the price of each item on the right);

Knowledge of Language Structures: • use their knowledge of word order in oral and written language to determine the meaning of sentences; Vocabulary Building: • use a variety of strategies to determine the meaning of unfamiliar words (e.g., use the context, break the word into syllables or other recognizable units, use a dictionary, use phonics); Use of Conventions: • use punctuation to help them understand what they read (e.g., exclamation mark, quotation marks); • Identify various conventions of formal texts and use them to find information (e.g., table of contents, chapter titles, headings, index, glossary, charts, graphs).

Despite this approach to literacy education, as presented in the grade three Language Arts curriculum, in practical terms the research team struggled with how the literacy curriculum might be a useful guide for students, particularly when all shared the belief that the students were capable language learners and the team wanted to honor this in their teaching practices. Is the key to using curricular documents to first be cognizant of language patterns used to structure these documents? That is to say, must one become more literate in one’s own understanding of these documents? What research does the document rest on? What belief structures are inherent in the teaching practices espoused within this document? How is language learning understood? For example, is it anchored in development stage theory? Cultural studies theory? Ultimately, what are the purposes of literacy and who gets to define these purposes? And why? Moreover, team members in the study often commented on the tension between the need for teaching explicit skill instruction and critical literacy practices:

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“What kinds of things do you do when you come to a word you don’t know?” and it took me about twenty minutes to get them to say something other than “sounding out”.... So I just have to look at the problem more deeply because they don’t look at it as the “big picture”. Decoding and comprehension go together.... But they think, “If I have a problem with reading, it’s because I don’t know what that word says. It’s about that word or these lists of words that I have to know.”... This is the piece that we need to help them understand - the whole and I’m having a problem with this part here by just letting them be aware of the things they need to do to get to the next level, instead of keeping it a secret that only the teacher knows (Jamilla). It makes sense to wrap the strategies they need to know around it, such as decoding, and to understand their thinking processes. We’d have to have an open dialogue with them whether it be direct skill instruction or crit. lit. (Dianne).

In reading this text, some readers may imagine that this is all well and good but what about teaching reading and writing skills? Of course this is a valid concern, particularly given that so many students continue to fail in school despite the concerted efforts of educators. Rather than fuel the ‘either/or’ debate over whether the central purposes of literacy education should focus on strategic reading or reading to make sense of life, perhaps a literacy model that incorporates both sides of the debate is useful. Freebody and Luke (1990) add to this discussion through their conceptualization of literate practices as involving four roles—code-breaker, meaning-maker, text user and text analyst. Being a code breaker involves understanding the sound symbol relationship and the alphabetic principles. Being text participant or “meaning-­maker” calls upon the reader to draw inferences, using background knowledge to fill out unexplicated aspects of the text. Being a text user means knowing how to use a variety of texts for a variety of purposes in real life situations—For example, reading instructions on a soup can versus writing a friendly letter versus reading instructions on how to put a piece of complex equipment together. Being a text analyst means applying critical discourse analysis and asking questions about absences in texts, how gendered cultural storylines work across texts, who texts are written for, who benefits from a particular storyline and how might it have been written differently. To return to the previous teaching event involving Jamilla’s concern regarding the teaching of explicit skills and critical literacy practices, the role of meaning-­ maker and text analyst were the literacy practices that were deliberately invoked. Although the role of code breaker was used earlier in the day through such literacy practices as the morning message and making words, some students spontaneously modeled the role of text-user. Bearing this in mind, reflections on the first of a series of fifteen-minute mini-­ lessons with the students were also based on the “K-W-L” strategy. This was accomplished by specifically tying critical literacy into the curriculum guidelines by accessing students’ prior knowledge of what their experiences of critical literacy were like. This lesson dealt with “Looking at the Big Picture” —referring back to Jamilla’s earlier comment that the students do not see the ‘big picture’, meaning that the students do not often discuss patterns of exclusion or marginalization or understand the social context of reading—through a large-group brainstorming session

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with the children. Examples of priming questions were, “Why do people need to learn to read”? and “Does everyone [around the world] have the same chance to learn to read”? Responses were recorded on a wall chart. An additional critical literacy pedagogic activity was developed around “How to chose a book for reading.” Connections were made with students by discussing books about social issues. Again brainstorming was used to identify strategies for selecting an appropriate book for independent reading. These strategies were recorded on another chart. A third theme dealt with decoding strategies, discussed earlier, through the priming question of “What do you do when you come to a word you don’t know?” Strategies were recorded on an additional chart so that the students would begin to articulate more strategies than just “sounding out.” This follows up on similar work already happening in the classroom, allowing Jamilla to find the balance that she was seeking between engaging children in critical literacy and explicit literacy skills teaching. A further fifteen-minute mini-lesson set the routines for “Sharing and Celebrating” by recording different thinking strategies. As we worked with students on an ongoing basis, their ideas were recorded on a chart called “Strategies for Sharing Our Thinking.” Miller (2002) calls this “Making Tracks of Our Thinking.” The priming critical question for this instance of meta-cognitive thinking was “What does thinking about reading look like, sound like and feel like?” It was revealing to see the students’ thinking as we learned together throughout the project. Mohammed, for example, suggested that the “teacher reminds us that we can use anything in our life” in order to learn. He goes on to note that TV has helped him make connections to literature and he went on to talk about how Muslims are now patterned as “the bad guys” in the “big news” story because of 9/11. Mohammed takes this personally and makes connections to patterns in the world he knows (Delpit, 1995). As an immigrant, new to Canada and a Muslim, Mohammed’s comment reveals his own feeling of insecurity on a global level, but also shows how safe he feels in being able to reveal his feelings on the local level, within his classroom. Mohammed’s grade three teacher acknowledges that many of her students watch a lot of television. However, she attempts to help them be more critical or discerning in their choices of programs to watch and how to critique systems of domination. In other words, Jamilla recognizes that television is the foremost source of information available to many children living in poverty, and otherwise, and is working towards the development of agency in her students. One of the dilemmas encountered by both teachers and instructors, interested in the promotion of critical literacy in teacher education programs, revolves around how to keep the dialogue hopeful when one begins to question socially patterned constructions of “the truth”. This may necessitate a curriculum for learning that allows students to understand not only the message that is presented, but also to make connections and develop patterns with their own lives and lived experiences (Cooper and White, 2004). The following spontaneous piece of writing is an example of a poem from Erina, a grade three student. Entitled “A Poem about Hope,” this poem is dedicated to her teachers.

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10  Action Research A Poem about Hope Don’t look in the stocking’s or under the tree. The thing that we’re looking for is something we can’t see. You can’t feel it or tuch it but it will tuch you it move’s with you grow’s with you. It will always follow you. It’s deeper then snow stronger then ice. The gift that we resev is the gift of hope. – Erina (8 years of age)

By the end of this “W” phase of the K-W-L strategy for reflective thinking, in conjunction with the research team, Jamilla, the grade three teacher, had identified what she wanted to learn. She wanted the research team to help clarify her understanding of the word “critical”, what critical literacy is like in practice and how to use the curriculum document to reflect her own teaching practice. Examining underlying assumptions of the literacy curriculum was not a bad place to begin. Constructing lessons that evoked questions about student understandings about the social context of literacy followed. Inglis and Willinsky (2006) remind us of the importance of revisiting current thinking about democracy in order to consider what constitutes democracy in action. At the heart of our actions and in those teachable moments rests the need for continuous critical reflection. The “W” in our reflection strategy, then, is useful only in as much as it provides the pattern or the framework to continually ask those difficult questions so fundamental to critical literacy and a democratic education for all students. This takes humility and desire or, perhaps as Erina suggests, hope which is deeper than snow or ice.

“ L” Represents Critical Literacy: What the Research Team Learned The research recounted above suggests a need to continue to challenge patterns that promote taken-for-granted assumptions embedded in existing orthodoxies that comprise research and teaching practice. This may be accomplished through re-framing questions to examine not only what has been offered but also what has been missing. Delpit (1998) points out that the key may be to understand the variety of meanings available for any human interaction, and not to assume that the voice of majority speaks for all. In this study about critical literacy for urban school children, the research team began to notice where students’ voices were excluded from issues that affected them in particular. For example, Suzanne reminded us of the need to

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understand the politics of the ‘local’ literacy context, “Many of our students in this particular situation are ESL students”, and their voices may not be able to be heard. Cultural and political patterns run deep in literacy and teachers need to be aware of this if they are to be concerned with all students, including “minority” students, gaining a chance to define themselves. Further, in this study, Jamilla, the grade three teacher on the project, was keen to examine how the provincial language arts curriculum could be used as a document to encourage the use of critical literacy strategies. Jamilla’s questioning helped the research team to understand that, while schools have been fairly successful at teaching essential literacies, such as code-breakers and text participants (Vasquez, 2000), schools and their policy makers may not adequately support the role of text analyst, a potential critical literacy strategy, which may help all students understand how the text positions them with respect to social patterns of power that include language usage. This occurs because the pattern of curricular language appropriates and neutralizes potentially critical literacy strategies. The research team learned that perhaps the key to using curricular documents is to recognize how language patterns are used to structure these documents. To become more literate in one’s own understanding of these documents may be to ask such questions as: How is language learning understood? What belief structures are inherent in the teaching practices espoused within this document? What research does the document rest on? Is the document anchored in a specific perspective of education theory? Ultimately, what are the purposes of literacy, of education, and who gets to define these purposes? And why? Given that an important goal of critical literacy is to give voice to critical approaches to reshape literacy education in the interests of marginalized learners excluded from access to dominant economics and cultures (Luke 1997), it is understandably difficult to ensure that the role the text analyst and other critically literate roles are valued in the classroom. Perhaps, as Heffernan and Lewison (2000) suggest, teachers are frequently discouraged from using their positions of power to persuade students to adopt certain positions. As teachers struggle to keep their opinions to themselves, they may exclude important issues, in favour of the dominant curriculum. This reluctance was evident in the research team itself. If students do not gain from mandated curriculum or policies relating to the development of critical literacy, directly or over the long term, such curricular policies may not be useful educational policies. It is incumbent upon all educators to be able and willing to develop, identify and implement curricular policies that are inclusive, for the benefit of all students. To this end, Banks (1999) describes four levels of a curriculum that is sensitive to issues of inclusion. The first level, “The Contributions Approach” is probably the most frequently utilized form of multicultural education, and is characterized by the addition of ethnic heroes. The curriculum remains essentially unchanged. Little attention is given to the ethnic groups either before or after the event, nor is the cultural significance or history of the event explored in any depth. Social issues are ignored and this approach represents a rather shallow look at culture and inclusive practices.

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The second and third levels represent the first phase of curriculum restructuring, yet issues are presented from a dominant perspective. Individuals or groups of people from marginalized groups in society are included, yet racial and cultural inequities or oppression are not necessarily addressed. A teacher might introduce a unit by studying groups who are benefiting from or being disadvantaged by the implementation of certain policies and practices, in the absence of a complete transformation of the curriculum. The fourth approach includes elements of the previous three approach but adds components that require students to make decisions and to take action related to the concept, issue, or problem they have studied. This approach requires that students not only explore and understand the dynamics of oppression, but also commit to making decisions and changing the system through social action. The major goal of this approach is to teach students thinking and decision making skills, to empower them, and help them acquire a sense of political awareness and efficacy. Banks’ (1999) description of these four levels may be useful for teachers who wish to benefit their students by becoming more enlightened about established patterns in which their own self-understandings prevent them from being properly or appropriately aware of social and political mechanisms.

Conclusion If a central aim of education can become the critical transmission, interpretation and development of the cultural traditions of our society, there is the need for a form of research that focuses its energies and resources on the policies, processes and practices by which this aim is pursued (Carr and Kemmis, 1989). While there is still a battle raging within the field of literacy over the central goals of literacy education (For a more complete discussion, see Short, 1999), struggling literacy students are at the heart of much of what we do as literacy educators and this struggle is manifested in the following questions: What conditions truly support literacy learning in the pluralistic milieu of the twenty-first century? How do literacy practices used in educational settings serve to affirm or disaffirm a student’s own sense of identity? Why consider identity and language teaching in the same breath? Such questions serve to flag the notion that outside pressures, a globalized society notwithstanding, are being brought to bear on curricula and programs provided by Canadian schools, and potentially, in schools world-wide. At issue is the problem of “recognizing patterns” in order to develop a critical awareness to understand what is truly important in our schools and to develop standards around such critical ideas as what it is we are doing, why we are doing it and who the major benefactors of these transactions are. There is, therefore, a need for a critical literacy capable of recognizing such patterns, asking questions about innate standards such as curriculum documents, and asking about what is important to schooling. These voices, in order to be heard must respect the notion of a democratic education not just for some citizens but for all citizens. Hopeful trends are beginning to emerge. Changes, and dare we say improvements, are being made in individual classrooms and within schools as well.

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Lasch-Quinn, E. (2017). Race experts: How racial etiquette, sensitivity training and new age therapy hijacked the civil rights movement. Rowman & Littlefield. LeCompte, M. (1995). Some notes on power, agenda, and voice: A researcher’s personal evolution toward critical collaboration research. In P. McLaren & J. Giarelli (Eds.), Critical theory and educational research (pp. 91–112). State University of New York Press. Lewin, K. (1943). Defining the “Field at a Given Time”. Psychological Review, 50(3), 292–310. Lewin, K. (1946). Action research and minority problems. Journal of Social Issues, 2(4), 34–46. Lewin, K. (1947). Frontiers in group dynamics: Concept, method and reality in social science; social equilibria and social change. Human Relations, 1, 5–41. https://doi. org/10.1177/001872674700100103 Lewin, K. (1948). Resolving social conflicts: Selected papers on group dynamics. Harper & Row. Lewin, K. (1958). Group decision and social change. Holt, Rinehart & Winston. Maksimovic, J. (2010). Historical development of action research in social sciences. Factas Universitatis: Philosophy, Sociology, Psychology & History, 9(1), 119–124. McCoy, D., Sanders, D., Baum, F., Narayan, T., & Legge, D. (2004). Pushing the international health research agenda towards equity and effectiveness. Lancet, 364(9445), 1630–1631. McNamara, C. (2006). Field guide to consulting and organizational development: A collaborative and systems approach to performance, change and learning. Authenticity Consulting. McNiff, J. (1988). Action research: Principles and practice. Macmillan Education. McTaggart, R. (1991). Action research: A short modern history. Deakin University Press. Meyer, J. (2000). Using qualitative methods in health related action research. British Medical Journal, 320(178). https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.320.7228.178 Mihăiloaie, C. (2014). What is the difference between single-loop and double-loop learning? Retrieved August 13, 2019, from: https://www.performancemagazine.org/ what-­is-­the-­difference-­between-­single-­loop-­and-­double-­loop-­learning/ Monk, R. (1992). Wittgenstein: The duty of genius. Penguin. O’Brien, R. (2001). Um exame da abordagem metodológica da pesquisa ação [An Overview of the Methodological Approach of Action Research]. In R. Richardson (Ed.), Teoria e Prática da Pesquisa Ação [Theory and practice of action research]. João Pessoa, BR: Universidade Federal da Paraíba. (English version) Retrieved, August 8, 2019, from: http://www.web. ca/~robrien/papers/arfinal.html Owens, R. G., & Valesky, T. C. (2015). Organizational behavior in education: Leadership and school reform. Pearson. Payrow Shabani, O. A. (2003). Democracy, power and legitimacy: The critical theory of Jürgen Habermas. University of Toronto Press. Rahman, M. A. (2008). Some trends in the praxis of participatory action research. In P. Reason & H. Bradbury (Eds.), The SAGE handbook of action research (2nd ed., pp. 49–62). Sage. Reason, P., & Bradbury, H. (2001). Handbook of action research: Participative inquiry and practice. SAGE. Riel, M. (2019). Understanding collaborative action research. Center For Collaborative Action Research, Pepperdine University, Malibu, CA. Retrieved, August 12, 2019, from: http://cadres. pepperdine.edu/ccar/define.html Rogers, E. (1994). A history of communication study: A biological approach. The Free Press. Sagor, R. (2000). Guiding school improvement with action research. ASCD. Smith, M.  K. (2001). Kurt Lewin, groups, experiential learning and action research. The Encyclopedia of Informal Education. Retrieved, August 8, 2019, from; http://www.infed.org/ thinkers/et-­lewin.htm Stenhouse, L. (1975). An introduction to curriculum research and development. Heinemann. Wallerstein, N., Duran, B., Oetzel, J. G., & Minkler, M. (2017). On community-based participatory research. In N. Wallerstein, B. Duran, J. G. Oetzel, & M. Minkler (Eds.), Community-Based participatory research for health (3rd ed., pp. 3–16). Jossey-Bass. Weng, F. (2014). Comparing the philosophy of Jürgen Habermas and Michel Foucault. Inquiries, 6(9), 1–2.

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Wenger, E. (1999). Communities of practice: Learning, meaning, and identity. Cambridge University Press. Whitehead, J. (2009). Generating living theory and understanding in action research studies. Action Research, 7(1), 85–99. Zeichner, K. M., & Noffke, S. E. (2001). Practitioner research. In V. Richardson (Ed.), Handbook of research on teaching (4th ed., pp. 298–330). American Educational Research Association.

Chapter 11

The Future of Qualitative Research

We are all interpretive bricoleurs stuck in the present working against the past as we move into the future. N. K. Denzin & Y. S. Lincoln (2000)

Introduction At this point, it appears that we have reached the final chapter of this volume. As we have worked our way through the various chapters and have investigated numerous qualitative methodologies, it has always been uppermost in the minds of the authors to offer as complete and concise an explanation as possible. However, the world of qualitative research is anything but complete and, at the same time, is definitely not concise. Confusions, commonalities and customizations appear to be the order of the day. And, here we find ourselves at the final chapter. The future of qualitative research is somewhat less precarious than its past. As the future moves into the present and, eventually, becomes the past, many of the “newest” of qualitative research methodologies have withstood the vicissitudes of time. Many of the methodologies that were “unscientific” in their day have become the gold standard against which other, newer methodologies are being assessed. This chapter reviews a number of these—bricolage, mixed methods, fundamental (or basic) qualitative research, rhizomatic research, the Five Contexts and postcolonial Indigenous research. The chapter ends with a video of decolonizing research (Donald (2012) through the experiences of a postcolonial Indigenous researcher. The methodologies mentioned in this final chapter as “emerging” have actually been around for quite some time and, by now, are decades old, if not older. Thus, by definition, they are neither new nor emerging. However, when placed alongside Supplementary Information The online version contains supplementary material available at [https://doi.org/10.1007/978-­3-­030-­85124-­8_11]. The videos can be accessed individually by clicking the DOI link in the accompanying figure caption or by scanning this link with the SN More Media App. © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 R. E. White, K. Cooper, Qualitative Research in the Post-Modern Era, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-85124-8_11

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many of the other methodologies identified in this volume which, in many cases have developed over centuries, generic qualitative research, bricolage, mixed methods and postcolonial research are relatively recent innovations. While these newer methodologies also have venerable histories, their histories may just be not as long as many of the older forms of empirical research that have preceded them. While such “emerging” forms of research deserve consideration in this volume, it is exceedingly difficult to predict the future. Thus, it is important to consider what is currently occurring on the fringes of traditionally accepted research, as it is hoped that such nascent forms of research will benefit newer scholars and established researchers. Following are but some of the “newer” methodologies and research designs that have begun to emerge over the last number of years.

Bricolage A bricoleur is one who creates, using whatever materials are available. From this perspective, the bricoleur represents a kind of handyman, a do-it-yourselfer, who utilizes whatever means allow him or her to accomplish the objective at hand. The term, bricolage, derived from the French, refers to the process of improvisation. In art, it is a technique, a creative mode in which artworks are created from the means at hand and can often be seen in postmodern art (Bennett et al., 2010). In keeping with the postmodern era, bricolage in literature can be seen through intertextuality, or the shaping of meaning through reference to other texts. In cultural studies, it refers to the process of individuals acquiring objects from a variety of social divisions in order to create new cultural identities, such as in the subculture referred to as “punk.” As an example, objects, such as the safety pin, that retain specific meaning in the dominant culture, are re-purposed as decoration or jewelry in the punk culture (Hebdige, 1979). Social bricolage was first introduced by Claude Lévi-Strauss, the French anthropologist, who saw bricolage as lying somewhere between art and science. LéviStrauss (1966) explored how societies create novel solutions by using resources that already exist in the collective social consciousness. Similarly, psychological bricolage refers to the cognitive process that enables individuals to retrieve and recombine previously unrelated knowledge they already possess (Sanchez-Burks et al., 2015). While bricolage has links with technical problem solving, it is also close to certain types of modern artistic expression (Hammersley, 2004). Thus, as well being related to the arts, bricolage may be viewed as pragmatic, strategic and self-­reflexive (Denzin & Lincoln, 2000). However, it was Norman Denzin and Yvonna Lincoln (1994) who articulated the concept of bricolage as a research orientation (Kincheloe, 2001), reformulating and elaborating on it as a methodology that adds rigour, depth and breadth to a research initiative. Denzin and Lincoln declare bricolage to be a radical break with previous qualitative research methodologies (2000), claiming that

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bricolage is a “pieced- together set of representations that are fitted to the specifics of a complex situation” in an “emergent construction which changes and takes new forms as different tools, methods, and techniques of representation and interpretation are added to the puzzle” (Denzin & Lincoln, 2000, p. 4), similar to a montage: Like performance texts, works that use montage simultaneously create and enact moral meaning. They move from the personal to the political, the local to the historical and the cultural. These are dialogical texts. They presume an active audience. They create spaces for give-and-take between reader and writer. (Denzin & Lincoln, 2000, p. 5)

Joe Kincheloe (2001, 2005) theorized a critical multi-logical epistemology and attendant ontology to ground bricolage in research, offering a sophisticated understanding of the complexity of knowledge production and the interrelated complexity of the researcher’s positionality and the phenomena in the world. Such a critical form of rigor avoids the reductionism of many monologic, mimetic research orientations. This research methodology is distinctive in that it requires the creative use of what is already at hand, rather than finding and applying specially designed, standardized techniques (Hammersley, 2004). Also, according to Kincheloe (2001), bricolage is an interdisciplinary approach to research inquiries that circumvents the artificial boundaries imposed by traditional qualitative research methodologies, yet also avoids the “undisciplined” approach to qualitative research, in order to recognize the dialectic nature of disciplinary and interdisciplinary concepts, promoting a type of synergy between them. Thus, Kincheloe and Berry (2004) argue against the “monologic” of one source of knowledge. Bricolage, therefore, is an acknowledgement of the complexity of subject matter that cannot be viewed accurately through “unilateral perspectives” (Willis, 2007, pp. 331–332). As such, bricolage may be viewed as a methodological approach that permits researchers to embrace a multiplicity of other and associated methodological approaches to provide unique possibilities for knowledge construction, as well as for opportunities for informed political action (Kellner, 1999). Although bricolage research can be considered a critical, multi-perspectival, multi-theoretical and multi-methodological approach to inquiry, it continues to be relatively misunderstood and unpopular in research communities, perhaps due to the complexity of the approach, which makes it far more intricate than a simple eclectic approach (Rogers, 2012). Kincheloe (2005) notes that any object of inquiry is ontologically complex in that it cannot be described as an encapsulated entity. In this more open view of the object of inquiry, it is always a part of many contexts and processes, it is culturally inscribed and historically situated. (p. 333)

Thus, ontologically speaking, bricoleurs tend to examine how socio-historical dynamics influence and shape an object of inquiry. Epistemologically, however, bricoleurs explore how foundations of knowledge surround an object of inquiry. As Kincheloe and Berry (2004) explain: “the complex view of the object of inquiry accounts for the historical effort to interpret its meanings in the world and how such efforts continue to define its social, cultural, psychological, and educational effects” (p. 7). In this way, epistemological analysis assists

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bricoleurs in understanding how dominant rationalities influence how a phenomenon can be understood. Levi-Strauss states that a bricoleur is “adept at performing a large number of diverse tasks; but, unlike the engineer, he [sic] does not subordinate each of them to the availability of raw materials and tools conceived and procured for the purpose of the project” (1966, p. 17). As Rogers (2012) explains, Bricoleurs allow for dynamics and contexts to dictate which questions get asked, which methods to employ and which interpretive perspectives to use. This means bricoleurs have an aptness for creativity—they know how to artistically combine theories, techniques, and methods. Furthermore, they are able to create their own methodological tools when needed. (p. 6)

Denzin and Lincoln (2000), identify five types of bricoleurs; • The Interpretive Bricoleur understands research as an interactive process, shaped by one’s personal history and demographics, and by those of the people in the setting. Adopting post-positivist epistemologies, interpretive bricoleurs recognize that knowledge is neither free from subjective positioning nor political interpretations, and reflexively piece together their research in terms of not only the object of inquiry, but also how their positioning affects the research process, encompassing continual (re)evaluation of subjective responses, intersubjective dynamics and the research process, itself. • The Methodological Bricoleur combines multiple research tools to accomplish a meaning-making task, engaging in fluid, eclectic and creative approaches. A methodological bricoleur respects this complexity by permitting contextual contingencies to dictate which data-gathering and analytical methods will be employed, using only the tools and means “at hand” to accomplish this work. • The Theoretical Bricoleur works through and between multiple theoretical paradigms, performing multiple readings on an artefact, text, or phenomenon, often from varied and occasionally conflicting perspectives. This allows bricoleurs to understand different theoretical contexts through which a phenomenon may be interpreted, thus illuminating the variety of complexities that influence a phenomenon. Thus, bricolage, as Kincheloe and Berry (2004) claim, exists as an appreciation of the complexity of the lived world and for questions that don’t lend themselves to easy answers (Rogers, 2012). • The Narrative Bricoleur appreciates that inquiry is a representation or narrative, because objective reality can never be “captured” (Denzin & Lincoln, 2000, p.  5). Research texts represent only specific interpretations of a phenomenon and, thus, such texts are always positioned from specific contextual perspectives. Narrative bricoleurs appreciate how ideologies and discourses shape knowledge production and seek to understand their influence on research processes Consequently, narrative bricoleurs attempt to trouble and avoid univocal research representations, and draw their techniques from multiple perspectives, voices and sources. (Rogers, 2012) • The Political Bricoleur is aware of how knowledge and power are connected. Embracing this understanding, as do educators who adopt critical pedagogies,

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political bricoleurs offer counter-hegemonic forms of inquiry against injustices and oppressive social constructs. • The Critical Bricoleur, as defined by Joe Kincheloe, is “dedicated to questioning and learning from the excluded” (Kincheloe, 2004b, p. 48), and seeks knowledge that is frequently silenced in dominant research narratives, thus addressing the plurality and complex political dimensions of knowledge work (Rogers, 2012). For Kincheloe (2004a), bricoleurs can benefit by adopting a process of “symbiotic hermeneutics,” a process designed to explore how contexts and relationships constitute phenomena, allowing bricoleurs to examine phenomena as connected things-in-the-world. Thus, symbiotic hermeneutics entails development of complex ontological and epistemological awareness surrounding topics of inquiry. For Kincheloe (2004b), bricoleurs seek out ways that phenomena interconnect with other phenomena, and are socially constructed in dialogues between culture, institutions and historical contexts (Rogers, 2012). Additional to the notion of symbiotic hermeneutics, critical hermeneutics affords an interpretive process used to explore how power tacitly forms phenomena, texts, knowledges, and subjects. Moving beyond symbiotic hermeneutics to critical hermeneutics alerts bricoleurs to ways in which power, in a specific context or setting assists in the construction of social, cultural and economic conditions by which meaning is made (Kincheloe, 2005). Bricolage, as it is understood here, is concerned with divergent methods of inquiry, as well as diverse theoretical and philosophical understandings of various aspects of research. Thus, the term refers to the deliberate mixing of qualitative methods and ways of thinking to address a specific issue or problem within academic qualitative research. Bricolage is a pragmatic and eclectic approach to qualitative research. Almost as a foreshadowing of John Creswell’s work on mixed methods, Kincheloe and Berry (2004) note that scholars in the tradition of the bricolage would attend to both qualitative and quantitative research, as they claim “no particular paradigm can be taken for granted as the world view” (Willis, 2007, p. 332). The bricoleur, in the tradition of Kincheloe and Berry (2004), takes “a non-­ foundational and contextual approach to the relationship between theory and research data” (Willis, 2007, p. 332). As such, theory and data are all tangled up together and objectivity becomes impossible (Willis, 2007), if it ever did exist. In this context such a researcher is less willing to make a final statement of truth or meaning based on the empirical investigations in which he or she has engaged. The bricoleur knows that empirical data viewed from another perspective or questioned by one from a different background can elicit fundamentally different interpretations. (Kincheloe & Berry, 2004, p. 7)

The awareness and utilization of different methods, perspectives and scholarly literature that researchers bring to a new inquiry can thus be seen as “virtuous,” due to the emphasis placed upon “philosophical research” (Kincheloe & Berry, 2004, p. 8), which demands the use of a variety of philosophical instruments that tends to clarify the research inquiry and offers insights into its conceptual basis. As noted by Willis (2007, p. 333), “Kincheloe’s bricoleur thus represents a social scientist who

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expresses the humble, tolerant, nonsectarian values advocated by Freire. Both Plato’s and Aristotle’s ways of knowing are valued.” As Hammersley (2004) attests, because the course of much qualitative research remains uncertain, to say the least, such endeavours into qualitative research require more than the mere deployment of skills. Additionally, the practice of reflexivity regarding both process and product may be necessary, even up to and including the reenvisioning of the research question itself. The model of bricolage tends to reject any form of restricted reflexivity and, like the affordability of one’s principles, the researcher must be able to “afford” as much reflexivity as possible (Hammersley, 2004). The failure of reflexivity, akin to failing to adapt to the situation under study, is likely to maximize reactivity, thus threatening the validity of the research project. Additionally, as data may change due to the passage of time, the type of data that may be required may not be reliably identified at the outset of the investigation (Hammersley, 2004). With a nod to the work of Zygmunt Bauman, who states that the postmodern condition is a thoroughly negative concept (Bauman, 1997), Hammersley (2004) notes that the task of pedagogy, as it pertains to bricolage, is to abandon all that has been taken for granted. Everything is questionable, as it is in the postmodern age. Under such circumstances, reflexivity becomes an essentially negative undertaking, as bricolage is approached in a very ad hoc, selective way of proceeding, where whatever works takes precedence and guidance becomes irrelevant (Hammersley, 2004). As the field of qualitative research is fragmented, alternately riven by methodological, philosophical and political disputes, researchers may benefit from understanding a full range of approaches to qualitative inquiry and of the arguments for and against these, so as to make reasonable choices for themselves. However, in order to avoid a completely anarchist approach to research (Feyeraband, 1978), there are aspects of qualitative research, including bricolage, that can be formalized in a procedure, of sorts, even though there may be issues around the degree and scope of reflexivity required.

Bricolage Research Methods Bricolage may include both pre-existing or “found” data or new data, produced for the study itself. The key characteristic of bricolage is that it presents research in such a way as to challenge the audience to see the phenomenon under study in new and unexpected ways. It is because of this characteristic that bricolage tends to make use of more than one data source, combined with a diverse range of data, allowing for smaller parts of the larger study to be manipulated. Although these smaller pieces may have meaning in their own right, the result, when all are pieced together, is a whole that is greater than the sum of its parts. How these “data chunks” are assembled potentially influences the ways in which meaning is constructed by the audience (Wibberley, 2016). Different data sources can be layered, placed on specific parts of the page, used as inter-­ texts (which divert from the main text) or deliberately juxtaposed to fragment or splinter

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reading. Alternatively the different data sources can be reworked into a different (and “artistic”) form, such as fiction, poetry, drama and/or visual imagery. (Wibberley, 2016, p. 107)

The subsections, or chunks of data, whatever it is derived from, may be drawn into an ordered whole or left disjointed and jarring against each other. However, should the researcher wish to move past the metaphors relating to bricolage, rather than using metaphor to represent the bricolage, the researcher may choose to have the bricolage replace the metaphor in actuality. Thus, there is really nothing to prevent the bricoleur from dispensing with the metaphor and putting the bricolage into the form of a collage, a painting or a novel (Wibberley, 2016). There are definite steps, or stages, to the development of bricolage. However, given that bricolage frequently utilizes an emergent approach to research, the following stages may overlap or run concurrently with other stages. • Begin a research diary or organizational logbook in order to record activities, feelings, experiences, ideas and other thoughts around an area of interest related to your intended research. • Read relevant literature related to the area of interest, preferably from a range of disciplinary perspectives. • Maintain an annotated bibliography of readings in the research logbook. • Consider and utilize a range of different data sources (explore existing sources or those that require developing) to illuminate the area of interest. • Decide what data will be required. • Document these decisions in your research logbook. • Consider to what extent the logbook or the literature around the area of interest may become a data source. • Consider whether the required data will be primary data such as interviews, observations and field-notes, or secondary data such as news articles, novels, autobiographies or policy documents. Strive to make the data as interdisciplinary as possible. Add these entries to the logbook. • Undertake initial analysis of the data, drawing on relevant forms of data analysis used by other approaches to research, the synthesis of which is a characteristic that is unique to bricolage. • Add entries to the logbook in relation to this data analysis. • Immerse yourself in the analysed data and consider how it offers converging or diverging evidence. Consider different ways the data could be presented or represented and the implications this may have for the construction of meaning. Document these considerations in the logbook. • Re-order the data through immersion and re-immersion in the analyzed data as part of the bricolage process. • Use the logbook to articulate the steps taken in developing the bricolage, possibly through inclusion of extracts from the logbook. It is this articulation that ensures the final product can be considered a form of bricolage. (Wibberley, 2016) According to Yardley (2008), the utilization of creative processes as interpretive instruments has been challenged by critics of the methodology. However, the very use of these creative processes challenges those views by putting performative research methods into practice, thus effectively using the method to test the

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methodology. Because there are multiple ways in which human cognitive networks process information and make creative leaps, the resulting bricolage is often a “meta-text” which features embedded visual, audio-visual and literary texts that challenge, inform and enhance meaning and provide alternate angles for interpretation and mediation. The goal, of course, is to stimulate an inclusive and dynamic dialogue between the researcher and the audience (Yardley, 2008). Although Silverman (1997) unflatteringly suggests that this raises the experiential to the level of the authentic (p. 248), he is attempting to build a case for maintaining rigour. Yardley (2008) questions what it is about experience that is inauthentic, suggesting that the mode of presentation may be at fault, rather than the experience, itself. At issue, here, is the need to offer a code or a map of some sort to translate the experience into meaningfulness for an audience. Such a map would hopefully define the parameters and the landscape of the research question, and serves to reflect its identity, albeit as if to see things “small” (Greene, 1995) in all their iconic and layered meaning, allowing the researcher to demonstrate how a specific research agenda can be contained within a larger cross-disciplinary domain permits a multitude of paradigms to be traversed without overload or confusion, thus allowing theoretical connections to become immediately apparent (Yardley, 2008). The reader can follow the route of their choice at any given part of the journey and determine, to a certain extent, their point of arrival—thus making it possible to cover a broad, multi-disciplinary terrain and to handle the kind of complexity that tackling meta questions, such as the nature of creativity, usually makes such a daunting task. (Yardley, 2008, n.p.)

In concert with this point, the presence of multiple and differing texts within the “meta-text” offers fertile ground for a kind of self-critique that is impossible within a single text. Visual images, combined with additional texts, offer more than mere illustrations, as they illuminate in much the same way as medieval rubrics in ancient manuscripts and offer an alternate vocabulary that may not be translatable into words. Conversely, these very pieces of data also challenge and increase the possibilities for mediating the text, with some forms being more sustained than others, while still other forms of represented data are more fluid, as with all forms of the written word. Thus, it is that the “map,” or code, offers itself as a methodological, theoretical or conceptual framework providing opportunities to explore, interpret and re-interpret the data across different textual and visual forms (Yardley, 2008). Eisner and Peshkin (1990) refer to this as a “radical democratic process” that recognizes and alternates between and among the disciplines, the researcher and the researched, and allows the possibility of dwelling within multiple domains simultaneously while, at the same time, metamorphosing into both the researched and the researcher (Merleau-Ponty, 1962). Should this sound somewhat ephemeral and unsubstantial, a Master of Education thesis, written by Diana Kuhl (2014) utilizes bricolage as a research methodology for exploring dyscalculia. This study utilized a synthesis of narrative, auto-­ ethnographic, critical, feminist, neuro-scientific and psychometric perspectives to explore the construction and experience of dyscalculia. In addition, the study explores epistemological privilege to explicate how the privileging of certain modes

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of inquiry contributes to the marginalization of the participants involved in the study. Ultimately, mathematical learning difference is explained as a multidimensional phenomenon, raising important questions about how such issues are approached and understood in educational research and practice. Bricolage can be found in many societal endeavours, from programming and developing computer code (Turkle, 1997), the visual arts (Cheng et al., 2008) to business organizations (Weick, 1993). Bricolage has been associated with a variety of applications and qualitative research methodologies over the years. Narrative inquiry and arts-based research frequently utilize methods associated with bricolage. As with any worthwhile endeavour, one may achieve or exceed one’s own goals through attempting to elevate that endeavour to an art form. Bricolage manages to do this with flair, innovation, improvisation and a modicum of courage.

Feature Article: Conceptualizing Bricolage This article describes a critical notion of the research design known as bricolage. As an interdisciplinary approach, bricolage avoids superficiality and parochialism often found in other qualitative research methodologies. Bricolage promotes a synergistic interaction between disciplinary and interdisciplinary relationships. Here, bricolage is concerned with divergent methods of inquiry as well as with the diverse theoretical and philosophical understandings of the various elements encountered in the act of research. Such insights allow researchers to obtain a better conceptual grasp of the complexity of research often missed in mainstream qualitative research. In particular, critical bricoleurs employ a number of different theoretical lenses in order to gain a more complex understanding of the intricacies of research design, particularly as it pertains to bricolage (See Describing the Bricolage: Conceptualizing a New Rigor in Qualitative Research).

Mixed Methods Research Although bricolage refers to a deliberate mixing of qualitative methods and ways of thinking about research design in order to address a specific issue or problem, John Creswell and Vicki Plano Clark (2017) offer an alternative to bricolage in terms of seven mixed methods designs, replete with methodological approaches and information regarding the dynamic and evolving nature of mixed methods research. Although, at first glance, mixed methods research appears to be more about mixing the paradigms of quantitative and qualitative research, as one delves more deeply into this form of inquiry, it eventually distils to the methods—after which it is named and the process by which it is accomplished. Mixed methods research is

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hereby introduced along with the process involved in designing and conducting this form of inquiry. Accordingly, Mixed methods research is a research design with philosophical assumptions as well as methods of inquiry. As a methodology, it involves philosophical assumptions that guide the direction of the collection and analysis of data and the mixture of qualitative and quantitative approaches in many phases in the research process. As a method, it focuses on collecting, analyzing, and mixing both quantitative and qualitative data in a single study or series of studies. Its central premise is that the use of quantitative and qualitative approaches in combination provides a better understanding of research problems than either approach alone. (Creswell & Plano Clark, 2007, p. 5)

Johnson et al. (2007) define mixed methods as a research approach or methodology that: • Focuses on research questions requiring real-life contextual understandings, multi-level perspectives and cultural influences, • Employs rigorous quantitative research assessing magnitude and frequency of constructs and rigorous qualitative research exploring the meaning and understanding of constructs, • Utilizes multiple methods such as intervention trials and/or in-depth interviews, • Intentionally integrates or combines these methods to draw on the strengths of each, and • Frames the investigation within philosophical and theoretical positions. However new this methodology may appear, researchers have long been using multiple methods in conducting both qualitative and quantitative research. In fact, Raewynn Connell, in Chapter One of this volume, addresses this notion by noting that there is no qualitative research that is entirely free of quantitative statistics, simply because any qualitative work tends to identify how many participants were interviewed, how many sites were studied and so on. Similarly, there is no quantitative work that does not have some qualitative features because any research, whether qualitative or quantitative, requires some form of interpretation. We are familiar with the art of explanation when it comes to the variability of understanding what a particular set of statistics means. Statistics can be interpreted to sing many different songs and this serves as an example of how statistics can be and, in many cases, need to be interpreted. It is never just quantitative. Nor is it only and ever just qualitative. It is this notion that lies at the heart of mixed methods research. Although mixed methods research is much more recognized than multi-­ methodology or multi-method research—and although mixed methods research specifically includes mixing qualitative and quantitative data, methods, methodologies, and/or paradigms—multi-method research represents a sort of umbrella term, of which mixed methods research represents but a single strand (Brewer & Hunter, 1989, 2006). However, since the 1990s, mixed methods research has become the more common term for this type of investigation, although there are three or four broad classifications of research that comprise this multi-methodology;

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quantitatively driven designs, qualitatively driven designs, interactive or equal status designs and mixed priority designs (Johnson et al., 2007).

The Rationale for Mixed Methods Why would anyone want to use mixed methods? As we have by now discovered, there is no single methodology that represents all things to all researchers. In fact, many of the methodologies discussed so far in this volume have not only serious limitations in their ability to describe or interpret a particular phenomenon, they are also delimited through the application of parameters that preserve the research design while, at the same time, circumscribe it. Some of the more “postmodern” research designs, qualitative methodologies not excluded, strive to overcome the limitations of a single design. Mixed methods research is just such a one. While quantitative research strives to explain, qualitative research attempts to interpret or describe. Bringing both paradigms, qualitative and quantitative, to bear on a specific phenomenon allows the research to not only explain the phenomenon but also to interpret and/or describe it. Additionally, exploration of scientific phenomena, whether social or natural, lends itself to mixed methods, as this allows the phenomenon to be viewed from a greater number of vantage points than would one research methodology alone. Another huge advantage of utilizing a mixed methods design would be to develop and test a new instrument that could be generalized to serve as a tool for other, similar research situations. Under certain conditions, mixed methods can either complement the strengths or overcome the weaknesses inherent in using a single methodology. In this way, a particular theoretical perspective may be illuminated to a greater extent by using mixed methods than by relying on a single methodology. This may extend to addressing a particular theoretical perspective at a variety of levels, in different ways. Needless to say, research questions or hypotheses may benefit from the use of a mixed methods research design that may serve to address the questions or hypotheses at different levels, applying criteria from the quantitative side of the design or from its qualitative side. In this way, not only quantities, in terms of how much but also qualities, in terms of what kind may be explored to greater advantage.

Characteristics of Mixed Methods Inquiry Mixed methods research has a number of characteristics that tend to distinguish it from bricolage. While some may be similar to bricolage—as Zygmunt Bauman (1990/2019) wryly notes on the topic of giving gifts versus business transactions— bricolage and mixed methods research may share some common characteristics, but one would never mistake one for the other. The reason for this is because of the

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mixing, not merely of methods, but of paradigms as well. While bricolage may do this to a limited extent, any researcher who aims to include a significant quantitative component along with a qualitative component would be more inclined to choose a mixed methods research design. Bricolage, however, tends to remain fairly solidly within the qualitative research paradigm. Thus, with mixed methods, the research project may emphasize one or the other paradigm, or both equally, as the situation dictates. Following upon this, the phenomenon under study may be posited as a hypothesis to be confirmed or disconfirmed, a research question to be explored, described or interpreted, or both. A huge advantage for quantitative research is the element of description that is occasionally necessary but frequently missing in the more positivistic quantitative paradigm. Conversely, much qualitative research can benefit from a more quantitative perspective, depending on the literature, knowledge, experience and the research process, itself. At the core of mixed methods research is the wonderful flexibility that it allows. For example, qualitative research has never been particularly focused on generalizing results of any specific study. This is often due to a limited sample size that prevents generalizing over a wide latitude. Quantitative research is the reverse. Generalizing results seeks the single truth that is not only elusive but also inconsequential in qualitative research. Mixed methods research designs allow for a wider variety in sample size, depending on the goals of the research project. Another great advantage of this type of research design is the fact that, like bricolage, data collection may involve any technique available to researchers. This freedom allows mixed methods research to move beyond the delimitations imposed by other types of, particularly qualitative, methodologies. To offer some flexibility from the qualitative side of the equation, mixed methods research allows for interpretation to be continuous and can occur throughout the data collection and data analysis phases of the research project. What this means is that such interpretation can inform and influence multiple stages in the entire research process.

