Introduction
When it comes to conducting interpretative analysis of a particular sociological or educational issue, it is of crucial importance to ensure that this analysis provides readers with objective insight into the issue, throughout its entirety. Therefore, while analyzing the subject matter, researchers must always strive to adjust their study to the principles of structural and semiotic appropriateness. In their article “A set of principles for conducting and evaluating interpretive field studies in information systems”, Heinz Klein and Michael Myers promote essentially the same idea: “While we agree that interpretive research does not subscribe to the idea that a pre-determined set of criteria can be applied in a mechanistic way, it does not follow that there are no standards at all by which interpretive research can be judged” (1999, p. 68). Thus, it is only when an interpretative analysis is being conducted along the lines of intellectual integrity, which provides it with academic credibility. In our paper, we will explore this thesis even further, while reviewing Gillean McCluskey’s qualitative study “Exclusion from school: What can ‘included’ pupils tell us?” and defining the degree of this study’s compatibility with seven principles of qualitative analysis, as outlined by Heinz Klein and Michael Myers.
The summary of McCluskey’s study
The main goal of McCluskey’s study was to define whether educators’ attitude towards the practice of disciplinary exclusion, as the ultimate tool of enforcing educational discipline, matches that of students, because it is namely the failure of Britain’s educational system to address students’ existential concerns, which author assumes to be the root of this country’s educational problems: “Indiscipline in schools in the UK continues to be the subject of fierce debate. The views of young people as pupils in these schools continue to be marginalized despite their centrality to this debate and their ability to offer a unique set of perspectives” (2006, p. 447). Such McCluskey’s hypothesis prompted her to choose in favor of conducting a qualitative analysis of students’ attitudes towards the issue of exclusion, as the author had rightly concluded that the application of the quantitative methodology in this particular case could hardly be considered fully appropriate, especially given the fact that the subject matter’s subtleties are being in the state of constant transition.
It is namely the fact that educators lack the insight into students’ perception of exclusion, which the author refers to as such that contributes substantially to the rates of exclusion in Britain’s secondary schools being continuously increased: “This lack of success in bringing about effective and positive change raises a series of important and urgent questions about current approaches and understanding of the issues surrounding indiscipline and exclusion” (2006, p. 448). Thus, this McCluskey’s suggestion served as a legitimate justification for her intention to proceed with tackling the issue by the mean of interpretative analysis – unlike what it is the case with quantitative (positive) epistemology, the qualitative one is being concerned with defining inner impulsion behind a particular sociological phenomenon, rather than with outlining such phenomenon’s quantitative effects onto surrounding reality.
McCluskey proceeded with conducting the empirical part of her study as follows: 1) 46 students (25 girls and 21 boys) from Scotland’s four secondary schools were randomly selected to serve as the study’s sample. 2) The sample was subsequentially divided into 4 groups with 9-14 students in each. 3) Students from each group participated in “disruption cards” and “concentric conversations” group work exercises. 4) After these exercises’ completion, students were presented with a behavioral questionnaire, to define the qualitative subtleties of their reactions to the issue of academic exclusion. 5) Study’s empirical data has been collected, analyzed, interpreted, and consequentially utilized to provide McCluskey’s research project with sociological soundness.
