As there are no universal meanings, so can there be no universal interpretations of those meanings. As there are many fluid meanings, so may there be many fluid interpretations of those meanings that, by the very nature of their being fluid and non-universal, cannot become absolutely defined.
Congruent with the research's reader response and interpretive communities framework and the relativist perspective that underlies it, using interpretative techniques closer to the hermeneutic rather than the positivistic tradition is not only an essential choice but would have to be the only choice of method of interpretation around which the research's ideological framework and its qualitative stance could cohere.
The use of an interpretative approach, however, becomes more complicated when we acknowledge that every child unavoidably moves into the autonomic group and interpretive community that is 'adult' – and from both an autonomic group and an interpretive community point of view there can be no going back. That is, whereas, in many instances, a person can move back and forth between groups and
communities – being an omnivore, then a vegetarian for a while, then an omnivore again, for example – a child growing into an adult is a uniquely one-way transition.
As an adult, therefore, I am only able to recall my childhood, all its fluid realities and many changing meanings, through the meanings and fluid realities offered by my present-day adult self. Childhood, though, "has its own methods of seeing, thinking and feeling" (Rousseau, 1762/1948, 1948, p. 52) and if this so, Crain (2016) believes, then "measuring children in terms of an adult yardstick is likely to miss what is unique to the child" (p. 109).
91 Although the children aren't to be measured, as such, it is important to remember that when entering into transactions with any articulated thoughts, feelings, ideas – texts – that the children might present during the research or as a result of the research process, the only tools, the only interpretative approaches, that an adult researcher has at her or his disposal in the examination and analysis of those texts, have to be employed through the sets of interpretive strategies that are already in place in being significant to the 'adult' and 'adult researcher' communities.
As an adult/adult-researcher, one cannot 'step outside' (see Ontological and Epistemological Position of the Research, above) of the context that is one's own interpretive community or set of interpretive communities. There exists no position, there are no interpretative approaches, from which an adult researcher can examine any of the children's texts using interpretive techniques from the children's interpretive communities in order to see or feel how the children see or feel or think about something from the children's own point of view.
An adult is not a child and so cannot interpret the world as a child does or re/create a child's meaning. All that is available to the adult researcher, and so to her or his research, is the doubly complex use of fluid hermeneutic techniques from fluid adult perspectives that operate in unison to create fresh fluid meanings that, in turn, might make some 'sense' of the data, the texts, that the children offer.
Despite this complexity, it is anticipated that some commonalities or patterns may emerge from the gathered data. If more obvious themes do not seem immediately evident upon primary examination of the texts, then by examining these
commonalities, patterns, motifs, it is likely that less obvious themes can be discerned.
It is the emergence of any such themes, both obvious and non-obvious, that this research looks forward to with respect to investigating children's ideas about science and scientists and so satisfying the research aims. Hence, having initially used interpretative techniques to collate and code the data, the research then employs a specific thematic approach to create fresh meaning in pursuit of the research aims and objectives.
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Thematic Analysis
The discourse analysis of qualitative research by any number of trusted methods – conversation analysis, interpretative phenomenological analysis or narrative
analysis, for example – can be satisfactorily employed in identifying the emergence of themes from qualitative data. For this research, however, I felt that these approaches to data analysis did not present any fully appropriate methods of choice.
First, the high level of linguistic and dialogic expertise, for an inexperienced practitioner, would prove a stumbling block to the correct dissection and proper interpretation of the data within the singular scope of any such method. Any naïve or amateurish use or misuse of the precise language, for instance, of these
methods may serve to detract from both the analysis itself and the report of the analysis.
Second, the somewhat inflexible nature these methods employ in codifying the data does not sit so comfortably with the theory of reader response. In the strictest sense, iterative meanings are fluid and transitory; every time the data is revisited, the data – the text – is created afresh and new meaning is made and so, when thinking about the essence of reader response theory, these meanings cannot and should not be conclusively codified; this research embraces fluid interpretations of what the children say and why they say it, not how they use language or
conversation to say it. In order for the research and what it may be telling us to be spoken about and let out into the world, however, the data does have to be
analysed in some fashion, a fashion that is more flexible, accessible and resonates more readily with the theory of reader response.