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Within this thesis, epistemology is taken as the philosophical grounding to decide what kind of knowledge is possible within the context of this topic (the embedding of m-learning in HE), and how to ensure that that knowledge is legitimate (Crotty, 1998). Through reference to literature, the term ontology will also be used in the discussion. Ontology is seen as the nature of existence and the
structure of reality but this sits alongside epistemology and ‘ontological and epistemological issues tend to emerge together’ (Crotty, 1998, p. 10). The
researcher’s epistemological instinct is based on an interpretivist paradigm with a view that knowledge is socially constructed. The researcher would see the main evidence to record and analyse being people’s practical experience and opinions of using m-learning technologies in Higher Education, what they see as the benefits of this technology and the drawbacks and how they see m-learning fitting into the institutional context. As a new technology in a new context (universities), there is a limited amount of published literature on the context of institutional embedding, to form a judgement at this stage and then test that judgement. It is thus difficult to propose a hypothesis that could be tested. Such a hypothesis could easily be testing an insignificant argument or issue. There are a wide variety of potential barriers to the ‘translation’ of m-learning into the university organization and it is difficult to propose a hypothesis which can provide the coverage of issues and elicit the depth of understanding. It may also prove difficult to create measures of acceptable external validity or reliability when dealing with a less understood phenomenon like m-learning embedding (Edmondson and McManus, 2007).
The research will be best directed by the ideas discovered through the research process with the aim being to gather ‘rich data from which ideas are induced’ (Easterby-Smith et al., 2002, p. 30). However, this non-positivist viewpoint doesn’t necessarily mean that a qualitative approach of some form is a given, even though the ‘nature of the phenomena’ encourages it (Mason, 2002, p. 11). The initial literature review has, through investigating innovation diffusion,
actor-network theory and m-learning literature, revealed a significant number of factors that could play a prominent role in the strategy for deployment of m- learning. All these factors generate research questions, which in turn could be translated into a series of questions that could be measured via a questionnaire or survey. Thus a quantitative approach is not ruled out by the questions or the data they may solicit.
In the initial field study phase of the project, an interview approach was chosen and this was vindicated by uncovering a number of issues that were not
anticipated by the literature review, and thus were best solicited through semi- structured open questions. An advantage of the interview approach is that it gave the opportunity to explain the research to an interview subject in a much fuller sense than a written introduction to a questionnaire or survey (Oppenheim, 2000). From a practical point of view it also allowed feedback and validation of the findings of the research to the interviewees who, in turn, have enabled further access for the more in-depth field study. All the evidence to date suggests that for this project a qualitative approach ‘is much better suited that a quantitative one to the task of understanding how complex, highly context-sensitive processes unfold in organizations and how they impact on those involved’ (King, 2000, p. 590).
The research has clearly stated that it planned to use ANT as a lens on the data. But is the use of Actor-Network Theory consistent with the interpretivist paradigm suggested above? This is a problematic discussion as the authors of ANT have specifically denied that it has an underlying ontology and
epistemology most notably expressed in the comment by ANT’s main proponent ‘ there are four things that do not work with actor-network theory; the word actor the word network the word theory and the hyphen’ (Latour, 1999, p. 16).
There are three main principles of ANT which touch on ontology and
epistemology namely agnosticism, generalised symmetry and free association (Callon, 1986a). Agnosticism means that the researcher has to be impartial towards all actors in the network be they human or non-human (technology, policy or strategy in this m-learning case). Symmetry refers to the creation of networks where actors and non-human actors have equally significant roles and the conflicting viewpoints of these different actors can be explained in an
abstract and neutral vocabulary that works in the same way for all actors, be they human or technology. Finally the idea of free association means that there can be no assumed distinctions between the technological and the social worlds in coming to an understanding of the phenomenon being researched. These terms which all focus on the equal significance of human and non-human actors are seized upon by critics of ANT, seeing it as a kind of war where innovators and scientists enrol technology into their heterogeneous networks in order to make that technology the dominant force in the organization and thus irreversibly translated or embedded (Amsterdamska, 1990).
Interpretivism has a constructivist ontology in that realities about the world are made sense of by the researcher. As such, an understanding is constructed by the researcher which implies some control over the findings - a selection of the truth. But ANT has a much more open ontology which dictates that the actors speak for
themselves thus creating an opportunity for critics to claim an incompatibility with a constructivist approach. ANT proposes that forces in the interplay amongst actors themselves define, constitute and construct this interplay (Law and Hassard, 1999).The argument is that an interpretivist position is imposing some structure on the data being gathered rather than ‘allowing’ the actors to construct their own reality. However even when ANT is adopted as an all
embracing research approach, if interviewing people is the chosen approach then clearly the questions are going to play a part in constructing the responses
received – in other words the actors may be speaking for themselves but only within the researcher’s ‘script’ and thus some constructivism is inevitably at work.
In practice although there is a potential philosophical conflict here between the chosen epistemology of this research and ANT, there are many IS researchers who have adopted interpretivism and ANT. They are taking the position on ANT, like this researcher, that it is a lens on reality rather than a fundamental ontology (Walsham, 1997, Wynn, 2001). The literature reviews have already identified that Law and Callon’s global/local model and its points of passage are the main reason for selecting ANT and so, in effect, the research is already focused on a sub-set of the whole Actor-Network theory. This is the main justification for its use as a lens in this instance even if there may be some potential conflict in epistemological terms. This conflict between reality
constructed in the researcher’s mind from evidence gathered, versus an ontology of ANT which finds reality emerging through the heterogeneous networks of actors that are studied, is highlighted in a paper that argues that interpretivism is
suppressing the true ontology of ANT (Cordella and Shaikh, 2003). However the true ontology of ANT remains difficult to pinpoint, Latour suppressing explicit mention of how evidence is gathered to support analysis of real-world projects through Actor-Network theory. In a study of the failure of rapid transit system development for Paris, we can infer that much of the data was gathered through interviewing key project members but not how that was transformed into an actor-network analysis of the project (Latour, 2002). Hence an interpretivist approach to this analysis of m-learning projects may be challenged by this debate on the ontology of ANT but is wholly consistent with methodologies adopted by highly-respected IS researchers such as Geoff Walsham (Walsham, 1997). The methodology has however, been influenced by Actor-Network Theory in that looking for points of passage between m-learning projects the ‘local’) and the university organization (the ‘global’) has predicated the need to add appropriate questions to any interview scripts that might illuminate those points of passage. Thus although the research design might be interpretivist led, it has certainly been adjusted by ANT in some aspects.
In choosing interpretivism as the over-arching methodology then consideration needs to be given to its use in IS Research. Walsham (Walsham, 1995) building heavily on the work of Latour on looking at science and engineering projects (Latour, 1987) , reviews the emergence of interpretivism in IS research.
Walsham highlights the work of Checkland’s Soft Systems Methodology (SSM) (Checkland and Holwell, 1998) as looking at the intervention of organizations on the management of IS as being based on an interpretive stance and similarly the interpretive nature of research by Kling (Kling, 1987). There is also considerable
number of studies looking at the social implications of IS influenced by the work of Zuboff (Zuboff, 1988) and Orlikowski (Orlikowski and Baroudi, 1990). Numbers of interpretivist studies have continued to develop and even the most ardently positivist journals have published a number of IS interpretive studies (Walsham, 2006). Hence both the use of interpretive methods and Actor- Network Theory are supported by approaches demonstrated in existing IS literature and thus this choice is a valid way forward for this study of m-learning projects.