In the prologue I alluded to my “deep immersion” within the field of legal education. As an
“insider-researcher” it is important to disclose fully my positioning, in order to make explicit that my interpretation is of necessity a personal one. It is informed by my historical experience of lecturing within a particular law faculty and my own ontological and epistemological assumptions as a teacher, a lawyer, and a white, English-speaking South African woman.
Important biographical influences were my experiences of teaching law at an English HWU for over 15 years, engaging actively in curriculum development and particularly in writing two first-year textbooks that implemented a new model of small group teaching for first- year students in 1998, after the change to an undergraduate curriculum was made. At the time of developing the new materials I had recently completed a Masters degree in Higher Education, in which my dissertation had been focussed on teaching legal writing. I have been the chairperson of both the Faculty Teaching and Learning Committee and the Quality Assurance Committee over many years, and have thus been closely aware of the changing student demographics and language and literacy issues that have become prominent concerns in law teaching. My role as originator of a tutor training programme for final-year law students engaged in mentoring and facilitating learning for first-year students provided
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additional impetus for wishing to explore the role that curriculum plays for students, whether as an obstacle or as an agent of change. In undertaking to prepare the Law Faculty for an internal review, which was followed by an institutional audit, I became aware of the tensions between the demands that quality assurance places on academics and the positive benefits to be gained by greater accountability.
Finally, in my role as “adviser-observer” to SALDA, heading the Task Team appointed by the Law Deans to redraft the SAQA template for the generic LLB qualification, and thereafter, to work with the CHE on a research project to undertake an appraisal of legal education, I have had access to an increasing quantity of documentation in this field. I have had contact with representatives of the legal professions and government role-players, who reflect wider stake-holder opinions on legal education. I have thus been exposed to multiple viewpoints, impressions and competing interest groups, who each present their case as the stronger one to determine the way forward. It was only by engaging in empirical research that would trace the foundations and roots of the current curriculum, pursuing the motivating vision through into the implementation phase, then, finally, exploring what the curriculum has meant to the products of this degree, that I thought I might approach a deep understanding of its fitness for purpose in a transitional society.
The position of the “deep insider-researcher” in a research setting raises the problem of the knowledge the researcher brings of the “history and cultures…semiotics and slogan systems operating within the cultural norms of the organisation or group” (B. Edwards, 1999). The researcher who is an existing member of a group will already have been generating some emergent theories about the group over time, and there is a risk of overlooking subtleties and nuances within a familiar field. The deep insider-researcher’s position of rapport and trust may also change within the group over time, since she is aware of history, and personal relationships interwoven in the history, that may not be accessible to an outsider.
At the same time, the insider-researcher is part of the “unfolding history and may have a significant impact on that ongoing story and relationships” (Rowan & Reason, 1981).
My immersion in the legal education field means that I am aware of details about the personalities, the institutions, and the histories of many of the participants. Their familiarity with me allowed them to reveal personal opinions and viewpoints that might not have been
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disclosed to an outsider. My own experience of many of the obstacles or experiences they describe represents a shared history and so provided me with data that had an “extra- ordinarily rich under-texture…and carries with it a potential for deeper understanding and greater insights” (B. Edwards, 1999). The risk inherent in this position is expressed in the observation that “*w+e come to recognise that there are no value-free privileged knowers who ask ideologically unfettered questions about the methods they will employ in their studies” (Kincheloe, 1991, p. 73).
In interpretive research it is the researcher who is the primary instrument for generating rich, descriptive data and for analysing the data as part of a process toward making sense of experiences and phenomena in their naturalistic social setting (Terre Blanche & Durrheim, 1999, p. 127). Therefore, it is important that I make full disclosure of my personal history and bias at this stage. I am aware that my personal background, subjectivities, and my extensive involvement with the subject matter which is the central focus of this study could have the effect of creating a particular bias. However, it also ensures that I have the necessary empathy and background knowledge to interpret the data in context. I fully appreciate the gaps in knowledge and the need to research this area to obtain empirical data that will allow me to make a meaningful contribution to the future development of legal education in South Africa. My participation in curriculum review processes through SALDA has positioned me so that I have had access to the most recent information, debates, statistics and national trends in curriculum development. I would not have had the interest in nor developed the particular research questions about the phenomenon, had I not had extensive immersion in the subject, over an extended period of time. My role as researcher, matches very closely the view of the phenomenologist as ”postulating her lifeworld as central to all that he or she does, including research and teaching, and as a consequence focuses on the biographic situation of each individual” (Pinar, 1994).
I continued to monitor this subjectivity reflexively at each stage throughout the study, by presenting “thick description“ supported by ample empirical evidence. It is recommended that a strong theoretical base, complemented with a coherent and convincing argument based on the empirical data, and evidence of the researcher’s understanding and logic will allow the researchers’ interpretation to be the meaning of the data, without losing the
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voices of the setting (Henning, Van Rensburg, & Smit, 2007, p. 7). Reflexivity acknowledges that the researcher is inescapably part of the world she is researching – since no objective reality exists anyway. Rather than trying to eliminate researcher effects, it is suggested that qualitative researchers should disclose their own selves as the research instrument par excellence (Hammersley & Atkinson, 1983), which I have attempted to achieve throughout.
Reflexivity or reflexive analysis was used regularly to check the influence of my own background, perceptions and interests during data gathering and data analysis (Kreftling, 1991). In the following section, the methods of sampling and generating data will be explained in detail to indicate how this was carefully done to avoid the imposition of personal bias and excessive subjectivity.