U5A1-68 - The Research Overview - Please read material and follow all instructions as outlined below.

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Communities of Practice as Systems

In working to select the appropriate qualitative inquiry framework for studying a particular problem or phenomenon, a systems perspective is called for when the focus of the inquiry is a system. For example, Ettiene Wenger (1998) has pioneered inquiries into communities of practice. Communities of practice are people engaged in systematic reflective practice and learning together (Wenger, McDermott, & Snyder, 2002). Studying a community of practice through a systems framework is especially appropriate because the community of practice is a system of interconnected and interacting people who can constitute either a network or community or both. Notice the language and images of systems in how Wenger and his colleagues talk about their focus.

We prefer to think of community and network as two aspects of social structures in which learning takes place.

• The network aspect refers to the set of relationships, personal interactions, and connections among participants who have personal reasons to connect. It is viewed as a set of nodes and links with affordances for learning, such as information flows, helpful linkages, joint problem solving, and knowledge creation.

• The community aspect refers to the development of a shared identity around a topic or set of challenges. It represents a collective intention—however tacit and distributed—to steward a domain of knowledge and to sustain learning about it. (Wenger, Trayner, & de Laat, 2011, p. 9)

SIDEBAR

DEVELOPMENTAL SYSTEMS THEORY AND METHODOLOGY

There exists a long tradition in theoretical psychology and theoretical biology in which developmental processes are explained as the result of self-organizing processes with emergent properties that have complex, dynamic interactions with environmental influences. The general denotation for this tradition is developmental systems theory. . . .

Accordingly, the tenets of developmental systems theory are well established as the superordinate developmental frame in contemporary developmental science. In addition, there are strong conceptual links between these theories and other contemporary theoretical models, such as dynamical systems, biological systems theory, and artificial neural networks (e.g., connectionism). (Molenaar, Lerner, & Newell, 2014, pp. 3– 4)

Science in general can be characterized as an inductive developmental system in which different scientific models constitute competing webs of beliefs. (Molenaar et al., 2014, p. 11)

Developmental systems theory and methodology employ theory-predicated methods to enhance understanding of

the mutually influential relations between individuals and the multiple levels of their context that constitute the developmental system. . . . A new era in the conduct of developmental science [is] one that captures the complexity of the developmental system and enhances the means to not only describe and explain intraindividual change and interindividual differences in intraindividual change but, as well, provides new means to generate evidence-based actions that optimize the course of health and positive functioning across the life span. (Molenaar et al., 2014, p. 12)

Mapping Systems

Analyzing a system will often produce a visual map of that system. Such maps are a form of qualitative representation of findings. I became involved in a systems analysis study examining how a new light rail

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transit line would affect interdependent and interacting systems along the 11 miles of construction, not only the transportation systems (buses, cars, trains, airport connections) but also housing systems, neighborhood organizations and community systems, service delivery systems, small businesses and shopping centers, nonprofit agencies serving people along the rail corridor, government/political systems, land use systems, zoning systems, utility systems, school systems, and economic systems. Exhibit 3.13 shows how qualitative inquiry (key informant interviews and focus groups with different stakeholder and constituency groups) was used to create a baseline map of the existing interacting systems. That map was then the basis for envisioning, engaging in, and evaluating systems change.

In addition to its influence in organizational development, systems approaches are important in family research and therapy (Hoffman, 1981; Montgomery & Fewer, 1988; Schultz, 1984; Smith-Acuña, 2011). A systems approach has also become one of the central orientations to international development efforts. Specifically, the Farming Systems approach to development (Farming Systems Support Project [FSSP], 1986) illustrates some unique ways of engaging in qualitative inquiry to support development, intervention, and evaluation from a systems perspective. The Farming Systems approach to evaluation and research is worth examining in detail because it has developed as a theory-based yet practical solution to agricultural development problems.

EXHIBIT 3.13 Systems Map Example

The Central Corridor light rail line covers the 11 miles (18 kilometers) between downtown Minneapolis and downtown Saint Paul (the Twin Cities) in Minnesota. The new transit line runs along a major commercial street, with many small businesses and shopping areas, through residential areas, including diverse low-income neighborhoods and immigrant communities, and through the campus of the University of Minnesota. The potential was high for disrupting neighborhoods, displacing residents, and bankrupting small businesses. At the same time, new opportunities for community and business development were emerging. In 2010, to seize on the opportunities and to minimize impacts, a collaboration of funders and government applied to the Living Cities Integration Initiative (http://www.livingcities.org/integration/) to support work along the Central Corridor, among other activities. The Integration Initiative’s initial goals were the following:

• Improve the lives of low-income people • Create a new framework for solving complex problems • Challenge obsolete conventional wisdom • Drive the private market to work on behalf of low-income people • Create a “new normal”/systems change

The Region & Communities Program of The McKnight Foundation, headquartered in Minneapolis, provided support to develop the local application for the initiative, including hosting focus groups and key informant interviews to identify how the existing system was functioning. The results provided information to create a baseline map of the existing system. That map, reproduced here, served as a foundation for those involved in the initiative to envision and undertake systems change together. Systems changes can be monitored and mapped against this baseline systems graphic.

The baseline systems map showed the following:

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• Key subsystems engaged in developing the Corridors of Opportunity were (1) Land Use Planning and Development and (2) Transit Planning and Development. These two subsystems functioned mostly separately (“in silos”) on “opposite sides of the tracks” (the new light rail system that is the centerpiece of the graphic).

• Low-income residents, businesses in the corridors of opportunity, and citizens’ groups were having difficulty accessing, engaging with, being heard by, and influencing these subsystems (lower left-hand corner).

• Equity was not a priority for these planning and development subsystems at that time.

The “Baseline Systems” graphic depicts the situation at the beginning of light rail construction; the key system actors, structures, and processes; and the lack of integration among these subsystem elements. The purpose here is not to explain this initiative in detail but to provide an example of how qualitative inquiry can be used to depict a system and support the conceptualization and evaluation of systems change.

SOURCES: Regions & Communities, the McKnight Foundation: http://www.mcknight.org/grant-programs/region-and- communities/central-corridor-funders-collaborative; Corridors of Opportunity/Living Cities Integration Initiative: http://www.corridorsofopportunity.org/; Living Cities Integration Initiative: http://www.livingcities.org/integration/. Reprinted with permission.

NOTE: The ecosystem map was developed by Libby Starling, Metropolitan Council, and Mary Kay Bailey, The Saint Paul Foundation.

Farming Systems Research as a Systems Analysis Exemplar

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In the first three decades following World War II, much of international development was conceived as a direct technology transfer from more developed to less developed countries. Scientists and change agents made technology transfer recommendations within their disciplinary areas of specialization, for example, crops, livestock, water, and so on. This approach to development epitomized a mechanistic orientation.

In reaction to the dismal failures of the mechanistic, specialized technology transfer approach to development, a farming systems approach emerged (Shaner, Philipp, & Schmehl, 1982b). Several elements are central to a farming systems perspective, elements that lead directly to qualitative methods of research.

1. Farming systems research and development (FSRD) is a team effort (Shaner, Philipp, & Schmehl, 1982a).

2. FSRD is interdisciplinary. The team consists of representatives from a mix of both agricultural and social science disciplines (Cernea & Guggenheim, 1985).

3. FSRD takes place in the field, on real farms, not at a university or government experiment station (Simmons, 1985).

4. FSRD is collaborative—scientists and farmers work together on agricultural productivity within the goals, values, and situation of participating farmers (Galt & Mathema, 1987).

5. FSRD is comprehensive, including attention to all farm family members; all farming operations, both crops and livestock; all labor sources; all income sources; and all other factors that affect small-farm development (Harwood, 1979).

6. FSRD is inductive and exploratory, beginning by open-ended inquiry into the nature of the farming system from the perspective of those in the system (Holtzman, 1986).

7. FSRD begins with qualitative description. The first team task is fieldwork to qualitatively describe the system (Sands, 1986).

8. FSRD is sensitive to context, placing the farming system in the larger agroecological, cultural, political, economic, and policy environments of which it is a part.

9. FSRD is interactive, dynamic, and process oriented. The interdisciplinary team begins with inductive exploration and then moves to trying out system changes, observing the effects, and adapting to emergent findings. The work is ongoing and developmental (FSSP, 1986).

10. FSRD is situationally responsive and adaptive. There are many variations in FSRD projects depending on priority problems, available resources, team member preferences, and situation-specific possibilities (FSSP, 1987; Sands, 1986).

