CAPITULO II De la Hacienda Pública
TITULO SÉPTIMO DE LOS MUNICIPIOS
This study draws on LCT’s knowledge-knower structures and its dimension of Specialisation Codes to analyse the knowledge and principles and procedures that are present in lecturer understandings, curriculum texts and marked student assessments.
The findings will be used to conclude which knowledge forms are being privileged in the first-year of the PMA Diploma and Degree programmes, the literacy practices
emanating from this knowledge, and the opportunities given to students to engage in these literacy practices. The next chapter maps out the actual steps taken in undertaking this research.
Chapter Four
Methods and
M eth od ol ogy
4.1 Intr oduction
Methodology is often seen as one of a trio in the philosophy of science that includes ontology and epistemology (Moses and Knutsen, 2012). In Chapter Three, I argued for my study’s ontology, which was defined as a development of an account of being, and its epistemology, which explores understandings of what knowledge is (Gray, 2009). In this chapter, I turn to the methods and methodology employed in my study. While methodology is the more abstract strategy whereby a researcher achieves her goals, methods are the tools to achieve these goals (Potter, 1996). Methodology is described as “the ways in which we acquire knowledge” and asks “How do we know?” (Moses and Knutsen, 2012: 4-5). Methodology involves an investigation into concepts and theories (Moses and Knutsen, 2012) in order to systematically solve a research problem through description, explanation and prediction of phenomena (Rajasekar, Philominathan and Chinnathambi, 2013). It is the study of which methods are best to produce reliable knowledge (Mose and Knutsen, 2012). Method is the research techniques such as data collection methods and the analytical tools.
Sayer takes a broad overlapping view of method, social theory and philosophy of social science and sees method as the “clarification of modes of explanation and understanding, the nature of abstraction, as well as the familiar subjects of research design and methods of analysis” (1992: 3). This is a more helpful perspective than a narrow sense of techniques as one’s choice of method reflects one’s conceptualisation and theorisation. In this chapter, I draw on Sayer’s (1992) account of methods and provide an overview of both the methods and methodology used in my study.
My methods and methodology are aligned to the social realist ontology and epistemology, which as discussed in Chapter Three, conceptualise knowledge both as ontological fact and as epistemological social phenomenon. It also sees knowledge as fallible (Sayer, 2000). I draw on CR’s notions of a stratified ontology of the real,
actual and empirical domains, as discussed in the previous chapter, as opposed to a flat ontology that only proposes an actual or real level or a conflation of both (Sayer, 2000) in the methods and methodology of my study. As will be seen in this chapter, CR and SR guides how I collect the data in the manner that I do and the analysis thereof.
4.2 Research Questions
All research is inquiry and necessitates research questions. I arrived at the following broad research questions for what my study sets out to do:
The main research question of my study is:
What are the knowledge-knower structures of the PMA first-year Diploma and Degree programmes and what literacy practices emanate from these?
The research sub-questions of my study are as follows:
What are the knowledge-knower structures of the first-year of the Diploma and Degree PMA curricula?
What kinds of literacy practices are students expected to perform in the first-year of the Diploma and Degree PMA curricula?
How do these literacy practices relate to the PMA knowledge-knower structures?
These research questions are aligned to my CR ontological and SR epistemological positions in this study to allow for intensive research into a detailed analysis of knowledge-knower structures and the ways in which literacy practices relate and enable access to these. Intensive research looks at the workings or changes in a process in a particular case or small number of cases (Sayer, 1992). The research questions are grounded in realist theory, a perspective of the world as an open system with causal powers (Sayer, 2000). The questions explore underlying generative structures and powers at the level of the real as well as events such as the curricula and literacy practices at the level of the actual. In a CR tradition the real consists of whatever exists, natural or social, regardless of whether we have access to it and it also consists of objects with their structures and powers that enable them to behave in particular ways (Sayer, 2000).
curricula and their causal powers, in this case how lecturers understand what must go together in the curricula based on their experiences and influences. In realist terms, the world is characterised by emergence or situations where the conjunction of two of more features result in new phenomena, which have properties irreducible to their constituents. For my study I would need to identify what happens to knowledge in the PMA curricula at the level of the actual as a result of lecturer understandings and influences upon it.
My questions also explore the nature of the objects of literacy practices and what is expected for student practices at the level of the actual. The level of the actual is what happens when causal powers become activated (Sayer, 2000). I used lecturers’ understandings and, the documented curricula at the level of the empirical to argue for my claims of what happens in the PMA curricula. Furthermore, I used a realist causal criterion to show that what happened cannot explain what could have or have not happened (Sayer, 2000). CR is compatible with a number of research methods and the choice of research method would depend on the nature of the objects being studied and the research focus (Sayer, 2000).
4.3. Abstraction as Methodology
Abstraction was employed as the methodology in my study. There are many abstraction-based methodologies that are concerned with the study of the isolation of phenomena from a wider context to explore their meanings, both in isolation and as part of the context being isolated from. In its undertaking of abstraction, my study has used the LCT framework and its Specialisation Code (see Chapter Three/sections 3.3.3 and 3.3.3.1).
