Quinto momento: Análisis e interpretación de la información

The empirical thematic analysis conducted in Stage 1 revealed that all dissertations include five common core components. In order to make sense of the empirical variation in how candidates go about putting these components together – an important concern for pedagogy – a return to theory was necessary. The second stage of the analysis therefore involved analytic coding using concepts from Specialization. This provided a first step to addressing the first research question, What kinds of knowledge practices create a successful doctorate?

In the first instance, the analytical coding involved understanding how the concepts of

epistemic relations and social relations could be used to reveal the bases of knowledge

practices in each component. As explained in Chapter 3 (Theoretical Framework), all knowledge practices involve varying strengths of both epistemic relations and social relations. Drawing on my knowledge of Specialization, I immersed myself in the data and started to distinguish between different kinds of relations in the thematic categories identified in Stage 1 of the analysis. I made notes of any instances where candidates foregrounded epistemic relations by emphasising their object of study or the methods used in the research, or when social relations were foregrounded by emphasising personal attributes of different knowers (either of themselves as researchers or in terms of other knowers in the field). I discussed and interrogated these characterisations, which were supported with as many examples as I could find, with my supervisory team during each fortnightly meeting until we were satisfied that they provided a fair representation of the data. The next step involved collating and formalising these interpretations of epistemic relations (ER) and social relations (SR) into a ‘translation device’.

A translation device is a tool which helps bridge the ‘discursive gap’ (Bernstein, 2000, p. 209) between theory and data. It provides a means for traversing the gap by creating an explicit intermediary dialogue between theoretical concepts and empirical data. Translation devices, such as the ones presented here, are always developed through engagement with the specificities of an object of study – i.e. each device is specifically designed to account for the particular empirical forms emerging in the problem-situation (Maton & Chen, 2016, p. 32). The strength of using a translation device in qualitative research is that it is able to make the basis of the claims made in the analysis more explicit, enabling greater analytical transparency

(Bernstein, 2000; Maton & Chen, 2016). It also allows for a consistent analysis to be conducted across different texts or sections of texts.

The translation device created for the analytic coding of epistemic relations and social relations is presented in Table 4.2. Each concept is defined theoretically and is then described in terms of how it manifests in the data. An example from the data is provided to exemplify the description.

Table 4.2. Translation device for Specialization

CONCEPT DESCRIPTION

OF CONCEPT

HOW CONCEPT

MANIFESTS IN STUDY EXAMPLE

ER+

Emphasises specialist knowledge, skills and procedures in research process

When candidates foreground the nature of their object of study or any theoretical or methodological procedures for generating knowledge

‘I have developed a new measurement tool for assessing political commitment, which may contribute towards research efforts to understand what good AIDS governance is, and what contextual factors make certain types of governance more likely.’

ER–

Downplays specialist knowledge, skills and procedures in research process

When candidates downplay specialist knowledge about their object of study or any specific theoretical or methodological approach for generating knowledge

‘… I draw on the work of several theorists of power whose work has been applied to such contexts.’

SR+ Emphasises personal attributes of knowers (e.g. personal experience, social categories such as gender)

When candidates foreground aspects to do with knowers (in terms of themselves and/or other scholars in field)

‘This story therefore is

fundamentally a ‘black’ story, with all the attendant violence and trauma that is embedded in the ‘black’ body.’

SR– Downplays personal attributes of knowers

When candidates downplay personal attributes to do with them as a knower/author of the research and attributes of other knowers in the field

‘I realised that educational practices could not be agreed upon insofar as we had different

conceptions about what it means to be intellectually disabled.’

Once the above translation device had been created, I returned to the groupings of the five core components of dissertations identified in the empirical thematic analysis. Using the definitions for ER and SR identified above, I undertook an analytic coding of the data in order to understand the different knowledge practices candidates use to construct the five core components across the sample. The analytic coding enabled different kinds of specialization

codes to be revealed in the sample. This provided a way to start addressing the second research question, How are exemplary knowledge practices enacted in writing?

During the analysis of ER and SR, it became apparent that there were more nuanced distinctions in the sample between different kinds of epistemic relations and different kinds of social relations. This meant that additional tools were needed to delve deeper into the differences within the different specialization codes. For this reason, the 4-K model (see Chapter 3, Theoretical Framework) was drawn on. Starting with epistemic relations, the 4-K model distinguishes between different strengths of ontic relations (OR) and discursive

relations (DR). As with epistemic relations above, I immersed myself in the data and made

notes of any instances of ontic relations, evident when the empirical nature of the object of study was foregrounded in writing. Likewise, any instances of discursive relations, evident in the foregrounding of specialist theoretical frameworks or methodological approaches, were recorded. I discussed and interrogated the definitions of these concepts and how they manifested in the data with my supervisory team until we were satisfied with the analysis. This resulted in the following translation device for insights (Table 4.3).