The study’s findings had brought the author to the following set of conclusions, in regards to the issue of disciplinary exclusion in Britain’s schools: 1) Educators’ justification for applying disciplinary exclusion to particularly unruly students, based on the assumption that considerations of ensuring student majority’s well-being overrule the considerations of providing behaviorally-inadequate students with a “second chance”, cannot be considered fully valid, due to this assumption’s conceptual fallacy: “The findings from this study reveal that these same pupils (belonging to ‘hard-working majority’) are simultaneously highly critical of school responses to indiscipline and involved in that same indiscipline” (2006, p. 458). This conclusion resonates with the foremost idea, promoted by McCluskey’s study: “As long as current discussion about a need for increased discipline in schools is underpinned by a discourse of the ‘disrupted’ and the ‘disruptive’, there is a highly problematic conceptual distinction” (2006, p. 461). 2) Teachers should adopt a more flexible attitude towards “underprivileged” students’ inability to adjust their behavior to euro-centric norms of educational conduct, to increase the levels of multicultural tolerance in British society and also to provide troublesome students with the prospect of attaining social prominence in the future: “The connections between disciplinary exclusion and social exclusion, but also broader constructions of less visible exclusion and marginalization, are all important aspects of understanding what exclusion means to pupils in school” (2006, p. 449). 3) The practice of designing educational policies must include the recognition of students’ opinions towards these policies as its integral component: “The views of young people are worthy of serious consideration. They raise a new, much larger set of questions about schools and schooling” (2006, p. 459). Thus, it appears that despite McCluskey study’s formal objectiveness, its conclusions nevertheless correspond to what represents the ultimate goal of promoters of neo-Liberal agenda in the field of country’s public education – discrediting euro-centrically defined concept of educational discipline, eliminating the objective standards for measuring the extent of students’ academic successfulness and transforming Britain’s schools from being the places of learning into the places of socialization.
In the next part of this paper, we will conduct a detailed analysis of suggestions, contained in McCluskey’s study, while utilizing Klein and Myers’ seven principles of interpretive field research as the conceptual framework for such an analysis.
Critique
The Fundamental Principle of the Hermeneutic Circle
Klein and Myers define this principle of qualitative research as being primarily concerned with the researcher’s ability to understand how a particular study’s implications correspond to its overall metaphysical significance: “The idea of the hermeneutic circle suggests that we come to understand a complex whole from preconceptions about the meanings of its parts and their interrelationships” (1999, p. 71). When we take a closer look at how McCluskey proceeded with conducting her study, it will appear that she remained fully aware of this principle, throughout the study’s entirety, because in “Exclusion from school: What can ‘included’ pupils tell us?” the inductive and deductive principles of scientific inquiry are being applied interchangeably.
For example, McCluskey begins her study by coming up with a deductive suggestion that it is utterly wrong to assess the actual significance of academic exclusion as a “thing in itself”, simply because the actual effects of the application of such an exclusion in academia do not correspond to the expected ones: “Today, despite the attempts by national policy to tackle exclusion and despite the resources made available, exclusion and non-attendance rates are rising once more, and the concerns of teachers about indiscipline continue to grow unabated” (2006, p. 448). In its turn, this prompts the author to suggest that exclusions’ low-efficiency must be fundamentally predetermined, rather than being simply an effect of its practitioners’ inability to apply it properly. Such McCluskey’s suggestion automatically implies that to be proven legitimate, it would have to be supported by empirically obtained data, which in its turn, served as the ultimate justification for the author’s decision to embark upon conducting a field study, in the first place.
After having researched the subject matter thoroughly, by the mean of carrying out a sociological experiment over the sample of secondary school students, McCluskey’s goes back to explain how her inductive research substantiates the study’s initial thesis: “There is much to learn from these findings and how they might usefully offer comment on current understandings of ‘authority’ and ‘discipline’ in schools” (2006, p. 460). In other words, in her article McCluskey had proven herself fully capable of understanding the epistemological technicalities of how “part” relates to a “whole” and vice versa. Thus, we can say that McCluskey’s study has been conducted in full compliance with the first principle of qualitative research.
The Principle of Contextualization
The principle of contextualization refers to the recent developments in Western philosophical thought, conceptualized by Hans-Georg Gadamer and Michel Michel Foucault. According to both philosophers, the actual significance of a particular political, cultural, or scientific idea cannot be discussed outside of its historical context, simply because it is the existence or non-existence of historically predetermined public discourses, which reflect the degree of various ideas’ acuteness. In “History of sexuality”, Foucault states: “Discourse can be both an instrument and an effect of power, but also a hindrance, a stumbling block, a point of resistance and a starting point for an opposing strategy. Discourse transmits and produces power; it reinforces it, but also undermines it and exposes it, renders it fragile and makes it possible to thwart it” (1978, p. 101). In his article “The Hermeneutic Circle”, Hans-Georg Gadamer comes up with a differently formulated but essentially the same suggestion: “The idea of an absolute reason is not a possibility for historical humanity. Reason exists for us only in concrete, historical terms, it is not its own master but always remains dependent on the given circumstances in which it participates. History does not belong to us; we belong to it” (1962, p. 239). Thus, it is a matter of crucial importance for just about any researcher to make sure that he/she fully understands the historical limitations of a particular idea that is being promoted in his/her work.
