Validity

As discussed in chapter 1, I choose to try to work with both constructivist and pragmatic, or action-oriented research paradigms, each of which has its own criteria of validity.

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Burns (2005) notes that applied social research typically has a positivist or structuralist orientation, aiming to collect a representative sample of data in order to arrive at best practices or solutions which may be generalizable across social settings. She contrasts this with teacher action research which may be more relativist and context-specific, aiming to produce results that are trustworthy and resonate within a specific situated context (pp.59-60). Critique of generalizations and adherence to "situated knowledge" are at the core of a constructivist, or postmodernist orientation, although as Pennycook (2006) notes, this commitment to relativism can make socio-political engagement challenging (p. 63). While promoting postmodernist research, Pennycook does not

discount research that takes a more positivist or structuralist approach in order to arrive at "complex understandings of how new flows of language and literacy relate to new flows of capital, media, technology, people, and culture" (p. 61). The methodology of this study is designed to incorporate elements of constructivist research (such as emergent design and collaboration), as well as elements of structuralist or traditional social science research (such as representative sampling and guiding concepts). This design supported engagement with local stakeholders through collaboration and flexibility, and I hope that it will also support engagement with researchers, policy makers and other stakeholders through presentation of longitudinal, triangulated data, as discussed further below.

The methods of this study are constructivist and relativist, aiming to "disinvent" (Makoni & Pennycook, 2007), in several ways: 1) open participant observation is the foundation of data collection; 2) interviews are semi-structured and aim to allow for participants' priorities to surface; 3) my position and values as a researcher cannot be

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erased, but instead are explored; 4) in my analyses I orient towards language practices and explore what Diidxazá means to different people, as a way of deconstructing

objectified ideas of The Language; 5) I spent most time in places where my participation was welcomed, and my communication and collaboration with stakeholders in these sites shaped the study significantly; and 6) I allow for analytic themes to emerge through cyclical coding. In order to maintain validity within this paradigm I engaged in extended ethnographic research over 17 months as a way of enhancing trustworthiness (Burns, 2005), and I consider some of my results to be the actions that I took in order to support desires and improvements in specific contexts. Additionally I discussed my work with stakeholders, getting formal and informal feedback on my ideas and perspectives, and allowing this feedback to shape my work.

The methods of this study are also structuralist, pragmatic, and aim to "reconstitute" (Makoni & Pennycook, 2007) in several ways: 1) pre-established conceptual categories help structure the data collection and analysis, attempting to provide a thorough and systematic description of a complex local-global language ecology; 2) interview protocols attempt to cover the same themes and allow for

comparison across the responses of diverse participants; 3) in my research and interview questions I use the objectifying labels "Isthmus Zapotec" or "Diidxazá" to refer to what are actually a variety of communicative practices, allowing me to communicate more effectively with stakeholders, but risking reinforcing a language-as-thing paradigm; 4) individual and group strategies for positive change are an explicit focus, which, although far from a universalized, positivist model of progress, is nonetheless linked to a

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structuralist orientation to social change; and 5) I aim for maximum transparency in my processes of data collection, analysis, and reporting. In order to uphold validity within this paradigm, I have attempted to collect a maximum quantity of data from a wide and relatively representative sample of actors and education sites, and to do so over a

longitudinal timescale. This rigor in data sampling and size enhance the reliability of the study, as well as its validity. Systematic reflection on my own position is intended to help control for bias in my observations and analyses. Finally, I triangulate a variety of data sources in my analyses in order to arrive at results that are generalizable from (at least) several perspectives.

Although it is a bit of a headache to shuttle between different epistemological paradigms, I think that it is a useful exercise and a necessary skill for a socially engaged researcher. Designing research with the possibility of engaging in different paradigms of validity only stands to enhance the quality of the resulting research. For example,

rigorous sampling, although not a requirement of a constructivist or post-modernist project, will in no way diminish the value of such a project, and could certainly improve the trustworthiness of the interpretations that emerge. Problematizing and probing common concepts, such as "Ithmus Zapotec", can improve the specificity and validity of a structuralist project, even when the dominant form of the concept may inevitably continue to be present alongside alternative perspectives (in this case of IZ practices). A constructivist project that aims to contribute to positive socio-political change must adopt some reductionist concepts and/ or perspectives in order to identify positive potentials and communicate about them with a wider audience, while a pragmatic project that aims

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to contribute to change must take seriously the constantly-shifting, locally-specific place and people from whom change might emerge. As I hope to be able to have productive conversations in both local spaces and the centralist spaces of government and academia, I have found it useful to work towards a research repertoire that includes these different paradigms and their discourses.