EL PAPEL DEL EXPERIMENTO EN LA ENSEÑANZA DE LA FÍSICA

This Chapter outlines why ethnography was chosen as the methodological approach for this study. Primarily, it was chosen because this study is examining individual responses to the provision of educational aid in the cultural environment of Timor-Leste and Indonesia, and an ethnographic approach allows us to investigate cultural as well as perceived reasons for respondents’ views. This Chapter leads us into a fuller explanation of the conceptual framework applied in this research, and begins by declaring in advance, the philosophical stance of the author and some of the ideological positions impacting upon this study.

A statement of philosophical background  

In acknowledging that both 'cultural heritage' and ‘cultural baggage’ always exist within a study of this nature, the background of the author has been framed against the cultural, historical, political and ideological circumstances of his time. Also acknowledging the interpretive nature of this philosophical position, there is no possible claim of uncovering ‘objective’ knowledge of the world, since we all have different, and thus equally valid, experiences of it. Hence the author’s background impacts upon the framing of this research, and whilst all attempts have been made to explicitly declare not only the 'assumptions' of the author and the 'assumptions' behind the methodological approach, it is recognized that, even as we attempt to openly declare this background, it is acknowledged that we cannot always 'know' when we are being at our most ideological (Hall, 1983).

This research originates from a decade-long experience as a manager of aid and development programs for an Australian University. This experience alerted me to a range of issues and challenges in this field that were worthy of examination and central to the approach to the research was the goal to enable multiple voices to be heard.

Methodological approach  

The qualitative nature of this investigation has meant that this study has employed an 'inductive' research approach to explore and examine the personal responses of the participants who were interviewed (Neuman, 1997). As Gray has pointed out:

The choice of research methodology is determined by a combination of factors - whether the researcher believes that there is a truth out there that needs discovering, or whether the task of the research is to explore and unpick people's multiple perspectives in natural, field settings (Gray, 2009, p. 27)

This study was constructed to explore the personal experiences of the selected interviewees as they engaged with the 'developmentalist18' and 'donor agencies’ that represented developmental projects in their country. Inductive research was chosen because it, (i) examines closely the data set collected in response to the research questions, (ii) it looks for repeated responses across the data obtained from all respondents, and (iii) attempts to develop meaningful understandings related to the research question through emerging patterns and themes arising from these repeated responses.

As indicated in Chapter Two, key concerns have been related to questions of: Why has one particular approach been employed rather than taking an alternative approach?; What IS included in the programs; What is NOT included in the programs?; Who IS sourced, cited or involved in the program?; and Who is NOT involved in the program?

Consistent with this inductivist approach, principles consistent with an interpretivist epistemology have been widely used in the examination of cultural issues within texts and data which have been collected using qualitative methods (Gray, 2009). Thus the author believes that this approach is well-suited to build a sound understanding of aid development activities, which is the territory that this research study will traverse. In addition, during

18  _{The  researcher  has  introduced  the  word  ‘developmentalist’  to  describe,  and  abbreviate  the  concept  of  an  ‘aid}  

this analysis, semiotic analysis will greatly assist in deconstructing meaning from text (as defined in the most general way), as has been amply illustrated by the work of Barthes (1973) and Hall (1983).

An important justification for using this inductive research approach stems from the desire to engage in the examination of a data set taken from respondents having one cultural perspective by a researcher having a different cultural perspective. This study is exploring the impact of development partners (from a powerful donor culture which is [partly] shared by the researcher) on aid-development practitioners (developmentalists) in the culturally specific environment of Indonesia and Timor-Leste. Thus the participant responses, obtained from senior officials in education and training, managers of training and human resource development, trainers and donor administrators, will be culturally specific, and their responses to the research questions will be naturally personal (subjective) in nature. Therefore sensitivity in collating and exploring consistencies and patterns to understand developed shared perspectives within the examined culture, is central to forming any possible conclusions, which will be evidentially (and morally) defensible. Gray (2009) argues in Doing Research in The Real World, that having a clear understanding of the distinction between 'being' and 'becoming', or alternatively between ‘what is’ or ‘what it means’, creates a distinction between the ‘ontological’ and the ‘epistemological’. In our situation, existing within a relativist ontology space, which is consistent with applying an interpretivist epistemology (see later), means that we take the meaning of the world surrounding this project as being dependent on the overlap of the many subjective experiences of the respondents’ experienced world. There does not exist, related to this issue, a reality independent of multiple experiences, which denies the possibility of using a positivist epistemology, since there is no question of the existence of ‘objective’ knowledge of this world. All we have to go on are a set of different subjective experiences (Lewis, Saunders, & Thornhill, 2012) which are working, more or less, in the same context.

