3.2 Paradigm
3.2.1 Interpretive paradigm
Mackenzie and Knipe (2006) continue that the interpretive, interpretivism or interpretivist paradigm (as it is often called) originated from the philosophy of Edmund Husserl's phenomenology and Wilhelm Dilthey's hermeneutics. Interpretivism gears towards understanding "the world of human experience" (Cohen et al., 2011, p.39), and suggests that "reality is socially constructed" (Mertens, 2005, p.12). As such the interpretivist researcher seeks to know the participants vision and understandings of a particular issue (Creswell, 2003, p.8) and also recognises the subjectiveness of
70 their participation since it is based upon their background and experiences. Creswell (2003, p.9) argues that interpretivism don’t normally begin with theories, but rather goes it to the field with the intention of "generating or inductively developing a theory or pattern of meanings" as the research process is completed. As such interpretivist research most often than not uses qualitative data generation approaches and methods of analysis in research or a combination of both qualitative and quantitative methods to achieve the objectives of the study.
Göran (2012) argues that interpretivism considers reality of knowledge to be embedded in people’s subjective worldview, making reality to be socially constructed. He continues that interpretivists believe that there is no one single approach or correct answer to any research problem; neither is the any ‘correct’ or ‘incorrect’ theory or idea. In interpretivist research, knowledge is judged based on how interesting they are to the researcher and those involved in the same learning area. As such this idea no matter how varied it may, be is constructed through a careful examination of its relationship to the phenomenon.
Thomas (2010) concurs by adding that knowledge and meaning only emerge as a result of interpretation, as such there is no objective truth or knowledge which is independent from thinking or human reasoning. Myers (2009) supports that the underpinning idea or framework for interpretive research that access to reality both in cases where in is given and in those where it is socially negotiated is only through social constructs like language, consciousness and shared meanings. This makes knowledge in interpretive paradigm a product of observation and interpretation, since by observing the researcher generates data about events or a phenomenon while to interpret is making sense of the data generated by making inferences or by connecting it to other abstract patterns within the same field. In this case, an understanding of a thing is gained through the meanings or attributes
71 people give to it. Reeves and Hedberg (2003, p. 32) also point out that the “interpretivist paradigm stresses the need to put analysis in context’’.
According to Reeves and Hedberg (2003, p. 32) the interpretive paradigm seeks to understand the world from a subjective perspective making individual experience of great importance in the meaning-making process. To archive this meaning oriented methodologies or instruments such as interviews, participant observation, and semi-structured questionnaires that rely on the subjective relationship between the researcher and the participants within the study is used. As such no dependent or independent variable is predefined; rather emphasis is laid on the participant’s complex sense making processes. Creswell (2008) adds to this by postulating that the interpretive paradigm emphasises the creation of a comprehensive analysis of one or more situations or cases and this caters for a thorough understanding of the teenage mother’s experiences of psycho-social support services provided in a secondary school in KwaZulu-Natal. Since experience is subjective meaning can only be constructed from experience through the interpretive paradigm since it opens up the problem and creates room for diverse interpretation and meaning making. This therefore is justifiably an interpretive study.
Nieuwenhuis (2010) argues that interpretive research offers a lens through which the researcher can understand or make meaning of human life from within and this meaning enable the process to focuses on people’s subjective experiences, or how these people build the social world by sharing meanings, and how they relate to or interact with others. In order to deal with the research questions in this study, the researcher will interact with teenage mothers so as to gain a detailed understanding of their subjective experience of the psycho-social support services provided in a secondary school in KwaZulu-Natal. By investigating the richness, depth and complexity of teenage mother’s experiences of the psycho-social support services provided in a secondary school, the researcher will
72 construct a sense of understanding of the meaning developed by teenage mothers. Within the interpretive paradigm the underpinning assumption is that by exploring or investigating participants in their social contexts or individual space, there is a greater possibility of understanding the perceptions they have developed of their subjective reality (Creswell, 2008). Cohen et al. (2011) concur that the primary concern of interpretive research is to understand the way in which participants (teenage mothers) will create, modify, and interpret to the world or school environment where-in they find themselves.
According to Neuman (2006), researcher especially interpretive researchers need to learn more about the phenomenon under investigation, by constructing questions of various kinds which are wide- ranging and universal in the form of words or images to generate all the relevant information needed.
Within this study therefore the participants (who are teenage mothers) responses are the source of data with richness, depth and complexity. The focal point in educational interpretive research according to Nieuwenhuis (2010) is to comprehend what informs human behaviour and this is anchored in the fact that knowledge and reality or truth is subjective, local, specific and non- generalizable and not objective or universal. Furthermore, Denzin and Lincoln (2003, p. 31) argue that interpretive paradigm acknowledges the fact that ‘‘results are not kept somewhere out there waiting for the researcher to come and take, but it is created and recreated through the interpretation of data’’. Concurring with this, Creswell (2008) opines that the interpretive paradigm is principally orchestrated towards meaning making and knowledge construction processes of an individual from his or her perspective. This therefore means that human behaviour or experiences is mechanically affected by his or her knowledge of the social world making reality a multiple phenomenon and socially constructed across space and time (Creswell, 2008). To add to this, Nieuwenhuis (2010) postulates that within the interpretive paradigm, reality can only be socially constructed and its knowledge is personal or self-objective, generated from a life time of experiences and constructed
73 through careful interpretation leaving meaning to be constructed within the individual. In this context the researcher wants to explore experience of the psycho-social support services provided in a secondary school in KwaZulu-Natal.
Cohen et al. (2011) opine that critics of interpretivism argue that its principal weakness is the fact that it cannot address the features and conditions from which meanings and actions, interpretations, beliefs and rules are deduced. Furthermore, Sarantakos (2005) advocates that this paradigm comes short of ‘‘acknowledging the organizational structures, particularly divisions of interest and relations to power and as a result presents partial accounts of social behaviour by their neglect of the political and ideological contexts of much educational research’’ (p. 24). This study bypasses such criticism since it looks at the experiences of individuals within a social order and since the society shapes the individual, the individual can effectively represent the society or a social order and all that happens in it. Figure 3.1 below represents the representation of the interpretive paradigm.
Figure 3.1Interpretive paradigm
74 Figure 3.1: Above illustrates the interpretive paradigm adapted from Nieuwenhuis (2010, p. 55).