The social constructivist theoretical perspective

The purpose of this research is to better understand how academics make decisions about undergraduate curricula, and the key educational and contextual factors that they perceive as being influences on their decisions. This study positions academics as purposeful social actors who are making decisions about curriculum as they plan courses as individuals, and as members of curriculum teams within an academic school or department, and university context. Hence academics make decisions and take actions informed by their own values, beliefs and experiences about curriculum and their interpretations of their social context. The nature of the research leads me to select a social constructivist perspective in which my aim is to capture an understanding of the phenomenon being studied from the perspectives of the participants (Denzin & Lincoln, 2000). The aim of research using this perspective is to identify underlying patterns or mechanisms to explain how people interpret and make sense of their experiences and the actions that they take to manage their day-to-day situations (Miles & Huberman, 1994; Schwandt, 2000).

This section explores the ontological and epistemological issues involved in constructing a study from this theoretical perspective. Constructivist research is included amongst a range of naturalistic, qualitative and interpretive approaches (Cohen, Manion, & Morrison, 2000), which are based on the following assumptions:

 people act intentionally and make meanings in and through their actions,  people interpret events and act on the bases of events,

 events and individuals are unique and constantly changing, hence they are not generalisable,

 situations should be examined from the viewpoints of the participants. In addition to the understanding that individuals construct their own meanings from their experiences of the world, social constructivists ‘recognize that influences on individual construction are derived from and preceded by social relationships’ (Young & Collin, 2004, p. 376). Young and Collin (2004) describe social constructivism as an emerging perspective that exists on a continuum with social constructionism, depending on whether the focus is respectively on the individual or the social. Schwandt (2000) notes that social constructionist epistemologies draw on constructivism and hence they

historical and socio-cultural dimension. Constructionism argues that meanings arise in an intentional interplay between the mind and the object being studied, and are both objective and subjective (Crotty, 1998). Individuals are constructing meanings about the social world, which Ashwin (2009) describes as being complex, in that it is made up of a larger numbers of elements, uncertain and unpredictable, and emergent. The

complexity of the social world means that it cannot be known directly and must be mediated through theory, which involves simplifying its complexity (Ashwin, 2009). Hence, explanations developed will be incomplete, approximate and contestable, and will focus on certain aspects and not others.

This view of the social world is adopted in my study, which reflects my beliefs that academics’ curriculum decisions can’t be known directly but require interpretation of their representations in dialogue and in curriculum documents. I selected qualitative research methods, involving interviews and analysis of curriculum documents, to gain insight into participants’ ways of understanding and representing their decisions. An exploratory framework for investigating the field of curriculum decision making (Figure 2.1 in Chapter 2) was developed from the literature to provide categories for

investigating and interpreting participants’ curriculum decisions and beliefs about influences. Participants were free to express their decisions and beliefs in their own language; however the framework provided a structure for probing participants’

understandings, and for developing initial deductive categories for interpreting meaning. This use of theory for the initial framework of the study is intended to capture the interplay between individual and social construction of meaning, which recognises that theories are produced socially, and new ways of seeing the world depend on existing theories (Ashwin, 2009).

The findings are presented as detailed accounts to represent the range of different ways in which participants make curriculum decisions in their context, and as case studies identifying underlying patterns of decision making. The findings are not intended to represent a generalisable truth about curriculum decision making, but to provide a defensible reasoning of the processes and outcomes of interpretation, with sufficient detail so that readers can form their own interpretations. The findings are intended to increase our knowledge about curriculum decision making in ways that can assist

academics to develop greater awareness of their own practices and the underlying beliefs that shape them, and a range of possible alternatives for improving practice.

The social constructivist theoretical perspective informs decisions about the role of researcher and the criteria for validity, which are explored in more detail in section 3.5. My role is informed by Crotty’s (1998) description of the researcher as bricoleur, who brings a sustained focus to the task of interpreting meaning, in order to create new meanings. Validity addresses questions about the authenticity and trustworthiness of the findings in the account provided of the social world of the participants, and in

identifying implications for others to take action (Lincoln & Guba, 2000). Approaches to validity in constructivist research include applying rigour in the methods for data collection and analysis, and providing detailed accounts of the processes in ways that show defensible reasoning and plausibility (Lincoln & Guba, 2000). Reflexivity is another important process for establishing authenticity in qualitative research (Lincoln & Guba, 2000), where my aim as a researcher is to be as self-reflective as possible about any potential biases world views and theories that I may be imposing on the data (Charmaz, 2006).