2.6 Thinking about ontological positions

In the TLRP briefing document you looked at in Activity 7, you might have noticed that there was explicit reference to a scientific methodology at points in the document. This might have made you feel that a particular epistemological stance might be expected from researchers. However, making assumptions about the research perspective when reading research literature is not straightforward. It is important therefore to dig beneath the surface and to scrutinise the research design and methodological choices made in order to clearly understand the researchers’ intended stance, rather than making assumptions at purely a surface level.

Figure 4 Sometimes you have to dig a little deeper in the literature

Language is very important in conveying which position you are adopting and, if terms are being used with particular meaning, they need to be explained to a reader. In the TLRP document, although ‘scientific’ is used at several points, the studies they are referring to as being judged for the various purposes included in the paper would not necessarily be expected to adopt a ‘scientific’ approach. If they are not adopting a ‘scientific’ approach and yet are being evaluated on this basis, a researcher needs to take especial care in offering a clear rationale for the position of their study in the academic landscape.

In the next activity, you will consider ontological and epistemological positions and the significance of different theoretical perspectives for how practice is understood.

Activity 8 Identifying ontological positions

Timing: Allow approximately 30 minutes

Part 1

Watch Video 1.

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Transcript: Video 1 Social media in the lives of youth with disabilities in Kenya

ALICE GATHONI:

I am researching on young adults with disabilities within the context of Kenya where I come from. And what I'm looking at is what they do on social media, their activities and mostly their agency on social media.

There's been so much concerns of late about issues of safety and bullying on social media, but I really wanted to understand about what young adults with disabilities think and the activities on these media, and what it is that social media enables them to be and become.

I went for fieldwork in Kenya for four months. And this was a participatory research. So I wanted to-- I worked with the young adults as core researchers. One of the things that I suggested we could do was a social media map, and it's basically a map but having the young person in the middle and then letting them describe the people they use social media with and what value these people have in their lives or institutions. So that was very important.

But because I was working with youth who had also visual impairments and, of course, we know it's not possible for them to sketch like you and me would ordinarily. So I wanted to find out how they did. And one of the things that really intrigued me is that they were very happy to do it but they used Braille. So it was beautiful allowing the young people with visual impairments to express themselves and to be part and parcel of the research.

One thing that I am realizing in my data is that through social media young adults with disabilities are able to form what I'm calling communities of practice. And using these communities of practice they are able to mobilize one another in cases of discrimination, in cases of issues of injustice.

This is something they didn't have before because we don't have more than 100 students with disabilities in one University. So we have two there, two there, but once they have social media it comes off helps them come together and that is very important. That's giving them a voice that they have not had before.

I have always wanted to bring out the voice of young people with disabilities. And a lot of research that is out there is really talking about what teachers are saying with very little about what youth with disability themselves want or what they value. And so I really wanted to do a research that was going to involve young people and not just involve them but also ensure that their voice is clearly heard.

These things are important. They count because that is what their aspirations are. And so if as academicians, as policy makers, people who are involved in decision making do not really take account of their voices, then it means that the research that we are doing or the places where we are placing our money it's not in line with the aspiration, it's not in line with what young people with disabilities in this age want. So I think that has taught me along the way to stop and reflect, is this what young people want?

End transcript: Video 1 Social media in the lives of youth with disabilities in Kenya

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Video 1 Social media in the lives of youth with disabilities in Kenya

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The research described in Video 1 relates to young adults with disabilities and their sense of agency via social media. The researcher asked her participants to describe the impact of people and institutions on their lives. Consider for a moment the ontological and epistemological frame the research is positioned within and respond to the following questions.

• What does the researcher think about reality (ontological position)?
• Make a note of what the researcher says about how she intends to investigate her topic. What does this suggest about the researcher’s epistemological position?

Part 2

Now listen to the following extract of an interview with Gill Adams, an academic at Sheffield Hallam University. In the interview she is asked to reflect on her doctoral research studying Maths’ teachers and describes the approach she took.

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Transcript: Audio 1

CLARE LEE

Hi. I’m Clare Lee and I’m talking to Gill Adams on the phone about her research. Now I supervised her research, so I know quite a lot about it but not as much as Gill does. Because when you do a doctoral research, you’re the expert and Gill is the expert here.

So, I will be asking her about the decisions she made as part of her research. The research used a narrative and biographical approach to collecting the data and we will have a conversation about all the different decisions she had to make.

