An Introduction to Grounded Methodology for Emerging Educational Researchers

Simon Hayhoe

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781000209525
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Ciencia de la computación
• Subtopic: Tratamiento de datos

Introducing the reader to grounded methodology and its ethical approach, this book explores the theory behind the method as well as how to use it to develop and evaluate learning and education projects.

Grounded methodology is designed to challenge traditional educational research methodologies, and in doing so questions the notion of the need for highly formal research in institutional settings. In this respect, it is also a simple way of planning an educational project that needs an evaluative element. Covering data collection techniques used in the course of education research such as observations, interviews, course development, participant diaries and online data collection, this book investigates the practical realities of researching in education contexts and the differences in educational, national and cultural backgrounds.

It is ideal reading for students and academics looking to update and increase their knowledge on grounded methodology, especially students who are researchers in final-year undergraduate or post-graduate level programs, or instructors planning to teach grounded theory or grounded methodology to their own emerging research students.

1
Introduction

This book examines the philosophy, principles and most importantly the practice of grounded methodology. It also examines the ethics of grounded methodology’s design and theory and introduces the reader to the practical use of grounded methodology through case studies of related projects. In addition, this book addresses the following hypothesis about grounded methodology:

Grounded methodology focuses on the theory that relationships can most often provide the richest understanding of our human societies and cultures. These relationships are, most importantly, the relationships formed between people, communities, institutions, epistemologies (that is families or types of knowledge) or forms of learning. However, in addition to “real world” relationships, grounded methodology also focuses on relationships between data, categories of data and the underlying relationships that underpin similarities or differences between these data and categories.

In doing so, the book features the application of grounded methodology through data collection methodologies used in the course of educational research using grounded methodology. These data collection methods include observations, interviews, the development of educational projects and systematic practitioner reflection, and systematic literature searches and online data collection methods.

The case studies and data collection methods in this book are projects I’ve designed, and this should be born in mind whilst reading them. For, although this book uses examples of research on disability, these are merely illustrative of the research methodology used in these studies and the implementation of a model of practice and analysis. The focus of this book is always the design and use of grounded methodology in educational contexts, how it came into being and how it is now used in research and teaching studies.

Consequently, when you finish reading this book, you should understand the process of grounded methodology as well as its theoretical background. You should also understand how this methodology can develop your understanding of educational contexts and practice, as well as its institutions and policies.

This book’s primary aims are to: 1) introduce a grounded methodology approach through an exploration of its framework amongst existing models; 2) argue that the study of educational institutions has too often focused on the idea that there can only be a single understanding of institutions through common experience; and 3) investigate the practical realities of researching educational institutions and differences in educational identities. Similarly, this book’s primary objectives are to: 1) equip readers to develop critical analyses of traditional studies of educational institutions using social and cultural models from parallel disciplines; 2) equip its readers with the ability to deconstruct traditional methods of data collection and analysis to develop a multi-layered philosophical approach to educational research; and 3) introduce a framework of an essentially more ethical research and an epistemological approach to studying educational institutions.

As the title of this book suggests, I have written this text with emergent researchers in mind. Emergent researchers can be undergraduate students negotiating their first dissertations or extended projects to gain honours, or postgraduate students studying research methods or writing their first masters or doctoral dissertations. Emergent researchers can also be those doing their first professional research project for work, or perhaps those who are already social researchers but are considering using grounded methodology for the first time.

Finally, this book is also designed for those planning to teach grounded theory or grounded methodology to their own emerging research students.

So, what makes this book different?

Hopefully, you are picking up this book having heard about grounded theory, even though you may be curious as to the difference between grounded theory and grounded methodology – or you may be asking yourself: is there one? You may also have read something about grounded theory from the many excellent monographs or chapters in edited books on social science and want to know how you can apply it to your educational research project. This is where this book is different.

Although many books include an analysis of grounded theory in education, these often do not present a single framework or description of data collection methods in relation to studies of institutions. Fewer books relate specifically to education, the study of practicing education or use alternative methods of data collection, such as the Web or academic databases. And, of these books, fewer still examine fieldwork, case studies or pure systematic literature reviews using this grounded approach, or chart such research projects from beginning to end.

This is hopefully what makes this book of greater help to you than traditional, simpler theoretical discussions.

Second, by reading this book you are walking in the footsteps of successful, sometimes award-winning research in this field. Many of the studies and the data analysis in the following chapters have already formed the basis of peer-reviewed and internationally recognised studies; many of these studies have received substantial funding; and all of these studies have been peer-reviewed. The methods and the fieldwork discussed in this book are therefore a subject of international work, and they have been tested for their significance in many educational contexts. The majority of these studies have also had direct impact on policy and practice in the field.

The structure of this book

The book contains six chapters including this introduction, which are set out as follows:

Chapter 2: From Grounded Theory to Grounded Methodology. This chapter analyses the early theories of researching through grounded theory, focuses on issues with grounded theory analysis, introduces the theory of grounded methodology and discusses how conducting grounded methodology studies in institutional settings is different. Importantly, it introduces the key issue related to this methodology, which is the use of relationships in education. Most importantly, this is the study of relationships among people within communities, and secondarily this is the study of relationships between datum and categories of data.

Chapter 3: Grounded Methodology and Field Research. This chapter discusses a study which used grounded methodology to analyse pilot tests and evaluate participatory practice. The aim of the study was to help develop and evaluate inclusive technologies for a large, multi-country project called Accessible Resources for Cultural Heritage Eco-Systems (ARCHES). The analysis for this evaluation was conducted using grounded methodology in a traditional way, and included interviews and structured exercises as data collection methods. Its outcomes fed into the design of educational technologies and key performance indicators that were designed to inform the policies of the European Union, which funded the study.

