Minería

1. A Shift in Epistemological Framework

The new direction of my research led me away from a search for a generic explanation for perceived variance in aptitude for theological reflection that would be applicable to other contexts and towards an exploration of the unique, non-replicable, lived experience of LMC students. This shift was away from what John Swinton and Harriet Mowat (2006, pp. 126-7) call a nomothetic understanding of knowledge and towards an ideographic epistemology (Schilderman, 2012, pp. 126-7).

179 (a) Nomothetic Knowing

Nomothetic epistemology adopts positivist assumptions and is characteristic of the natural sciences. It may also be appropriate to practical theology when quantitative research methods are employed to draw on empirical data such as statistical information or scholarly surveys to provide knowledge about the practices of faith (Schilderman, 2012; Astley, 2002, pp. 98-100). Exponents of nomothetic knowing begin with a hypothesis and test it by empirical observation so that it can be shown to resist attempts at falsification. This leads to generic knowledge that is replicable in and applicable to other situations or populations.

The problem-based implication behind my original research question led me unwittingly to adopt this epistemological framework as I set out to hypothesize why some people might struggle with theological reflection. The intention was to test any resulting hypothesis by observation of LMC students and then formulate a theory of aptitude for theological reflection that would be replicable among other populations. Several possibilities were explored

(Chandler, 2011). I considered the extent to which difficulty in correlating faith insights and lived experience might be attributable to people’s personality types or learning styles(Coffield, et al., 2004); whether it might be due to their positions on a progressive developmental path (Fowler, 1981); and the influence authoritative frameworks of faith might have on adults’ learning and reflecting (Le Cornu, 2005) .

Any or all of these approaches might very well prove to be useful tools for describing how LMC students reflect (Chandler, 2011, p. 15) but I was seeking to go further and deduce from them a prescriptive explanation as to why some people have difficulty with theological reflection. The flaw was that, thus far, I had only been dealing with my own perceptions of what was going on with the students without making any attempt to test its validity. I was trying to find a

generalizable theory for a problem the existence of which was unproven. There was a need, then, to take a step backwards and pay closer attention to the practices of the LMC. The decision was made to explore whether a better starting point might be an inductive approach that would pay attention to the particular stories that LMC students have to tell about their experiences of theological reflection and the training programme.

(b) Idiographic Knowing

The exploration of this revised starting point necessitated a shift in epistemological framework in the direction of ideographic knowing. This is an epistemology that undergirds qualitative rather than quantitative research (Astley, 2002, pp. 98-100). In contrast to a nomothetic search for knowledge that is applicable to any and all situations, it sees truth as being located in ‘unique, non-replicable experiences’ (Swinton & Mowat, 2006, p. 43); in this case in the lived

180 experience of theological reflection among LMC students. This gives it particular resonance with the Christian tradition in which truth is ultimately seen as being revealed in the ‘unique, non-replicable’ event of the incarnate Christ. Instead of seeing any findings that might emerge from the research as being generalizable and replicable elsewhere, an ideographic approach would see their usefulness as being restricted to providing insightful resonances with theological reflection in other contexts.

Ideographic epistemology exists within the interpretative paradigm of constructivism. That is, it assumes that all knowledge is, at least to an extent, constructed by individuals and communities (Swinton & Mowat, 2006, pp. 34-6). This leads its adherents to adopt research methods that would seek to establish how students on the LMC construct their understanding of theological reflection by adopting a rigorous approach to narrative that pays careful attention to the stories told by the students themselves (Swinton & Mowat, 2006, p. 38). The purpose would be to provide a thick description (Thompson, et al., 2008, p. 53) that would do justice both to the uniqueness and the complexity of the way LMC students correlate insights from the faith tradition with lived experience.

2. Identifying a Method

(a) Hermeneutical Phenomenology

Having decided to explore the usefulness of ideographic epistemology for the research project, I identified ‘hermeneutic phenomenology’ as a potential method (Astley, 2002, pp. 110-114; Swinton & Mowat, 2006, pp. 110-116). As its name suggests, this method promised to lead in the direction of a thick description of theological reflection among LMC students by paying attention to both phenomenology and hermeneutics. At the phenomenological level it promised to help me pay attention to the phenomenon itself, that is the lived experience of the LMC students, in as objective and bias-free way as possible. At the same time, at its hermeneutical level, it promised to help me explore the part my pre-understandings had to play in my interpretation of what the students had to say. I will now look in more detail at how these two levels promised to facilitate my research.

(b) Phenomenology: Bracketing Preconceptions

In encouraging an unbiased, objective enquiry into the phenomenon being observed the method follows the phenomenology of Edmund Husserl (Gadamer, 2004, pp. 235-242). This

encourages the suspension or ‘bracketing’ of any expectations that the researcher might have about the outcome of a project. Such bracketing would allow the lived experience of the LMC students to be heard in a way that was not unduly influenced by my own preconceptions. This

181 is not to say that bracketing is easily practised. Indeed, I recognized from the outset that it was likely to prove difficult in relation to my research project given my close interest in the LMC.

