Paradigms and ideology in participation research
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Paradigms and ideology in participation research: a comparative analysis
Kjell Rubenson, University of British Columbia/University of Linkoping
Abstract
Research paradigms on participation in adult education in North America and the Scandinavian countries are compared. An explanatory framework based on academic environment and the structure and function of adult education is discussed. The North American research has had a stronger emphasis on intradisciplinary development while Scandinavian research mainly has been guided by social urgency. The different contexts are reflected in the direction of theory development in North America and Scandinavia.
Background and purpose
It is only recently that social scientists have come to recognise that knowledge, in the broadest sense of the word, is context-dependent, constrained by and created out of social factors. Scholars working within the sociology of knowledge have paid increased attention to the social process in which research is done: how do the social and cultural locations of research effect knowledge production? According to the viewpoint held in the sociology of knowledge, assumptions, cultural locations and political interests are intricately tied to the choice of research problems as well as to conceptual, procedural and design questions[1].
As literature in the sociology of science emphasises, communal aspects of research are central to an understanding of the mode of inquiry used. Within any scientific community a shared way of ‘seeing’ the world and a commitment to particular ways of reasoning, conducting and evaluating research develop. According to Kuhn[2] scientific communities have particular constellations of questions, methods and procedures that form disciplinary matrixes or paradigms. Kuhn maintains that the purpose of, for example, doctoral studies is to socialise the neophyte scholar into ways of thinking, seeing and feeling as a researcher within a specific field.
The purpose of this study is to give focus to the issues raised above through a comparative analysis of research paradigms on participation in adult education in North America and the Scandinavian Countries, with an emphasis on Sweden. More precisely, according to Törnebohm’s concept of territory any scientific description can, on an epistemological level, be described in terms of its territory[3]. He further states that knowledge produced by research creates an authorised map of the research territory. Törnebohm’s work helps us to reframe our questions as follows: to what extent are the North America and Scandinavian maps similar and/or different, and if different how can these differences be explained?
Explanatory framework
This comparison of research on participation in adult education in North America and Scandinavia has as its point of departure a contextual analysis of a) the academic environment, including the development of adult education as a field of study; and b) the structure and function of adult education in the two regions.
Academic environment
While there is a long history of a discussion in North America about whether adult education constitutes a discipline, this has not been the case in Scandinavia where adult education research is a more recent phenomenon. This difference in emphasis on the disciplinary character of adult education can be partly explained by the structures and traditions of the countries’ respective university systems.
There exists a vast literature on the process of specialisation whereby new disciplines and/or fields of studies emerge. Elzinga[4] suggests three main types of innovation through which a new field gets established:
1. a new discipline develops by virtue of research being focused on a new area (territory) of reality;
2. a new discipline emerges when an earlier field of research and its territory is seen in a new light (perspective shift);
3. a new discipline emerges when new types of knowledge and skills need to be developed.
In the United States, where universities have had a long tradition of training professionals, graduate programmes in adult education began in the 1930s. The firstwas established at Teacher’s College Columbia in 1930 with the first doctorate awarded in 1935. The major growth in the field, however, came in the late 1950s and early 1960s, primarily motivated by the increased need for the training of adult education professionals.
The Scandinavian pattern is quite different. This can be explained by two things. Firstly, Scandinavian universities have traditionally been less responsive to social pressure and have therefore paid less attention to training of professionals, than have their United States counterparts. Secondly, the providers of adult education, often connected to popular social movements, have been suspicious of the universities and the elitist ethos that they portray. However, the political climate in Scandinavia changed in the late 1960s and as a consequence research on the adult education phenomenon has burgeoned. One factor underlying this growth was that adult education became a major public policy issue. While external societal forces led to the growth of adult education in both Scandinavia and North America, Scandinavia differs in that it was the need for knowledge connected to broad social policies, rather than professionalisation, that led to an explosion in the amount of adult education research being supported.
In order to understand why adult education is not developing as a special field of study in Scandinavia, we have to understand the differences in the degree of specialisation in education. While in Sweden education exists within the faculty of social sciences as a discipline separated from teacher training programmes, this is not the case in North America. By contrast, in North America we often see a faculty of education divided into departments either on the basis of discipline or on the basis of the area of practice. Thus defining adult education as a distinct area in North America is congruent with the way faculties of education are structured; in addition the professional emphasis is clearly embedded in the institutional structure of the university.
