Saturday, November 28, 2015

Paradigm, Methodology and Methods in Architectural Research, by Mikael Powell



          

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Qualitative research terms and conceptual organization in literature can be inconsistent and misleading, failing to do the following:
…[A]dequately define research terminology and sometimes use terminology in a way that is not compatible in its intent, omitting important concepts and leaving the reader with only part of the picture.  Texts are sometimes structured in a way that does not provide a clear path to information terms and major concepts.  (Mackenzie & Knipe, 2006, Discussion section). 
Discrepancies exist between researchers regarding the meaning, importance and sequence of establishing the paradigm, also known as the theoretical framework for research (Mertens, 2005).  For instance, the paradigm may be situated as the starting point by which to derive research methodology and methods (Erikson, 1986; Mackenzie & Knipe, 2006); or be a methodology of its own (Neuman, 2000 ).  It could also be a perspective to be explored during research (Berg, 2001); or the methodology employed could influence the paradigm subsequently chosen (Walter, 2006).  Some assert that the concept of paradigm and methodology are synonymous (Anderson, 1987; Somekh & Lewin, 2005).  
Likewise, a case study in the reviewed literature is defined as a research approach and a methodology (Baxter & Jack, 2008; Berg, 2001).  Other experts state that “case study research appears to be based on its own separate method, related to but not wholly part of the qualitative or quasi-experimental domains” (Yin, 2012, p. 19).  Also, listed as methods are qualitative research (Hatch, 2002; Mackenzie & Knipe, 2006) and data collection instruments (Jones, 1995).  In light of the variety of definitions of what constitutes a research paradigm (theoretical framework) versus methods and methodology to conduct the research, it is necessary for me to clearly outline the foundation of my research in the ensuing discussion.
            I assented to Creswell’s definition of research as “a process of steps used to collect and analyze information to increase our understanding of a topic or issue” (2008, p. 3).  I based my research upon an interpretivist paradigm that posits that the world is defined by construal, both by parties within and beyond the social sphere (Angen, 2000; Creswell, 2003; Erickson, 1986; Mackenzie & Knipe, 2006).  I do so because that paradigm fits my epistemological and ontological view of how the world is experienced and elements and processes are defined.  “There can be no understanding without interpretation” (Angen, 2000, p. 385).  This was the framework that set “down the intent, motivation and expectations for the research” (Mackenzie & Knipe, 2006, Research Paradigm section) and it was the foundation for all my decisions regarding the approach, type of research I conducted, and choice of  data collection instruments (Mac Naughton, Rolfe & Siraj-Blatchford, 2001).  Indeed, this worldview was an appropriate frame for study of the physical classroom and the influence on the learning experience, because it recognizes the social and cultural aspects of the classroom environment, with teaching being only one factor of many, and the importance of the perspectives of both teacher and students (Erickson, 1986).
Pursuant to my interpretivist paradigm, I selected the case study approach.  This approach “explores a real-life, contemporary bounded system (a case) or multiple bounded systems (cases) over time, through detailed, in-depth data collection involving multiple sources of information…and reports a case description and case themes”  (Creswell, 2013, p. 97).  The case study approach is appropriate for my research because it is aligned to an interpretivist framework of valuing the varied perspectives of participants, and, because there is little research concerning remedial responses, case study findings serve to provide a “rich and holistic account of a phenomenon.  It offers insights and illuminates meanings” (Merriam, 1998, p. 41).  
In addition, the case study approach was an appropriate strategy for this research problem because I asked a “how” (descriptive) question, I could not prohibit participants from performing corrective actions to study the phenomena so it is best examined in the natural setting, the context (classroom) was important to the phenomena, and the relationship between the context and phenomena was unclear (Yin, 2003).
  In Chapter Two, I discussed different case study models and deemed no single strategy to be adequate.  For this case study, I used an interdisciplinary approach.  The study was essentially an education case study (within the social science model), which gave emphasis to epistemology, pedagogical practice and educational process, but incorporated attention to the architectural features and context of the space, including its historic origins (as in the architectural case study), and also paid great attention to human behaviors in response to the built environment.   