Unfortunately, the analysis of McCluskey’s study leaves no doubt as to the fact that, while conducting it, the author remained utterly ignorant that it is only within the context of today’s neo-Liberal public discourse, concerned with issues of “tolerance”, “multiculturalism”, “sexism” and “male chauvinism”, that her study’s conclusions could be taken into consideration. The study’s very introduction invariantly points out at author’s inability to discuss educational problematics as such that does not necessarily relate to current political trends: “In 1997, when the new Labour government came to power, it made a direct and powerful commitment to reducing social exclusion” (2006, 447). Besides the fact that this line implies that there can be no alternative to New Labor governing, it also reveals the author’s unawareness of a simple fact that it was named after neo-Liberal sophisticates, operating under the disguise of “spokesmen on behalf of working people”, had taken over governmental offices, that the creation of educational “pro-tolerance” discourse became possible, in the first place.
After all, even as recent as 20 years ago, it would never occur to British educators that there might have been anything wrong with the practice of applying disciplinary exclusion to misbehaving students. The reason why this issue has recently caught the attention of the public eye is that, ever since they came to power, Laborites began to actively undermine the very notion of educational discipline as utterly euro-centric and therefore “evil”. Thus, the ideas contained in “Exclusion from school: What can ‘included’ pupils tell us?” will only remain valid for as long as the practice of designing educational policies in this country continues to be affected by political considerations, on the part of promoters of “multiculturalism” in governmental offices. However, there are many good reasons to believe that it is only a matter of a very short time before this will cease to be the case, due to ordinary citizens’ growing discontent with New Labor governance as such that causes this country a great deal of harm.
The Principle of Interaction between the Researchers and the Subjects
In their article, Klein and Myers have made a perfectly good point, while suggesting that qualitative research implies the creation of an “additional meaning” to the purpose of such research, because during the process, researchers’ initial view on the essence of a researched issue often gets to be altered, due to a variety of different socially-defined factors. One of these factors is research participants’ apparent ability to understand the full scope of motivational considerations, behind the researcher’s field activities: “Interpretive researchers must recognize that the participants, just as much as the researcher can be seen as interpreters and analysts” (1999, p. 74). In its turn, this presents scientists with the challenge of establishing a psychological trust with study subjects, while remaining unaffected by these people’s existential anxieties. The application of this suggestion to McCluskey’s study reveals both: 1) the high degree of author’s sociological competence (the participants of a study were selected to represent a crosscut sampler of British secondary school population), 2) McCluskey’s lowered ability to remain unaffected by socialization with the subjects of her research.
The author had failed to realize that it is conceptually inappropriate to treat the subjects of sociological research as such that are being capable of exerting influence onto the system of coordinates, within the context of which these people’s existential anxieties are being discussed (the same thesis can be applied to explain why government’s attempts to regulate the functioning of economy can never be truly effective – apparently, government itself never ceases to remain economy’s subject). This is why McCluskey’s study’s conclusions appear to be affected by the opinions of those who participated in the research, which can hardly be considered academically appropriate because it intensifies doubts as to the researcher’s intellectual integrity.
This also explains why at the end of her study, McCluskey ended up adopting students’ opinion on the issue of discipline as the only legitimate one: “Young people’s sense of ‘discipline’ or ‘dominion’, then, is perhaps both broader and more finely textured” (2006, p. 460), without realizing the conceptual fallaciousness of such her stance, simply because students are simply not in a position of offering alternative semiotics to the notion of discipline, because they never cease remaining discipline’s subjects.
