Critical realism

3.5.1 Introduction to critical realism

Critical realism is a philosophy of natural and social sciences developed by Roy Bhaskar (1978; 2002). He described his philosophy of science as „transcendental realism‟ (Bhaskar, 1978). Critical realism has served as the base for the work of many social scientists, including Margaret Archer, Tony Lawson, Alan Norrie and Andrew Collier (Martins, 2011).These advancements have led to an increasing number of social science researchers using critical realism in their research (Pawson & Tilley, 1997;Danermark, Ekström, Jakobsen, & Karlsson, 2002) including in the field of education (Maxwell, 2004; Scott, 2005; Shipway, 2011) and particularly in ESD (Schudel, 2012; Sabai, 2014). Bhaskar (1978; 2002) developed three forms of philosophy: first wave or basic critical realism, dialectical critical realism and the philosophy of meta-reality. In this study, only the epistemological and ontological arguments of basic critical realism were used to underlabour the capability approach. The study therefore only explored those concepts of critical realism that helped underlabour the capability approach. According to Potter and Lopez (2001), basic critical realism has its origin in the critique of positivism in Natural Science and hermeneutic in the Social Sciences. Positivism‟s assumption is that knowledge of reality can only be gained through empirical means while the assumption in hermeneutics is that reality is only a product of our social construction of knowledge (ibid.). Critical realism has been linked to hermeneutics and postmodernism in agreeing that, “the production of knowledge is itself a social process and one in which language is deeply embedded” (ibid.: 9). However, critical realism diverts from hermeneutics and postmodernism by arguing that knowledge of reality cannot be solely reduced to its social determinants of production or social meanings. Critical realism put forward an argument that reality is an actual independent entity and it is a misunderstanding of it that has led to distortion. Thus critical realism‟s ontological position, is that reality is independent, structured and to a large extent not observable (Bhaskar, 1978).

Critical realism is based on the assumption that there are real generative mechanisms underlying the events of the world and our experiences of it offering the theory of ontological realism (Benton &

are real (ontological realism) but that our knowledge about them is theory-laden, imperfect and fallible (epistemic relativity) (Sayer, 1992; 2000).Therefore what constitutes scientific knowledge will necessarily change over time as theories with better approximations to the truth are developed. This led Bhaskar (2002) to describe his position in terms of „epistemic relativity‟ and to argue against the correspondence theory of truth. Bhaskar advocated epistemic relativity simply because given the lack of a direct access to a manifest truth, our knowledge claims are relative to some fallible theory or perspective (Cruickshank, 2003).

3.5.2 Key aspects of critical realism drawn on in the study

3.5.2.1 Stratified reality

Critical realist researchers base their explanations of how people experience a phenomenon on mechanisms that operate at deeper levels of reality. The three levels of reality in basic critical realism are the empirical, the actual and the real. Bhaskar accepted that each of these levels is real, thus there seem to be a terminological confusion with the term „real‟ also classified as one of the levels of analysis. Benton and Craib (2001) asserted that the metaphor of levels indicates that critical realism is a form of „depth‟ realism, implying that scientific research employing a critical realist methodology goes beyond what is experienced, to uncover generative mechanisms. A generative mechanism is “the way of acting of things” (Bhaskar, 1978:14).

The empirical is the layer of reality that is most accessible to us. It refers to our observations and experiences of the world. This layer, according to Danermark et al. (2002), contains our data or facts and these facts are always what mediates our theoretical conceptions. This layer consists of knowledge that is fallible and unstable. In the case of this study, empirical knowledge consists of Life Sciences teachers‟ conceptions of their valuable beings and doings as teachers and as participants in PLCs or their understanding of their own practice and continuing professional development. The actual is the layer of reality which consists of the events of the world, experienced by people or not (Danermark et al., 2002). An example of events in this study is actual Life Sciences teachers‟ practices. The real refers to anything that exists, be it natural or social, which has power to cause events and experiences at the level of the actual and the empirical (Sayer, 2000). It is within the level of the real that causal mechanisms and causal powers are found. These mechanisms may exist unexercised: “... what has happened does not exhaust what could happen” (Sayer, 2000:12). It is through an understanding of the real that I sought to explore the structural factors that shape the PLCs events and experiences in this study responsible for PLCs functionings, events and experiences. The strata of critical realism imply that observation is fallible, thus we are not fully able to provide a complete understanding of any social situation (Potter & Lopez, 2001).