A farming systems approach uses mixed methods, incorporating both qualitative and quantitative forms of inquiry. It includes direct observations, informal interviews, naturalistic fieldwork, and inductive analysis, all within a systems framework. There may be no larger-scale example of efforts to integrate naturalistic inquiry, quantitative methods, and a systems perspective through interdisciplinary evaluation and research teamwork for the purpose of promoting long-term social and economic developments. As farming systems research has evolved, it has sometimes become framed in even more general terms as agroecology:

a discipline in which agriculture can be conceptualized within the context of global change and studied as a coupled system involving a wide range of social and natural processes . . . [addressing] the key challenges of mitigating environmental impacts of agriculture while dramatically increasing global food production, improving livelihoods, and thereby reducing chronic hunger and malnutrition over the coming decades. (Tomich et al., 2011, p. 193)

Whole-Systems Frameworks

Farming and food systems agroecology is just one example of a systems approach to intervention, research, and evaluation. What this and other systems approaches offer is an inquiry framework based on the premise that the interconnected world of human beings cannot be fully captured and understood by simply adding up carefully measured and fully analyzed parts. At the system level (the whole program, the whole farm, the

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whole family, the whole organization, and the whole community), there is a qualitative difference in the kind of thinking that is required to make sense of what is happening. Qualitative inquiry facilitates that qualitative difference in understanding human or “purposeful systems” (Ackoff & Emery, 2005).

A final story will reinforce this point—the fable of the nine blind people and the elephant, which I used in the second chapter to illustrate the importance of context and which I repeat here because it illustrates so well the real challenge of systems thinking. Besides, good stories have layers of meaning, and this one has phenomenological, hermeneutic, constructionist, and even ethnographic implications, which you may want to reflect on, but I’ll simply reintroduce it as a systems tale. Ironically, it is often offered as an example of systems thinking but is, in its usual Western telling, actually quite linear and mechanical.

As the story goes, nine blind people encounter an elephant. One touches the ear and proclaims that an elephant is like a fan. Another touches the trunk and says the elephant most surely resembles a snake. The third feels the elephant’s massive side and insists that it is like a wall. Yet a fourth, feeling a solidly planted leg, counters that it resembles more a tree trunk. The fifth grabs hold of the tail and experiences the elephant as a rope. And so it goes, each blindly touching only a part and generalizing inappropriately to the whole. The usual moral of the story is that only by putting all the parts together in right relation to one another can one get a complete and whole picture of the elephant.

Yet, from a systems perspective, such a picture yields little real understanding of the elephant. To understand the elephant, it must be seen and understood in its natural ecosystem, whether in Africa or Asia, as one element in a complex system of flora and fauna. Only in viewing the movement of a herd of elephants across a real terrain, over time and across seasons, and in interaction with plants, trees, and other animals will one begin to understand the evolution and nature of elephants and the system of which elephants are a part. That understanding can never come at a zoo.

Complexity Theory

Core inquiry question: How can the emergent and nonlinear dynamics of complex adaptive systems be captured, illuminated, and understood?

Science has explored the microcosms and the macrocosms; we have a good sense of the lay of the land. The great unexplored frontier is complexity.

—Heinz Pagels (1988) American physicist

Complexity writings are filled with metaphors that try to make complex phenomena understandable to the human brain’s hardwired need for order, meaning, patterns, sense making, and control, ever feeding our illusion that we know what’s going on. So complexity theorists talk of flapping butterfly wings that change weather systems and spawn hurricanes, individual slime molds that remarkably self-organize into organic wholes, ant colonies whose frantic service to the queen mesmerize us with their collective intelligence, avalanches that reconfigure mountain ecologies, bacteria that know the systems of which they are a part without any capacity for self-knowledge, and black swans that appear suddenly and unpredictably to change the world. Complexity science offers insights into the billions of interactions in the global stock market, the spread of disease throughout the world, volatile weather systems, the evolution of species, large-scale ecological changes, and the flocking of migrating birds. Complexity theorists explain the rise and fall of civilizations and the rise and fall of romantic infatuation. That’s a lot of territory. But the vision is vast: Complexity theorists

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believe that they are forging the first rigorous alternative to the kind of linear, reductionist thinking that has dominated science since the time of Newton—and that [Newtonian thinking] has now gone about as far as it can go in addressing the problems of our modern world. They believe they are creating the sciences of the twenty-first century. (Waldrop, 1992, p. 13)

So what is a complex system? Professor Melanie Mitchell of the Santa Fe Institute, the world’s leading think tank on complexity theory, offers this definition:

A system in which large networks of components with no central control and simple rules of operation give rise to complex collective behavior, sophisticated information processing, and adaptation via learning or evolution. . . .

Systems in which organized behavior arises without an internal or external controller or leader are sometimes called self-organizing. Since simple rules produce complex behavior in hard-to-predict ways, the macroscopic behavior of such systems is sometimes called emergent. Here is an alternative definition of a complex system: a system that exhibits nontrivial emergent and self-organizing behaviors. The central question of the sciences of complexity is how this emergent self-organized behavior comes about. (Mitchell, 2009, p. 13)

Complexity theory has been viewed as a new paradigm of inquiry and explanation for natural sciences for some time (Gleick, 1987; Hall, 1993; Holte, 1993; Murali, 1995; Nadel & Stein, 1995; Waldrop, 1992). It is now established as a framework of inquiry in the social sciences (Cronbach & Gleick, 1988; Stacey, 2001, 2007). The openness, flexibility, and adaptability of qualitative methods make complexity theory an especially useful framework for qualitative inquiries into complex dynamic situations and phenomena. Complex dynamic systems are dynamic, unpredictable, and ever adapting. “It’s like walking through a maze whose walls rearrange themselves with every step you take” (Gleick, 1987, p. 24). This metaphor fits a great deal of fieldwork in real-world settings, but the implications can be so threatening to our need for order that we ignore the rearranging walls and try to impose order on the morphing maze with a single, static diagram. Complexity theory challenges us to attend to the unpredictable, the disorderly, the messy, and the ever- changing and adapting—in short, to look at and inquire into the world as a complex entity.

Distinguished anthropologist Michael Agar used complexity theory to interpret fieldwork findings in his study of a heroin epidemic among suburban youth in Baltimore County. He concluded,

Complexity [theory] served, at least at the metaphorical level, to better define a research problem—explaining heroin trends—and it helps articulate why traditional social research has not answered this most basic question of drug research: How and why do trends occur? It also points at the kind of data we need to obtain and organize to do just that, however difficult that data might be to obtain. Furthermore, complexity handles some current anthropological research issues—like the inclusion of the researcher, broadening historical and political context, and the issue of prediction—as part of its central themes. With characteristics like holism, emergence, and feedback that map onto anthropological assumptions more so than any previous formal models, complexity is clearly worth a closer look. (Agar, 1999, p. 119)

SIDEBAR

COMPLEXITY IN NATURE: HONEYBEE COLONY COLLAPSE DISORDER

The mysterious and dramatic disappearance of U.S. honeybees since 2006, known as “colony collapse,” manifests complex, dynamic, and intertwined factors: a parasitic mite, multiple viruses, bacteria, poor nutrition, genetics, habitat loss, and pesticides. Bees, especially honeybees, are crucial to pollination of crops. The multiple, interacting, and overlapping causes mean that there can be no single intervention strategy to reverse the decline that has seen one third of bees disappearing each winter since 2006.

“Consensus is building that a complex set of stressors and pathogens is associated with CCD (Colony Collapse Disorder), and researchers are increasingly using multi-factorial approaches to studying causes of colony losses” (National Honey Bee Health Stakeholder Conference Steering Committee, 2012, p. 5).

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Complexity can inform qualitative inquiry by deepening attention to cultural diversity in both data gathering and analysis because other “theoretical models may often be unrealistic and/or ethnocentric: in other words, they fail to take account of the range of variation in orientation to be found even within a single society” (Hammersley, 2008a, p. 42).

A second kind of complexity emphasized by qualitative researchers arises from the processual character of social life. This is perhaps more fundamental. The argument is that, rather than the outcome of any sequence of events being a pre-determined or law-like result of some set of causal factors operating on it, the outcome is an emergent and contingent product, one which would not necessarily be produced in other similar cases.