At the level of transformational synthesis of data, semiotic analysis provides a powerful and well-tested approach to examine and deconstruct the ontological concept of ‘What is?’ at a deeper level. Clearly, this question of ‘What is?’ can be juxtaposed by an equivalent interest in 'What is not?’, and this type of analysis brings us closer to generated meanings and ideology within our study area. Hall (1983) argues that developing a notion of ‘What is?’ is when we are being at our most 'ideological'. Of key relevance here is that this simple question of ‘What is?’ can be, and often is, misinterpreted across cultures. Thus, we are warned that when researching across cultures, as in this project, 'What is?' is not at all a clear or useful single position to adopt (Hall 1983). It has been decided that, for this study, the task of focusing upon 'What it means' [epistemology] will provide greater assistance to inform our discussions, as well as to establish positions from which this research can begin to discover how meanings are produced and what these meanings tell us about ourselves. It has been advised that, for such work:

The focus becomes not one of how these texts describe the reality of the world, but how the social world is represented, and how meanings are produced. Texts are therefore seen as social practices, embedded with multiple values and vested interests, not the reporting of independent, objective judgments (Gray, 2009, p. 26).

Because it is common for inductive research to use one of a number of theoretical perspectives, it is important to note that this study has leaned heavily upon interpretivism, where there is no, direct, one-to-one relationship between ourselves (subjects) and the world (object) (Gray, 2009). However, interpretivism, according to Gray, can be divided into a number of parallel representations including, symbolic interactionism, phenomenology, realism, hermeneutics, and naturalistic inquiry. It is considered that this study lends itself most favorably toward the symbolic interactionalist approach. Following Gray (2009), the essential tenets of symbolic interactionism are that: (i) people interpret the meaning of objects and actions in the world and then act upon those interpretations, (ii) meanings arise from the process of social interaction, and (iii) meanings are handled by using, and are modified by, an interactive process used by people in dealing with the phenomena that are

encountered. Meanings, in this world, are not fixed or stable, but are revised on the basis of experience. This includes the definition of 'self' and of who we are (Gray, 2009).

Developing a critical framework  

The study examines perspectives of vocational education and training and engagement of international agencies and advisors on systems development. The purpose of this examination was to uncover the impact of international perspectives and their ‘wholesale import’ into foreign educational systems (Allais, 2014; Coles et al., 2014). As a consequence, critical inquiry and a post-modernist stance fit comfortably with this aim as a research methodology, as they challenge the researcher to make clear and openly explicate their ideological background. The critical inquiry perspective is not content to merely interpret the world, but it also seeks to change it. The assumptions and understandings that lie beneath critical inquiry have been claimed to be that:

Ideas are mediated by power relations in society, certain groups in society are privileged over others and exert an oppressive force on subordinate groups. What are presented as facts cannot be disentangled from ideology and the self-interest of dominant groups. Mainstream research practices are implicated, even if unconsciously, in the reproduction of the systems of class, race and gender oppression (Gray, 2009, p. 25).

The critical inquiry perspective extends the reach of interpretivism analysis by not just describing ‘What is?’, but by opening up appropriate questions to examine the (hidden) dominant positions (ideological positions) of development practice. Therefore, the theoretical frameworks that impacted upon this research include, in one way or another; post structuralism, critical theory, adult learning theory and comparative education. It must be noted, though, that these frameworks are not mutually exclusive.

Contribution of educational pedagogy to development  

The adult education sector has a background in critical thinking and critical reflection on practice (Foley, 2004), due in part to the reflective nature of educational pedagogy. This is opposed to the 'results-oriented’ focus of development work where critical reflection is wanting. It is proposed that this

critical reflection in adult education, if applied in a development context, would assist the production of more reflective development projects. In addition, using a critical framework would help explore the core ideas of what ‘development’ hopes to achieve, and whose development we are talking about. We propose further that development work therefore needs to be applied using a critical approach. This could begin, as signposted earlier, by posing the following presumption: What is NOT included is as equally valid as what IS included. In this way, a critical analysis of: program designs, lessons learnt, development reports, stakeholder involvement and engagement, and indeed the entire plethora of conceived development work, would benefit by posing more generalised statements and questions such as:

• It is not what is in the program that matters, it is what is NOT in the program;

• It is not what is in the policy that matters, it is what is NOT in the policy that matters;

• It is not who is in the activity that matters, it is who is NOT included that matters;

• It is not what is in the structure/review that matters, it is what is NOT included in the structure/review that matters;

• It is not which participants are included, so much as which ones are NOT included;

• It is not what IS, as much as it is what is NOT.

This study acknowledges Stuart Hall for his critique of media, media imagery, and visual iconography for this critical framework, and its potential application into the world of development and education and training (Hall, 1997). Hall argues that it is not what IS in an image so much as what is NOT in the image that tells 'us' more about ourselves. This includes our notions of our constructed world or our ‘common sense truths’ about ourselves (Hall, 1983). Hall goes on to describe the impact of this 'constructed world' as ‘ideology at work’, which is a rich metaphor that will continually inform this study.

