Chapter 5 Exploring reality: a critical realist study
5.2 Paradigm
5.2.2 Stratified reality and contingent causality/ epistemological stance
Critical realism makes a number of assumptions about reality that are crucial to this study. Firstly, CR makes the assumption that the world we live exists independently of what we think about it (Zachariadis, Scott and Barret, 2010). This also implies the potential fallibility of knowledge, suggesting that there is no absolute truth. Our perceptions are simply a window to that reality and are therefore not necessarily the real reality; as such they cannot be the object of research. Sayer (2000) notes that the realist tenet that the world is independent of our knowledge of it is closely related to the distinction between intransitive and transitive dimensions of knowledge. The intransitive dimension refers to our object of study (i.e., the social phenomenon under study), which in this study is the representation of academic literacy in an Engineering Faculty. The transitive dimension, on the other hand, refers to the theories and discourses that are used to understand social phenomena.
Considering the fallibility of knowledge, Bernstein, (1983 p. 9) comments that
each time an objectivist has come up with what he or she takes to be a firm foundation, an ontological grounding, a fixed categorical scheme, someone has challenged such claims and has argued that what is supposed to be fixed, eternal, ultimate, necessary or indubitable is open to doubt or question.
The implication is that ―researchers‘ fallibility and unavoidable reliance upon presumptions rule out claims to indubitable knowledge‖ (Miller and Tsang 2010 p.
144). Guided by such as understanding of the nature of knowledge, Sobh and Perry (2006 p. 1201) note that CR researchers ―enter the field with prior theories‖. This is necessitated by the underlying philosophy that reality has an external referent;
therefore other people have likely researched or experienced that reality (ibid).
Consequently, their perceptions become ―some of the windows through which we can understand the present reality‖. Miller and Tsang (2010) argue that because reality has an external referent, knowledge claims may be challenged and their merits assessed logically and empirically. This, they further contend, ―motivate[s] the need for and possibility of critically evaluating theories‖ (p. 144). The main purpose for conducting the literature review in this study was to explore understandings of the notion of representation, and what representations of academic literacy and students other scholars have come up with. Specifically, I was looking for discourses that have been used to talk about students and academic literacy. Olsen (2009) states that realists attempt to rework and reassess conceptual frameworks, which they argue are representations of the real. To understand reality requires a larger conceptual map of reality. This requires a CR researcher to work with multiple theories providing windows through which the present reality can be understood.
Secondly, CR sees reality as ―both multi-dimensional and stratified and also [as]
open and differentiated in the sense that closed systemic situations in which event regularities occur are highly restricted‖ (Bhaskar and Lawson, 1998 p. 5). It is in this context that CR illuminates reality. It adds value in the research activity because it takes into consideration the notions of heteroglossia (Bakhtin, in Farrell 1995) and polyvocality (Foucault, in Agger, 2006) in which multiple voices are seen as fundamental in any discourse. Because the nature of the life-world under study is dependent upon individuals‘ experiences of phenomena, a singular version of reality that might be provided will be seriously biased and flawed. In this study, CR is used as a paradigmatic framework of analysis which can offer a meta-perspective on the different positions from which the study draws. This meta-perspective of reality allows analysts to penetrate the deeper structures that generate certain behaviours/tendencies. Hence, instead of focusing on experiences alone, CR makes it possible to probe beyond these experiences. This is because, in CR terms, reality
has three levels of ontological depth: the empirical, the actual, and the real (Bhaskar, 1978). At the empirical level, the focus is on surface events which are recorded through the senses; in the context of academic literacy, this could be the perceptions or interpretations of what academic literacy is. Common sense thus takes precedence at this level. Critical realists understand however that senses can be deceptive and cannot therefore, be used alone to analyse reality. That is why beneath the empirical domain they posit the domain of the actual. At the actual level, events, experiences and practices are generated. In other words, the perceptions and/or interpretations present at the level of the empirical produce justifications for pedagogical practices. We make sense and interpret what happens. Because we see these experiences and events, they therefore become the data and field of inquiry or focus of research. Bhaskar (1978) argued that scientific realism concentrates on this level because it is tangible. Yet, the events that we see at the level of the actual are generated by mechanisms at a third level termed the domain of the real or causal. Simply put, the domain of the real produces mechanisms that produce events that are made manifest in empirical sensations (see Figure 5-1). The implication is that researchers should seek to understand and explain these
‗tendencies‘ rather than focus on naive common sense reality available at the level of the empirical and or actual (Houston, 2001). By privileging the real, critical realists do not claim privileged knowledge of it, but understand, rather, that reality exists regardless of whether or not it is experienced. Hence, the purpose of analysis is to uncover reasons (real) evident in experiences (empirical) that eventually become both the data and or field of investigation (actual), and it provides discursive constructions that support that field (actual) (Corson, 1997).
