SELECTING THE VEHICLE FOR THE JOURNEY
4.1 Orientation
In Chapters Two and Three I journeyed through different sites of literature, which guide my research methodology and analysis in Chapter Five. Chapter Four offers the methodological exposition of how I attempt to answer my critical question:
What is the impact of adult English literacy curriculum on the lives of female adult learners?
In the first section of Chapter Four, I discuss my research design and theoretical positioning, as well as expose the influence that it would have in shaping this study. As a qualitative researcher using the critical postmodern paradigm, I explain that there is no tangible reality but multiple realties. Research is non- linear and constantly changing under the influences of complex dynamic forces.
The researcher and the researched interact in multiple ways with the realities of society. I construct meaning using mainly the feminist and critical lens not as a neat clinical researcher but as someone who engages with all its messiness to attain credibility. As researcher I advance my reasons for adopting a qualitative research method. I personify my methodology as a journey into which I breathe life to reveal the parallels that I have drawn from my own experiences. I use metaphors because it helps me to see "what we don't see" (Doll, 1993: 169).
In the next part of Chapter Four, I discuss the various data sources used in this research: interviews, autobiographies, and classroom observation. In the final section I give an account of the technique I use to analyze my data and the methodological challenges I faced as a qualitative researcher.
4.2 Research Design
From the discussion that follows it will become clear why the qualitative method, the interpretative, naturalistic and critical postmodern paradigm were better suited to answer my critical question. I point out how the above methods assisted in life history research, which was one of the main tools of this study.
4.2.1 Tuning the Vehicle for the Journey Ahead
Denzin & Lincoln (1998c) aptly describe the qualitative researcher's design as similar to the dancer's three stages of warm-up, exercises and cool-down. Just as dance adapts to life, qualitative design adapts, changes and is redesigned as one's study progresses because of the social realities of doing research. As a qualitative researcher I am not the choreographer but the driver who tunes up her or his vehicle for the journey.
As the driver I choose the type of vehicle for the journey ahead There are myriad vehicles available but I have chosen the four-by four, which would be able to traverse both rugged and ordinary plains. I believe, as much as I am largely from the qualitative paradigm, there are times in this research where I borrow from the ethics of the positivist tradition. All the statistical data quoted in this research are taken from the positivist paradigm. Hence, as much as the two paradigms have different methodologies, the objective of the researcher is the search for the elusive truth, which is part of the complex reality with which researchers are engaged. Paradigms are not always boxed into fixed categories. Reality exposes the many complementary and contradictory forces that come into play.
Qualitative research is multi-method in focus. I use the critical postmodern and naturalistic , approach to the subject matter. As a qualitative researcher I study things in their natural setting and attempt to make sense or interpret, the
24 Naturalistic: in their natural setting, one of the instruments I use to evaluate the impact of the English literacy curriculum on adult learners, is the classroom observation of lessons done in the natural classroom setting.
phenomena in terms of the meaning that they bring. Qualitative research is difficult to define clearly because it does not belong to a single discipline nor does it have a distinct set of methods that are entirely its own. As a qualitative researcher I argue that reality can never be fully understood, that objective reality can never be captured.
I use the postmodern paradigm, which calls for a critical reappraisal of the rigid binaries that have been created in society. These rigid dichotomies such as objective reality and subjective experiences, fact and imagination or cause and effect that society has imposed on it are rejected by postmodernist thought. In post modernist framework such binaries are viewed as offering a parochial understanding of reality because society is far more complex than those, which can be boxed into fixed neat labels. The exciting feature of postmodernism is its eclecticism, one that combines the scientific with the aesthetics. Postmodernism is too varied and has become the in word that has pervaded the arts, humanities, literature, management, mathematics, philosophy, science, the social sciences and theology (Toulmin in Doll, 1993). Interpreting human action through the postmodern paradigm is to understand that it is in a dynamic, more complex pluralistic, unpredictable system or network like life itself. Things are less ordered and more fuzzy (Doll, 1993). Habermas (1993) stresses the potential power of dialogic conversations, of transforming both participants and that being discussed.