OK, so, to start off could you discuss how you chose your research focus?

GILL ADAMS

Hi Clare. My research explored teachers’ experiences of their professional learning. And I focused particularly on women secondary mathematics teachers. And I’ll talk a little bit about why and how that focus came about. It really arose from my professional practice and experience. I was a secondary maths teacher and later a consultant supporting teacher professional learning. At the time I started the research I was a teacher educator. So, I worked with beginning teachers and also designed and led courses for experienced teachers as they continued to develop their careers.

My research was prompted really by an activity on an Open University module where I was asked to develop my own mathematics autobiography. And this got me thinking more about how I’d learned as a mathematics teacher. So, the initial stimulus for the research really came from reflections on my experience as a learner and as a facilitator of professional learning. Then from this starting point I began to explore the literature initially focusing on teacher professional learning and then digging a bit deeper into mathematics teaching. So, there were existing studies about particular professional development courses and initiatives in mathematics. But nothing really about teachers experiences of learning throughout their career. So how mathematics teachers experienced that learning on the job.

So, in addition to the research being driven by my interest and my own experience another influencing factor for me was a little bit more pragmatic and was shaped by my employment situation. And I think these pragmatic influences are quite significant actually because you need your research to fit your particular context. So, mine was shaped by my employment. I’d just come back to England after two years volunteering overseas. I had a temporary position in a university, and I needed my study to be one that I could continue even if I changed jobs.

I chose a narrative approach for my research as this enabled teachers’ professional learning to be firmly located within the teachers’ lives. And it helped me to reveal the significance of context. So those national, local and individual factors that influence provision to professional learning, access to it and teachers’ participation in it. This approach, I think, enabled me to elicit stories of professional learning, the kind of detail of teachers’ actual experiences. Drawing out some of the challenges and successes that they experienced. And providing a bit of time to stop and reflect on that.

The narrative approach enabled me to focus on depth and on the detail of these individual stories. So rather than trying to generalise it was really the detail of the individual lives that was important, as it is in much of narrative research. That focus was really important to me at the outset. And it was only really as the project developed that I fully began to grasp the huge significance of context at different levels. So moving away from the individual and, and thinking about them in relation to the bigger picture.

You need participants in life history and narrative research who are going to be prepared to give you a little bit of their time and their stories. And often participants are known to researchers in narrative and life history research. And that was the case in my study. They were teachers who I’d had some contact within my work as a teacher educator. So the research then provides other teachers with stories that might provoke their reflection on their own professional learning. And support them to clarify and articulate their professional learning goals and take a little bit more ownership over their professional learning.

I think very often in schools there isn’t that time to stop and think about your own learning and development and to take control of that and direct it and seek out opportunities. So, so the research would provide teachers participating with the opportunity to do that but also other teachers, the stories that were produced would enable them to use these as tools really for their own professional learning.

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Audio 1

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• Make a note of what Gill says in relation to what she wanted to find out. What does this suggest about the ontological position behind her research?
• Do Video 1 and Audio 1 make your personal theoretical views about the relationship between theory and practice clearer?

Discussion

These researchers explain how they have developed methods to collect data as ways of coming to know the world (their epistemological view). Both hold views that the world is social and that the human experience is personal, likely to be unique and related to their complex histories and experiences.

In Video 1, Alice wanted to come to know how young people with disabilities used social media and needed to find ways for them to express their experiences, taking into account their disabilities.

In Audio 1, Gill wanted to find ways to support her participants reflect on their experiences to date and explore how it was informing their present.

Both worked with their participants to create spaces to reveal new insights, new both to the participants and to the researchers. These are subjective realisations, which mean that what the participants said or reported will have depended on what they were asked, how they were asked and how safe they felt when they were asked. They might also have been influenced by what was said or done prior to the data collection. If these factors had been different, they might have offered different insights. This view of the world is in contrast to objective views of the world as stable and measurable in repeatable ways. What do you think about the world in relation to the topics you are interested in?

In this course so far, you have been introduced to some key terms and concepts that are used when people engage with the research process, either through reading literature or undertaking an enquiry. You have explored the meanings of ontology and epistemology and how they are the theoretical roots of research paradigms. You have also seen how sometimes these theoretical roots are assumed, and not discussed, in the research literature. The next section will build on this learning and take you through an exploration of the language and ideas behind paradigms and paradigmatic positions.