One source of this kind of complexity in social life, to which some qualitative researchers have given great emphasis, is the ability of human beings to suspend a line of action in which they are engaged, and to redirect it. . . . All this suggests that social processes cannot be understood in terms of some immanent, fixed pattern of causal relations. Instead, the routes followed by social processes (and therefore the outcomes) are in an important sense contingent, though at the same time not simply inexplicable. (Hammersley, 2008a, p. 42)

Complexity theory has been used for qualitative, case-based inquiry across a wide range of phenomena where a simple cause–effect conceptualization cannot capture and do justice to the nonlinear dynamics and emergent properties of the phenomenon of interest:

• Studying businesses that thrive under conditions of chaos and uncertainty (Collins & Hansen, 2011) • Explaining the dynamics of financial markets, economic booms and busts, and political change (Ormerod,

2001; J. B. Stewart, 2009; Taleb, 2005, 2007, 2012) • How cities function, how our brains operate, and how software is created (Johnson, 2001) • Illuminating organizational change and adaptation (Allison, 2000; Eoyang & Holladay, 2013; Stacey,

2001, 2007) • Making sense of how major social movements like Mothers Against Drunk Driving and microfinance

have changed the world (Westley, Zimmerman, & Patton, 2006) • Understanding particular groups that work in complex dynamic environments, for example, leaders

(Wheatley, 1992) and social workers at midlife (Karpiak, 2006) • Evaluating international humanitarian aid (Ramalingam, 2013; Ramalingam & Jones, 2008) • Developmental evaluation based on complexity theory to evaluate a wide range of social innovations

(Patton, 2011, 2012a)

Capturing complexity is a common rationale for undertaking qualitative research (Hammersley, 2008a), but complexity theory involves more than seeing the world as complex. Complexity theory and the concepts that are central to complexity science have important implications for how qualitative inquiries are undertaken. Exhibit 3.14 presents core complexity concepts and their implications for qualitative research and evaluation.

Distinguishing Between Simple, Complicated, and Complex

The challenge in any research or evaluation design is to match the inquiry framework to the nature of the phenomenon being studied and the questions being asked. In doing so, it can be helpful to distinguish between the simple, the complicated, and the complex. The simple, complicated, and complex distinctions do not constitute a taxonomy of operationally distinct, mutually exclusive, and exhaustive categories. The distinctions constitute a typological continuum. Phenomena are relatively simple, relatively complicated, and relatively complex. Exhibit 3.15 presents these distinctions and their implications for qualitative research and evaluation.

EXHIBIT 3.14 Complexity Theory Concepts and Qualitative Inquiry Implications

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EXHIBIT 3.15 Simple, Complicated, Complex

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SOURCES: For the distinction between simple, complicated, and complex, see Patton (2011, chap. 4); see also Westley et al. (2006), Snowden and Boone (2007), Gawande (2010), Funnell and Rogers (2011), and Williams and Hummelbrunner (2011).

Complexity Theory as a Worldview

Complexity theory offers much more than a framework for inquiry. It alters the way we think about the world and our relationship to it. Ilya Prigogine, a physicist and chemist, began by applying complexity theory to the physical world. He then came to see its implications of complexity (emergence, nonlinearity, and instability) for the social world—for how we study, understand, and ultimately engage the world.

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We have not chosen the world we describe, we are born into a certain world and we must take account of this world as it is, reducing as far as possible our a priori feelings. This world is unstable [complex]—this is not a capitulation, but on the contrary an encouragement to combine new experimental and theoretical research which takes account of this unstable character. The world is not a victim offered up for us to dominate; we must respect it. The world of unstable phenomena is not a world which we can control, any more than we can control human society in the sense that extrapolation in classical physics led us to believe. . . .

We need to be aware that our knowledge is still a limited window on the universe; because of instability we must abandon the dream of total knowledge of the universe. From our window, we must extrapolate and guess what the mechanisms could be. An unstable world means that although we may know the initial conditions to an infinite number of decimal points, the future remains impossible to forecast.

There is a close analogy with a work of literature: in its first chapter a novel begins with a description of the situation in a finite number of words, but it is still open to numerous possible developments and this is ultimately the pleasure of reading: discovering which one of the possible developments will be used. Similarly, in a Bach fugue, once the theme has been given it allows a great number of developments out of which Bach has chosen. (Prigogine, 2009, pp. 235–236)

In-depth qualitative fieldwork and the case studies that result from such fieldwork share the kind of emergence Prigogine evokes in the complex imagery of an unfolding novel or a crescendoing orchestration of classical music: discovering from the initial conditions we observe what will evolve, emerge, adapt, and ultimately open to us a new view of an ever-changing, ever new world.

This [complex, unstable] world is very different from the classical world, and it extends to all of physics and cosmology. Instability leads to a new rationality, which puts an end to the idea of absolute control, and with it an end to any possible idealization of a society under absolute control. The real is not controllable in the sense which science claimed. (Prigogine, 2009, p. 236)

Focusing on the Simple: Entering Into Complexity or Avoiding Complexity?

Relationship of Systems Theory to Complexity Theory

Complexity theory is sometimes viewed as a subset of systems theory. In other framings, complexity theory and systems theory are sufficiently distinct to constitute separate and unique but overlapping approaches to understanding the world, like seeing and hearing. Seeing someone speak can enhance hearing and deepen understanding of what the person is saying. Listening to someone is given additional meaning by watching that person’s expressions. Both are senses. They operate separately but can overlap to reinforce what we take in and make sense of in an interaction.

Exhibit 3.16 depicts these two contrasting perspectives. Figure 1 in Exhibit 3.16 shows complexity as one of many systems approaches. Figure 2 shows systems theory and complexity theory as parallel but

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overlapping frameworks, as presented in this chapter. For the purpose of identifying and presenting distinctly different theoretical orientations that can inform qualitative inquiry, I find it useful to treat systems theory and complexity theory as depicted in Figure 2: separate but overlapping approaches to understanding the world.

EXHIBIT 3.16 Relationship of Systems Theory to Complexity Theory

Complexity theory is sometimes viewed as a subset of systems theory. In other framings, complexity theory and systems theory are sufficiently distinct to constitute separate but overlapping approaches to understanding the world.

• Figure 1 shows complexity as one of many systems approaches. • Figure 2 shows systems theory and complexity theory as parallel but overlapping frameworks, as

presented in this chapter. For the purpose of identifying and presenting distinctly different theoretical orientations that can inform qualitative inquiry, I find it useful to treat them as depicted in Figure 2.

FIGURE 1 Systems Theory as the Core Inquiry Framework: Complexity Theory as One of Many Systems Approaches

SOURCE: Williams and Hummelbrunner (2011).

FIGURE 2 Systems Theory and Complexity Theory as Distinct but Overlapping Inquiry Frameworks (Patton, 2011)

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MODULE

18 Pragmatism, Generic Qualitative Inquiry, and Utilization-Focused Evaluation

Utility is its own demonstration of truth. Thus, what is useful is true. —Halcolm

Essentially, all models are wrong, but some are useful. —George E. P. Box,

(Box & Draper, 1987, p. 424) Mathematician

Pragmatism and Generic Qualitative Inquiry

Core inquiry question: What are the practical consequences and useful applications of what we can learn about this issue or problem?

The pragmatic theory of truth emerged at the turn of the twentieth century through the works of Charles Sanders Peirce, William James, and John Dewey. While important differences distinguish their contributions and perspectives, at the core they argued that truth is verified and confirmed by testing ideas and theories in practice. Pragmatic theory posits that “a statement is true if it works” (Seale, 2012, p. 20). As a qualitative inquiry framework, pragmatism directs us to seek practical and useful answers that can solve, or at least provide direction in addressing, concrete problems. Examples of pragmatic questions illustrate what this means.

• What have outstanding teachers learned about good teaching? (Implication: Interview and conduct case studies of outstanding teachers to seek useful and applicable patterns in their collective wisdom.)

• Why are participants dropping out of the program? (Implication: Interview dropouts to find out what can be done to reduce the dropout problem.)

• What lessons for living can we glean from the wisdom of older people? (Implication: Observe, interview, and do case studies of reflective senior citizens willing and able to reflect on life’s lessons for living; see, for example, Pillemer, 2011.)

• What have successful immigrants learned about making the transition to a new country, society, and culture? (Implication: Study the experiences and capture the lessons of successful immigrants compared with unsuccessful ones; see, for example, Blewett, 2009; Colic-Peisker, 2008.)

What these questions have in common is striving for practical understandings and wisdom about concrete, real-world issues. These questions aren’t aimed at validating the nature of reality, getting at the essence of some phenomenon, generating grounded theory, or deconstructing social constructions. Rather, these are action research questions, seeking practical and useful insights to inform action. For pragmatists, findings that carry no practical value are meaningless precisely because they are useless. The pragmatist seeks what William James called the “cash-value” of knowledge: “From this it is only one further step to the pragmatist definition of truth as that which has fruitful consequences” (Russell, 1959, p. 279).

A Pragmatic Example

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Here’s a great example of a pragmatic qualitative inquiry from Michael Agar (2013), distinguished author of The Lively Science: Remodeling Human Social Research. His “lively science” is grounded in the understanding that human beings are different from minerals, plants, and other animals and need to be engaged interactively in the field to understand human situations and find solutions to human problems. He describes being asked to help solve a waiting room problem in an outpatient chemotherapy clinic. The clinic analyzed records, conducted surveys, did time-and-motion studies, and ran computer models but could only reduce the average of several hours of waiting time by a few minutes. So they sought his help.