The Principle of Abstraction and Generalization
Given the fact that in her study McCluskey does not specify research participants’ racial affiliation, it appears that study’s implications were originally meant to be endowed with universal sounding – that is, students’ discontent with how the principle of academic exclusion is being implemented by teachers in the places of learning should also be the part of educational realities just about anywhere. As Klein and Myers had put it: “Intrinsic to interpretive research is the attempt to relate particulars as may be described under the principle of contextualization to very abstract categories; unique instances can be related to ideas and concepts that apply to multiple situations” (1999, p. 75). Yet, even the brief inquiry into the subject matter points out the fact that this is far from being the case – the conclusions of McCluskey’s study simply do not relate to the specifics of educational challenges abroad. For example, in his article “Education pressure cooker: Social Darwinism and status ranking in Asia”, David Ho says: “The Hong Kong educational system functions like a huge machine, sorting students into institutions ranked hierarchically and warping their development in the process. Schools vie against one another in fierce competition, striving to rank among the top, or at least not at the bottom” (2009). Even in Hong Kong’s elementary schools, the studying emphasis is being firmly placed on hard sciences – math and geometry. By the time children reach 12 years old, they are expected to know how to solve complex mathematical equations. Moreover, they are also expected to act uniformly, with even the slightest indications of misbehavior, on their part, being addressed in a rather severe manner.
Nevertheless, despite the sheer harshness of an educational process in Oriental countries, it never occurs to Asian students to complain about teachers’ lack of fairness, for as long as the issue of academic exclusion is being concerned. The same applies to pupils of Asian descent in British secondary schools – these youngsters do not only score the highest, during IQ tests, but they also seem to have no problems whatsoever, while adjusting their behavior to correspond to British educational standards. Therefore, the suggestions contained in McCluskey’s study can be referred to as anything but universally applicable, simply because it is namely the representatives of racial minorities (except for British-Chinese), who “suffer” from the “harshness” of the practice of disciplinary exclusion.
While realizing this fact perfectly well, McCluskey’s nevertheless strived to conceal its lack of intellectual honesty by making a brief reference to “underprivileged” students as those that are being particularly vulnerable: “It is clear that certain groups of young people are much more likely than others to experience disciplinary exclusion… These include pupils from poorer families, children with learning difficulties, those from families with experience of multiple house moves… African-Caribbean boys” (2006, p. 449). Yet, despite the author’s admission as to the existence of the whole categories of pupils that are being metaphysically alienated from the concept of educational discipline by particularities of their genetic makeup, she did not incorporate this admission into the study’s core. In its turn, this significantly undermines the validity of the study’s conclusions. Thus, even though McCluskey’s study contains numerous generalizations as to how pupils perceive the practice of academic exclusion, these generalizations appear to be utterly unsubstantiated.
The Principle of Dialogical Reasoning
The principle of dialogical reasoning corresponds to the researcher’s ability to recognize its prejudices, in regards to the studied subject, without striving to eliminate them, as positivist researchers do. In their article, Klein and Myers provide us with a theoretical framework for the application of dialogical reasoning within the context of conducting an interpretative study: “Hermeneutics recognizes that prejudice is the necessary starting point of our understanding… Of course, the suspension of our prejudices is necessary if we are to begin to understand a text or text analog. But as Gadamer points out, this does not mean that we simply set aside our prejudices. Rather, it means that we, as researchers, must become aware of our own historicity” (1999, p. 76). When we apply this suggestion to McCluskey’s study, it will appear that; whereas the author continued to remain affected by her deep-seated ideological prejudices, in regards to the concept of educational discipline, on one hand, she nevertheless has proven its inability to recognize these prejudices’ actual essence, on another. In its turn, this prevented the author from being able to assess her study’s foremost conclusions critically.
While understanding perfectly well that there must be an objective reason for the process of Britain’s educational standards being continuously lowered (namely –the multiculturalization of British society), McCluskey consciously strived not to focus too much attention on the issue, due to her subconscious fear of accusations of “racism”. For example, it is specifically students’ “dissatisfaction with school systems of discipline and methods of dealing with disruption”, which the author refers to as the explanation for the earlier mentioned tendency.
