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curriculum change and implementation in what could be termed “Voices of Deans Past and Present” (chapter5.
4.13 Phenomenographic methodology: variation in experiences of
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Phenomenography was developed as an empirical methodology in educational research predominantly in Sweden at the end of the 1970s and early 80s (Marton, 1981; Uljens, 1996). It developed out of common sense considerations about teaching and learning, relying on an application of the introspective method, rather than on a principled conceptual underpinning (Richardson, 1999). Phenomenography has been adopted in numerous studies of “learning-related phenomena” (Micari, Light, Calkins, & Streitweiser, 2007). Learning assumed a central importance within this framework because “it represents a qualitative change from one conception concerning some particular aspect of reality to another” (Marton, 1988). It was established that the outcome of learning and conceptions are always related to the approach the learner or person adopted in arriving at that understanding, or the way they approached that phenomenon (Yan, 1999).
This research approach is characterised by an attitude of “empathy” toward the participants, which requires a detachment from the researcher’s lifeworld and an opening up to the lifeworld of the participant, demanding an imaginative attitude and an “active engagement” with the world being described (Ashworth & Lucas, 2000). “The world is not constructed by the learner, nor is it imposed upon her; it is constituted as an internal relation between them” (Marton & Booth, 1997).
There is said to be a clear relationship between what we are looking for in research and the position or perspective from which we are doing the looking (Marton, 1981). This is particularly accurate in describing the relationship between what I was seeking in this research and the methodology selected. I wanted to identify the different ways in which graduates had experienced the curriculum, through the lens of an interpretive methodology that would allow me to identify different perceptions and experiences in a way that was closely attuned to the graduates’ own experiences.
Phenomenographers claim only to analyse the participants’ “ways of functioning” or “forms of thought” and not their lived experience (Marton, 1981, 1984). The methodology has a purely descriptive “knowledge interest” and the conceptions are described as human-world relations (Yan, 1999). The object of phenomenographic analysis always consists of
“expressed experience” (Uljens, 1996). Clarity regarding the process by which the research
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is conducted is of great significance in terms of determining whether the outcomes are
”ontologically defensible and epistemologically valid” (Ashworth & Lucas, 2000).
Phenomenography has developed into a methodology with a set of theoretical assumptions that seek to identify variation in the way people conceive of and approach learning-related experiences (Marton & Booth, 1997). It is similar to other methods of qualitative research in that it relies on in-depth interview data and aims to reveal understanding of phenomena from the participant’s perspective (M Van Manen, 1990). However, phenomenography is unique in that instead of seeking common themes as phenomenology does, variation amongst participants’ conceptions of the same phenomenon is the objective, and rather than treating the phenomenon as the subject of the study, phenomenography regards the range of ways of conceiving as the unit of analysis (Micari et al., 2007). A “map of the collective mind” (Uljens, 1996) is produced from the views of the participants as they were manifested in the interview transcripts.
As an empirical research orientation, originally based loosely on Gestalt-psychology, phenomenography holds that for whatever we see or experience, we perceive a “gestalt”
quality, or a signative whole entity or figure, which can be distinguished from its surroundings or background. A “gestalt” will always have a structure, to mutually support the collection of items which constitute it (Yan, 1999). Its focus is on the relationship between the person and a phenomenon in the world and it aims to understand what it means to experience, understand, or make sense of a phenomenon in different ways. This
“experience” aspect depicts the internal relationship between humans and the world (Marton & Fai, 1999). This approach will provide a means to operationalise the part of the study which seeks to understand how curriculum prepares professionals for practice during their formative education at university.
Phenomenographic research is conducted in real settings and “looks at issues through the eyes of the key players”. The assertion that this approach is better able to represent the complexity of educational settings and situations to “produce meaningful and useful conclusions” is based on the claim that the observer/researcher is not uninvolved or independent of the setting (K. Trigwell, 2000, p. 65). This powerful motivation for using the
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particular methodology is “consistent with my everyday work”, trying to understand how my students think about aspects of the curriculum, and as Trigwell suggests:
at the methodological level, the idea of looking in a mass of (loosely constrained) data for some order, and qualitative differences and relations, is more appealing in complex situations, where at times, our knowledge seems limited, than prescribing the parameters into which data will be channelled (p. 65).
A conception is described as being “dependent on both human activity and the world that is experienced by the individual” (Svensson, 1997). A “conception” of the phenomenon refers to the meaning that is given to the relationship, or the understanding that one has of the experience through the critical aspects of the phenomenon that are discerned and focused on simultaneously (Bond & Le Brun, 1996). It includes the “meanings and understandings”
of the phenomenon.
The unit of analysis in phenomenographic research is a “conception”, which is composed of two intertwined aspects: the referential aspect, which denotes the particular global meaning of the individual object conceptualised, ”so as to discern it from its context”, and a structural aspect, which is the combination of features discerned and focussed upon by the subject (Marton & Pong, 2005).
