Introducing Neuroeducational Research by Howard Jones Paul;Jones Paul Howard;

Author:Howard Jones, Paul;Jones, Paul Howard;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Taylor & Francis Group
Published: 2010-08-15T00:00:00+00:00

Experiential methods of investigation

In some structured interviews aimed at collecting participants’ experiences, the information provided and the questions presented can focus a respondent's attention on a set of very specific issues in a very specific manner. For example, when exploring learners’ experiences with a teaching strategy, it seems reasonable to ask teachers when they use such a strategy in their lessons. Here, the researcher may decide that meanings are so aligned to a particular data gathering context that the coding can be based securely on these, with interpretations ‘anchored in the external appropriate reality’(Swift, 2006). In this case, it might be assumed that the researcher and participants share some similar sense of what ‘using a strategy’ means. But in interviews that aspire to capture the respondent's authentic experience, any assumption that the researcher shares a common set of meanings with their participants is more questionable. Indeed, the ‘appropriate reality’ of each participant must be part of what is being investigated, if we are to understand their meaning in what they are saying. For example, in a study of how learners value a strategy in their learning, it cannot be assumed that a researcher can pre-guess how their participant will approach the issue, the way in which he/she will want to express their experiences or even what questions or prompts the researcher should use to illicit the most valuable responses. On studying a recording of the interview, there may be many important clues in the language, terms and intonation used, but to predefine clear codes by which to identify these appears premature – how can the researcher already know what they are looking for? That creates a classic chicken and egg situation: interpretation is required in order to generate appropriate codes, yet codes are required in order to make the interpretation. Of course, a similar problem can arise in the type of qualitative interpretation of social evidence discussed above, when analysing social discourse and observations of social behaviour, but the aim of collecting someone else's authentic experience makes the determination of meaning (i.e. their meaning, rather than the researcher's) more problematic.

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