Chapter Summary
3.1 The V-Shaped Magnet of Story and Voice
Chapter Three: The Magnet
'... Though scientists have been able to harness the power ofmagnets for years, they have yet to determine what a magnetic field 'is'... '
(www.technicoil.com/magnetism.html)
Chapter Overview
The methodology of this study can be broadly conceptualised as an attempt to return the discourse of therapy into the context of academia by inserting
"human experience, beliefs, doubts, emotions and intentions" into a context governed by issues of "truth, observation, analysis and proof" (Cortazzi, 1993; p132). By so doing, it challenges the assumptions of the scientific tradition upon which professional knowledge transmission and creation occurs. In addition, it highlights the importance of implicit ways of knowledge creation on which therapeutic practice is based.
Having said this, however, and as extensively argued in the previous Chapter, the discourse of empiricism has the greater legitimacy in voicing the debate· around professional development. In presenting the research methodology of this study, therefore, emphasis is placed upon the validity, representativeness and reliability of narrative research techniques as vehicles for expressing one version of 'truth'. As such, 3.1 presents a more detailed motivation for the use of narrative as the research approach, highlighting its appropriateness for introducing the historically silenced voice of a student.
Thereafter, 3.2 locates the research approach within its case-study context by first describing the Department of Speech & Hearing Therapy at the University of Durban-Westville, and then introducing Nolwazi Mpumlwana, the research study participant. 3.3. Describes the methods of data collection, and 3.4 the methods of data analysis. In this concluding section, the reader is prepared for the presentation of the research material in Chapter Four, and for the broad categories of discussion that comprise Chapter Five.
3.1.1 "Homo Fabula: we are storytelling beings." (Okri, 1997; p114)
The way we organise and understand our experience of life is expressed by the stories we tell (Mumby, 1993). "All the great religions, all the great prophets, found it necessary to spread. their message through stories, fables, parables. The Bible is one of the world's greatest fountains of fiction and dream. Itis the stories, rather than the facts, which still enchant us towards belief' (Okri, 1997; ppllO-lll). Serving to join past, present and future, stories have, therefore, not only the power to influence how we think, but to transform the way people construct reality.
As has been argued in the previous Chapter, the model of professional development in SHT trains practitioners to focus on the empirical-analytical 'it is said' dimension of reality. Myers (1990) terms this bracketing of social reality into empirical givens as a 'discovery narration', whereby texts and thought, articulating an artificial and truncated view of social life, actually mystify the natural state of human affairs. Another way of putting this is that the rational empirical process of making 'fact' creates a tension between what Dillon (1992; p44) calls, "human situatedness and impersonal decorum."
The tension lies between what people say represents 'truth', and what lies beneath the truth-making process. In other words, there is a hidden dimension to the making of meaning in the empirical tradition (Harre, 1990; Mumby, 1993).
By acknowledging the centrality of this hidden dimensi(:m in the construction of knowledge, the concept of narrative as a research discourse has become central in understanding the nature of the teaching-learning relationship, and particularly so in contexts and times of change (Cortazzi, 1993). As Okri (1997; pIlI) points out,
"Without fighting, stories have won over more people than all the great wars put together". The reason lies in the nature and power of narrative itself.
Human discourse represents a string of narratives. As such, stories represent a basic element of human social life (Mumby,1993; Jameson, 1998). In their telling they set forward powerful truth claims about the values and beliefs of the narrator. These values affect how individual reality is constructed and extended into new situations, how
problems are conceptualised, and on what basis 'correct' behaviour is adjudicated and acted upon (Witten, 1993). The important point is that stories do not convey an absolute meaning, or claim to 'truth', they rather evoke meaning. In this way, they do not perpetuate a scientific myth of control (Harre, 1990; Myers, 1990) but advance a process in which - and through which - self, other, and context make and exchange meaning (Goodson, 1992). At one and the same time, therefore, narratives allow access into how the narrator constructs knowledge on the basis of her thinking and culture, and also serve a 'revelationary' purpose in terms of audience collusion in 'making-meaning' of the narratives themselves (Mumby, 1993).
As was argued in the previous Chapter, the polemic 'around' the professional model of development has been conducted by insider-professionals, educated within the gender- influenced academic discourse of empiricism. Itwas also suggested that this discourse is significantly different to that of practice. With its emphasis on dialogic, interpretative, and context-dependent 'human situatedness' (Dillon, 1992), the essence of practice discourse is that of story. As Witherell & Noddings (1991) have pointed out, life-history narration is the basis on which any therapeutic encounter is based.
The argument for an insertion of therapeutic discourse into that of academia is, therefore, in reality the argument for the acknowledgement of story as representing the hidden dimension of professional discourse. The following section extends this discussion by suggesting that the 'subject' of the professional development debate has been similarly hidden within the truth-making discourse of science.
