LCT in mixed-methods research: evolving an instrument for quantitative data

Maton, Karl; Howard, Sarah Katherine

Title: LCT in mixed-methods research: evolving an instrument for quantitative data
Creator: Maton, Karl, Howard, Sarah Katherine
Date: 2016
Type: text
Type: book
Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/66479
Identifier: vital:28954
Description: publisher version
Description: A mantra of social science declares a fundamental divide between the quantitative and the qualitative that involves more than methods. According to this depiction, the two methodologies are intrinsically associated with a range of ontological, epistemological, political and moral stances. Each of these constellations of stances is strongly integrated, such that choice of method is held to involve a series of associated choices. Each constellation is also strongly opposed to the other, along axes labelled positivism/constructivism, scientism/humanism, conservative/critical, old/new, among others. These ‘binary constellations’ (Maton 2014b: 148-70) offer a forced choice between two tightly-knit sets of practices that are portrayed as jointly exhaustive and mutually exclusive. So widespread is this methodological binarism that many scholars ‘are left with the impression that they have to pledge allegiance to one research school of thought or the other’ (Johnson and Onwuegbuzie 2004: 14). A competing mantra disclaims this divide. Distinctions underpinning the picture of binary constellations have been regularly dissolved. Arguments that one deals with numbers, the other with words, one studies behaviour, the other reveals meanings, one is hypothetico-deductive, the other inductive, one enables generalization, the other explores singular depth, among others, have been repeatedly undermined (e.g. Hammersley 1992). Indeed, the death of the divide is frequently declared. Calls for ‘transcending’ (Salomon 1991) or ‘getting over’ (Howe 1992) the quantitative-qualitative debate and arguments for mixed-methods research (Brannen 2005; Johnson and Onwuegbuzie 2004) are recurrent. These calls highlight how the methodologies offer complementary insights for research and demonstrate that eschewing either methodology on principle is unnecessarily renouncing potential explanatory power. However, the call to mixed-methods research remains more breached than honoured. Methodological monotheism remains dominant – studies of education and society typically adopt either quantitative or qualitative methods. As we shall discuss, the former is typically associated with the influence of psychology and the latter is often claimed as emblematic of sociology. Studies utilizing the sociological frameworks on which Legitimation Code Theory (LCT) builds have echoed this pattern by overwhelmingly adopting qualitative methods. Accordingly, Part I of this volume begins by exploring how LCT concepts can be enacted in qualitative research (Chapter 2). However, LCT is not limited to one methodology and a growing body of mixed-methods research is engaging with both qualitative and quantitative data. In this chapter we illustrate how this research works and the gains it offers. For resolutely qualitative researchers, the prospect of reading anything quantitative, even in mixed-methods research, may be unenticing. However, it would be a mistake to pass over this chapter, for several reasons. First, we offer insights into research practice that might surprise such scholars. As Bourdieu argued, ‘methodological indictments are too often no more than a disguised way of making a virtue out of necessity, of feigning to dismiss, to ignore in an active way, what one is ignorant of in fact’ (Bourdieu and Wacquant 1992: 226). Our aim is to contribute towards removing this reason for one-sidedness. We show, for example, how quantitative methods confound their common portrayal as neat, straightforward and procedural; they are complex and involved and require craft work and judgement. Our focus is, therefore, more practical than metaphysical. We shall not enter seemingly endless debates over whether the ‘quantitative-qualitative divide’ refers to paradigms, epistemologies or methods and whether these are complementary or incommensurable. Rather, we discuss the development of an instrument for enacting LCT concepts in quantitative methods and ground this account in real examples of mixed-methods research. Specifically, we trace the evolution of an instrument for embedding specialization codes within questionnaires through its creation for research into school music and then its development within studies of educational technology. Given that mathematics can be off-putting to the noviciate, we minimize discussion of statistics and explain measures in lay terms. Second, this is much more than a story of quantitative methods. The evolution of the instrument both shaped qualitative methods and was shaped by the data they generated, offering insights into how qualitative research can more fully engage with LCT. Its development also involved intimate dialogue with theory that shed fresh light on LCT itself, making explicit the ‘gaze’ embodied by the framework (Chapter 1, this volume). We shall highlight wider lessons learned about the craft of enacting LCT in research, lessons of direct relevance for studies using any methods. Third, we shall illustrate the explanatory power offered by using quantitative and qualitative methods together, such as providing a robust basis for detailed findings, identifying wider-scale trends typically inaccessible to qualitative methods that provide a context for their data, and facilitating knowledge-building through greater replicability across contexts and over time. For example, the technology studies built directly on the music studies to cumulatively develop the instrument and generated probably the largest data set in code sociology: 97,386 responses (83,937 student and 13,449 staff surveys) on the organizing principles of academic subjects, alongside 20 in-depth qualitative case studies of secondary schools. This offers a foundation of substantial breadth and depth for making claims about knowledge practices across the disciplinary map and a firm basis on which future research into disciplinary differences can build. Moreover, the quantitative instrument itself can be adopted or adapted in new studies, further enabling cumulative knowledge-building. Given these substantive, methodological and theoretical gains, it is perhaps surprising there exists any temptation to skip past discussion of mixed-methods research. This reflects the methodological character of the fields in which LCT emerged. We thus begin by briefly illustrating how the sociological frameworks on which the theory builds have become distanced from quantitative methods.
Format: pdf
Publisher: Routledge
Language: English
Relation: Knowledge-building: Educational studies in Legitimation Code Theory, Maton, Karl and Howard, S.K. (2016) LCT in mixed-methods research: evolving an instrument for quantitative data. In: Maton, Karl, Hood, Susan and Shay, Suellen (editors) (2015) Knowledge-building Educational studies in Legitimation Code Theory.p. 27-48. Routledge., Knowledge-building: Educational studies in Legitimation Code Theory volume number 49 71 2015 978-0-415-69233-5
Rights: Routledge
Rights: Use of this resource is governed by the terms and conditions of the National Library of South Africa Copyright Act (http://www.nlsa.ac.za/downloads/Copyright%20Act.pdf)

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