SELECTING THE VEHICLE FOR THE JOURNEY
4.4 Life History: The Vehicle used in the Journey
As the traveller I needed to have a plan (research design) of how I intended to travel through the various sites of interest. The vehicle used for the journey sets the parameters for the type of journey undertaken. Research works on the same principles: the researcher and the researched are constantly being exposed to complex multiple issues. Society is not an ordered structured entity but is constantly in flux. The four-by-four vehicle (life history) offers this research the positioning and space required as a traveller (researcher), to undertake an adventurous journey with the four adult learners.
I used life history as a methodological tool to obtain rich data. The life history research afforded me time to do rigorous long-term studies that uncovered the meanings of events in the adult learner's lives. As a qualitative researcher I gain the discursive space using life history methodology to become immersed in a study that requires passion for people, passion for communication and passion for understanding people. It is a contribution of qualitative research, and can only enhance educational and human services practice (Denzin & Guba, 1998a). The postmodern, critical and feminist theoretical lenses offer me the opportunity to gaze at the life histories of the learners. Life history research gives voice to the voiceless domestic female adult learners and illuminates my understanding of the lived experiences in their journey in acquiring the English language.
As a researcher I had to probe how the adult learners made sense of the English language in their day-to-day lives and to examine the impact that English literacy had had on their life world. The life history approach using the in-depth interview provided an excellent research technique. Tuckman in Cohen & Manion (1986:
292) succinctly describes the interview as providing access to what is "inside a person's head" it makes it possible to measure what a person knows, the
"knowledge or information" that a person likes or dislikes, values and preferences, and what a person thinks.
The life history assisted me to draw an in-depth portrait of the adult learners and capture their interpretation of life. The learners, who were also domestic workers, had an opportunity to tell their story through the life history approach.
Storytelling is a fundamental human quality, which is imperative for researchers to recognize as a significant contribution to research. The women's life histories in The Personal Narratives Groups (1989) provide an entry point for the examination between the individual and society in the construction of gender.
Women make their own lives (and life histories); however, they do so under conditions not of their own choosing. Life histories can be helpful in understanding hegemony because they document a variety of responses to hegemony. Life histories especially of women and racially or ethnically oppressed
people are often rich sources of counter hegemonic insight because they expose the viewpoints embedded in the dominant ideology.
In constructing the life story it is important to be reminded of the subject's own self-definitions about their lives, in contrast to the definitions imposed by the constructer of the story and by the subject's own society. Marks (1989) agrees that it is critical to understand the political and socioeconomic relations that shape a life. There are power relations that surround the production of knowledge between the subject and researcher. Marks (1989) emphasizes that it is important to acknowledge and address the realities and conditions of inequality affecting life history work. The examples they cited include literacy/illiteracy and poverty/economic security. When the researcher emphasizes only the interests and purposes that share with the subject of the life history, such emphasis obscures complex ethical, practical, and political issues. Life history must be multiple to ensure that the interests of the subject and her community are advanced. In this research learners engaged in a warm-up session before actual recording where issues about their lives were dialogued. Each of these frameworks provides a different lens through which a life story is viewed. Shostak (1989: 239) states that:
...the most important ethical message regarding life histories is not a restriction but an obligation: we should make every effort to overcome obstacles, to go out and record the memories of people whose ways of life are preserved only in those memories.
Life history describes the human condition of ordinary people living ordinary and not so ordinary lives, etched from their memories and experiences and the meaning life have for them. The stories express modes of thought and culture often different to the researcher. They are therefore complex, telling of worlds sometimes foreign to the researcher's world or worlds that no longer exists. The stories are also familiar as they reveal the complexities and paradoxes of human life.
The life history as a methodological tool, probed deeply into the adult learners' lives to understand how other factors shaped and were influential during the process of acquiring the English language. In the life history study, I conducted extensive interviews with the adult learners for the purpose of collecting a first person narrative (Biklen, 1992). Over time, the content of the life history interviews became more revealing as I probed deeper and deeper into their lives.
The data collection process was ongoing over the six-year period (1998-2003), I was able to understand and get to know the learners in far greater depth. The theoretical frameworks play a significant role in life history research, as will be explained in the next section.