3.1.2 The Absent Story
Chapter 2 pointed out that by virtue of its empirical discourse - both through its use of the symbol systems of English and Afrikaans and through the methods of knowledge construction - the professional enterprise is based upon observation. The professional teaching-learning environment is similarly structured, with surveillance mechanisms such as examinations, teacher observations, assignments and report-writing forming core training operations. According to Foucault (1979), an observing educative gaze is concerned with constituting the student as the 'subject' of its educational experiment in order to normalise the product. The purpose, as both he and Fairclough (1989) point
out, is to legitimise the existing power relationships between teacher and student.
Translated to professional training, this means that the goal of the process is to effectively shape the student in terms of the existing ideological construction of what a South African Speech and Hearing therapist 'should be'. The aim being, that once graduated, the practitioner will conform to the normative values of professional behaviour.
The significance of this to the historical silence of the student voice is that while constituted as a 'subject', a "real subjection is born... He [sic] who is subjected to a field of visibility, and who knows it, assumes responsibility for the constraints of power ...
he becomes the principle of his own subjection" (Foucault, 1979; p203). Failure to negotiate this 'field of visibility' results in negative self-attributions. As Fairclough (1989; p57) has pointed out, failing students attribute their lack of success to , "I can't because I'm stupid" as opposed to acknowledging the presence of different ideological positions in the teaching and leaming process.
The consequence of negative, or self-handicapping, attributions is that while confirming the legitimacy of the teacher as the 'one who knows best', they also lead to a silent acceptance of the status quo on the part of the student (Foucault, 1979). This silence results in two key consequences of relevance to this study.
Firstly, it can allow. the 'problem' of specifically BAFL speaking student failure to be objectified by insider-professional researchers, who may fulfil additional aims of the scientific enterprise by describing their interpretation of the student voice in regard to reforms to the curriculum - as opposed to listening to the voice itself.ll Secondly, it allows student silence to be conceptualised of as a string of narrative events that have notoccurred in the training context.
According to Lukes' (1974) three-dimensional view of power, the study of what events do not occur in specific contexts leads to an uncovering of the real interests inherent within them. Although he suggests the presence of 'inarticulate ideologies' in decision-
11.Hugo's (1998) article, "Communication Pathology: The Way in Africa" is an interesting example of thIS phenomenon.
making that promote a selective perception and articulation of particular problems for discussion, the argument here has proposed specific interests within professional/
institutional empirical discourse that have contributed to a subjugation of the student VOice.
In other words, the reasons underlying the silence of the student can be linked to the dominant paradigm of professional inquiry. In this analysis, therefore, the hidden dimension of making meaning in the empirical tradition conceals not only story, but the stories of students.
This study attempts to synthesis both story and BAFL speaking student in articulating the narrative of how professional training discourse is experienced. As Nolwazi is immersed within it, the interpretations offered will represent an important shift from previous research regarding the professional training programme. By altering the source of critique to the student in training, the voice that will be heard is one not yet normalised into teacher-professional interpretations of what a Speech and Hearing therapist 'should be.' Her insights should, therefore, reflect aspects of the normalisation process itself. At the same time, and by adopting a life-history approach to framing this narrative, access may be granted to her implicit ways of knowledge creation that reflect her historical and socialised situadedness as a Black South African woman.
At the risk of repeating points made in Chapter 2.3, yet as a summative preparation for the following sections of this Chapter, the narration of a life-history is an interactive technique that, especially in educational settings, provides valuable insights about how people make sens~ of their current experiences (Cohen
If'
Manion, 1994). In the narration, the teller is reflecting on the sum total of her interpretations of past memories in order to make meaning of the present. The coherence of the self-narrative occurs through the integration of meaning, purpose and value. In this way, it links past, present and future (Witherell, 1991). In other words, the narrator, by reflecting on the past, interprets the present and future through its lens. The telling of a life-history accesses, therefore, the individual's implicit knowing, yet does so by following the traditions of story-telling. Itis through these traditions that individuals "make their meanings count"(Witten, 1993; pI 00).
Yet while the narration of a life history compels belief, it also shields the claims made by the narrator from testing and debate (Elbaz, 1990). Itis not a 'copying process', but a
"decision-making process where people see what they want or need to see and actively reconstruct it" (Cortazzi 1993, p80; citing Buckhart, 1982). Life-history narratives compel attention and belief through mechanisms within the nature of the discourse itself. One set of these lies within the teller's organisation of the textual schema, and the other within acceptance and endorsement by the audience (van Dijk, 1977; Labov, 1972 & 1977; Cortazzi, 1993). The claims to truth of a life-history narrative lie, therefore, in a joint, interpretative, construction by the teller and listener.
Itis in the nature ofthis interpretative construction that the researcher needs vigilance as to methodological considerations. Itis her task to provide adequate methods and means of gathering and analysing the data in order to ensure a reasonable level of research validity. The following sections of this Chapter attempt to provide this. 3.2 describes the context of the research study, and introduces Nolwazi Mpumlwana to the reader. 3.3 discusses the methods of data collection, and 3.4 provides the methods of data analysis.
3.2