Chapter 4- Methodology
4.2 The qualitative paradigm and its philosophical assumptions
A researcher needs to find appropriate philosophical assumptions and research paradigm for analyzing his or her collected data accurately. Among all the research paradigms, social constructivism is the one which has been chosen for this study to analyze the perception of the teachers and students regarding their reopened schools through their interviews. Social constructivism is also named as interpretivism (Creswell, & Miller, 2000). It is considered as the best suited paradigm for this study because according to this paradigm individual people have different understanding of the world in which they live or work (Goles & Hirschheim, 2000). It also allows people to have their individual views on their life experiences (Teddlie &
Tashakkori, 2011). As a result, through this paradigm the researcher can have participants’
individual point of view on their experiences which they had in the reopened schools. In addition, it also suggests the researchers to depend on the interviewees’ thoughts on the situations since they are the ones who were present in those situations and lived those
(McNicholl, Ellis & Blake, 2013). Besides, as per the paradigm the subjective views people make based on their experiences are formed with having interaction with others (Creswell, &
Miller, 2000). Furthermore, researchers are suggested to make more open-ended questions for interviewing participants so that while discussion they can explain the meaning of the situations which they have experienced (Wilson, 2014). Also, researchers need to focus on the specific setting in which participants had those experience so that they can have better understanding of the interviewees’ situation and interpret them in a better way.
Creswell and Tashakkori’s (2007) “Philosophical Assumptions with Implication for Practice”
table (p.17) has been followed to make the following table of philosophical assumptions of the study.
Table 1: The Philosophical Assumptions of the Study
Research Paradigm Philosophical Assumptions
Social Constructivism/
Interpretivism
Ontological Epistemological Axiological Methodological
Varied views of individuals make multiple
realities
Evidences are attained through the personalized experiences of the interviewees
Along with participants’
statements, values and biases of the researcher were
considered
Qualitative Multiple Case Study Approach
Ontology as the first philosophical assumption refers to the nature of reality and how the reality is perceived through all the participants of a study (Tashakkori & Creswell, 2007). In this research ontological assumption has been used for collecting data by interviewing both teachers and students regarding their views on reopened schools. Since different people have different experiences based on the situations they face, through this assumption the researcher also got varied perceptions of individual students and teachers from their interviews. Besides this
assumption allows the researchers to collect and analyse the data with flexibility as they can use different themes of the findings as various realities by referring to participants’ statements.
Hence ontological assumption helps the researcher to present multiple realities with the help of the different experiences the participants have in their own situation.
Epistemological assumption is having knowledge which is connected to experience (Lee, 2012). According to this assumption knowledge can be attained through social experiences.
Since people experience different situations in life, it makes people having different knowledge regarding various realities (Morgan, 2014). Hence the researcher tried to analyze varied knowledge which were gained by people having different experiences. Besides for better understanding the subjective experiences of the participants the researcher needs to get close with the participants while collecting data (Goldkuhl, 2012). For that the researcher tried to take the piloting interviews with some of the participants to make them comfortable with her before the final one.
Next the axiological assumption is clearly stating the positions and influences of the researchers have in the study. Through this assumption the researcher has clarified the level of her own values and biases contributed in the study. Also, for having this clarification the reliability and validity of the study gets upgraded.
Lastly case study has been chosen as a methodological approach for this study. With the help of this approach perceptions of teachers and students can be investigated with the multiple experiences of teachers and students which they had while attending reopened classes. Also, this methos is considered as one of the best approaches since it has multiple dimensions to analyze the data. Besides, this approach allows the researchers to investigate one or more cases to examine that phenomenon thoroughly and for that they can collect data from more than one sources. For example, in this study the researcher has collected data from both students and
teachers and she could cross check the information from both parties to verify the authenticity of the data which will make the study more trustworthy. Furthermore, to follow the multiple case study approach researchers focus on one topic and can take more than one cases to investigate a certain phenomenon (Creswell and Tashakkori, 2007). In addition, through this approach researchers can present a variety of viewpoints on the particular aspect. By following the multiple case study approach the researcher explored the phenomenon of teachers’ and students’ perceptions on the reopened schools and presented different aspects of this issue by analyzing multiple cases of teachers and students who had different point of views based on their varied experiences.