Methodological Framework

The methodological framework that underpins this study was informed by my own interest in seeking a way for graduate practitioners working in the PVI sector to have their

‘assessment stories’ heard. In Chapter 2 I identified how reflecting on my own life history helped to understand how my personal ontological and epistemological position is framed within a critical social constructionist stance. Knowledge from this perspective can be understood to be “ideological, political, and permeated with values” (Schwandt, 2000, p.198). Such a position assumes that constructions of the world and the actors who operate within it are bound by power relations. For those actors in a weaker positon within a field, their professional identity and consequential roles are imposed upon them by those who hold positons of power. This view can be applied to the sample of participants in this study. Despite their increased symbolic capital, their position within the ECE field meant that they had limited opportunities for “unified resistance” (Osgood, 2012) to the normative and performative discourses which policy imposed on them. The additional reminder that this group also tends to find themselves at the “bottom of the epistemological hierarchy” (Moss and Urban, 2010) in relation to their contribution to policy was a further motivation to seek a way to gain a greater insight into the lived experience of assessment practice for those working in this sector.

Goodley, Lawthorn, Clough and Moore (2004) acknowledge that once the life or lives you are interested in have been identified, the research project becomes bound up with your own theoretical positions and so the narrative should be underpinned unequivocally by the aim of empowerment (p106). It is at this point that I provide a further consideration of my

58 rationale for using a life history approach in this research. Goodson (1995) provides a

distinction between a life story and life history methodology. The former is a personal reconstruction of experience, whilst a life history takes a more accumulative approach. In addition to the inclusion of life story accounts, other people’s accounts, documentary evidence and a range of historical data (p97) may also be captured. This allows for the provision of a “dialogue of a story of action within a theory of context” (Goodson, 1995, p97) which in turn helps to understand the powers of culture that define those particular ways that enable people to act and not act in specific ways (Tierney, 1998, p54). I

deliberately chose not to elicit accounts from other practitioners that worked with the participants, as this was not within the scope of the research aims. There were practical constrains to involving other practitioners, but more importantly, the core aim of this research was to identify the aspects of their professional lives that were most significant to the participants. I did however see the value of using documentary evidence in terms of assessment texts that were self-selected by the participants. This allowed for an

identification of the intertextual factors that contributed to the inter-relationship between (habitus + capital), field and practice. By providing opportunities for participants to share narratives within the socio-political context in which they existed, it helped to provide an insight into what they were understanding were the opportunities and constraints that framed their life experiences (Reay, 2004, p433) in relation to both the past and present. Viewing these life experiences within the context of the field served to provide an

understanding of how their own personal and professional habitus was shaping their own assessment practice.

An important dimension to this approach is the relevance of reflexivity. Reay (2004) reminds us that “habitus operates at an unconscious level unless individuals confront events that cause self-questioning, whereupon habitus begins to operate at the level of consciousness and the person develops new facets of the self” (p437-438). Capturing my own life history was therefore equally important in this research, as it helped to understand my own

subjectivities in relation to practice and the workforce. For both myself and the participants, the act of creating physical and mental spaces to reflect on significant events in our lives was a key part of the process in helping to make the unconscious aspects of our habitus more conscious.

59 Yet I also needed to be realistic about the impact my study could possibly have. I found resonance with McArdle’s study into EC arts education whose rationale was not to see research as an endeavour to “solve the ‘problems’ of the field” (2001 cited in McArdle and McWilliam, 2005, p.325) in order to produce formulas and ways of working that would create a particular pedagogical or professional model. It would be naïve to think that such a small scale study could in any way transform practice that was so strongly determined by the global and local political imperatives that all of the education sector face. Instead, I saw this research as an opportunity to open up thinking about the “normalizing categories” (McArdle and McWilliam, 2005) and current articulations of terms commonly associated with assessment practice.

