Can We Really Ignore The Elephant In The Living Room?

There is no doubt in my mind – if one fully wishes to grasp the term Verstehen, history needs to be considered as it plays a pivotal role in understanding the philosophical tenets of a research approach. I did enjoy going over the golden age and the healthy criticism that ethnography has been through. From my viewpoint, history consolidates interpretative research designs that foster an in-depth understanding and analysis of people’s life and meaning-making, action-research, case studies and non-western approaches, for example. Building on this concept, history does represent a fundamental construct that provides underlying tenets for modern educational systems. Its disavowal might end up in disastrous organizations devoid of any theoretical framework whatsoever. Heretofore, qualitative inquiry has started to be recognized as science per se (one has to recognize that in several countries and in some research realms, qualitative inquiry is nothing but soft science).

On the other hand, can we really ignore the elephant in the living room? Having spent most of my professional life as a qualitative practitioner, I have found Denzin’s ideas compelling and thought-provoking, indeed. Qualitative approaches provide unique opportunities to describe and discuss realities from an interpretative standpoint. To illustrate this concept, Denzin (2017) has posited “Our empirical materials can’t be fudged, mis-represented, altered or distorted, because they are life experiences. They are ethno-dramas” (p. 151). Consequently, reality encompasses multifaceted subtleties and sub realities. Further, as social entities, educators must be on the lookout for neoliberalist practices that might jeopardize our standards of living, being the audit culture one of them. Do not get me wrong, warrantability, measurement and transparency are significant constructs in our money-driven world. It is just that there are, by far, much more relevant aspects to take into consideration. Respect for human dignity and solidarity for non-traditional ways of learning and understanding constitute underlying elements that societies should consider to perpetuate their living systems.

An idea that has been rattling around in my head for some time is that there may be several types of validities and truths. Within qualitative inquiry, teachers and professors are stakeholders in the process. The stance they assume and their biases are relevant to the outcomes of the project – specifically perceptions and beliefs. Thus, qualitative inquiry aims to provide a holistic understanding of multifaceted situations – that is, the assumptions and background of the practitioners are also significant. Partisan views and conceptions might jeopardize Vivéncia and its implications on the research process.  Given its relevance to qualitative inquiry, researchers ought to situate themselves within the approach and, most importantly, within the community/group that is being “observed”. Validity from the community/group is the hallmark of interpretative approaches.

References

Denzin (2017). The elephant in the living room, or extending the conversation about the politics of evidence. In N.K. Denzin & Y.S. Lincoln (Eds.), The Sage handbook of qualitative research. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

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