I hang around, listen to patients and front line staff, read a lot of things. . . .

It turns out that maybe reducing waiting time is impossible. But patients have different ways of looking at waiting time with a common thread. The thread is uncertainty—how much better things go if you know why you are waiting, both in terms of what’s going on with the clinic and what’s going on with your disease. So we plan a system to address that. Even though not much can be done about the number of minutes, a lot can be done about reducing the uncertainty of those minutes. Even if it’s bad news, which it usually isn’t on a day-to-day basis, it’s better to know one way or the other rather than to assume your cancer just jumped a stage when the real explanation is that a subway delay or another patient’s morning test results messed up scheduling. (Agar, 2013, pp. 24–25)

SIDEBAR

PRAGMATISM AS A PHILOSOPHICAL SYSTEM

Pragmatism demonstrates that it is itself a unique philosophical worldview:

• In contrast to philosophies that emphasize the nature of reality, pragmatists emphasize the nature of experience.

• In place of questions about the nature of truth, pragmatists focus on the outcomes of action. • Instead of concentrating on individuals as isolated sources of beliefs, pragmatists examine shared

beliefs.

Thus, pragmatism as a philosophical stance is quite different from many other philosophical systems— and even more different from the crude summary of pragmatic behavior as “what works.”

As a philosopher, Dewey was especially interested in the concept of inquiry as a form of experience that helps to resolve uncertainty. Inquiry is thus a conscious response to situations in which how one should act is not immediately clear. When you are faced with such situations, pragmatism asks the key question: What difference would it make to act in one way rather than another? And the only way you can answer this question is by tracing out the likely consequences of different lines of action and ultimately deciding on a way of acting that is likely to resolve the original uncertainty in the situation. . . .

Thus, when you think about what difference it would make to use one method rather than another, you are thinking about the potential consequences of this choice. Moreover, the potential results from your choice can only be evaluated in terms of the goals and purposes behind your original research question.

—David L. Morgan (2014, pp. 28–29) Integrating Qualitative and Quantitative Methods: A Pragmatic Approach

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There are two ways in which pragmatism informs qualitative inquiry. First is inquiring into practical questions in search of useful and actionable answers. Second is making pragmatic decisions while conducting the inquiry based on real-world constraints of limited time and resources. This means making methods decisions based on the situation and opportunities that emerge rather than adherence to a pure paradigm, theoretical inquiry tradition, or fixed design. It can also mean mixing methods and adapting data collection as the fieldwork unfolds.

Bricolage: Emergent Research Designs and Fieldwork Pragmatism

The creative, practical, and adaptive qualitative inquirer draws on varied inquiry traditions and uses diverse techniques to fit the complexities of a particular fieldwork situation. It is in this regard that we may be thought of as bricoleurs. The term comes from anthropologist Levi-Strauss (1966), who defined a bricoleur as a “jack of all trades or a kind of professional do-it-yourself person” (p. 17). He brought into the world of research the tradition of the French bricoleur, who traveled the countryside using odds and ends, whatever materials were at hand, to perform fix-it work. The qualitative inquirer

as bricoleur or maker of quilts uses the aesthetic and material tools of his or her craft, deploying whatever strategies, methods, or empirical materials are at hand. If new tools or techniques have to be invented, or pieced together, then the researcher will do this. (Denzin & Lincoln, 2011, p. 4)

Drawing on creativity and pragmatism opens up new possibilities, the bricolage of combining old things in new ways, including alternative and emergent forms of data collection and combining inquiry traditions.

By nature reluctant to take strong paradigmatic stands, pragmatic qualitative researchers move comfortably within and among various discourses whether postpositivist, interpretivist, feminist, or constructivist . . . allowing qualitative methods to showcase their strengths without ideological imperatives attached. (Padgett, 2004, p. 7)

Creswell (2009) adds that “for the mixed methods researcher, pragmatism opens the door to multiple methods, different worldviews, and different assumptions, as well as different forms of data collection and analysis” (p. 11). Thus, while it’s quite feasible to pragmatically mix methods in principle, it remains quite challenging interpersonally where the mixing process involves quantitative and qualitative researchers working together; power dynamics and dysfunctional interactions do not disappear merely because researchers with different methodological expertise agree to collaborate (Lund, Heggen, & Strand, 2013).

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Generic Qualitative Inquiry

Not all inquiries need to be formally conceptualized within one of the specific inquiry traditions reviewed in this chapter. The quite concrete and practical questions of people working to make the world a better place (and wondering if what they’re doing is working) can be addressed without allegiance to a particular epistemological or philosophical tradition. While these intellectual, philosophical, and theoretical traditions have greatly influenced the focus, value, and legitimacy of particular types of qualitative inquiry, it is not necessary to swear vows of allegiance to any single epistemological perspective to use qualitative methods. Experienced pragmatic researcher David Morgan (2007) has characterized this as “paradigms lost and pragmatism regained,” especially with regard to a pragmatic approach to “integrating qualitative and quantitative methods” (Morgan, 2014).

SIDEBAR

PRAGMATISM AS A BASIS FOR MIXED METHODS

Pragmatist philosophy has been especially influential as a justification for mixed methods. Evaluation pioneer and distinguished scholar Lois-ellin Datta (1997) made the case for pragmatism as the foundation for mixed methods in a classic article in New Directions for Evaluation:

I propose for our field that “pragmatic” mean the essential criteria for making design decisions are practical, contextually responsive, and consequential. “Practical” implies a basis in one‘s experience of what does and does not work. “Contextually responsive” involves understanding the demands, opportunities, and constraints of the situation in which the evaluation will take place. “Consequential” in this discussion is defined by pragmatic theory . . . [which] holds that the truth of a statement consists of its practical consequences, particularly the statement’s agreement with experience. These practical consequences form standards by which concepts are analyzed and their validity determined. . . .

A Pragmatic Framework. Four questions about practical consequences of design decisions are:

1. Can salient evaluation questions be adequately answered?

2. Can the design be successfully carried out, taking into consideration such issues as access to information, time available, evaluators’ skills, and money or other resources required for the evaluation?

3. Are design trade-offs (for example, between depth of understanding and generalizability) optimized?

4. Are the results usable? (pp. 34–35)

Pragmatism is a thread that runs through the writings of advocates for mixed methods (e.g., Creswell, 2009; Maxcy, 2003; Morgan, 2007, 2014; Patton, 1985b, 1988b; Rallis & Rossman, 2003; Rossman & Rallis, 2011; Tashakkori & Teddlie, 2003).

While students writing dissertations and academic scholars will necessarily be concerned with ontology and epistemology, there is a very practical side to qualitative methods that simply involves skillfully asking open- ended questions of people and observing matters of interest in real-world settings to solve problems, improve programs, or develop policies. This is sometimes called generic qualitative inquiry (Caelli, Ray, & Mill, 2003; McLeod, 2001; Merriam, 1997). In short, in real-world practice, methods can be separated from the epistemology out of which they have emerged. One can use statistics in straightforward ways without doing a philosophical literature review of logical empiricism or realism. One can make an interpretation without studying hermeneutics. And one can conduct open-ended interviews or make observations without reading treatises on phenomenology. The methods of qualitative inquiry now stand on their own as reasonable ways to find out what is happening in programs and other human settings.

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SIDEBAR

GENERIC QUALITATIVE INQUIRY

Generic qualitative inquiry uses qualitative methods—in-depth interviewing, fieldwork observations, and document analysis—to answer straightforward questions without framing the inquiry within an explicit theoretical, philosophical, epistemological, or ontological tradition. Say you have to understand what motivates people to volunteer their time to a nonprofit. You could frame this as an ethnographic inquiry (culture of volunteerism), a phenomenological study (the lived experience of volunteering), ethnomethodological research (everyday norms of volunteering), or a realist inquiry (identifying the mechanisms that support and explain volunteering within a particular context). Indeed, you could frame the study within any of the theoretical orientations reviewed in this chapter. Or you could just interview people about volunteering and observe them while they volunteer, without using an explicit theoretical framework. This is generic qualitative inquiry (Caelli et al., 2003; Cooper & Endacott, 2007; McLeod, 2001; Merriam, 1997).

Let me offer an analogy. You can give some money to someone in need because your religious faith directs you to be charitable or you feel an explicit ethical obligation. Or you can give money to a person in need because you see the need and respond as a fellow human being, without placing that charitable act within a religious or ethical tradition. You would be engaged in a generically charitable act instead of a religiously based or explicitly ethically oriented act. The behavior is the same in both cases. The interpretive framing of the act can vary.