Strengths and Weaknesses of Mixed Methods This type of research methodology, predictably, has numerous strengths, as well as several weaknesses, inherent in its overall design. First and foremost, mixed methods research may be relatively amenable to describing and reporting of results. A further benefit is the flexibility factor that can become a very useful feature whenever unexpected results arise from a prior study. Additionally, alluding to a previous point, mixed methods, to a certain degree, can assist in generalizing qualitative data. Further to this, it may also be useful in designing and validating research instruments, as the perspective is much more panoramic than in most other research methodologies. Finally, and perhaps most importantly, a mixed methods research design can become very fruitful in positioning quantitative research within a more

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transformative framework that may allow for a more socially just perspective than may be available through a more monolithic research design. However, because nothing is ever perfect (nor easy, for that matter), a mixed methods research design also offers some limitations. First and foremost is the time required to bring the project to completion. Simply because more than one paradigm tends to be involved in mixed methods research, time required to collect, distil and analyze research findings will tend to take more time than would using a single paradigm or a single research methodology, whether it be qualitative or quantitative in nature. There may also be issues with the data collected. Different methods and, by extension, disparate methodologies, tend to produce diverse types of data. Thus, it may become necessary to resolve discrepant data, as some forms of data may be in conflict with others or, possibly, some data may not be of similar quality, given the methods generated to create the data in the first place. The evidence must be fairly equal in that the data must support the evidence, rather than having data from various sources negate one another in terms of the amount or quality generated. Additionally, by its very nature, mixed methods research can result in a more complex research design than would be the case in utilizing a single methodology. This complexity can result in difficulties in deciding when and, occasionally, how to proceed with designs that are of a sequential nature. Finally, given that mixed methods research is a relative newcomer to the qualitative research paradigm, there is little information, as of yet, on how to move the body of research into a more transformative vein. While some of these limitations will be overcome through the passage of time and the power of experiential knowledge, currently, mixed methods research has been viewed with some skepticism. However, as it comes of age, many of the issues that currently bedevil it will ultimately be resolved.

Design Strategies Regardless of whether a researcher employs qualitative, quantitative or mixed methodologies when it comes to a research study, whichever path the researcher chooses, (s)he must maintain a focus on the choice of methodology. The major difference between quantitative and qualitative studies is that quantitative research begins with a problem statement, moving to the hypothesis and on to data collection, population, and data analysis whereas, in qualitative research, the study begins with a purpose, moves to a research question through an explication of the research methodology chosen, and then to data collection. Data is usually collected from a smaller participant sample, and data collection and analysis often occur simultaneously. John Creswell, a key developer of mixed methods research, attempts to minimize these issues by offering a systematic framework, involving four decisions and six design strategies, for advancing one’s own mixed methods research. Regarding the four initial decisions, Creswell et al. (2003) suggest that the first decision should deal with the sequence for implementing the data collection. Then, one can come to

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grips with which “method” (or paradigm) will take priority during data collection and analysis. From this point, a third decision regards the “integration stage” (p. 211) of the findings. Here, the question becomes how will the findings be treated, given the quantitative and qualitative nature of the data? The final decision revolves around whether a theoretical perspective will be considered. Ordinarily, a theoretical perspective such as a conceptual, organizational or theoretical framework is a key feature of qualitative research. However, given the mixed methods format, if the quantitative paradigm takes precedence over qualitative data collection and analysis, a theoretical perspective may be neglected or omitted. Integration of multiple forms of data allows data from differing sources or paradigms to be connected, merged and/or embedded. Creswell et  al. (2003) recommend six design strategies for the mixed methods researcher. The first is the sequential explanatory design, which features the collection and analysis of quantitative data that is followed by the collection and analysis of qualitative data. The order is prescribed so that the qualitative data can assist in the explanation and interpretation of the quantitative findings. A second design strategy is the sequential exploratory procedure. This is, in effect, a reversal of the process for the first strategy. Here, the initial phase of data collection and analysis is qualitative in nature and is followed by quantitative data collection and analysis. As with most qualitative research designs (read methodology), the purpose of this strategy is to explore a particular phenomenon, rather than to explain it. Creswell (2003) notes that this may be useful when a new instrument is being developed and tested. The third design strategy is called sequential transformative and is equivocal about whether quantitative or qualitative data are collected first. The results of the analysis are integrated within the interpretation of the findings. As such, the discussion tends to merge both quantitative and qualitative perspectives. This approach is most frequently used when a specific theoretical perspective is being employed that tends to drive the direction that the research takes. Concurrent triangulation, a quantitative term, is brought to bear when a weakness in one “method” is strengthened through the application of a second approach or paradigm. This is the fourth design strategy and it can be employed in order to confirm, validate or corroborate the study findings. A fifth design strategy, concurrent nested, occurs when one approach is prioritized, while the second approach is embedded within the research design. This is most commonly utilized when a non-dominant research question requires attention, or when it is necessary to seek information from different levels within the research study. The final research design is the concurrent transformative design, characterized by a specific theoretical perspective that is contained within the objective of the research or within the research questions themselves. This strategy is favoured when a theoretical perspective is evaluated through differing levels of analysis, both quantitative and qualitative. Whichever strategy is chosen, or whether a mixed methods design is chosen at all, deliberately mixing qualitative and quantitative research paradigms is a common feature in much research, revisiting Connell’s comment that all research contains some aspects of both qualitative and quantitative features. “Mixed methods”

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has become such a generic term, or perhaps it always was, that it can be said that a mixed methods study may feature methods from either quantitative or qualitative paradigms, combined qualitative methodologies or a combination of methods, methodologies and paradigms. Although different researchers bring abilities to bear that predispose them to a specific paradigm, neither quantitative nor qualitative research is superior to the other, nor is one easier to master than the other, as both require specific dispositions, competences and capacities. Although it may be somewhat more demanding, mixed methods research provides not only a more holistic viewpoint, but allows researchers to move through phases of the research in order to build the study by moving from one paradigm to another.

Procedures and Processes While there is no rigid formula for designing a mixed methods study, there are a few general steps that may offer some guidance (National Institutes of Health Office of Behavioral and Social Sciences, 2018): • Preliminary considerations; Consider philosophy and theory, When the study will be initiated, Consider resources such as time, financial resources and skills, Consider the research problem and reasons for using mixed methods. • State study aims and research questions that incorporate reasons for conducting a mixed methods study. • Determine methods of quantitative and qualitative data collection; When data will be collected, Emphasis to be given to each method, and How they will be integrated or mixed). • Select a mixed methods design addresses the hypothesis or research question(s) and the data collection/analysis/integration procedures. • Collect and analyze the data. • Interpret how the combined quantitative and qualitative approaches contribute to addressing the research problem and questions. • Write the final report making explicit the contribution of the mixed methods approach. (National Institutes of Health Office of Behavioral and Social Sciences, 2018) Recognize that mixed methods designs differ in several important ways. Some mixed methods projects employ a single study, conducted by an investigator or a team of investigators. Other mixed methods projects, such as those typically advanced in larger research projects, consist of multiple studies—some quantitative

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and some qualitative—that build on one another and contribute to an overall program, objective or purpose. • Remain current with the latest techniques, software and texts, • Be creative and consider data analysis methods not commonly used, • Choose the “best fit” between research design and hypotheses or research questions, and know the assumptions and limitations of that design, • Incorporate figures and tables into qualitative codebooks to strengthen conceptualizations, • Create summary statements for participants to assist with abstract portions of the analyses. These summary statements may be a sentence or two that describes the participant’s statement and offers an overview of available qualitative information. In considering a mixed methods design, there are several choices of methods that should be determined at the outset of the research endeavour. If a fixed method design is chosen, the methods are determined at the beginning of the research process, given the intent to mix qualitative and quantitative methods. In an emergent (or cyclical) design, the methods emerge during the process of the research rather than being predetermined. Whatever methods are chosen to facilitate the research project, with mixed methods research, there are a multiplicity of quantitative/qualitative weightings, numerous design strategies and a plethora of methods available to the researcher. It is this that makes mixed methods research a flexible, comprehensive and holistic methodology.

 undamental, Generic or Basic Qualitative F Research Methodology A basic or fundamental qualitative approach is frequently descriptive in nature (Sandelowski, 2000). This research approach, akin to most qualitative methodologies, supports an inductive style of data analysis, building from particulars to general themes, focuses on individual meaning and the importance of describing the complexity of a particular situation (Creswell, 2014). Idiographic interpretation is employed through a focused attention on the particularities of a case rather than seeking generalizations (Bogdan & Biklen, 1992; Creswell, 2014), as in most qualitative research methodologies. Consequently, most qualitative research studies have small sample sizes due to the level of detail sought (Bogdan & Biklen, 1992). Qualitative research also places the researcher as the key instrument in data collection and analysis (Bogdan & Biklen, 1992) and honors tacit knowledge, or intuitive and felt knowledge (Creswell, 2014), by privileging the researcher’s insight as “the key instrument for analysis” (Bogdan & Biklen, 1992, p. 29).

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Over the years, within the paradigm of qualitative research itself, there has been a growing trend to not identify a specific methodology, but to rely on the entire paradigm of qualitative research as a kind of blank canvas for the researcher to explore. While this may sound suspiciously like bricolage or mixed methods research, the difference between these three types of methodologies is that bricolage makes use of what is available and mixed methods research combines qualitative and quantitative paradigms, while a fundamental or basic qualitative research methodology eschews allegiance to any form that tends to restrict it, while staying firmly within the traditions (and paradigm) of qualitative research. While the terms, basic and fundamental might imply superficiality, simplicity or a preliminary or elementary approach, Sandelowski (2000) argues that these terms in no way convey or validate a hierarchy among methodologies but, rather, differentiate basic or fundamental qualitative research from other descriptive qualitative methodologies. Fundamental qualitative methodology is distinctive from other types of descriptive methodologies such as phenomenology, grounded theory or ethnography insofar as these methodologies “are not exclusively in the descriptive domain” and, thus, require more interpretation from researchers (Sandelowski, 2000, p. 335) and, although all inquiry entails description and “no description is free of interpretation,” basic qualitative descriptive studies have a relatively “low-inference” of interpretation (p. 335). As a result, a fundamental qualitative methodology is not highly interpretative from the perspective of a conceptual, philosophical or other highly abstract framework or system, since this methodology presents the facts of a study in “everyday language” where researchers “stay closer to their data and to the surface of words and events” (Sandelowski, 2000, p. 336) than researchers who employ more interpretive qualitative methodologies. Although it may be considered a fairly new methodology, Merriam, writing in 1998, refers to fundamental qualitative research as a basic or generic qualitative research and states that it attempts to “discover and understand a phenomenon, a process, or the perspectives and worldviews of the people involved” (p. 11) and that the approach is among some of the most commonly used qualitative research approaches, particularly within educational research. Brink and Wood (1978) categorize it as exploratory research “designed to elicit descriptions of a single topic or a single population that has previously been ignored in the literature” (Wood & Ross-Kerr, 2011, p. 12), while Caelli et al. (2003) define it as research “not guided by an explicit or established set of philosophical assumptions in the form of one of the known qualitative methodologies” and is generally focused on “understanding an experience or event” (p. 2). Although no clear or comprehensive definition of a fundamental qualitative research methodology exists, to date, “it is one of the most frequently employed methodological approaches in the practice disciplines” (Sandelowski, 2000, p.  335); however, it is often deliberately mislabeled as one of the more traditional, historical or accepted qualitative methodologies by researchers seeking “epistemological credibility” (Thorne et al., 1997, p. 170).

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A fundamental qualitative research methodology, however, may be of significant value, particularly in sociological studies, as it may effectively illuminate the intricacies in the functionality of society and human interaction without being constrained by procedural and methodological considerations. Fundamental qualitative research involves utilization of an eclectic approach to match the research design to the methods that best suit the research questions. So, to be clear, while methodologies are research frameworks in their own right, they can be identified as methods whenever the research can benefit from characteristics inherent in any of the traditional and historic methodologies. It is this understanding that exists at the heart of a fundamental research methodology. Fundamental or basic research methodologies are also spawning a number of new appellations such as “biographical,” “philosophical” or “critical social research,” “ethical inquiry,” “governmental,” “activist,” “foundational” and “historical research,” to mention but a few permutations of a fundamental research methodology. The list goes on and, in fact, it may be safe to say that the value of such a generic type of research lies in its ability to meet the needs of researchers (and participants) who do not wish to be constrained by typical or traditional research methodologies. This freedom must not be taken lightly, as it may become all too easy to throw something at the wall and hope that it sticks. As a result, what follows is a description of a fundamental qualitative methodology, also known as “basic” or “general” qualitative inquiry. Theoretical frameworks and other theoretical considerations continue to be associated with this methodology, and sampling, data collection and analysis methods are retained, maintained and pursued. Specific research designs endure and are proposed for a fundamental qualitative methodology, as do participant recruitment and selection, along with details of specific research methods to be employed. It is these details that help to sustain the rigour of the proposed methodology. Coding, category creation and abstraction processes continue to be a fundamental option in terms of research methods. Data (re)presentation, validity and reliability strategies continue to be used to verify the study. As such, a fundamental qualitative research methodology can easily be as rigorous as any of the aforementioned methodologies available to novice or experienced researchers alike. A basic or fundamental qualitative methodology may make use of the same descriptive, interpretive or critical approaches as do other methodologies, particularly since qualitative research is an “approach for exploring and understanding the meaning individuals or groups ascribe to a social or human problem” (Creswell, 2014, p. 4). This research methodology supports an inductive style of data analysis, building from particulars to general themes, including “a focus on individual meaning, and the importance of rendering the complexity of a situation” (Creswell, 2014, p. 4). Qualitative, or “soft,” data, as opposed to the “hard” data of quantitative research, is “rich in description of people, places and conversations, and not easily handled by statistical procedures” (Bogdan & Biklen, 1992, p. 2). Thus, a basic or fundamental qualitative methodology, as described by Sandelowski (2000), tends to be the

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method of choice when a “straight description of phenomena [is] desired” (p. 334) in order to obtain clear descriptions or answers to questions relevant to practitioners and policy makers.

Fundamental Qualitative Research Methods According to Cooper and Endacott (2007), deductive research is generally undertaken to test or explain a theory (quantitative research) while inductive research is employed to develop theory (qualitative research). However, it is possible to use a qualitative approach as part of deductive research; for example, using individual interviews or focus groups to refine or define hypotheses for testing. By contrast, however, inductive research requires a qualitative approach to build the theory. Thus, a basic qualitative descriptive study seeks to obtain a comprehensive descriptive summary of a specific phenomenon and, as such, Sandelowski (2000) avers that fundamental qualitative research studies are the least “theoretical” of qualitative methodologies and tend to draw from the principles of naturalistic inquiry, which implies minimal manipulation or imposition of a priori units on the outcome (Lincoln & Guba, 1985) and, can be described as a “commitment to studying something in its natural state” with “no pre-selection of variables to study, no manipulation of variables, and no a priori commitment to any one theoretical [framework]” (Sandelowski, 2000, p. 337). With regards to sampling, data collection and analysis, Sandelowski (2000) describes a basic qualitative research design as “an eclectic but reasonable and well-­ considered combination of sampling, data collection, analysis, and re-­ presentational techniques” (p.  337). While there are no extant rules for sample size, a purposive sampling strategy or combinations thereof may be employed, including homogenous and maximum variation sampling, deviant case sampling or demographic variation sampling, to name but a few (Patton, 2002). Data collection typically involves minimally to moderately structured open-ended interviews to discover the “who, what, and where of events or experiences, or their basic nature and shape” (Sandelowski, 2000, p.  338) with qualitative content analysis being the preferred method of data analysis in basic or fundamental qualitative descriptive studies and can be described as a “dynamic form of analysis of verbal and visual data that is oriented toward summarizing the informational contents of that data” (p. 338). Researchers who choose a generic or basic qualitative methodology should make their theoretical position as explicit as possible; for example, motivation to undertake the study, congruence between methodology and methods, description of methods, clear strategies to establish rigour and the identification of the analytic lens through which data are examined (Cooper & Endacott, 2007). Another important consideration is the impact and influence that the interviewer exerts on the interviewee and interview process. Gender relationships, age and emotional factors all play a part in this interaction (Bold, 2012) and an interviewer’s

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“demeanour, personality and expectancies” all shape the interview outcome (p. 102). Consequently, interviewers must adopt a reflexive stance so as to avoid skewing the data towards a particular perspective or prejudicing interviewee responses (Bold, 2012). Recent changes in qualitative interviewing, however, have shifted “the role of the interviewer towards being a dialogue-partner and contributing to the text developed during the interview” (Kirkevold & Bergland, 2007, p. 69). This shift in understanding supports a more conversational approach to interview data collection, positioning the interviewer as learner and the interviewee as expert (Levin, 2017). Altheide (1987) notes that the interview process, should it be utilized, is reflexive and highly interactive between the researcher, concepts, data collection, coding, analysis and interpretation, meant to be systematic and analytic without becoming rigid. Codes generated from the data itself are systemically applied through the course of the analysis (Sandelowski, 2000). A pre-existing coding system, such as a “template organizing style” (Crabtree & Miller, 1999, p.  21) may be employed, although such codes are frequently modified or dispensed with in favor of newer codes that better fit the data (Morgan, 1993; Sandelowski, 2000). In basic qualitative research, descriptions emerging from the data are valuable as end products in themselves without having to function as entry points for further interpretive study. Thus, there is no mandate to produce anything more than a descriptive summary of a phenomenon, organized in such a way as to present the data collected that will be most relevant to the intended audience (Sandelowski, 2000). Selecting appropriate data collection methods ensures research credibility by demonstrating how well the collected data answers the research questions. Qualitative content analysis may be used to analyze, describe and “summarize the informational contents of the data” (Sandelowski, 2000, p. 338). Hsieh and Shannon (2005) define basic qualitative research as a “research method for the subjective interpretation of the content of text data through the systematic classification process of coding and identifying themes or patterns” that offers a “flexible method for analyzing text data… [that] focuses on the characteristics of language as communication with attention to the content or contextual meaning of the text” (pp. 1277–1278). Because each inquiry is unique, the analysis process is flexible and may not proceed in a linear fashion, as there are no simple guidelines for data analysis. Results of the study are, thus, heavily influenced by the “skills, insights, analytic abilities and style of the investigator” (Elo & Kyngäs, 2008, p. 113). Data may be arranged chronologically, with attention to themes reflecting major topics. These categorizing constructs may be used independently or in combination with each other. Within fundamental qualitative research, as with most qualitative research, validation of findings occurs throughout the steps in the process of research (Creswell, 2014) and consists of various reliability processes to check for accuracy and credibility of research findings that help to establish the rigour (Caelli et al., 2003) essential for basic qualitative descriptive studies.

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This may be demonstrated through the careful accounting of events (and meanings, as appropriate) that researchers and participants would agree is accurate (Sandelowski, 2000), as well as through member checking, thick descriptions, transparency of the researcher’s role and theoretical positioning (Creswell, 2014). Although member checking may be useful in validating the credibility of the study by authenticating that findings are true to participant experiences, Elo and Kyngäs (2008) caution that this be undertaken cautiously, as participants may not apply similar levels of understanding as researchers and may, therefore, inadvertently pose a “threat to validity” (p. 6) by editing response to the original interview. In the final phase of the study, reporting—in terms of results, methods and analysis of data—includes clear descriptions of culture, context, selection, and characteristics of participants. Reporting, in the form of a manuscript or presentation, should contain systematic and careful attention regarding how connections between data and results are developed (Elo et al., 2014). Visuals, such as figures, diagrams and tables provide an overview of the findings and present the “content and structure of concepts…in a clear and understandable way” (Elo et al., 2014, p. 6), serving also to explain the purpose and process of the analysis. Additionally, as Elo et al. (2014) point out, the authenticity of the findings is “increased if the results are presented in a way that allows the reader to look for alternative interpretations” (p.  6). Representative quotations from participants may also be used to ensure the findings “accurately represent the information that the participants provided” (Elo et  al., 2014, p. 6) rather than confirming researcher bias. Further to this, evaluating how well categories cover the data in order to present complete understanding of the context, as well as a thorough analysis abstraction process that features mutually exclusive concepts and a clear explanation of the similarities and differences between categories will add further credibility to the findings (Elo et al., 2014, p. 7). Finally, a detailed and accurate description of the analysis process and the relationship between findings and original data adds to the dependability of the study, allowing other researchers to follow the decisions made by the initial researcher(s) (Elo et al., 2014, p. 7).

Considerations in Basic Qualitative Research Reflexivity may be defined as a sensitivity towards how the researcher(s) and research process shape the data collection, their prior assumptions and experience. It is important for the qualitative researcher(s) to describe their theoretical position in terms of what brought them to the question and the assumptions they make about the topic. To ensure methodological validity, the logic of enquiry, procedures and measurement instruments must be valid and clearly described (Cooper & Endacott, 2007). Additionally, according to Cooper and Endacott (2007), random sampling is unusual in qualitative research because statistical representativeness is rarely an objective in understanding social processes. Purposeful or “purposive” sampling is

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common in most forms of qualitative research, while snowball sampling is a strategy used when the initial participants or informants recommend additional potential participants. The interview process is commonly audio-taped, although video-­ taping is becoming more prevalent. Interviews are semi-structured or unstructured and may be conducted individually or as focus groups. Focus groups, however, require the researcher to be flexible within a dynamic and developing interview, and to consider the interactions within the group (Cooper & Endacott, 2007). Depending on research objectives, the setting, participants, activities and interactions, frequency, duration and non-verbal interactions may be recorded (Merriam, 1988). As a caveat, researchers should bear in mind the risk of becoming immersed in the group culture and losing the research agenda, and of the Hawthorne Effect where changes in behaviour occur due to the observation (Cooper & Endacott, 2007). Miles and Huberman (1994) indicate the stages of analysis for interview transcripts or observational records as: • Data reduction and display. Transcripts are read and reread independently by researchers, maintaining awareness of preconceived ideas, who then independently identify key categories to be charted. • Conclusions are drawn by identifying category clusters and noting relationships within the data, thus enabling development of overarching themes and sub-themes. • Confirmation of results. Researchers weigh the evidence and compare and contrast the data. Consideration should be given to any additional procedures such as examination of negative or outlying cases, triangulation and respondent feedback. Qualitative researchers who elect to utilize a basic, generic or fundamental research methodology would benefit from becoming sensitive to how they influence and interpret data by closely considering the sample and analysis processes, by choosing relevant methods of data collection, and by incorporating applicable processes for creating rigorous research. In addition, researchers should pay attention to effective description and communication of findings to those who may be less familiar with the relevant processes.

Rhizomatic Research Similar to participatory action research, rhizomatic research requires participants to undertake the role of collective, reflexive inquirers, whose object of knowledge production activities generate transformative knowledge to address problems of practice. As with many qualitative methodologies and approaches to research, rhizomatic research stands as a reaction to more positivistic forms of research, and builds on the imagination, aspirations, everyday needs, resilience, resistance, tribulations, and agonies of stakeholders as historical actors and active agents (Gutiérrez, 2016). By

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considering this through the lens of Deleuze and Guattari’s (1987) model of rhizomatic knowledge structures, one may begin to understand how the contemporary research environment values heterogeneous, non-hierarchical, networked styles of work on research projects (Guerin, 2013). Positivism, a philosophical system commonly associated with quantitative research, contends that every rationally justifiable assertion can be scientifically verified or is capable of logical or mathematical proof. As noted by Humphreys (2013), to operate within this paradigm of quantitative research and to produce research that matters, or is considered research at all, a researcher must adhere to protocols or procedures rooted in Enlightenment rationalism and positivistic epistemology. In this way, positivist methods and research protocols serve as exclusionary mechanisms, denying any validity or trustworthiness to insights, understandings, or interpretations that emerge from other forms of investigation that do not necessarily conform to pre-set methods. Ultimately, such conditions determine what types of knowledge count as true, and divergent types of research may be disregarded as superfluous, unscholarly, or unreliable (Humphreys, 2013). Current research projects are increasingly conceived as multidisciplinary, interdisciplinary, transdisciplinary and extradisciplinary. One effect of this is that the traditional boundaries between disciplines seem to be weakening (Guerin, 2013). As leaders of a critical intellectual movement, French philosophers Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari (1987) presented a new metaphor, leading to a creative mode of thought for dissolving linear and vertical worldviews of positive determinism in the West (Ko & Bal, 2019). Rhizomatic thought represents Deleuze and Guattari’s answer to traditional Western rationality (which they term arborescent, like roots, shoots and branches of a tree). While the image of the tree stresses hierarchy, linearity, dichotomy, and static progress, rhizomatic thought is characterized by heterarchy (portrayed by power relations that differ in different contexts), multiplicity, continuity, and flux. Arborescent thought proceeds through roots (axioms, foundational knowledge or principles) and branches (logical results); by contrast, a rhizome has no center, and is constantly shifting (Sherman, 2018). Rhzomatic research, also identified as “post-qualitative” research, is just such a divergent type of research, first introduced as a philosophical concept by Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari in their book, A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia (1987). The concept is based upon the botanical phenomenon, the rhizome, a plant root that sends out stems and shoots from its nodes and is characterized by a lateral network of nodes without a centralizing taproot (Ko & Bal, 2019). In qualitative research, rhizomatic research describes both research and theory that allows for multiple, non-hierarchical entry and exit points in data representation and interpretation, as opposed to more hierarchical and binary concepts of knowledge. Thus, instead of working with vertical or linear connections, rhizomatic research allows for planar and “trans-species” connections (Deleuze & Guattari, 1987). As an example of “trans-species” connections, history and culture, while connected, are not hierarchical in that one is neither responsible to nor for the other. In essence, there is no specific origin or genesis because the rhizome is always in the

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middle, in medias res, with no beginning nor end, resisting chronology or organization, but preferring a more spontaneous system of growth and regeneration. Deleuze and Guattari (1987) offer several principles relating to rhizomatic considerations; • Connection and heterogeneity—The point of any rhizome may be connected to any other. In fact, this must occur in order for the rhizome to propagate. Multiple thoughts or ideas can intersect or connect at various points in the story or system. Heterogeneity means that there are no requirements for connections, as links or connections can attach themselves in various ways. For example, a piece of art could be linked to a particular social theory, which could then be linked to a political suppression, and so on (Guerin, 2013). • Multiplicity—When the “multiple” is treated as a substantive, it ceases to have any relation to any individual phenomenon. Multiplicity refers to the random and multi-directional aspect of growth in a rhizome. The rhizome can be conceived of as a linear system of dimensions, of directions in motion, traveling in multiple directions from its original root (Guerin, 2013). • Asignifying rupture—Although a rhizome may be broken, it will regenerate along its old lines or along new lines. Traversal lines crossing boundaries are encouraged to rupture dichotomizing lines that seek to maintain the status quo. This requires interdisciplinary work in which iterative connections and ruptures of distributed expertise generate adaptive systemic solutions as living artefacts (Ko & Bal, 2019). • Cartography—A rhizome is not responsive to structural or generative models. One enters into the rhizome from a distinct point. Also, it is impossible to re-­ enter from the same position or for different people to approach the rhizome from the same position because each person enters situations and creative processes from unique experiences and points of view. Each situation is different, so even a person’s point of view changes each situation based on others’ contributing perspectives and experiences. Therefore, every new interaction changes the system’s cartography (Guerin, 2013). As a result, cartography—or map-­ making—is the method preferred over tracing. Mapping and remapping are vital to the representation of rhizomatic thinking. • Decalcomania (from “decal”), also referred to as “tracing” points to the art or process of transferring and permanently fixing pictures or designs to a receptive surface. A key rhizomatic trait is the lack of this quality, as rhizomes never duplicate themselves in the same way as previously (Guerin, 2013). Thus, rhizomatic inquiry represents a map rather than a tracing or a design. According to Strom and Martin (2017), the process of tracing relates to normative research methodologies, whereas mapping encompasses the qualities of the rhizome, drawing upon and utilizing non-normative approaches in order to develop new forms of knowledge, new interpretations, and new understandings. Thus, the practice of rhizomatic research expresses a version of reality. This new reality may be captured in time, through tracings normally associated with more commonly represented methodologies.

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Adopting a rhizomatic approach theoretically and methodologically requires the researcher to embrace multiple shifts in thinking about inquiry, which carries implications for the way studies are designed, conducted, and reported (Strom & Martin, 2017). This has been referred to as “post-qualitative” research (St. Pierre, 2011) and addresses the notion that knowledge is constructed rather than discovered. Honan and Sellers (2011) explore approaches to the development of a rhizomatic methodology. In rhizomatic fashion, Honan and Sellers map connections and disconnections between and across different pathways. They describe three different but ultimately connected processes; • Write a rhizomatic text that is non-linear and self-consciously part of the research method. This writing is partial and tentative, transgresses generic boundaries and allows inclusion of the researchers’ voice. • Use rhizomatic thought to analyse the discourses operating within data. Discourses operate within a text in rhizomatic ways; they are not linear or separate. A text includes a myriad of discursive systems which are connected to and across each other. A rhizomatic discourse analysis follows the lines of flight that connect these different systems in order to provide accounts of plausible readings. • Follow Deleuzian lines of flight that connect and link disparate forms of data so that (im)plausible readings connect analyses of writing, artworks, video and interview transcripts. Data can be analyzed rhizomatically to find connections between writing, artworks, video, interview transcripts and textual artefacts. This kind of analysis allows (im)plausible readings of connections between, across and within various data. The various disconnections illustrate the impossibility of establishing a formulaic methodology. While careful not to engage in binary thinking, rhizomes are compared and contrasted, but not opposed, to linear and modernist “arboreal” metaphors common among more established methodologies. Rhizomatic thinking and writing involves making ceaseless and ongoing connections. Thus, according to Deleuze & Guattari, “Any point of a rhizome can be connected to anything other, and must be... A rhizome ceaselessly establishes connections between semiotic chains, organizations of power, and circumstances relative to the arts, social sciences, and social struggles” (Deleuze & Guattari, 1987, p. 7). In order to deliver a piece of writing, one must first identify the author. While this may seem obvious, co-authors frequently must decide on whether they wish to be considered an “I,” a “they” or a “we,” or remain “objective through the usage of the passive voice. Developing a linear text with a progression of ideas, leading to a coherent conclusion is also problematic, as rhizomatic thinking strives to overcome binary thinking in order to produce points of intersection, overlaps, convergences (Honan & Sellers, 2011). Tracing a straight path from beginning to end inevitably permeates not only one’s thinking but also one’s understanding of thinking and understanding, given that the most common medium for writing is the two-­ dimensional page. However, lyrics, stories, poems and other literary genres are common in rhizomatic writing and research. As ever, as in most research, there is always something more to be said. No conversation is ever finished or final.

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Thinking rhizomatically allows for a discursive analysis of re-presented data. Writing rhizomatically allows for the mapping the pathways through and across disparate data by re-presenting these data in myriad forms. Textual analysis, hence, depends upon understanding that discourses operate within texts in rhizomatic ways; they are neither linear nor separate. Historically speaking, texts do not replace one another but travel alongside, borrow, supplant, suppress and emphasize one another. Discourses associated with all of these appropriations are present and concurrent, even if not particularly current. In short, one text does not render another invisible, as in a palimpsest (Honan & Sellers, 2011), where a text or image is reused or altered but still bears visible traces of its earlier form. Understanding texts as rhizomatic make sense of this layering, as each discourse interweaves and interconnects with each other in order to form a discursive web that connects with other texts. In this way, discourses may be mapped across contexts (Honan & Sellers, 2011). Such rhizomatic thinking applies to speech, as well. Individual communities and nations, as a whole, function better, in terms of equitability, when their members are able to use varieties of the chosen language effectively and efficiently. While rhizomatic texts draw discourses to the surface and makes them visible, it also focuses attention on the discourses that one engages with in talking, reading, writing and re-presenting our data. Thus, one must signal the discursive pathways that are used, remembering each informs and works alongside the others and that each is a plateau to be moved across horizontally. Consequently, each word or phrase must be thoughtfully produced. The use of ellipses, unending sentences, broken and re-constructed words are some examples of this kind of writing. It is important to continually and reflexively focus on the minutiae of the written text when producing rhizomatic writing (Honan & Sellers, 2011). Rhizomatic relationality also may affect how one understands theory and practice, product and process, as it places teaching, learning and researching within a constant state of becoming. This is asymptotic, as one will never actually “be;” one may only be a part of the process of becoming, even to the extent of becoming something new. For practitioners, this means theorizing through inquiry. This is a process that involves an evolution of questions. It is an active stance to knowledge creation that informs practices, and which makes inquiries emergent, generative, reflexive and responsive (Irwin et al., 2006). Rhizomatic thinking represents a valuable lens for coaches to apply in their own work (Sherman, 2018). Commonly utilized as a form of professional development and school reform, academic, professional and fictive writing, as well as in service learning and health care, to identify but a few areas of application, instructional coaching is frequently based on a model of learning, where static knowledge such as “best practices” are provided, introduced, explained, and modeled by coaches and implemented by teachers. Rhizome philosophy may effectively apply to learning in organizations; Rhizomatic Learning in Organizations (RLO) (Charney, 2017), thus expanding rhizomatic thinking and practices from individuals to groups and, ultimately, to organizations. However, within classrooms, this model of learning has been challenged by such forces as sociocultural theory and critical pedagogy, which represent counterpoints to behaviouristic, mechanical theories of learning.

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Rhizomatic thinking not only offers alternative practical approaches to teaching and learning, it also represents epistemological, ontological, and even axiological entailments that change the way we understand, evaluate, and explore the phenomenon of learning (Sherman, 2018). In fact, St. Pierre (2017) argues that these concepts exhibit a radical ontology that may challenge the very foundations of qualitative research methodology. The rhizome may be thought of as a relationship between multiplicities or assemblages made up of complex constellations of objects, expressions, qualities and territories that come together for varying periods of time. This allows one to understand the world in terms of connections and relationships that are constantly shifting, breaking, reforming and reorganizing (Sherman, 2018). In terms of professional development, a teacher can be understood as one element within a complex and shifting set of relations that collectively function to produce a particular outcome. Thus, the teacher’s context may be thought of as an assemblage within an assemblage, constantly shifting, reconfiguring, and becoming (Reilly, 2014), eventually sponsoring a teacher’s professional transformation. Seeing a teacher as constantly becoming within a larger assemblage can also entail a different approach to teacher learning and professional development, wherein learning and growth is seen as a reworking of relationships within the larger assemblage. A new element can potentially ripple outward through the entire assemblage, affecting all who come within its influence. Thus, the assemblages, emergent and unpredictable, are not the sum of the properties of their parts but the results of those relationships among properties and parts. For example, an element can move from one assemblage to another and have a completely different influence (Sherman, 2018). Molar and molecular lines, lines of flight (Deleuze & Guattari, 1987) can be understood as established norms and values, the forces behind “acceptable patterns of behavior, institutional norms, and/or dominant ways of thinking and being in the world” (Strom & Martin, 2017, p. 9). These lines of flight are possible in any direction; however, it is not flight from something. The flight indicates movement between nodes. Thus, it is the coming and going, the occupation of the space in between, that matters, rather than an attempt to reach an endpoint (Guerin, 2013). As molar lines are political, molecular lines are micropolitical, representing the enactments of molar lines in situations in everyday life. While molecular lines generally follow the status quo of the molar, they have the potential to become lines of flight, represented by mutations, surprises, the unexpected. New connotations or meanings can arise from accidents of circumstance, humour, misunderstandings and so on, and new capacities may be brought to bear within the assemblage, reworking the existing relations (Sherman, 2018), which also maintain the potential to arc back to the molar and lead to systemic change. However, Masny (2014) stresses, “Rhizoanalysis is not a method; in other words, there is no one way to do rhizoanalysis” (p. 351). Consequently, it is up to the researcher to find creative solutions to the challenge of rhizoanalysis. Accordingly, Rhizome theory…offers a way of thinking and being that enables a collective to develop and practice flexibility in tandem with stable, set organizational processes, moving beyond the stasis traditional and legacy learning and adapting theories and frameworks explored earlier. Dwelling within the middle of things, where collective learning and adapting are

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emergent and collaborative, allows for centering and developing comfort for the unknown or the unfinished. It provides space for learning that is open and that moves toward ongoing development…. It situates a learner to remain in the thick of learning, to give learning time and space to germinate, form, un-form, reform, and grow. It is not a place of looking for answers with fervor; it is a place of allowing learning and insights to emerge. Enabling one to dwell in the middle of things is informed by both explicit and tacit knowledge, thereby deepening awareness for embracing change that is both established and emergent. (Charney, 2017, p. 141)

Rhizomatics thinking maintains the capacity to disturb and disrupt hegemonic, linear modes of operation common to Western ways. Rhizomes, due to their unstructured order, defy the principles of structure because they do not conform to any one generative or linear model (Deleuze & Guattari, 1987). Thus, this non-linear, multiple growth associates it with difference and its lack of center provides a space to establish external networks (Carrington & Iyer, 2011). Rhizome theory paves a way for expanding upon existing methodologies and approaches to research. As such, it is poised to become an additional qualitative methodology to complement those methodologies that have been described and explored through the pages of this volume.

The Five Contexts The Five Contexts is equally useful, for students, researchers, and teachers alike, as it is geared towards grasping this complex and dynamic issues as it is an exceptionally versatile construct. In fact, the Five Contexts has been used throughout this volume as a means of organizing and deconstructing the messy and complex nature of qualitative research. It may be used in this way or as a more formal methodology to conduct research throughout the humanities and the social sciences. The first context is the (auto)biographical context that allows for the situating of oneself with respect to the research at hand. One’s own stories and experiences shape the research far more than one may first imagine, as there is no perfect objectivity. “Our autobiographies, as individuals and as scholars, create and re-create our research interests, our philosophical predilections, and our paradigmatic stances” (Lincoln, 2012). After all, is it not the personal story, the autobiography, which gives life to history and its political and philosophical conditions which, in turn, sustain the contexts of qualitative research? The second context is the historical context which is interwoven with the third context, the political context, where issues of power, control, regulation and other dynamics mesh with paradigm choice. The effects of gender, race, class, national heritage, and ongoing tensions is the material for both the historical and the political contexts. The fourth context, the postmodern context, aptly renamed by Zygmunt Bauman (2007) as “liquid modernity” is perhaps the most fluid of the contexts, as it relates to an unfixed and fluctuating transition between unsettled eras. For researchers, the

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most important issue within this postmodern era within which we live and work are the questions that arrive at this point in time. (Lincoln, 2012). The fifth and final context, the philosophical context, is at the same time the most stable, but is also a compilation of understandings that have been developed as a result of the preceding four contexts.

The Autobiographical Context As Clifford Geertz (1973) noted, the researcher is of prime importance to the research. Therefore, knowing who the researcher is becomes enormously important. This is also a valuable tool for the researcher involved, as (s)he may be able to utilize this context to question their assumptions and to develop guidelines for research. It is hoped that this context will assist the researcher in situating him-/herself relative to the qualitative research that is being conducted. After all, to understand one’s own motivations and to question one’s own assumptions may allow that individual to become more objective when engaging in research endeavors (Gannon, 2006). Cooper and White (2012) highlight the importance of the autobiographical context; [T]he situation of oneself with respect to the research at hand, particularly research of the qualitative kind, is essential to the understanding of the researcher’s position with regard to that research, the assumption held, and the suppositions examined. (p. 45)

The Historical Context Merleau-Ponty (1962) suggests that one must delve deeply into history in order to reach the unique core of existential meaning which emerges, ultimately, within any type of research. It is important to recognize that one has a place in history, and that one can change that place from being merely an observer and a reactionary to being in a position of power within which one can insert oneself into the historical moment in order to influence the course of that history. For the researcher, the historical context offers an important perspective on the past which, in turn, can inform future decisions, considerations, and methodologies (Blumenreich 2004). Everyone occupies a place in history, and one may change that place from being merely an observer or reactionary. One may choose to insert oneself into the historical moment in order to influence the course of that history in however many small or large ways that are available as opportunities present themselves. Historical events also offer an opportunity to provide an understanding of how power operates in all its guises.

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The Political Context It has been said that politics, by its very nature, is never neutral. Also, politics is omnipresent in the lives of every citizen in today’s society. Whether it be personal politics or those of a more general nature, it is important to recognize the political nature of everything that one does, either from the point of view of the researcher or from that of the research participants. Recognition of the political aspects of engaging in or performing research allows the researcher to bring an additional perspective to bear upon the research issue. Thus, as Merleau-Ponty (1962) suggests, everything, including political matters, has meaning and points to underlying structures within relationships. Cooper and White state that it is crucial, as a researcher, to position oneself within the historical backdrop of the times (2012). Situating oneself within the landscape of the current political climate can help contextualize the realities and provide insight into some of the technological and pedagogical challenges faced by the researcher.

The Postmodern Context Since we live in postmodern times, this context is an important consideration to any form of research. In this age of blurred genres and mixed methods (Denzin & Lincoln, 2000), the postmodern era helps one to realize that it is now more difficult to compartmentalize research into neat, mutually exclusive domains. Perhaps it was always thus and we are only now beginning to recognize that the messy, descriptive nature of qualitative research is the norm. In that sense, an understanding of these postmodern or “liquid” times can assist the researcher in seeing qualitative research in all its complexities. In this context, Cooper and White (2012) build on the work of Zygmunt Bauman, who describes post modernity in terms of fluidity, moral choice and responsibility.

The Philosophical Context The philosophical context binds the previous contexts together in order to gain a deeper understanding of the complexities associated with engaging in qualitative research. Through the philosophical context, one can contemplate those deep issues that the research embodies. This context allows for the necessary introspection and thoughtfulness that may aid in delving into deeper philosophical questions of meaning. Acting as a binder to the aggregate of the other contexts, it is the philosophical context that compares and contrasts meanings, seeks patterns, and attempts to come to an understanding of all that the research means, embodies, and foreshadows. (Cooper & White, 2012, p. 143)

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As such, these five contexts represent an orientation to inquiry that researchers, graduate students, and the professionals and practitioners who are attached to research endeavors may find useful, as they seek to develop ways by which they can engage with the research process, data collection and analysis, and the dissemination of their research findings. These five contexts contribute to ways of thinking about research methods and their more overarching paradigms. While there is a great deal of overlap and concurrence among and between the contexts, as there is between methods, methodologies and paradigms, particularly in terms of interpretivist and critical perspectives, the five contexts may be used as a methodology for doing research within the current milieu. In general, the five contexts lay bare relationships, specific issues of subjectivity, and interrogate the significance of the individual autobiographical within current historical, political, postmodern, and philosophical perspectives. Through the conducting of research utilizing the five contexts, autobiographical dimensions may become more fully developed through transactions between the individual and the world, as well as through the historical, political, postmodern and philosophical contexts. The whole receives its definition from the parts and, reciprocally, the parts can only be understood in reference to the whole. Thus, the importance of a solid theoretical grounding is important to all researchers, as is an understanding of their own situations with respect to the qualitative research at hand and to the attitudes and actions appropriate, given this self-knowledge, which allow researchers to engage in their research with hearts and minds. We trust these contexts will assist beginning and practicing researchers in engaging with their research initiatives. As such, these five contexts represent an orientation to inquiry that researchers, graduate students, and the professionals and practitioners, who are attached to research endeavors, may find useful, as they seek to develop ways by which they can engage with the research process, data collection and analysis, and the dissemination of their research findings (Cooper & White, 2012).