A third factor which must be taken into account is the funding for adult education research. A major difference is the large allocation to education from various policy fields: in Sweden, for example, a large amount of educational research including adult education is financed through the National Board of Education’s sectoral R & D fund. It is important to point out that while the impetus for a research project is a policy issue the design and theoretical standard of the project is reviewed by peers according to traditional social science criteria. No equivalent funding mechanism exists in North America.
Structure and function of adult education
It is very difficult to get comparable participation figures across countries. However, there are data on organised adult education from Canada, Norway and Sweden that are similar enough to allow for comparison. In the first two countries the total participation rate is around 19 percent, in Sweden 42 percent. Figures for the U.S. are uncertain as various studies, using different definitions, have arrived at anything ranging from around 12 to 50 percent[5]. The North American figures most comparable to those in Scandinavia come from the National Centre for Education Statistics which in 1981 estimated a participation rate of 12 percent. Allowing for the study not fully taking into account employer sponsored courses and the numbers of full-time students in adult education, the ‘true’ figures for participation may be closer to the Canadian-Norwegian figures, than the 12 percent reported by NCES.
Regardless of participation figures there are two marked differences in the respective structures of adult education. The first is that the formal educational system plays a much larger role in North America than in Scandinavia, while the reverse is true for adult education organised by social movements. Second, in contrast to Scandinavia’s heavy government funding and response to social demands, the North American system is to a large extent market driven, and geared to respond to individual demands. The situation in Sweden reflects the fact that adult education in the 1970s became an integrated part of the Scandinavian countries’ economic and welfare policy. During this period the priority aim of adult education was seen as the attempt to bring about equality, where equality was defined as an equalisation in the possession of various resources (political, economic, cultural and social) among the population.
Participation research
North America
In North America, the voluntary nature of, and market approach to, adult education has made participation a major research topic. In the 1920s we already find systematic studies conducted to find out who participated in adult education and why. Looking at more recent times, 13 percent of all articles published in Adult Education Quarterly during the period 1970-1987 addressed the issue of participation (motives for participation, characteristics of participants, and need identification). A similar figure is reported by Long[6] for research presented at the Adult Education Research Conference, 1971-1980.
Research on participation can be divided into two main categories: descriptive research, and research designed to generate theory (including instrument development). Looking historically, one can detect two changes of interest in participation studies. First, studies are increasingly theoretically sophisticated. Second, perspectives on participation seem to have changed.
Descriptive research has been of two kinds: clientele analysis describing the people participating in a certain programme; and regional and, to a lesser extent, national surveys comparing characteristics of participants to those of non-participants. The earlier comparisons between participants and non-participants, although criticised for lack of theory and sophistication, provide a rather rich and telling picture of the social, cultural and economic differences between participants and non-participants. The motive for conducting these studies varied.
As Courtney’s historical review[7] reveals, early studies were instigated not only by ‘selfish’ institutional motives but also by social concerns. The issue of participation in adult education was related to participation in society in general. Further, although this was not developed to any great extent, there existed an embryo sociological perspective linking participation to social class. This line of research, which had totally dominated the scene in the early years, started to decline in the middle 1960s, although still appearing now and then.
A theoretical concern superseded preoccupation with traditional participation surveys. Most important was a fundamental shift toward an emphasis on motivation. In light of the rather rich descriptive material that already existed, this was a natural development.
Looking at articles by North American scholars in Adult Education Quarterly from 1970 to 1987, there are three times as many articles addressing motivation as there are studies that more directly address differences between participants and non-participants. In fact, while there are a few Scandinavian articles in this journal which deal with participation-non-participation, there is no major empirical North American study comparing participants and non-participants. Judging from this we can suggest that the social concern of earlier studies has been replaced by a concern for theory development. In this process the non-participant seem to have disappeared. Further adult education as a social phenomenon gets replaced by motivation, a psychological phenomenon.
This particular development in approaches to research, with its aim of finding generalisable results based on empirical study, is embedded in and relies on psychological theories in a logical-positivistic paradigm, an approach that accords well with the dominant paradigm of educational research in North America at large.
Inspired by Tough's research[8] another important change that occurred in the 1970s was a shift in research from a narrow preoccupation with participation in education to an interest in participation in learning including both organised education and self-education.
Scandinavia
Although we have been talking about Scandinavia as a generic whole, there are major variations between the countries in the region that are not addressed here. Compared to the US, the interest in participation research is a very recent phenomenon in Scandinavia. This is not surprising given that the Scandinavian countries’ interest in recruitment to adult education is equally new. During the radical reforms in secondary and higher education during the 50s and 60s, little or no attention was paid to recruitment to adult education. This late interest can be contrasted with the fact that during the whole of this century adult education has played a significant role in the Scandinavian countries. It was only when, in the late 1960s, adult education came to be used directly as an instrument for achieving overall social and economic policies that researchers got interested in this area of education. The changed status of adult education was followed by a sharp rise in resources for R & D. In Norway a special institute for R & D in the field of adult education was established in 1976. The development of adult education’s share of the Swedish National Board of Education’s (NBE) R & D increased from eight percent 1972 to 20 percent 1978/79. Corresponding trends can be detected in Denmark.