Yet, it has been noticed since a long time ago that students’ inability to observe the rules of social conduct, while proceeding with their studies, often correlates with their inability to operate with highly abstract categories, due to these students’ low IQ. In its turn, the rate of one’s IQ is being genetically predetermined. In his article “Philosophy of science that ignores science: Race, IQ and heritability”, Neven Sesardic suggested that sociological data, in regards to the link between people’s racial affiliation and their ability to succeed in academia, remains valid, despite its clearly defined racist connotation: “The idea that human races differ in average cranial capacity or brain size sounds to many people like the crudest possible form of racist and pseudoscientific belief. But notice that the belief is nevertheless empirical, and that its truth-value cannot be determined by conceptual analysis or political condemnation” (2000, p. 595). Thus, even though McCluskey study’s argumentation appears to be formally objective, it nevertheless corresponds rather well to the author’s anti-racist prejudices. And, the progressive sounding of these prejudices does not make them less prejudicious.
Therefore, it is namely the set of the author’s personal socio-political beliefs, which affected the study’s conclusions more than anything else did. While promoting the idea that the issue of disciplinary exclusion is being utterly controversial, McCluskey acted as the pusher of the neo-Liberal agenda in the field of British public education. As Martyn Hammersley had rightly noted in his article: “Research and ‘anti-racism’: The case of Peter Foster and his critics”: “Anti-racism’ is not simply a scientific theory (though it seems likely that it is intended as that in part), it is a practical enterprise directed towards changing British society” (1993, p. 442). Thus, given McCluskey’s apparent inability to recognize its stance on the issue of academic exclusion as such that is being affected by her perceptional irrationality, we cannot confirm that “Exclusion from school: What can ‘included’ pupils tell us?” complies with the fifth principle of the methodology of qualitative research, as defined by Klein and Myers.
The Principle of Multiple Interpretations
As we have suggested earlier, “Exclusion from school: What can ‘included’ pupils tell us?” is being marked by a high degree of ideologization. Therefore, it comes as no surprise that in her study McCluskey has failed to provide readers with alternative interpretations of the study’s findings. The foremost idea that the author strived to promote, throughout the study’s entirety, can be formulated as follows: there is no objectively existing difference between students that are being assumed “affected” by academic disruption and those who “cause” such a disruption: “The juxtaposition of the generality’s direct involvement in minor but persistent rule-breaking with such strong views on current discipline processes presents an uncomfortable paradox to those who would see ‘the disruptive’ and ‘the disrupted’ as two quite distinct groups” (2006, p. 461). However, as we are well aware, the paradoxical subtleties of a particular phenomenon imply that it is only by adopting a three-dimensional approach towards analyzing this phenomenon that researchers can endow their conclusions with theoretical soundness. Therefore, the absence of clearly defined difference in how “included” and “excluded” students acted, during workgroup exercises, and how they reacted to the questions contained in the questionnaire, does not necessarily mean that they are being equally dissatisfied with the very practice of disciplinary exclusion as “thing in itself”.
The apparent sameness of study participants’ reactions can be easily interpreted as the ultimate proof of researcher’s incompetence – it might very well be the case that McCluskey had simply failed to invest an adequate amount of effort in designing study’s procedures, which is why students were becoming confused, while being presented with improperly formulated questions in the questionnaire. After all, sociologists are being well aware of the fact that the results of just about any sociological survey can be easily manipulated with by the mean of adjusting survey’s questions to the needs of those who finance these surveys. For example, the question “Do you support government’s intention to increase taxes?” is most likely to trigger strongly negative reaction in respondents. However, if the same question is being redesigned to correspond to respondents’ psychological anxieties: “Do you support government’s intention to increase social spendings?” – people’s reaction to this kind of question is most likely to be positive. Given the fact that McCluskey’s study does not offer alternative interpretations as to the actual significance of obtained empirical data, we are being left with no choice but to refer to it as such that does not quite correspond to the sixth principle of qualitative research.