Postcolonial Indigenous Research Quietly arriving in the consciousness of Eurocentric qualitative research methodologies, Indigenous perspectives and decolonization initiatives have helped to forward postcolonial Indigenous research. Postcolonial research represents what may be considered a new paradigm in research even though, arguably, it predates much of the research methodologies represented by Eurocentric research models. Without drawing upon established qualitative research methodologies established by Western societies, Indigenous research strives to (re)construct a body of knowledge that carries hope and promotes transformation and social change. In this way, multiple realities are shaped by the many connections that humans have with the environment and all that it entails.

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Indigenous knowledge is embodied in languages, proverbs, folk tales, stories, and cultural experiences that are generally unobtainable from conventional Eurocentric methods and methodologies. According to Cardinal (2001), “Indigenous research methods and methodologies are as old as their ceremonies and their nations. Indigenous cultures are rich with ways of gathering, discovering and uncovering knowledge” (Cardinal, 2001, p.  180). As a result, the Indigenous Research Paradigm is relational, based on relationships and relational experiences emanating from the experiences and culture of the people. In keeping with the sanctity of the spirit, Indigenous research ethics, like all Indigenous ethics, are based on respect, reciprocity and responsibility that honour the perspectives of their research participants. Thus, every attempt is made to reproduce the voices of the research participants authentically and in a way that the participants can recognize and know themselves. Ethics framed in Indigenous cultures, including perceptions of reality and right behaviour frequently remain at odds with prevailing norms in Western research (Castellano, 2004).

Professor Dwayne Donald

We had a wonderful opportunity to interview Professor Dwayne Donald at the Enoch Cree First Nation on the outskirts of Edmonton, Alberta. His interview offered a multiplicity of insights, ways of doing and being that, frankly, the rest of

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the world may benefit from. Ethics of caring, selflessness and conservation are first among many values that were discussed during the interview.

Video Clip 11.1: Professor Dwayne Donald (▶ https://doi.org/10.1007/000-­6de)

Born and raised in Edmonton, Professor Donald, has lived in Edmonton (Amiskwacîwâskahikan) most of his life and comes from a family that’s a mix of Cree and Métis, as well as Norwegian. He claims that competing stories of the genesis of Canada come into confluence in the story of his own family. One of the best ways to understand researchers and the commitments they have, claims Dwayne Donald, is to understand the stories they tell about themselves and who they are. This has had a big influence on how Professor Donald thinks about curriculum and pedagogy and his own commitment to education. After describing his cultural heritage, Professor Donald notes that, although he did not know much about the history of his community, things changed dramatically when he began teaching social studies in 1993 at Kainai First Nation School. The following decade transformed him as he learned and was supported in gaining his identity as an educator. In speaking of identity, Professor Donald calls upon his two Indigenous names. His Blackfoot name refers to somebody who runs a long time for a long distance, while his Cree name translates to “Big Bear,” a healer. His

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mentor, Tall Man, told him that he will spend his life bringing people closer together. This connotation of healing and support has provided much guidance regarding his role as a professor in a Faculty of Education. Professor Donald views curriculum as a confluence of different interests and his work is to try to figure out how to balance them. His focus is on bringing people together to think about how we can teach and learn from Indigenous wisdom and insights. Holistic understandings have a big role in guiding people. One of his puzzlements is with regard to changing attitudes. So, if someone is racist, for example, a PowerPoint presentation that assumes the individual will give up racist attitudes is unlikely to work. Instead, Professor Donald strives to address the spirit, the emotion and the body, in balance with the intellect. This leads to experimentation. One of the ways he tries to accomplish this is by going outdoors to think about sources of inspiration, involving holistic approaches to life and living, as well as by troubling the false universalism that comes with the acceptance of Enlightenment-­ based philosophies as providing the answer to important question we might ask. In short, he is trying to help people remember what’s been forgotten. Local manifestations of knowledge, through issues of power and control, morph into something different from their origins. Professor Donald uses the example of the Cree lunar cycle, which has thirteen moons in the calendar, for understanding time. He asks his students to study the moon, to study particular places of their choosing, to pay attention to what’s going on ecologically in that area at that time and to figure out a way of keeping track of what they learn, what the place teaches them, what the moon teaches them. The “deliverable” is to develop a creative way to express that. These experiments in knowledge and knowing try to expand and enhance how we understand what it means to be a human being. Regarding land acknowledgement, Professor Donald believes that people should speak in their own way about how they understand the life that surrounds them, and how they understand what it means to live in the place where they live. The acknowledgement, he notes, doesn’t really align with traditional teachings. This, he claims, is because humans were the last ones to arrive on Earth and, when they arrived, they didn’t know very much and needed a lot of help. Thanks to their more than human relatives, the First People survived. Now, as human beings, we must attempt to live in a way that honours what we were taught at that time and to follow those “natural law teachings.” Honoring life and thinking about how enmeshed in this life we are is what that land acknowledgement is supposed to do—an acknowledgment in a humble way. In thinking about his research trajectory, Professor Donald understands the Fort as a mythic symbol at the height of the creation story of Canada. At this point Professor Donald (2009) describes living in Fort MacLeod, Alberta, and being subjected to the “annoying music of the Musical Ride of the “Northwest Mounted Police” (Royal Canadian Mounted Police). His young son points to the dichotomy of European ascension versus Indigenous subjugation and it is the fort that symbolizes this oppression. Thus, the “Fort” represents a social spatial organizer in Canadian society by teaching us that there are insiders and outsiders in this society—separate realities. Professor Donald attacks this colonial frontier logic and, in

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his teaching, strives to expose its falsehoods in order to promote, repair and renew the relationship on different terms. More recently, he has left this critique behind and has turned his attention to how we might proceed differently on different terms, guided by a Métissage sensibility. Métissage was a curriculum concept, initiated by Cynthia Chambers (1999), who worked at the University of Lethbridge for many years. As a master’s student at the University of Lethbridge, young Dwayne Donald was very influenced by Professor Chambers regarding the ways in which the old First Nations people that she knew told stories and used language to express relationality. Métissage, during the French colonial period, was a derogatory term used to refer to what they perceived to be the “mongrelization” of the French race, as they thought of it, through intermarriage with people who weren’t French. In the French Caribbean, after the departure of the French, some of the intellectuals in Haiti took back that term, Métissage, and used it to describe the culture in that setting; they were left to try and generate a culture, a language, music, all kinds of different things as a way to express who they thought they were. And so, states Professor Donald, “This is Métissage.” Cynthia Chambers read about this and used it as a way to express relationality through life stories. Now, a Métissage Collective of researchers across the country create scripts and perform them in different ways, trying to combine creativity, relationality and story as a way to reinvigorate how we think about curriculum. Indigenous Métissage, notes Professor Donald (2012), is not Métissage just for Indigenous people but is a way to attend to the particularities of place. Thus, Métissage, represents a research sensibility or an inquiry that begins with an artefact, something created by humans or something that occurs naturally in the world. Indigenous Métissage inquires into the difficulty of Canadian/Indigenous relationships through creating stories to understand the relationships differently, in all of their complexities. Next to the University of Alberta campus is the North Saskatchewan River (“kisiskâciwani-sîpiy”). In Cree, the translation would be, “It’s a river that moves at a swift walking pace.” Professor Donald has begun to take groups of students and educators into the river valley regularly and to tell them stories about the place. He uses the metaphor of pentimento or palimpsest, the reusing of old canvases to embody new works of art, covering up older works that lie beneath the façade. Edmonton, claims Professor Donald, has a façade. We interact with it the way it looks now, but it is important to go beneath the façade to think about the layers of memory, experience and story that exist beneath that façade. And so, this is what really inspires this River Valley walk. Along the North Saskatchewan River, people have gathered for thousands of years to trade, to renew relations, to do ceremonies together. For anyone who wants to come along, Professor Donald takes them on a two-hour walk and tells them stories, some more recent, some more ancient, about that place to deepen their understanding of its character. In his own words, “there’s something really important for us with just talking together in these ways and being together, surrounded by life and thinking about things in those ways.” At a human-to-human level, “wâhkôhtowin,” the concept of kinship, involves teachings about how one is related to other human beings and how to interact with

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them in those traditional ways. Because we are enmeshed and entangled in a whole bunch of relationships that we depend upon for our survival, one of the Elders told Professor Donald, The most important thing you can do in your work is connect people to the gifts that exist in the place where they live because, once they see those gifts as part of their own identity, they’re more likely to want to protect them…. And that’s when we come along side each other in that treaty relationship is when we understand each other as connected in that wahkohtowin way.

“Wâhkôhtowin” literally refers to walking together in a bent over way, holding hands. So, Professor Donald would gets people together, whoever they are, holding hands, bent over, looking at the land, looking at the gifts and, as they walk together, they move together. He has learned that there is a lot of healing that comes from that because, in his view, one of the most difficult legacies that we all have to recover from is colonialism. Professor Donald defines colonialism as an extended process of denying relationships and there are several different relationships that have been denied, and which continue to be denied. There are three denied relationships still prominent in educational setting, according to Professor Donald. The first is the denial of the relationship between the mind and the rest of the individual, a major by-product of colonial times emanating from Enlightenment-era scientific notions of the separateness of the mind and body. A second relationship that has been denied is the lack of a relationship between differing cultures and their peoples. The third denial is represented by the separation of the individual from the land. This legacy of relationship denial needs to be repaired and renewed on different terms. This is, for Dwayne Donald, a fundamental guiding principle. Even the trouble we are experiencing with the pandemic has been predicted and expected because it has been growing for many years, along with an epidemic of loneliness. Professor Donald believes that there is a desire to belong and to understand and the pandemic has allowed that emptiness to surface. This represents an opportunity to develop a new awareness even though this is also considered to be a dangerous time. At this point Professor Donald recounts a story of a tiny, old Mayan woman who spoke at a symposium in Lethbridge. She referred to the Mayan calendar that ended in 2012 and noted that the world was not going to end, it was going to change. She said, when newcomers arrived in our territory, her people tried to greet them in that ancient way of relatives Unfortunately, it was soon realized that they had forgotten how to greet the Indigenous people in the same way. Consequently, the Mayans knew there would be trouble. Their response was to secretly educate their youngsters in caves, in the Mayan traditions, language and stories, a practice that is still being continued, today. This practice has continued for 500 years, in 2012, with this new era, “it’s time for us to come out of the caves,” she said. “What we remembered the world needs, now. And so, we have to start sharing what we’ve learned or what we remembered.” This caused Professor Donald to think of the prophecy of the White Buffalo that offers a chance for renewal. So, with climate change, the pandemic and all the

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concerns for sustainability, this has been a central message that he offers to students. There are other ways to live outside of what he refers to as homo economicus. There are other ways to be a human being. Since people have been living in this area for thousands of years quite successfully, it may be time to remember that wisdom and make it part of our daily lives. The focus is on everyday, regular, life practices that anyone can adopt and make part of how we live. For example, it is the summer, now, at the time of this interview. If we follow the traditional rhythm, this is a time for traveling, gathering and things like that. Rather than regarding a place as being dead, one may look at it through the eyes of the archeologist and decide what it is that the place used to mean. In this way, one can ask how to feed this place in order to have this place feed us back. The focus is on what one can do to improve this piece of land. One way of doing this was to pick medicine—sage—and, by showing people the protocols associated with how to do that and how to use that medicine, it connects people with the gifts that exist in their own place and shows them how to feed and heal themselves. Professor Donald notes that his interest lately has been in unlearning colonialism. Like a number of scholars, he claims that Truth is one thing we can talk about. However, Reconciliation is something else. Echoing Taiaiake Alfred, a Mohawk scholar, Professor Donald says that the message sent by notions of Reconciliation has been that Canada and Canadians will allow Indigenous people to learn their language or practice their culture, but the land and its resources are not up for negotiation. Thus, some people say that Reconciliation will only happen when Indigenous people get their land back. Specific to faculties of education, teacher education and curriculum, the current context has definitely improved. The students he works with are much more informed than they were 10 years ago, although there’s still a lot of work to be done. In Professor Donald’s view, institutions tend to pass over the colonial terrain and go straight to reconciliation because the idea of reconciliation supports ways in which Canadians think of themselves as peacemakers and friends. Passing over this difficult terrain is what Professor Donald has paid attention to and is the reason why “unlearning” has become an important concept. Colonialism may be understood as an ideology that is represented through this relationship denial. We cannot make progress on Truth and Reconciliation until we unlearn colonialism. The former chief of the Tsuut’ina Nation, Lee Crowchild, spoke of Truth and Reconciliation. Because most of the attendees at this particular conference were not Indigenous, the term, “Reconciliation,” required defining. Looking in the dictionary, Chief Crowchild found it said something about “to apologize or atone for wrongdoing.” And he said, “That doesn’t have anything to do with us because we didn’t do anything wrong.” So, he said that, “That leaves truth.” Chief Crowchild used the example of a “Wolf Lodge,” a shared ceremony that had to do with conflict resolution. The end result was to arrive at a shared understanding of what had transpired between opposing parties in order to reach an agreement. If they could not agree, there would be no peace. He finished by saying, “Canada needs a Wolf Lodge.” Given this example, Professor Donald believes the unlearning of colonialism has much to do with the Wolf Lodge concept.

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Colonialism is an ideology, not merely an intellectual habit, but an embodied kind of understanding. Professor Donald notes that, when you’re colonized, you carry it on your skin, you carry it inside of you and it has a very deep effect on how you participate in the world. This acceptance of relationship denial in all the different forms that he has talked about needs to be unlearned. In order to promote the unlearning of colonialism as a pedagogical concept and trying to think of it holistically, Professor Donald tries to put people into settings they are not used to and asks them to consider knowledge and knowing, teaching and learning, in ways that they had not really thought of before. By way of example, Professor Donald offers the story of developing a social studies curriculum. Together, he and Ramona Big Head created the Elder Mentor Program but it was initially unsuccessful until the Elders wanted to get the students to participate in a Sweat Lodge ceremony, a common tradition on the Canadian Prairies. Ramona big Head would go with the females and Dwayne Donald would go with the young men, as each group was learning different things. None of the boys showed up, so Dwayne drove by himself to a beautiful place by this beautiful river. The three Elders were waiting. Thinking the ceremony would be cancelled was an error. The Elders had made “arrangements.” Directly from the interview transcript is the following account. [T]hose three old men turned their attention to me. So, I was the one who collected the rocks, I was the one who dug the hole, I was the one who cut the willows, I was the one who built the lodge, I was the one who started the fire, I was the one who picked the sage. But while I was doing all this, they took turns talking to me about what I was doing, and they told me stories about what I was doing. And they walked beside me as I was doing things. I’d never been taught like that ever before… And what I know now is that, in that holistic way, they were guiding me intellectually, emotionally, spiritually, and physically. And they were like lifting me up. So, I got to go in the ceremony with these three beautiful old men.

Now, when he thinks about Indigenous wisdom traditions, his mind goes back to that experience and the groundedness of that day. This is the day, Professor Donald claims, that he began unlearning colonialism and he is still working on it. At this point, the interview shifts to Abraham Maslow and the Hierarchy of Needs. Maslow’s mentor and thesis advisor, Ruth Benedict, asked young Maslow if he wanted to universalize his concept, had he tried it with a culture other than his own? Benedict managed to send him to the Siksika Blackfoot community east of Calgary, Alberta. Apparently, Maslow remained in that community for six months and, eventually, his Hierarchy of Needs became nuanced by Blackfoot philosophy. This little-known information would have been academic suicide had Maslow claimed that the Blackfoot had inspired him in creating his Hierarchy of Needs. This event related to Maslow’s notion of “self-actualization.” His observations about how children were treated in the Blackfoot community is called the ethic of non-interference, somewhat related to the notion of natural consequences. The story is that Maslow was visiting someone’s home on the Reserve, and there was a gathering. Maslow was there, sitting in a corner, observing everything, probably taking notes. There was a door next to where he was sitting and he observed a young boy who went to the door to try to open it. But it was too big and cumbersome. Maslow

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observed this boy struggle for several minutes and he observed that the adults appeared not to notice. Perhaps he thought, “Can’t the adults see this boy needs help?” However, he resisted the urge to get up and open the door. So, he waited. Eventually, the boy managed to get hold of the doorknob and opened the door. Right away, there was a rush of adults that praised him. This was like a big light-bulb moment for Abraham Maslow. The Hierarchy of Needs and self-actualization comes from this time that he shared with that Blackfoot community.

Summary: Emerging Qualitative Research Methodologies Although there are many methodologies available to the qualitative researcher, many of them remain somewhat prescriptive in nature, as they have been fashioned to account for specific problems or issues. This chapter has considered newer methodologies that can be said to be “emerging” in the sense that they are perhaps more flexible, to a certain extent, than some of the more traditional methodologies that have been described in the pages of this volume. This flexibility may be ascribed, at least in part, to their newness but also to the fact that they have been developed to account for some of those pesky research problems where other, more traditional methodologies are too “tight” a fit. The parameters of some of these more traditional methodologies may circumscribe or limit the various ways that researchers wish to collect and analyze data. Bricolage represents a kind of “do-it-yourself” methodology in that the bricoleur makes use of whatever materials are at hand. Bricolage, a child of the postmodern era, can be inventive in creating novel solutions by using resources already at hand, allowing researchers to retrieve and recombine previously unrelated knowledge in order to generate new knowledge. The value of bricolage, as with many newer methodologies, is that it tends to avoid the reductionism that accompanies many of the standard or traditional qualitative research designs and, so, avoids artificial boundaries imposed by more traditional qualitative research methodologies. It is this very flexibility that permits researchers to embrace a multiplicity of associated methodological approaches or methods to provide unique possibilities for knowledge construction. However, at the point of writing, bricolage continues to be relatively misunderstood in research communities, perhaps due to its complex nature. Five types of bricoleurs are identified as the interpretive bricoleur, the methodological bricoleur, the theoretical bricoleur, the political bricoleur and the narrative bricoleur (Rogers, 2012). Methods and procedures associated with bricolage are discussed within this chapter. Symbiotic hermeneutics and critical hermeneutics are approaches that bricoleurs may utilize in seeking silenced knowledge frequently found in dominant research narratives. Bricolage remains a pragmatic and eclectic approach to qualitative research. Willis (2007) notes that, in bricolage, both Plato’s and Aristotle’s ways of knowing are validated. While bricolage refers to a deliberate mixing of qualitative methods and ways of thinking about research design in order to address a specific issue or problem, mixed

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methods research combines quantitative and qualitative research. Mixed methods research, along with processes involved in designing and conducting this form of inquiry are introduced and described. There are a number of broad classifications comprising this multi-methodology, as described by Johnson et al. (2007). While many of the methodologies discussed in this volume delimit the more global aspect of knowledge generation through the application of parameters that preserve the research design, some of the more “postmodern” research methodologies, such as mixed methods research, strive to overcome the limitations of a single design. Bringing qualitative and quantitative paradigms, to bear on a specific phenomenon allows the research to not only explain the phenomenon quantitatively but also to interpret and/or describe it qualitatively. Thus, mixed methods research can complement the strengths and overcome the weaknesses inherent in using a single methodology. Characteristics of mixed methods inquiry were described and explained in this chapter. Mixed methods research offers a certain flexibility, as data collection can involve any technique available to researchers, and offers a fluidity regarding sample size and issues of generalizability. Strengths and weaknesses of mixed methods research, design strategies, as well as procedures and processes related to this methodology were described and discussed. Fundamental, generic or basic qualitative research, as an emerging methodology, tends to honour the paradigm of qualitative research through its descriptive nature (Sandelowski, 2000). This methodology, like most qualitative methodologies, features an inductive type of data analysis that builds from particular to general themes, focuses on individual meaning and the importance of describing the complexity of a particular situation (Creswell, 2014). This methodology represents a nascent trend to not identify a specific methodology, but to rely on the entire paradigm of qualitative research as a blank canvas for exploration. Basic qualitative descriptive studies have a relatively “low-inference” of interpretation (Sandelowski, 2000, p. 335) and tend to represents the data in conversational language. Although no clear or comprehensive definition of a fundamental qualitative research methodology currently exists, it represents one of the more frequently employed methodologies in the social sciences and humanities. A basic qualitative research methodology may effectively illuminate intricacies in the functionality of society and human interaction without being constrained by procedural and methodological considerations. It involves the utilization of an eclectic approach to match the research methods that best suit the research questions. Basic research methodologies are spawning numerous new appellations such as “biographical,” “philosophical” or “critical social research,” “ethical inquiry,” “governmental,” “activist,” “foundational” and “historical research,” to mention but a few permutations of a fundamental research methodology. Coding, category creation and abstraction processes continue to be a typical option in terms of research methods. Data presentation, validity and reliability strategies continue to be used to verify the study. As with many qualitative methodologies and approaches to research, rhizomatic research stands as a reaction to more positivistic forms of research, particularly since current research projects are increasingly conceived as multidisciplinary, interdisciplinary, transdisciplinary and extradisciplinary. Traditional boundaries

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between disciplines seem to be weakening. Thus, rhizomatic thought represents an answer to traditional Western rationality. Rhizomatic thought is characterized by heterarchy, multiplicity, continuity, and flux. Rhzomatic research, also identified as “post-qualitative” research—knowledge is constructed rather than discovered—is a divergent type of research, describing both research and theory that allows for multiple, non-hierarchical entry and exit points in data representation and interpretation, as opposed to more hierarchical and binary concepts of knowledge. In essence, there is no specific origin or genesis because the rhizome is always in the middle, with no beginning nor end, resisting chronology or organization, but preferring a more spontaneous system of growth and regeneration. Several principles relating to rhizomatic considerations are connection and heterogeneity, multiplicity, assignfying ruptures, cartography and decalcomania. The Five Contexts is equally useful for students, researchers and teachers alike, as it is geared towards grasping this complex and dynamic issues and it is an exceptionally versatile construct. The Five Contexts has been used as a means of organizing and deconstructing the messy and complex nature of qualitative research. It may be used as a formal methodology to conduct research throughout the humanities and the social sciences. The first context is the (auto)biographical context that allows for the situating of oneself with respect to the research at hand. Stories and experiences shape the research far more than one may first imagine, as there is no perfect objectivity. The second context is the historical context, which is interwoven with the third context, the political context, where issues of power, control, regulation and other dynamics mesh with paradigm choice. For the researcher, the historical context offers an important perspective on the past which, in turn, can inform future decisions, considerations, and methodologies (Blumenreich, 2004). Historical events also offer an opportunity to provide an understanding of power operates in all its guises. The fourth context, the postmodern context, is perhaps the most fluid of the contexts. The postmodern era helps one to realize that it is now more difficult to compartmentalize research into neat, mutually exclusive domains. The fifth and final context, the philosophical context, is at the same time the most stable, but is also a compilation of understandings that have been developed as a result of the preceding four contexts. These five contexts contribute to ways of thinking about research methods and their more overarching paradigms. In general, the five contexts lay bare relationships, specific issues of subjectivity, and interrogate the significance of the individual autobiographical within current historical, political, postmodern, and philosophical perspectives. Indigenous perspectives and decolonization initiatives have helped to forward postcolonial Indigenous research. Postcolonial research represents a new paradigm in research even though it predates many established research methodologies represented by Eurocentric research. Indigenous research strives to (re)construct a body of knowledge that carries hope and promotes transformation and social change. Multiple realities are shaped by the many connections that humans have with the environment and all that it entails. Indigenous knowledge is embodied in languages, proverbs, folk tales, stories, and cultural experiences that are generally unobtainable from conventional Eurocentric methods and methodologies. As a result, the

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Indigenous Research Paradigm is relational, based on relationships and relational experiences emanating from the experiences and culture of the people. Indigenous research ethics are based on respect, reciprocity and responsibility that honour the perspectives of research participants. Every attempt is made to reproduce the voices of the research participants authentically and in a way that the participants can recognize and know themselves. Suggestions for Further Reading Should the reader wish to read further regarding emerging qualitative research methodologies, please refer to the following: Andres, L. (2012). Designing and doing survey research. Sage. Brewer, J., & Hunter, A. (2006). Foundations of multimethod research: Synthesizing styles. Sage. Creswell, J. W. (2003). Research design: Qualitative, quantitative, and mixed methods approaches (2nd ed.). Sage. Johnson, R. B., & Christensen, L. B. (2014). Educational research: Quantitative, qualitative, and mixed approaches (5th ed.). Sage. Tashakkori, A., & Teddlie, C. (1998). Mixed methodology: Combining qualitative and quantitative approaches. Sage. Selected Annotated Bibliography Bauman, Z. (1997). Postmodernity and its discontents. Polity Press. Modern civilization depends upon the constraint of impulse, the limiting of self-­ expression and, today, in the time of modernity, Bauman argues, the regulation of desire turns from an irritating necessity into an assault against individual freedom. In the postmodern era, the liberty of the individual is the overriding value, representing the criterion in terms of which social rules and regulations are assessed. The result, however, is a sacrificing of security. The most prominent anxieties in our society today, Bauman shows, derive from the removal of security. Thus, the world is experienced as overwhelmingly uncertain, uncontrollable and frightening. Totalitarian politics frightens by its awesome power, while the new social disorder frightens by its lack of consistency and direction. The very pursuit of individual happiness corrupts and undermines those systems of authority needed for a stable life. This book builds upon Bauman’s earlier contributions to social theory, consolidating a reputation as interpreter of postmodernity. Brewer, J., & Hunter, A. (2006). Foundations of multimethod research: Synthesizing styles. Sage. This volume draws upon Brewer and Hunter’s original work, which was published in 1989, at a time when a single stand-alone methodology represented the gold standard of qualitative research. This text explains how a synthesis of various research techniques —such as fieldwork, surveys, experiments, and nonreactive studies—can be used with intent to improve knowledge within social science investigations. This volume explores many of the aspects related to multi-method research inquiries and includes the formulation of research problems, along with data

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collection, sampling and generalization of results. In addition, attention is paid to measurement, reliability and validity, as well as hypothesis testing and causal analysis. This book ends with a section on writing and the publication of results. This is a volume that will be of great value to graduate students, practicing researchers and anyone who wishes to remain abreast of newer developments in multi-method research. Crabtree, B. F., & Miller, W. L. (1999). Doing qualitative research. Sage. This volume has been popular for its clear delineation of qualitative research issues and the way it prepares readers, particularly in health settings, for performing qualitative research. Doing Qualitative Research reveals new ways of knowing, how to ask questions at multiple system levels, the incursive interaction between these levels, and ways to expand existing research approaches. Organized to follow the structure of the qualitative research process, the book begins with an overview of how to decide what methods to use based on aims, objectives, questions, and paradigms of knowing. Sampling issues and options are highlighted, followed by comprehensive coverage of such topics as participant observation, key information interviewing and focus group discussions. Also included are chapters on the process of interpretation, detailed descriptions of actual analyses using different analysis organizing styles, and the use of computer software for qualitative data management. Creswell, J. W., & Plano Clark, V. (2017). Designing and conducting mixed methods research (3rd ed.). Sage. This book combines some of the latest thinking in the field of mixed methods research, replete with practical, step-by-step guidance. The third edition now includes seven mixed methods designs and contains accompanying journal articles that illustrate each design. The authors walk readers through the entire research process and present updated examples from published mixed methods studies that have been drawn from multiple disciplines. In addition, this new edition includes information about the dynamic and evolving nature of the field of mixed methods research, four additional methodological approaches, and coverage of new directions in mixed methods. For anyone interested in conducting mixed methods research, this volume represents and excellent guide, resource and text. Indeed, it may represent the “go-to text” for mixed methods research that has captured many of the recent changes within mixed methods research. Eisner, E. W., & Peshkin, A. (Eds.). (1990). Qualitative inquiry in education: The continuing debate. Teachers College Press. This book address many important and sensitive issues in qualitative inquiry. For each issue, two papers are presented and are followed by a commentary and response from one of the paper presenters. Thus, this volume provides a picture of the current debate as it unfolds among some of the nation’s leading educational scholars. An introduction by editors Eisner and Peshkin traces the development of the contemporary interest in qualitative inquiry from a period when such work was considered problematic. Now the commitment to qualitative research by a host of distinguished

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scholars testifies to its firm presence in research and in academic life, in general. As the editors emphasize, this book’s exploration of issues in qualitative inquiry is intended to extend the dialogue on matters of consequence to those who are committed not only to qualitative research but also to research of quality. This volume is comprised of six sections and includes comments on the continuing debate between quantitative and qualitative researchers. Hebdige, D. (1979). Subculture: The meaning of style. Routledge. This is a book for all people. It is complex and remarkably lucid, representing the first book to discuss and describe the “punk” generation, offering intellectual content. This volume concerns itself with the UK’s postwar, music-centred, white working-class subcultures, and includes the “teddy boys” and “mods” to the “rockers,” “skinheads” and “punks.” With enviable precision and wit, Hebdige has addressed a complex topic that investigates and interprets the meanings behind the fashionable exteriors of working-class youth subcultures. He approaches them with a sophisticated theoretical apparatus that combines semiotics, the sociology of deviance and Marxism in order to create a stimulating attempt to chronicle the various youth-protest movements of Britain in the last 15 years. This book is recommended whole-heartedly to anyone who would like fresh ideas about some of the most stimulating music of the rock era. It is definitely a book that belongs on anyone’s bookshelf. Kincheloe, J. L. (2005). Critical constructivism primer. P. Lang. The Critical Constructivism Primer introduces students in the field of education to the study of knowledge. Educators often negotiate minefields of educational contradictions in the contemporary pedagogical landscape. This volume describes and discusses how the study of knowledge has been inscribed by particular values and (re)produced in problematic ways. It addresses dimensions of power, such as whose interests it serves and how it shapes the identities of those who consume it. Critical constructivism is an epistemological position that examines the process by which knowledge is socially constructed. The author guides readers through the basic concepts and alerts them to the dangers of objectivism, reductionism, and the pathological views of self and world that emerge when students and educators are unaware of the construction of knowledge maintained by dominant power interests. The book is essential reading for individuals who want to become researchers and educators. Levin, T. H. (2017). Studying teacher collaboration: Preparing for and conducting interviews on sensitive topics with reluctant interviewees. Sage. Interviews have the potential to uncover other peoples lived experience, beliefs, and worldview with more depth than other qualitative research methods. Despite this potential, interviews also pose challenges for interviewers when they address sensitive topics or interview reluctant subjects. Beyond the challenge of asking insiders questions that invite self-critique and critique of peers, the author has also worked with teachers at each research site who proved initially reluctant to participate. He describes strategies that build rapport and trust, including positioning the

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researcher as an “ingénue,” having much to learn from interviewees. Often opening with grand tour questions to establish the right conversational dynamic, the author describes the preparation and development of a semi-structured interview protocol with carefully worded questions, with the most potentially sensitive questions at the end of the interview, in such a way as to “give back” without making the research less trustworthy. Patton, M. Q. (2002). Qualitative research and evaluation methods (3rd ed.). Sage. Drawing on more than 40 years of experience conducting applied social science research and program evaluation, the author of this volume has crafted the most comprehensive and systematic book on qualitative research and evaluation methods, inquiry frameworks, and analysis options available today. This book has been a resource and training tool for countless applied researchers, evaluators and graduate students. It has been completely revised with hundreds of new examples and stories that illuminate essential all aspects of qualitative inquiry. The author has created the most comprehensive, systematic and up-to-date review of qualitative methods available, while retaining and expanding upon the exhibits that highlight and summarize many of the major issues. This volume offers guidelines, summative sections, tables and figures, as well as sage advice. This revision will help readers integrate and make sense of the great volume of qualitative works published in the past decade. Silverman, D. (Ed.). (1997). Qualitative research: Theory, method and practice. Sage. Edited by David Silverman, this book brings together a team of internationally renowned researchers to discuss the theory and practice of qualitative research. In each chapter, the contributors broaden our conception of qualitative research by drawing upon particular examples of data-analysis to advance their analytical arguments. This volume succeeds in providing a comprehensive yet accessible guide to a variety of methodological approaches to qualitative research. This book is intended to be a comprehensive but accessible guide to a variety of methodological approaches to qualitative research. Although this volume represents the first edition on this particular subject, subsequent editions offer up-to-date developments in qualitative research and present an overview of theoretical and practical considerations. This is a book unlike many other qualitative research methodology books and is suitable for researchers and graduate students alike. Turkle, S. (1997). Life on the screen: Identity in the age of the Internet. Touchstone. The author of this intriguing volume argues that computers have created dramatic psychological changes in users and in methods of learning and thinking. While Life on the Screen is not a book about computers, it is about people and how computers are causing us to re-evaluate our identities in the age of the Internet. We are using life on the screen to engage in new ways of thinking about evolution, relationships, politics, sex and the self. Life on the Screen traces a set of boundary negotiations, telling the story of the changing impact of the computer on our

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psychological lives and our evolving ideas about minds, bodies and machines. What is emerging, Turkle says, is a new sense of identity as decentered and multiple. She describes trends in computer design, in artificial intelligence and in people’s experiences of virtual environments that confirm a dramatic shift in our notions of self, other, machine and world. The computer emerges as an object that brings postmodernism down to earth. Wood, M. J., & Ross-Kerr, J. C. (2011). Basic steps in planning nursing research: From question to proposal (7th ed.). Jones & Bartlett. This book represents an almost perfect introduction to the research process, particularly as it application to nursing practice. The volume demonstrates not only how to effectively develop a useful and useable research plan but also guides the reading audience through all of the stages within the research process, from initiating and developing a suitable research topic to the final written proposal. This book teaches readers how to prepare an appropriate research topic, as well as how to develop a solid general research question. In addition, the authors take the audience through the steps necessary to formulate a strong and convincing conclusion. With a strong focus on the planning process, this text represents an excellent resource for both beginners and novices in developing a research plan, not to mention that it is also of value for practicing researchers. There is an evident focus on evidence-based practice and research ethics throughout this volume. Questions for Further Study • How would you define mixed methods research and how would you evaluate this methodology? • Consider the value of bricolage for different audiences, such as policy makers, graduate advisors, individuals in jobs or the workplace, and graduate students. Discuss the value for each audience. • How will Indigenous, postcolonial or decolonization methodologies impact or influence the Eurocentric methodologies? • Select an emerging methodology for your field of study. Using the definitions in this chapter, discuss how you would design a research study. • Discuss the importance of each of the emerging methodologies described in this chapter and how each contributes to qualitative research today.

Final Thoughts Perhaps it is true that, of all the predictions that one may make about the future of qualitative research, none may be more true than the notion that the field of qualitative research will never become less complex and messy than it is at the present moment. Very likely, as time passes, there will be more methodologies that deal with particular types of problems, issues and research questions that will become sanctioned and approved by researchers, in general. In short, qualitative research is still coming of age. We are not finished, yet.

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As has been noted previously in this volume, a strong set of research questions, combined with a robust conceptual or theoretical framework and a solid survey protocol will maximize opportunities for success. Confusing though it may seem, many of the methodologies that have been explored between the pages of this volume may also be considered methods when they are used in conjunction with an explicit and explicated methodology. For example, within any qualitative research methodology, the methodology itself acts as an overarching umbrella or a lens through with to view the potential research initiative. Whatever overarching methodology is chosen, within the qualitative paradigm, many of the previously discussed methodologies can be pressed into service as methods that support the methodology of choice. This is especially true of fundamental qualitative research. Narrative, while it is a methodology in its own right can be used as a means to support and extend or expand the existing methodology. Likewise, hermeneutic interpretation, phenomenology description or ethnographic understandings can add dimensions to the research endeavour that benefit the eventual structuring of the final inquiry. Also, included in the array of available methods, quite aside from interviews and surveys, the researcher may identify cases within the research, or may reflect on the usefulness of grounded theory to build the research even prior to an understanding or anticipation of the results. In addition, arts-based methods allow data to be represented in non-visual ways, even though arts-based considerations may see the research as a method rather than through an arts-based methodology. Likewise, action research may be used as a method, especially in terms of a process or an overarching principle that flattens the hierarchy between the researcher and the participants in the research project itself. However researchers position themselves with respect to their qualitative research projects, the key to any and all projects is the variety of choice, intimidating though that may be. Qualitative research in any of its incarnations will always be complex and messy. It will never become less complex and will always remain a work in progress, as new methodologies arrive and older methodologies become less attractive to more modern researchers. Perhaps qualitative research in general reminds one of Charles Dickens’s (2008) Bleak House, a daring experiment in the narration of a complex plot that challenges the reader to make connections between the fashionable and the outcast, the beautiful and the ugly, the powerful and those who are victimized. The unraveling of the mysterious court case of Jarndyce versus Jarndyce is so complex and intertwined that anyone who truly understands its intricacies is driven mad. While this is hyperbolic and intended as a humourous parallel to qualitative research methodologies, like Bleak House, qualitative research defies a single description. Like the novel to which it is compared, qualitative research can be, at once, mystifying and somewhat intimidating. Perhaps this is, in part, due to its very subjectivity, which lends itself to interpretation and the development of new and parallel developments while, not quite methodologies in their own right, serve as mileposts for newer methodologies that are set to appear on the event horizon. Perhaps another consideration, and this may be an important observation, is the somewhat cavalier approach to vocabulary evinced in qualitative methodologies. Variously, paradigms such as the natural sciences versus the social sciences have

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been styled as approaches, while approaches, such as descriptive, interpretive or critical approaches have routinely been described as methodologies or even methods, even though these remain as lenses through which to view aspects of the qualitative research process. There is even conflation of the terms methods and methodologies and, to make matters even more confusing, some methodologies, if not all, may be used as methods. It is this very “fast and loose” approach to qualitative terminology that confuses and confounds many beginning researchers. However that may be, the very things that can be condemned with regard to qualitative research methodologies are also the very things that make it fascinating to study. Vocabulary is still being developed for these methodologies and, confusingly enough, qualitative researchers are still utilizing vocabulary that has traditionally been considered to be quantitative in nature. This likely occurs because of the relative newness of this paradigm in the modern sense. However, things are beginning to change. Cross-overs are beginning to occur on a regular basis. In qualitative research, the research question has replaced the hypothesis and control groups are relegated to more quantitative studies. Surveys are qualitative while questionnaires continue to belong to quantitative research. More recently, crystallization has supplanted triangulation as a preferred method by which validity can be achieved, rather than measured and, while member checks, the returning of transcripts for validation by the interviewee, may continue, the necessity for and reliability of such processes or methods is becoming more commonly called into question. Even the writing process is developing its own sort of consistency. Active voice and subjective viewpoints are replacing the more clinical approach to writing. The situation of the self and the reasons for the study itself are becoming more fluid and flexible. All of this is good news to the qualitative researcher, as qualitative research begins to develop its own vocabulary, methodologies and methods. Of concern, however, is the notion of paradigmatic drift. As the two continents of qualitative and quantitative research respond to different oceanic currents and the winds of change, there may be a danger that quantitative researchers and qualitative researchers may no longer speak the same language or, at least, may use the same language but the two distinct vocabularies may become so very different that understanding between the two paradigms may cease to exist. In actuality, this has been an unfounded worry. With the development of mixed methods research and other means of combining disparate methodologies, what is beginning to occur is the opposite. Instead of qualitative and quantitative researchers developing two distinct and separate languages, both quantitative and qualitative researchers are beginning to value one another’s languages. While it remains more common to see primarily qualitative research studies making use of quantitative methods, quantitative researchers are showing signs of becoming more aware of the value of qualitative capabilities in their research. As these two paradigms of research blend, they may never completely merge. However, there is the hope that each will benefit the other and, in so doing, the research that is being performed today will be more robust and will address the various phenomena under study from a multiplicity of perspectives. This is the spirit of

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inclusiveness and represents hope and foresight for future research in all its magnificent and varied forms.

 escribing the Bricolage: Conceptualizing a New Rigor D in Qualitative Research Joe L. Kincheloe City University of New York Graduate Center/Brooklyn College Kincheloe, J.  L. (2001). Conceptualizing a New Rigor in Qualitative Research. Qualitative Inquiry, 7(6), 679-692. Abstract Picking up on Norman Denzin’s and Yvonna Lincoln’s articulation of the concept of bricolage, the essay describes a critical notion of this research orientation. As an interdisciplinary approach, bricolage avoids both the superficiality of methodological breadth and the parochialism of unidisciplinary approaches. The notion of the bricolage advocated here recognizes the dialectical nature of the disciplinary and interdisciplinary relationship and promotes a synergistic interaction between the two concepts. In this context, the bricolage is concerned not only with divergent methods of inquiry but with diverse theoretical and philosophical understandings of the various elements encountered in the act of research. The insights garnered here move researchers to a better conceptual grasp of the complexity of the research act—a cognizance often missed in mainstream versions of qualitative research. In particular, critical bricoleurs employ historiographical, philosophical, and social theoretical lenses to gain a more complex understanding of the intricacies of research design. As a preface to this essay, I want to express what an honor it is for me to deliver the Egon Guba Lecture. I consider Egon one of the most important figures in research in the 20th and 21st centuries and consider his career the best model I know for a life of rigorous, innovative scholarship in education. Every idea expressed in this essay is tied to concepts Egon developed over the past few decades. If they are insufficiently developed, it is an expression of my limitations, not his. In this spirit, I dedicate this lecture to Egon Guba and his innovative scholarship and pedagogy. My desire to write this essay and ultimately a more comprehensive work on bricolage comes from two sources. The first involves my fascination with Denzin and Lincoln’s (2000) use of the term in their work on research methods over the past decade. From my perspective, no concept better captures the possibility of the future of qualitative research. When I first encountered the term in their work, I knew that I would have to devote much effort to specifying the notion and pushing it to the next conceptual level. Secondly, coupled with this recognition of the power of bricolage was the experience several of my doctoral students brought back from their job interviews. Prepped and ready to answer in detail questions about their methods

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and research agendas, my students spoke of their theoretical embrace and methodological employment of the bricolage. Much too often for our comfort, search committee members responded quite negatively: “bricolage, oh I know what that is; that’s when you really don’t know anything about research but have a lot to say about it.” Much to our dismay, the use of the concept persuaded such committee members not to employ the students. I had no choice, I had to respond. Yvonna Lincoln and Norm Denzin (2000) used the term in the spirit of Claude Levi-Strauss (1966) and his lengthy discussion of it in The Savage Mind. The French word, bricoleur, describes a handyman or handywoman who makes use of the tools available to complete a task. Some connotations of the term involve trickery and cunning and remind me of the chicanery of Hermes, in particular his ambiguity concerning the messages of the gods. If hermeneutics came to connote the ambiguity and slipperiness of textual meaning, then bricolage can also imply the fictive and imaginative elements of the presentation of all formal research. Indeed, as cultural studies of science have indicated, all scientific inquiry is jerryrigged to a degree; science, as we all know by now, is not nearly as clean, simple, and procedural as scientists would have us believe. Maybe this is an admission many in our field would wish to keep in the closet. Maybe at a tacit level this is what many search com- mittee members were reacting to when my doctoral students discussed it so openly, enthusiastically, and unabashedly.