Utilization-Focused Evaluation

Standards for high-quality evaluations emphasize utility and feasibility as well as propriety, accuracy, and accountability (Joint Committee on Standards, 2010). Utilization-focused evaluation (Patton, 2008b, 2012b) is explicitly pragmatic, eclectic, and situationally adaptive and responsive. Exhibit 3.17 presents examples of pragmatic principles for utilization-focused evaluations. In the same vein, Real-World Evaluation is a pragmatic approach to “working under budget, time, data, and political constraints” (Bamberger, Rugh, & Mabry, 2011).

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©2002 Michael Quinn Patton and Michael Cochran

Generic Qualitative Request

Pragmatism, like all inquiry frameworks, has its critics. Attacking the practical and contextual focus of pragmatic inquiries, detractors criticize their failure to produce generalizable knowledge. With regard to the adaptive approach to fieldwork, Pawson (2013), in his Realist Manifesto, takes aim at the allures of the pragmatic perspective, which he asserts “must be reckoned with . . . because it emanates from the labor of evaluation practitioners rather than an abstract, preconceived model” (p. 71). But he is concerned that emergent designs responding to unforeseen problems and opportunities, in-the-field adjustments driven by practicality, and a proliferation of novel methods and bricoleur creations lack the rigor, and therefore the credibility and validity, of systematic scientific inquiry. In practice, he believes, pragmatism rapidly becomes unmanageable and, ironically, impractical and unfeasible:

Solutions are arrived at piecemeal. The field researcher is always best placed to spot the latest intricacy, the first to herald complexity’s newest twist. They will draft up a methodological solution which, if it shows promise, will be imitated by other evaluators. One splendid idea after another is added to the evaluation toolbox—but with what result? Methodological pragmatism bursts evaluation at its seams. The toolbox requires a truck to transport it. No evaluation study can encompass all of its contents. Any single evaluation will always fall a crucial spanner or two short. (p. 72)

EXHIBIT 3.17 Utilization-Focused Evaluation: Pragmatism in Practice

Utilization-focused evaluation begins with the premise that evaluations should be judged by their utility and actual use; therefore, evaluators should facilitate the evaluation process and design any evaluation with careful consideration of how everything that is done, from beginning to end, will affect use. Use concerns how real people in the real world apply evaluation findings and experience the evaluation process.

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Pragmatic Design Principles

Principles offer guidance. They are not recipes, laws, or absolute prescriptions. Principles help in dealing with practical trade-offs in the less than perfect real world of evaluation design. Below are three common evaluation challenges with corresponding pragmatic principles to use in the face of real-world constraints.

SOURCE: Adapted from Essentials of Utilization-Focused Evaluation (Patton, 2012a).

His final judgment is that pragmatism produces “endless answers to never-ending problems” (p. 72). But perhaps we need some cultural context to understand the vehemence of his objections. Pragmatism is “a uniquely American philosophy” (Schwandt, 2001, p. 204). Pawson is quintessentially British. Americans tend to like thinking of themselves as pragmatic. But to people in other countries, American pragmatism comes with baggage, some of it negative. Thus, the 10th principle of pragmatic inquiry is as follows:

Be prepared to communicate to others how and why the philosophy of pragmatism has informed the inquiry. That people will understand the philosophy of judging truth by utility, or agree with it, cannot be assumed.

For the other 9 principles of pragmatic inquiry, see Exhibit 3.18.

EXHIBIT 3.18 Ten General Pragmatic Principles of Inquiry

1. Focus the inquiry on getting useful answers to practical questions. 2. Select and mix methods to get diverse perspectives on and triangulated insights into the problem

being studied, recognizing that all methods have strengths and weaknesses (Creswell, 2009, pp. 10– 11; Morgan, 2007, 2014).

3. Adapt the design to real-world constraints of limited time, resources, and access—and acknowledge those constraints and their implications for findings (Bamberger et al., 2011).

4. Integrate inquiry frameworks and epistemological traditions as appropriate, doing so thoughtfully, intentionally, and with attention to the implications of combining frameworks and the controversies that may ensue (Denzin & Lincoln, 2011, pp. 4–6).

5. Look for actionable findings: Analyze data with an eye toward informing action (Davidson, 2012). 6. Use multiple analytic reasoning processes: deduction (reasoning from the general to the specific),

induction (reasoning from the specific to the general), and abduction (working back and forth between general and specific to solve a problem) (Patton, 2011, pp. 284–285; Reichertz, 2004).

7. Examine and report how the inquiry itself and the processes involved in data collection have affected what is learned (Flick, von Kardoff, & Steinke, 2004, p. 17).

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8. Be explicit about the values that undergird and inform the inquiry. Pragmatism is not value-free. Utility, like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder. It involves making judgments: value judgments. The very definition of a problem to be studied involves values about how the world might be better— with human rights, social justice, gender equity, and shared governance as examples (Davidson, 2005, pp. 85–98; Julnes, 2012; Schwandt, 2002, pp. 137–155).

9. It is easier to establish what doesn’t work than what does work, and what works in one context and at one time may not work at another place and in another time, so both utility and truth derived from utility are context dependent, subject to further inquiry, and constitute at best “partial truth” (Pawson, 2013, p. 192).

10. Be prepared to communicate to others how the philosophy of pragmatism has informed the inquiry. That people will understand the philosophy of judging truth by utility, or agree with it, cannot be assumed.

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MODULE

19 Patterns and Themes Across Inquiry Frameworks: ChapterSummary and Conclusions

Research on humans in their social world by other humans is not a traditional science like the one created by Galileo and Newton. It’s not that the creators were wrong. Far from it. The ones who were wrong were the historical figures who tried to imitate the way the creators worked, neglecting the fact that learning how people make it through the day is different from dropping balls from the Leaning Tower of Pisa or getting hit on the head by falling apples. Galileo didn’t have to communicate with the balls. Besides, he didn’t have to worry that the balls might look down 185 feet and refuse to jump and throw him over the parapet instead. (Agar, 2013, p. 6)

All the inquiry frameworks reviewed in this chapter grapple with the challenge of how to study human beings. All have turned to qualitative methods as the best way to do so. What distinguishes these inquiry frameworks is that they focus on and prioritize different questions and draw on different philosophical and epistemological traditions to inform their inquiry.

Six Distinguishing Questions

The variety of qualitative inquiry frameworks are distinguished by answers to six core questions (one for each day of the week plus a day left over to integrate your answers):

1. What do we believe about the nature of reality? Diverse answers derive from varying ontological premises and debates, for example, the possibility of a singular, verifiable reality and truth versus the inevitability of socially constructed multiple realities.

2. How do we know what we know? Diverse answers stem from divergent epistemological premises and debates about the possibility and desirability of objectivity, subjectivity, causality, validity, and generalizability.

3. How should we study the world? Different inquiry frameworks specify different methodological preferences, priorities, and procedures about what kinds of data and design to emphasize for what purposes and with what consequences.

4. What is worth knowing? Answers to this question are grounded in philosophical debates about what matters and why.

5. What questions should we ask? Different disciplines (e.g., anthropology, sociology) and interdisciplinary perspectives (e.g., ecological psychology, cultural studies) have emerged from focusing on different burning questions and different methodological preferences for answering those questions credibly (through peer review) within each discipline.

6. How do I personally engage in inquiry? This involves different perspectives and debates about injecting personal experiences and values into the inquiry, including issues of voice and using the inquiry to bring about change.

The same phenomenon, program, organization, or community studied by researchers from different perspectives will lead to quite different studies even though they might all undertake observations, interviews, and document analysis. Nor would it necessarily be possible to synthesize the descriptions and findings of such different studies even though they took place in the same setting. When researchers and evaluators

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operate from different inquiry frameworks, their results will not be readily interpretable by or meaningful to one another. While the frameworks provide guidance and a basis for interaction among researchers operating within the same framework, the different theoretical frameworks constitute barriers that impede interaction across and among different perspectives. In effect, each theoretical framework is a mini paradigm with its own internal logic and assumptions.