To adopt a social constructionist positon the researcher must:

…not remain straitjacketed by the conventional meanings we have been taught to associate with the object. Instead, such research invites us to approach the object in a radical spirit of openness to its potential for new or richer meaning. It is an

invitation to reinterpretation. (Crotty, 1998 p.51)

Adopting this perspective required a willingness to seek methods that offered an insight into the multiple ways in which the participants’ roles played out in their own workplace, as well as the meaning they and other actors in the field were attributing to assessment discourses. Bourdieu’s conceptual tools served as a useful methodological framework that I felt would enable me to approach the study in a way that would open up the potential to gain richer insights into the subject matter and help to challenge some of the assumptions regarding professional identity and assessment practice.

Bourdieu developed a “theory of practice” in order to account for the “ontological

complicity” (Grenfell.2012, p.44) between objective structures and internalised structures. Grenfell interprets this by explaining that individual action emerges from an unconscious calculation of profit (which in the first instance may be symbolic) and the strategic position of the self in a social space (or field) to maximise the capital available to them. In relation to my research, this position is relevant as I was interested to examine whether the

participants viewed their assessment practices as a form of game playing (Basford and Bath, 2014), and whether this was either a conscious or unconscious endeavour. This required me

60 to consider to what extent the capital the participants had gained from their undergraduate studies had structured their habitus, as well as the extent to which the objective structures of the field were structuring their habitus to be reproduced, limited or transformed.

Bourdieu does not use binaries, nor does he separate theory from empiricism, as he sees them as relational. He argued that the adoption of either a subjective or objective position did not allow for a sufficient understanding of the social world (Grenfell, 2012). In order to endeavour to seek validity in research, a researcher needs to seek to understand the structures and mechanisms of a social space where, through collective histories, a greater understanding of the relational factors can be gleaned. What this does not do is result in universal validity, but it allows for insight into the distinction, or differences, between social sites. The habitus of the researcher is therefore equally as important as the habitus of the participants of a study. Bourdieu believed research habitus required “socio-analysis”, which is a capacity to reflexively understand the positioning of the researcher in respect of “what is being researched and in relation to the intellectual field in which the research is located“ (Rawolle and Lingard 2013, p.118). Familiarity with the research field can be an aid to reflexivity, as you are not positioned entirely out of the field (Green, 2013). This helps to gain an insight into the “deepest logic of the social world”, with the objective of

“constructing it as a ‘special case of what is possible’… an exemplary case in a finite world of possible configurations” (Bourdieu, 1998a, p.2). This premise serves as the starting point for my research, as Bourdieu argued that a precondition for understanding practice is for the researcher to be able to critically reflect upon both the social and epistemological conditions that result in practical action. I was not positioned entirely out of the field, having had previous professional experience of working with participants in the area as well as having academic interests located within ECE (as outlined in Chapter 2).

Conversely, it is important that as a researcher, familiarity with the field does not lead to assumptions, or a positon of privilege, when translating the discourses of others (Deer, 2012). It requires the researcher to engage in “participant objectification” (Bourdieu and Wacquant, 1992, p.68), where they are mindful that there can be a variety of viewpoints on the object of study that can coexist. Indeed, as the literature review highlighted, there were multiple viewpoints regarding professional identity, assessment practice and

61 documentation, which needed to be considered when reflecting upon the social and

epistemological conditions in which the study was located. There was also the possibility that my own experiences of working in this field served to form a particular lens in which I viewed the sector. The adoption of MacNaughton’s (2003) three positions was a

methodological principle which I used in the analysis of the findings in order to attempt to address this issue. One other way of engaging with participant objectification is to regard the participants as “theory – generating agents” rather than objects of interpretation (Grenfell, 2012, p.37). Therefore, I needed to seek a way of having “intensive encounters” with the participants who live by a specific cultural construction in order to be able to portray the space in a “provisionally accurate manner” (Foley, 2002, p.473). Through the act of collaborative reflection we were able to inductively consider ways in which sense could be made of the relationship between habitus, field and practice. The following section outlines the methods I employed that were intended to allow the participants to be theory- generating agents, and provide the space for reflection and critical thinking.