Bricolage in the Cosmos of Disciplinarity and Interdisciplinarity My umbrage at the denigration of bricolage by my students’ interlocutors should in no way be taken as disrespect for those who question the value of the concept. For those of us committed to theorizing and implementing such an approach to research, there are some profound questions that need to be answered as we plot our course. As we think in terms of using multiple methods and perspectives in our research and attempt to synthesize contemporary developments in social theory, epistemology, and interpretation, we must consider the critiques of many diverse scholars. At the core of the deployment of bricolage in the discourse of research rests the question of disciplinarity/interdisciplinarity. Bricolage, of course, signifies interdisciplinarity—a concept that serves as a magnet for controversy in the contemporary academy. Researching this article, I listened to several colleagues maintain that if one is focused on getting tenure he or she should eschew interdisciplinarity; if one is interested in only doing good research, she or he should embrace it. Implicit in the critique of interdisciplinarity and thus of bricolage as its manifestation in research is the assumption that interdisciplinarity is by nature superficial. Superficiality results when scholars, researchers, and students fail to devote sufficient time to understanding the disciplinary fields and knowledge bases from which particular modes of research emanate. Many maintain that such an effort leads not only to superficiality but madness. Attempting to know so much, the bricoleur not only knows nothing well but also goes crazy in the misguided process (Friedman,

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1998; McLeod, 2000; Palmer, 1996). My assertion in this article respects these questions and concerns but argues that given the social, cultural, epistemological, and paradigmatic upheavals and alterations of the past few decades, rigorous researchers may no longer enjoy the luxury of choosing whether to embrace the bricolage (Friedman, 1998; McLeod, 2000).

The Great Implosion: Dealing with the Debris of Disciplinarity Once understanding of the limits of objective science and its universal knowledge escaped from the genie’s bottle, there was no going back. Despite the best efforts to recover “what was lost” in the implosion of social science, too many researchers understand its socially constructed nature, its value- laden products that operate under the flag of objectivity, its avoidance of contextual specificities that subvert the stability of its structures, and its fragmenting impulse that moves it to fold its methodologies and the knowledge they produce neatly into disciplinary drawers. My argument here is that we must operate in the ruins of the temple, in a postapocalyptic social, cultural, psychological, and educational science where certainty and stability have long departed for parts unknown. In the best sense of Levi-Straus’s (1966) concept, the research bricoleurs pick up the pieces of what’s left and paste them together as best they can. The critics are probably correct, such a daunting task cannot be accomplished in the time span of a doctoral program; but the process can be named and the dimensions of a lifetime scholarly pursuit can be in part delineated. Our transcendence of the old regime’s reductionism and our understanding of the complexity of the research task demand the lifetime effort. It is this lifetime commitment to study, clarify, sophisticate, and add to the bricolage that this article advocates. As bricoleurs recognize the limitations of a single method, the discursive strictures of one disciplinary approach, what is missed by traditional practices of validation, the historicity of certified modes of knowledge production, the inseparability of knower and known, and the complexity and hetero- geneity of all human experience, they understand the necessity of new forms of rigor in the research process. To account for their cognizance of such complexity bricoleurs seek a rigor that alerts them to new ontological insights. In this ontological context, they can no longer accept the status of an object of inquiry as a thing-in-itself. Any social, cultural, psychological, or pedagogical object of inquiry is inseparable from its context, the language used to describe it, its historical situatedness in a larger ongoing process, and the socially and culturally constructed interpretations of its meaning(s) as an entity in the world (Morawski, 1997).

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Rigor in the Ruins Thus, bricolage is concerned not only with multiple methods of inquiry but with diverse theoretical and philosophical notions of the various elements encountered in the research act. Bricoleurs understand that the ways these dynamics are addressed— whether overtly or tacitly—exerts profound influence on the nature of the knowledge produced by researchers. Thus, these aspects of research possess important lived world political consequences, as they shape the ways we come to view the social cosmos and operate within it (Blommaert, 1997). In this context, Douglas Kellner’s (1995) notion of a “multiperspectival cultural studies” is helpful, as it draws on numerous textual and critical strategies to “interpret, criticize, and deconstruct” the cultural artifacts under observation. Employing Nietzsche’s notion of perspectivism to ground his version of a multimethodological research strategy, Kellner (1995) maintains that any single research perspective is laden with assumptions, blindnesses, and limitations. To avoid one-­ sided reductionism, he contends that researchers must learn a variety of ways of seeing and interpreting in the pursuit of knowledge. The more perspectival variety a researcher employs, Kellner concludes, the more dimensions and consequences of a text will be illuminated. Kellner’s multiperspectivism resonates with Denzin and Lincoln’s (2000) bricolage and its concept of “blurred genres.” To better “interpret, criticize, and deconstruct,” Denzin and Lincoln call for bricoleurs to employ “hermeneutics, structuralism, semiotics, phenomenology, cultural studies, and feminism” (p. 3). Embedded in Kellner’s (1995) and Denzin and Lincoln’s (2000) calls is the proto-articulation of a new rigor—certainly in research but with implications for scholarship and pedagogy in general. This rigor in the ruins of traditional disciplinarity connects a particular concept—in contemporary education, for example, the call for educational standards— to the epistemological, ontological, cultural, social, political, economic, psychological, and pedagogical domains for the purpose of multiperspectival analysis. In the second edition of their Handbook of Qualitative Research, Denzin and Lincoln (2000) maintain that this process has already taken place to some extent; they referred to it as a two-way methodological Diaspora where humanists migrated to the social sciences and social scientists to the humanities. Ethnographic methodologists snuggled up with textual analysts; in this context the miscegenation of the empirical and the interpretive produced the bricoleur love child. Thus, in the late 20th and early 21st centuries, disciplinary demarcations no longer shape in the manner they once did in the way scholars look at the world. Indeed, disciplinary boundaries have less and less to do with the way scholars group themselves and build intellectual communities. Furthermore, what we refer to as the traditional disciplines in the first decade of the 21st century are anything but fixed, uniform, and monolithic structures. It is not uncommon for contemporary scholars in a particular discipline to report that they find more commonalities with individuals in different fields of study than they do with colleagues in their own disciplines. We occupy a scholarly world with faded disciplinary boundary lines. Thus, the point

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need not be made that bricolage should take place—it already has and is continuing. The research work needed in this context involves opening an elastic conversa- tion about the ways such a bricolage can be rigorously developed. Such cultivation should not take place in pursuit of some form of proceduralization but an effort to better understand the beast and to realize its profound possibilities (Friedman, 1998; Palmer, 1996; Young & Yarbrough, 1993).

Bricolage and the Dialectical View of Disciplinarity Questions of disciplinarity permeate efforts to theorize the research bricolage. Exploring such inquiries, one notes a consistent division between disciplinarians and interdisciplinarians: Disciplinarians maintain that interdisciplinary approaches to analysis and research result in superficiality; interdisciplinary proponents argue that disciplinarity produces naïve overspecialization. The vision of the bricolage promoted here recognizes the dialectical nature of this disciplinary and interdisciplinary relationship and calls for a synergistic interaction between the two concepts. Before one can engage successfully in the bricolage, it is important to develop a rigorous understanding of the ways traditional disciplines have operated. I maintain the best way to do this is to study the workings of a particular discipline. In the context of becoming a bricoleur, such a study would not take place in the traditional manner where scholars learned to accept the conventions of a particular discipline as a natural way of producing knowledge and viewing a particular aspect of the world. Instead, such a disciplinary study would be conducted more like a Foucauldian genealogy where scholars would study the social construction of the discipline’s knowledge bases, epistemologies, and knowledge production methodologies. As scholars analyzed the historical origins of the field, they would trace the emergence of various schools of thought, conflicts within the discipline, and the nature and effects of paradigmatic changes. In this genealogical context they would explore the discipline as a discursive system of regulatory power with its propensity to impound knowledge within arbitrary and exclusive boundaries. In this context, scholars would come to understand the ideological dimensions of the discipline and the ways knowledge is produced for the purposes of supporting various power blocs. It is not contradictory, I assert, to argue in a dialectical spirit that at the same time this genealogical analysis is taking place, the bricoleur would also be studying positive features of the discipline. Even though the discipline operates in a power-­ saturated and regulatory manner, disciplinarians have often developed important models for engaging in a methodical, persistent, and well-coordinated process of knowledge production. Obviously, there are examples not only of genius within these domains but of great triumphs of scholarly breakthroughs leading to improvements in the human condition. The diverse understanding of these types of disciplinary practices empowers the bricoleur to ask compelling questions of other disciplines he or she will encounter. Such smart questions will facilitate the

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researcher’s capacity to make use of positive contributions of disciplines while avoiding disciplinary parochialism and domination. As bricoleurs pursue this dialectic of disciplinarity, gaining a deep knowledge of the literature and conversations within a field, they would concurrently examine both the etymology and the critique of what many refer to as the disciplines’ arbitrary demarcations for arranging knowledge and structuring research. In a critical context, the bricoleur would develop a power literacy to facilitate his or her understanding of the nature and effects of the web of power relations underlying a discipline’s official research methodologies. Here bricoleurs would trace the ways these power dynamics shaped the knowledge produced within the disciplinary research tradition. Learning multiple lessons from their in-depth study of the discipline in particular and disciplinarity in general, the bricoleur becomes an expert on the relationships connecting cultural context, meaning making, power, and oppression within disciplinary boundaries. Their rigorous understanding of these dynamics possibly makes them more aware of the influence of such factors on the everyday practices of the discipline than those who have traditionally operated as scholars within the discipline (Freidman, 1998; Lutz, Jones, & Kendall, 1997; Morawski, 1997).

Questioning the Social Construction of Interdisciplinarity Thus, bricoleurs operating within this dialectic of disciplinarity gain an in- depth understanding of the “process of disciplinarity,” adeptly avoiding any superficiality that might result from their interdisciplinary pursuits. At the same time, such researchers possess the insight to avoid complicity in colonized knowledge production designed to regulate and discipline. Such subtle expertise illustrates an appreciation of the complexity of knowledge work to which bricolage aspires. Understanding disciplinary processes and models of expertise while recognizing the elitist dimensions of dominant cultural knowledge technologies involves a nuanced discernment of the double-edged sword of disciplinarity. Concurrently, bricoleurs subject interdisciplinary to the same rigorous perusal. Accordingly, bricoleurs understand that interdisciplinarity is as much a social construction as disciplinarity. Just because bricolage is about interdisciplinarity, bricoleurs must not release the notion from the same form of power analysis used to explore disciplinarity. In addition, bricoleurs must clarify what is meant by interdisciplinarity. A fuzzy concept at best, interdisciplinarity generally refers to a process where disciplinary boundaries are crossed and the analytical frames of more than one discipline are employed by the researcher. Surveying the use of the term, it quickly becomes apparent that little attention has been paid to what exactly interdisciplinarity implies for researchers. Some uses of the concept assume the deployment of numerous disciplinary methodologies in a study where disciplinary distinctions are maintained; other uses imply an integrated melding of disciplinary perspectives into a new

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methodological synthesis. Advocates of bricolage must consider the diverse approaches that take place in the name of interdisciplinarity and their implications for constructing the bricolage. In light of the disciplinary implosion that has taken place over the past few decades and the “no going back” stance previously delineated, I feel no compulsion to preserve the disciplines in some pure, uncorrupted state of nature. Although there is much to learn from their histories, the stages of disciplinary emergence, growth and development, alteration, and devolution and decline, the complex view of bricolage I am presenting embraces a deep form of interdisciplinarity. A deep interdisciplinarity seeks to modify the disciplines and the view of research brought to the negotiating table constructed by the bricolage. Everyone leaves the table informed by the dialogue in a way that idiosyncratically influences the research methods they subsequently employ. The point of the interaction is not standardized agreement as to some reductionistic notion of “the proper interdisciplinary research method” but awareness of the diverse tools in the researcher’s toolbox. The form such deep interdisciplinarity may take is shaped by the object of inquiry in question. Thus, in the bricolage, the context in which research takes place always affects the nature of the deep interdisciplinarity employed. In the spirit of the dialectic of disciplinarity, the ways these context-driven articulations of interdisciplinarity are constructed must be examined in light of the power literacy previously mentioned (Freidman, 1998; Blommaert, 1997; Pryse, 1998; Young & Yarbrough, 1993).

 ricolage as Deep Interdisciplinarity: The Synergy B of Multiple Perspectives With these disciplinary concerns in the front of our mind, I will now focus attention on the intellectual power of the bricolage. It does not seem a conceptual stretch to argue that there is a synergy that emerges in the use of different methodological and interpretive perspectives in the analysis of an artifact. Historians, for example, who are conversant with the insights of hermeneutics, will produce richer interpretations of the historical processes they encounter in their research. In the deep interdisciplinarity of the bricolage the historian takes concepts from hermeneutics and combines them with historiographical methods. What is produced is something new, a new form of hermeneutical historiography or historical hermeneutics. Whatever its name, the methodology could not have been predicted by examining historiography and hermeneutics separately, outside of the context of the historical processes under examination (Varenne, 1996). The possibilities offered by such interdisciplinary synergies are limitless. An ethnographer who is conversant with social theory and its recent history is better equipped to transcend certain forms of formulaic ethnography that are reduced by the so-called “observational constraint” on the methodology. Using the x-ray

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vision of contemporary social-theoretically informed strategies of discourse analysis, poststructural psychoanalysis, and ideology-critique, the ethnographer gains the ability to see beyond the literalness of the observed. In this maneuver, the ethnographer-­as-bricoleur moves to a deeper level of data analysis as he or she sees “what’s not there” in physical presence, what is not discernible by the ethnographic eye. Synergized by the interaction of ethnography and the social theoretical discourses, the resulting bricolage provides a new angle of analysis, a multidimensional perspective on a cultural phenomenon (Dicks & Mason, 1998; Foster, 1997). Carefully exploring the relationships connecting the object of inquiry to the contexts in which it exists, the researcher constructs the most useful bricolage his or her wide knowledge of research strategies can provide. The strict disciplinarian operating in a reductionistic framework chained to the prearranged procedures of a monological way of seeing is less likely to produce frame-shattering research than the synergized bricoleur. The process at work in the bricolage involves learning from difference. Researchers employing multiple research methods are often not chained to the same assumptions as individuals operating within a particular discipline. As they study the methods of diverse disciplines, they are forced to compare not only methods but also differing epistemologies and social theoretical assumptions. Such diversity frames research orientations as particular socially constructed perspectives—not sacrosanct pathways to the truth. All methods are subject to questioning and analysis, especially in light of so many other strategies designed for similar purposes (Denzin & Lincoln, 2000; Lester, 1997; Thomas, 1998). This defamiliarization process highlights the power of the confrontation with difference to expand the researcher’s interpretive horizons. Bricolage does not simply tolerate difference but cultivates it as a spark to researcher creativity. Here rests a central contribution of the deep interdisciplinarity of the bricolage: As researchers draw together divergent forms of research, they gain the unique insight of multiple perspectives. Thus, a complex understanding of research and knowledge production prepares bricoleurs to address the complexities of the social, cultural, psychological, and educational domains. Sensitive to complexity, bricoleurs use multiple methods to uncover new insights, expand and modify old principles, and reexamine accepted interpretations in unanticipated contexts. Using any methods necessary to gain new perspectives on objects of inquiry, bricoleurs employ the principle of difference not only in research methods but in cross-cultural analysis as well. In this domain, bricoleurs explore the different perspectives of the socially privileged and the marginalized in relation to formations of race, class, gender, and sexuality (McLeod, 2000; Pryse, 1998; Young & Yarbrough, 1993). The deep interdisciplinarity of bricolage is sensitive to multivocality and the consciousness of difference it produces in a variety of contexts. Described by Denzin and Lincoln (2000) as “multi-competent, skilled at using inter- views, observation, personal documents,” the bricoleur explores the use of ethnography, Pinarian currere, historiography, genre studies, psychoanalysis, rhetorical analysis, discourse analysis, content analysis, ad infinitum. The addition of historiography, for example, to the bricoleur’s tool kit profoundly expands his or her interpretive facility. As bricoleurs historically contextualize their ethnographies, discourse

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analysis, and semiotic studies, they tap into the power of etymology. Etymological insight (Kincheloe & Steinberg, 1993; Kincheloe, Steinberg, & Hinchey, 1999) involves an under- standing of the origins of the construction of social, cultural, psychological, political, economic, and educational artifacts and the ways they shape our subjectivities. Indeed, our conception of self, world, and our positionalities as researchers can only become complex and critical when we appreciate the historical aspect of its formation. With this one addition, we dramatically sophisticate the quality and depth of our knowledge work (Zammito, 1996).

 xpanding The Boundaries: The Search For New Forms E Of Knowledge Production Operating as a form of deep interdisciplinarity, bricolage is unembarrassed in its effort to rupture particular ways of functioning in the established disciplines of research. One of the best ways to accomplish this goal is to include what might be termed philosophical research to the bricolage. In the same way that historiography ruptures the stability of particular disciplinary methods, philosophical research provides bricoleurs with the dangerous knowledge of the multivocal results of humans’ desire to understand, to know themselves and the world. Differing philosophical/ cultural conventions have employed diverse epistemological, ontological, and cosmological assumptions as well as different methods of inquiry. Again, depending on the context of the object of inquiry, bricoleurs use their knowledge of these dynamics to shape their research design. It is not difficult to understand the epistemological contention that the types of logic, criteria for validity, and methods of inquiry used in clinical medicine as opposed to teacher effectiveness in teaching critical thinking will differ. In making such an assertion the bricoleur is displaying philosophical/ epistemological/ontological sensitivity to the context of analysis. Such a sensitivity is a key element of the bricolage, as it brings an understanding of social theory together with an appreciation of the demands of particular contexts; this fused concept is subsequently used to examine the repertoire of methods the bricoleur can draw on and to help decide which ones are relevant to the project at hand. Practicing this mode of analysis in a variety of research situations, the bricoleur becomes increasingly adept at employing multiple methods in concrete venues. Such a historiographically and philosophically informed bricolage helps researchers move into a new, more complex domain of knowledge production where they are far more conscious of multiple layers of intersections between the knower and the known, perception and the lived world, and discourse and representation. Employing the benefits of philosophical inquiry, the bricoleur gains a new ability to account for and incorporate these dynamics into his or her research narratives (Bridges, 1997; Fischer, 1998; Madison, 1988; McCarthy, 1997).

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This is what expanding the boundaries of knowledge production specifically references. In the particularities of the philosophical interactions with the empirical in a variety of contexts, bricoleurs devise new forms of rigor, new challenges to other researchers to push the methodological and interpretive envelopes. As bricoleurs study the subjective meanings that human beings make, for example, they use their philosophical modes of inquiry to understand that this phenomenological form of information has no analogue in the methods of particular formalist forms of empirical research. Thus, in an obvious example, a choice of methods is necessitated by particular epistemological and ontological conditions—epistemological and ontological conditions rarely recognized in monological forms of empirical research (Haggerson, 2000; Lee, 1997). I want to be as specific as possible about the nature of these epistemological and ontological conditions. Although we have made progress, much of the research that is devoid of the benefits philosophical inquiry brings to the bricolage still tends to study the world as if ontologically it consists of a series of static images. Entities are often removed from the contexts that shape them, the processes of which they are a part, and the relationships and connections that structure their being-in-the-world. Such ontological orientations impose particular epistemologies, specific ways of producing knowledge about such inert entities. In this ontological context, the task of researchers is reduced, as they simply do not have to worry about contextual insights, etymological processes, and the multiple relationships that constitute the complexity of lived reality. In a reductionistic mode of research, these dynamics are irrelevant and the knowledge produced in such contexts reflects the reductionism. The bricolage struggles to find new ways of seeing and interpreting that avoid this curse and that produce thick, complex, and rigorous forms of knowledge (Karunaratne, 1997). In this thick, complex, and rigorous context, bricoleurs in the social, cultural, psychological, and educational domains operate with a sophisticated understanding of the nature of knowledge. To be well prepared, bricoleurs must realize that knowledge is always in process, developing, culturally specific, and power-inscribed. They are attuned to dynamic relationships connecting individuals, their contexts, and their activities instead of focusing on these separate entities in isolation from one another. In this ontological framework, they concentrate on social activity systems and larger cultural processes and the ways individuals engage or are engaged by them (Blackler, 1995). Bricoleurs follow such engagements, analyzing how the ever-changing dynamics of the systems and the processes alter the lived realities of participants; concurrently, they monitor the ways participants operate to change the systems and the processes. The complexity of such a mode of inquiry precludes the development of a step-by-step set of research procedures. Bricoleurs know that this inability to proceduralize undermines efforts to “test” the validity of their research. The researcher’s fidelity to procedure cannot simply be checked off and certified. In the complex bricolage the products of research are “evaluated.” The evaluation process draws on the same forms of inquiry and analysis initially delineated by the bricolage itself

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(Madison, 1988). In this context, the rigor of research intensifies at the same time the boundaries of knowledge production are stretched.

Life on the Boundaries: Facilitating the Work of the Bricoleur The bricolage understands that the frontiers of knowledge work rest in the liminal zones where disciplines collide. Thus, in the deep interdisciplinarity of the bricolage, researchers learn to engage in a form of boundary work. Such scholarly labor involves establishing diverse networks and conferences where synergistic interactions can take place as proponents of different methodologies, students of divergent subject matters, and individuals confronted with different problems interact. In this context, scholars learn across these domains and educate intermediaries who can build bridges between various territories. As disciplinary intermediaries operating as bricoleurs facilitate this boundary work, they create conceptual and electronic links that help researchers in different domains interact. If the cutting edge of research lives at the intersection of disciplinary borders, then developing the bricolage is a key strategy in the development of rigorous and innovative research. The facilitation and cultivation of boundary work is a central element of this process. There is nothing simple about conducting research at the interdisciplinary frontier. Many scholars report that the effort to develop expertise in different disciplines and research methodologies demands more than a casual acquaintance with the literature of a domain. In this context, there is a need for personal interaction between representatives from diverse disciplinary domains and scholarly projects to facilitate these encounters. Many researchers find it extremely difficult to make sense of “outside” fields and the more disciplines a researcher scans the harder the process becomes. If the scholar does not have access to historical dimensions of the field, the contexts that envelop the research methods used and the knowledge produced in the area, or contemporary currents involving debates and controversies in the discipline, the boundary work of the bricolage becomes exceedingly frustrating and futile. Proponents of the bricolage must help develop specific strategies for facilitating this complicated form of scholarly labor. In this context we come to understand that a key aspect of “doing bricolage” involves the development of conceptual tools for boundary work. Such tools might include the promotion and cultivation of detailed reviews of research in a particular domain written with the needs of bricoleurs in mind. Researchers from a variety of disciplinary domains should develop information for bricolage projects. Hypertextual projects that provide conceptual matrices for bringing together diverse literatures, examples of data produced by different research methods, connective insights, and bibliographic compilations can be undertaken by bricoleurs with the help of information professionals. Such projects would integrate a variety of conceptual understandings, including the previously mentioned historical, contextual, and contemporary currents of disciplines (Friedman, 1998; Palmer, 1996).

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Kellner (1995) is helpful in this context with his argument that multiperspectival approaches to research may not be very helpful unless the object of inquiry and the various methods used to study it are situated historically. In this way, the forces operating to socially construct all elements of the research process are understood, an appreciation that leads to a grasp of new relationships and connections. Such an appreciation opens new interpretive windows that lead to more rigorous modes of analysis and interpretation. This historicization of the research and the researched is an intrinsic aspect of the bricolage and the education of the bricoleur. Because learning to become a bricoleur is a lifelong process, what we are discussing here relates to the lifelong curriculum for preparing bricoleurs. Also necessary to this boundary work and the education of the bricoleur are social-theoretical and hermeneutical understandings. Social theory alerts bricoleurs to the implicit assumptions within particular approaches to research and the ways they shape their findings. With grounding in social theory, bricoleurs can make more informed decisions about the nature of the knowledge produced in the field and how researchers discern the worth of the knowledge they themselves produce. With the benefit of hermeneutics, bricoleurs are empowered to synthesize data collected via multiple methods. In the hermeneutic process, this ability to synthesize diverse information moves the bricoleur to a more sophisticated level of meaning making (Foster, 1997; Zammito, 1996). Life on the disciplinary boundaries is never easy, but the rewards to be derived from the hard work demanded are profound. I’ll mercifully stop here. … This is part of an expanding piece.

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Haggerson, N. (2000). Expanding curriculum research and understanding: A mytho-poetic perspective. New York: Peter Lang Publishing. Karunaratne, V. (1997). Buddhism, science, and dialectics [Online]. Available: http://humanism.org/opinions/articles.html Kellner, D. (1995). Media culture: Cultural studies, identity and politics between the modern and postmodern. New York: Routledge. Kincheloe, J., & Steinberg, S. (1993). A tentative description of post-formal thinking: The critical confrontation with cognitive theory. Harvard Educational Review, 63(3), 296-320. Kincheloe, J., Steinberg, S., & Hinchey, P. (1999). The postformal reader: Cognition and education. New York: Falmer. Lee, A. (1997). What is MIS? In R.  Galliers & W.  Currie (Eds.), Rethinking MIS. London: Oxford University Press. Lester, S. (1997). Learning for the twenty-first century [Online]. Available: http:// www.devmts.demon.co.uk/lrg21st.htm Levi-Strauss, C. (1966). The savage mind. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Lincoln, Y. S. (2012). Foreword. In K. Cooper & R. E. White, Qualitative research in the postmodern era, Volume I, (p. x). Dordrecht, NL: Springer. Lutz, K., Jones, K., & Kendall, J. (1997). Expanding the praxis debate: Contributions to clinical inquiry. Advances in Nursing Science, 20, 2. Madison, G. (1988). The hermeneutics of postmodernity: Figures and themes. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. McCarthy, M. (1997). Pluralism, invariance, and conflict. The Review of Metaphysics, 51, l. McLeod, J. (2000, June). Qualitative research as bricolage. Paper presented at the Society for Psychotherapy Research Annual Conference, Chicago. Morawski, J. (1997). The science behind feminist research methods. Journal of Social Issues, 53(4), 667-682. Palmer, C. (1996). Information work at the boundaries of science: Linking library services to research practices. Library Trends, 44(2), 165-192. Pryse, M. (1998). Critical interdisciplinarity, women’s studies, and cross-cultural insight. NWSA Journal, 10(1), 1-11. Selfe, C., & Selfe, R. (1994). The politics of the interface: Power and its exercise in electronic contact zones [Online]. Available: http://www.hu.mtu.edu/~cyselfe/ texts/politics. html Thomas, G. (1998). The myth of rational research. British Educational Research Journal, 24, 2. Varenne, H. (1996). The social facting of education: Durkheim’s legacy. Journal of Curriculum Studies, 27, 373-389. Young, T., & Yarbrough, J. (1993). Reinventing sociology: Mission and methods for postmodern sociologists (Transforming Sociology Series, 154). Weidman, MI: Red Feather Institute. Zammito, J. (1996). Historicism, metahistory, and historical practice: The historicization of the historical subject [Online]. Available: http://home.cc.umanitoba. ca/~sprague/zammito.htm

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Joe L.  Kincheloe is a professor of education at the City University of New  York Graduate Center in Urban Education and at Brooklyn College. The author and editor of more than 20 books, he is a well-known lecturer. His areas of research include cultural studies, pedagogy, issues of diversity, qualitative research, bricolage, interdisciplinary rigor, and research methodology. His latest book, The Sign of the Burger: McDonald’s and the Culture of Power, will be out in February from Temple University Press.

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Appendices

Appendix A: Links to Video-Clips by Chapter Chapter 1 1 2 2 3 3 4 4 4 5 5 5 5 6 6 6 7 7 7 8 8 8 9 9 9 10 10 10 11

Clip 1 2 1 2 1 2 1 2 3 1 2 3 4 1 2 3 1 2 3 1 2 3 1 2 3 1 2 3 1

Interviewee Raewynn Connell Robert Stake Henry Giroux Henry Giroux David G. Smith David G. Smith Donald Polkinghorne Donald Polkinghorne Donald Polkinghorne Max van Manen Max van Manen Max van Manen Max van Manen Clifford Geertz Clifford Geertz Clifford Geertz Robert Stake Robert Stake Robert Stake Elliot Eisner Elliot Eisner Elliot Eisner Barney Glaser Barney Glaser Barney Glaser Stephen Kemmis Stephen Kemmis Stephen Kemmis Dwayne Donald

URL link https://youtu.be/gAwKXZCuBeQ https://youtu.be/RX5GCV41Hmw https://youtu.be/9UX9CfP0Ppw https://youtu.be/j925Ukcn6pw https://youtu.be/VX3TotAXmpY https://youtu.be/Q5TbdqZzsG4 https://youtu.be/WRlsWpvLuAY https://youtu.be/65XdLogPhcU https://youtu.be/_gPmLOIN1ok https://youtu.be/xQAGj7RSEY0 https://youtu.be/9S_AqCxzGf0 https://youtu.be/k8sajcg-­rs4 https://youtu.be/e3YR3XTu1Zk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y6P_6I8NahI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LMTY7xxsyC8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k9W21GJNIFc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xXW_P6RaUKg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oYVW4m-­IJYM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ov4WF1Lk4DY https://youtu.be/7UGUIgJFh9U https://youtu.be/XxLlKIsjR-­k https://youtu.be/fCnx67ffXKU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cL9LLOKyVgo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fDEBIUGeWsM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1ZtA_eTItlQ https://youtu.be/PSYyPM-­tnYM https://youtu.be/_kmiZMgfbsM https://youtu.be/E80GfG5G-­go https://youtu.be/jtkRWc6mfoU

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 R. E. White, K. Cooper, Qualitative Research in the Post-Modern Era, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-85124-8

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Appendix B: Excerpts of Interview Transcripts Chapter 1: A Brief History of Qualitative Research Professor Raewynn Connell Video-Clip 1.1 I am, I have to say, I am a little wary of the concept of qualitative research and the conventional distinction between quantitative and qualitative research. I think that, in almost any piece of qualitative research I can think of, there is a quantitative element that is where, you know, we do a set of interviews. We transcribe the interviews. We sit down and study the interviews and we write a case study, let’s say. That is the most common research process that I am involved in at the moment. Um, but in sort of, in analyzing the interview, I am constantly making quantitative judgments about you know.... What is a typical statement by this person? You know, what is the usual outcome here and what are exceptionals? Now those are quantitative statements, actually. If you say this is usual, that is unusual, it is a quantitative statement; an inexact one, but it is a quantitative statement, all right. Um, and those kinds of statements have always been made. If, when we say something is normative, something is usual, ah, this is the predominant pattern in this group that we have talked to. On the other hand, when you look at things that are conventionally acknowledged as quantitative research…, say, survey, you know, forced choice survey research, which I also do some of. When you are studying the statistics and responses to a given question, you are making qualitative judgments about the meaning of that question all the time. And, if you see a correlation between two items, you are asking questions about the meaning of these items and the meaning of the connection, which are qualitative questions. So, I don’t think there is a sharp distinction between qualitative and quantitative, at all. I think those are moments, which coexist in almost every piece of research. And no, I put more strongly. Every piece of research I have ever been involved in, and I have now been working as a social researcher for 40 years. Every piece of research has had both of those elements in it. That said, we can also say that some pieces of research have a greater saturation, if you like, of qualitative analysis. And that, you know, poses somewhat different issues in the handling of information. It involves a greater effort to think through questions of meanings, significance, internal contradiction, the layering of experience and awareness. The, um, research with a, um, you know, a high concentration of qualitative elements will often involve a greater, greater effort if you like, to um, to tease out the variance of experience of social practice. In institutional research, um, it would involve, um, a considerable effort of comparison between cases, to find the ways in which different institutions or different branches of the same institution function differently. So there, yeah, there are different kinds of questions that come into focus in what is conventionally called qualitative research.

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Professor Emeritus Robert Stake Video-Clip 1.2 For next week, we have Project G. If you take a look at the project descriptions, you will find that you are to prepare an interview, a personal interview, using it if you are going to do Project H, but if not, you can do something else. Listen, the aim is to develop question construction skills, whether or not you are going to get some data for your Project H. You may interview someone who has direct experience with the issue or someone whose experience would help you figure out more about the issue. You are going to designate what this issue is before you do your questions and you are going to explain that to me when you turn in your papers. What is the issue that is being developed by this question, this interview? Think very carefully of a few questions you can ask that will make the issue more understandable… I said that already. At a minimum prepare four questions. Four questions, that’s all you need, including an exhibit question as one of them. Think of some possible responses the interviewee might provide and how you would probe them…how you would get deeper into what you want to know about the issue. Revise the questions. Ask somebody in the class to make a written critique of your questions. That’s what it says. Revise until you are proud of it. Do the interview. Report both the questions planned and asked. You have to do this. You have to say these are the questions, the four questions, I planned and these are the four that I did ask. And, they might be the same, or you might decide that they answered three of them when you did the first one and now you substitute something else. Away you go…. You tell me what you’ve done. Read them and your questions to see if you could have done more to advance understanding of the issue. Then, write five hundred words about your efforts that define the issue, the questions and what you learned about questioning. Note what it doesn’t say. It doesn’t say record what they answered. You can do that if you want to, but that’s not what I’m interested in getting from you. I want to see question building. I want to see the questions you are using to try to get at that issue. It’s very difficult to pick up an issue pertaining to your case. All of this is still supposedly getting to understand your case better. You ask four questions, maybe not even mentioning case, you ask four questions, four more and you tell me what you intended to ask, what you did ask and then what you learned about writing questions in a situation like this…. Five hundred words. Chapter 2: An Introduction to Critical Approaches Professor Henry Giroux Video-Clip 2.1 Well, I think that what critical inquiry does, I mean, as I said before, it takes seriously the primacy of the ethical and the political. It is the kind of work that is not only self-reflective about its own presuppositions, how it does, what it does, and under what circumstances, but it is, it is utterly concerned about the consequences

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of what it does. I mean..., so that, when…when inquiry becomes critical, think about what that means. It means that it becomes critical in ways that suggest that the very nature of what we do should be scrutinized, always under question. But, secondly, it raises it questions about the object of that inquiry. And I would think that an inquiry that is critical is very discriminating about what it is that it exactly wants to address so that, for me, something is critical when, in fact, it links itself to the elimination of human suffering. It takes seriously those kinds of ethical imperatives that suggest that it should open up the possibility of justice rather than close it down. That it should open up the possibility of allowing people to live in a world with dignity rather than close those parameters down. So, critical inquiry is, in a sense..., it does a number of things. One, it is self-critical. Two, it takes seriously the relationship between what is and what ought to be. It is based on a language of not only critique but a language of possibility. Thirdly, it says that authority should always be accountable; that power should be accountable, that central to any notion of inquiry is the notion of power and politics and that power should be accountable. Fourthly, it takes very seriously the question of what kind of conditions in our research can we produce that maximizes the capacities for people to intervene in the world in ways in which they don’t, are not just governed by the world but actually can learn how to govern it themselves. In other words, how do we maximize the possibility for human agency individually and collectively? And finally, there is the most important question of all. What does it mean to recognize that the question of research and the question of education and the question of critical inquiry to become meaningful cannot simply narrate itself in ways that suggest it is interviewing itself? I mean what does it mean to become worldly? How do we emphasize its public connections in ways that take seriously the question of dignity, social justice, and the elimination of human suffering? I mean, in the broadest possible way, those kinds of elements point to something else. They point to a notion of critical inquiry that marks the intellectual as a publicly engaged intellectual; that marks the institutions in which he or she works as institutions that always should be under scrutiny; that marks a space that is never restricted to the university but always suggests that it is something that has to act as a translating device between the university and the larger world.… For me, the only research that really mattered in my life was research that linked theoretical rigour and social relevance, you know. I mean research that in some way had something to say to the world. Research that, in a sense, was elevated to the status of being worldly, worldly meaning that it took seriously the, the notion that people have unbelievable human potentialities and possibilities and that first and foremost ah, research that seemed to matter was research that was organized around the theoretical principles that took seriously the primacy of the ethnical and the political. And that kind of research always suggested that the work that we did should have some connection to the most central, the most urgent, the most important social problems of the time. So, I was never one to, ah, indulge in a kind of research that it seemed to me didn’t have a currency that spoke to public life. And particularly spoke to questions of agency and questions of democracy.

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I mean, I think, that in some fundamental way..., look, education is always a moral and political practice because, first and foremost, it is about the struggle over agency, over agency. It is about the struggle over the lives we inhabit, the futures we imagine, the relationships that we engage in, ah, the people that we work with and, and that is even more so today because the question of responsibility is now globalized. You know, we have to re-theorize responsibility outside of small neighbourhoods, outside of families. I mean, outside of the relationship of simply ourselves, the most immediate people in our lives. I mean, I think that, you know, we live in a world where all of this is so interconnected that this question of who is in, who is out, you know, who has the opportunity for a decent life, who can experience a life with dignity is no longer something that can be separated, ah, from other parts of the world. So, I mean, so the question of agency now takes on a kind of global significance, suggesting that the political and ethnical parameters that drive the research that we do are equally more.., are far more important than they ever have been in the past. But, I think there is another issue. I think the other issue is to recognize that this question of research has become utterly politicized and in ways that we have never seen before, meaning that research is not merely about the work that one does in light of the problem that one sort of addresses. Research is also about the question of power and who can be bought and who can’t…. Pedagogy, as a disciplined form of intervention in a particular learning site, ah, with the intent of preparing people for the world has a long history. Certainly, it goes back to the Greeks. I think that what critical pedagogy does is it takes those broad considerations, linking learning to social change, being concerned about questions of agency, developing a language of critique and possibility and it situates that in a notion of teaching critical pedagogy that in some way ah, validates both. It validates pedagogy, let’s say, as a moral and political practice, you know, one that takes seriously what it means to provide the educational conditions within classrooms and elsewhere for really giving students the opportunity to become agents and not just simply to experience themselves as, as, you know, the objects of forms of education in which the question of training becomes paramount, right? We don’t give, we don’t empower students but we provide the conditions, I think, for students to understand what it would mean to have the kind of power by virtue of the knowledge that they have and the skills that they need to be able to enter the world in a way in which they really believe they can somehow change it and not just simply accommodate to it. And, if you really were articulating a notion of critical pedagogy and education as a form of social justice, it was difficult to go in and begin to silence people. I mean that just simply didn’t work well. Video-Clip 2.2 We should push the envelope around questions of social justice, that societies should be seen as never just enough. And, that intellectuals have responsibilities, to say the very least, not just simply to produce in hours but, in some ways, do what they can to expand and deepen the possibilities of democracy itself….

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The fact of the matter is 70% of the workforce is contract labor. I mean 70% of the work force is being exploited in ways similar to the ways we talk about workers being exploited in the Pacific Rim. So, yeah, this is really quite a dire time. While I was at Penn State, it became increasingly clear to me that, ah, the United States was moving towards a mode of authoritarianism that I could no longer support…. And, to understand the relationship, the growing authoritarianism in the United States and the growing various forms of fundamentalism and the, ah, an attempt to really grapple seriously with neoliberalism as a mode of common sense, as a form of public pedagogy…. When the social state is under attack, when any notion of compassion is under attack, when all forms of solidarity that matter that can’t be measured simply in profit or financial terms are viewed disparagingly as a dependency of some sort where weakness is now relegated, elevated, a notion of scorn where everybody is on the island, you know. And when you live in a world in which social Darwinism becomes the primary motif for how individuals should relate to each other, it seems to me that the question of social inquiry, which always emerges, by the way, in particular social formations and contexts has to take seriously what it means to address that. Social inquiry is not a method. Social inquiry is always the outcome of particular struggles. And it seems to me, not to recognize that is to lend it a notion of objectivity that neutralizes and depoliticizes the very notion of inquiry itself and, in doing so, often makes the arbiter of that inquiry complicitous with the worst injustices. I think that, first and foremost, education, to have any theoretical and political gravity at all has to be linked to the question of democracy. We educate people to learn a democracy. Education is the foundation for developing the capacities, the skills and the knowledge to be able to not only be able to recognize the importance of democracy; democracy is an artifice. Democracy is not a given. It is something; it is socially politically, and historically constructed. It comes and it goes. And it is not something that exists by virtue of a transcendent force. It is not something that power bestows; it is not something that God bestows; it is not something that emerges out of a certain kind of religious justification. It is something that is struggled over. And, unless people struggle over, struggle over it, it disappears, just as those people who occupy those countries for which democracy doesn’t exist disappear. And it seems to me that one of the greatest challenges that education faces today is to justify and define itself as a democratic public sphere, as one of the few left that can both engage, remind and educate people that we live in very dangerous times. That the earth is not only periled by virtue of all the forces, a variety of anti-­ democratic forces but that, unless we educate people to think in terms that suggest a relationship between the self and the other, marked by a democratic ethos enacted on a global level, we don’t have a lot of time left. So, I guess I not only am arguing that education, as a project, gets its meaning by virtue of its willingness to educate people to live in a critical, in an inclusive democracy, but that the urgency of the problem demands a responsibility from educators and others that we have never seen before, because education is being sabotaged.