3.5.2.2 Mechanisms, power and structures

Drawing from critical realism, Martins (2006) differentiated between the concepts of structures, power and mechanisms as three fundamental concepts of critical realist ontology, noting that:

Structures are the underlying conditions of possibility that enable or facilitate the occurrence of a given phenomenon. Structures comprise powers that may or may not be exercised and, when exercised, may or may not be actualised in actual events and states of affairs. Mechanisms refer to the mode of operation of structures and exist as the power that a structure possesses of acting in a given way. (p. 676)

In accordance with the quote above that structures comprise powers that may or may not be exercised, Collier (1994) gave an example of a motorbike that is capable of speeds of 200 km/h but might never be driven that fast. On mechanisms, Bhaskar (1978) argued:

The world consists of mechanisms not events ... They may be said to be real though it is rarely that they are actually manifest and rarer still that they are empirically identified by men ... they are not unknowable, although knowledge of them depends upon a rare blending of intellectual, practice-technical and perceptual skills ... This is the arduous task of science: the production of the knowledge of those enduring and continually active mechanisms of nature that produce the phenomena of our world. (p.37)

Bhaskar (1978:3) noted that mechanisms are “nothing other than the ways of acting of things”. Mechanisms are ways in which structured entities, by means of their powers and liabilities, act and cause particular events (Easton, 2010). Entities have causal powers (ibid.). They provide building blocks for critical realism‟s explanations and can be things such “as organisations, people, relationships, attitudes, resources, inventions, ideas, and so on. Entities can be “human, social, or material, simple or complex, structured or unstructured” (Easton, 2010:120). They are usually structured with nested structures within them that affect one another i.e. an organisation has departments, people, processes, resources which all affect one other. “When activated, particular mechanisms produce effects in conjunctures, which may sometimes produce different events and conversely the same type of events may have different causes” (Sayer, 1992: 116). Easton (2010) warned that the concept of mechanism needs to be used with caution because it has problematic connotations which imply clear structure and invariance in operation, something that critical realists reject.

Sayer (2000) argued that the same structures and mechanisms with different conditions cause different observed events. He noted that, causal mechanisms do not act deterministically. They are better understood as tendencies (Bhaskar, 1998). Tendency means “to capture the idea of a continuous activity that may or may not be actualised in concrete events and states of affairs, even when it is continuously exercised” (Martins, 2006:676). This implies that generative mechanisms as causal forces should only be conceived of as partial causes (Sayer, 2000). Causes are always a

partial explanation of an outcome, implying that mechanisms are always acting and interacting in a context of other causes that generate the observed outcome (Sayer, 2000). Tendencies can be linked to courses of action that one would take; for example, Life Sciences teachers participating in the PLC activities in order for their valued beings or doings to come to fruition (Tao, 2013a). The concepts of mechanisms, tendencies and structures were significant in this study as justified in Section 3.6 in this chapter (and as shown in Chapter Eight).

3.5.2.3 Open systems and tendencies

In addition to stratified reality, critical realism argues that reality is differentiated and this differentiation is between open systems and closed systems (Shipway, 2011). Bhaskar (1978) noted that open systems result in a situation where particular mechanisms cause certain effects and those effects are observed. The objects of knowledge in the Social Sciences are only experienced in the open systems (ibid.). What this implies is that education programmes such as the Fundisa for Change programme are always placed in the open systems. Collier (1994) noted that in most situations (except in a few controlled experiments) events happen in open systems where there are many multiple co-determining mechanisms that make it somehow difficult or impossible to draw conclusions on constant conjunctions between a particular cause and effect. To explain this statement, Shipway (2011) gave an example of the wet patch found on the carpet, which could be a case of a glass of water that was spilled by Jim who was trying to get some water because he was very thirsty. The argument being made here is that the event is co-determined in the sense that we cannot claim that every time Jim is thirsty, the final result will be a wet patch on the carpet.