Judging from the references cited in a bibliography of a Scandinavian countries[9], it seems that research in the respective countries has followed a similar development in research patterns:
- studies aimed at describing participants in a certain type of adult education;
- studies aimed at comparing participants and non-participants with respect to various characteristics;
- studies concentrating on the target group, i.e. the underprivileged.
Descriptions of those who participate led to questions on how they differ from those who do not, and such comparative studies usually concentrate on the differences between various sub-groups. Departing from the overall descriptive approach, focus then shifted to the examination of the interrelation of social and psychological factors among the target group.
Another characteristic of the research is its preoccupation with analysing the effects of various adult education reforms aimed at recruiting disadvantaged groups. Thus, an important research emphasis has been on ‘ideals and realities’ in adult education. These studies analyse social forces underlying the reforms, the ideology of reforms, reform strategies, and they go on to address the effects of various reforms in relation to goals, strategies and allocated resources. The development of this line of research, especially in Sweden, has benefited enormously from the availability of two kinds of data: a) national statistics on adult education participation; and national social indicators and b) the availability of large longitudinal data banks. Scandinavian researchers have, with rare exceptions, not addressed participation in learning projects as defined by Tough and are generally sceptical to the redefinition that has occurred in the field.
One way of classifying research is to look at degree of social urgency and intradisciplinary importance.
Official documents from Parliament, Government Commissions and local authorities show that not only was adult education integrated into the general educational policy of the Scandinavian countries but it also constituted one of the areas of highest priority. Thus it can be concluded that the research conducted on participation has been carried out under the pressure of a high degree of social concern.
The degree of intradisciplinary importance depends among other things on whether the research opens up new scientific territory, poses new questions concerning old problems, confirms previously tentative findings, and creates or refines new methods. Research of little intradisciplinary importance is not necessarily bad research. Presentations of facts and conclusions can be correct, of good quality, and also important in relation to the degree of social urgency. I have argued elsewhere[10] that Scandinavian research into adult education participation is marked by the lack of analytical approaches. Studies mainly have been concerned with describing who takes part in adult education, particularly with regard to different statistical background factors such as age, education and social status. More often than not, researchers have been content to describe their own findings without relating them to the findings which have emerged from comparable investigations.
However, since the late 1970s it has been possible to notice in the different Scandinavian countries the beginnings of efforts not only to describe but also to explain the phenomenon of participation. This effort has been largely concerned with integrating research on participation in adult education with social science research in general, by proceeding from theories of more general character. In view of the fact that much interest has centred around ‘ideals and realities’ and the intersection between state, adult education provision and individual behaviour, it is understandable that sociology and social theory have had a relatively strong influence on recent theoretical work. This is not to deny that social psychology also has played an important role in this research; indeed in that it acknowledges the social character of individual thought it plays its part in what Berger and Luckmann call ‘the social construction of reality’.
Discussion
There are marked differences in the approach to participation research, as we note in the above discussion. These differences have to be understood in the larger context of the impact social and cultural traditions have on research[11]. The United States, with its decentralised political and economic system, places a research emphasis on social mobility for the individual; Scandinavia, with its greater degree of state involvement and emphasis on collective change, fosters a research focus on the interaction between social structure and individual behaviour.
In addition, the differences in the academic environment also play a major role in determining research traditions. The growing concern about intradisciplinary research in North America, with its concomitant scepticism about borrowing from other disciplines, is linked to the institutional fact of adult education's development as a separate discipline. The Scandinavian countries’ efforts to ‘discipline’ adult education research has, in contrast, been viewed as unrealistic and undesirable. Scandinavia has been guided in its cartography of adult education by a social urgency complemented by special funding for theoretically oriented research.
A particular strength of Scandinavian research is that the social and, particularly, political concern with adult education has resulted in large research projects providing rich data not only on individual behaviour but also on its interrelation to social contexts. Its weakness has been its negligence toward the creation of adult education as a distinct field of study. The situation in North America is the reverse: it has concentrated in building a cumulative body of knowledge but with a focus on the individual, a fact not surprising given its limited policy emphasis and lack of a comparable data base to that of Scandinavia.