I have been involved with the programme from its conception, first as director of studies and latterly as principal. I know the syllabus and the students well and this led me to have some expectations as to what my work with the focus group might reveal; I strongly suspected, for example, that it would show that the programme had given students linguistic tools to talk about the ways they correlate faith with experience. I clearly had a vested interest in being able to report that the course had been successful in providing such tools and there was a danger that this might skew my findings. It may, indeed, have been in a subconscious attempt to

compensate for such bias that I had originally assumed there was something problematic about the way the students correlate faith and experience. To the extent that they might have

compromised my objective, unbiased description, these vested interests, along with my expectations, needed to be bracketed.

c) Hermeneutics: Getting a Purchase on Lived Experience

This is not to say that the researcher’s prejudices and pre-understandings have no contribution to make. At the hermeneutic level, the method I chose follows in the tradition of Hans-Georg Gadamer (2004). According to this approach, far from being an impediment to understanding, the researcher’s prejudices and pre-understandings are seen positively as prerequisites that are necessary to get a ‘purchase’ (Brown, 2012, p. 114; Gadamer, 2004, pp. 271-3) on the

phenomenon being explored.

Gadamer understands human beings as occupying a ‘horizon’ of which their prejudices and pre- understandings form an integral part (Gadamer, 2004, pp. 301-5). Similarly, he sees any phenomenon we seek to understand as occupying its own horizon. The event of understanding occurs when the human subject enters into a conversation-like openness to the phenomenon so that a new entity or ‘fusion of horizons’ occurs (Brown, 2012, pp. 114-115). Following this method, I decided that the aim of my pilot study would be to approach the experience of LMC students with an awareness of my own prejudices and preconceptions, but with a conversation- like openness so that a ‘fusion of horizons’ might take place leading to a fuller understanding of the ways in which LMC students reflect.

d) Hermeneutics and Power

Whilst hermeneutic phenomenology promised to be helpful to my research project by providing a bias-free, objective description at the same time as facilitating an interpretative fusion of my own horizon with that of students on the LMC programme, it is not beyond criticism.

182 Habermas, for example, criticizes Gadamer’s approach for being too uncritical in its dialectical openness towards the other. Similarly feminist and liberationist approaches have criticized it for failing to do justice to gender and politico-economic imbalances respectively (Brown, 2012, p. 115). But Gadamer’s fusion of horizons does allow for a critical stance to be taken towards the ‘economic and hegemonic interests’ that lie behind social and linguistic conventions (Gadamer, 2004, pp. 550-1; Astley, 2002, p. 152). With my project, just such a critical stance needed to be taken with regard to the ways in which the dynamics of power between the researcher and the students might influence the outcome of the focus group.

There was no escaping the reality that my role involves making a final recommendation to the bishop on completion of the programme as to whether or not individual students should be licensed. This threatened to undermine my research because of the possibility that students would be reluctant to share stories or make comments for fear that these might prejudice their progress on the programme. It was for this reason that I chose a focus group rather than individual interviews to gather data for the pilot study; whilst I recognized that there was a danger that the more public setting of a focus group might have led to a reticence on the part of some participants to share openly, I decided that, on balance, strength in numbers and the mutual support of the group would be more likely to provide an environment in which they would be truthful. In the information supplied to the participants (see appendix) and in my preamble to the meeting of the focus group I was as clear as I could be that contributions would not affect anybody’s progress on the LMC. I recognized, however, that my interpretation of the data would need to take account of the fact that the power dynamics would continue to play a part in the hermeneutical horizons of both researcher and participants.

3. Hermeneutics and Being

My proposed use of hermeneutic phenomenology was open to the further criticism that I was regarding it as a research method rather than a methodology. Whereas these two terms are often used interchangeably by pastoral theologians (Miller-McLemore, 2012, p. 12; Graham, 2012, pp. 201-2; Parker, 2012, pp. 207-8), a distinction can be drawn between them. Research methods are techniques and tests that are designed to gather and analyse data. Methodology refers to an overarching approach to carrying out research that comes with its own ontological, philosophical and epistemological assumptions (Swinton & Mowat, 2006, pp. 74-5). To the extent that hermeneutic phenomenology involves the specific techniques of bracketing pre- understandings and fusing interpretive horizons, in may be categorized as a research method. Swinton and Mowat (2006, p. 105), however, recognize that it also provides an ontological and epistemological framework and could, therefore, equally be seen as a methodology.

183 Indeed, Gadamer, following Martin Heidegger, saw hermeneutics not as a method or set of tools but as the fundamental nature of human-being-in-the-world (Gadamer, 2004, p. 250). To be human, according to Gadamer, is to make meaning. I decided, therefore, to approach my research in a way that sees hermeneutics not only as a research method but also as a

methodology with an accompanying theory of understanding (Brown, 2012, p. 112). This led me to regard all LMC students as interpreters of situations. Given that, to a greater or lesser extent, they all have lengthy experience of Christian living, it also seemed reasonable to assume that scripture and the tradition formed part of their interpretative horizon. This, perhaps, is another way of saying that by dint of being human (and so, by nature, also being interpreters of their world) on the one hand and practising Christians on the other, all LMC students correlate the insights of faith with lived experience in ways that have implications for Christian living. In other words, they all reflect theologically. This insight finally identified what was wrong with my original question. The heart of the research is not about variance in theological reflection but about the various ways in which LMC students reflect theologically.

4. A Revised Research Question

The shift to ideographic epistemology and hermeneutic phenomenology had now brought the research to a point where it would be possible to draft a revised research question. Rather than seeking a theory in response to a perceived problem, the question needed to apply itself to interpreting students’ accounts of the ways in which they correlate faith insights with lived experience as well as giving an account of how the LMC has strengthened such reflective practice. The following question was drafted:

How do LMC students correlate insights from the Christian tradition with lived experience in ways that inform their ministerial practice? How can the course further strengthen such ministerial praxis among its students?