The case was a single undergraduate class period at a large university in the metropolitan Boston area in which a constructivist course was taught in a classroom principally designed for non-constructivist instruction.  The case was descriptive because it defined phenomena in situ (Baxter & Jack, 2008; Yin, 2003).  I chose a unique case of profound disparity between pedagogy and physical environment to highlight issues regarding remedial responses to the physical classroom (Flyvbjerg, 2006; Merriam, 1998).  The benefit of selecting an exceptional case to explore phenomena of which there is little research was threefold:
First, since such data are rare, they can help elucidate the upper and lower boundaries of experience.  Second, such data can facilitate….prediction by documenting infrequent, non-obvious, or counter intuitive occurrences that may be missed by standard statistical (or empirical) approaches.  And finally, atypical cases….are essential for understanding the range or variety of human experience (Abramson, 1992, p. 190).
Within this case study, I situated sub-units of data compiled from surveys of local students and teachers, a document analysis, and a teacher interview to support my interpretation of the findings.  I compared data within each method, and then looked for a cohesive understanding between the surveys, document analysis and interview, and then compared those findings to the entire case to provide a single-case study with multiple data units embedded therein (Baxter & Jack, 2008; Swanborn, 2010; Yin, 2003).  This allowed me a better understanding of the phenomenon, both in its distinct parts and holistically.
While a case study can be part of quantitative, qualitative, or mixed methods research (Yin, 2012; Stake, 1994), I chose a qualitative methodology because it is “research that produces descriptive data - people’s own written or spoken word and observable behavior….[and] the researcher looks at settings and people holistically” (Bogdan & Taylor, 1975, pp. 7–8). This is in congruence with my theoretical framework for research.  Working within this methodology, my philosophical assumptions of “the nature of reality (ontology), how the researcher knows what she or he knows (epistemology), [and] the role of values in the research (axiology)” (Creswell, 2003, p. 16) were as follows.
Knowledge obtained from this research was through my relationship with the participants and my immersion into phenomena in situ.  My ontological view is interpretivism; therefore, I defined reality as truth constructed from the construed meanings from many and various participants.  For that reason, my research included comments and stories of participants and their stated conclusions as well as my interpretations.  Of course, each participant and the researcher contributed evidence of their value systems within their input.  I analyzed all data from students and teachers for value, attitude, and belief content.  My interpretations and analysis of participant’s conjecture provided the reasons for arriving at conclusions.   
Ericson (1986) valued participant perspectives in interpretive research, because he said it is largely overlooked in other studies for three reasons:
One is that the people who hold and share the meaning perspectives that are of interest , are those who are themselves overlooked, as relatively powerless members of society….A second reason that these meaning-perspectives are not represented is that they are often held outside conscious awareness by those who hold them, and thus are not explicitly articulated.  A third reason is that it is precisely the meaning perspectives of actors in social life that are viewed theoretically in more usual approaches to educational research as either peripheral to the center of research interest, or as essentially irrelevant.  (pp. 124–125).
These reasons reinforce my decision to conduct interpretivist qualitative research.  In Chapter Four, I analyze conditions of power and control concerning remedial responses to the classroom design between students and teachers, and between teachers and university administration, to uncover that the least powerful have an important perspective.  However, true to the sentiment of Erickson, Chapters Three and Four also show a majority of those performing corrective actions label them as inconsequential to their teaching or learning experience, thus making the scarce input more valued.  Lastly, as I mentioned in Chapter One, there is little research on the effects of remedial responses and only minor exploration in research on other topics.
Erickson (1986) lists the two main inquiries of qualitative classroom research as, “What is happening here, specifically?  What do these happenings mean to the people engaged in them?” (p. 124).  Likewise, I interrogated the phenomenon of performing remedial actions by asking four basic questions:
§  Question 1: “What is existing?”  This was followed with a request for a thorough  description of the existing classroom situation in order to set the context;
§  Question 2: “What actions were done or attempted?”  This question solicited the experiential account of corrective actions attempted or executed to better understand the influences that impact these experiences;
§  Question 3: “What comprises your learning (or teaching) experience for this course?”  This was followed with a request for a list of components and locations (for example, preparing lesson plans in my office) to better understand how class-time is situated within the course experience, and; 
§  Question 4: “How is the learning (or teaching) experience in the course influenced by the corrective actions that you took (or continue to take)?”  This question was asked to better understand the impact of these acts.
