- the principles of ‘grounded theory’ applied to chemical education research.
Post-Inductive Resonance?
:
the principles of
‘grounded theory’
applied to
chemical education research
a paper presented to the
4th European Conference on Research in Chemical Education
at the University of York
9th - 12th September 1997
Keith S. Taber
(then of Havering College of Further and Higher Education
& Roehampton Institute, London.)
Correspondence:
Dr. Keith S. Taber
http://www.educ.cam.ac.uk/staff/taber.html
http://people.pwf.cam.ac.uk/kst24/
University of Cambridge Faculty of Education
184 Hills Road
Cambridge CB2 8PQ
United Kingdom
Abstract
This paper suggests that the principles of ‘grounded theory’ may provide researchers with a way of moving from the particular to the general, when undertaking qualitative chemical education research.
The context of the paper is a research project into the development of learners’ understanding of chemical bonding during the A level chemistry course (i.e. University entrance level in the U.K.) This project has used in-depth case studies of individual learners in a longitudinal research design, to investigate in detail the changing ideas of a limited number of students. Case studies are not intended to be generalisable, but the principles of ‘grounded theory’ suggest they may be used as a starting point for developing authentic models of wider relevance. Such models have the advantage of emerging from the data, rather than being dependent on predetermined categories used in the research. They are also capable of being tested by traditional hypothetico-deductive techniques.
The nature of grounded theory research relies on the ability of the analyst to undertake detailed coding of research data, and to become so familiar with the material that categories ‘emerge’ and are refined by a process that is here labelled post-inductive resonance. Research results are interpretations, akin to those of anthropologists, but their authenticity may be validated by the liberal presentation of illustrative data, as well as by subsequent testing using simple survey procedures.
The paper shows how, through a grounded theory approach, a model of factors influencing student learning about chemical bonding was produced. In particular, the research suggested that an alternative conceptual framework based around the octet rule may be a significant block to progression for many students. The main aspects of the alternative framework are presented, and the consequences for teaching about chemical bonding are discussed.
Plan of this paper:
1. Research paradigms in educational research:where the distinction between interpretive and normative enquiry and the nature of educational research are considered;
2. The problem of induction:where the origins of our hypotheses (and analytical categories) are considered to be problematic, and where the need for systematic authentication is explored.
3. Grounded theory: where a set of procedures for producing authentic analytical categories is discussed.
4. The application of grounded theory to chemical education: where the application of grounded theory principles to the ‘understanding chemical bonding’ project is discussed.
5. A model of developing understanding of the concept of chemical bonding: where the results of the ‘understanding chemical bonding’ project are outlined as a grounded theory that may be tested through traditional hypothetico-deductive techniques.
6. Conclusions:where it is suggested that the grounded theory approach may bridge the interpretative-normative divide, and provide researchers with a means to build authentic models of learning in chemistry.
Appendix: grounded theory should be open to testing by standard hypothetico-deductive methods.
1. Research paradigms in educational research:where the distinction between interpretive and normative enquiry and the nature of educational research are considered;
“The documentation of students’ scientific conceptions and the way these progress is a field of work that has its roots in the ethnographic tradition with its recognition of the centrality of personal meaning and of individual and cultural differences. Yet despite this orientation, there appears to be strong messages about apparent commonalities in students’ conceptions that may have implications for future directions of work in this field.”
(Driver, 1989, p.488, emphasis added.)
Mortimore points out that “educational researchers usually have taken their degrees in other subjects and have frequently worked in different traditions” (1991, p.210). Research in education takes a number of forms, however, the most well recognised division is between those studies which seek general statistically valid conclusions about some average epistemic subject, and which seek to negate the effects of individual differences and idiosyncrasies - perhaps described in terms such as objective, positivist, the natural scientific view, paradigm 1, the erklären tradition, nomothetic, scientific, experimental, and traditional - and those studies which deliberately focus on understanding the individual - perhaps described in terms such as subjective, the interpretive view, the verstehen tradition, paradigm 2, holistic and naturalistic - (Carr & Kemmis, 1986, p.62; Cohen and Manion, 1989, p.9; Gilbert and Watts, 1983; p.64 Walford, 1991b, p.2).