Table 4.3. Translation device for insights (epistemic relations)

CONCEPT DESCRIPTION OF

CONCEPT

HOW CONCEPT

MANIFESTS IN STUDY EXAMPLE

OR+

Practices that strongly bound and control what objects of study are considered legitimate or not

When candidates foreground aspects relating to objects of knowledge (e.g. specific topics, phenomena of study or problem situations)

‘The public hearing of the TRC in 1998… placed many of the formerly top secret military documents about the programme in the public domain. This opened the way for a detailed examination of Project Coast.’

OR–

Practices that weakly bound and control what objects of study are considered legitimate or not

When candidates downplay aspects relating to objects of knowledge (e.g. specific topics, phenomena of study or problem situations)

‘I have no idea why I have chosen to look specifically to these images in an attempt to make sense of my place in this world; why I am resorting to the study of these flimsy pieces of fading and stained paper as a way to resolve my seeming struggles of metaphorical homelessness.’

DR+

Practices that strongly bound and control legitimate procedures for generating knowledge

When candidates foreground specialist approaches (e.g. theoretical frameworks or methodological approaches) for understanding objects of study

‘Step 2: Themes were identified for each Q-set, using a thematic analysis as a preliminary procedure to feed into a theoretical model aligned with discourse theory and Q-methodology.’

DR–

Practices that weakly bound and control legitimate procedures for generating knowledge

When candidates downplay specialist approaches for understanding objects of study

‘Through feminism I had been exposed to some challenges to epistemological hegemonies in the centre. Standpoint Theory

resonated with my situation as activist-researcher, while theorists on the Ethics of Care affirmed what I had concluded while completing my Master’s thesis…’

The 4-K model was then used to distinguish social relations into varying strengths of subjective

relations and interactional relations. The same process to that described above was followed,

culminating in the following translation device for gazes (Table 4.4). The translation device provides a systematic way to code for any instance of subjective relations (SubR), evident in the foregrounding or downplaying of anything to do with the personal attributes of knowers (such as race, class, gender etc.). Similarly it accounted for any instances of interactional relations (IR), seen in the foregrounding or downplaying of particular ways of knowing of knowers.

Table 4.4. Translation device for gazes (social relations)

CONCEPT DESCRIPTION OF

CONCEPT

HOW CONCEPT

MANIFESTS IN STUDY EXAMPLE

SubR+

Practices that strongly bound and control legitimate knowers

When candidates foreground qualities to do with knowers

‘I am a feminist lesbian who married a woman after decades of renouncing marriage as the nexus of women’s oppression… So this research is not only about others’ intimate relationships, but also about my own.’

SubR–

Practices that weakly bound and control legitimate knowers

When candidates downplay personal attributes of

knowers (either themselves or other knowers in field)

Not found in sample

IR+ Practices that strongly bound and control practices of knowing

When candidates foreground legitimate ways of knowing – of themselves and/or the ways of knowing of other knowers in the field

‘Although my emphasis is empirical, the studies of certain writers who are concerned with theatre and ritual have been useful in shaping my argument.’

IR–

Practices that weakly bound and control practices of knowing

When candidates downplay legitimate ways of knowing – of themselves and/or the ways of knowing of other knowers in the field

‘The description of ‘tribes’ can be problematic and is often more about the anthropologist or ethnologists desire to categorise people than a reflection of the identities of the people they describe…’

The above three translation devices (Table 4.2, 4.3 and 4.4) provided a means to analytically code the dissertations using concepts from Specialization. This provided a way to understand the organising principles that underpinned the knowledge practices – that is, it provided a way to look beyond what candidates were writing about (i.e. the focus of the knowledge) to rather consider the principles informing or giving rise to the kind of knowledge being enacted (i.e. it could reveal the basis of the knowledge practices). This affords a way to characterise the dissertations according to the organising principles of their knowledge practices, providing a way to account for why and how dissertations differ without having to rely on common-sense categories such as subject type or chapter structure. This process, as well as the implications of the analysis, is described in greater detail in the analysis presented in Chapter 6.

The Specialization analysis provided an important first step for understanding how candidates use generalizable knowledge-building strategies to construct the five core components of the dissertation in different ways. It also raised the question of how this is actually done in

dissertations – i.e. the process of constructing knowledge in practice. To address this question, a third stage of analysis using Semantics was undertaken.