124
125
research design, phenomenology has a focus on understanding and interpretation of phenomena in relation to subjects and their everyday lives. This means that studies that are concerned with understanding meaning of concepts as they are constructed in the world can be categorised to be falling in the phenomenology category. According to Wellington et al. (2007) a social constructionist ontology tallies with phenomenology. To be specific, since I set out to understand and explain the construction and contestations of Africa and Africanness, I could argue to be conducting a study informed by phenomenology.
However, the obligation to single out a particular design is fraught with problems. The main limitation is regarding the nature of the subject in the research. In phenomenology, the common tendency is to engage with human participants (for example through interviews) who are then regarded as the subjects (Fouché, 2010). Yet in my study the theory showed, as was explained in Chapter 4, that the subject is the textbook user (in this case the learner and teacher) and I will not be engaging directly with the textbook users. Therefore, while it is the convention in phenomenology to engage with human subjects, I conceptualised the subject differently since my focus was on how text constructs meaning and consciousness. This complication is linked to the issue raised earlier on the uniqueness of textbook analysis and how it sometimes does not fall neatly in other generic education research designs. This is especially so when one considers the varying understandings of research designs. In Mouton’s (2011) view research can be designed as either empirical or non-empirical although he warns that these two can be divided into smaller sub-designs. In this dichotomy, most conceptual studies are regarded as non-empirical. However, the dichotomy is also problematic in that while my study is empirical in that the data was generated from the textbooks, it is also conceptual to an extent in that it set out to understand the meaning of a concept (African consciousness as conceptualised in Chapter 2).
Nevertheless, I used Mouton’s (2011) model of research design as a basic blueprint for this study. The model posits that there are four dimensions of any research design: (i) the nature of the study (empirical or non-empirical); (ii) the nature of data (primary or secondary); (iii) the type of data; and (iv)the extent to which the researcher can control the data. Using this
126
framework, my study followed the design classification as represented in Figure 5.1. Although research designs can consist of other aspects, these are the basic four which I focused on in classifying my research design.
Figure 5.1: Research design classification
(i) Nature of the study (ii) Nature of data
(iii) Type of data (iv) Data control
Empirical/Non-empirical Secondary Textual Low control
The issue of the nature of the study has already been referred to above. I argue that this study is largely empirical, although the academic rigour of textbook analysis is sometimes questioned in spite of its long history described in Chapter 3. Indeed, according to Johnsen (2001, p. 24) textbook analysis “has never been considered a college or university discipline.” The issue cannot be about the volume of work because the textbook analyst generates as much data as the most used qualitative methods – such as interviews – can generate (if not even more voluminous). In fact, Peräkylä (2005, p. 870) rationalises textbook analysis by pointing out that much of “social life in modern society is mediated by written text;” for example patients’
records for medicine, written laws for the legal system, manuals and journals for professional training and magazines for leisure. Therefore it can be seen that criticism of textbook analysis involves the nature and position of the subject explained above. Because of this textbook analysis can be both empirical and non-empirical.
On the second dimension of research design classification, I posit that the data that I analysed was a form of secondary data. Sometimes, the line between primary and secondary data can be
127
very thin, especially when one applies a historically-informed classification of sources. But it should be clarified that by secondary data, I mean that I analysed data that was not initially meant to be for research analysis purposes (Mouton, 2010). This is different from secondary data such as interview transcripts which are analysed for the second time and for a different purpose. Textbooks are written to serve their purpose as educational media and not necessarily as data for analysis; and so their text is a form of secondary data which is already in the public domain. To explain with an example, when I analysed visuals in the textbooks, I did not view them as primary data because I did not employ the analysis methods used for primary data analysis. So instead of analysing the source of the picture, I analysed the role of the picture as used in the textbook in creating meaning, which makes it secondary data analysis.
The type of data that I worked with constitutes the third dimension of research design and it is different from the second dimension in that it is more specific about the forms in which data is found. According to Mouton (2011, p. 146), the type of data can range “from numeric to textual.” I claim that I used textual data, basing this on the argument raised in Chapter 2 that text is not limited to words only, but it can be both verbal and visual (LaSpina, 1998; Väisänen, 2008). On the one hand, verbal signs are those in which meaning is conveyed through words (Janks, 1997). On the other hand, visual signs, which Väisänen (2008) calls imagetexts, comprise images such as pictures, illustrations, graphs and maps (Nicholls, 2003; Pingel, 2010). Therefore, from a qualitative point of view, the entireties of the textbooks are made up of textual data.
These types of data are explained in further detail in the data generation section later in this chapter.
As previously mentioned, textbooks are not fundamentally written for the purposes of research. The implication of this for my research was that I designed the study knowing that I had low control over the data. This was both an advantage and a disadvantage. The merit is that in my research I would not have to contact the textbook authors and producers and thus I avoided a possible case of the participant saying (based on the interface) what they might assume the researcher wants to hear. Thus, this study is an example of the use of “non- obtrusive strategies that reduce reactivity and observation effects” (Mouton, 2011, p. 169).
128
Negatively speaking, this could also be a demerit since I could not have had a chance to ask the author or textbook producers to clarify certain meanings which I might find unclear in the data.
The above four dimensions therefore clarify the classification of my research design using Mouton’s (2011) framework. These guidelines provided both guidance and coherence as I conducted my study. In summation, I conducted a phenomenological research design which was empirical and involved secondary textual data over which I had limited control.