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In the United States, we don’t have education any longer, we have training. We don’t educate people to be critical, we educate people to take tests. We do everything we can to eliminate education as a democratic public sphere. We bring in corporations who advertise to students in bathrooms, in multiple places. We bring in teachers who are overworked and deskilled. We bring in corporations that now speak about education as if they actually know something about it. We bring in military recruiters to, in a sense, ah, take off the streets poor, young, Black and white kids to become fodder for a war that never should have taken place. So, it seems to me that, when we look at education today, we are looking at not only something that talks about the crisis of learning but talks about the crisis of youth and, finally, talks about the crisis of democracy. First of all, look, in the larger world in which we live; it seems to me that, when I make the claim that we need a new language, one of the things I would claim is central to the development of that language is that we have to recognize that you can’t talk about the political without talking about the pedagogical. The questions of pedagogy are central to any notion of politics—any notion of politics—because the question of agency is foundational to politics. You can’t talk about politics unless you talk about agency. You can’t do it. If you abstract agency from politics, what in fact you end up with is a population that is utterly depoliticized. Just as you, in an age of globalization you can’t abstract power from politics, although we do it, right? As Bauman has said repeatedly, we now live in an age in which politics is local and power is global. And that has created a series of conditions that, ah, it seems to me, anybody who takes critical education seriously is going to have to think about. That raises new questions about the question of the globalization of critique, responsibility, and intervention and citizenship. I think that education should unsettle people. I think that it should jostle everything they know. I think it should force them to delve into themselves in ways in which the most fundamental dimensions of who they are can be questioned. I think it should put them in exile—I think pedagogy should put people in exile. They should occupy a place that they are not familiar with so that they can make that familiar, so that the strange, all of a sudden, can become familiar. That they should constantly be placed in positions where what is being juxtaposed, of voices that unsettle the authoritative nature of what they think they know. Because that, then, translates into unsettling the authoritative nature of what anybody knows. And it means that you, all of a sudden, live in a culture and work in a culture in which you not only are engaged in an active exchange for which questioning matters but also accountability, right? And, secondly, I am not concerned about forms of education, liberal forms of education that simply claim they want to make people critical. I don’t think it is enough. You have to also make them responsible and accountable. I mean accountable in that, when you argue a position, that position signifies certain kinds of social relationships. And those social relationships signify something about ethics, signifies something about one’s relationship to the other. It’s hard to imagine anybody being in education who doesn’t believe that hope is the precondition for possibility and for agency and for creating a better world. I don’t know why people would be in education if, in fact, they don’t believe that education plays

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a fundamental role and, in fact, highlighting the contraction between what is and what ought to be. I mean, everything that we do implies, in some fundamental way, something about the future. And the question is, who’s future? You know, I mean…I mean, is it like a daydream? And, if it is like a dream, is it a bad dream or a good dream? I mean, how do we position ourselves as intellectuals to take up the question of what it means to educate people to either adapt—either adapt to a particular kind of future, or one that simply replicates the existing society in which they find themselves or are capable of creating a new future in which they can be comfortable; one that correlates with what they believe in. Secondly, you can’t do this without recognizing that this is like an act of war. I mean, although that is much too harsh but, but this is battle, you know. We are battling over ideas. I mean, we are battling over different understandings of how the world works. Power is never absent from these discussions, either by virtue of the people who intervene who try to shut you down, the David Horowitz’s of the world, who really believe that any alternative opinion is unpatriotic or, in the United States, or un-American. So we have to educate people not simply to be driven by the mastery of knowledge. You know, we have to, in some way, inculcate in them the need to recognize that knowledge has something to do with power and knowledge and power have something to do with, in some way, fighting for a particular kind of future and, finally, to do that means it is difficult. It’s not easy. You have to be political to do that. You have to understand the exegesis of living in a political world and not just defining yourself as a teacher, you know. You are not just a teacher. Or, and I think that what we often have to recognize is that you can never talk about teaching without talking about the institution of political formations in which it takes place. So, I tell students you are going to teach somewhere, you don’t just.... You canvass the community. You talk to other teachers. You find out what kind of rules are in place. You find out who has been fired lately and why. You find out how power works. You don’t just walk in and say, I am going to walk into a classroom and teach. Now, some students may say we don’t have the luxury for that—that we need to eat, and they are right and, in some cases, they don’t. But those questions should never be far from their minds. They can never separate the politics of pedagogy from the politics of the institutional conditions that actually constrain or enable it. Chapter 3: Hermeneutic Inquiry Professor David G. Smith Video-Clip 3.1 These questions always come up, of course, in the graduate seminars where we talk about interpretive traditions of human sciences. I always like to go right back to Plato and Aristotle because, in a sense, the debate really is defined by that conversation, what I call a cultural conversation between Plato and Aristotle. Plato, you know, following in the tradition of Greek thought, always made the point about

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language being more than what it said. That the meaning of language is always more than what is contained in the words. This goes right back to the Greek concept of the logos. And also to the operation of the Oracle, in classical Greek society. The Oracle always spoke in ambiguous terms and it was always taken for granted that you could never accept at face value what the Oracle said. It required interpretation. That’s why the word “hermeneu” meaning to interpret, in Greek culture usually was allied to the other Greek word “mantike” meaning divination. So, I think that’s a really important point, that hermeneutics, in a sense, begins with an assumption that the surface, that the meaning of anything is never in the surface, but it’s rather—What lies on the surface is a production, in a sense, of something that’s much deeper and much more complex, behind the scenes. You know, in more recent times, you got people like B. Griffiths, for example, who speaks about the relationship between the implicate and explicate orders. The explicate order, meaning the order of the world that is right at hand. But the implicate order is the order that, in a sense, is implicated in the explicate order. And that, in a sense, the implicate order is everything else that’s not explicit. And what’s really important, I think, to understand in the hermeneutic sense is that the relationship between the explicit and the implicit is profoundly organic, and in a sense, it’s symbiotic. It’s not a discontinuous relationship, but it’s rather very, very much connected. Even in the Hindu tradition, for example, in the concept of voice, the Hindu word “vash,” this is well understood also, that, in fact, the relationship between the implicate and the explicate is not just continuous but it’s also highly political; that is, in a sense, that the explicate order is always subordinate to the implicate order. Or you can use other kinds of language. You can say that what is silent is far more powerful than what is spoken; what is invisible is so much more powerful than what is visible. What is at work in the world, far beyond human imagination, rationality, even creativity, is so much more powerful and at work constantly, than what we see, touch, and feel on a day-to-day basis. Video-Clip 3.2 Plato’s vision of language was poetic and it was based upon the culture of the Oracle. Aristotle, through his theories, like the theory of substance, which says that a thing is most itself when it’s separate from every other thing. And his theory of the principle of non-contradiction that “A cannot be B and still be A.” in other words, you can’t have B inhering in A because A is A and B is B. So, this created this sort of philosophy recalls the notion of the predicative understanding. If A happens, B will necessarily follow. So, now that kind of understanding, you know, Jean Grondin who was the best biographer of Gadamer, wrote a lovely essay in that book called Sources of Hermeneutics, in which he, in his tracing of the evolution of hermeneutics in classical times, he raises a very interesting question. He says, how would the Western tradition be different if Plato had triumphed over Aristotle, instead of Aristotle over Plato? See, because the Aristotelian notion of analytic logic that is predicated on this idea that you can make a word stick to a thing, like a pen is a pen is a pen, and nothing else needs to be considered. In fact, you’ve got to translate all other aspects out for the pen to be itself. See, that is the foundation of modern

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science, and of course, it came to us through the Arabs, because it was the Arabs who translated Aristotle, you know, and gave Aristotle to the West. And it was Aristotelianism that then produced, you know, metaphysics, through medieval scholasticism, metaphysics as this idea that somehow, if I say that this is the way the world is and can make an argument for it, then it is, right? That’s the point. Whereas you know, the Platonic idea would always be no matter what you say, there’s always more to be said. No matter what you say, the invisible trumps the visible. And the silent, the unspoken trumps the spoken. And unless we’re vigilant to that relationship, utter violence is the inevitable result. Because, under a metaphysical orientation, you take your certitudes far too seriously. You take your interpretations as definitive, right? That’s the point. And that’s what happened in science up until sort of the scientific revolution in the post-­ Kuhnian sense, right? When science became understood in a much more ecological way. But the dogmatism of early science came out of an Aristotelian understanding of the relationship of language to things. And so, I think you can trace that right down, right through how Western imperialism came to be, itself. Which is, it took itself far too seriously. It took its claims to be truth claims instead of provisional understandings, you know, given under certain circumstances, and that there’s always more to be said. Chapter 4: Narrative Inquiry Emeritus Professor Donald Polkinghorne Video-Clip 4.1 The existential writings had just come in, Bonhoeffer and some of the religious existentialists, as well as the others. Heidegger was very important. And so, my interests really changed from ministerial to more philosophical interests. And a lot of my work on qualitative research began there. We started a journal called Methods of Qualitative Research. One of the ideas was to try to attract people who were, at that time, at the beginning of qualitative research and having some impact. And while I was there, I wrote my book on Methodology for the Human Sciences, which was basically saying the human sciences and working with people needed to involve language rather than primarily numbers. And so I guess research, writing and reading at that time. My notion of knowledge is that it reveals more. And one of the standard things that I have students do is to take an hour to look at a rose, so that, as you look at things more, things that weren’t noticed before that were on the surface, come to life. So there’s details that were not seen and, so, as you spend time and focus on things. And part of it has to do, then, with what lens do you bring to bring out these details? My own notion is in terms of understanding more about people and human beings is that it’s the lens of language, which is able to do that in terms of its metaphor, analogies, the function of language, its grammar, that’s the kind of lens that

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opens up aspects of being human. That the numeric is not as good as some, in terms of that dimension of being human. You asked about hermeneutics, and I’m a, I see hermeneutic again as that’s what we do. We analyze, try to understand language, and that’s what hermeneutics is. So, if you move into the realm of language, the numbers, you’re doing hermeneutic. Historically, it was the language of the Bible, and what was there, what was it about, understanding. So, I just, in terms…I don’t see hermeneutic or take hermeneutic as a particular kind of qualitative research. My approach to it is qualitative research is hermeneutic, its attempts at understanding. In the sense that, see, my notion of what qualitative research is about, what we’re trying to do, is to develop our findings or not of what’s real. Our findings are a way of seeing, and this is the postmodern aspect of it, that we create lenses, ways to look at things, that expose aspects, bring them to life. And in that sense, it’s all hermeneutic. Really good qualitative research, I think, when you read it, you say, “I haven’t noticed that before.” And again, it’s akin to humanities work, what you’re trying to do is to expose aspects of the story, of the writing, that isn’t right there on the surface, isn’t obvious, is beyond the conceptual framework that I’ve used to understand. It brings new understanding because I break apart the conceptual framework, add to it, so that it exposes depth and parts of what it means to be a person, the depth of the person, that aren’t obvious at first view. And if I don’t see something new, I don’t think the findings are very worth it. And that means why would I basically be interested? But it can do that, and when it does, you get the “aha!” Video-Clip 4.2 I’ll go back and give some context for the answer. I think this may deal with some of the questions that come up later. But one of the articles I wrote a couple of years ago had to do with this second generation of qualitative research. And then the idea is to place it in a historical context, which is part of the narrative notion that neither quantitative or qualitative are handed down from on high. They were historical developments. The importance in the sixteenth century, basically, of the transformation of research and authority. Prior to that, the authority was biblical. We, as a Western culture, have had as the authority primarily the biblical books. And we still do this in giving sermons, how do you know what you have to say in this sermon is correct? Do you cite the Bible as support for this? And the sixteenth century transformation from that to observation, which brought about the scientific revolution, and so on. That this, the development of some cognitive tools should be able to argue, know more, understand things, which was starting off, with the human beings, it meant the balance between nature and humans changed. We now manage nature; we understand nature in ways we didn’t before. A few things like earthquakes and weather. But we’ve done a great deal in terms of changing nature, which has brought about our present capacities to go to the moon, fly airplanes, the whole electronic revolution, and so on. But what was left out of that was the study of human beings, which was very interesting. The idea of the soul was not studied, and as we enter the seventeenth and eighteenth century, nineteenth century, it was still a religious notion that human

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consciousness was the soul. And it was a gift from God, which was not studiable by the methods that had been developed to study nature. Nature was something different, and we have Descartes in these things, that they were true parts of reality of the human soul and nature. And the study of one didn’t mean you could study the other. And there was no access to study the soul. And then we began, in the nineteenth century, with studies of what goes on in consciousness in relationship to what goes on in the world. So we had just noticeable differences between sensory gongs and so on and what you could know, which is somewhat the beginning of qualitative research. Because you train people to observe themselves and tell you what was happening. And this even was in the 1870s before we began to study human beings in terms of consciousness rather than the body. One now famous originator of psychology had a whole set of what we called folk psychology, the study of people. He needed literature and language to study. When psychology got transported to the U.S., that part didn’t come along. It was the more mechanical notions and looking at sensory experience, which was the more important part of psychology. And this is Titchener’s work and so on. I mean, it’s a shame in many ways, but it set the foundation for the way psychological research was done. And it remains the way it’s done. So, when I work with students on their dissertations in their research, the articles that are looked at are the ones which approach things using physical science models. And we got more sophisticated tools, 1920s, ‘30s, these statistical tools began to come in. They were very unsophisticated because the mathematics that you could do prior to computers was quite limited. And, then, once the computers came in, so way late, the models that could be used to do research on human beings in psychology became much more sophisticated. Video-Clip 4.3 In the 1950s, after World War II, all psychological research was quantitative and used those tools. And, as they got more sophisticated. And at that time we were talking about large IBM machines and punch cards and so on. The old-timers know about this, I mean, that’s what computer work was at that time. But that was what psychology was all about. The Vietnam War happened in the U.S. And one of the people was McNamara who had come from Ford. I don’t know if you’re—He recently come out with a movie about the mistakes he made. But the reports of the war had to do with body counts. We were winning because how many people were killed, calculations had to do with what would be the cost. Well, it would cost a hundred American lives to get a thousand northern Vietnamese. So, that was sort of the calculations that were done. In the U.S., there was a revolt against this, especially among young people, that this wasn’t the way to think about people, to make those kinds of calculations. And this was the 1970s that I talked about before, this kind of general—Part of that, then, had to do with we needed a new way to study people. And that was the beginning. Qualitative research didn’t happen first, it was that we needed a new way to study what was happening. And qualitative research was a response to that, one which I don’t think, I mean, we still haven’t worked it all out, how to study human beings. But part of that response, then, and that’s what the

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first generation, going back to that, was about, was to justify within a context where mainstream psychology, especially, and the other human sciences, was based on statistical models, which was the kind of thinking that we were using in making choices in the Vietnam War. Part of my interest in narrative goes back to Heidegger who talks about human beings are primarily activities, not objects. The temporality is basic and so on. How do you talk about or capture the development of the person. And that’s what I think narrative is about. It is a form, in story form, of expression that our language allows, and our visuals now, motion pictures and so on, that is different. We have sedimentation of all of our experiences, our memories, and so on. And that we are activities rather than something we could see, even. And I think narrative is a format that has captured that. One of the problems with narrative, talking about it, is the term. At one level, it means anything that the person says, that they give a description, that’s their narrative. The more specialized meaning, which I’m interested in, is a particular kind of talk, a talk which is about movement through time, the storied form. Most of the interview material is not narrative in the second sense. We do get people’s stories sometimes, but we get a lot of description, explanation, other kinds of statements. I’m more interested in narrative as the outcome of the analysis of the data, what people say and they may give us descriptions, explanations, stories, whatever. And then we can analyze it either by producing a story from that, or by producing thematics. Chapter 5: Phenomenological Inquiry Professor Max van Manen Video-Clip 5.1 And Michael walks in, stands beside me, as he often would do.... “What are you doing now?” I said Oh, I am just asking, just for my class tonight, I am doing a little exercise and asking people if they ever had any secrets and to write about them. And I said to Michael, “Do you ever have any secrets, Michael?” And he goes [shakes head]…and I felt so bad, because his face became like a mask. I felt so bad that I asked that because I truly embarrassed him and then he says, “Well maybe once.” But that is fascinating too, right? I mean, I never taught him about secrets but he knew what it was. And so, yeah, that is sort of how the whole project started. And, um, there are many more of these little things, and many of the projects, you know, sort of went like that. And, wow, it is a fascinating project and I think... See, that is a good example, maybe, also of showing the relationship between phenomenology and pedagogy because I was phenomenologically reflecting on something that happens to us in everyday life and that we don’t reflect on usually, even if it is maybe an experience that really is quite an intellectual experience or a thinking experience. Still, we don’t reflect on it.

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In that sense it is pre-reflective, right? We experience it before we think it, right? That’s.., all our experiences are like that. All our experience, every day, whether you are talking with someone or you are doing something by yourself, or writing something, making food or eating something, whatever you do, every moment of your life, you are experiencing something without thinking it, even if you are thinking. Of course, you are thinking. Most likely, you are thinking something but you are not thinking of the thinking, right? In this sense, it is always pre-reflective, you know. In that sense, it is also in some sense, well, see, this is really hard, it becomes philosophically… also um, um... conflictual, contentious, right? Where you then say, well how would you call that? Would you call it a raw experience? Is it already experience or is it not yet experience until you actually begin to think of it? So what happens in the moment, in the everyday moment in our lives? But in the moment, yes, we have experiences but, since they are not named and we are not really thinking it, it is still in some sense a preconscious consciousness. It is lived experience; it is not articulated experience. It is not reflective. It is pre-­ reflective, it is pre-theoretical; it is pre-conceptual, pre-linguistic. Now you are putting name on it and that is how we lift, I think, that is how we lift the preconsciousnsess of everyday lived experience. We lift it up and begin to name it. But, by lifting it up and naming it you are also inevitably distorting it, inevitably... you are sort of damaging it because it is no longer what we lived. What we lived, it is already named. It is not…sort of abstracted already in language. And now I am naming but in naming you are also inevitably, and this is what Hegel already said…. When Adam named the things... When God said to Adam, name all of the things in your world, all the animals and whatever you saw in it.... By naming them, he killed them at the same time because, in naming, we kill that what we named, that what we want to understand and that is really for me at the heart of phenomenology. And that makes phenomenology also a weird type of research, right? Because essentially what you are admitting if you say this is that it is impossible. That in language, you are trying to capture that what is pre-language. You try to put in words what we kill by putting it in words and naming it, you know. It is an impossi... it is an impossibility. And of course, that is true. That is a wonderful impossibility. (laughter). And it is a wonderful fascinating enterprise. I think phenomenological texts have a fair amount of strongly embedded language. You have to be very careful. If you change this, then the meaning changes right away and it is no longer, you are no longer getting at whatever it is that you are trying to get at, you know. And so now, um, yeah, this whole sense of what I have learned, you know, my phenomenological reflections are now, have made into a person who is different from the way I was before, and that is where I see the importance of phenomenology is not so much the knowledge you produce but the person you produce, you know. The ability to change yourself. To remake yourself and I really think that is the pedagogical requirement for all teachers, you know, you have to think, you have to know yourself to know others and to teach others. For me, phenomenology is interesting because it, it may provide us insights into how we live with others, right, with kids, with colleagues, you know, as teachers, as nurses, as medical doctors, as mothers and as fathers, you know. So in that sense,

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yeah, it is the phenomenology of practice. Phenomenology of the life world where we practice what we are, who we are and, in that sense I think, you know, research is more a kind of research into practice of meaning Video-Clip 5.2 It is the sense of the ordinary and that is also very much a part of the Dutch culture, you know, that, the attentiveness to ordinary life, to the everydayness. You may look at Dutch art of the 1700s and Vermeer, Rembrandt and Breughels and ter Borch and many of the others, you will see that it is very unusual for art in Europe to have that attentiveness to the everyday, everyday object, everyday things and especially Jan Steen. In fact I did a whole presentation, a keynote, not too long ago on that very theme of Dutch art and phenomenology because I think there is kind of a cultural, a cultural link, a cultural attitude, you know, that sort of goes back. During the latter years of high school I became very interested in existentialism. And I think it was a personal interest but it was also a part of the culture, very much around us, you know, and the movies, Le Tresor, you know, I mean you would just really dwell in this, in this existential mood, right? And Jean-Paul Sartre, of course. I even read Sartre, Camus and many Dutch authors, too, or Herman Hesse, you know. Kafka was one of my favourite authors. So, I had all of this sort of this existential aspects of life, also really drew me. However, you shouldn’t confuse existentialism with phenomenology. I think phenomenology is existential in a sense that it is attentive to ordinary life to existence, but existentialism is really a philosophy of life, right? And, as a philosophy of life it, it advocates that we are responsible and that we value freedom, and you know, Sartre’s notion of we are all condemned to freedom. Video-Clip 5.3 Langeveld once said, “I am not really in...and he used the word... I am not really interested in Husserl’s philosophical pretensions, but only in his method.” And by that, I think he really meant, I am interested in that attitude, in that way of looking at the world, you know, that is phenomenological. When Husserl says “primal impressional consciousness” then, of course, he also has this notion of the retention and the protension, you know, that in the moment the past is always present still and the future is already also present and, then, in the next moment, that last moment is still present as retention, but in that retention was another retention and another and another, and that is how we can know melodies of a song, right? Because it is all still there! Then we see the next line, in the instant. But, at the same time, it is always that instant that we are trying to grasp, right? It is the moment, the instant of the moment that phenomenology tries to grasp. You can never grasp it quite because that is the pre-consciousness of everyday life that you can never quite grasp. You are always too late. So in that sense, reflectively, we are never in the now. And that is sort of Derrida’s point, right? I mean he deconstructs Husserl and kind of saying, “Well, yeah, on the one hand you are always, in the now. On the other hand you are never in the now.” He doesn’t quite say it like that but he makes sort of interesting observations that you have to draw

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this kind of conclusion. And I think this is again the wonderful.... This makes phenomenology possible, right. That on the one hand, yeah, we are experiencing a life as we experience life, our lived sense of things and everydayness of things. And then, as we want to reflect on it, the reflection is always retrospective. So when phenomenology tries to reflect, reflectively, um, grasp that what is pre-­ reflective. That is another good definition of phenomenology. Lived experience. Phenomenology somehow tries to get to get a direct understanding of that what is orginary in our everyday life but knowing that it is impossible. There is another definition for phenomenology, if you like, would be, phenomenology is, I think, the project of instilling wonder, you know? Of looking at something and saying, “Wow, gosh, I have never quite seen it. I have never quite seen this. I have never quite thought of this.” And so, um, and that is what I try to do with my students, you know, and I ask them to formulate a question, right. What is this experience like? What is that experience? But it takes quite a while for most students to come to the point where they truly begin to wonder about that question and when they... um... When it comes to the point of, my gosh, you know.... And I think at that level also then, um, you begin to see that you are not really investigating a problem, you are investigating something that makes us human. Something that makes us human. You are investigating an aspect of the human condition. And again, the idea of investigating a possible human experience; so, in that sense I think phenomenology is really more than, what I am so interested in it is that more than any other qualitative ah, social science, qualitative research, I think it poses the question of what it means to be human. Another way of looking at phenomenology is that it tries to articulate what is unique, what makes something different from other things, right? The singularity of things, you know. And of course, ultimately, the singularity is exactly that moment that we talked about, the experience, and no experience is ever the same. Like you sitting, now, like this in a chair, no matter how many times in your life you have sat in a chair, it is never quite like this, right. It never ever will be. No moment in our lives is ever the same as any other moment. In that sense it is always singular, it is always unique. So, phenomenologically, how do you study that? How can you study something that is not repeatable? Well, you know, well that is the fascinating project, right. To see phenomenology not as just a research method with, you know, with a bunch of techniques and methods but really that ultimately, after you have had all these little hints, it is a matter of writing and in the writing is the reflection. In the writing is the gift of meaning and sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn’t. And, so, phenomenological research ultimately is writing, you know? And look at the great phenomenologist, they are all authors, they are not just writers, they are authors right and they have their own sort of unique way of saying it. And Derrida, too, of course, very much so, you know? Derrida is a phenomenologist in the sense that he so much sees also, and with Blanchot and because of Blanchot I think, you know, that Derrida also is the only other philosopher who really talks about writing. Because philosophers don’t talk about it. They all do it but they don’t reflect on it, which is odd, which is strange,

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because you would think you know, writing is at the heart of it all. But you know, most don’t think about the writing itself, the phenomenology of writing. And then, of course, Derrida shows that, just as it is with our everyday experiences, lived experience, it is never the same. No moment is ever the same, and will ever be, it cannot be. That is the nature of human being, of the human condition. Every moment, every instant is always different from any other instant in your life you may have had. And it is different for you and for me. We may be standing in the same spot looking at the same picture; it is not the same experience, right? And just, and so that was a phenomenological sort of taken-for-grantedness, almost, right? That is the singularity of experience. Phenomenology also makes it, well when I say taken for granted it is so accepted that um, that is how, how experience is, right? In other words, that it is always unique, always never the same, so and yet we try to say something about it. How can you say something about an experience if it is never the same? Do you see the profound contradiction of that? Video-Clip 5.4 You may experience things that only later, when someone mentions, you say, “Oh yeah, yesterday there was that.” You hadn’t thought of at the time. At the time, you didn’t even notice it, but now that someone mentions it, “Yeah, I saw that yesterday,” right? And so, that is the idea of primal impressional consciousness, that we have experienced this. We don’t necessarily ever reflect on but, the funny thing is, we can bring them back... And when I say we can bring them back, what was “them?” You know, because it wasn’t an, it wasn’t yet anything that is meaningful, it was just life. I was just there. I was there in the room and I can’t even say that I experienced the phenomena because the phenomena now has significance, has meaning, right, to it, and as Gadamer says, it is now a pattern, you know, it now becomes this. And, as Husserl says, the phenomenon is exactly that, when you begin to focus on something. And of course, Heidegger would say, look, that is not even relevant, you know. You are already thrown in the world. You are already there. The meaning is already there. Don’t worry about primal impressions. Don’t worry where it comes from, it is already there. Well it is the now, the moment, the lived experiences, right? Because there is another sort of thing that is important about this and it is that the word lived experience has become so popular it is no longer, you know, people say, well what about your lived experiences? Well, you know, technically, lived experience means the pre-reflective experience right, before you think it, you know. Lived experience doesn’t mean significant moments necessarily. Lived experience just means life as we live it before we think it. But we begin to use the word as if it means something else, as if it means something that stands out. It is okay, but it is not very phenomenological, you know? In essence, phenomenology is very simple; it is just a study of life as you experience it. Now what can be difficult about that, right? So, it is so, um, ordinary, that, as soon as you begin it, you run up against all these problems, these questions. Well, how can you, right? Because what is it really, a moment like that? What is this lived

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experience and what is this lived experience and how could you get at it and, then, you begin to discover that, yeah, that you have to get a lot of hints, you know. What you want to try to do with phenomenological discourse, you try to get to this, to the point where the discourse, itself, gets you back, as Merleau-Ponte says, returns you to the experience as we live it, as it presents itself. I realize that, at the heart of qualitative inquiry is the writing, and I think this is also true for other forms of qualitative, not just phenomenology, you know. And the new ethnography, you know, is becoming also very interested in the evocative and even that language they use, evocative ethnography, which is quite fascinating that they are using this phenomenological language. And so, at one point I did an article that I sort of called “From Meaning to Method” rather than method to meaning because, phenomenologically, there is the philosophical method and that is how you can do phenomenology. And then you try to get at meanings of things, right? And so, my, my sense of it is that a very crucial aspect of philosophical, reflective phenomenological thinking and inquiry is not addressed by the very people who do it. They talk about eidetic reduction and all these kind of philosophical notions and these are also treated in the philosophical literature but they don’t talk about writing; they don’t sort of see or acknowledge or make problematic that, um, when we do phenomenological inquiry, actually, this is it, the writing is the thing and what happens in the writing. And there you go, so phenomenology holds intention, the particular, the concrete, the singular, and the universal, the general, the transcendental, the reflective and, in the tension, we can gain these phenomenological insights of what secrecy can be or privacy can be. So, in a way, you can say, what phenomenology is constantly doing is, well, is it making copies or is it making originals? It is not making copies because that is not original. It is not making originals because it is making it of the preconscious, moments of living, right? Chapter 6: Ethnographic Inquiry Professor Clifford Geertz Video-Clip 6.1 So, I grew up in northern California across the bay from San Francisco in Marin County. And I was there for…this was before the Second World War, um, and I was there until.... We were in the countryside in a pretty isolated situation, farming country, until the Second World War in which I then entered the Second World War and served in the Pacific. And I hadn’t thought I was going to college or anything but when I came back out of the war, ah, the GI bill, you know, the GI bill was an American program for college students. You get 4 years of school. So, I decided I could go to college after all and then I asked a high school teacher where to go and he told me about a school in Ohio, a small, liberal arts college, a work/study place called Antioch I went there. And then, and I studied religion, philosophy, not in

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anthropology because they didn’t have it, anyway, and I didn’t know anything about anthropology, at that point. And, then, when I was all ready to go to Graduate School, I had to choose something to go in, and a professor there knew about anthropology and a program that was beginning at Harvard in the Social Relations Department in which anthropology was combined with sociology, psychology, clinical and social psychology, rather than with physical and archaeology, as normally. I thought that was very attractive, so I went there and I got my degree, there. And while I was there, there was a program, a research project, a group research project to send people to Indonesia, which had just become independent, to Java, and so there were about eight of us. Some of them dropped away after a while but six or seven of us got there anyway and we spent two-and-a-half years in a small town in central Java doing a community study. I wrote my thesis on the basis of that, religions of Java. I have had a charmed life in some ways. I have been able to do what I wanted and being reasonably well supported while doing it, so I haven’t, and certainly, overall, I don’t feel that I have failed at anything but I have been…you know, some things I wished I had done differently, as always the case like...but I can’t think of what the hell they would be. But one of the problems now, is again, it is connected with two versions of the theme here, is that I haven’t been back in the field recently, so I don’t have recent data to deal with and I have to figure how to write about different kinds of essays than I usually write because, you know, I am not just back from Morocco or something. I still keep in contact with that sort of situation but I am not doing fieldwork anymore. I will be 80 in a couple of months so, you know, I don’t, I am not ready to spend years in the field anymore. So, ah, you have to constantly shift your persona and your work as it goes on that way. So now I write a lot of reflective work and review work of what has been going on and so on. Video-Clip 6.2 That was the time just after the war, at the beginning of the Cold War, actually, when the United States was terribly interested in trying to understand other countries. It had been isolationist before the war and had been broken down by the war and, right after the war, the United States suddenly found itself, at least notionally, a great power, so, there was much concern with understanding the third world and other places. So, there was a great fashion, one of those areas, what is called “area studies.” People worked in India and South Asia. People worked in Indonesia and South East Asia or North Africa, the Maghreb in Morocco area, and focused on that. And there was money around for it then. There was a lot of it. Now that seems to have died, some, quite some time ago, not died, not a death, but it is much less now. Americans are much more, I think, rather enwrapped in themselves and much less open to the world than they once were. They are involved in some ways but they are not much help to what is going on. So, there is less, there is still money but it isn’t as much and it isn’t as... That was a particularly, about 1950–1960 you know.... You know I would have to look back and see what the dates were. There was a great, there was a foreign area language program, there was all kinds of, there

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were all kinds of money for people who were willing to go out and live in African or Asia and find out what the rest of the world was like. Because, at that point, the United States was interested in.... It wasn’t that it was a mission business, didn’t do that. We didn’t have any connection with the government but it did, it did. The atmosphere was such that the Americans were beginning to learn.... You know, when I was asked to, you talked about, why did I choose Indonesia, I hadn’t heard of it really before. I didn’t know the difference between an Indonesian and a China, and I think most people didn’t. Um, ah, so there was that, that magic moment, magic decade, I guess, when there, there was money for this kind of work and people did it. Ah…. Now I think it is less so, or it is harder to get money, and also there is a kind of.... Well, we can talk about that again. There is a kind of scientism which makes people want to have hypotheses and testing things, and so on. We were much freer to be able to do what we wanted and they were interested in just... When I worked in Indonesia, there was a Harvard team of economists who worked in Jakarta, you know, where I was but… They were very interested in trying to find out what.... You know these were economists, who were very technical economists and made mathematical models and the whole bit. But, they were quite interested in what we found out and I was interested in what they were doing as well. And there was much more of an interchange than there is now. Now it tends to be a kind of science wars going on that you know makes it difficult for, it is harder and harder to justify, or the justification isn’t accepted for doing qualitative research than there once, than there was, then. Now, I don’t want to over do that. People are still doing it and still getting money for it so it is not all closed down, but there was that period from, yeah, I guess 1950 to the early 60s, mid-60s, breaks down with everything else. Breaks down the 60s. Um, there was, it was a golden moment for this kind of research. Video-Clip 6.3 Ah. Well, I think actually culture is what anthropologists spend most of their time trying to clarify. When I came into anthropology there was a kind of cake of custom notion, it was, culture was all learned behaviour. And there is nothing wrong with that. A lot of people still operate with that, rather simple thing, you know. There is genetically determined and there is learned behaviour and learned behaviour is euphemized as being culture. It is cultural. As I say, it is not that that is wrong, it is just that it so broad and so diffuse that I wanted to make it, not only me, the whole generation of people, wanted to make a little bit more explicit and narrow, and more narrowed in the sense of “focused” ideas, so it didn’t, was that we had more than one concept to the whole discipline. Well, I think because of a feeling of a turning away from the earlier monographs which, I say, were all in third person and people just described culture and they say the Hopi do this and the Zuni do that and the Kwakiutl do this and somebody else does that and the culture was, then, a sort of a cake of custom notion. When we got into, as me and a lot of other people did, to trying to see culture as distributed, to see it as multiply focused, and to see it as not integrated. The lines between one culture and the next were not as sharp; they fused into each other. We felt we needed a more specific kind of concept.

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For me, not for everybody, but for me that meant turning toward the whole problem of meaning and thinking of culture as people’s symbolic structures that give meaning to their lives. I may have been influenced in that direction because I started off working, as I said, on religion. In Java there was a Hindu, a Muslim and a sort of animistic element, all mixed together in various kinds of proportions, which I tried to sort out and reintegrate in my thesis and a book that was published on religions in Java. So, I needed a concept that was a little bit narrower, so we could have some other concepts beside just one sort of master, and you could no longer say things like culture made him do it, sort of thing, you know. You had to really think about how meaning structures were assembled, how they were put together, how they were taken apart, how they clashed, all those sorts of things. And that, at least in my view.... And I think this is generally about different views of exactly what they mean by culture. But there has been a great deal of discussion about this. But it gives it a concept with some edges to it and not just a sort of generally diffuse sort of, as I say, Kwakiutl do this and Zuni do that so.... One of the big shifts in anthropology, as I said, came after the war when anthropologists, who had been working with tribal people, very simple people, suddenly were confronted with large civilizations and countries, which were becoming independent. Actually, next year at the Institute, here, we are going to have a year of, a thematic year, of people coming who are working on what happened to the third world 50 years after. And, so, it is going to look at, it has been about 50 years since the Bandung Conference and when the third world sort of formed the non-aligned movement that came into being. Yeah. Well it is harder to do anthropology. Now, too, you have to get.... Sometimes, they try to apply, um, procedures which work well enough for psychology, or something, to anthropology, so they want you to, for example, get release forms from your informants and you can’t, you couldn’t work that way. I mean, people won’t sign a release form. I said you go and talk to them and you get to be friends, and if you put a thing in front of them and they would say, I am not having anything to do with it. So it makes it, to convince people that this, that plus…. There is that and there is also the business of is it really scientific? There is a lot of obsession about that, a kind of spiritual hypochondria about.... So, between the two of them, between having to pass review boards, and we do have to do that, and that is good. And, I think, in one sense it is good. Anthropology is part of what has happened in the last 20 or 30 years, is anthropology has become.., anthropologists have become more self-conscious about what they are doing and then the validity of it.... And the ability to speak for somebody else, which is not what we are trying to do. We are trying to get them to speak for themselves. But it is a, it is an issue and it has become a very rooted issue in anthropology about, about you get everything from extreme spiritual hypochondria which people won’t move because they are afraid...that it is illegitimate and it is a waste of West study in the East and we are studying down and [so] on…. I don’t think that is all wrong. I mean, I think one has to be self-conscious about what one is doing. I think we can overdo it and get to the point where one doesn’t do anything. I could be quite happy to justify my work in contemporary moral terms but it is, that has

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happened and you get a great deal of, sometimes, over-reflection of world dilemmas of the sort which are probably not very real. And then, neglective moral dilemmas, which are really real and that you just pass over. Anthropology is a morally perilous enterprise and there is that question of who/why you do this and what grounds am I going to do it on and who am I to say what they say and so on and all you can do is face up to it and try... One of the things I have always tried to do is to write, in not exactly the first person, but to write at least in a recognizable style so it is clear who is talking and, then, it is to be taken with the usual grain of salt when…. So, I don’t, I don’t represent myself as an omniscient narrator about Java. I say I talked to X and X said this. It is a little bit closer to being, to being, ah, honest, anyway, I hope. Right after the war we were.., the United States was much more interested in what other people thought and it was the time of third world revolutions and new countries were coming into being and the United States was much interested and that sort of waned a bit. Now, it is, sort of, very self-consciously about to change the world in our own image and so on.... I don’t want to get into contemporary politics but I always seem not at all happy with the direction, the main direction of contemporary politics in the United States. And it isn’t toward understanding people, it is sort of trying to make them into our own image so we can understand them as us, and it is…. I mean, I can’t imagine people going into a society like the Iraqi one with less knowledge about what it is all about than we have had. Now, that doesn’t mean that anthropologists can solve all the problems or anything of the sort, but without some sort of.... I mean, it took them a long time to discover the difference between Shiites and Sunis.... you know, they could have…. They could have thought about that before because a lot has been written on Shiites and Sunis. Well, yeah. I think the main doubts that people put forth when you do this kind of work is; is it is objective; is it scientific? Is it, you get a lot of that. Again, how do we know what you say is so? What kind of evidence for this is there? And, ah, particularly scientism sort of reigns supreme; you do get this kind of um, critique. How do you know your interpretation is valid and has any grounds? And that is a real question. I am not trying to reject it but, ah, ah, as I said, try to answer it by, with the way I write and what I have to say and...um, and, but I think there has been a lot of comment and concern about what a good interpretation is like, how you can tell a good one from a bad one. And we have all written about that and written about our own…. It makes our work more self-reflective than it was. I mean we.... Now my “clear” is written from a certain subject position and people realize that, and then it is foregrounded.... Again, when I started on anthropology, most, almost all anthropological monographs were written in an omniscient third person kind of way so it was just, I mean Evans-Pritchard was a great anthropologist but he never spent much anguish in his press over what he was saying. He was very clear and this is it, this is that. Do I believe this, nor believe that? Do they do this, or do they do that? I am not saying that to put him down, because he was such a great anthropologist but that kind of style now is less…, you get away with it less. You have to really sort of say, “Well I talked to X and X said this and then Y said that, which wasn’t the same thing,” and, ah, and you work at it that way in a much more, ah, at least I try to, ah, sensitive way. More than that, I don’t see what you can do, ah, but there is, there is

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a split in anthropology, and I think of the social sciences generally, between people who are, really want to make it into a science on a model of physics or something of that sort of thing. And people like myself; again, we all vary. They don’t necessarily all have my views but they have this kind of approach, which is to say that, ah, each discipline and each kind of work has its own standards and its own way of doing things, and trying to justify those and say what we are saying. Again, anthropology tends to follow the flag, as we say.... It is now, it was a time when, again, anthropology grew up. There has been a lot of discussion on this. It grew up in a colonial period when, you know, again, the people were just objects. I mean, they were, ah, ... ah…. and eh.... The Javanese or the Moroccans, or so on, were not part of the discourse, they were just quoted. I mean they were just ventriloquized. Probably, you would go out and ask some questions, come back and give the answers into the cinema roll form. So, they weren’t really a part of world discourse but, ah, they broke into world discourse, not through anthropology but through becoming independent, various civil wars and revolutionary wars and so on. So, both the Moroccans and Indonesians, of course, had violent separations from there, especially Indonesia, as well. Dutch and Moroccan was less violent but there, but it was similar, too. They became independent and began to speak in their own voice. So, you no longer could take that colonial, you know, “I ask the questions, you give me the answers, and I will tell people back home what you said.” Now, you do try to find some way to get them into, to get yourself into a discourse which is not consigned to either the West or non-West and so on, and try to enlarge, as I say, the discourse. So, they no longer can be treated as just objects. They are actors on the world stage and, as I say, it is not anthropology that did that…. I mean it is, as I said, it follows the flag. It changes, ah, when the conditions change, the kind of simply working in these places.... We were talking earlier about getting permission to work here and so on, data access…. But getting access there is what is difficult now. You have to, you have to get it from an independent government. You don’t have a colonial office, and they can just send you, say okay, go do this, and we will send six people to help you and so on. Now you have to convince and, in both cases in Morocco and Indonesia, it was a very complicated and difficult diplomatic task to convince the government, local potentates, to allow you to work and to do what you are doing. So, you have to deal with the army, you have to deal with all kinds of people that... So, the whole situation changed around anthropology. Before the war, anthropologists just went out to some island, you know, and it was, colonial. You would get in a boat, to go and live there and that was that. Ask people questions, come when you want to. It wasn’t that simple but I mean…. but the change in the political conditions under which you operated is radical and of course, right now, it becomes even more perilous because it is difficult, you know, it is hard... I wouldn’t want to try and work in the Middle East right now, it would be difficult but it could be done and people are doing it. I had no trouble in Morocco but, ah, it is.... The world changes and you have to change with it and, willy-nilly, it is no longer that kind of, there are still some people who work on very isolated groups and so on, and do it that way and it is very valuable because these people are disappearing. But I have always worked on very alive societies and politically independent societies. I

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got to Morocco, I got to Indonesia, excuse me, just too.., shortly after independence and Morocco, too, just shortly after independence from Morocco. And so I was plunged into the middle of a political maelstrom that wasn’t mine, it was theirs and I had to figure out how to operate in this kind of a situation. Very much less clear-cut than a colonial situation. Chapter 7: Case Study Research Professor Emeritus Robert Stake Video-Clip 7.1 So, I reached for the world of Clifford Geertz and ethnographers, but it took so long to find those things. Gradually, I saw them. Almost immediately, I saw the classroom observation being in there, for teachers were… in the lounge, as well as in the classroom. It wasn’t necessary.... The discipline of ethnography or of social psychology just wasn’t enough a part of me, yet, to be able to capitalize on those. And finding case study as an answer, or the stepping-stone as a part of evaluation was…was.., very…very.., was very slow for me. I remember Lee Cronbach stepping out of a car in which I was, in the 1960s, ‘66 and saying, “You know, what we really need is a social anthropologist.” It took me ages to figure out what that meant and, gradually…. I didn’t really become a social anthropologist but greatly into the kind of sensitivity and perspective that I admire in social psychologists and cultural anthropologists, and maybe people who are in curriculum studies have that as their scope. The stepping-stone or the building block or the unit that we look for is the episode. The bit of experience, the bit of happening that can be studied and added to, and aggregated and interpreted is the, um, common way for qualitative research to go, which is a trade-off, or a putting down, of the idea of seeing what is going on in terms of variables. As soon as we start saying, “And this is an example of persistence or cooperativeness or reasoning,” we have moved into the quantitative world, the quantitative world. And whether we just do simple comparisons.... “This is more an example of cooperation than this one over here,” the further we get into some refined metric and looking for correlations and the like, we are already into the quantitative world so.... Variables on the one hand as a stepping-stone, episodes, instances, happenings on the other side as the qualitative stepping-stone. Video-Clip 7.2 When I think of case study, I almost directly think of studying the case in which we have a substantial interest in the case intrinsically, in the case itself. We care about it. It is our, it is our client, it is our case in a nursing situation, or a social work situation. Many of the sociologists think, “What is it a case of?” How is this case going to help us understand other cases? How can we use this in the traditional social science way of understanding macro systems? I am a small-town person myself. I say that is not nearly as important, not nearly as challenging for us than to

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understand the individual, individual case, child, teacher, or national medical, education system, is an individual case, too. Not to generalize to other cases but to particularize, to find out the complexity, the situationality of the case, that we have selected or has been selected for us. Now, most of my students are going to want something that is respectable in their discipline to their committee, and they are going to want to be simultaneously, or with priority, studying an important educational questions—singular—educational question, or social work question, or um, park district question, or something that their field considers to be as respectful in a.., a research oriented campus as it can be. So, I have called that instrumental case study and use it as a concept, frequently, in my classes and advisement I do with doctoral students and others. But, ah, I keep wanting them to think about the intrinsic case, partly for what enables them to do in terms of general research thinking. If they only do subordination of a case to a general research question, they are less likely to see the special field of the biographer, or the special concern of the social worker, who has the most difficult case to try to come to understand. A case is something with boundaries, something that has an integrity and an internal operation of some kind, often with goals and aspirations, often with a sense of “Am I on the right track?” self-reflectiveness or whatever. And, yet, I will accept, um, a curriculum as a case or an innovation in a school district as a case. Sometimes, it is hard to find those mental qualities to such matters, such cases but, ah, even there we find people, who are advocating the case and opposing the case and the like, and it is their mental conditions and feelings, experiences, that we can look into in order to understand the case, even an abstract case. My students had me experience last week of criticizing, critiquing a case study where a conflict between the superintendent of public instruction in Wisconsin was trying to wrest responsibility away from the University of Madison, sorry University, of Wisconsin at Madison College of Education, for teacher education. He was saying, “The law requires the state to decide on standards for teacher education. We have deferred to you for a long time but you’ve not done well enough, and now we are going to take some of that responsibility back.” This happened, perhaps, mostly because of the personality of the state commissioner, but it happened and turned out to be a nice case study that the student did for a doctoral dissertation and I had my students critique this. And they had a lot of trouble refining the case here, even though the author, Nona Prestine, said, “My case is this conflict,” they were uncomfortable. They would rather think of an adolescent girl as the case or, perhaps, a police officer who has been seconded to the schools to do some kind of drug training as a case, a person, or maybe a group of people, a faculty, perhaps. Those are easier. I pushed them towards taking a case that isn’t a person or a group because I think they will learn more from my course by struggling with the nature of the case and how one can come to understand it than they will by taking the individual. When I wrote the book, The Art of Case Study Research, I was starting to get some of those ideas well in mind. I am still happy with that book but these ideas still are changing.

