“Bonding in Difference” – Developing a Diverse Approach to Studying Attitudes to Diversity in Education in an Era of Interculturalism and Performativity

Author(s):

Maria Ejlertsen(presenting / submitting)

Conference:

ECER 2017

Network:

Emerging Researchers' Group (for presentation at Emerging Researchers' Conference)

Format:

Paper

Session Information

ERG SES E 11, Social Justice and Education

Paper Session

Time:

2017-08-21

15:30-17:00

Room:

W4.23

Chair:

Pauline Taylor

Contribution

The focus of this paper is on research methodologies and methods for understanding attitudes towards diversity in education in an era of interculturalism and performativity. Applying a deconstructionist and cross-disciplinary lens, current research paradigms, methodologies and methods in the field are mapped and a diverse and integrated approach is proposed.

Two key trends dominate educational policy, research and practice today throughout OECD and European countries. One is the emphasis on intercultural understanding and inclusive quality education for all, reflected through numerous transnational initiatives and national policies and curricula. A parallel, and potentially conflicting, trend is the push for performativity and accountability in education through the normalisation of standardised tests and reporting frameworks, and public ‘league tables’ of academic performance, nationally and transnationally. This puts pressure on schools and students to perform well on relatively narrow measures, arguably leading to increased uniformity. These two trends, along with a third trend of continuous educational reform (Kelchtermans, Ballet, & Piot, 2009), exposes key ‘dilemmas of difference’ found in contemporary education between uniformity and diversity, conformity and difference (Norwich, 2008) and raises the question of how these are addressed in schools (Ball & Olmedo, 2013). In current educational settings, these dilemmas cannot be escaped (Norwich, 2008); however, we can become aware of, and thus influence, the choices we make around them. To this end, awareness and understanding of attitudes towards diversity are key and has been found to be more important for inclusion in education than using specific pedagogical strategies (Spratt & Florian, 2015).

Furthermore, it is increasingly recognised that appreciation of diversity in education goes beyond considering diversity in demographic composition, ability and learning of students and extends to appreciation of ontological, epistemological and axiological diversities (UNESCO, 2015). It is therefore argued that when studying attitudes towards diversity it is necessary for the research itself to employ a diverse approach, which engages with, and values, diverse research disciplines, paradigms, methodologies and methods. This builds on Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak’s view of different theories as situated strategies (Danius, Jonsson, & Spivak, 1993, p. 4), which as such should be used strategically, and takes up the challenge by Schutz, Decuir-Gunby, and Williams-Johnson (2016) in their call for innovative multi-paradigmatic approaches using multiple and mixed methods to study the complexity of in emotions in education. To date, studies on attitudes in education using mixed methods are limited and mostly prioritise quantitative questionnaire surveys, with a secondary attention to qualitative focus group discussions or interviews without overt interrogation of the underlying epistemologies. Furthermore, attitudes are formed by both affective and cognitive processes (Breckler, 1984) and can be more or less implicit (unconscious) or explicit (conscious) (Greenwald, Poehlman, Uhlmann, & Banaji, 2009). However, studies on attitudes in education mainly focus on conscious cognitive responses. There is thus a need for developing an innovative integrated approach to studying attitudes towards diversity in education, which, in addition to using multiple mixed methods, specifies a multi-paradigmatic and cross-disciplinary approach.

The aim of this paper is to develop such an approach to studying attitudes to diversity in education. It does so through asking the following research questions: What research paradigms, methodologies and methods are currently employed across disciplines engaged with researching attitudes and diversity that are relevant to an educational setting? How can these be combined and extended to allow for a diverse approach to studying attitudes towards diversity in schools?

Method

Literature on affective and cognitive, implicit and explicit attitudes relevant to diversity in education is deconstructed and mapped across a range of disciplines, including education, psychology, sociology and human geography, with an emphasis on the underlying research paradigms and the methodologies and methods used. Furthermore, to reflect the highly contextual construction of attitudes towards diversity (Avramidis & Norwich, 2002), innovative literature analysing contextual factors, such as emotions in educational texts (e.g. Rawolle, 2013) and educational spaces and places (e.g. Kraftl, 2016), is also included. Adapting the overall framework by (Carter & Little, 2007) for evaluating research epistemology, methodology and methods, the literature is reconstructed in a matrix according to the research paradigms, methodologies and methods used and analysed for consistency and implicit assumptions. Carter and Little (2007) argues for a pluralistic valuing of research paradigms, methodologies and methods, but maintain the incommensurability of different paradigms. This paper extends their framework by arguing that, with careful attention, different research paradigms can be consumable and complementary. Based on this an innovative multi-paradigmatic approach to studying attitudes to diversity in schools is proposed. The deconstructionist lens adopted in this paper is born out of feministic, queer and postcolonial scholarship, and exemplified by G.C. Spivak in her interview by Alfred Arteaga titled ‘Bonding in difference’ (Arteaga, 1994): “Deconstruction does not say there is no subject, there is no truth, there is no history. It simply questions the privileging of identity so that someone is believed to have the truth” (p. 285). As such, claims of universality are treated with caution. Rather, different research paradigms and disciplines are seen as different facets of the same stone. It is argued we must move and dialogue between different facets in order to get the fullest picture of what is a dynamic, complex and non-linear reality, and that the borderlands (Arteaga, 1994) at the intersection between different paradigms, methodologies and methods are rich and fertile spaces to be explored.