The areas of exploration noted above have evolved throughout the research.  Beginning with my casual observation and questioning, and substantiated by the initial review of the first surveys and formal classroom observation, I advanced the notion that perceptions of classroom adequacy were contextually different among students and professors.  Indeed, the initial numbers of students who described an inadequate physical classroom environment, yet labeled it as inconsequential to their learning experience, compared to teachers who described a similar context, but reported that it was an important issue, prompted the addition of Question 3 above.  I found it necessary to understand how participants’ perceive their teaching and learning experiences, and how their corrective actions have affected these experiences.  I asked these four basic questions throughout my data collection and specifically asked one or more of these questions in each data collection method (see Figure 9 in Chapter 5) as one of the techniques to support research credibility, which I will explain later in this chapter.
To support my research inquiries, I selected data gathering techniques that were appropriate for an interpretivist case study approach using qualitative research methodology (Brikci, 2007).  According to Mackenzie and Knipe (2006), research that is predominantly qualitative employs methods such as “Interviews,  Observations, Document reviews, [and] Visual data analysis” (Table 2: Paradigms, methods and tools) but can also adopt methods used mainly in quantitative research.  Consequently, I chose all of these aforementioned qualitative research methods, plus that of survey, often used in quantitative work to collect numerical data (Creswell, 2003), but, for my purposes, I solicited descriptive data through that tool. 
Byrne (2004) said that “qualitative interviewing is particularly useful as a research method for accessing individual’s attitudes and values – things that cannot necessarily be observed or accommodated in a formal questionnaire…[and] when done well is able to achieve a level of depth and complexity that is not available to other, particularly survey-based approaches” (p. 182).  For these reasons, I chose the interview method as a way to delve further into participants experience performing remedial actions, beyond the class observation and surveys.  I utilized an unstructured interview style, in which there were no pre-determined questions and researcher’s inquiries were largely in response to participant comments; to deeper understand participant’s experiences without the constraint of the researcher’s pre-conceived frameworks or limitations (Punch, 1998).
            Creswell (2012) stated that observation is the most frequent method used in qualitative research and defined it as “the process of gathering open-ended, firsthand information by observing people and places at a research site” (p.213).  Thus, it was an obvious choice to explore the phenomenon of performing corrective actions, to surveil existing conditions, and the results of those actions in context.  I assumed the role of a nonparticipant observer, simply viewing the proceedings without comment (Creswell, 2012).
I used the document review method to examine course literature distributed by the teacher to students.  Bowen (2009) describes document analysis as “a systematic procedure for reviewing or evaluating documents-both printed and electronic (computer-based and Internet-transmitted) material….in order to elicit meaning, gain understanding, and develop empirical knowledge”  (p.27).  I used this method because insight developed from this technique is often used to support case studies (Bowen, 2009) and key documents may constitute “social facts, which are produced, shared, and used in socially organized ways” (Arkinson & Coffey, 1997, p.47).
I incorporated the visual data analysis method for my research to study video recordings of the observed class period.  The use of audio-visual recording for analysis, documentation, conferencing, and social interactions is widespread in today’s society (Knoblauch, Baer, Laurier, Petschke & Schnettler, 2008).  In particular, “video is an important resource for many contemporary social researchers across a range of fields” (Jewitt, 2012, p. 21).  A major reason is that video recording provides a lasting rendition of events that is often clearer and more comprehensive (Knoblauch, Schnettler & Raab, 2012), and the media allows multiple interpretation and analyses, when compared to personal accounts of observed phenomena.  My technique was video-based fieldwork, which involved “the collection of naturally occurring data using video cameras and is perhaps the most established use of video for data collection within the social sciences” (Jewitt, p. 4).
Finally, I chose a qualitative survey method because it is well suited to my interpretivist view of supporting participant perspectives.  This technique differs from a quantitative research survey which aims to gather “information from (a sample of) entities for the purpose of constructing quantitative descriptors of the attributes of the larger population of which the entities are members” (Groves, et al., 2004, p. 4).  My intent is to explore the full range of the participants’ diverse perspectives (Fink, 2003) concerning the influence of doing corrective actions on the educational experience.  Thus, “the qualitative type of survey does not aim at establishing frequencies, means or other parameters but at determining the diversity of some topic of interest” (Jansen, 2010, para. 2).  In order to solicit for a variety of perspectives, most of the questions in the questionnaire used in this study were open-ended, in that they asked participants for descriptions of phenomena and explanations of their feelings and behaviors (Roberts, et al., 2014).
  Within these five research methods, I utilized specific data collection tools that I developed to obtain the demographic data of my research participants, including typical values, attitudes, beliefs, and trends. 

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