Griff Foley (2004) uses a similar critical framework in education, and suggests that applying critical theory takes us beyond the 'interpretive' world into the 'socially constructed' world. This approach could help the development sector explore the many falsehoods and beliefs around development work. Foley explains that:

The critical paradigm emphasises the social context of knowledge and

education. Critical theory focuses on the relationship of knowledge power and ideology. Critical theory takes us beyond the relativism of the interpretive framework, which simply helps us understand that different people see things differently, and helps us realise that our understandings are socially

constructed, often in distorted ways. Such distorted understandings, critical theorists argue, can be systematically exposed, explained and eliminated. In a process called ideological critique, the notion of critical and emancipatory theory and practice has been influential in adult education over the past century (Foley, 2004, p. 14).

In this study, we have applied this critical framework in examining the Independent Completion Report into IASTP in the following Chapter. In summary, this critical analysis included: (i) examining the inclusion and use of the Most Significant Change (MSC) evaluation framework as opposed to an alternative framework, (ii) the number and selection of ultimate beneficiaries cited in the final report, (iii) the effectiveness of measuring the benefits, and (iv) the narrow nature of the 'scope' of evaluation guidelines (de Moura Castro & Alfthan, 1992). A similar critical review of a substantial development project in Timor-Leste reveals very clear examples of confusion, misdirection and reluctant support by a major donor, in this case The World Bank, to trial locally-based management activities.

Jesson and Newman (2004), writing in Foley's Dimensions of Adult Education: Radical Adult Education and Learning (Foley, 2004), give significant weight to Gramsci’s description of ‘hegemonic control’. They claim that 'social control' and 'common sense truths' which are voiced by the oppressors and oppressed alike, maintain things as ‘the way things are’ (cited in (Foley, 2004)). Indeed, detecting this act of social control is problematic in both the development sector and the educational and training sector. In the development sector, peasants working the land and being forced by circumstances to generate an 'export crop' is very much the lived reality in

Timor-Leste (Mats & Fredrik, 2013). In the Indonesian Kalimantan forest, dependent communities are being forced off their land to make way for an AusAID funded dam (Wilks, 2010). These development projects are justified under the notion that they are natural ‘common sense’ truths.

Many other ‘common sense truths’ are analysed in this study, and some which are included here are: (i) the proliferation of, and de-contextualisation of quality frameworks around the world, presented as ‘Timor-Leste needs a National Qualifications Framework’ (Allais, 2014; Coles et al., 2014), (ii) Timor-Leste needs competency based training and demand driven Technical Vocational Education and Training (Cooper & Walters, 2009), (iii) university education is more valued in Timor-Leste (Hill, 2005), and (iv) Timor-Leste needs a Technical Vocational Education and Training system focussed on construction and tourism (Curtain, 2009). We assert here that deconstructing these ‘common sense truths’ in the development context, is critical to gaining an understanding of the nature, extent and depth of social control. A process of semiotic analysis is applied in this study for the process of deconstruction. Too often, there is a reliance upon, and acceptance of, the language and construction of development programs, and this manifests itself in the unequivocal support for the existing (i) Terms of Reference (de Moura Castro & Alfthan, 1992) (ii) Training Needs Assessments and (iii) Program Design Objectives as well as every other 'Considered' and 'Expert Evaluation' of program provision.

The  'developmentalists'  know  this  language  as  they  are  inculcated  with  certain   attitudes   and   beliefs,   and   they   inhabit   these   constructed   worlds.   In   this   world,   they   speak   a   common   language,   without   having   any   intention   to   critically   examine   and   confront   this   development   culture.   However,   semiotic   analysis,   when   applied   to   this   language,   uncovers   (or   strips   bare)   certain   attitudes   and   beliefs   that   occupy   these   constructed   worlds,   allowing   us   to   critically   examine   and   confront   the   tensions   in   this   aid-­‐development   culture.   Having   conceptualized  the  study  in  this  manner,  the  following  Chapter  on  methodology   develops  the  means  used  to  uncover  these  common  sense  truths.

Chapter Four: Methodology

This chapter outlines how the individuals were selected as respondents for the study and how the collected data has been analyzed to reveal patterns and structures consistent with the literature and the key research questions of donor engagement in training. This methodological approach includes: detailing the interview techniques (for the individual and focus group interviews); how the ethical issues were handled (noting the social risks, aspects of confidentiality and anonymity); methods employed for data collection and secure data storage; and, finally, how aspects of reliability and validity were ensured. The demographic data included respondents’ nationality, years in the workforce, current employment and educational background, this information being collected in order to allow cross- referencing of participants’ perceptions.

Methodology and Methods  

This research intends to add to the body of knowledge by providing academic critiques of various aspects of development practice, including monitoring and evaluation frameworks together with the donor institutions’ reflections on development practices. It has the objective of informing aid-development practitioners of the outcomes of various approaches and policy directions for training program design and monitoring, including selected evaluation techniques, using the perceptions of respondents intimately involved with previous programs. This research uncovered more appropriate methods of designing and developing capacity and institutional building programs, particularly in Indonesia and Timor-Leste, which met local requirements. Too often, training approaches and capacity building programs used by coordinating donor institutions such as The World Bank and the Asian Development Bank, have fallen significantly short of the expected goals (Canagarajah et al., 2002).