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Video-Clip 7.3 It is difficult for us to se... to sell the idea of case study because there is an appetite for answers, explanations, um, bases for improving systems that we shouldn’t be promising with, with case studies. I have no doubt that a policy maker or board or an executive is better off with an examination of some cases, whether they’re done by a researcher or not, but to dig into, “What are the transactions? What is going on, here? What are the problems and why can’t we get them solved?” So, I think that we have a lot to offer but, still, it is hard to sell the idea that, by sticking so close to an individual case, not leaving to try to reform the system has soon as you have an insight, sticking to getting a deeper understanding of how the situation is causing things to be this way and not likely to be transportable. The right answer can, then, be somewhere else. So, what does a person generalize from this kind of research? It is not the specific tactic that seems to be working or preventing good work in the situation, but the idea that there is a confluence of community and personal and political and economic influences that are playing upon the situation. The details aren’t replicable, but the complexity of these forces are replicable. Now you find that in quantitative research, too. It isn’t that quantitative people aren’t capable of drawing from any of these forces, and they do. But, ah, and they manage to get a diversity of those cases built into their research that is extremely valuable for understanding limits of generalization and the power of generalization. But the experiential account that we get from a case study or qualitative research of a similar vein is just so necessary. How things happen over time and the degree to which they are subject to personality, and how they are only gradually perceived as tolerable or intolerable by the communities or the groups that are involved is, is so important. So, I think we have got a lot that we share with other researchers but it.... For example, I mentioned biography; a biographer is able to.... A biographer is able to capture some of that same sort of thing because he or she is doing case studies. They call it something else, I wouldn’t be surprised, if we posed our rules for them but they are very much sensitive to the same phenomena. If I wasn’t clear before in my definition of what is a case, I try to draw a line against the phenomenon as a case. So, the phenomenon of, ah, of teacher professional development or an individual or a collective basis is not what I would consider a proper case to study with these, the methods we have. There are other methods that are better. As soon as you go to a particular, a professional person participating in professional development or go to a professional development program, where it is defined in space and time and personalities, then you have got a possibility for a case study. But the general phenomenon, which is more akin to what social science is all about, isn’t so suited to the case study research that we have. It is much more particularistic, much less seeking the generalizable. Putting the criticisms in my own words, I would say that we are inadequate in our explanations as to how valuable case understanding is. So our rationale, our justification is poorly expressed and may be too difficult to express. It is such a natural part of everybody’s life that they come to say, “Here is something that is really

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powerful,” when it hasn’t been powerful in a way that they appreciate. But it isn’t difficult when we start with an example, a portfolio, when we say, “Look at this case, on this autistic, the child with autism here and how the actions of the mother and the change of view of the teacher has made mainstreaming this child a possibility; whereas, a year or two ago the possibility didn’t exist.” When you get into dramatic cases like that, other people will say, “Well, isn’t this what teachers’ stories in newspapers are for? Why would we have an academic discipline to do the job that expert reporters can do?” And, so, we go on with trying to think of what is different about the more disciplined and less entertaining way, when we were just complaining before that it was engaging, entertaining to hear about this particular case.... I don’t think we do have, um, I don’t think we have made our case and I think that it is our responsibility, not our audiences or our critics responsibility to say, “Okay, we don’t need a better justification than that.” I don’t know whether I have changed with, either with regard to the presenting of the rationale for case study or making the case better for a research enterprise that so accepts impressions, stated in private, stated in conceptualizations or just plain stories that people have to tell us. Even if it isn’t triangulated, I often want something to be included in the study. And it is my job to delegitimize it by saying, “In an off moment, here is what this person thought about,” even though, in other instances, the person appeared not to believe that, at all. Still, this is what she said. Now, I think we have gotten better at trying to frame things that way, but it is still not good enough. We have such a strong correlation existing between the... between what people who choose case studies do, and there are two sides to that. We find the consistency among so many case researchers who do try to get at these impressions or these data, these experiences, the contextuality and all. This search for those concepts belongs to, by correlation, case research but I want to keep the definition of a case being anything that is looked at in great detail, whether it is inspecting a ball bearing or whether it is looking at the university campus in terms of a number of students who are from in-state and those who are out of state, and faculties in terms of whether or not they are trained to teach, or not trained to teach, so we categorize lots and lots of things, but we are always trying to understand this university in our institutional research task and I mean that’s case study without following these more impressionistic and more situational, you know, ethics. Chapter 8: Arts Based Research Professor Elliot W. Eisner Video-Clip 8.1 Probably the most important influence on my life is my engagement in the visual arts and I should say my engagement in the visual arts as a child. As a result, my skill as an artist quote, unquote, grew and I got some recognition in school. I got acknowledgement and took art courses in high school all 4  years with some

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wonderful teachers. This was really important to me because I graduated in the 20th percentile of my high school graduating class. That wasn’t too sharp. I would never get into any selective university today. I didn’t get into a selective university, then. I went to the School of the Art Institute of Chicago; the point being that I was engaged in art and that called a qualitative world to attention for me. And that grew and developed and provided a lot of satisfaction but also influenced my thinking and my saying where the arguments and debates that ensued in my house when my father, in particular, was entertaining our relatives. They generally, after about 15 or 20 min, get into political arguments. So these political arguments stimulated me because I could see the glint in their eye, the flush in their cheeks when they were so engaged. They didn’t know that much about politics but that didn’t stop them. So, what happened was I discovered the joy of intellectual process in my home as a young man. And when I finished high school, I, as I said, went to the School of the Art Institute of Chicago to study painting and, after being there for a year-and-a-half, I decided to leave and to try to make my way in the world of commercial art; so, I became a commercial artist. It was strictly technical, so I transferred out of that job, went back to college and got a degree at Roosevelt University both in art and in education. Why education? I liked the issues that were being discussed in the educational field. And I had the good fortune to go to a really fine school of design, which is the Institute of Design at the Illinois Institute of Technology. The Institute of Design was an offshoot of the German Bauhaus and they prepared people to think in fresh and new ways about any kind of a design problem. And I went to the Chicago public schools as an art teacher. I didn’t really understand what I was doing. I was teaching art but what did that mean? So, I decided I needed more education and I found it at the University of Chicago. Video-Clip 8.2 Quality, in the vernacular, often means something of high value; like, this is a quality hotel room or this is a quality meal, or this is a quality this or a quality that. That is not what I am talking about. I am talking about qualities such as redness, hardness, softness, strength, weakness, et cetera, et cetera. So that a painter, for example, will take qualities of line and color, and texture and composition and put them together by arranging them in ways in order to effect the experience of somebody else. And, in so doing, aspects of the world are made vivid that otherwise would be dormant. So that the Rodan or Cezanne or a Renoir, to take very important artists, the world begins to look like the image because the image illuminates aspects of the world that, otherwise, would not be seen. So, art does not always imitate life; life imitates art. The same is true in the sciences, incidentally. If you learn a theory, you begin to see the world through the portals that that theory provides. People who make those theories, we call scientists. People who make qualities, we tend to call artists. I don’t want to draw a distinction between art and science at this level. In fact, I am pointing out that both art and both science are people who make structures that affect the way we see and come to know.

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Some people are better served by being able to write a certain kind of narrative, for example, or to make films or videos, for example. I mean, the project that you are now engaged in is premised on the assumption, even if it is not articulated, that the visual image and the details of expression are going to be as informative, or almost so, as a text that could also be made of this. In fact, you could do a project where you take the interviews or an interview or two and make a typescript out of it and use the same in visual material and to see what differences it makes in the experience and understanding of viewers. Whether you use film or video or text. Ah… So, there is a change, a growing awareness that the culture provides different forms of representation that facilitate certain kinds of understanding that promote certain kinds of awareness that are useful for different purposes. I got this idea that the development of perception was really important and that, what does it mean to develop perception? Well, it means to become increasingly differentiated, perceptually; to be able to see what is subtle and significant in some domain, not in all domains. It is too much to ask for. And, then, that is one half of it. But the other half is how do you transform what you become accustomed of, aware of into a public object that is sharable with others. Well, that requires language. It doesn’t.... It requires more than language but, to keep things tidy for the moment, it requires the ability to articulate in ways that make it possible for others to notice. Years ago, I was doing some work for the National Endowment for the Humanities and I was in Poughkeepsie, New York, and I went to visit some middle school there. So, I walked into the school, introduced myself to the woman who was manning the gates of the main office and said, “I am here from Stanford University to see the school. I think you have noticed that I was coming?” “Yes, indeed.” She said, “Can we escort you to the room that you are going to be observing at least one of them?” “Fine.” And before I was dropped off, she said to me, “At the end of the day when you are through, our principal would like to talk to you.” So I spent the day in the school. At the end of the day, I went to see the principal. The principal says, “Would you sit down? Sit down.” He started talking education and the principal says to me, sometime during the conversation…. He says, “You know, schools are places with very few soft surfaces.” I said, “My God.” Schools are places with very few soft surfaces. That is a knockout. I had been in schools all my life and I never noticed that schools were places with very...; but, in fact, they are. The seats are hard. The wood on the floor is typically hard. It is not designed like a home. It doesn’t look anything like this living room. It is hard, rather than soft. It is geometric, rather than curvilinear. Once you become aware of that possibility, you being to look at schools. I didn’t have to go out and check schools out because I had been to schools and I know that his observation was astute. Once you recognize the astuteness and accuracy of that observation, even though it might not be perfect accuracy, then you can begin to ask other questions, “Well how did schools get to look this way?” The point is, his observation and his ability to connect this to soft surfaces is a way of becoming conscious. So, I would like to see an expansion of the forms of representation that are made available to students in order to get at what counts in schools. Now, that has implications for teacher education. People need to know how

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to use a camera, how to make a film, how to edit appropriately, et cetera. I think we should be less preoccupied with tight little data sets and more open to the kinds of possibilities that rich forms of description make possible. The novel is not an inappropriate vehicle to use as a form for a dissertation, for example. An idea that drives many people up a wall but I think it will be coming, over time, that there will be an expansion of the ways in which people do their doctoral work and the forms that it takes because, when you have a useful tool, it opens up possibilities that you wouldn’t normally see with conventional resources. So, I would like to see students being encouraged to, as they say, work at the edge of incompetence in order to create images that reveal. We have reduced education to schooling and we have reduced schooling to test scores, which are appropriate for some things but not for everything and certainly not for most. Now, there are complications involved and those complications pertain to the fact that it is time consuming. It is much easier to evaluate kids, inadequate though it might be, with… ah… instruments that can be machine-scored than to write insightful observations and narratives with respect to the performance of a student. Now, I would feel a lot better if the people leading the parade for bubble-­ filling forms for testing if they said we’re not entirely happy with this procedure, but it is the most efficient one that we have got right now. But that is not what happens. What happens is that those test scores are reified and taken as significant indicators of education. They also are predicated on the assumption that, in an effective school, everybody is headed to the same destination. Video-Clip 8.3 As far as DBAE is concerned, DBAE goes back—that’s Discipline-Based Art Education—to some material that was written about by Jerome Bruner, Manuel Barken and myself in the 1960s. It is predicated on the idea that, if you are going to build a program in the visual arts, you had better make it possible for kids to learn in four different domains. One is.., one domain is the domain of making an art object of some kind, a painting, a drawing, a lithograph, a ceramic piece, a sculpture, et cetera. So, one kind of experience you want them to have is getting into the material and making something that has aesthetic quality. The second domain has to do with becoming critical, having them learn how to see and talk about what they have made and what other people have made. A third has to do with understanding that art is a part of culture and that, if you want to understand a work of art, whether it is contemporary or ancient, you need to know something about the culture in which it was made. And finally, the fourth thing is that, since people argue about art, such a rich and open concept, it is important to have some background in aesthetic theory. Can a work of art be ugly, for example? How do you justify your conclusions about the value of a work of art? So, you have these four domains, production, criticism, art history and aesthetics and you build a curriculum around these four. They can be integrated or they can be independent but these are the four domains and there should be some sense of sequentiality among the learning tasks involved. That was a huge difference in attitude towards what you teach in the arts. If you apply those four principles.... I am

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going to show you something, to science, what you get is, give kids an opportunity to make science, give kids an opportunity to critique science, give kids an opportunity to understand that science is a part of culture, give kids, finally, an opportunity to talk about, and debate and discuss the nature of scientific thought. What makes a statement scientifically valid, for example? If you design a program in science that looks that way, I will take it. What I am interested in thinking more and more about is the way in which aesthetic experience or “heart” as experience are not owned by the fine arts but occur in law, medicine, as well as architecture, painting, dance, but they occur in principle or can occur in principle whenever individuals have intercourse with the world, so that we have been interviewing people who work in different professions to get them to talk about those moments in their work life that afford them the opportunity to have aesthetic experience. People who love their work often love it because of aesthetic experience, not just because they get paid, because they like who they are when they do it. They like what happens when they are engaged in it. So, it is taking the concept of art or the aesthetic and broadening it to any kind of human activity in which the consequence of engagement is a certain character of experience, a certain quality of experience and, it seems to me, that is probably one of the most important outcomes of schooling—to teach kids how to fall in love. Chapter 9: Grounded Theory Professor Barney Glaser Video-Clip 9.1 My past is very clear, as it sources grounded theory. I was raised in a wealthy home with a complete staff. My parents barely knew I existed but the staff was wonderful, although they obeyed. So, what most people suffer from in the normal upbringing is the valuation of parents; sometimes good, sometimes bad. As you can read in my reader what happens when the valuations are bad because their lives are. I was never evaluated. I always had my own thoughts, pro and con, and they never evaluated me. So, that’s why I could do grounded theory, because I was not afraid of negative evaluations at the age of 30, 28 or whatever, whereas most people have some level of performance evaluation anxiety…. And I was also in charge of my own education, and being super brilliant—you can take that off the tape—I decided, when I went to school and what schools I went to. At the age of five, I went in to my mother, who was busy doing what she ever did, I don’t know, because we didn’t have much of a relationship. I said, “Isn’t it about time that I go to kindergarten. I’m five years old.” She said, “I don’t know. I’ll send a maid over to check.” So, she went over and checked and they said, “Yes, he should be in kindergarten.” And, ever since then, I’ve always decided on what schools I went to and, since I’m smart, I always got straight “A”s and I’ve always just been in charge. No one said, “You should go here; you should go there.” And, I always knew what I wanted out of the school that I went to. Now, I lived in a neighbourhood

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where there is a beautiful big high school. I said, “No, I have to go to Lower Albany, where the intellectuals go. So, I went across town, every day. I went to Stanford…. I went to Paris and studied for a year—literature—and read constantly…. So, when I came back to America, I was very fluent in French, and I was drafted and they put me in the French army for a year…. I went into the French army. It was wonderful. I translated for colonels and generals, and I saw secret stuff that I didn’t want to see because I wasn’t cleared. And it was amazing, the weapons I saw. At any event, when I got out, I was afraid to go back in the American army because I didn’t know it…. In the meantime, I had lost the feeling of the French literature because I joined the world of preconceived happenings, which I could not relate to the real world…. As I studied at Columbia, remember, I am always in charge of my own education; I never joined group studies…. So, when I got to Columbia, after the army, I started studying and I started running into what I have been learning all my life, I wasn’t in control. And I was asked to learn things that didn’t relate to reality. On a grounded theory basis, it related to a reality, but not the reality of reality…. My whole defense was why Robert Merton’s famous paper on recognition was wrong. I had the data; I had the theory coming from the data; it was just wrong…. But, then, I realized, you know, that what I was discovering was the beginnings of grounded theory, in the sense that all you had to do was pay attention to what was going on…. And, then, I met Anselm. And he took me on the “dying project.” Oh, when I moved out here, he hired me. And this was the same thing. I said to him, “Look at the data. Who gives a shit what you’re supposed to find?” And he was thrilled. Video-Clip 9.2 Everybody was amazed by the book because it revealed something no one had ever thought of—awareness context and social interaction and how people struggle; and everybody was saying, “How do you do it? How do you do it, Anselm? How do you do it, Barney?” And I said, talking to Anselm, “Let’s write a methodology on how we deal with the awareness of dying….” In that instance, I said, “This is a perfect book to write a methodology for because we have the data. It’s not a “think-up” methodology. We have the data, in two ways. How we did it and the product, which is great.” We became very famous…. And that’s where grounded theory came from, over time, just paying attention to reality, being in control, and it’s not OCD, obsessive compulsive control, it’s just sort of seeing what is really going on and responding to the reality of it. Now, Discovery was very famous, immediately…. Grounded theory is not a qualitative methodology, it is a general methodology used on any kind of data…. Grounded theory actually has three dimensions; (1) a methodology, (2) a product that people really like, but (3) a jargon that is grounded. And, the jargon, as a contribution, is way ahead of the product and the method…. There are multiple grounded theories out there. But they aren’t, because they don’t have the meaning of the jargon. They don’t do the method systematically, as it’s prescribed. But they use the jargon to decide what they’re doing. And, then, they twist the jargon and there is this whole thing about constructive… What is it..? Constructivism?

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Video-Clip 9.3 It’s simple enough to just tell people to use the constant comparative method and let patterns emerge. But, as I read books, everybody is referring to how they got “gamushed” trying to get to a pattern. So, I’ve been collecting lots of data on… It just occurred to me, getting out of the data, getting to immersion, using the constant comparative method is so “gamushed” by life circumstances. I don’t know. Well, I have many variables on what does it; supervisors, colleagues, spouses, lack of intelligence, you know, or short-circuiting to the description. Someone should write a book on how to get out of the data and get conceptual…. Most of the qualitative data work is descriptive. They don’t know how to go conceptual..., or conceptual description. One concept may describe it for chapters. So, it’s there, but it.., unless you are doing rigorous grounded theory, and you have to follow the steps rigorously, it’s amazing. Grounded theory is a very rigorous method, which makes you very free. So, it’s paradoxical. If you follow it rigorously, you will be free to be very creative and you will have your “Aha!” moments, your “Eureka” feeling, but most people get short-­ circuited into qualitative description, and because it’s called grounded theory…. All research is grounded.… Sshh…! I mean, I thought that was the definition of research, you know, it’s like…but how it’s how you ground it and it can be used with quantitative data, too. It can be used with any kind of data…. Because, everywhere you look there’s patterns that can be conceptualized. There’s always patterns and, even if there isn’t any, that’s a pattern. But mostly, I would say, in all social life there is patterns. And, therefore, there’s patterns in quantitative data; there’s patterns in visual data…. So, there’s a lot of people who do grounded theory, normally, because (1) they’re conceptual, and (2) once they get on the conceptual level, they are caught. Now, I don’t know how rigorous they are, but they tend to do grounded theory very normally because of their high intelligence and their conceptual ability…. So, this is the reversibility—What you’re doing, which is in my book, which you’ve read carefully, backwards I hope— it’s the reversibility of the interchangeability of indicators. So, you get a pattern based on a pattern emerging out of the interchangeable indicators, right? Then, you see the pattern. Then, when you take it out, you reverse it and pick up other indicators, which get you back into life…. You have to be careful of “Core Fever.” The general implications are so great you start seeing it everywhere and it may not apply because it always has to be grounded in the reversibility of indicators…. But, you have to tolerate confusion and others have to tolerate your confusion. And then, all of a sudden, you see it clearly. But preconscious processing is very strong and very fast. It’s much faster than conscious, and it’s much better than a computer because your mind is always making sense of things.

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Chapter 10: Action Research Emeritus Professor Stephen Kemmis Video-Clip 10.1 So, I grew up in Sydney in a pretty comfortable middle class home. I, ah, I think probably one of the things that might be relevant in some ways to what I.., to what my later work became was the great emphasis of my father in particular; consideration for other people was a very, very big value with him. He was pretty agnostic, my mother a pretty Christian sort of person and my older siblings were rather religious. It didn’t stick for me, I regret to say; so, I was rather different. I went to a private school, a boys’ school, as often happened for middle class boys, at that time. And, while I probably showed some promise when I was in primary school, I must say I was just slightly south of hating school. I really didn’t like school much, at all. I guess I was bored, I suppose, and not very confident, not very comfortable with school and I thought school probably needed remediation and, certainly, many of my teachers I had not much love or care for. But some, certainly, influenced me. But, I wandered my way through school, increasingly interested in playing the guitar and being a folk musician and, somehow or other, managed to scrape into Sydney University and get a place there. And mostly, my preoccupations there were playing the guitar and singing folk music and I think one of the things that was a very big influence, at that time, was the civil rights movement in the United States. It was having a massive impact in Australia, as well, and those were very, very formative experiences for me. Another one was the Vietnam War. But, we were still some, some years before the flowering of the women’s movement in, and only the beginnings, at the time—1970, ’71—the women’s movement was beginning to get a precarious toehold at the University of Sydney, but things were not changing as rapidly as they might and our very masculinist culture was still, uh, very different. So, young men like me, who did well at university, were regarded as bright young men to whom the earth must be given. And the women students might become, might be offered jobs as tutors and so on at the university but it wasn’t expected that they would go on to be professors or anything. But that privilege, the privilege of being in the right place at the right time, is something that, ah, actually made a better me, very greatly, in terms of questions of social justice. The repudiation of that became a kind of cause for me. And, it was, in an odd way, a radicalizing experience and it certainly fed part of my interest in interpretive methods in educational, as well. Video-Clip 10.2 And it happened that I struck Bob Stake, the man who had been surrounded by transactional psychology in Princeton and had seen the world, ah—it all depends on your point of view, how you understand the world—who had written a brilliant doctoral thesis that I read as a monograph of psychometrics on certain parameters of learning curves as measures of intelligence. And here I was, encountering him as

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he was losing faith in those measures and wanting to see beyond. I gave a seminar the other day, here in Illinois, on, um, can self-evaluation be scientific or, more provocatively, can evaluation which does not involve self-evaluation be scientific? To see beyond the statistics and into the people and social groups and societies that are to be understood, seemed to me to be a profound question. Having grown up in an empiricist positivist view of science, it was, ah, it was a massive thing to throw it off. So, to see things differently, to have the furniture of my own brain moved around, concepts juggled and pushed aside, and different ways of seeing, that was, ah, to me, a wonderful and liberating experience. And I have had it, I don’t know, six times or something like that in my life, where I have had to give up where I understood the world before and see things from a different perspective. So, I started reading Wittgenstein, also, while I was here and that was another massive challenge to my accepted ways of understanding the world. But, I suppose the next one, the next one, most interesting for me, and I have for some real—I was beginning to think deeply about the question of theory and practice, while I was at the University of East Anglia, where I went from the University of Illinois. Isn’t this something we are interested in, in creating a just society? Isn’t this what we are trying to do with the Vietnam War and, and un-making decisions made by government for pragmatic reasons and reasons that we’re misunderstanding the world that they are in? Couldn’t we have more science like this? And so, when I left East Anglia and went back to Australia, I began to work on those kinds of questions. And by an odd circumstance, I won’t bore you with the details, I met Wilf Carr and it turned out I was replacing him at Deakin University and he had come back, and we had become firm friends and colleagues, and so forth. So, we conceived, over the years that followed, a book for education about action research using the Habermasian theory of human interests as its base, and it turned out to have been more important than Wilfred and I ever imagined, and to have had more impact than we’d ever imagined. I don’t have any idea how many copies it had sold and it certainly hasn’t made any of us millionaires, but it has never been out of print since 1986 in the Falmer version. It is very weird for a book to do that, very weird indeed. And, if one had to write it now, it would have to be a completely different kind of book. But we used that theory and knowledge constitute interest as the backbone of the book. Here is a whole lot of educational research that is of a technical paradigm. Here is a whole lot of action research that is of a technical paradigm. It is just improving things, getting the job done, solving problems. Then, there is all of this education research that is of a practical character, trying to inform and educate and illuminate, trying to let people see into other people’s lives, case study research, interpretive research, things like that. And the task, it seems to me, of qualitative research is to engage otherness and to realize that it is all selves in relation to others, and our task is to reach for one another in this intersubjectivity and this conversation between us, in which we can make sense of each other and the world. And those things are matters literally incomprehensible to a positivistic, behaviouristic, empiricist social science.

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Video-Clip 10.3 The Habermasian theme was a massive new way of seeing. And the question was, could we find a way of making this emancipatory research work, this emancipatory action research? Could we build examples and so on? And there is more to be said about that history but, and it is very, very different sort of circumstance today from in those days, when we were trying to create that possibility. I keep writing lists of key features of action research and I am never quite sure when I have reached the foundations or the essentials. And I think of it, now, the really crucial parts of it are that action research is participatory. No one does action research on anybody else, so the actor is the researcher. The teacher is the researcher, the social worker, the community persons; it is participatory. Part of my critique of the educational research industry was that we are always worrying about the relationships between theorists’ theories and practitioners’ practices, when we talk too little about theorists’ practices and practitioners’ theories. So, it was only by changing practitioners’ theories that we change the world. So, the first thing for me is action research is participatory. In order to do research, I think there is something to do with gathering data or evidence to be reflective about, knowing the consequences of one’s actions, knowing what one has done, trying to represent it, and the consequences. So, to do research needs to be driven in some way by gathering data or evidence about the character and the consequences of one’s actions. And, I think all of this is quite a complicated question. I still think that it is emancipatory, at least in the sense of being self-transformative for both the individuals and the groups. I, I am, I concede that action research is done by individuals, either isolated individuals or individuals working alongside one another, individuals are involved but, since the world and since social practices are socially constructed, to change social practice means changing not just what the teacher does but also what the student does. Not just what the teacher and student do, but the way the parent observes that relationship. People are in social networks and, when one changes action, when one is able to change things, one is necessarily changing various kinds of so-called stakeholders. We can call them people who are linked up with that action and, to do that in a self-understanding way, requires their engagement, somehow or other, in the research process. But the aim is to transform things and the aim is to transform them so that they are, um—let me give you a list. They are culturally and discursively more sustainable. That is, they are not irrational or false, or ideologically driven, so that they are socially and morally and politically more sustainable; that is, they are not unjust and then cause harm or suffering so that they are materially and economically more sustainable. They are not destructive. They are not wasteful, unproductive, so that they are more ecologically sustainable in environmental terms, and whether they are using up the Earth’s resources, and whether they are more sustainable in terms of individual human beings and their resilience and their capacity to live, or whether they, as it were, are wasting their lives or deforming or disfiguring their lives.

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So, for me, action research has that emancipatory impulse to be less of those unsustainabilities, and I don’t believe we can. I used to hope we can change towards the good, towards the rational, towards the true and all that sort of stuff. Now, I believe that now we sort of have to climb, crab-like, out of our holes, away from the darkness of irrationality; away from the darkness of injustice; it’s away from the negatives we try to get. When we think we have got the positives, that is when we get utopian. So, to me, action research isn’t a form of engaged research; it is collective and collaborative. One of the difficulties that was caused by our constantly searching for the essence of action research, and looking for its essence in a certain way, that is to find the method, the one true method. (Coughs.) Probably the real realization of the beautiful action research, the pure action research, the unsullied action research, the one that embodies it all, um, you know, will it have that spiral of plan, act, observe, reflect won’t matter? That never quite works, really. I mean it can, in a general sense, but it’s not like that. Will it be sort of, because it’s driven by data, will it be blah, blah, blah? It doesn’t lift itself out of real life. I find Habermas’s system of micro-theory, system of micro- very, very helpful for understanding the way action research theories work. I think our world is so overly structured in terms of systems, governmentality, performativity, accountability demands, compliance, the regulation, rampant policy-­ making and, you know, I would say, reckless, endless, policy-making and regulation. That social world seems to roll over us like a juggernaut and, for an action researcher, the politics are always crowned by that. For me, one of action research’s most important goals is to find the community of spaces in which people can meet each other and think together and, especially, think in that particular mode that Habermas calls communicative action, where we are aiming at intersubjective agreement, mutual understanding and consensus about what to do; those three things. Now, how can we create conditions under which people can do that? Our action research is in trying to see into what is happening, and what are its consequences and that, to me; this doesn’t happen, you know. We don’t write the proposal in February, get the funding in March and finish the project by November. These are the sorts of things that take a long time. And, this is not the way we ordinarily think about projects and it is very hard to write research proposals that will permit or capture this. But, I am increasingly thinking of action research as—well, it’s a kind of subversive or restless quest to understand things together and to understand together why things are going wrong, because I think things are going wrong in a very, very big way. And, for me, the task of action research is to find ways to have these conversations, not for a feel good reason, that’s not for…, so we understand one another and we are all happy. It is not because consensus is easily reached or disagreement and conflict are easily overcome. Very different kinds of education are needed and it seems to me that an action research project is a way of engaging people together to overcome these kinds of irrationalities and these kinds of problems. Now, does it involve self-transformation for these groups? I believe so, and we have seen examples of it in the Northern Territory, where we’ve worked, years ago. Does it involve collecting data? Yes, it

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creates, it involves people collecting historical data, collecting all kinds of data and trying to interpret their reality, and to write its story and to write different ways of understanding the story. And, does it involve that kind of systematic inquiry made public? Yes, people writing and connecting with one another. But, it doesn’t look like a research paper at the time and it doesn’t look like the need for a proposal and the proposal turns into taking 26 steps and then writing it up and passing it off to a journal. It involves changing the world. And, that’s what engaged research is about; not changing the words, changing the world. The great scientific breakthrough is not the one that is in the pages of a journal that a few arcane specialists will read. The great breakthrough is solving the problem of Indigenous education in Australia, solving the problem of international relations. It is in the world that we want to see these changes made. But, that requires working with people, not working on them. But, action research that does make a difference, I think, is action research that helps people to find other ways of understanding the world. If I think, if I think about, um, that whole Freirian movement of conscientization, so many people learning to read and, simultaneously, learning to understand the social world, that, that is so taken for granted that how it oppresses them is invisible to them, and how Freire and others help people to understand their social location and their language, together. What an extraordinary liberating theme that was and Paulo Freire is one of the fathers of action research. But some of us, ah, are only good at that and not so much good at being engaged in the world. And, so, the question is what changes do we want to make and how do we want to make them? And, for me, that’s, that’s the call to action research. It is not a call that the academy likes. Chapter 11: The Future of Qualitative Research Professor Dwayne Donald Video-Clip 11.1 I think that one of the best ways to understand researchers and the commitments they have is to understand the stories they tell about themselves and who they are. And certainly, that’s something that I’ve paid attention to myself in trying to understand my motivations, my interests. So, I was born and raised in Edmonton, a long time ago now. And I lived in Edmonton most of my life, in the same neighbourhood, actually. And I have pretty deep roots in this place we call Edmonton. In Cree, it’s known as “amiskwaciy.” And so, I come from a family that’s a mix of Cree and Métis, Norwegian, and I think there’s definitely some English and Scottish connections, as well. My Dad’s family is a mix of Cree and Métis, so deep roots in this territory, here, for however long it’s been. And my Mom is the granddaughter of immigrants from Europe. So, I often like to say that the two, sort of, competing stories of the genesis of Canada come into confluence right in my own family…the story of my own family. And it’s had a

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big influence on how I think about what needs to be done in terms of curriculum and pedagogy and my own commitment to education. One thing that I think is also important for people to know is that I descend from specifically from the Papaschase Cree. So, the Papaschase Cree were part of Treaty Six and, in this Edmonton area, here, we’re a well-known band, a fairly large band. And, in the late 1870s, they were my ancestors, the Papaschase Cree, where, a Reserve was surveyed for them, but they never actually lived on that Reserve because a lobbying began to have that Reserve removed. And so, the land was expropriated in the 1890s, finally, and the people were chased away. So, I grew up on the land that was the Papaschase Reserve, but we didn’t know much about that, you know, when I was young; I didn’t learn about that until later. But things really changed quite dramatically for me when I got a job teaching at the Kainai First Nation. And people would…; those are Blackfoot folks, part of the Blackfoot Confederacy; people might know them as the Bloods. They’re commonly known as the Bloods, but they call themselves Kainai. So, I got a job as a high school social studies teacher there in 1993. And I was there 10 years and that experience changed my life. Growing up in the city, there are all kinds of things that I never really had a chance to experience or understand or even think about. And, so, down there, with those Kainai folks, they kind of took pity on me, I would say, and really tried to teach me, and to guide me and support me in trying to figure out who I am, you know, in this work. And I remember, one of the first days that I was first at the school and getting to know people, the superintendent, the late Joyce Goodstriker, who was from the community, she kind of took me aside and she said, “We hired you because we need you to develop curriculum. We want Blackfoot themes, we want Blackfoot history, we want Blackfoot culture.” And they used the Alberta curriculum at that school. So, this was an interesting problem. So right from my first day, I was in the midst of curriculum development, sort of learning as I went, I guess you could say. And so, that really provoked a lot of really good things from me. And I think, with that time at Kainai High School in that community is really what spurred me on to do the kind of work that I do now, for sure. Maybe one last thing I’ll say that would be helpful for people to think about and understand in relation to my work, is that I have two other names besides Dwayne Donald. The first one I’ll mention is a Blackfoot name, it was given to me by an Elder, the late Tall Man, “spitaikoan.” And it was done in a community setting. In Blackfoot you would say “niisto niitsiitsiitaapiiiniihka’sim apioomaahka.” So, my name is aipioomaahka. And that’s…, it refers to somebody who runs a long time for a long distance. But when I asked Tall Man to tell me more about that name and why he chose that name for me, he gave me that name, he went like this with his hands. And he said to me, he said, “You got a group of people who live over here, and you got another group of people who live here.” And he said, “They don’t know each other very well. They don’t talk to each other; they don’t understand each other.” He said, “What you’re going to do in your life is you’re going to spend time with these people, then you’re going to run over here and you’re going to spend time, then you’re going to run back. You bring them closer together.”

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So, when he told me that, of course, that name took on a much deeper meaning for me, about what the work was about, you know? And what he always emphasized to me when he knew about my family and this sort of coming together of different people, he said, “That’s your job. You’re like a translator, you’re like an interpreter, you try to help people understand each other better.” So, there’s that. And then my Cree name, mistahimaskwa nitisiyihkâson, so that’s “Big Bear.” And people who paid attention in history or social studies class will know that name, this sort of infamous figure in the Canadian West. And so, I was given that name by Bob Cardinal. And in Cree culture, bears, specifically Grizzly bears, big bears, they’re connected with healing. So, their work is to heal. And one of the things I’ve learned over the years is that humans and bears are considered to be intimately connected. And one of the reasons is that bears, like humans, have to pay attention to a lot of different things because they’re omnivores, they eat all kinds of different things, like humans do, not just one or a few things. And so, it’s sort of more the ecosystem sensibility and this idea of trying to get everything to work together, which is that healing kind of connotation. So, it’s my view that apioomaahka and mistahimaskwa, they support each other, those two names, and it gives me a lot of guidance on what I should be doing as a professor in a Faculty of Education. I consider myself a student of curriculum studies. I think that my interest and passion for curriculum stems really from the realization that curriculum is an expression of like a confluence of all kinds of different interests and trying to figure out how to balance them. My own sort of working understanding of curriculum is it’s stories we tell about the world and our place in it. And so, I very much have a storied sensibility, I guess you could say, when it comes to curriculum. And so, for many years now, in the Faculty of Education at the University of Alberta, I’ve taught an undergraduate course. It’s called Indigenous Curriculum and Pedagogy. And, really, what I try to do in that class is to get away from informational approaches to Indigenous ways. I mean that’s…, it’s necessary because there’s still a lot that people haven’t had a chance to learn about. But what I really try to focus on is bringing people together, all people, whoever they are, that are in my class; bring them to together to think about how we can teach and learn from Indigenous wisdom and insights. And so, because of the work that I’ve had with Elders and the influences those have had on me, I would say holistic understandings have a big role in how I try to guide people. So, one of the things I’ve puzzled on a lot is this problem—I guess I’ll call it—where, in educational settings, we’ve bought into the notion that, if you want to change the way someone thinks, that you can just tell them that they should change the way that they think. And typically, we do this in the form of lectures and PowerPoint presentations. So, if I think someone is racist, well then, I give them a presentation on anti-racism and then we assume they’re not racist anymore. And I think that’s a highly questionable understanding of teaching and learning. So, I try to think about how I can address the spirit, how I can address the emotion, how can I address the body, in balance with the intellect. And so, a lot of things that I try to do involve, you know, experiential type things. We’ll go outside as often as we can just to try to think about our sources of inspiration, what they might be

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outside of textbooks or PowerPoint presentations. At the graduate level, I would say the courses are more experimental, involving holistic approaches to life and living. And, in Alberta now, part of the Teacher Quality Standard is something they call foundational knowledge of First Nations, Métis, and Inuit. And so, all teachers are expected to engage with those in their teaching. And so, I’ve taught a grad course that, again, puzzles on that—What is foundational knowledge? How would we recognize it if it was in front of us? And what would we do with it?—those kinds of things. Along with some other doctoral seminar courses that have to do with notions of knowledge and knowing. And, really, in those, what I’m trying to do is to, I think, trouble the false universalism that comes with our acceptance of enlightenment-­ based philosophies as providing the answer to any important question we might ask, you know? I would say that the current context is so replete with falsely liberal or falsely universalized liberal philosophies that we’re really challenged to imagine other ways of being in educational institutions. So, that’s my interest in notions of knowledge and knowing is really trying to help people remember what’s been forgotten, I guess you could say. I’ll use a reference here that some people might be interested to follow up on. It’s a book called Masons, Tricksters and Cartographers. It was written by an Australian. I think he might be a social anthropologist, I’m not sure; his name is David Turnbull. This book is… I find it so fascinating because what Turnbull’s project is about is trying to show how insights and understandings always arise in local contexts. And it’s only when they’re connected to power and control that they get taken out of that local context and they’re extended. He calls them “extensions of knowledge spaces.” And they become assertions in a universalized way. And so, there’s a lot at stake in trying to think about knowledge and knowing in those ways. And so, what Turnbull tries to do is to show these examples, these case study examples, of local manifestations of knowledge and how, through issues of power and control, how they kind of morphed and became something different from what their origins were. What he’s interested in, and this is why I’m interested in it, is he wants to try and create an academic context where knowledge systems can speak to each other in equitable ways. And his point is that the only way is if you take them up in their particularities. And so, at the doctoral level, this is something that we’ve experimented with where I’ve asked students, sort of modeling what Turnbull shows, to pick a case study themselves that has to do with their own curriculum interests and to try to trace out the development of this insight and then how it morphs into kind of the extension of a knowledge space, as Turnbull says. I remember one student, in particular, who’s a physics teacher had a lot of fun with that, you know, just looking at physics principles and exploring their history. So that’s just one example of things we’ve done. Some others I could mention in relation to the course on Holistic Approaches to Life and Living, which is led by the Elder Bob Cardinal, guided by him. It’s predicated on the Cree lunar cycle, which has been followed in this area for who knows how long. There are thirteen moons in this calendar or this understanding of time. And each moon has a specific name and the name has to do with what’s supposed to be going on, ecologically, at that time of year. And so, what we ask our students to do is to study the moon, and study

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particular places of their choosing, and to pay attention to what’s going on ecologically in that area at that time, and to figure out a way to keep track of what they learn, what the place teaches them, what the moon teaches them. And, then, to come up with some creative ways to express that. So, these are, I would say, experiments in knowledge and knowing and really trying to expand and enhance how we understand what it means to be a human being. I’m also someone who, when I hear, wherever I am, when I hear someone read that land acknowledgement, it doesn’t really inspire. I don’t know what it would be, it doesn’t inspire good feelings, I guess. It sounds contrived to me. And, at the same time, you know, we have to acknowledge when Justice Sinclair and the other authors of the Final Report of the TRC, when they recommended it as part of the Calls to Action, that institutions do land acknowledgements, it had good intentions. And I do think some good has come from it because people, certainly, across the country are much more aware of it than they had been. But that’s a common question that I have from different people who say “What would you say I should do about this land acknowledgement? Should I read it?” and usually when someone asks me, I say “No, don’t read it.” My advice to people is to speak in their own way about how they understand the life that surrounds them, and how they understand what it means to live in the place where they live. And, really, the acknowledgement, as you kind of mentioned, in kind of parallel to the anthem—it doesn’t really work, it doesn’t really align with the traditional teachings that I’ve had. Maybe I can just say a little bit about that. The teaching, in general, around here, that I’ve been taught is that human beings are the last ones to arrive on earth. And you will hear other Indigenous communities will say very similar things, you know? So, before humans arrived, everything was at work and in motion on earth; everything to support life and living was at work and present. Humans were the last ones to arrive. And, when we arrived, the stories tell us that we didn’t know how to do very much. So, we needed a lot of help. And, so, all these, you know, more than human relatives around here, they taught us a lot. And our task, I would say, as human beings, from that world view, is to try to live your life in a way that honours what we were taught at that time, to try not to forget what we were taught and to follow those, what people around here call “natural law teachings.” And so, when I think about, you know, how do I, what do I say about what it means to live here, my mind goes to that, to honoring life, and thinking about how I am enmeshed in this life that exists around here. At its best, that’s what that land acknowledgement is supposed to do; it’s like an acknowledgment in a humble way. You recognize that your life is dependent on all this life that surrounds you. That’s the way I look at it. I think, when I think about my research trajectory, I’ll call it, one of the things that’s notable is that I think when I began this work as an academic, I was concerned a lot with the critique and one of the central features of my work has been understanding the Fort as a mythic symbol at the height of the creation story of Canada. And so, part of that insight, I guess, that comes from that is that, if you consider the story that’s been told in schools for many generations on the genesis of Canada— and I use that word “genesis” purposefully because it has this sacred kind of connotation to it—this Genesis story, there are certain symbols that are at the heart of

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that story. In other words, there are certain symbols that support the integrity of that story. And one of the most important ones is the Fort. And this insight and its mythic character was actually a gift from our son, who is twenty-two now. But, at the time, we were living in Fort Macleod, which is in southern Alberta. And Fort Macleod is part of that mythic story because, in Western Canada, anyway, what we’re taught is that Northwest Mounted Police were sent west from Red River, what we call Winnipeg now, to try and establish peace in what we call southern Alberta now. And so, in 1874, they established Fort Macleod in the heart of Blackfoot territory. So, this is a place where we lived. And, like a lot of places in Canada, Fort Macleod has a fort recreated as a museum. And children are taken there regularly during the school year. But they also…, it’s been a popular tourist site and it’s right along that busy highway there. And one of the things that they do in summer at Fort Macleod is they recreate the Musical Ride of the Northwest Mounted Police where they get on the horses and they do what they do. And they hire local high school students to ride the horses and do this. So, when you live in town, they play this really annoying music whenever the horses are doing the musical ride. You can’t avoid it. It’s five or six times a day that they play this music. So, this summer that I’m referring to, our son must have been, I think he was two-and-a-half years old. Whenever he heard the music, he wanted to go check out the horses. And I had to go with him. I got really tired of this. But, one night that summer, we were getting ready for bed. I was helping him to put on his pajamas and he said to me, he said, “Dad, I don’t want to be an Indian anymore.” It was hard to hear. It still is hard to say. But like most parents, I was pretty good at not over-reacting, so I took a deep breath and I sat down on the bed and I said, “Oh, is that right? Why is that?” and he said to me, he looked me right in the eye, he said, “Indians always lose.” Yeahhh! It’s stunning, it was then and still is now, that at such a young age he was able to articulate something very clearly, like he went right at it. And you know, he grew up in a household where the message was quite different. He was surrounded by people who gave him a message that was quite different. And, yet, he picked up on this, very clearly. And so, right from the time he was born, the Elders that I knew told me, “Listen to your son when he first starts to speak because he’s going to remember things from before he was born and he’s going to express them. Listen carefully because he’s going to—” So, this is the way I took this. I took this as guidance from my son on what to pay attention to. So, that’s why I studied the Fort. So, I understand the Fort as a social spatial organizer in Canadian society. It teaches us that there are insiders in this society and there are outsiders. And insiders do certain things and outsiders do other things. And it’s like separate realities. And this is considered to be naturalized and necessary, this divide. And it’s been my argument that most of our institutions, including universities and schools, are based on this social spatial organizer. So, universities are like forts. And because of my family background and the mixed heritage I have, I really wanted to bring attention to this logic, what I call colonial frontier logic, and expose its falsehoods, and really try to promote, repair and renew the relationship on different terms, based on my own ancestry and the things that I was taught, you know, from people in my family.