It is important to note that the domains of reality proposed by Bhaskar (1993; 1978) overlap. The empirical is a subset of the actual, which is a subset of the real. It is quite evident why this last level is of critical concern to the proposed study. This is because it provides an ontology which helps to uncover the nature of the unobservable causal mechanisms that generate practices (discursive constructions of identity) that are evident at the empirical level. Broadly speaking, it helps us understand that phenomena such as conceptualisations of academic literacy emerge from certain levels, yet they are not, neither should they be reducible to those levels
because reality is stratified. Bhaskar‘s three domains are presented in Figure 5-1 below.
Figure 5-1 Bhaskar’s domains of reality Domain of the
real Domain of the
actual Domain of the empirical
Mechanisms ×
Events × ×
Experiences × × ×
Adapted from Bhaskar, 1978 p.38
For CR analysts, to theorise is to propose mechanisms that explain events (Miller and Tsang, 2010 p. 146). Hence, they engage in a process of retroduction and abduction. Danermark et al. (2002 p. 96) define retroduction as a process of
―advancing from one thing (empirical observation of events) and arriving at something different (a conceptualization of transfactual conditions)‖. Drawing from Bhaskar, retroduction seeks to question the conditions which necessitate the occurrence of the phenomenon under investigation (Bhaskar, 2008). In the context of my study, it questions representations of academic literacy and students; it asks what conditions determine such representations. Retroduction, is thus a form of inferential reasoning used to reconstruct empirical phenomena. Abduction, on the other hand, refers to the re-interpretation or re-contextualisation of phenomena within a conceptual framework or a set of ideas (Danermark et al., 2002 p. 80).
Through abduction, the CR analyst re-interprets empirical observations using an established heuristic or conceptual framework. As an explanatory model abduction thus emphasises that ―facts are always theory-laden‖ (Alvesson and Skoldberg, 2009). Chapter 4 indicated that my study is informed by a number of theoretical frameworks drawn from different disciplines. In particular, I am relying on Gee‘s theorisation of discourses and identity, Bourdieu‘s cultural capital and habitus, Bernstein‘s pedagogic device and Lave and Wenger‘s situated learning. All of these theories provided me with both the language of theorisation in my analysis as well as the theoretical lenses through which I could make sense of the data.
Thirdly, CR‘s position on the relationship between knowledge and language is also of essence. Critical realists hold that dominant discourses in society influence people‘s perceptions as well as actions (Trowler, 2001) and in turn help to define (represent) others. For this reason, reality is not independent of semiosis and discourse. It is discursively constructed, just like identity (Gee, 1996). If reality is discursively constructed, then it is multifaceted, pointing to multiple identities. And if that is the case, then whose reality is privileged in the academy; what kind of representations does this kind of reality give rise to?
The approach offered by CR is relevant to this study because it helps illuminate the complexity and the differential practice that underlie the development of discourses in higher education. Like the Gee (2001; 1996) and Bourdieu and Passeron (1977/1990), CR implicates language/discourses in the production and reproduction of knowledge in society. The framing of the key research questions in this study likewise reflects the socio-cultural-historical and CR views that frame this study.
These questions indicate that people do hold multiple perspectives of academic literacy – hence the focus (in the research questions proposed for this study) on the dominant discourses framing academic literacy in an Engineering Faculty. The suggestion is that there are diverse perspectives of academic literacy, making it a contested issue that warrants interrogation to illuminate both the dominant practices and (especially) the causal mechanisms of such practices.
Having explicated the research approach, design and analytical framework guiding this study, I now turn attention to issues of data collection and analysis. While it is true that CR is a philosophy rather than a method, in this study the focus is on using the philosophy to come up with a practical method for theory testing.