Reynolds has described “an intellectual either/or situation where the two oppositional groups used only one method each, a method which in both cases was supported and buttressed by a supporting ideology about the nature of social science knowledge” (1991, p.194). This can lead to “clashes among researchers with different purposes who tend to see the others as engaged in the same enterprise as themselves, but simply doing it badly” (Hammersley, 1993b, p.xix).
My research has concerned student understanding of chemical bonding. The purpose of my study was to investigate the development of understanding, and therefore it was necessary to work with the same individuals at different stages in their courses so that I could observe any changes in their thinking. In order to understand how students relate their ideas about chemical bonding it was necessary to use sequences of questions that went beyond finding-out which diagrams were considered to include bonds, and which categories of chemical bond were used, but to ask ‘why’ each response was given until a detailed picture of the colearners’ thinking - their intuitive theories or alternative frameworks - emerged. [1]
Pope and Denicolo have suggested “that the very choice of intuitive theories as a focus of investigation represents an epistemological stance consistent with the qualitative-interpretative approach” (Pope & Denicolo, 1986, p.154, italics in original). As Driver points out “in order to investigate such alternative frameworks, pupils’ thinking has to be probed in some detail; it is the reasons pupils give for their answers, not the answers themselves, which are important” (Driver, 1983, p.26).
Chemical bonding is an abstract topic where it is common practice to switch between alternative - but scientifically accepted - models and different ‘levels of explanation’ (Taber, 1995a), and where it is reasonable to conjecture that a learner’s ideas could be confused and multifaceted. From a constructivist viewpoint we might say that learners could have ‘multiple frameworks’ for understanding this topic area.
In order to discuss changes in student thinking it was therefore necessary to work with students intensely so that as much as possible of the complexity and nuances of their ideas could be revealed. In effect, a case-study approach was required. By definition, a case study is “the examination of an instance in action” and is said to involve “some commitment to the study and portrayal of the idiosyncratic and the particular as legitimate in themselves” (Walker, 1993, pp.163-195). However, it was my intention to identify any “apparent commonalities in students’ conceptions” (to borrow Driver’s phrase from the motto above), to attempt to devise a model of developing student understanding of chemical bonding that might have some more general applicability.
Some commentators have criticised the apparent dichotomy of approaches discussed above (Atkinson & Delamont, 1993, p.214; Carr and Kemmis, 1986, p.105; Delamont & Hamilton, 1993, p.26, p.36; Hammersley, 1993c, p.47; May, 1993, p.26; Walford, 1991b, p.2).
Car and Kemmis (1986, p.108) argue that as research in education is a practical activity (rather than the seeking of knowledge for its own sake as in ‘pure’ science), undertaken to solve educational (i.e. practical) problems - that is where there is perceived “a gap between a practitioner’s theory and practice” (p.112) - so “the purpose of educational research is to develop theories that are grounded in the problems and perspectives of educational practice” (p.122, my emphasis). From this action-research perspective educational research would be undertaken by the practitioner-researcher (Carr & Kemmis, 1986, p.158, p.165; Elliott, 1991, p.49; Hustler et al., 1986, p.3, May, 1993, p.28; Stenhouse ,1993, p.222). Carr and Kemmis refer to grounded theory where the “relevant concepts, hypotheses and problems must be inductively developed from the ‘raw data’ provided by a study of the substantive area” (p.125, my emphasis).
2. The problem of induction:where the origins of our hypotheses (and analytical categories) are considered to be problematic, and where the need for systematic authentication is explored.