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And so, the research though, I mean…, I think early on as an academic, it was important for that critique to take on the form that it did. And I think it helped a lot of people to draw attention to that dynamic. But maybe about 5 years in, I kind of had an existential breakdown [laughing] because I thought to myself what if someone was to say to me, “Okay Dwayne, forts, colonialism, all of that, it’s very accurate and very important. But what should we do instead?” And I realized, at the time, that I felt like I didn’t have a very good answer for what to do instead. So, I would say slowly I started to turn, I started to leave the critique behind and turn my attention to research that had to do with how we might proceed differently on different terms. And so, I think that’s where a lot of the work with Elders, a lot of the work with holism, thinking about wisdom traditions, thinking about sacred ecology, thinking about Treaty teachings. And all of that really being guided by a Métissage sensibility, I think. That’s the way I understand what I try to do now. Métissage as a curriculum concept was initiated by one of my mentors and friends, Cynthia Chambers, who worked at the University of Lethbridge for many years and retired from there. So, I was a master’s student at the University of Lethbridge. And the first class that I ever had was with Cynthia Chambers. I had no idea who she was when I walked in the room. But that changed quite quickly. Cynthia, over the years, I’ve worked quite a bit with her and so her story, along with the story of Erika Hasebe-Ludt, had a big influence on me, and their encouragement and my own, I guess, articulation of what I think Métissage might be comes from that. So, Cynthia grew up in the Arctic. Her father was a bush pilot, so that’s how she ended up, up there. So, she grew up around Indigenous people in the far North, in the fifties. She actually went to residential school but, of course, it was a very different experience for her as a White child. And she got to go home at the end of each day. But she has these very poignant, of course, and sometimes painful memories of that and who her classmates were. A little later on, when she became a young woman, she married a Dene man named George Erasmus. George Erasmus is a pretty important guy in the Dene nation, in the history of Canada, really. He was one of the main authors of the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples, in 1996. So, Cynthia married into this large Dene family and spent a lot of time with them. Had a few children through that marriage and then, later, had another child with a Cree man. And then, eventually, got a Ph.D. and got a job teaching in the heart of Blackfoot territory. So, as a woman with Scottish and English roots, her question was, “How do I tell the story of my life without choosing sides? And what does that have to do with curriculum?” And so, Cynthia started to look around. And, one of the things I know that she was very influenced by was the ways in which the old First Nations people that she knew, especially the women, the way in which they told stories and the way in which they used language. So, Cynthia became very interested in language, story and agency, and the ways in which people express relationality. So, when she looked around at different concepts and different ideas, she came across this idea of Métissage which, I don’t speak French but of course, it’s a French word, French origins, connected to the uniquely Canadian word “Métis,” although it’s not the same thing. As I understand it, Métissage was, during the French colonial period, was a derogatory term and it was used to refer to the

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mongrelization, what they perceived to be the mongrelization of the French race, as they thought of it then, through intermarriage with people who weren’t French, the colonized or the enslaved. And, so, Métissage had this negative connotation to it. Now, as I understand it, during the post-colonial period, in former French colonies, in particular the French Caribbean, so Haiti would maybe be the best example, some of the intellectuals there co-opted or took back that term Métissage and they used it as a way to describe the generation of culture in that setting. So interesting, because, if you consider that the original inhabitants of a place like Haiti had mostly been killed off, although their blood does remain in some of the people that live there. Mostly the island was taken over by enslaved people, former slaves, who come from all kinds of different places. And so, they were left in that place to try and generate a culture, a language, music, all kinds of different things as a way to express who they thought they were. And so, this is Métissage. And so, Cynthia read about all this and used it as a way to bring it back to Canada to describe a way to express relationality through story, through life stories as they call them and this ethic of relationality that can be told through story. And so, over the years, I’ve been part of what we call a Métissage Collective which is a collective of researchers across the country who are interested in very similar projects. And so, we create scripts together, we perform them in different ways, and we have done that. And, really, I think, it’s trying to combine creativity and relationality and story, commitment to story, as a way to reinvigorate curriculum, how we think about curriculum. Cynthia has a very important paper that I would highly recommend. It’s called “A Topography for Canadian Curriculum Theory” and it was published in the Canadian Journal of Education, I think, in 2001. And in that paper, she asks the question from Northrop Frye, “Where is here?” And so, Cynthia’s version of Métissage, because of her relationships with Indigenous people in different places around the country, it’s been very influenced by connections to place and how, as human beings, how we express our relationships to places as living relatives and how our stories are intertwined with these relationships with places. So, “A Topography for Canadian Curriculum Theory” has to do with thinking about curriculum in its particularities to place, and thinking about languages that belong in particular places, and thinking about languages of our own to describe ourselves, and our cultures, and our identities, interpretive tools that we can use to make sense of all of this. And so, this call for a topography, I think, spoke directly to me as someone who puzzled for a long time on those questions of, you know, who am I, where do I belong, where is here? You know? So, Métissage was something that I really connected with strongly as a master’s student and really guided a lot of things that I did. And through that process, I managed to try and articulate something that I called Indigenous Métissage. So, Indigenous Métissage is not Métissage just for Indigenous people. The way I conceptualized it was as a way to attend to the particularities of place. And so, it’s an inquiry, Indigenous Métissage, I would say, is a research sensibility or an inquiry that begins with an artefact. So, I define artefacts very loosely, very openly. It can be something created by humans, like a map

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or a photograph or some other piece of art, or it can be things that occur naturally in the world that humans interact with. So, the inquiry into Indigenous Métissage begins with an artefact. And we have to understand that artefact as connected to a particular place. So, it belongs in that place; that’s where it makes sense. And then, the third part, so artefact, place, Indigenous Métissage is focused on Indigenous Canadian relations and trying to inquire into the difficulty of that relationship and creating stories for us to understand the relationships differently, to understand them in their complexities. And to, I guess, use those to guide new stories about this country and what it means to live here. Separate from, I guess, what I was taught when I was in school. I did publish a paper in the International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education, I think it might have been in 2011. It’s a paper called Indigenous Métissage: Decolonizing Research Sensibility. And then, there’s also a paper that is, I guess I thought of it as an example of Indigenous Métissage. It’s published in the Manitoba First Nations Educational Resource Journal, I think it’s called First Nations Education, in 2009. And that had to do with things called Forts, Curriculum and Indigenous Métissage. I would say probably in the last 5–8 years of my work, I’ve become less interested in writing and publishing. I think there’s a lot of value in that and certainly I’ve learned a lot more. But I guess I’m interested in challenging myself to expand how I think about learning and different ways to learn. And so, right next to the University of Alberta campus is a beautiful river valley. And the river, in English it’s known as the North Saskatchewan River but its real name is “kisiskâciwani-sîpiy.” In the Cree language, the translation would be, “It’s a river that moves at a swift walking pace.” So, it’s a beautiful river and valley that we have right next to us. So, what I’ve started to do is to take groups of students and educators, really, in the Edmonton area, and students—K to 12 students—into the river valley regularly and to tell them stories about the place. And I use the metaphor of pentimento. Pentimento is a term that I came across, literally, just browsing in the library and looking for ideas. And I came across a book called American Pentimento. And I became curious with the term and looked it up and it turns out it has to do with the study of painting, which I don’t know anything about, really. But I learned that people are interested in interpreting paintings, works of art, paintings, beneath the façade. So, trying to think about the layers of creativity beneath the façade and trying to think about how the artist struggled to express what they finally left on the façade. And, in the sixties, they developed technology where they could x-ray works of art, paintings, and see the layers that were covered over. This is pentimento, this is this interpretive work of pentimento. So right way, when I read about that, I thought about places in the same way. You take a place like Edmonton; it has a façade. We interact with it the way it looks now. And I think an important thing to do is to go beneath the façade and think about the layers of memory, experience and story that exist beneath that façade. And so, this is what really inspires this River Valley walk. And so, the other thing is that right next to the campus is an ancient gathering place that’s well known in oral tradition in this area. “Pehonan” is what it’s known as in the Cree language that refers to a waiting place or a gathering place. So, right

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next to the U of A campus, along the North Saskatchewan River, people have gathered for thousands of years in that spot to trade, to renew relations, to do ceremonies together. And what I do with anyone who wants to come along is we take about a two-hour walk and I tell them stories, some more recent, some more ancient, about that place and I really try to deepen their understanding of its character. And it seems to have had a significant effect on a lot of students. And I’ve encountered, sometimes I have seniors’ groups that want to come along, and I’ve encountered people who have lived, you know, 50, 60  years in Edmonton and they’ve never heard any of the stories I’ve told them before. So, it can be quite emotional for people, as well, to realize there’s so much they haven’t been told, no one’s told them. And so, I think that experience, in itself, and the opportunities to interact with people in holistic ways has really got me much more interested in getting away from publishing and—Some people have said, after listening to the stories, some people say, “Well, you should publish those.” And of course, my first thought is, “Well, maybe not. Maybe there’s something really important for us with just talking together in these ways and being together, surrounded by life and thinking about things in those ways.” The other thing that I wanted to mention that I think is really important is that, more and more in my life, I’ve been influenced by wisdom concepts in the Cree language, specifically. And one that I want to mention that really guides a lot of my work and my research interests is “wâhkôhtowin.” And “wahkohtowin” in the Cree language, if you ask people who know the language to give you a simple definition, they would say it’s about relationship. But more specifically, wahkohtowin teaches us about kinship. So, at a human-to-human level, wahkohtowin involves teachings about how you’re related to other human beings. So, it teaches you about your relatives, about your extended family, and how to refer to them, how to interact with them in those traditional ways. But wahkohtowin also has a more than human element to it. So, it teaches, as I was saying earlier, that we are enmeshed and entangled in a whole bunch of relationships that we depend upon for our survival. One of the Elders that I work with told me several years ago, he said, “The most important thing you can do in your work is connect people to the gifts that exist in the place where they live because, once they see those gifts as part of their own identity, they’re more likely to want to protect them.” He said, “And that’s when we come along side each other in that Treaty relationship is when we understand each other as connected in that wahkohtowin way. But I think the most important aspect of wahkohtowin that I wanted to share is that, etymologically, as a hermeneutic scholar mostly interested in etymologies, that word wâhkôhtowin is comprised of “wakit,” which refers to something that is bent or curved. So, wahkit and the next word that connects with it is “pimohtê,” which has to do with walking, it means to walk. And the ending, “win,” that’s a nominalizer; so that’s a way, in the Cree language, that you convert a motion or a movement into a noun, into a concept. So, “wahkohtowin” literally refers to this idea of walking together in a bent over way, holding hands. So, I would say that’s what guides my research, is getting people together, whoever they are. I try not to exclude anyone, getting them together in a

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way—they hold hands, they’re bent over, looking at the land, looking at the gifts, and they walk together, they move together. And what I’ve learned is that there’s a lot of healing that comes from that because it’s my view that one of the most difficult legacies that we have to recover from is colonialism. I define colonialism as an extended process of denying relationships. So, I would say that there are several different relationships that have been denied, continue to be denied, that I could draw your attention to. But I’ll speak of three. So, the first one, which is still predominant in most educational settings that I’ve been in is the denial of the relationship that exists between your mind and the rest of you. This separation that’s a major byproduct of the colonial project, I would say, that everything is generated from above your eyebrows and a little bit to the right. And in schools, the message is the only purpose of the rest of your body is to take your brain around from class to class. Right? So, I’m quite troubled by the perpetuation of that relationship denial. So, the next one, the next relationship that’s been denied that I’ll mention is the relationship that exists between you and people who don’t look like you—people who don’t pray like you, or people who don’t speak like you. And the last one is the denial of the relationship that exists between you and what allows you to live. And, so, here, I’m speaking, of course, about the water, the sun, the earth, the wind, all these things that our Elders draw our attention to. And so, if I’m accurate in that assessment that we have inherited a legacy of relationship denial, then I think the most important thing that I can do is to repair those relationships that have been denied and renew them on different terms. And so, I think, in all the teaching and the research I do, this is a fundamental principle, fundamental guiding principle. What are the relationships that have been denied? What’s the damage that’s been done? How can we heal, renew and, then, continue on, proceed on, differently? Yeah. Happily, you know? I think it’s important for people to remember that this trouble we’re going through right now with the pandemic, it was predicted; it was expected, actually. From many different people and contexts, it was suggested that this was going to happen. And I guess what I pay attention to is how, in a certain way, we’ve been—I, I’ll speak for myself, I’ve been trained and educated to think that we had everything figured out and we could avoid that, you know? We were bigger, better, faster, stronger and it was just going to keep getting better. And so, I’ve been paying attention, myself, to how I’ve kind of been seduced by that and caught up in that. And, so, I think, you know, what I say to students in relation to that, and I would say that this is certainly a heightened crisis that we’re in right now, but it’s been growing for many years. And I would say that, in my classes and the students I work with, and I’m sure you’ve noticed it as well, is that there has been an epidemic of loneliness. And I think many people are mourning—have been mourning—the loss of a tradition in their lives that could give meaning and purpose to what this is about, what we’re supposed to be doing. I’ve certainly noticed it in my classes that, sometimes, I have students who—usually they’re young women— who sob and weep in class. And, of course, they’re embarrassed about it. But I think there’s a desire to belong and to understand that, you know, petro-capitalism hasn’t

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provided. So, and I think this pandemic has brought that much more to the surface now, this lack, this emptiness. I guess what I’ll mention is that a lot of Indigenous communities and traditions that I’m aware of have indicated that we’re on the cusp of an era, of the growing of a new era, a new awareness. But it’s also considered a dangerous time. So, it’s a time of opening but it’s also, that opening also provides danger. It’s possible that it could go in ways that are against life, I guess I’ll say, you know? For example, the Anishinaabe people, it’s fairly well known—they’ve made it known publicly—that, in their tradition, they measure time according to fires. So, this time that’s arising now they refer to as the Eighth Fire. And it’s a time, again, for a possibility of a different way of living. But it’s dangerous, can be. Maybe I’ll share too, that, in 2012— so the year is significant for this story—in 2012, I went to Lethbridge. The University of Lethbridge was hosting a symposium involving tribal colleges from Canada, the United States, and Mexico. And it was mostly to share ideas and struggles, just meet people and connect. And so, I went just to try to learn from all of this. And right from the moment I entered into the room where the conference was being held, I noticed this beautiful, tiny, old woman, who later I learned was a Mayan. She’s a Mayan woman from southern Mexico who had come along with her contingent. And throughout the morning, I was kind of distracted with watching her because she kind of had this aura around her, of wisdom, right? And I wanted to hear her speak. So finally, she did speak, and she needed the help of a translator and they had to get a kind of stool for her, too, because she was so short that you couldn’t see her behind the podium [laughing]. But anyway, they figured all that out. And the first thing she said, I remember, in kind of a humorous way, of course, was she said, “Don’t worry. The world’s not going to end.” Because it was 2012 and there was this idea that the Mayan calendar predicted that the world was going to end. And she said, “Don’t worry. That’s not true. It’s going to be okay.” She said, “What our calendar tells us is that things are going to change. And of course, we don’t know how, but we know things are going to change.” But she said to us, she said, “When newcomers arrived in our territory,” the Spanish, she said, “We tried to greet them in that ancient way of relatives and we hoped that they would remember how to greet us as relatives. But right away, we realized that they had forgotten how to greet us in that way.” So, she said “Our ancestors knew that we were in trouble; there was going to be trouble.” She said, “What they started to do is they began educating the young people in caves, in secret, as a way to continue the traditions and the language and the stories because,” she said, “because they knew we were going to need them.” And so, she said, where she was from this has continued for 500 years of educating young people in caves, in secret. What she said was, “What we know is that in 2012, with this new era, this calendar tells us that it’s time for us to come out of the caves.” She said, “What we remembered the world needs now. And so, we have to start sharing what we’ve learned or what we remembered.” And as soon as she said that, right away I thought of my own tradition, my own people around here. And there is on the Prairies here, there is a white buffalo prophecy that, in very similar ways, is about renewal or the chance for renewal. Things are going to change but there’s a chance for a new beginning. So, with climate change,

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with the pandemic, and with all the concerns for sustainability, this has been a central message that I’ve had with students, has to do with there are other ways to live outside of what I call homo economicus and whatever the Alberta government is promoting these days, you know? There are other ways to be a human being. People have been living in this area for thousands of years quite successfully and maybe it’s time for all of us to remember some of that wisdom and make it part of our daily lives. And that’s really, you know, I think that in the work that I do, especially with the Elder, the focus is on everyday, regular, life practices that everyone can adopt and make part of how we live. That’s what he focuses on. And so, I follow that. You know? So instead of these giant field trips, where we go to the mountains and we do special things—I mean, there’s good with that, but I’m much more interested in trying to help people think about everyday life and how to work on that, you know? I’m teaching a class right now with the Elder. And we went on a.., we spent a day together with the group that is part of it. We’re together for the whole trip around the sun. So, in the summertime now, if we follow that sort of traditional rhythm, this is a time for traveling, this is a time for gathering, and those kinds of things. So, we got together and did a ceremony led by the Elder; that really had to do with approaching places as living relatives. And we talked a lot about that sort of practice that is common in archeological or scientific ways, where you regard a place as dead. And so, the work of the archeologist is almost to perform an autopsy, where you’re digging into that place and you’re…, its like a forensic autopsy, okay? This is what this place used to mean. So, we’re trying to think about it in terms of how can we think of this piece of land, this place, as already alive? And how can we feed this place? And how can this place feed us back? And again, the focus was on these are things that you can do yourself. And, then, the other thing we did was to pick medicine, in this case it was sage, which is a medicine very common here in the Prairies. So, just showing people the protocols associated with how to do that, how to use that medicine, and just like the Elder said, “Connect people with the gifts that exist in their own place and show them how to feed them.” So, that’s one practical example. I guess one thing that’s on my mind right now, Karyn, that I can share is my interest lately in what I’m calling “Unlearning Colonialism.” So, I’m really trying to work with this as a pedagogical concept. And here, I guess I’ll take a risk and I’ll speak about Truth and Reconciliation. And I’m like, I think, a number of scholars, I don’t feel like what I’m about to say is unique, but not so much a skepticism of Truth and Reconciliation but a wariness. And at the institution that I work at, the University of Alberta, you know, I’ve said publicly that truth is one thing we can talk about. And reconciliation is something else. I don’t believe that institutions like the one I work at know how to speak the language of reconciliation. They’re not, they haven’t been created to do that. And it’s troubling when they try to champion it as something that they’re at the fore, you know, doing, leading on, because I don’t think there’s been much careful thought on what that really means. And many Indigenous scholars, and I’ll use Taiaiake Alfred as one, a Mohawk scholar who basically says that reconciliation, the message has been that, you know, Canada and Canadians will allow Indigenous people to maybe learn their language or practice

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their culture, but the land is not up for negotiation and the resources are not up for negotiation. So, some people say that reconciliation will only happen when Indigenous people get the land back. So, those are things that I think about a lot. But, specific to faculties of education, teacher education, curriculum, what I see is that we have the current context, which I would say in the past decade has definitely gotten better. Like, in the Faculty of Education that I work at, there has been a qualitative shift in how people understand Indigenous issues and themes. The students I work with are much more informed than they were 10 years ago. But in this current context we’re in right now, there’s still a lot of work that needs to be done. But my view is that institutions have a tendency to pass over the colonial terrain, and all these difficulties, and they go to Reconciliation. Because it’s quite pleasant to think about Reconciliation and I would say the idea of Reconciliation supports, in many ways, the ways in which Canadians prefer to think of themselves as a people, in terms of peacemakers and friendly, you know? And so, this passing over of this difficult terrain is what I’ve paid attention to. And so that’s why “unlearning” has become an important concept for me. What does it take to unlearn colonialism? By what processes can it take place? And I think colonialism, I think we have to understand it as an ideology that has very—it’s not just an intellectual project, it’s an embodied kind of thing; people wear it, carry it in their skin, on their bodies, this relationship denial. And so, this idea of unlearning is something that has my attention. And I really don’t think that we can make much progress on anything related to Truth and Reconciliation until we unlearn colonialism. The former chief of the Tsuut’ina Nation, which is—The Tsuut’ina Nation is just right up against the city of Calgary on the southwest corner of Calgary. The former chief, Lee Crowchild, gave a keynote address at a Model UN Conference that was hosted by Concordia University of Edmonton at the Banff Centre. This is a few years ago. And Chief Crowchild was talking about Truth and Reconciliation, as the chief of his First Nation. And, as far as I know, most of the delegates that attended this were not Indigenous. So, this was new for them. He said, when he first heard that word “Reconciliation,” he wondered what it meant. And so, he asked a few different people and what he noticed is that he got a different answer from everyone he asked. And so, he looked in the dictionary, eventually, and it said something about “to apologize or atone for wrongdoing.” And he said, “When I saw that, I thought, “Well, that doesn’t have anything to do with us,” speaking of his community, he said, “because we didn’t do anything wrong.” So, he said that “That leaves truth.” And, at that point, he started talking about a tradition on the Prairies here, that I’d heard about from Blackfoot folks; it’s called the Wolf Lodge. So, the Wolf Lodge was this kind of shared ceremony of people on the Prairies and it had to do with conflict resolution. So, if communities were in conflict, a Wolf Lodge was used as a way to bring people together. What they would do is they would have a ceremonial aspect to it but, eventually, they would end up in a teepee and the conflicting sides would face each other. And what they would try to do is they would try to arrive at a shared understanding of what had transpired between them. Through sharing their stories and accounts, they would try to reach an agreement. And what he said is that,

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if they couldn’t agree, there would be no peace. And he finished all that by saying that “Canada needs a Wolf Lodge.” And so, I thought of that when you were talking about what we call political correctness and how it seems like this need to have these hard conversations, you know, and speak to each other in direct terms is increasingly avoided in settings where it’s really necessary. And so, I think that this idea of unlearning colonialism has something to do with the Wolf Lodge concept that Chief Crowchild was talking about. This idea of unlearning is something I came across just in some literature. And a lot of it has to do with this idea of unlearning learning theories and how they, I guess, tend to override the ways in which people understand teaching and learning. But for me, I’m interested in thinking about unlearning in terms of colonialism. Colonialism as an ideology, is not just an intellectual habit, it’s an embodied kind of understanding. When you’re colonized, you carry it on your skin, you carry it, you know, inside of you. It has a very deep effect on how you participate in the world. And this is what needs to be unlearned, is this habit, this acceptance of relationship denial in all the different forms that I’ve talked about. And so, I’m interested in promoting unlearning colonialism as a pedagogical concept and trying to think about it in holistic ways. And a lot of it has to do with what I call “paradigmatic provocations.” In other words, trying to put people in settings that they’re not used to, and asking them to consider knowledge and knowing, teaching and learning, in ways that they hadn’t really before. I’ll give an example of another story to tell. This is a very personal story, but I think it’s worth telling, to share it with others. This happened about 25 years ago. I was teaching at Kainai High School. And as a Social Studies teacher developing curriculum, one of the people I worked most closely with was the English teacher, Ramona Bighead. And Ramona was from the community, born and raised there, a Blackfoot woman, a strong Blackfoot woman. And so, I really relied on her a lot for guidance and ideas and especially, you know, language and culture. Together Ramona and I created what we called the Elder Mentor Program. I don’t think there was anything very creative or unique about what we did, when I think about it now. Basically, we had three male Elders and three female Elders. We invited them to the school, and we asked them to speak to the kids. And they did. But in general, that approach wasn’t very successful. And the Elders tried to tell us that. Eventually one of them said, “Do we have to stay at the school? Can we leave the school?” And now that I think about it, it kind of makes me laugh to think that that hadn’t occurred to us before. But anyway, we said, “Yeah, sure. That would be great. Let’s do that.” So, one of the first things that we did was they wanted us to get the students to participate in the Sweat Lodge ceremony, which is a common tradition here on the Prairies. But down there, males and females they have different protocols and different things that they learned. So, the guys in my class and the girls in my class, they were— Ramona would go with the girls and I would go with the young men. And we were learning different things. Finally, it was the day before the Sweat Lodge ceremony was supposed to take place. And I was feeling pretty good. I thought, you know, all the arrangements were made, everything was ready, and it was the end of the school day, and I was in my

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classroom, just at my desk. I must have been marking something or whatever. And these three young men, who were in my class, they came in my classroom and they closed the door behind them. So, of course, right away I thought, “Oh that’s interesting. What’s up?” So, one of them said, “We’ve never been in a sweat lodge,” which was surprising for me but, of course, now I know, I understand that better. He said, “We’ve never been in a sweat lodge and we’re kind of worried we’re going to look stupid and we’re going to make mistakes. So, can you give us some background, or tell us what’s going to happen, so we know what to expect?” And I said, “Well, that’s not really my job to do that. What I’ll do is, on my way home, I’ll stop by and I’ll talk to the Elder and see what he says.” So, I went, gave him some tobacco and asked him, you know? “This is what these students said. What do you think about that?” And he said—well first, he laughed, he had a good belly laugh—and then he said, “We don’t do things that way.” He said, “We don’t have a seminar before we have a ceremony.” He said, “In our way, if you want to learn something, you have to commit to the process and your learning will come through that commitment. You can’t just stand back and be a spectator,” he said. “And that’s what they want,” he said. “We don’t do things that way.” So, “Okay.” So, the next morning, I was in my room, those three guys came, and I told them what he said. So, the afternoon came, and I had the school van ready, and expecting all these young men in my class to show up and none of them came. So of course, I was kind of embarrassed about this. And this was before cell phones, so I drove down by myself to this beautiful place on the Reserve right by this beautiful river. And these three old men were waiting for us. And I pulled up by myself and I was feeling kind of bad, kind of, you know, looking at the ground, and I said “Yeah. None of them came.” And I thought, being kind of naïve and inexperienced, I thought that we would cancel. But the one old man, he said, “Well, no, we have to go ahead,” he said, “We made prior arrangements.” He was kind of going like this [laughing] “We made arrangements.” So, he said, “We have to go ahead with it.” So, I said “Okay.” So, what happened on that afternoon is that those three old men turned their attention to me. So, I was the one who collected the rocks, I was the one who dug the hole, I was the one who cut the willows, I was the one who built the lodge, I was the one who started the fire, I was the one who picked the sage. But while I was doing all this, they took turns talking to me about what I was doing, and they told me stories about what I was doing. And they walked beside me as I was doing things. I’d never been taught like that ever before. And I think about that experience pretty much every day because it was such a gift to be brought into that tradition that, really, I knew very little about. And what I know now is that, in that holistic way, they were guiding me intellectually, emotionally, spiritually, and physically. And they were like lifting me up. So, I got to go in the ceremony with these three beautiful old men. And I would say that my own teaching and learning practices are…. Every time I’m engaged, I think about that experience and I try to somehow touch just a little bit of that, of what they gave me at that time. Yeah. So, when I think about Indigenous wisdom traditions, my mind goes to that experience and the groundedness of that, what happened on that day. And so, for myself, and I don’t think I’m done yet, but I think that

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my unlearning colonialism began that day, that’s when it started, about 25 years ago, and I’m still working on it. If you go on YouTube, a couple of friends of mine, Narcisse Blood and Ryan Heavy Head [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WTO34FLv5a8] have done, they’re the ones who did the research on this and, so, on YouTube there are lectures that they’ve given, mostly in the U.S. actually, because the American Psychological Association is quite interested in what they came up with. So, Maslow was a grad student at Columbia University in New York, in the thirties, and he was working on his theory that became the Hierarchy of Needs, that pretty much every undergrad in North America anyway, learns about. I don’t know, maybe it’s more widespread than that. His supervisor was a woman named Ruth Benedict. And Ruth Benedict basically said to him, you know, “That’s interesting, but have you ever tried it with a culture not your own? Like if you’re going to universalize this, shouldn’t you look at other people?” And he said, “No.” So, through her connections, she managed to send him to Alberta, and there’s a Blackfoot community east of Calgary, it’s called Siksika, and that’s where he was sent. This was in the thirties, the height of the Depression, right? So, this was a time when you couldn’t leave your Reserve; Indian Agent was basically a dictator, right? So, Maslow—first of all, he went to the Indian Agent and asked, you know, “We want to do research here. Is that okay?” And you know, surprisingly the Indian Agent said, “Well, I think so, but I’ll get some of the Elders together and you can ask them.” This is actually kind of a funny story because, apparently, he had a couple of assistants with him, and one of them was a young woman—I can’t remember her name. But anyway, so the Elders assembled, and Maslow had a chance to explain his research and his interest. And he couldn’t speak in an articulate way; he was so nervous, he kept kind of stumbling. So finally, the young woman stepped forward and explained it. So that’s how Maslow, I can’t remember how you say it in Blackfoot, but his Blackfoot name is “Women Speak for Him.” That’s his Blackfoot name, that’s how they remember him. So, he was there, I think, for five months. And what my friends say, what they argue is that the Hierarchy of Needs was nuanced by Blackfoot philosophy. And what they did is they talked to people in the community who had stories about when he was there because they remembered him when he was there. And they also got access to his notes, Colombia still had them, and they spoke to—Some of his colleagues were still alive, and so, basically—were still alive, they might not be anymore because this research was done almost 10 years ago now. Basically, they say that it would have been academic suicide to sort of claim that the Blackfoot had inspired him in these ways. But the reason I thought of that is what you were saying about the young child because one of Maslow’s big insights that became “self-actualization” was his observations about how children were treated in the Blackfoot community and this is what they called the ethic of non-interference, which is very common. And so, the story that was shared, and I’m not sure where my friends uncovered it, I can’t remember. But the story is that Maslow was in someone’s home on the Reserve, and there was a gathering going on, the family was together, they were eating, some kind of maybe a birthday party or something. But he was there, and he was sitting

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in the corner, as like a researcher, and he’s observing everything, I guess, probably taking notes, too, right? Anyways, there was a door next to where he was sitting. I guess it was an old-style, heavy, wooden door with a large doorknob and he observed this young boy came, kind of walked his way through the crowd and went to the door and he tried to open it. But it was too big and cumbersome, so he couldn’t. So, he observed this boy struggle for several minutes with this. And what he observed was that the adults around the room appeared not to notice. And, so, right away, in his reflections, he thought, “Well, what kind of people are these? Can’t they see this boy needs help?” And so, I guess in his reflection, he resisted the urge to get up and open the door. So, he waited. And, eventually, he said the boy managed to get a hold of the doorknob and he opened the door. And he said right away, there was a rush of adults that showed up and praised him for doing that. And so, this was like a big light-bulb moment for him. And there are other stories that they shared. But their view is that this is a teepee that he’s created, that Hierarchy of Needs and self-­ actualization comes from that time with that Blackfoot community.

Index

A Abduction, 345 Abstraction, 44, 55, 135, 139, 147, 211, 226, 272, 280, 318, 345, 350, 356, 358, 360, 461, 480 Action, 1, 32, 68, 100, 145, 188, 234, 288, 345, 387, 443 Action research, 1, 32, 116, 305, 314, 319, 387–434, 462, 487, 540–544 See also Practitioner research Acts of consciousness, 138–140, 148 Aesthetics, 66, 78, 103, 290, 293, 296, 300, 302, 303, 305–308, 318, 319, 324, 529, 536, 537 Agency/agent, 17, 34, 35, 39, 52–54, 68, 97, 110, 111, 215, 300, 388, 395, 411, 416, 424, 431, 462, 510, 511, 513, 550, 560 Agenda(s)/agendae, ix, 3, 16, 31, 35, 124, 256, 322, 389, 397–399, 407, 448, 462, 490 Age of Discovery, 7 Alexander the Great, 5, 7, 21 Allegorisis, 68 Allegory/allegorical, 4, 68, 94, 111, 146 American Educational Research Association (AERA), 294–296 Analysis, 3, 29, 65, 94, 139, 186, 234, 290, 340, 392, 443 Ancient Greece, 1, 3, 62, 68, 76, 146, 162 See also Greece Anthropology/anthropologist, 8, 16, 20, 23, 129, 185–189, 191–193, 196–202, 204, 206–212, 214–226, 229–231, 234, 236, 238, 239, 243, 258, 260, 264, 287, 417, 442, 525–530, 547

Appearance, 21, 138, 139, 146, 174, 216, 239, 299 See also Reality Approach, 2, 29, 64, 97, 150, 187, 233, 289, 346, 388, 443 Archeology, 556 Argyris, C., 408, 410, 414, 415 Aristotle, 3–7, 9, 21–26, 44, 61, 63, 68, 70, 71, 76, 80, 82, 85, 138, 146, 287, 446, 479, 514–516 Art, 7, 30, 74, 96, 144, 208, 242, 287, 350, 407, 442 Artefact, vii, 60, 65, 146, 147, 188, 203, 250, 253, 289, 293, 299, 307, 354, 357, 444, 464, 465, 475, 551, 552 Artist, 15, 48, 74, 144, 209, 243, 258, 288, 292, 293, 297, 304–307, 313, 315, 319, 320, 323, 328, 533, 534, 552 A/r/tography, 297, 298, 303, 304, 315 Arts-based research, 287–334, 449, 533–537 Arts-informed research, 288, 291, 293, 298, 299, 303, 306, 307 Assumption, 22, 31, 33, 53, 55, 64, 75, 82, 101, 104, 110, 112–114, 116, 160, 171, 180, 192, 244, 250–252, 256, 279, 297, 324, 353, 363, 389, 410, 432, 450, 456, 457, 461, 469, 490, 492, 496, 497, 500, 515, 535, 536 Audience, vii, xi, 42, 55, 64, 98, 118, 126, 138, 166, 196, 236, 246, 249, 290, 291, 298, 301–303, 305, 308–310, 344, 366, 417, 443, 446, 448, 460, 486, 533 Audiovisual, 203, 235 Australia, 9, 188, 189, 300, 390, 391, 396, 403, 540, 541, 544

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 R. E. White, K. Cooper, Qualitative Research in the Post-Modern Era, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-85124-8

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564 Author, ix–xi, xiv, 7, 16, 41, 47, 48, 64–66, 68, 74–77, 79, 80, 110, 111, 114–118, 128, 138, 145, 154, 168, 188, 189, 204, 206, 207, 209, 220, 221, 242, 260–263, 276, 290, 306, 311–314, 365–368, 379, 380, 397, 414, 417, 418, 441, 465, 483–486, 521, 522, 531, 548, 550 Autobiographical context, vii, 47–49, 293, 469 See also Five Contexts Awareness, 11, 41, 52, 53, 55, 127–129, 139, 146, 161, 171, 242, 293, 302, 304, 308, 344, 358, 366, 376, 426, 434, 445, 462, 468, 476, 495, 508, 535, 538, 555 Axiology/axiological, 467 B Bandung Conference, 197, 527 Barone, T., 126, 288, 295–299, 311, 318 Basic qualitative research, 441, 456–462, 480 See also Generic qualitative research; Fundamental qualitative research Bauman, Z., vi, viii, 2, 15, 22, 23, 52, 53, 94, 114, 116, 145, 249, 446, 451, 468, 470, 482, 513 Behaviour, 30, 88, 121, 126, 129, 177, 185–188, 191, 195, 197, 201–204, 206, 207, 211, 220, 244, 257, 260, 279, 343, 345–347, 361, 388, 393, 408, 412, 415, 462, 472, 526 Belief, 3, 14–18, 24, 61, 69, 74, 83, 109, 128, 136, 150, 157, 160, 186, 187, 193, 197, 202, 209, 216, 288, 303, 306, 332, 387, 389, 410, 417, 424, 425, 429, 433, 484 Best fit, vi, 100, 137, 162, 456 Best practices, 257, 466 Bias(es), 21, 31, 52, 83, 84, 201, 253, 255, 257, 267, 268, 272, 276, 324, 350, 461 Bible, 43, 81, 96, 101, 111, 517 Biblical interpretation, 59, 63 Biographical context, 60–62, 97–98, 140–144, 187–191, 235–237, 291–294, 341–343, 389–391, 468, 481 See also Five Contexts Biology, 5, 22 Blurred genres, x, 20, 50, 189, 295, 297, 304, 470, 492 Boaz, F., 187 Bolzano, B., 138 Bracketing, 140, 157, 158, 161, 345 Brentano, F., 138, 146, 155, 162 Bricolage, 441–449, 451, 452, 457, 479, 486, 489–500

Index Bricoleur, 441–445, 447, 449, 479, 490–494, 496–500 Bruner, J., 99, 109, 112, 114, 125, 296, 536 Buddhist tradition, 155 Business, 126, 206, 218, 221, 243, 257, 264, 267, 270, 313, 348, 350, 449, 451, 526, 527 Byzantine Empire, 7 C Cake of custom/cake of culture, 196, 197, 526 Camus, A., 8, 144–146, 162, 164, 521 Canada, xii, 17, 187, 196, 246, 300, 417, 431, 473, 474, 477, 544, 548–551, 555, 556, 558 Case, 2, 29, 73, 94, 137, 195, 233, 299, 354, 397, 442 Case study, 36, 106, 107, 117, 207, 233–281, 314, 317, 323, 395, 397, 416, 508, 530–533, 541, 547 Casework/caseworker, 240, 241 Categories/categorizing, 2, 31, 37, 47, 130, 149, 160, 163, 197, 201, 213, 234, 245, 251, 259, 265, 267, 275, 278, 288, 345, 346, 348, 349, 353–361, 363, 371, 372, 378, 416, 458, 460–462, 480 Charmaz, K., 347–349, 355, 356, 361–363, 365 Christian/Christianity, 63, 81, 86, 390, 540 Clandinin, D.J., 97, 100, 103, 104, 108, 109, 111, 114, 115 Class, 12, 15, 20, 22, 35–37, 43, 46, 47, 49, 50, 52–54, 61, 86, 87, 119, 139, 140, 173, 174, 176–178, 201, 235, 241, 311, 313, 323, 349, 387, 468, 484, 496, 509, 519, 531, 534, 540, 546, 550, 554, 556, 558, 559 Classification, 139, 156, 217, 288, 450, 460, 480 Climate/climate change, 102, 196, 224, 266, 268, 424, 470, 476, 555 Code/coding, 37, 59, 61, 160, 163, 191, 212, 215, 221, 253, 274, 314, 340, 345–349, 354–358, 360–362, 364, 365, 369, 371, 372, 377, 430, 448, 449, 458, 460, 480 Cold War, 85, 194, 237, 525 Collaborative ethnography, 202, 205, 208 Colonial/colonialism, v, 7, 16, 18, 20, 26, 185, 189, 193, 194, 196, 198–200, 205, 224, 474–478, 529, 530, 549, 550, 554, 556–558, 560

Index Community, 19, 47, 49, 50, 71, 86, 97, 100, 111, 114, 169, 191, 193, 216, 233, 236, 248, 254, 305, 310, 315, 316, 320, 322, 366, 371, 373, 376, 387, 395, 398–400, 402, 405, 416, 418, 419, 426, 427, 443, 466, 473, 478, 479, 492, 514, 525, 532, 542, 543, 545, 548, 555, 557, 558, 560, 561 Comprehension, 5, 65, 74, 420–422, 430 Computer(s), 20, 43, 102, 104, 105, 114, 115, 165, 229, 354, 449, 483, 485, 486, 518, 539 Comte, A., 30, 40, 41 Concept, 3, 38, 62, 94, 135, 187, 235, 290, 340, 394, 442 Conceptual framework, vii, 2, 38, 40, 96, 98, 103, 111, 116, 137, 339, 406, 448, 517 Conceptualizing, 354, 358, 364, 406, 449, 489–500 Conclusion, 15, 16, 38, 55–56, 79, 99, 137, 153, 179–180, 217, 222, 228, 229, 250, 251, 253, 254, 256, 262, 274, 277, 280, 281, 296, 318, 345, 371, 372, 417, 434, 462, 465, 486, 522, 536 Connell, R., 9–11, 21, 450, 454, 507, 508 Connelly, F.M., 93, 97, 100, 103, 108, 111, 114, 115 Connoisseurship, 296, 308–309 Consciousness, 33, 53, 102, 111, 117, 138–140, 147–153, 155–158, 160, 162, 188, 207, 220, 289, 294, 302, 368, 442, 471, 496, 518, 520, 521, 523 Consensus, 71, 74, 229, 402, 403, 423, 543 Constant comparative method/process, 352, 355, 356, 358, 360–361, 364, 539 Constructivism, 33, 398, 484, 538 Context autobiographical, vii, 47–49, 293, 469 biographical, 60–62, 97–98, 140–144, 187–191, 235–237, 291–294, 341–343, 389–391, 468, 481 historical, vii, 2, 25, 50–51, 62–68, 76, 101–102, 146–150, 191–192, 237–241, 252, 294–295, 299, 343–344, 391–395, 445, 468, 469, 481, 517 philosophical, vii, viii, 2, 3, 51, 54–55, 70–72, 107–109, 159–161, 202–203, 252–254, 305–306, 351–353, 407–408, 469–471, 481 political, vii, 49, 51–52, 68–69, 103–104, 150–154, 195–200, 244, 246, 300–302, 344–347, 397–404, 468, 470, 481

565 postmodern, viii, 2, 53–54, 69–70, 104–107, 155–160, 200–202, 249–252, 302–305, 347–350, 404–406, 468, 470, 481 Contextualized understanding, 139 Cooper, K., v, vii, xii, 1, 2, 8, 15, 18, 19, 38, 47, 48, 50, 52–55, 100, 104, 107, 108, 115, 136, 189, 303, 419, 431, 469–471 Core concept, 356 Core Fever, 356, 539 Co-researchers, 160, 407 Crisis of representation, x, xi, 4, 15, 20, 50, 73, 198 Critical approach, v, 29–56, 169, 201, 202, 421, 428, 433, 458, 488, 509–514 Critical discourse analysis, 40, 41, 430 Critical ethnography, 201–203, 208 Critical inquiry, 34, 40, 45–48, 50, 52, 54, 55, 509, 510 Critical pedagogy, 33–35, 38, 40, 47, 50, 52, 55, 332, 394, 395, 414, 417, 444, 466, 511 Critical thematic analysis, 37, 40 Critical theory, 16, 20, 33–37, 40, 46, 47, 51–55, 78, 202, 350, 391, 398 Critical thinking, 33, 421, 422, 425, 427–429, 497 Critique, 12, 16, 30, 33–35, 39, 42, 46–48, 55, 63, 67, 69, 74, 156, 166, 167, 189, 195, 242, 248, 255, 291, 304, 320, 362, 394, 395, 404, 414, 416, 421, 431, 475, 484, 490, 494, 496, 509–511, 513, 528, 531, 537, 542, 548, 550 Cultural relativism, 187 Culture, 6, 45, 62, 101, 144, 182, 239, 293, 387, 442 Cwikel, J., 310, 316, 322 Cyrus the Great, 7 D Data, 10, 29, 98, 140, 186, 235, 290, 339, 388, 444 analysis, 29, 43, 108, 112, 115, 160, 161, 163, 204, 239, 264, 265, 274–276, 280, 307, 340, 346, 351, 354–355, 360, 371–372, 380, 447, 452, 453, 456, 458–460, 480, 485, 496 collection, 15, 31, 38, 107, 108, 112, 161, 171–172, 193, 204, 210, 215, 239, 240, 253, 260, 261, 264, 265, 267–274, 277–281, 291, 340, 353, 354, 358, 360, 362, 365, 371, 398, 403, 406, 452–456, 458–462, 471, 480