People’s awareness of a phenomenon is structured according to the “what” aspect which corresponds to the object itself, and the “how” aspect which relates to the act of discerning it, in a dynamic relationship (Marton & Booth, 1997). Marton (1994) explains that phenomenography addresses the question of what a phenomenon looks like, as much as how it is seen. A conception of learning constitutes part of the student’s experience of learning: it has a structural aspect that concerns the constituent parts of the whole experience and their relationship to each other, including contextual factors, and a referential aspect which is the meaning aspect (Morgan & Beaty, 1997). This characteristic of identifying the “what” and “how” of the phenomenon will serve to capture the graduates’ perceptions regarding the experience of curriculum very effectively, in that not only will it allow space to discern the “what” aspect, the knowledge (content) that they learned, but it will also detect the “how”, as it relates to curriculum. The experience includes students’ intentions, approaches, reflections and the idea that “experiencing denotes an
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internal relationship between the subject (the graduate) and the world” (Runesson, 2005, p.
70).
Thus, the methodological orientation of phenomenography accommodates the subtle processes of curriculum such as processes that constitute part of the hidden curriculum, as well as more obvious features, namely the contents of the curriculum. In the graduate interviews clear differences between the structural understanding and the referential understanding of aspects of the curriculum within each category of description will be explicated. Similarly, this duality that constitutes the employers’ conceptions will become evident in the analysis of the data.
The outcome of phenomenographic research is to produce content-loaded descriptions of the qualitatively different ways in which the subjects or participants conceive of or experience phenomena in the surrounding world (Marton, 1981). The “outcome space”, which is the final result of a phenomenographic study, is defined as the logical relations among the descriptive categories, in a hierarchical ordering. The categories are neutral, with respect to empirical subjects, the individual participants, and to the context or life-world from which they emanate. However, the notion that a hierarchically ordered set of interrelated conceptions of a particular key concept necessarily reflects the meanings of the students’ conceptions accurately “within their distinct life worlds” has been challenged by some researchers (Ashworth & Lucas, 1998, p. 427). By disconnecting conceptions from the
“temporal and situational context” it is possible to compare conceptions to other expressed, decontextualised conceptions, although the hierarchically-ordered categories of the outcome space are not usually generalisable, being as they are, the unique creation of the researcher (Uljens, 1996). Phenomenographic research involves more than reporting on the different conceptions; it involves identifying the conceptions and looking for their underlying meanings and the relationships between them (Entwistle, 1997).
The need to exercise phenomenographic “bracketing” or “epoche” is emphasised, for the purposes of ensuring that the researcher enters the life world of the participants, by suspending presuppositions such as existing theories and categories (Ashworth & Lucas, 1998). The focus is essential in order to access the personal reality of the participant and to ensure that the researcher pays attention to the “subtleties of the actual life world”
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(Ashworth & Lucas, 1998, p. 421). However in more recent literature this aspect of the methodology has been contested. The implications of a purist approach to bracketing are that a review of the literature should not be undertaken prior to analysing the data. Several authors concede that it is unlikely that a researcher is able to undertake a study without a background knowledge of the research literature (Ashworth & Lucas, 1998; Uljens, 1996).
Theoretically the researcher should be open to “discover” the set of categories of description as they emerge from the data, without being influenced by pre-suppositions.
However, another set of researchers such as Laurillard (1993), Crawford et al. (1994) and Prosser and Miller (1989) have specifically used predetermined categories to compare empirical findings across different contexts, such as research among students in different countries or in different disciplines. Notions around “deep and surface learning” (Marton &
Booth, 1997) have been pursued in research on learning to extend and develop understandings of categories of description across different disciplinary contexts, as well as the notion of “professional legal entity” (Petocz & Reid, 2001; Reid et al., 2006).
In this study, I have selected to first “discover” categories of description from the data, although it has been difficult to apply bracketing rigorously because of my position as “deep insider-researcher”, and also in view of my personal relationship with most of the graduates as an ex-lecturer. I was, however, able to engage empathetically with the participants and relate to their “lifeworld”, because of my familiarity with the curriculum and my experience in this field (Ashworth & Lucas, 2000). After discovering the categories of description I compared my categories to categories developed in a similar study, relating to law students in Australia (Reid et al., 2006). My purpose was to establish whether there were any points of correlation or dissonance between the two analyses and interpretations.
Criticisms of this approach are that the data, the constructs, the findings and even the object of the research may be reflections of the researcher’s own ideas and products of the empirically productive situation created in the interviews. A risk inherent in the approach can be a lack of reflexivity and an absence of a detailed critical analysis of the data generation and analysis (Hasselgren & Beach, 1996). This critique has been addressed in this study by adopting a consistently reflective attitude and exposing my positioning and my difficulties at each stage of the research process. In addition, recent literature in this field
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has prescribed detailed guidelines and principles for ensuring the quality and integrity of the analysis, which I have attempted to apply (Åkerlind, 2002). Another significant cautionary observation made in the literature is the need to clarify the context-specific nature of the outcomes of such research, and to exercise caution in generalising the findings beyond the context within which they were derived, which I believe that I have done (Pratt, Kelly, &
Wong, 1999).
The observations made above about phenomenographic methodology establish the basis for selecting this approach for the second section of the study, in preference to the phenomenological approach which better suited the data related to the lived experience of curriculum change. Phenomenography is well suited to studies related to students’
experience of learning in higher education and was thus considered to be both appropriate and original in ascertaining the perspective of graduates, as well as their employers regarding the law curriculum.