Research methodology: An interpretive stance

Scholars have referred to a number of different orientations, perspectives or “world views” that underlie and inform research methodology and methods. Babchuk and Badiee (2010) maintain that understanding philosophical orientations provides a lens, an ontological view of reality, which enables researchers to position themselves when conceptualising their own research designs, and a rationale for choosing qualitative and or quantitative methods to investigate research questions. Cohen, Manion and Morrison (2007) presented three broad philosophical paradigms or “world views”. They refer to these as normative, interpretive and critical paradigms that researchers employ to investigate how people attempt to make sense of their social world. An interpretive view or research orientation is one that presents a naturalistic view of the world and seeks to establish reality from within. That is, it seeks to understand the subjective world of human experience from the perspectives of the individuals who are part of the situation being investigated (Burns, 1997; Cohen, et al., 2007; Creswell, 2008; Patton, 2002). Positivist paradigms, on the other hand, strive for objectivity and employ scientific methods and normative approaches, seeking to measure and explain natural phenomena, or employ laws or law-like generalisations for the purposes of comparing and predicting future action (Creswell, 2008). Critical research perspectives regard the other two paradigms as incomplete, as they neglect the ideological and political aspects influencing social behaviours. The purpose of critical research “is not merely to understand situations and phenomena but to change them…. [I]t seeks to emancipate the disempowered” (Cohen, Manion, & Morrison, 2000, p. 26). In determining the research design, however, fitness for purpose must be the guiding principle as different paradigms are suitable for different research purposes and research questions. The strength of an interpretive paradigm, Cohen, Manion and Morrison (2007) argued, is its fitness for the study of human behaviour,

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“where the immense complexity of human nature and the elusive and intangible quality of social phenomena contrast strikingly with the order and regularity of the natural world ” (p. 11). Because this study is interested in teachers’ understandings, points of view and reasons for engaging in particular writing discourses (Ivani!, 2004), an interpretive stance was taken. Within this paradigm, the study employed a qualitative interpretive theoretical framework, and within this it applied critical discourse analysis to interpret teachers’ positioning in the various discourses of writing.

4.1.1 A qualitative research approach

Qualitative research has a long history in education and in the social sciences. Scholars have described qualitative research in various ways (Bogdan & Biklen, 1992; Cohen, et al., 2007; Creswell, 2008). One way of reviewing these descriptors is to use Bogdan and Biklen’s (1992, 2007) framework. They identified five features of qualitative research. These are discussed below.

Qualitative research is interested in “meaning”

A qualitative research approach is interested in the different ways people make sense of their lives and the worlds they live in. It recognises that credibility and status must be given to the participants’ “voice”. People are not seen as mere subjects; they are experts on what the researcher wants to learn about the fundamental principles of their behaviour:

Qualitative researchers believe that since humans are conscious of their own behaviour, then the thoughts, feelings and perceptions of their informants are vital. How people attach meaning and what meanings they attach is the basis of their behaviour. (Burns, 1997, pp. 291-292)

Multiple meanings are derived from the context studied and portray how the participants personally interpret events, contexts and situations. In qualitative research it is acknowledged that people create multilayered,

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complex “realities” as they actively construct their social world; their actions are deliberate and creative. Hence “qualitative research places stress on the validity of multiple meaning structures and holistic analysis, as opposed to the criteria of reliability and statistical compartmentalisation of quantitative research” (Burns, 1997, p. 11).

Qualitative research is naturalistic

Qualitative research acknowledges the subjective experience of individuals immersed in natural settings. It recognises that human behaviour is shaped by sociological and historical experiences. Events cannot be understood adequately if isolated from their context (Sherman & Webb, 1988). To retain the integrity of the phenomena being investigated, qualitative research methodology requires the researcher to get beside people and attempt to understand phenomena from “within”. It is an attempt to study the social world in its natural state with minimal intervention or manipulation by the researcher (Bogdan & Biklen, 2007; Creswell, 2008). The researcher, “rather than imposing their own modes of rationality on those they study, attempts to comprehend social action in terms of the actors’ own terms of reference” (Burns, 1997, p. 302). However, it must also be recognised that in taking an interpretive stance, the researcher positions the participants as part of the contexts being observed, and as such the researcher cannot avoid being both modified by and in turn influencing the setting (J. Bell, 1993; Bogdan & Biklen, 2007; Burns, 1997; Lichtman, 2010).

Qualitative research is descriptive

Qualitative research is presented in descriptive form. Thick and detailed descriptions are essential to represent the complexity of the natural situations, contexts, and settings that are the focus of qualitative research. This also reduces the likelihood of simplistic interpretations. Qualitative data mostly deals with pictures and words rather than numbers. Often described as “soft” data, material accumulated from interview

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transcripts, observations, teacher and students’ artefacts and field notes provides rich sources of information. Descriptive data can better capture the multilayered meanings of contextualised behaviour and when written up the results of the research “contain quotations from the data to illustrate and substantiate the presentation” (Bogdan & Biklen, 2007, p. 5). Bogdan and Biklen emphasised that: “The qualitative research approach demands that the world be approached with the assumption that nothing is trivial, that everything has the potential of being a clue that might unlock a more comprehensive understanding of what is being studied” (p. 5).

Qualitative researchers are concerned with process

Qualitative researchers are concerned with process rather than simply with outcomes or products (Bogdan & Biklen, 2007). Qualitative methods move flexibly from description and data inference to explanation, suggestion of causation and theory generation (Cohen, et al., 2007). This flexibility enables the researcher to modify and refine findings as collection and analysis of data proceeds. The researcher is able to interrogate the data and develop initial theoretical hunches as part of considering a framework to support analysis of the whole data set. They are able to formulate and reformulate their understandings as part of coming to a more comprehensive and grounded understanding and explanation of events, intentions and actions.

Qualitative researchers tend to analyse data inductively

By its very nature, qualitative research design is explorative. In qualitative research, data tends to be analysed inductively (R. Burgess, 1985; Burns, 1997; Creswell, 2008), moving from detailed data gathered in the field to sorting into general codes and themes. On the whole the researcher does not enter the field and “search out data or evidence to prove or disprove hypotheses they hold before entering the study” (Bogdan & Biklen, 2007, p. 6). Rather, theory generation is derivative: the

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data suggests the theory, rather than vice versa. There are those, including Ezzy (2002), who argue for more sophisticated uses of grounded theory that draw on both inductive and deductive methods of theory generation. In Ezzy’s words: “The task of the grounded theorist is to allow deductions from pre-existing theory to suggest specific research problems and foci, but the researcher must not allow this pre-existing theory to constrain what is noticed” (p. 12). The benefit of this unified approach is that both inductive and deductive processes are used for interpreting and analysing meanings and for theorising.

In conclusion, an interpretive qualitative research approach focuses on meaning, is naturalistic, presents findings as rich descriptions, is concerned with the research process and tends to analyse data inductively. This approach has been adopted for this study because it allowed me to value the voices of the teachers and student participants and to gather and present a richer perspective on teaching writing, one that moved beyond understandings derived from the literature.