This means that one cannot reasonably ask which theoretical framework is “right,” best, or most useful. It depends on what one wants to do and which assumptions one shares. Gareth Morgan stated the problem quite succinctly after presenting a variety of research perspectives:

There was the question as to how the reader could come to some conclusion regarding the contrary nature, significance, and claims of the different perspectives. . . . I realized that there was a major problem here. . . . There is a fallacy in the idea that the propositions of a system can be proved, disproved, or evaluated on the basis of axioms within that system. . . . This means that it is not possible to judge the validity or contribution of different research perspectives in terms of the ground assumptions of any one set of perspectives, since the process is self-justifying. Hence the attempts in much social science debate to judge the utility of different research strategies in terms of universal criteria based on the importance of generalizability, predictability and control, explanation of variance, meaningful understanding, or whatever are inevitably flawed: These criteria inevitably favor research strategies consistent with the assumptions that generate such criteria as meaningful guidelines for the evaluation of research. It is simply inadequate to attempt to justify a particular style of research in terms of assumptions that give rise to that style of research. . . . Different research perspectives make different kinds of knowledge claims, and the criteria as to what counts as significant knowledge vary from one to another. (Morgan, 1983, pp. 14–15)

Essentially, then, you must make your own decision about the relative value of any given inquiry framework and perspective. Each has strengths. Each has limitations. No universal standard can be applied to choose among these different frameworks. Quite the contrary, the diversity itself is a good indicator of the complexity of human phenomena and the challenges involved in conducting research.

Themes That Cut Across the Inquiry Traditions and Frameworks To conclude this chapter, I’m going to present the results of my own qualitative analysis of themes that emerge in looking across inquiry frameworks.

1. Definitions of inquiry frameworks vary. Charles Peirce, William James, and John Dewey defined pragmatism differently (Russell, 1959, pp. 276–279). In his Dictionary of Qualitative Inquiry, Thomas Schwandt (2001) introduces phenomenology with this caveat: “This complex, multifaceted philosophy defies characterization because it is not a single unified philosophical standpoint” (p. 191). Of symbolic interaction, he warns, “Like all frameworks informing qualitative studies, this theory comes in a variety of forms and thus is difficult to summarize briefly” (p. 244). Systems theory definitions and inquiry frameworks abound and befuddle (Pawson, 2013, p. 53; Williams, 2005; Williams & Hummelbrunner, 2011). While ethnographers agree that ethnography is the study of culture, they disagree about how to define culture. The inevitable discombobulating conclusion is this: Do not go in search of the definitive, agreed-on, “right” definition for any inquiry framework. You will not find it. You will have to select that definition that resonates with you and your inquiry purpose and be prepared to explain, justify, and even defend whichever definition, or definitions, you select.

2. Identification of founding theorists and important contributing figures within each tradition can be a matter of dispute. Sometimes, the first person who labeled a distinct inquiry framework is recognized as the founder of that inquiry approach. Harold Garfinkel (1967), for example, coined the term ethnomethodology. Clark Moustakas (1990) originated heuristic inquiry. Glaser and Strauss (1967) are credited with developing grounded theory but with this caveat:

Of course, the method did not arise solely from the work of Glaser and Strauss. If we look at previous work in the Chicago School [of Sociology] we see common elements—the basic social process, for instance, appears in the writings of that time. (Morse et al., 2009, p. 9)

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But more general frameworks like ethnography, phenomenology, hermeneutics, narrative inquiry, and complexity theory have mixed genealogies, multiple contributors, and disagreements among theorists about who contributed what, who influenced whom, and what significance to attach to various contributions. We find the intersection of the definition challenge (Item 1 above) and the founders’ challenge in the very definition of phenomenology offered by Denzin and Lincoln (2011): “A complex system of ideas associated with the works of Edmund Husserl, Martin Heidegger, Jean-Paul Sartre, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, and Alfred Schutz” (p. 16).

3. The perspectives of pioneers are often misrepresented in secondary summaries of their views. Consult original sources to understand what major inquiry pioneers and theorists actually said. Be wary of relying entirely on secondary and tertiary sources, like this book, if you intend to work within a particular framework. This chapter is a menu, but to experience the full meal of any inquiry framework, you must go to the original cookbooks and feast on the pioneering writings of those in whose footsteps you intend to follow.

A wonderful example of why this is so can be found in a confessional essay by distinguished sociologist Robert K. Merton (1995) about how he and others misattributed the Thomas theorem, which is the foundation of the social constructionist inquiry framework: “If men define situations as real, they are real in their consequences” (see Exhibit 3.7). The book in which it first appeared was coauthored by William I. Thomas and Dorothy Swaine Thomas (1928). However, Merton confesses that in his own influential writings he attributed the theorem only to W. I. Thomas, omitting his wife’s coauthorship and contribution. Others followed suit and continue to do so to this day. Merton openly reflected on whether this omission, which he deeply regretted, was a matter of sexism, scholarly sloppiness, innocent inattention to detail, or all of these in combination. The moral of the story is that secondary and tertiary sources are filled with inaccuracies, out-of- context quotations, distorting summaries, abysmal abstracts, misattributions, misrepresentations, mischaracterizations, and other mischief that can only be corrected by consulting original sources.

A parallel caveat concerns the labels attached to theorists. These can be misleading or can change over time. For example, Miles and Huberman described themselves as positivists in the first edition of Qualitative Data Analysis (1984) but came to think of themselves as realists in the second edition (1994). Or take the case of Paul-Michel Foucault (1926–1984), a French philosopher and social historian, who analyzed and addressed power and its functions, including how those in power control knowledge. That led to his being labeled variously as a postmodernist or poststructuralist, both of which he rejected, preferring to classify his thought as a critical history of modernity (Ball, 2013; Foucault, 2013). To know what Foucault wanted to be called, you have to consult his own writings, not rely just on secondary characterizations and labels.

4. Fidelity disputes abound: Advocates, theorists, practitioners, and critics debate what is central, distinct, and essential in each inquiry framework. Giorgi (2006) advocates what he considers the right, high- fidelity approach to phenomenological inquiry. Exhibit 3.5 presents his review ofcommon errors and deviations he found in reviewing doctoral dissertations that claimed to be following phenomenology. Fidelity becomes an issue for every model or approach as followers adapt the original idea to new contexts. The question is this: How much variation and adaptation can there be before what is being done is so different from the original that it no longer falls within the original idea? Consider the case of empowerment evaluation, a well-defined participatory inquiry framework for program evaluation (Fetterman & Wandersman, 2005). Miller and Campbell (2006) examined 47 published studies labeled “empowerment evaluations.” They found wide variation in what was done and which principles were followed, including a case of an evaluation that was designed and executed by an evaluator “with no input or involvement from stakeholders. . . . [But the evaluator thought] the project was an empowerment evaluation because by allowing a disenfranchised population to respond to a survey, the population was afforded a voice” (p. 306).

5. Subdivisions and special interest subgroups have emerged within each inquiry tradition. Phenomenology can scarcely be considered a coherent inquiry framework given the many subdivisions: existential phenomenology, transcendental phenomenology, hermeneutic phenomenology, humanistic phenomenology, sociological phenomenology, and psychological phenomenology. Realism follows suit:

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phenomenological versus scientific realism (Cumpa & Tegtmeier, 2009); ontological realism, philosophic realism, critical realism, experiential realism, perspectival realism, subtle realism, emergent realism, natural realism, innocent realism, and agential realism (Maxwell, 2012, pp. 3–4).

The “tussles, tensions, and resolutions” of different versions of grounded theory have been thoughtfully reviewed by Janice Morse (2009). Given the Internet age and increasing use of social media, communities of practice have emerged to facilitate communications dialogue and debate among those who feel affinity to a particular inquiry framework or one of its subdivisions. A quick search will take you to websites, listservs, and professional organizations convened around diverse inquiry frameworks and special interests within them.

6. Combinations of inquiry frameworks have become commonplace—and controversial. Some combinations involve just two inquiry traditions. For example, Charmaz (2009) has created constructivist grounded theory. Hermeneutical phenomenology combines two major traditions. One can do a heuristic feminist study engaging in heuristic inquiry from a feminist perspective. Or one can do “critical ethnography” (Thomas, 1993), combining elements of critical theory and ethnography. Bentz and Shapiro (1998) have created what they call “mindful inquiry” as a synthesis of phenomenology, hermeneutics, critical theory, and Buddhism. From phenomenology, they take the focus on experience and consciousness. From hermeneutics, they take the focus on texts, on the process of understanding, and on letting new meanings emerge from the research process. From critical theory, they direct attention to the social and historical context of both the researcher and the research topic, including attention to domination, injustice, and oppression. From Buddhism, they take the focus on becoming aware of one’s own “addictions” and attachments and on practicing compassion. In positing this synthesis, they aim to place the researcher, rather than research techniques, at the center of the research process. This adds something of a reflexive, autoethnographic orientation as another foundation of mindful inquiry because the mindful inquirer uses awareness of personal, social, and historical context and personal ways of knowing to shape the research.

