The main goal of this contribution is to present a methodological innovation that expands the analytical potential of ethnographic research. As we know, under certain conditions ethnographic research is able to provide "fuzzy generalizations" (Bassey, 1999; Hammersley, 2001), which lead to the transferability of knowledge from one environment or context to others (Gomm, Hammersley, & Foster, 2000). Nonetheless, it is not easy to bridge the gap between individual characteristics that are made visible by the ethnographic approach and the understanding of a whole situation (i.e. actors and actants interacting in and with the given environment), which is needed in order to provide the research with applicable generalization. That is why we combined ethnographic techniques of gathering data with situational analysis (SA).       

         SA provides us with cartographic tools (Clarke, 2003; 2005) that allow the viewing of the researched environment together with its actors and actants as a dynamic system (Rockwell, 2005; Thelen & Smith, 1998). This is in accord with situational epistemology set by Dewey and developed by his followers (Dewey, 1992, lw.12; Johnson, 2007). SA thus enables researchers to describe a system in which there are no simple linear causal relationships, and yet it is possible to capture the laws and regularities given by the so-called "pragmatic cause" (Rockwell, 2005). This makes it possible to describe such a system and predict its future development without overly idealizing and reducing the initial analytical units of the entire system (quantitative methodology) or focusing on individual non-generalizable cases (qualitative methodology).

         A dynamic system is characterized by: 1) the ongoing interactions of actors and actants with each other and with its environment, 2) the complexity of the interactions, and 3) feedback loops that permanently change the "essence" of relationships, and thus the "essence" of the very system elements (Thompson, 2007). The concurrence of the characteristics gives rise to the emergence of new system properties. However, the two-dimensional nature of the cartographic tools of SA does not allow the visualization and subsequent analysis of these emergent processes.           

         Relational maps allow researchers to find relationships between the basic units of analysis (the so-called "elements"). These relationships (so-called "mechanisms") explain how individual elements contribute to the character of the central element and how they, in this way, influence the whole situation (Clarke, 2005; 2014; Clarke & Montini, 2014). During the construction of the relational map, researchers are led to identify one element as central and in relation to it determine the mechanisms on the basis of which the researched situation is characterized. 

         This fact, however, leads to methodologically significant questions: How to properly determine the central element? Why this and not that element should be depicted as the central element? When we started to think about the very methodological principle on the basis of which SA is constructed, we realized that by using SA we cannot display the relationships among mechanisms. These relations are manifestations of emergent processes that play a key role in understanding any dynamic system. Thus, we realized that we are limited by the very two-dimensional principle of representation of SA.          Inspired by Bachelard's insight into tool-knowledge continuity (1998), the theory of conceptual metaphor (Lakoff & Johnson, 1980; 1999), and the texts about other related themes (see below), we proposed an extension of SA with a three-dimensional representation. In our research, this allowed us to detect processes of de/synchronization.

         Without this innovation, the process of de/synchronization would not be detected and no usable generalization could be presented. The proposed methodological innovation helps researchers doing ethnographic research to construct fuzzy generalizations that strengthen the credibility and applicability of their theories.

We combined an ethnographic approach and situational analysis during our research on inclusive schools, seeking an answer to the main research question: What implicit or explicit processes enable schools to build an inclusive environment (Šíp et al., 2022)? Through the mapping procedure, we made up the relational map for each school. In this stage of the analysis, we met the methodological difficulty described above. Why should we choose this and not that element as central? This act of choice will have a significant impact on the results of the research, but there is no clear procedure for taking this step. At this stage, we started experimenting with placing one element after the other in the central position. We thus obtained a set of different perspectives on the whole situation, and each of them characterized the situation from a little different angle. Nevertheless, we felt that there is a significant continuity between them that we had not yet been able to determine. At this moment we realized that the problem might reside in the methodological tools we used. We needed to extend SA in order to be capable of making an abstract ascent that would allow us to see different representations as variations of the same general principle that directs the system. To do this, we reviewed the theoretical literature on the relationships between the process of mapping and what is mapped. Thus we studied texts on relations between epistemological tools of inquiry and the understanding that came thereof (Bachelard, 1985; Dewey, 1992, lw.12), on corporeal roots of symbolic meaning (Lakoff & Johnson, 1999; Gibbs, 2005; Johnson, 2007; Iacoboni, 2009), on enacted mind theory (Varela, Thompson & Rosch, 1993; Thompson, 2007), etc. The texts share one important ground: there is a continuity between what is experienced and how experience is mapped. Inquiring into phenomena in their constant change, we need the proper projection of data to be able to catch its persistent activity patterns. Expansion of SA by spatial projection enables us to detect the general pattern which in this case was the process of de/synchronization of mechanisms.

The detected process reveals the relationships between the individual mechanisms that determine a situation. If the mechanisms are synchronized with each other, their influence on the whole situation is harmonized and strengthened, and the school determined by them takes a clear shape. In this case, the shape of an inclusive environment. On the contrary, if the mechanisms are in a process of desynchronization, their positive influence weakens, the shape has an indistinct form and the school, despite all the efforts it makes in relation to building a pro-inclusive environment, moves away from this ideal. In this phase of the research, we did not only answer the specific question of why the schools we examined are successful in building a pro-inclusive environment, we also pinpointed a more general rule. We found a general rule that allows us to beneficially describe completely different environments than schools (e.g. hospital environments, military environments, scientific laboratory environments, etc.). These processes condition the rise of emergent properties of dynamic systems that cannot be understood by seeing how individual mechanisms are presented in the relational map of SA. We would not have been able to discover this general rule if we had not extended the two-dimensional nature of the representation of SA with a third dimension, which enabled us to glimpse the nature and significance of the interrelationships of mechanisms.

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