The Principle of Suspicion
People endowed with strong analytical abilities have long ago noticed an apparent paradox that the number of “Holocaust survivors”, who claim is entitled to monetary compensation for their “suffering” and who charge as much as $20.000 for holding “lectures on Holocaust” in front of student audiences, appear to increase in exponential progression to the flow of time, even though this tendency does not make any logical sense. To explain this seeming “paradox”, we will need to resort to Klein and Myers’ definition of the principle of suspicion, which according to both authors, should be observed by researchers who conduct interpretative studies: “The principle of suspicion requires sensitivity to possible biases and systematic distortions in the narratives collected from the participants” (1999, p. 72). There is no good reason for interpretative researchers to assume that the answers they obtain from respondents do reflect these people’s actual opinions, in regards to the researched subject matter.
As practice shows, the participants of sociological surveys often have a personal interest in misleading researchers, due to a variety of different considerations, on their part. However, given McCluskey’s apparent affiliation with promoters of left-wing agenda, it would be naïve to expect the author being capable of doubting the integrity of students’ responses (students cannot lie – only racist teachers can!), especially if these responses strengthen the validity of study’s main premise.
Nevertheless, there is plenty of indirect evidence in the study as to the fact that, while reacting to presented questions, many students were driven by considerations of personal interest: “One group expressed dislike of a newly imposed school dress code and also mentioned a lack of facilities. Another group, within a school which had undergone extensive refurbishment, also wanted to review the school dress code, while another was concerned about resources and the length of the lunch break” (2006, p. 458). Yet, it never occurred to McCluskey that the subtle indications of students’ insincerity, contained in “Exclusion from school: What can ‘included’ pupils tell us?”, undermine the overall validity of her study’s findings. In its turn, this serves as proof of the author’s failure to observe the principle of suspicion, while conducting qualitative research.
Conclusions
The main conclusions of our analysis of McCluskey’s study can be summarized as follows:
- The only principle of qualitative inquiry that has been fully addressed in “Exclusion from school: What can ‘included’ pupils tell us?”, is the Fundamental Principle of the Hermeneutic Circle.
- The only principle of qualitative inquiry that has been partially observed by McCluskey is the Principle of Interaction between the Researchers and the Subjects.
- The rest of the principles of qualitative study, outlined in Klein and Myers’ article “A set of principles for conducting and evaluating interpretive field studies in information systems”, appear to be absent in McCluskey’s study’s methodological framework.
Given the fact that McCluskey’s study contains strong evidence as to the author’s apparent intelligence, one might wonder how come she has failed at endowing her work with academic credibility in such an obvious manner? The answer to this question is simple – while conducting her study, McCluskey was never able to assess ethical issues through the lenses of historicity. That is, she actively strived to adjust the study’s findings to resonate with the currently dominant political ideology of neo-Liberalism, simply because of her irrational commitment to the idea that this world can be made a better place to live if people are being forced to embrace “tolerance”. It is due to McCluskey’s highly ethical stance on the subject of her research, which does not allow us to consider the study’s conclusions seriously – apparently, it never dawned upon the author that ethical considerations simply can have no place within a context of a scientific inquiry, unless we talk about the “science” of theology.
Martyn Hammersley’s article “The issue of quality in qualitative research” contains a particularly valuable observation as to what should be considered the foremost indication of a scientist’s academic indiscretion – his or her conscious strive to utilize its research project as the instrument of pursuing a political agenda: “There are quite a lot of qualitative researchers today who insist that research ought to be political in this sense: that it should aim at the eradication of social inequality of various kinds, that it should improve the lives of some group of people (children, for example), that it should serve the goals of education or of some political cause. It is not hard to see that this is likely to lead to incommensurable paradigms reflecting sharply divergent orientations; unless one holds to the enlightenment idea that there is a single all embracing conception of ‘the good’ that will be recognized (at least eventually) by everyone” (2007, 294). It appears that McCluskey’s study has been conducted along the lines of left-wing political activism, which is why there is not even a single precondition for the study’s conclusions to be recognized as academically credible if being thoroughly scrutinized. As we have mentioned earlier – every qualitative study features the elements of opinionated. However, for such a study to be still considered more or less objective, its author must be capable of recognizing these elements for what they are. Unfortunately, this cannot be said about McCluskey – while trying to sound particularly “progressive”, she had lost sight of the fact that the study’s conclusions can be interpreted in a variety of different ways and that her commitment to the idea of “multicultural fairness” may not be shared by others.
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