Sayer (1992) argues that intensive research uses abstraction and structural analysis to examine the nature of relations and structures. Knowledge abstracts from particular conditions, constituents of the whole are abstracted, while keeping in mind what is being abstracted from (Sayer, 1992). Isolating a particular aspect allows one to see it with more clarity, however, features should not be treated as if they exist in isolation of each other (Lawson in Archer et al, 1998). Abstraction involves the isolation in thought of a one-sided or partial aspect of a concrete object, which could be people, institutions or activities (Sayer, 1992). What are being abstracted are the different aspects that together make up the concrete object. For example, a HE institution is
influenced by national policy, its location, mission and vision, the research output of its academic staff, its academic identity etcetera. If each of these influences is isolated through abstractions, it is a way of starting to conceptualise what their combined effect would be on the HE institution and this allows us to start making sense of this object. According to Danermark, Ekström, Jakobsen and Karlsson (2002), abstraction advances from the concrete object to the abstract and then moves back to the concrete. It allows us to grasp the concreteness of objects though it should be noted that not all concrete objects are empirically observable (Sayer, 1992).
The nature of relations that abstraction examines can either be external or contingent and internal. An object is external if it can exist without the other. It is said to be contingent as it is not a necessity for it to be in a relation but neither is it impossible that it can (Sayer, 1992). An object is internal if it is dependent on the other and furthermore, it is in an asymmetric internal relation when one object can exist without the other but not vice versa (Sayer, 1992).
Extending this analysis to my study, the PMA curricula and the lecturers would be internally related as the latter informs the former. They are in an asymmetric internal relation as the lecturer can exist without the PMA curriculum (and teach perhaps on some other related course) but the PMA curriculum cannot exist without lecturers (though who knows how technology might shift this in the future). The PMA literacy practices and PMA curricula have internal relations as the literacy practices emanate from the curriculum. The curriculum’s literacy practices and the PMA students also have internal relations. The literacy practices expected of students exist as assessments of their competence in PMA and it is through these practices that students are assessed and deemed to have succeeded or failed.
Taking this one step further to the issue of cumulative knowledge building18, the relations between the curriculum and cumulative knowledge building are contingent, one can exist without the other but co-existence is possible. However, not having cumulative knowledge building in the curriculum could constitute a concrete object that has negative effects for student learning. To put it differently if the curriculum as concrete object does not have an internal relation with the aspect of knowledge that
18 Cumulative knowledge building refers to new knowledge building on and integrating past knowledge (Maton, 2009).
cumulatively builds, students might not be able to transfer this knowledge successfully to future contexts.
Abstraction also identifies and examines structures. These are sets of objects or practices that are internally related (Sayer, 1992). The internally-related objects of the PMA curricula include outcomes, theories, concepts, practical examples, tasks, assessments, writing and reading practices, pedagogy, perceptions of student learning, philosophy, history (where conditions are not of the lecturer’s choosing) and is influenced by HE institution, its position in the institution, the research in the field, field philosophy and history, lecturer philosophy and position in institution amongst others. Together they form the PMA curricular structure. Researchers should not see structural analysis as providing the complete picture but see it as the first steps to research and the important question for researchers would be what it is about structures that may produce the effects under study (Sayer, 1992). So in my study this is phrased as: What are the knowledge-knower structures of the PMA first-year Diploma and Degree programmes and what literacy practices emanate from these?
4.4 Qualitative Research
Qualitative research is suitable for this study as this approach focuses on the real world – people’s everyday practices – and on studying the complexity of these phenomena as they occur in natural settings (Leedy and Ellisa Ormrod, 2005; MacArthur, Graham and Fitzgerald, 2008). Qualitative research would allow me to study the qualities (Henning, van Rensburg and Smit, 2005) of the knowledge- knower structures of the PMA programmes and the academic literacies emanating from them. Through qualitative research, I could develop a language of description to better understand and theorise about how PMA knowledge builds and the literacy practices these students are expected to demonstrate. The knowledge-knower structures and the literacy practices in the PMA programmes will be studied in all their dimensions and layers (Leedy and Ellisa Ormrod, 2005) so that there is a focus on depth of understanding (Henning et al, 2005). The “deep, intense and holistic overview of the context under study” (Gray, 2009: 164) is in keeping with the intensive research required by a realist approach. This will be done in an analysis of the generative mechanisms of PMA knowledge in the curriculum. My research is related to quality or kind. I am working primarily with lecturer understandings of
curricula and student literacy practices which qualify as qualitative study.
Characteristics of a qualitative approach are that emerging themes are often verified with informants and via reflexivity, the researcher’s reflections on her own actions and observations, could become part of the data (Miles and Huberman, 1994 and Flick, 2006 cited in Gray, 2009). A qualitative research design is also appealing to me because of its flexibility. Investigators could enter it with some idea about what they intend to do and with a theoretical foundation but design decisions are made throughout the study (Willis, 2007). Qualitative research does not necessarily proceed with pre-specified and carefully planned steps (Willis, 2007). I, thus, did not need to stick rigidly to the design and could let the research experience (with its potential challenges or new interesting possibilities) guide my decisions about method. Research becomes in this way a nonlinear and iterative process as data collection, data analysis and its interpretation influence one another as they occur throughout the study (Willis, 2007) and result in redesign. Gray (2009: 173) calls this the “emergent” feature of qualitative research when initial ideas about design change during the research process.
Qualitative research is sometimes criticised as being unscientific, anecdotal, subjective and lacking generalisability (Gray, 2009). It is, therefore, important in qualitative research to show rigour in the research design and through attention to validity and reliability. Issues of validity and reliability are addressed later in this chapter, but, first, I turn to the research design.