4 THE RESEARCH TASK AND METHODOLOGY
4.6 Reliability and research ethics
A major goal in qualitative research is to describe and comprehend the phenomena in focus. According to Alasuutari (1994), putting the findings in dialogue with previous research and thereby including them in wider discussions and as part of a wider entity is considered one way of generalising qualitative findings. This was done consistently in all the phases of this dissertation. As Tuomi and Sarajärvi (2013) state, the credibility of a study can be assessed via the concepts of validity and reliability, which were developed and are widely applied in quantitative studies. Their use in qualitative research has been criticised, but there are no equivalent general guidelines for evaluating the quality of the findings. The main point in qualitative evaluation is to focus on the research as a whole and its internal consistency. (Tuomi & Sarajärvi 2013, 133– 135.)
I have aimed to be honest, open and critical in this dissertation. I have taken into account the ethical norms of the human, social and behavioural sciences (TENK 2009), and norms in securing the anonymity of the interviewees (see Kuula 2006). I have removed the names of individuals, companies and residential areas, the names of schools and catchment areas, and often even the special subject areas and specific names of the languages studied in the school when the information was not relevant to the analysis, in order to secure the anonymity of the interviewees, the schools and their staff when reporting the findings. As suggested (TENK 2009), I have done my best to avoid causing harm to the participants resulting from their participation. The parents interviewed for sub-studies II and III, which mainly describe the construction of symbolic hierarchies across general and selective classes, are identified by means of non- personalised pseudonyms, such as Mother 10 and Father 4. The names assigned to the interviewees in sub-study IV, in which the main focus is on the families’ educational strategies and discourses, are informal first names such as Laura and Andreas, in accordance with the Finnish non-formal discussion style. The names were chosen explicitly to indicate the gender of the parent, and are widely used in Finland.
As required (TENK 2009), the interviews were voluntary and the parents were informed that they were participating in a school-choice–related research interview. On the ethical level it should be noted that the interviewees were able to define what sort of information they did or did not provide (Kuula 2006). Some of them refused to answer certain questions, especially those concerning the family’s income.
The interviewees were contacted via an online communication system operated by the local educational authorities, and asked to participate in a survey in connection with the PASC project. Parents were asked to volunteer, and almost all those who did were interviewed. They were contacted by telephone
and email before the interviews, and given basic information about the research. Some of them asked questions about the research beforehand, and some wanted to know more afterwards. All the interviewees received reasonably similar amounts of background information in advance, thus there were no significant differences among them in this respect.
Reflexivity has featured strongly throughout the study in terms of observing the ‘social and intellectual unconscious embedded in analytic tools and operations’, and considering the research as a ‘collective enterprise rather than the burden of the lone academic’ (Bourdieu 1989; Wacquant in Bourdieu & Wacquant 1992, 36). Reflecting on the position of the researcher and triangulating the findings within the research community have been intentionally and continuously pursued. Preliminary findings have been presented to academic audiences at different seminars and conferences and the analysis has been sharpened and deepened based on the received feedback, all of which contribute to the credibility of the research (Tuomi & Sarajärvi 2013). All the co-authors have been engaged in the common processes of reading a wide range of research literature, analysing data and writing research papers. Wacquant (Bourdieu & Wacquant 1992, 38) sees reflexivity as a requirement for sociological work and as an ‘epistemological program in action for social science’. The reflexivity in this dissertation has also served, as Steiner-Khamsi (2009) puts it, to avoid being culture-insensitive.
Vincent and Ball (2007, 1062–1063) openly describe the requirement for researchers to position themselves in relation to the phenomenon they are studying. Reay (2004b), on the other hand, points out in a footnote that reflecting on the position of the researcher might detract attention from the interviewees, on account of which she does not do so in the actual text. Explicit reflection is considered relevant in this work, and is part of the methodology. During the process of data collection and analysis I, the main author of this dissertation, was a relatively young (in her 20s), white and native-Finnish- speaking, upper-middle-class (in terms of the definitions of social class applied in this dissertation) woman living in a few capital cities across Europe and South America with no children of her own. Therefore I am not claiming to intuitively, or based on my own experience, understand parenthood or the parental anxieties concerning the school choice of their children.42
I have described the research process and my own role as a researcher as thoroughly as I thought necessary, which could be seen as a factor increasing the trustworthiness of a study (Eskola & Suoranta 1998, 211).
42Later on, in 2011, I interviewed my own parents individually based on the same interview structure as used with the parents interviewed for this study in order to raise my awareness of my own family background concerning educational choice. I obviously did not use these interviews in the analysis reported here.
5 RESULTS
This dissertation comprises four articles. One of these explores the theoretical and conceptual framework of the academic debate on school choice in Nordic and Continental Europe (sub-study I43), within which the three empirical studies
(sub-studies II, III and IV) are positioned. The concepts and interpretations applied in the research in Europe travel across countries as researchers read and refer to one another’s work. It is evident that there are three main areas of study: policies and school markets, school choice as a social practice, and school choice in both areas in a local context. The findings of this dissertation can be positioned along the continuum representing the market-sceptical approach to school choice (Bunar 2010), and simultaneously at least to some extent covering the presented perspectives (sub-study I) on school markets (here the space of school choice: sub-studies II and III), and school choice as a social practice (sub- studies II, III and IV) and as a local phenomenon (sub-studies II and III).
As van Zanten (2009a, 179–180) states, studies on school choice in cities should investigate the characteristics of the ‘objective’ and the ‘concrete’ school market, including the local dynamics of choice, urban space and educational provision in general. The construction of parental choice in relation to the locally provided room for choice should also be examined. The aim in this dissertation is, first, to explore empirically how the space for parental choice is socially constructed through the social hierarchies of schools and their general and selective classes in the local urban context (sub-studies II and III). A further aim is to find out what forms of capital and processes of transformation and transmission are required in the making of a choice in the local context (sub- studies II and IV). Finally, the study explores how these symbolic relations relate to the possible reproduction of social positions via educational practices in the Finnish comprehensive-school system.
A major contribution of this dissertation is to introduce the concept of the social space of school choiceas a way of gathering together the findings reported in all four articles and furthering the discussion on the applicability of relevant research across localities (sub-study I). The concept is elaborated on more thoroughly in the latter part of the results section (5.2), but in brief, the social space of school choice constitutes the relative positions of agents within the social hierarchies of families, and of the symbolic hierarchies of schools within the borders of local governance (governance of education) and urban limitations(local urban context). As a concept it relates to optimising the choice
43The focus on Stephen Ball’s work on school choice was intentional and in response to
an explicit demand to investigate his work for a special anniversary issue of the London Review of Education.
in the competition space (see Taylor 2002): knowing with whom one is competing, what the positions of the other agents are, what is the symbolic significance of the competition, and how to react to it - in other words having a feel for the game (see Bourdieu & Wacquant 1992).