EFECTO DEL MANEJO DEL SUELO SOBRE LA

I am already a part of the community of participants, albeit not in the same age group; this of course gives me a personal interest in the study topic, and a resulting desire to bring about positive changes, which according to Clough and Nutbrown (2007) is ultimately a common goal for most researchers. I must take into account my own position, that of being a professional working in the field but also an autistic adult and to this end I shall indulge in autoethnography and self-reflection as a critical methodology throughout the thesis.

Epistemologically I shall reject positivist approaches and explore the concept of interpretivism which has, for the past forty years, been seen by many as an alternative to the positivist view that life needs to be defined in measurable terms and ‘can exclude choice, experience, individuality and moral responsibility’ (Cohen et al., 2007:18). There is also an ontological distinction between objectivity and subjectivity and according to Searle (1995) it is crucial that both ontological and

epistemological senses of the distinction are considered. While positivism purports to give structure and quantification, as a researcher in the field of autism I need to remember that positivism denotes human behaviour as passive and thereby does not take into account individualism which, when researching around young people with autism, is imperative. Baron-Cohen (2008) indicates that autism is a spectrum of behaviours, traits, and characteristics, and each individual has any number and combination of these; and I discussed in Chapter 2 the heterogeneity of autistic individuals. Positivism also fails to take account of our ability to interpret our own experiences (Giddens, 1976). I would not go as far as agreeing with Byrne’s view (cited in Robson, 2002:26) that ‘positivism is dead. By now it has gone off and is beginning to smell’; but the view, if not the expression of it, seems to be widely accepted as a grounding for research, especially social research. Indeed surely there would be no post-positivism if positivism were suitable for all research? For instance post-positivists accept that the experience, tacit knowledge, values and so on, may influence what is observed although they also argue that there is still a commitment to objectivity albeit recognising that bias may be likely (Robson, 2002).

Interpretivism has history in Weber’s approach to social science as an ‘interpretive understanding [what he called ‘Verstehen’] of social action in order to arrive at a causal explanation of its course and effects’ (1947:88) as well as being influenced by phenomenology which is about individuals making sense of the world around

them and not conceding to any preconceptions (Bryman, 2008). Schutz,

influenced by, amongst others, Weber, has made clear his position:

the observational field of the social scientist - social reality - has a specific meaning and relevance structure for the beings living, acting, and thinking within it. By a series of common-sense constructs they have pre-selected and pre-interpreted this world which they experience as the reality of their daily lives...

Schutz (1962, cited in Bryman, 2008:16).

tradition of the Chicago School; symbolic interactionism, a term coined and further

developed by Blumer (1986). Symbolic interactionists maintain that during

interaction, an individual continually interprets the symbolic meanings of what is around him including the actions of others and uses these meanings to act further. Blumer sees ‘meanings’ as a symbolic interactionist as ‘social products... [resulting from] the defining activities of people as they interact’ (1986:5). However, the crucial element to these results is that people go through a ‘process of interpretation’ of the meanings in order to reach the end products, and do not

simply take already established meanings as the truth. This process involves

engaging in some self-interaction. I shall return to this premise during my discussion of autoethnography. For now I wish to merely note that for autistic people this self-communication and self-interaction is likely to be something which happens naturally. Because of the difficulties with communication with others, in my experience, there is a tendency for autistic people to internally rehearse words and interpret other’s words and meanings, before opening up to others or going public with opinions and actions. However, this also means that interaction where one individual responds to another or ‘in relation to one another’ (Blumer, 1986:7) in the formation of a ‘society’ may be more demanding for those with autism. In order for a person with autism to engage in this theoretical perspective of society, the symbol needs to be understood in terms of symbolic communication which, according to Mead (cited in Charon, 2007:111), is about sharing messages with others, ‘intentionally and meaningfully’, that is the symbols are understood by both parties. The potential issue for a person with autism is one of different sensory processing (Grandin and Barron, 2005) and particularly if the communication is with a non-autistic person, a lack of shared understanding is common.

Epistemologically, using an interpretive stance for research is a triple process: ‘the researcher is providing an interpretation of other’s interpretations... [and these] have to be further interpreted in terms of the concepts, theories, and literature of a discipline’ (Bryman, 2008:17). This latter stage of interpretation, brings into play the inductive strategy of developing theory from data, influenced by grounded theory as many qualitative research methodologies are (Corbin and Strauss,

2007). It should be mentioned here that grounded theory was considered for this study. Although the phases of my methodology built layers of data, rather than snowballing from each other as data was produced, my phases were all conducted concurrently. There were similarities however that the data created emerging themes.

Constructivism is the ontological position which I consider to be closely aligned to my research and which is often seen as a joint paradigm with interpretivism (Mertens, 1998). It implies that social phenomena and their meanings are produced through social interaction and are constantly being revised; that the researcher presents her own ‘constructions’ of social reality (Grix, 2001; Smith, 2010). Many social phenomena are considered to be social constructions. Of relevance to this study ‘childhood’ for instance (Prout and James, 2007:1) and

‘sport’ (Smith, 2010:1) are both considered social constructions. It was also

discussed in Chapter 1 the possibility of ‘disability’ being a social construction, as considered by some including Green (2008). This would support the premise of the social model of disability.

Constructivism places great importance on the values of the researcher. I value the benefits of teaching sport and physical activities to young people with autism. It is important to me as a researcher, and indeed as a person with autism being involved in these areas, that I utilise academic research and find the methodologies best suited to gaining the most valuable data in order for me, and the young people concerned in the research, to gain the most benefit both in the short term and even more importantly I believe in the long term.

Constructivism grew out of hermeneutics ‘which is the study of interpretive understanding or meaning’ (Mertens, 1998:11) and Habermas who is a major influence of hermeneutics formed his ‘communicative action’ which ‘relies on a co-operative process of interpretation in which participants relate simultaneously to something in the objective, the social and subjective worlds...’(1989:120). Speaker

common definitions. Their mutual understanding is the ‘intersubjective recognition of validity’. Guba and Lincoln (1989, cited in Mertens, 1998:14) on hermeneutics, note that it is important to identify multiple perspectives from the participants, in order to get more reliable interpretations of meanings and then for the researcher to compare and contrast by amalgamating the various ideas, and then ‘forcing reconsideration of previous positions’.