Tendencies operate within the open systems (i.e. in the PLCs) of the social world amongst counter - tendencies, which are “counteracting forces [that] can override and conceal the effects of the operation of a particular mechanism” (Collier, 2005:110). Archer (2007) noted:

If there is a congruent relationship between an individual‟s tendency with concurrently operating tendencies, there is enablement of action: but if there is incongruence, there is a constraint. At that point, an individual has the power to reflect upon one‟s circumstances and to decide what to do in them or to do about them; and this reflexive deliberation may result in compliance to counter-tendencies (in which original course of action is negated), or evasion of it (in an attempt to realise the action, albeit in a constrained way). (p.20)

Relating this to the three levels of reality, Tao (2013a) observed that the outcome of a decision made regarding the enabled or constrained tendency lies in the actual domain of critical realism. Any observations made related to the outcome lie in the level of the empirical, and any explanations given for the experiences entail the underlying causal mechanisms, tendencies and counter - tendencies (Shipway, 2011). It was important in this study to understand the causal factors and the causal processes that explain how the generative mechanisms relate to the Life Sciences teachers‟

PLC activities. This is linked to the critical realism concept of causality. The concept of open systems is significant in this study as it helps explain the tendencies and counter-tendencies that may override or conceal activities within the PLC as an open system (see Figure 3.2), affecting teachers‟ capabilities and functionings.

3.5.2.4 Causality

Causality is “to ask the cause of something is to ask what makes it happen, what produces, generates, creates or determine it, or more weakly, what enables or leads to it” (Sayer, 1992:104). In the realist view, “analysis deals with the necessary conditions and powers of structures, abstracting from the particular historical contingencies which brought those conditions into being” (Sayer, 2000:141). In essence, a critical realist approach to research is a search for transfactual causality in which the exercise of powers and tendencies of generative mechanisms are contingent on different structural and social relations in an open-ended societal system.

Figure 3.2: Critical realist view of causation (adapted from Tao, 2013b and Sayer, 2000:15)

Figure 3.2 demonstrates how the same mechanisms in an open system can be affected by different counteracting forces that can override the operations of the mechanism causing different events / outcomes.

3.5.2.5 Social structures

Significant to critical realism is the notion of social structures (Sayer, 2000). Like natural entities, social structures emerge from relations: the relations between people, and relations between people and nature (Easton, 2010). Included in this set of relations is culture, which can be considered the existing set of ideas that can be understood or known by someone (Archer, 1995). While

distinction is not clear (ibid.). Social structure and individual agency may be autonomous to some degree, but they are also mutually constitutive (ibid.). The social mechanisms that emerge from social relations shape an individual‟s situation and individuals as constituent parts of society reproduce and sometimes transform society through engaging in socialised or unique social practices (Archer, 1995). Martins (2006) noted that, structures can be physical, biological, psychological or social structures. Social structures are constituted by social rules, which are attached to given social positions (ibid.). And social positions are internally related (ibid.). As Lawson (2003) explained, aspects or items are said to be internally related when they are what they are, or can do what they do, by virtue of the relations in which they stand. When parts of a given phenomenon are internally related, these parts in isolation will not possess the essential properties of the whole. These (internally related) social positions (that are attached to given social rules) constitute the underlying social structure that facilitates or constrains human agency and social practices. Social entities have causal influence through how they shape the circumstances of the agency of individuals, shaping their choices and capacities (Bhaskar, 1998). The web of relations condition and influence an individuals‟ reasoning and action through the provision of material resources and normative ideas (Archer, 1995).

The point of contact between the social structure and individuals is to be found in positioned practices; that is, “positions (places, functions, rules, tasks, duties, rights, etc.) occupied (filled, assumed, enacted, etc.) by individuals, and of the practices (activities, etc.) in which, in virtue of their occupancy of these positions (and vice versa), they engage” (Bhaskar, 1998:41). Occupying a particular role, relative to others, is what determines what a person can or cannot do (Sayer, 2000). In this way, a person‟s relative position in society subjects them to the causal mechanisms that constrain and enable behaviour. In the context of this study, this means the positions occupied by different people, i.e. Fundisa for Change coordinator, partner, teacher or PLC coordinator, will determine what they can do or not do.