566 Dead Sea Scrolls, 59 Debate, 3, 7, 42, 43, 61, 66, 72, 78, 87, 114, 116, 129, 146, 149, 152, 172, 195, 197, 205, 215, 216, 229, 244, 258, 291, 292, 299, 306, 311, 348, 362, 399, 418, 430, 483, 484, 499, 514, 534, 537 Decolonizing/decolonizing research, 107, 112, 320, 441, 552 Deconstruction/deconstructive, 7, 8, 31, 40, 149, 167 Deconstructive approach, 31, 40 Deductive coding, 348 See also Inductive coding Definitional approach, 31 Democracy, 35, 38–40, 301, 388, 394, 415–417, 427, 432, 510–513 Derrida, J., xi, 8, 70, 147, 149, 150, 153, 154, 162, 167, 521–523 Descartes, R., 84, 101, 111, 146, 149, 155, 165, 518 Description, 20, 40, 42, 66, 94, 106, 110, 111, 116, 125, 129, 142, 151, 154, 156, 161, 171, 172, 189, 192, 193, 201, 203–207, 209–231, 234, 239, 241, 243, 246, 251, 253, 254, 258, 265, 266, 278, 299, 301, 309, 314, 328, 346, 352, 360, 363, 366, 379, 399, 434, 452, 457–462, 483, 487, 509, 519, 536, 539 Descriptive approach, 31, 40 Descriptive psychology, 138, 146 See also Genetic psychology Dewey, J., 32, 186, 296, 302, 367, 391, 395, 405, 414, 415 Dilthey, W., 64–67, 69, 74, 76, 79, 83 Dissemination, 6, 208, 290, 298, 471 Donald, D., 472–478, 507, 544, 545 Double-loop learning, 408, 410 Dutch culture, 144, 521 E Education, 4, 34, 63, 161, 190, 234, 287, 342, 392, 448 Educator, 1, 39, 52, 54, 89, 116, 162, 169, 174, 180, 309, 399, 416, 420, 426, 430, 433, 434, 444, 473, 475, 484, 512, 552 Eidetic reduction, 158, 524 Eight moments of qualitative research, 19–22, 50 Eisner, E.W., 20, 287, 288, 290–297, 299, 300, 306, 308, 311, 312, 318, 320, 448, 483, 533 Empire, 6, 7, 18, 62, 85, 107, 196, 300

Index Empirical, 5, 23, 30, 37, 38, 45, 46, 67, 107, 139, 146, 169, 213, 221, 224, 226, 235, 236, 246, 253, 255, 257, 263, 265, 275, 297, 299, 350, 362, 406, 407, 442, 445, 492, 498 Empiricist/empiricism, 5, 46, 64, 138, 146, 396, 397, 541 Engaged hermeneutics, 67 Enlightenment, 30, 63, 80, 84, 85, 87, 394, 463, 474, 476, 547 Eora tribes, 100 Epistemological anarchy, 36 Epistemology/epistemological, xi, 3–5, 20, 21, 36, 41, 42, 44, 47, 64, 68, 69, 72–73, 78, 85, 116, 140, 147, 156, 159, 225, 257, 262, 297, 298, 303, 349, 350, 363, 368, 388, 406, 443–445, 448, 457, 463, 467, 484, 490–493, 496–498 Epoché, 157, 160, 161, 163 Equality, ix, 36–38, 40, 394 Equity, 37, 38, 40, 74, 77, 322, 390, 407, 427 Erklären, 64, 72 Essence, 3, 4, 12, 16, 32, 39, 107, 123, 139, 143, 147, 149, 158–160, 161, 163, 166, 187, 197, 223, 269, 280, 299, 305, 334, 341, 344–346, 400, 402, 403, 463, 481, 523, 543 Ethic(s)/ethical, 22, 23, 34, 35, 68, 80, 89, 104, 116, 159, 198, 201, 203, 205, 207, 236, 298, 302, 305, 311, 313, 315, 320, 366, 368, 407, 411, 414, 415, 426, 458, 472, 473, 478, 480, 482, 486, 509, 510, 513, 533, 551, 560 Ethnic/ethnicity, 15, 19, 193, 197, 230, 427, 433 Ethnography/ethnographic, 16, 83, 100, 158, 185, 229, 288, 365, 448 Europe/European, 6, 7, 16–18, 32, 61, 63, 71, 72, 78, 83–85, 107, 129, 144, 147, 151, 162, 171, 187, 191, 208, 235, 258, 263, 394, 474, 521, 544 Evaluation, xi, 20, 42–44, 75, 99, 237, 238, 246, 262, 307–312, 341, 396, 399, 406, 412, 444, 485, 498, 530, 537, 541 Evidence, 2, 21, 29, 30, 55, 75, 79, 102, 199, 235, 240, 250, 253, 256, 257, 277, 278, 288, 289, 298, 345, 378, 401, 409, 447, 453, 462, 486, 528, 542 Exegesis, 59, 67, 68, 94, 111, 514 Existence, 5, 24, 32, 65–67, 69, 72, 87, 112, 139, 144, 147, 149, 155–158, 163, 164, 188, 206, 216, 221, 222, 289, 296, 366, 521

Index Existential/existentialist/existentialism, 8, 65, 69, 72, 73, 76, 79, 83, 95, 135, 144–146, 148, 152, 155, 156, 162–168, 230, 302, 306, 410, 469, 516, 521, 550 Experience, 11, 29, 64, 94, 135, 188, 234, 288, 341, 388, 441 Explicate order, 62, 65, 75, 81, 515 See also Implicate order Expression, 24, 54, 64–65, 67, 68, 99, 106, 114, 148, 149, 176, 211, 215, 220, 288, 290, 293, 302, 305, 309, 313, 320, 322, 324, 333, 442, 467, 489, 519, 535, 546 F Family resemblances, 31, 94, 118, 135, 136, 146, 162 Feminism/feminist, 20, 47, 200, 202, 205, 207, 208, 304, 317, 320, 322, 328, 332, 333, 368, 391, 448, 492 Field notes, 97, 108, 112, 115, 274, 356, 357, 359, 361, 371, 447 Fieldwork, 108, 112, 115, 188–190, 192, 194, 198, 201, 203, 208, 209, 350, 362, 482, 525 Findings, vi, 10, 15, 18, 38, 42, 79, 86, 96, 163, 172, 177, 193, 195, 196, 212, 218, 224–226, 241, 242, 245, 246, 250, 251, 256, 257, 262, 267, 275, 276, 279, 280, 299, 306, 309, 348, 352, 354, 358, 362, 365, 379, 388, 389, 392, 398, 443, 453, 454, 460–462, 471, 500, 517, 530 First principles, 139, 150, 314 Five Contexts, vii, 2, 38, 40, 47, 50, 55, 136, 441, 468–471, 481 Focus group, 354, 424, 459, 462, 483 Framework, vi, vii, 2, 29, 38, 40, 46, 47, 49, 51, 68, 96, 98, 100, 103, 111, 116, 124, 137, 145, 201, 207, 227, 251, 253, 260, 265, 275, 277, 280, 288, 291, 295, 298, 311, 315, 319, 320, 339, 340, 348, 351, 352, 394, 406, 424, 432, 448, 453, 454, 457–459, 467, 485, 496, 498, 517 Frankfurt School, 33, 46, 51, 69, 393, 394 Freedom, 54, 84, 85, 89, 145, 167, 226, 276, 301, 322, 329, 357, 361, 362, 394, 452, 458, 482, 521 Freire, P., 47, 49, 77, 394, 395, 398, 404, 405, 414, 417, 446, 544 Freud, S., 25, 80, 235, 258 Fundamental qualitative research, 457–462, 480, 487

567 See also Generic qualitative research; Basic qualitative research G Gadamer, H.-G., 64, 66, 67, 69, 71, 72, 76, 78, 79, 83, 136, 158, 168, 170–172, 515, 523 Gee, J.P., 51, 99, 112, 421 Geertz, C., xi, 8, 15, 16, 20, 23, 26, 107, 126, 185, 186, 189–191, 193–200, 204, 205, 207, 210, 237, 296, 301, 469, 524, 530 Gender, 15, 20, 46, 48, 167, 207, 299, 301, 318, 349, 387, 421, 459, 496, 498 Generalization/generalizability, x, 5, 30–32, 84, 125, 168, 195, 201, 210, 234, 241, 243, 245, 247, 248, 251–256, 258, 267, 275, 279, 281, 340, 350, 360, 404, 414, 456, 480, 483, 532 Generic qualitative research, 367, 442, 457 See also Fundamental qualitative research; Basic qualitative research Genetic psychology, 138 See also Descriptive psychology Genre, x, 20, 49, 50, 53, 64, 109, 189, 193, 226, 289, 294, 295, 297, 304, 313, 465, 470, 492, 496 Giles, D., 163, 168, 170, 182 Giroux, H., 34, 35, 38–41, 47, 49, 51, 53, 166, 507, 509 Given/givenness, vii, ix, 2, 4, 9, 11, 15, 20, 31–33, 39–41, 47, 54, 60, 63, 65, 68, 69, 71, 72, 79, 85, 87, 96, 97, 99, 104, 107, 109, 117, 122, 124, 126–129, 136, 138, 139, 142, 144, 146, 150, 151, 158, 161, 165, 175, 189, 195, 204, 211, 217, 220, 221, 225, 230, 248, 250, 254, 265, 267, 269, 277, 279–281, 288, 291, 296, 302, 305, 319, 324, 348, 352, 363, 367, 381, 388, 400–403, 405, 421, 424, 430, 433, 447, 448, 453–456, 462, 465, 471, 477, 491, 508, 512, 516, 540, 545, 546, 560 Glaser, B., 20, 264, 265, 339–348, 351–353, 355–362, 364–367, 370–372, 507, 537 Globalization, 7, 39, 41, 85, 366, 426, 513 God, 17, 24, 61–63, 75, 81, 86, 87, 102, 142, 145, 329, 490, 512, 518, 520, 535 Grammatical interpretation, 64 Grand narrative(s), xi, 20 Greece, 61 See also Ancient Greece Greek civilization, 6, 21, 35

568 Greene, M., 15, 54, 55, 108, 116, 288, 301, 302, 306, 448 Grounded theory, 20, 33, 207, 239, 244, 264, 265, 290, 339–381, 457, 487, 537–539 Gubrium, J.F., 100, 112, 364 H Habermas, J., 69, 393, 394, 396, 400, 402, 403, 416, 417, 543 Health, 246, 287, 310, 312, 313, 315, 322, 348, 363, 371, 373, 374, 376–380, 392, 398, 399, 483 care, 167, 181, 370, 373, 374, 376, 378, 380, 392, 395, 398, 466 research, 363, 398–399 Hegel, G.W.F., 33, 78, 138, 142, 146, 162, 520 Heidegger, M., 64–67, 69, 71–73, 76, 78, 79, 83, 96, 105, 136, 147–152, 155, 156, 158, 161, 162, 165, 168, 170, 172, 176, 178, 239, 516, 519, 523 Hermeneutics, 20, 33, 59, 93, 135, 239, 295, 445 circle, 65, 66, 69, 73, 74, 76 idealism, 66 realism, 66 Hermes, 62, 63, 75, 490 Heron, J., 407, 414 Heteroglossia, ix, 7 Hindu tradition/Hinduism, 62, 197, 515 Historical context, vii, 2, 25, 50–51, 62–68, 76, 101–102, 146–150, 191–195, 237–241, 252, 294–295, 299, 343–344, 391–395, 445, 468, 469, 481, 499, 517 See also Five Contexts History, v, vii–ix, xii, 1–26, 29, 35, 44, 46, 50, 51, 62, 64, 65, 68–70, 78, 79, 81, 83, 84, 97, 107, 109, 144, 146, 149, 156, 189, 192, 202, 203, 205–208, 210, 211, 221, 223, 235, 236, 239, 241, 243, 258, 260, 261, 266, 272, 280, 298–300, 341, 367, 369–371, 393, 397, 398, 400, 418, 433, 444, 463, 468, 469, 473, 495, 508–509, 511, 536, 542, 545–547, 550 Horizonalization, 161, 163 Human/humankind, 5, 30, 61, 93, 138, 182, 249, 287, 345, 392, 448 Humanities, vii, 1, 12, 20, 21, 44, 53, 59, 63, 65, 69, 72, 73, 75, 77–79, 81, 87, 96, 103, 105, 112, 114, 116, 140, 145, 167, 169, 204, 224, 288, 296, 299, 303, 317, 394, 402, 468, 480, 481, 492, 517, 535 See also Social sciences

Index Human sciences, 14, 43, 61, 68, 75, 77, 83, 85, 87, 96, 116, 117, 167, 182, 287, 295, 514, 516, 519 Huss, E., 310, 316 Husserl, E., 66, 78, 83, 138–140, 146–153, 155–159, 162, 166, 217, 521, 523 Hypothesis/hypotheses, x, 4, 12, 19, 25, 75, 79, 165, 206, 224, 226, 240, 253, 256, 270, 271, 275, 279, 347, 348, 350, 353, 356, 358, 359, 361, 362, 364, 380, 451–453, 455, 456, 459, 483, 488, 526 Hypothetico-deductive method, 74, 75, 347, 350 I Identity, 16, 41, 47, 50, 52–54, 100, 103, 104, 106–109, 111, 112, 118, 127, 128, 223, 225, 228, 230, 243, 258, 266, 276, 293, 297, 302, 305, 321, 329, 331, 367, 397, 425, 426, 434, 442, 448, 469, 473, 476, 484–486, 551, 553 Ideology(ies), 18, 25, 41, 46, 48, 129, 187, 201, 228, 230, 302, 328, 394, 444, 477, 478, 496, 557, 558 Imagination, 54, 55, 62, 63, 69, 84, 98, 100, 127, 161, 220, 304, 313, 320, 326, 462, 515 Imperialism, 16, 72, 76, 84, 193, 196, 199, 516 Implicate order, 62, 76, 515 See also Explicate order Indicators, 270, 353, 356, 387, 536, 539 Indigenous, 18, 19, 188, 191, 196, 399, 403, 441, 471–479, 481, 482, 486, 544, 546, 548, 550, 551, 555–557, 559 Inductive coding, 347 See also Deductive coding Inductive data analysis, 160, 163 Inquiry, 1, 30, 60, 93, 135, 185, 235, 288, 339, 398, 443 Institution/institutional, 1, 34, 44, 46, 51, 67, 103, 107, 109, 122, 124, 126, 129, 174, 188, 191, 200, 201, 205, 208, 218, 221, 229, 260, 266, 270, 291, 303, 371, 387–389, 394, 397, 411, 416, 426, 445, 467, 477, 508, 510, 514, 533, 547–549, 556, 557 Integrity, 109, 241, 307, 308, 411, 531, 549 Intent, 2, 13, 14, 64, 74, 129, 198, 199, 237, 242, 244, 259, 273, 287, 323, 411, 456, 482, 511 Interpretation, 19, 36, 59, 93, 135, 185, 236, 290, 362, 404, 443

Index Interpreter, 32, 63, 64, 66, 67, 78, 243, 258, 320, 482, 546 Interpretive approach, v, 31–33, 40, 225, 229, 352 Interpretive inquiry, 65, 76 Interpretive theory, 20, 67, 204, 210–231 Interpretivism/interpretivist, 33, 68, 299, 350, 471 Interview, 10, 95, 152, 186, 235, 311, 342, 404, 447 Inuit, 17, 187, 547 Islam, 6, 197 J James, W., 25, 138, 155, 187, 367 Jargon, 261, 344, 538 K Kant, I., 25, 33, 83, 138, 146, 155, 162, 394 Kemmis, S., 1, 389–391, 395–397, 399–404, 414, 417, 434, 540 Kincheloe, J.L., 46, 47, 394, 417, 442–445, 484, 489, 497, 502 Knowledge, 3, 30, 64, 94, 143, 188, 236, 287, 346, 387, 442 Knowledge, theory of, 3, 21, 41, 80 Kuhn, T., 71, 72, 76 L Language, 8, 34, 59, 96, 138, 186, 251, 290, 345, 396, 457 Leader/leadership, 18, 43, 115, 313, 323, 324, 348, 406, 463 Learning, 4, 35, 108, 160, 187, 234, 293, 368, 387, 445 Legitimacy, x, xi, 84, 225, 230, 244, 258, 277 Le Play, P.G.F., 235, 258, 261 Lewin, K., 387–434 Lines of flight, 465, 467 Linguistics, 29, 49, 72, 103, 107, 148, 149, 151, 158, 161, 166, 187, 195, 229, 261, 296, 346, 367, 406 Literature/literature review, 8, 43, 46, 49, 52, 84, 88, 102, 114, 116, 117, 123–125, 145, 148, 158, 171, 172, 202, 222, 225, 231, 256, 262, 275, 276, 298, 316, 317, 319–321, 342, 357, 359, 361, 362, 364–366, 370, 372, 373, 378, 379, 415, 431, 442, 445, 447, 452, 457, 494, 499, 518, 524, 538, 558

569 Lived experience, 15, 48, 64, 83, 103, 106, 109, 135, 142, 148, 150–152, 154, 155, 158–163, 167–170, 177, 239, 351, 364, 405, 431, 484, 520, 522–524 Logic, 5, 8, 22, 42, 44, 63, 68, 71, 73, 84, 85, 89, 107, 117, 138–140, 149, 159, 165, 166, 217, 220, 226, 239, 240, 245, 253, 254, 267, 279, 315, 368, 394, 396, 461, 474, 497, 515, 549 Logical positivism, 67, 239 Lone Ethnographer, 19, 192–195, 205 Love, 124, 143, 150, 223, 492, 537, 540 Low-inference, 457, 480 M Madison, D.S., 201 Malinowski, B., 19, 185, 188, 189, 191, 192, 204, 208, 209, 220, 236, 258, 261 Marion, J.-L., 147, 149, 150, 162, 165, 166 Marxism/Marxist, 35, 69, 70, 200, 202, 229, 394, 484 Maslow, A., 478, 479, 560 Mead, G.H., 32, 186, 187, 394 Mead, M., 16, 19, 185, 187–189, 204, 230, 392 Media, 8, 49, 53, 114, 159, 193, 202, 205, 253, 288, 289, 293, 313, 373, 376, 393, 394, 421 Member checks, x, 461, 488 Memo memoing, 348, 357, 358, 361, 371 writing, 340, 357 Mental phenomena, 138, 217, 220 Merleau-Ponty, M., 67, 147–149, 151, 158, 162, 166, 309, 448, 469, 470 Merton, R.K., 343, 344, 356, 367, 538 Metaphor, 48, 61, 66, 96, 109, 135, 137, 143, 199, 228, 295, 304, 313, 328, 329, 396, 447, 463, 475, 516, 552 Metaphysics/metaphysical, 22, 71, 78, 83, 140, 150, 153, 165, 516 Method(s), 1, 29, 63, 96, 140, 186, 233, 287, 347, 388, 441 Methodological individualism, 195, 196 Methodology(ies), 1, 29, 63, 94, 135, 186, 233, 288, 339, 387, 441 See also Research design Métissage, 475, 550–552 Meyer, C.B., 264–281 Microchip, 104, 105 Middle Ages, 6, 7, 21, 68

570 Mixed methods, 73, 116, 234, 305, 365, 367, 441, 442, 445, 449–456, 470, 480, 482, 483, 486, 488 Morality, 145, 191, 230 Muslim, 7, 431, 527 Myth/mythology, 14, 44, 55, 62, 66, 68, 129, 145, 164, 189, 192–195, 205, 208 N Narrative inquiry, 66, 93–130, 135, 138, 146, 168, 242, 246, 449, 519–524 theory, 66 Natural sciences, 5, 12, 30, 36, 65, 66, 73, 83, 186, 195, 199, 204, 235, 239, 360, 487 Neocolonialism, 199 Neoliberal/neoliberalism, 38, 55, 394, 512 Nexus of meaning, 74, 75 Non-Alignment Movement, 198 North America, 18, 102, 129, 208, 560 Nursing, 67, 182, 237, 240, 243, 246, 350, 380, 486, 530 O Objective, 13, 15, 16, 19, 20, 25, 31–33, 41, 44, 48, 65, 67, 70, 71, 77, 80, 97, 111, 114, 124, 138, 139, 146, 150, 155, 160, 201, 204, 215, 219, 245, 257, 278, 291, 322, 361, 392, 394, 401, 407–410, 419, 422, 424, 442, 444, 454, 456, 461, 462, 465, 469, 483, 491, 528 Objectivity, viii, 15, 16, 18–21, 31, 39, 75, 97, 111, 140, 187, 199, 204, 229, 276, 277, 279, 297, 445, 468, 481, 491, 512 See also Subjectivity Objects of experience, 140 Observation, 15, 48, 72, 96, 153, 186, 235, 320, 345, 397, 447 Observer, xi, 16, 20, 25, 206, 236, 256, 267, 273, 274, 276, 324, 325, 328, 348, 363, 469 Ontology/ontological, 5, 8, 9, 36, 64–66, 68, 69, 72–73, 78, 147, 148, 156, 159, 167, 170, 172, 174, 175, 177, 215, 350, 368, 388, 443, 445, 467, 491, 492, 497, 498 Oracles, 61, 68 Organizational framework, 29, 454 Organizations, 14, 98–100, 109, 110, 113, 116, 187, 200, 208, 211, 234, 257, 258, 264, 266, 268–272, 274, 276, 277, 279, 314, 324, 361, 388, 393–395, 398, 405,

Index 409, 410, 412, 415, 428, 429, 449, 464–466, 481 Orginary, 154, 163, 522 Other/othering, 3, 32, 60, 94, 136, 186, 233, 288, 340, 388, 441 P Paradigm, shift, 8, 71, 72, 76, 189 Participant, 10, 29, 75, 94, 139, 186, 236, 293, 345, 388, 449 Participatory Action Research (PAR), 387, 395, 397–405, 416, 418, 462 Participatory observation, 188 Pattern, 5, 79, 98, 146, 186, 244, 293, 340, 392, 460 Pedagogy, 33–35, 38–40, 47, 50, 52, 54, 55, 141, 167, 207, 304, 305, 332, 392, 394, 395, 414, 417, 421, 466, 473, 489, 492, 502, 511–514, 519, 545, 546 Perceptions, 5, 86, 125, 128, 138–140, 146, 148, 149, 153, 156, 161, 166, 274, 275, 277, 303, 313, 314, 322, 345, 350, 370, 380, 392, 472, 497, 535 Persia, 7 Perspective, 1, 30, 64, 94, 136, 188, 233, 289, 345, 390, 442 See also Point of view Phenomenological model, 139 Phenomenological psychology, 139, 153 Phenomenology, 33, 66, 94, 135, 207, 290, 351, 457 Phenomenology of practice, 143, 159, 521 Phenomenon/phenomena, vii, viii, 2, 4, 5, 9, 10, 12, 31, 32, 34, 36, 65, 67, 69, 73, 80, 96, 100, 103, 108, 112, 135, 136, 138–141, 145, 146, 148–150, 152–154, 156–163, 165, 170–174, 186, 205, 217, 220, 227, 234, 235, 241, 243, 245, 248, 250, 251, 255, 258, 259, 264–266, 268, 270, 275, 280, 281, 289, 290, 311, 340, 346–353, 355, 356, 362, 363, 367, 370, 374, 402, 410, 443–446, 449, 451, 452, 454, 457, 459, 460, 463, 464, 467, 480, 488, 496, 523, 532 Philosophical context, vii, viii, 2, 3, 51, 54–55, 70–73, 107–109, 159–162, 202–203, 252–254, 305–310, 351–353, 407–408, 470–471, 481 See also Five Contexts Philosophy, 3, 30, 59, 136, 191, 236, 367, 392, 455 See also Western philosophy

Index Place, 33, 81, 97, 167, 192, 230, 288, 353, 389, 453 Plato, 3–6, 21–26, 61, 70, 71, 76, 146, 148, 166, 394, 446, 479, 514–516 Point of view, vi, 17, 138, 146, 150, 151, 160–162, 186, 191, 197, 198, 208, 212, 218, 241, 257, 289, 464, 470, 540 See also Perspective Policy(ies), 16, 37, 44, 84, 97, 108, 116, 200, 246, 247, 253, 259, 260, 301, 319, 396, 399, 402, 409, 410, 416, 433, 447, 459, 486, 531, 532 Political context, vii, 49, 51–52, 68–69, 103–104, 150–154, 195–200, 246–249, 299–300, 344–347, 397–404, 468, 470, 481 See also Five Contexts Political science, 234, 235, 243, 258 Polkinghorne, D.E., 29, 43, 94–96, 98–99, 101, 102, 104–106, 110–112, 116, 125, 136, 160, 296, 516 Popper, K.R. Sir, 24, 31, 40, 44, 70, 71, 76, 80, 257, 261, 262, 353, 358, 396 Popularity effect, 158 Positivist paradigm/positivism/positivist, 4, 16, 19, 30–33, 39–41, 67, 215, 229, 239, 244, 345, 363, 365, 396, 463, 541 Postcolonial, 16–19, 21, 107, 441, 481, 486 Postcolonial Indigenous research, 441, 471–479, 481 Postcolonial research, 16–19, 21, 442, 471, 481 Postmodern postmodernism, 202, 486 postmodernity, viii, 482 Postmodern context, viii, 2, 53–54, 69–70, 104–107, 155–159, 200–202, 249–252, 302–305, 347–351, 404–406, 470, 481 See also Five Contexts Postpositivism, 30–31 Postpositivist approach, 31 Poststructuralism/poststructuralist, 15, 20, 394 Power, 8, 33, 59, 97, 154, 198, 248, 290, 341, 397, 444 Practice, 2, 29, 63, 100, 143, 192, 234, 287, 346, 387, 446 Practitioner(s), 1, 47, 51, 107, 159, 212, 262, 301, 311, 313–315, 344, 387, 388, 399–401, 406, 407, 418, 419, 459, 466, 471, 542 Practitioner research, 1, 387, 399, 406, 419

571 Pragmatic approach, 32, 251 Pragmatism, 32, 346, 349, 368 Preconscious, 142, 159, 356, 520, 524, 539 Preconscious consciousness, 142, 520 Prejudice, 66, 76, 171, 172, 276, 392, 427 Pre-language, 143, 520 Pre-reflective, 142, 154, 158–160, 163, 520, 522, 523 Pretension, 153, 521 Primal impressional consciousness, 153, 157, 158, 162, 521, 523 Privileges, 37, 50, 53, 55, 84, 85, 114, 169, 201, 224, 391, 416, 448, 496, 540 Problem statement, 453 Process, 3, 32, 65, 93, 140, 186, 236, 288, 339, 387, 442 See also Products Products, 32, 42, 44, 51, 68, 76, 86, 117, 153, 186, 192, 193, 203–209, 276, 288, 302, 306, 309, 318, 322, 323, 326, 340, 344, 359, 362, 372, 446, 447, 460, 466, 491, 538 See also Process Professional learning communities, 387, 405 Prophecy, 61, 62, 343, 476, 555 Protestant Reformation, 63 Protocol, 88, 98, 167, 213, 250, 251, 253, 368, 406, 463, 477, 485, 487, 556, 558 Psychoanalysis, 66, 80, 235, 496 Psychology, 14, 72, 102, 138, 191, 234, 287, 350, 392 Q Qualitative content analysis, 37, 459, 460 Qualitative inquiry, v, 2, 14, 25, 30, 42–44, 137, 158, 167, 186, 201, 207, 231, 259, 293, 308, 311, 312, 334, 446, 458, 483–485, 489, 524 See also Qualitative research Qualitative methods, vi, vii, xii, 1, 2, 14, 19, 25, 26, 29, 43, 83, 239, 263, 276, 279, 366, 368, 370, 445, 449, 479, 485 Qualitative research, 2, 29, 63, 96, 135, 189, 233, 288, 339, 389, 441 See also Qualitative inquiry; Qualitative methods Quality(ies), v, xi, 6, 9, 103, 117, 150, 172, 219, 234, 239, 242, 246, 251–253, 287, 289–291, 295, 301, 302, 306, 308, 309, 318–320, 324, 345, 376, 407, 414, 420, 451, 453, 464, 467, 484, 497, 531, 534, 536, 537

572 Quantitative research, vi, x, 1, 6, 9–14, 20, 21, 26, 29, 30, 40, 83, 96, 104, 204, 234, 237, 239, 241, 248, 250, 261, 263, 264, 276, 404, 406, 445, 450, 451, 453, 454, 458, 459, 463, 488, 532 Question construction, 12, 509 Questionnaires, 73, 253, 261, 270, 317, 481, 488 Quintain, 245, 259 R Race, 15, 18, 20, 38, 44, 46–48, 50, 187, 201, 349, 387, 468, 475, 496, 551 Radcliffe-Brown, A.R., 185, 188, 189, 204 Rational fallibilism/fallibility, 31, 44, 71, 76, 353, 358, 396 Rationalist/rationalism, 41, 46, 55, 138, 146, 463 Realism, 19, 41, 44, 66, 126, 257 Reality, vi, xi, 1, 4, 13, 17, 31–34, 36, 47, 55, 71, 76, 83, 85, 99, 102, 136, 138, 139, 146, 148, 149, 156, 157, 160, 162, 165, 178, 188, 194, 216, 219, 222, 223, 227, 230, 241, 243, 244, 257, 271, 318, 319, 328, 331, 342, 344, 346, 348, 350, 362, 363, 375, 387, 388, 391, 392, 396, 402, 403, 411, 413, 420, 444, 464, 470–472, 474, 481, 498, 518, 538, 544, 549 See also Appearance Reciprocity, 56, 176, 179, 203, 472, 482 Reduction, 139, 157, 158, 160, 161, 372, 462, 524 Reflexivity, 114, 206, 257, 307, 333, 363, 368, 446, 461 Relationship, 26, 34, 62, 99, 139, 192, 234, 293, 340, 397, 445 Reliability, x, 16, 20, 84, 252, 253, 256, 264, 265, 276–280, 362, 458, 460, 480, 483, 488 Religion, 4, 30, 46, 62, 80, 89, 139, 165, 191, 197, 203, 208, 223, 230, 387, 524, 525, 527 Renaissance, 6–7, 30, 63, 122 Replication, 245, 254, 279 Representation, viii, x, xi, 4, 15, 17, 20, 29, 36, 49, 73, 109, 117, 126, 140, 147, 198, 219, 230, 245, 259, 263, 289–291, 293, 296–298, 301–304, 307, 309, 312, 344, 348, 400, 405, 412, 414, 443, 444, 464, 481, 497, 535 Research, 1, 29, 63, 94, 135, 186, 233, 287, 339, 387, 441

Index See also Qualitative research; Quantitative research Research design, v, vi, 1, 2, 42, 72, 87, 94, 96, 106, 107, 111, 116, 136, 207, 208, 234, 235, 244, 258, 263, 301, 340, 407, 442, 449–454, 456, 458, 459, 479, 480, 482, 489, 497 See also Methodology(ies) Researcher, 1, 31, 68, 96, 154, 186, 234, 287, 339, 387, 441 Research question, vi, x, 4, 38, 49, 98, 100, 108, 137, 160, 163, 234, 240, 241, 253, 264, 270, 272, 277, 280, 281, 297–299, 303, 339, 345, 346, 352, 353, 358, 363, 365, 406, 411, 446, 448, 450–456, 458, 460, 480, 486–488, 531 Responsibilities, 35, 38, 39, 52, 53, 63, 118, 124, 130, 145, 221, 242, 249, 319, 321, 373, 374, 403, 424, 427, 470, 472, 482, 511–513, 531, 533 Results, 2, 29, 62, 96, 136, 187, 235, 291, 340, 389, 446 Retention, 153, 521 Rhizomatic research, 441, 462–468, 480 Ricœur, P., 64, 66, 67, 69, 73, 76, 80, 147, 149, 162, 222 Rigour, 34, 172, 237, 246, 251, 254, 255, 308, 352, 404, 414, 442, 448, 458–460, 510 Roman Empire, 6, 7, 62 Rome, 6, 21 S Sample/sampling, 171, 186, 201, 216, 223, 243, 255, 259, 267, 268, 270, 271, 278, 280, 281, 340, 353–357, 360, 363, 371, 372, 378, 380, 424, 452, 453, 456, 458, 459, 461, 462, 480, 483 Sartre, J.-P., 8, 83, 144–148, 150, 155, 156, 162, 167, 521 Saturation, 11, 53, 340, 353, 354, 356, 357, 361, 372, 508 Scheler, M., 147, 162 Schleiermacher, F.D.E., 63–65, 68, 69, 76, 79, 81 Scholar scholasticism, 7, 71, 516 Science, 1, 30, 59, 96, 138, 186, 234, 287, 339, 392, 442 Scientific method, v, 4, 5, 9, 21, 31, 67, 68, 71, 73, 101, 140, 146, 148, 186, 368, 392 Scientific racism, 187 ScolARTistry, 297 Scripture, 59, 63, 64, 81

Index Secret(s), 48, 140, 141, 273, 313, 342, 430, 476, 519, 538, 555 Self, 50, 67, 84, 109, 123, 124, 128, 130, 148, 150, 162, 179, 187, 188, 263, 322, 324, 329, 376, 406, 484–486, 488, 497, 512 Semiotics, 8, 20, 41, 69, 76, 85, 149, 211, 218, 226, 229, 465, 484, 492, 497 Serendipity, 356, 367 Significance, 11, 35, 74, 77, 78, 80, 104, 117, 148, 150, 158, 162, 165, 170, 200, 204, 211, 222, 263, 289, 294, 358, 406, 416, 422, 433, 471, 481, 508, 511, 523 Sikes, P., 110, 111, 120, 123, 125, 128, 130 Simmons, E., 45–56 Simulacrum/simulacra, 142, 344 Single-loop learning, 408–410 Sisyphus, 145, 164 Smith, D.G., 59–62, 70–72, 75, 76, 82–89, 507, 514–516 Smith, D.E., 200 Smythe, E.A., 163, 168–180, 182 Social change, 35, 36, 52, 115, 263, 314, 401, 404, 411, 416–418, 471, 481, 511 Social class, 15, 387 Sociality, 97, 103, 108, 109, 111 Social justice, 34, 37, 38, 52, 128, 129, 276, 302, 390, 391, 397, 401, 402, 405, 414, 427, 510, 511, 540 Social sciences, 1, 30, 59, 96, 140, 195, 235, 288, 339, 392, 455 See also Humanities Social work, 234, 240, 241, 243, 258, 310, 530, 531 Society, 5, 30, 82, 114, 143, 185, 235, 288, 370, 388, 442 Sociology/sociologist, 14, 30, 41, 44, 114, 128, 129, 186–188, 191, 192, 200, 209, 223, 234–236, 239, 240, 243, 258, 260, 261, 264, 301, 313, 339, 343, 350, 356, 366, 368, 393, 417, 484, 525, 530 Socrates, 3–5, 9, 21, 24, 26, 59, 63, 76 Socratic method, 4 So What? Question, 99, 108 Spence, D., 98, 163, 168–180, 182 Spiritual hypochondria, 198, 527 Stake, R.E., 11, 12, 20, 21, 29, 233, 234, 236–249, 252–254, 258, 259, 262, 265, 389, 395, 396, 507, 509, 530 Statistics/statistical, 9, 11, 12, 29, 30, 83, 87, 102, 105, 111, 117, 165, 235, 237, 260, 267, 279, 396, 450, 458, 461, 508, 518, 519, 541 Stereotype, 243, 258, 302, 321, 331

573 Story/storytelling, 15, 16, 25, 43, 44, 47, 50, 53, 86–89, 93, 94, 97–100, 103, 104, 106–115, 117, 122, 124, 125, 127–129, 136, 138, 162, 170–179, 204, 213, 219, 221–223, 227, 228, 236, 242, 243, 249, 251, 253, 262, 288, 289, 295, 296, 310, 315–317, 320, 324, 328, 341, 354, 356, 374, 403, 424, 429, 431, 464, 465, 468, 472–476, 478, 481, 485, 517, 519, 533, 544, 546, 548–553, 555, 557–561 Storywork, 107, 112 Strategy(ies), 20, 43, 100, 207, 240, 301, 340, 388, 453 Strauss, A.L., 20, 264, 265, 339–341, 343, 349–356, 358–362, 364–367 Structural functionalism, 188, 202 Subjective/subjectivism, 32, 33, 44, 66, 84, 85, 100, 138–140, 146, 150, 151, 155, 162, 191, 215, 216, 229, 255, 256, 276, 291, 293, 298, 302, 306, 346, 348, 370, 374, 375, 444, 460, 488, 498 Subjectivity, 5, 15, 18, 24, 25, 33, 44, 48, 84, 85, 138, 157, 162, 279, 304, 471, 481, 487, 497 See also Objectivity Subject(s), 16, 24, 25, 29, 44, 46, 48–51, 55, 61, 68, 77, 81, 83, 107, 117, 128, 146, 147, 160, 162, 175, 186, 191, 192, 201, 207, 208, 219, 226, 228, 233, 234, 236, 242–244, 248, 255, 256, 258, 262, 270, 301, 303, 307, 313, 317, 323, 324, 328, 345, 348, 397, 421, 427, 443, 445, 484, 485, 494, 496, 499, 528, 532 Surveys, 43, 73, 98, 203, 213, 255, 260, 264, 270, 273, 317, 346, 482, 487, 488, 494, 508 Symbolic interactionism, 32, 187, 188, 202, 345, 346, 365 Symbol/symbolic, 13, 23, 26, 32, 60, 63, 67, 70, 74, 94, 96, 114, 135, 187, 188, 197, 201, 202, 215, 218, 220, 221, 226–230, 289, 296, 325, 329, 331, 332, 345, 346, 365, 368, 396, 430, 474, 527, 548, 549 T Taylor, C., 67, 68 Teacher research, 387, 399, 406 Techniques, 42, 43, 75, 109, 110, 112, 113, 115, 117, 118, 154, 158, 160, 161, 163, 169, 171, 209, 211, 212, 235, 251, 254, 261, 295, 305, 320, 346, 354, 363, 365, 368, 372, 398, 408, 416, 442–444, 452, 456, 459, 480, 482, 522

574 Technology, ix, 6, 42, 105, 182, 350, 392, 494, 534, 552 Temporality, 65, 97, 103, 106, 108, 109, 111, 175, 182, 519 Terminology, 73, 158, 162, 216, 362, 488 Text, 8, 29, 60, 93, 135, 188, 239, 293, 348, 394, 442 Theme/thematizing, 2, 22, 37, 98, 99, 106, 144, 145, 155, 160, 161, 163, 166, 172, 175, 177, 179, 191, 201, 203, 234, 253, 254, 274, 275, 332, 347, 348, 355, 356, 370, 377, 379, 400, 405, 417, 431, 456, 458, 460, 462, 480, 521, 525, 542, 544, 545, 557 Theologies, 7, 59, 61, 69, 79, 86, 87, 165, 166 Theoretical framework, vi, 29, 38, 47, 51, 98, 227, 251, 265, 295, 319, 348, 454, 458, 487 Theorizing, 33, 83, 128, 159, 211, 299, 343, 354, 355, 357–359, 365, 407, 417, 466, 490 Theory(ies), 3, 31, 60, 107, 138, 188, 236, 290, 339, 391, 445 Theory of intentionality, 140 Thick description, 20, 171, 189, 204, 205, 209–230, 243, 461 Thomas, W.I., 235, 236, 258, 263 Three commonplaces, 97, 103, 108 See also Place; Sociality; Temporality Tradition, 22, 32, 61, 100, 140, 187, 260, 299, 345, 394, 445 Transformation, 44, 64, 82, 83, 101, 111, 293, 307, 319, 388, 389, 393, 394, 401, 403, 407, 408, 416, 434, 467, 471, 481, 517, 543 Triangulation, 65, 249, 278, 319, 454, 462, 488 Triple crisis of representation, x, xi, 4, 198 Triple-loop learning, 408–411 Truth and reconciliation, 477, 556, 557 Truths, vii, viii, 3, 5, 9, 20, 25, 32, 36, 50, 62, 63, 66, 71, 72, 78, 79, 83, 84, 97, 120, 139, 145, 201, 210, 216, 217, 223, 243, 254, 258, 262, 291, 297, 319, 331, 363, 431, 445, 452, 477, 496, 516, 556, 557 Typological classification, 139 U Ulrikab, A., 17 Understanding, 2, 30, 60, 95, 139, 188, 234, 290, 340, 388, 443 See also Verstehen

Index Unfinalizability, 8 United States, 19, 38, 46, 50, 105, 186, 188, 194, 198, 199, 205, 230, 236, 237, 300, 342, 370, 371, 378, 390, 392, 398, 512–514, 525, 526, 528, 540, 555 Unit/units of meaning, 122, 125, 130, 160, 161, 163, 186, 266–268, 270, 278, 279, 281, 355, 359–361, 429, 434, 459, 530 Universal cognitive structures, 139 Universal truth, 5, 32, 36, 84, 139 Universal/universalism, 4, 5, 31, 32, 36, 49, 75, 84, 85, 89, 139, 159, 161, 164, 208, 222, 252, 289, 474, 478, 491, 524, 547 University(ies), 7, 38, 60, 114, 140, 186, 237, 292, 343, 389, 475 Urban planning/urban studies, 237, 246 V Validity, x, xi, 3, 16, 20, 77, 84, 87, 198, 199, 201, 221, 224, 247, 253, 256, 257, 264, 265, 267, 271, 275–279, 303, 315, 346, 353, 358–360, 362, 367, 404, 446, 458, 461, 463, 480, 483, 488, 497, 498, 527 Value, 1, 14, 16, 19, 30, 31, 38, 53, 61, 65, 66, 75, 77, 84, 100, 106, 128, 138, 139, 145, 147, 152, 159–161, 164, 166, 169, 185–187, 189, 197, 198, 201, 202, 206, 214, 217, 224, 229, 241, 254, 260, 288, 291, 298, 302, 305, 310, 329, 349, 363, 399, 405–410, 421, 433, 446, 458, 463, 467, 473, 479, 482, 484, 486, 488, 491, 515, 521, 534, 536, 540, 552 Van Maanen, J., 200, 202 Van Manen, M., 84, 135, 140–145, 152–154, 157, 159, 160, 162, 163, 167, 170–172, 182, 200, 519 Variable, 16, 139, 170, 198, 239, 253, 260, 268, 279, 308, 340, 349, 352, 354, 355, 359, 362, 372, 378, 408, 459, 530, 539 Verstehen, 63, 64, 72, 83, 218, 265 See also Understanding Video-clip, vi, viii, ix, xi, 10–12, 14, 21, 34, 38, 40, 60, 70, 94, 104, 111, 112, 140, 143, 153, 154, 157, 189–191, 194, 196, 238, 240, 242, 247, 258, 291–293, 300, 311, 341, 343, 389, 399, 401, 508–510, 514–561 Vietnam War, 20, 105, 112, 390, 391, 518, 519, 540 Violence, 47, 71, 123, 219, 223, 230, 312, 325, 516 Virtuoso researcher, 236, 240, 251, 258

Index Vocabulary, vi, x, xi, 10, 18, 73, 100, 139, 204, 228, 404, 412, 414, 428, 429, 448, 487, 488 Voice, xii, 4, 18, 19, 42, 47, 48, 50, 52, 53, 55, 62, 109, 112, 174, 176–178, 199, 202, 299, 300, 302–304, 317, 320, 332, 373, 376, 389, 397, 399, 404, 416, 432–435, 444, 465, 472, 482, 488, 513, 515, 529 W Wâhkohtôwin, 475, 476, 553 Western culture, 85, 101, 111, 189, 517 Western imperialism, 72, 76, 84, 516 Western philosophy, 3–5, 21, 24–26 White, R.E., v, vii, 1, 2, 8, 15, 18, 19, 47, 48, 50, 52–55, 100, 104, 107, 108, 136, 189, 303, 431, 469–471 Wolcott, H.F., 201–203, 209

575 World War First/I/WWI, 8, 14, 44, 46, 188 Second/II/WWII, 8, 14, 19, 21, 104, 105, 144, 148, 167, 188, 191, 194, 197–200, 239, 518, 524 Writing, 3, 32, 64, 95, 138, 185, 243, 289, 340, 403, 457 Y Yin and Yang (Yin/Yang) symbol, 13, 26, 289 Yingling, J.A.K., 369 Yin, R.K., 234, 237, 239, 240, 243, 245–247, 249–255, 258, 263–265, 268, 270, 275, 279, 280 Z Zeus, 61–63 Znaniecki, F., 235, 236, 258, 263