Open, interactive, communal conversation is the key to understanding adult learners' life world.
Another feature of postmodernism is the concept of multi-layers of interpretation.
The postmodernist looks to the past, in order to code its loose ends with a future vision. The postmodern framework is a mix of codes within one structural matrix, which is a paradoxical and a challenging play of ideas. Hargreaves (1995) adds that it is this aspect of postmodernism, the paradoxes, ironies and perversity that reveal the trends that are not clear or consistent. The roles that one plays in society is blurred, and there are no fixed interpretations of the function an individual plays. Through postmodern interpretation, I see the paradox of adult
learner's lives in society; those trying to make sense of 'bloomin, buzzin,' confusion we call life (Doll, 1993). The paradox lies in the complex interplay between desire for openness and closure (resolution, definiteness). It is this uncertainty or doubt of the human experience that causes people to dialogue and communicate with one another. There are marginalized female voices that are silenced and not heard to which I wish to give articulation in this study.
In life history research I engaged in the adult learners' story telling in such a manner that I become aware of their multi-layered contexts and to discover the insights of "the figure under the carpet" (Edel cited in Denzin& Lincoln, 1998c:
95). This mixed metaphor aptly illustrates how the researcher (re) constructs a pattern from the data one has of the life of the person studied and written about. In this study the adult learners who are under the carpet are not so much found as constructed. I use critical and feminist approaches through the critical postmodern paradigm and argue that there is no clear window into the inner life world of the adult learners. As such any gaze is always filtered through the lenses of language, gender, social class, race and ethnicity.
I assert that there are no objective observations, only observations socially situated in the worlds of the observer and observed. According to Cohen &
Manion (2000), the interpretative paradigm is characterized by a concern for the individual. Since life history is one of my major tools, the concern is for the adult learners in this study. The main focus is to understand their subjective world of the human experience. I need to get inside the adult learners and to comprehend from within in order to retain integrity of how adult English literacy impacts on their everyday life. In the interpretative approach the researcher begins with the individual and sets out to understand her or his interpretations of the world. This method relies upon the subjective verbal and written expressions of meaning given by individuals studied, which are like windows into the inner life of the person. By using this approach I would be able to have a clearer understanding of the adult learners' world in co-constructing their life histories.
Through the interpretative paradigm I demonstrate that there is no tangible reality.
I see reality as a construction in the minds of the adult learners and I believe that there is no single tangible reality out there. Thus there are an infinite number of interpretations that might be made; there are therefore multiple realities. The qualitative method allows me more flexibility in dealing with the multiple realities of the learners' life worlds because the methods expose more directly the nature of the relationship between the researchers and researched. They allow for my own posturing in terms of bias because the qualitative methods are more sensitive to the mutually shaping influences and value patterns that may be encountered (Lincoln & Guba, 1998c: 40). In their story telling I interpret, (re)construct their stories and give meaning to their realities. In the life history research there is a co-construction of reality between the researchers and researched. Truth is an elusive concept. In constructing women's life stories Denzin & Guba (1998c: 11) quote from the text Interpreting Women's Lives, referring to the Personal Narratives Group (1989) truth here implies:
...the multiplicity of ways in which a woman's life story reveals and reflects important features of her conscious experience and social landscape, creating from both her essential reality.
Qualitative researchers reject the positivist method that there is only one way of telling a story about society. I seek alternative methods of researching as my study includes human conditions such as emotionality, personal responsibility, multi- voiced texts, an ethic of caring and dialogue with the subjects. At the end of Section A, I will explicate how trustworthiness is established in qualitative research so that this research can achieve credibility.
As a qualitative researcher I get closer to the subject's perspective through detailed interviewing, observation and confronting the everyday social world. My research is emic, case-based position, which directs attention to the specifics of a particular case, the Asoka Adult basic Education Co-operative. I believe that rich description of the social world is valuable (Denzin & Lincoln, 1998c: 5-11).