Expected Outcomes

In addition to mapping the research paradigms, methodologies and methods used in literature relevant to attitudes in education across the aforementioned disciplines, the paper proposes a multi-paradigmatic and integrated approach to studying attitudes to diversity in schools. Such an approach is beneficial for stimulating academic discussion of methodologies and methods in education in an intercultural and performative setting, at several levels. Firstly, it proposes and exemplifies a diverse methodological approach which is coherent with the prevailing interculturalistic understanding of diversity which recognises and values epistemological and axiological differences. Secondly, it furthers the discussion of the opportunities and challenges of different research disciplines and methodologies and how these can be combined to best serve the needs of educational policy and practice. Furthermore, it is expected that employing a diverse research approach will encourage new possibilities and collaborations within and between disciplines and research paradigms touched upon. Finally, a key features is the focus on methods for studying the processes and contexts in which attitudes are formed and acted on, rather than solely on the attitudes themselves, thereby enabling understanding and subsequent change.

References

Arteaga, A. (1994). An other tongue : nation and ethnicity in the linguistic borderlands / edited by Alfred Arteaga. Durham: Durham : Duke University Press. Avramidis, E., & Norwich, B. (2002). Teachers' attitudes towards integration / inclusion: a review of the literature. European Journal of Special Needs Education, 17(2), 129-147. doi:10.1080/08856250210129056 Ball, S., & Olmedo, A. (2013). Care of the self, resistance and subjectivity under neoliberal governmentalities. Critical Studies in Education, 54(1), 85-96. doi:10.1080/17508487.2013.740678 Breckler, S. J. (1984). Empirical validation of affect, behavior, and cognition as distinct components of attitude. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 47(6), 1191-1205. doi:10.1037/0022-3514.47.6.1191 Carter, S. M., & Little, M. (2007). Justifying knowledge, justifying method, taking action: epistemologies, methodologies, and methods in qualitative research. Qualitative health research, 17(10), 1316. Danius, S., Jonsson, S., & Spivak, G. C. (1993). An Interview with Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak. boundary 2, 20(2), 24-50. doi:10.2307/303357 Greenwald, A. G., Poehlman, T. A., Uhlmann, E. L., & Banaji, M. R. (2009). Understanding and using the Implicit Association Test: III. Meta-analysis of predictive validity. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 97(1), 17-41. doi:10.1037/a0015575 Kelchtermans, G., Ballet, K., & Piot, L. (2009). Surviving diversity in times of performativity: Understanding teachers' emotional expereince of change. In P. A. Schutz & M. Zembylas (Eds.), Advances in Teacher Emotion Research (pp. 215-232): Dordrect: Springer. Kraftl, P. (2016). Emotional geographies and the study of educational spaces. In M. Zembylas & P. A. Schutz (Eds.), Methodological Advances in Research on Emotion (pp. 151-164). Switzerland: Springer. Norwich, B. (2008). Dilemmas of difference, inclusion and disability : international perspectives and future directions / Brahm Norwich. London: Routledge. Rawolle, S. (2013). Emotions in Education Policy: A Social Contract Analysis of Asymmetrical Dyads and Emotion. In M. Newberry, A. Gallant, & P. Riley (Eds.), Emotion and School: Understanding how the Hidden Curriculum Influences Relationships, Leadership, Teaching, and Learning (pp. 49-60): Emerald. Schutz, P. A., Decuir-Gunby, J. T., & Williams-Johnson, M. R. (2016). Using multiple and mixed methods to investigate emotions in educational contexts. In M. Zembylas & P. A. Schutz (Eds.), Methodological advances in research on emotion and education. Switzerland: Springer. Spratt, J., & Florian, L. (2015). Inclusive pedagogy: From learning to action. Supporting each individual in the context of ‘everybody’. Teaching and Teacher Education, 49, 89-96. doi:10.1016/j.tate.2015.03.006 UNESCO. (2015). Rethinking Education: Towards a Global Commom Good? Retrieved from http://www.unesco.org/new/fileadmin/MULTIMEDIA/FIELD/Cairo/images/RethinkingEducation.pdf

Author Information

Maria Ejlertsen (presenting / submitting)

University of Queensland

School of Education

St Lucia

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