In the positivist model of science derived from Bacon, an observer notices a pattern inherent in the data, and then sets about testing the hypothesised pattern by making a systematic and controlled set of observations, to “interrogate nature to tabulate both the circumstances under which a phenomenon is present and also those under which it is absent” (Bynum et al., 1981, p.203). There are two aspects of this method which may be considered problematic: the process by which patterns are spotted, and the process by which they are validated against nature. The latter aspect is sometimes termed ‘the problem of induction’. The former problem also concerns a process that may be labelled induction: how specific conjectures are induced in the researcher’s mind, that is, the process by which patterns are recognised and categories or concepts initially emerge during analysis. This is a creative act of intuition, or imagination, which can not be justified logically. Koestler suggests that “the particular type of mental activity which takes place in the so-called ‘period of incubation’ [prior to the awareness of an original insight] does not meet the criteria of articulateness and logical decency required for admission into the focal awareness of the wide-awake state” (1982 {1967}, p.361). Kuhn (1970) has pointed out how the development of science often depends on the recognition of the significance of some anomaly, i.e., the interpretation of some datum as not being adequately explained within the existing theory. This is also an act of imagination, that takes the individual beyond the communal view “that blinds him towards truths which, once perceived by a seer, become so heartbreakingly obvious” as Koestler expressed it (1959, p.10).
There are accounts of this moment of inspiration in science, perhaps the most famous being Kekulé’s description of the benzene ring structure. Barbara McClintock, the Nobel prize winning geneticist, has described to her biographer how much of her scientific work depended on a kind of subconscious thinking that she labelled ‘integration’ (Keller, 1983, pp.102-3, p.115). This type of thinking process is not only below the level of conscious awareness, but outside of conscious control, thus Lloyd Morgan’s recommendation to “saturate yourself through and through with your subject, and wait” (as quoted in Koestler, 1982 {1967}, p.363). However, in general this aspect of the scientific process has tended to be ignored, and once a hypothesis has been subjected to rigorous scientific testing, the mysterious nature of its initial induction in the mind is ignored. Indeed, Medawar (1963) claimed that, post-hoc, the hypothesis tends to be presented as if logically emerging from the data that was collected whilst it was being tested; and in this sense the scientific research paper is fraudulent, “because it misrepresents the process of thought that accompanied or gave rise to the work that is described in the paper”, so that “the scientific paper in its orthodox form does embody a totally mistaken conception, even a travesty, of the nature of scientific thought” (Medawar, 1963, p.228, my emphasis).
In my own research there were moments during the analysis of data that I became aware of hypotheses about relevant categories that seemed to describe aspects of the data. Such a hypothesis may be judged to be authentic if it ‘resonates’ with the data: that is if the hypothesis is found to match other parts of the data set, and is not significantly challenged by incommensurate data. In my research I referred to this process of matching, of checking hypothesised categories against data, as post-inductive resonance. It is my belief, based on my own experience of the data analysis, that to a large extent the process of post-inductive resonance occurs at a sub-conscious level. Over a period of time, immersion in a data set leads to the sudden realisation that one has interpretations that seem to fit (‘resonate with’) the data, but which one has not up to that point consciously thought through. One may be able to offer a post-hoc reconstruction of the match between data and interpretation, but one is not able to describe the inductive process. [2]
Medawar’s argument was that induction has at its origin nothing more than guesswork, but that the initial origin of a hypothesis did not invalidate the research which followed. Scientific theory is judged by the match of theory to observation, which is independent of the creative act of forming the initial hypothesis. Whilst Medawar thought this ‘fraud’ gave an unfortunate distortion to accounts of scientific work, this conventionalisation of accounts (often required by journals), did not affect the validity of the conclusions, as these depended on the controlled experimental method.
A problematic aspect of positivist science is the logical impossibility of demonstrating the truth of general statements from any finite set of particular instances: there will always be alternative (albeit perhaps less parsimonious) interpretations that are consistent with a limited data set, and there is always the possibility that the instances not studied would refute the hypothesis. This is formally known as ‘the problem of induction’. Consequently, Popper (1959 {1934}) has discussed how in principle scientists should proceed by conjecture and refutation, and seek falsification rather than confirmation of their theories. Most natural scientists may be considered to work within a disciplinary matrix (after Kuhn) or research programme (after Lakatos) where there is a theoretical core (e.g. Lakatos’ hard core) which is generally considered secure, and which - in practice, rather than in terms of pure logic - effectively limits the range of acceptable interpretations of a data set. For example, within physics or chemistry, carrying out an experiment on a Tuesday rather than a Wednesday would not be considered a variable worth controlling or exploring, and explanations that violate certain conservation laws would not usually be entertained. All such assumptions can only be formally justified in terms of the existing theoretical framework of science, which in Popper’s terms should be considered provisional.