Combining inquiry frameworks can spark severe criticisms. Combinations are controversial. The hope for such combinations is that they combine the strengths of different approaches, but they can just as easily undermine the strength of high-fidelity adherence to a particular framework and create a combination that weakens each of the frameworks brought together. Indeed, Blaikie (1991) has asserted that those who fail to acknowledge the ontological and epistemological differences built into different methods are guilty of “ignorance or misunderstanding” (pp. 126, 128). Giorgi (2006) is highly skeptical of dissertation students thinking they can willy-nilly add other inquiry frameworks to phenomenology. Thus, theorists and proponents of various qualitative epistemologies argue that they should be implemented as pure forms to fully realize the focus and purpose of each. Pragmatists argue that though there are times when some approaches can be mixed, the burden of proof that this is a good and fruitful idea rests with the researcher proposing to integrate approaches. It’s not easy. It should not be undertaken cavalierly. Just because you consider yourself an effective multitasker doesn’t mean you can effectively implement multiple inquiry frameworks. It should be the exception rather than the rule, like mixing alcohol and prescription drugs: possible on special occasions but potentially dangerous; be sure you have a designated driver! A clear and convincing case must be presented, both methodologically and epistemologically, that combining multiple approaches actually serves to deepen the answer to the research question and that whatever approaches are combined can be implemented with quality. It shouldn’t just be dallying around with different approaches and using more than one because you’re having trouble deciding or focusing, which is what I see with some students who, unable to distinguish approaches enough to figure out which one is most appropriate, take what they hope will be the easy way out and design a combination. It might work. And, again, it might not.

7. All frameworks have attracted passionate criticism. Criticism comes with the territory. Having noted above the criticism that combining frameworks can generate, it’s worth noting that any particular inquiry will also attract critics, skeptics, naysayers, and cynics. William Blake famously observed, “Without contraries is no progression.” There’s a reason why academic disciplines are characterized as “disputatious communities”; and not for nothing have debates about inquiry frameworks been called “paradigm wars” (Paulson, 1990). Pawson (2013) brings all his legendary wit to bear in a scathing attack on systems and

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complexity theories: “There are so many varieties of systems thinking that I hardly know where to start (an old complexity theory joke by the way)” (p. 53); he is no less acerbic about the inadequacies of pragmatism (pp. 71–80). He denigrates my own complexity-pragmatic approach, developmental evaluation (Patton, 2011), as “(a) evaluation-by-adjective, and (b) evaluation-by-personality” (Pawson, 2013, p. 77).

Phillips (2000) offers a comprehensive defense of “naturalistic social science”—that social science can attain the same rigor and certainty as natural science. He affirms traditional scientific values of truth and objectivity while critiquing what he calls the “beasts” of holism, postpositivistism, Kuhnian relativism, hermeneutics, narrative research, and constructivism.

Martyn Hammersley (2008a) has published a whole book of essays “questioning qualitative inquiry” that collects together in one volume critiques of particular frameworks as well as of qualitative inquiry generally.

Any given inquiry framework has its origins in criticism of some existing approach, critiquing it and offering what the critic considers a better alternative. Positivism spawned postpositivism and antipositivism; realism has given rise to antirealism. Naturalists can enjoy entertaining dinners with antinaturalists, as can modernists with postmodernists, empiricists with postempiricists, and structuralists with poststructuralists. Objectivists versus subjectivists constitute a macro-epistemological and ontological debate; phenomenological realism versus scientific realism is a more micro debate (Cumpa & Tegtmeier, 2009). Ethnomethodology was created by Harold Garfinkel as a critique of functionalist sociology; he indicted mainstream sociology for treating “human actors as ‘judgmental dopes’ who passively carried out prescribed actions on the basis of internalized norms” (Schwandt, 2001, p. 81).

You get the point. The dialectic of thesis giving rise to antithesis runs deeply through the history of inquiry frameworks. So what does this mean practically? I offer this: Whatever inquiry framework you choose to use, study the pioneering theorists and more recent practitioners, but study also the critics. There is much to learn, not least of which is where the pitfalls lie in any given approach.

8. The extent to which an inquiry framework specifies precise methods of data collection and analysis varies. Ethnography prescribes in-depth fieldwork, but ways of conducting fieldwork vary greatly (Bernard, 1998). By comparison, grounded theory prescribes some specific data collection processes and analysis techniques. Phenomenology is more philosophical than methodological, but heuristic inquiry, an offspring of phenomenology, is quite detailed methodologically and procedurally. Narrative inquiry can take a variety of forms but has generated a detailed and in-depth approach to biographic interviewing (Wengraf, 2001).

The extent to which philosophical and epistemological frameworks have or even can generate specific methods is a matter of debate.

In relation to these arguments, however, we should ask whether it is true that different sources of data, or even different methods, do involve conflicting ontological or epistemological assumptions; and if they do, whether this implies incompatibility. A number of writers assert that empiricism, interpretivism, and realism are fundamentally different philosophical orientations that underpin various social research methods. However, these authors do not effectively establish that conflicting epistemological and ontological assumptions are necessarily built into the use of specific methods. (Hammersley, 2008b, pp. 28–29)

In later chapters, we will take an in-depth look at methods: interviewing techniques, observation methods, and qualitative data analysis approaches. Many of the methodological choices are more informed by pragmatism than philosophy. So this is just a cautionary note that if, as recommended earlier (Item 2), you turn to the original writings of pioneering inquiry framework theorists, be prepared to find a lot of philosophy about how to study the world but often not much methodological direction. The methods have developed through the experiences of practitioners trying to apply the philosophical guidance to real-world inquiries. The theory-to-practice translation is seldom smooth and often is another source of debate.

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9. The primary unit of analysis in different frameworks varies: Some focus more on understanding individuals, others on understanding social groups. Ethnography focuses studies on groups of people who share a culture. Autoethnography begins with individual experience and reflection as the entry to culture. Phenomenology aspires to get at the essence of lived experiences for humans generally. Heuristic inquiry, like autoethnography, makes individual experience the focus of inquiry. Social constructionism aims to illuminate how groups of people come to share perspectives. Constructivism examines how individuals develop their perspectives (see Exhibit 3.8). Symbolic interaction, with a social- psychological sensibility, looks at interactions among individuals. Ethnomethodology focuses on people in specific situations and interactions. In essence, different frameworks put different boundaries around what aspects of the human experience are of priority concern. This is most directly reflected in different units of analysis.

10. There is no definitive list of alternative inquiry frameworks and no agreed-on way of categorizing or grouping them. Take a look again at Exhibit 3.3 (pp. 97–99), which summarizes the inquiry frameworks reviewed in this chapter. The purpose of this review has been to accentuate distinctions so as to facilitate choices. But as this summary of crosscutting and overarching themes makes abundantly and even painfully clear, the boundaries between perspectives remain fuzzy. Those of us who try to make sense of the options through some overall conceptual framework, as I have done in this chapter by reviewing contrasting inquiry frameworks and focusing on core questions, emphasize different approaches. No consensus exists about how to classify the varieties of qualitative research. Crotty (1998, p. 5) has elaborated five major theoretical perspectives as the foundations of social research: positivism (and postpositivism), interpretivism (which includes phenomenology, hermeneutics, and symbolic interactionism), critical inquiry, feminism, and postmodernism (to which he adds an “etc.” to suggest the open-ended nature of such a classification). Creswell (2012) also settled on five approaches, but a different five: (1) narrative research, (2) phenomenology, (3) grounded theory, (4) ethnography, and (5) case study. Jacob (1987) chose yet another set of five for a qualitative taxonomy: (1) ecological psychology, (2) holistic ethnography, (3) ethnography of communication, (4) cognitive anthropology, and (5) symbolic interactionism. Schwandt (2000) highlighted three “epistemological stances for qualitative inquiry”: (1) interpretivism, (2) hermeneutics, and (3) social constructivism. Denzin and Lincoln (2000) organized their review of qualitative variety around seven historical periods and seven “paradigms/theories”: (1) positivist/postpositivist, (2) constructivist, (3) feminist, (4) ethnic, (5) Marxist, (6) cultural studies, and (7) queer theory. Wolcott (1992) created a family tree of 20 distinct branches showing different “qualitative strategies.” Tesch (1990) identified 27 varieties. Having examined some of the various attempts to classify qualitative approaches, Miles and Huberman (1994) concluded,

As comprehensive and clarifying as these catalogs and taxonomies may be, they turn out to be basically incommensurate, both in the way different qualitative strands are defined and in the criteria used to distinguish them. The mind boggles in trying to get from one to another. (p. 5)

Schwandt, who has studied these distinctions as much as anyone and is the lexicographer of the Dictionary of Qualitative Inquiry (2001), offers this reflection on theoretical distinctions:

It seems to be a uniquely American tendency to categorize and label complicated theoretical perspectives as either this or that. Such labeling is dangerous, for it blinds us to enduring issues, shared concerns, and points of tension that cut across the landscape of the movement, issues that each inquirer must come to terms with in developing an identity as a social inquirer. In wrestling with the ways in which these philosophies forestructure our efforts to understand what it means to “do” qualitative inquiry, what we face is not a choice of which label—interpretivist, constructivist, hermeneuticist, or something else—best suits us. Rather, we are confronted with choices about how each of us wants to live the life of a social inquirer. (Schwandt, 2000, p. 205)

SIDEBAR

QUEER THEORY AND QUALITATIVE INQUIRY QUESTIONS

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Queer researchers are in good company with other scholars drawing on poststructuralist and postmodernist approaches such as some feminist, anti-racist and postcolonial scholars. . . . In research deemed “queer,” the methods we use often let us speak to or interact with people, usually on the basis of sexual/gender identities and within anti-normative frameworks. . . . If, as queer thinking argues, subjects and subjectivities are fluid, unstable and perpetually becoming, how can we gather “data” from those tenuous and fleeting subjects using the standard methods of data collection such as interviews or questionnaires? What meanings can we draw from, and what use can we make of, such data when it is only momentarily fixed and certain?

