POBLACIÓN Y DIAGNOSTICO

This discussion provides a justification for using a CGT methodology as a means of collecting and interpreting data in order to theorise teacher practice enactments. It describes how the union of a sensitivity to practice and a CGT methodology provided both philosophical and methodological congruence for this study. Further, it discusses my own philosophical positioning and its congruence with adopting CGT. This discussion foregrounds the following Methodology chapter (Chapter 6), where the specifics regarding methods and the actualities of data collection are articulated.

In order to give greater context to the use of a CGT methodology, I briefly outline some of the key underlying tenets of Grounded Theory (GT), with particular reference to its origins and its evolutionary trajectory since its creation in 1967 by Glaser and Strauss with their ground breaking text The Discovery of Grounded

Theory. Prior to this, “positivism still had great influence and this permeated the

social sciences: qualitative research was seen as the poor relation to numerical quantitative approaches” (Tolhurst, 2012, para.6), with qualitative researchers often labelled as being “soft scientists” whose work was “unscientific, only exploratory, or subjective” (Denzin and Lincoln, 2011, p.2). Indeed, in The Discovery of Grounded

Theory, Glaser and Strauss (1967) lamented how qualitative work was, “either not

theoretical enough or the theories were too ‘impressionistic’” (p.15). This concern voiced by Glaser and Strauss was done so against a backdrop of challenge against the historically dominant hypothetico-deductive, positivistic, quantitative research traditions (Savin-Baden and Howell Major, 2013) which began to gather pace during the 1960s. During this time there was a significant shift in thinking within the social sciences, with the beginnings of divergence from the positivism historically associated with classical social scientists, towards a social science where meanings were, “constructed, negotiated and managed by different individuals and groups

within various social and historical contexts” (Broom and Willis, 2007, p.24). This shift was taking place during one of the ‘moments’ in qualitative research as identified by Denzin and Lincoln (2011). Beginning with the Traditional Period (pre-WWII) and currently represented (2008 onwards) as the Fractured Future, Glaser and Strauss’s GT emerged during the Modernist moment (post-WWII – 1970) (p.629), when notions that objectivity and hypothesis testing in order that the neutral researcher can find the ‘truth’ (Newby, 2014), was making way for new approaches where, “the personal is political, that the subjective is a valid form of knowledge…and that all people are capable of naming their own world and constructing knowledge” (Ryan, 2006, p.17).

To respond to the criticism of qualitative research being ‘soft’ and ‘unscientific’, Glaser and Strauss developed GT as “an inductive, theory discovery methodology that allows the researcher to develop a theoretical account of the general features of a topic while simultaneously grounding the account in empirical observations or data” (Martin and Turner, 1986, p.141). A key premise of GT is that of emergence. Charmaz (2008a) suggests that “grounded theory is predicated on an emergent logic… emergent method as inductive, indeterminate, and open-ended. An emergent method begins with the empirical world and builds an inductive understanding of it as events unfold and knowledge accrues” (p.155). She continues the theme of emergence with her assertion that “the comparative and interactive nature of grounded theory at every stage of analysis distinguishes grounded theory from other approaches and makes it an explicitly emergent method” (ibid, p.163).

With a dual heritage of both symbolic interactionism from Strauss, and positivism from Glaser (Alvesson and Sköldberg, 2009), the resulting methodology aimed to close “the embarrassing gap between theory and empirical research” (Glaser and

Strauss, 1967, p.vii), and to “identify something that lies in the empirical field waiting to be discovered” (Åge, 2011, p.1608).

At this juncture it is worth providing a brief definition of symbolic interactionism, particularly given that the “relationship between classical Grounded Theory and the interpretive tradition of Symbolic Interactionism is strong and historical” (Aldiabat and Le Navenec, 2011, p.1063). Entitled Symbolic Interactionism by Blumer (1969) (based upon earlier works of his tutor, Mead), it is a means of studying social interaction based up three underlying principles, namely:

 Humans act towards things on the basis of the meanings they ascribe to those things.

 The meaning of such things is derived from, or arises out of, the social interaction that one has with others and the society.

 These meanings are handled in, and modified through, an interpretative process used by the person in dealing with the things he/she encounters (Blumer, 1969, p.2).

Essentially, these principles contend that people interact socially on the basis under which such interactions have meaning for them, with the origins of such meanings being via social interaction (Ashwin, 2009). Significantly, meanings can change through self-interpretation, thus an individual can “suspend, regroup or transform meanings” (Pascale, 2011, p.88). The resultant interaction of these three elements is in the “formation of propositions about relationships or shared meanings” (Sidwell Sipes, 2002, p.155). This understanding of meaning enables people to understand the intentions of others, as this understanding will indicate that other people within the setting can understand the gestures and symbols used, thus enabling them to respond accordingly “on the basis of his or her internal understanding of the meaning

of the behavior, which is derived from past interactions and anticipated future interactions” (Milliken and Schreiber, 2012, p.692).

Given that GT is “an important method for studying topics of a social nature” (Jones and Alony, 2011, p.3), its symbolic interactionism ancestry helps give it distinctiveness as a methodological approach by virtue of how it “translates and discovers new understandings of human beings behaviours that are generated from the meaning of symbols” (Aldiabat and Le Navenec, 2011, p.1072). Crucially for this study, the symbolic interactionism underpinning resonated particularly well in relation to the exploration of an essentially social site, i.e. Shireland College, and the ‘sayings, doings and relatings’ that reflected the practices of those within it. Given that symbolic interactionism contends that meanings can be modified, and that individuals actively shape, and are shaped by their environment, I considered that it fused well with the notion of practices being dynamic.