Chapter 4: Grounded Methodology and Developing Education. This chapter discusses a study using grounded methodology in a non-traditional way, to develop an arts education project. This project was designed to teach the community in the city of Bath about the history and dangers of flooding. The aim of the project was to commission artworks which were accessible to marginalised groups and to develop a system of using them for teaching and evaluating the process of development. This study included reflection, project design and management, the employment of a new methodology of inclusion, observations of the implementation of artworks, visual methods, exhibitions and interviews.

Chapter 5: Grounded Methodology and Systematic Literature Reviews. This chapter discusses another study using grounded methodology in a non-traditional way, this time to conduct a systematic literature review on mobile technologies and learners with visual impairments. The aim of the study was to examine the nature of inclusion and technology for learners with visual impairments, to understand how other academics theorised inclusion and the use of technologies, and to research the difference between educators and engineers in this regard. Subsequently, the study included a survey of the trade press and institutional literature as well as academic literature.

Chapter 6: Conclusion. This chapter includes a summary of the findings of the previous chapters.

2
From grounded theory to grounded methodology

Introduction

This chapter provides an overview of the foundation of grounded theory and then grounded methodology. In providing this overview, I show how the latter evolved from the former. More particularly, this chapter shows the philosophy that underpins these methodologies and their construction; how grounded theory was created and the era that created it; and why I felt that grounded methodology should be a new, more distinct methodology.

Significantly, this chapter is framed by two simple messages, which can also be applied to the case studies and data analysis throughout the book.

The first message repeats the hypothesis in Chapter 1 and emphasises that grounded methodology is focused on relationships. This is to say, these studies are about relationships between data; they are about relationships among themes, categories, variables and case studies; they are about the distance that separates these relationships; and they are about underpinning relationships. Most importantly, grounded methodology is first and foremost about human social and cultural relationships. It is about how people are connected or are different, or in other words, what makes people and communities who they are in comparison to others.

The second message is that, like grounded theory, grounded methodology is mostly interested in social or cultural processes when used in the study of education. These processes can include practice, policy development, learning, movement or technology usage, to name but a few. This second message has resonance with me, as I originally trained in a college of art and design, where we talked about performance and product. That is to say, the drawing (the product) is the creation of how we made the drawing (the process). In grounded methodology, our data collection and analysis strategies and techniques are all about the process, with the product of education merely being an illustration of what we have ended up with.

Three important definitions used in this chapter

Before beginning this chapter, it is important to define one word and two phrases in relation to the study of methodology. The word I need to define is hypothesis, which is a statement that can be tested with data as evidence, such as “the earth is round” or “the earth is flat.” In a very particular way, the hypothesis in science and social science is the catalyst of any study, much like a research question.

The two phrases I need to define are inductive logic and deductive logic. These two phrases represent huge areas of study that have been considered since Athenian philosophers such as the Sophists. However, in science and social science, they have a specific relationship to theory and hypothesis testing, and as I will show later, they are central to our understanding of grounded theory and grounded methodology.

Put simply, inductive logic in science and social science is the philosophical belief that we can only create a theory about something after data about it is collected. This also often insinuates that when interpreting these forms of study that, if something cannot be observed, it cannot be understood as “real.” For instance, if we were to study millions of people’s diets to find out what causes cancer and discover those who drink red wine and olive oil are much less likely to have cancer, then we can hypothesise that these foods can decrease the risk of cancer. Therefore, the ideas that drinking olive oil and red wine reduces the risk of cancer has been induced through study.

With similar simplicity, deductive logic can be said to be the belief that we can deduce reality initially through logical argument, reasoning and discussion before testing it. To put it another way, I have hypothesised at the beginning of this book that: “Relationships can most often provide the richest understanding of our human societies and cultures.” This hypothesis is based on my experience and therefore could be said to be unproven and therefore deductive.

There are two important aspects to this form of deductive logic that are important to know when studying any form of methodology: 1) they are often reliant on a passage of time to prove a hypothesis through study, and this passage of time can affect the nature of your data, the type of data you collect, the reliability of your data and even your hypothesis; 2) if you are a positivist, then you believe in deductive logic as a form of historicism; this is the belief that there are rules to history and things will happen in the future just because they’ve also happened in the past (Popper, 1999).

For example, a pharmacologist might deduce that a drug might work on a form of disease because it has worked on a similar disease in the past. The pharmacologist might then conduct a drugs trial over a fixed number of years to see if this hypothesis is true. Predictive models such as economic or weather forecasts can also be said to use deductive logic, although they are not scientific. It is only when a predicted passage of time has finished, and a model’s predictions can be tested, that they can be said to be scientific. Thus, predictive models are merely deductive hypotheses before this future evidence can be collected to test the model.

The aims of this chapter

This chapter has two aims. The first aim is to provide you with an informed choice of where and when it is best and most appropriate to use grounded theory or grounded methodology. It also points you to reasons as to why you should not use either methodology if they are not needed, if your study warrants a combination of methodologies or either methodology is inappropriate.

The second aim is to allow you to consider the nature of methodology, an issue that is frequently considered by experienced researchers, and one that is increasingly important for emerging researchers to consider. It also aims to allow you to consider why we need a methodology at all, or if we do need a methodology, does it matter what it is? This again is a perennial consideration by research students, as I would argue that it is always important to consider what is the purpose of having a blueprint, a philosophy or a function for your research.

To begin to address these aims, this chapter is broken into the following sections: 1) The early history of grounded theory – this section explains the context of grounded theory, how it was created and its intellectual underpinnings; 2) The principles of grounded theory – this section examines the fundamental components of grounded theory; 3) The development of grounded methodology – in this section, I discuss grounded methodology, its unique elements and how it works; and 4) the Conclusi...