And what does this mean for our thinking about ourselves as researchers? . . . We found it disconcerting that we often do not apply our queer re-theorising, re-considering and re-conceptualising to our social science methodologies and choice of methods. As queer approaches to research proliferate across the social sciences, we argue there is a certain “sweeping under the carpet” of how we actually “do” research as “social scientists” given our attractions, and attachments, to queer theory. . . .

Theory, data and method cannot be understood in isolation from each other and the relationship between theory and data is a methodological problem. When we think of this intersection, persistent and unresolved questions emerge: What impact, if any, could (or should) queer conceptualisations have on our methodological choices and in what ways? Can social science methods be “queered” or even made “queer enough”? How can social science methodologies feed into and question queer epistemological paradigms? How are social science methodologies, and the knowledges created by them, addressed in queer theories? If methodologies are meant to coherently link ontological and epistemological positions to our choice of methods, are methodologies automatically queer if queer conceptualisations are used? Can we have queer knowledges if our methodologies are not queer? Is there such a thing as queer method/methodology/research? These sorts of questions [are] often overlooked in the excitement of new revelations and insights gained by queer interventions into empirical data.

—Browne and Nash (2010, pp. 1–2) Queer Methods and Methodologies

Exhibit 3.19 presents an overview of these themes.

EXHIBIT 3.19 Distinguishing and Understanding Alternative Inquiry Frameworks: Crosscutting Themes

1. Definitions of inquiry frameworks vary. 2. Identification of founding theorists and important contributing figures within each tradition can be a

matter of dispute. 3. The perspectives of pioneers are often misrepresented in secondary summaries of their views.

Consult original sources to understand what major inquiry pioneers and theorists actually said. 4. Fidelity disputes abound: Advocates, theorists, practitioners, and critics debate what is central,

distinct, and essential in each inquiry framework. 5. Subdivisions and special-interest subgroups have emerged within each inquiry tradition. 6. Combinations of inquiry frameworks have become commonplace—and controversial. 7. All frameworks have attracted passionate criticism. Criticism comes with the territory. 8. The extent to which an inquiry framework specifies precise methods of data collection and analysis

varies. 9. The primary unit of analysis in different frameworks varies: Some focus more on understanding

individuals, others on understanding social groups. 10. There is no definitive list of alternative inquiry frameworks and no agreed-on way of categorizing or

grouping them.

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Note: Each of these themes is discussed and elaborated on pages 159–164.

Chapter Summary and Conclusion The chapter opened with a review of the quantitative/qualitative methods paradigms debate. Exhibit 3.1 (pp. 90–91) presented 10 contrasting emphases and contributions of quantitative, qualitative, and mixed methods approaches. Debate about these contrasting and competing perspectives has been an important part of the history of research and evaluation. While this chapter demonstrates that the variety of inquiry approaches has expanded well beyond the simplistic dichotomy between quantitative and qualitative paradigms, the debate is still alive in many places. The paradigms debate is part of our methodological heritage. Knowing about it and understanding the passions the debate has aroused, and still can arouse, is an important foundation for making methods decisions. At its core, the paradigms debate “addresses one of the most important and contentious issues challenging applied research and evaluation practice today: what constitutes credible evidence” (Donaldson et al., 2009, p. vii). Part of your responsibility as a researcher and/or evaluator is to develop and be able to articulate your own position with regard to what constitutes credible evidence and why. Chapter 9, this book’s final chapter, will return to this issue as its focus.

Having reviewed the paradigms debate as context for methodological decision making, the bulk of this chapter has consisted of distinguishing theoretical perspectives by their foundational questions and discussing the implications for inquiry of positioning your study within a particular intellectual and theoretical tradition. Exhibit 3.3 (p. 97) summarizes the 16 contrasting and competing theoretical inquiry frameworks we’ve discussed: ethnography, autoethnography, reality-testing, foundationalist epistemologies (positivism, postpositivism, and empiricism), grounded theory, realism, phenomenology, heuristic inquiry, social constructionism and constructivism, narrative inquiry, ethnomethodology, semiotics, symbolic interaction, hermeneutics, systems theory, complexity theory, and pragmatism.

There is no definitive list of alternative inquiry frameworks and no agreed-on way of categorizing or grouping them. The 16 frameworks reviewed and discussed here are neither exhaustive of possibilities nor without controversy. While these diverse approaches reflect different inquiry traditions and priorities, they also provide windows into some central and enduring qualitative inquiry issues. Thus, I concluded the review with an analysis and synthesis of 10 themes that emerge in looking across inquiry frameworks (see Exhibit 3.19).

In concluding, I would reiterate that you must make your own decision about the relative value of any given inquiry framework and perspective based on your own interests, theoretical preferences, intellectual tradition, and inquiry context. Each approach has strengths. Each has limitations. No universal standard can be applied to choose among these different frameworks and others not reviewed here. The diversity of possibilities reflects the complexity of human phenomena and the challenges involved in conducting research. Theories guide us through the world’s maze. Prolific cultural theorist Arthur Asa Berger offered a concluding insight, a “coda,” about how to use diverse theories productively.

In the course of my career, a number of people have asked me how I was able to publish more than sixty books. I’ve actually written more books but not all of them have been published. I generally tell them that I know some theories and have learned how to apply the concepts found in these theories to any number of different topics. It is through theories and concepts that I make sense of things that interest me. When I have some topic that I want to write about, in my mind I think “round up the usual suspects,” and then I see what ideas these “suspects” (theorists) have to offer that I can use. It also helps if you know how to type with ten fingers and are disciplined. (Berger, 2010, p. 149)

From Theory to Practice

The next chapter explores some of the ways in which qualitative inquiry can contribute to practical knowledge and pragmatic understandings. To help make that transition, this chapter ends with a practical, cautionary tale

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from “Halcolm the Gourmand.”

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APPLICATION EXERCISES

1. Paradigms debate: The chapter opened with a discussion of the quantitative/qualitative paradigms debate. Exhibit 3.1 (pp. 90–91) summarizes the differences. Discuss how the debate shows up in your own discipline or field of interest. What is at the heart of the debate? Why does it matter? What is your own position on the paradigms debate? Explain and support your position. (If you are not sure, or undecided, explain why.)

2. Advice to a graduate student: Exhibit 3.2 (p. 96) is a letter from a graduate student asking for advice. Based on your reading and understanding of this chapter, write a letter of response.

3. Examining a theoretical perspective in depth: Exhibit 3.3 (pp. 97–99) provides an overview summary of the diverse and competing theoretical orientations discussed in this book. Select any two of these

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approaches, and apply them to a topic that you would be interested in researching. Demonstrate how the two approaches would lead you to frame your inquiry in different ways. Show that you understand how a theoretical inquiry framework influences the formulation of your research question.

4. Pragmatic: The review of different theoretical orientations ends with a discussion of pragmatism (see Module 18, including Exhibits 3.17 and 3.18). Select a research question of interest to you, and discuss how you would approach it from a pragmatic perspective. Demonstrate that you understand pragmatism as an inquiry framework.

5. Generic qualitative inquiry: What are the strengths and weaknesses of generic qualitative inquiry? (See pp. 154–155.) Demonstrate that you understand why some advocate generic qualitative inquiry and others criticize it.

6. Halcolm (How come?): Discuss the “Halcolm the Gourmand” cartoon at the end of the chapter (pp. 166– 167). What does that story have to do with this chapter? What are its meanings and implications in relation to the module titles of this chapter and the practical focus of the next chapter?