A Student

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A Students Guide toMethodology

• Justifying Enquiry
• 3rd edition
• Peter Clough and  
• Cathy Nutbrown

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Chapter 5Reading purpose and positionality

• Radical reading provides the justification for
  the critical adoption or rejection of existing
  knowledge and practices.

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The arrest of experience

• Radical reading is a process which exposes the
  purposes and positions of both texts and
  practices. Here we are concerned both with the
  understanding of written and semiotic texts and
  the more metaphorical reading of situations.
  What do certain signs, conventions and symbols
  mean? How do you read this or that action or
  event? How, that is, do you interpret the events
  in the theatre of enquiry?

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Criticality

• Criticality being critical describes the
  attempt to show on what terms personal and
  public knowledges are jointly articulated and
  therefore where their positional differences lie.

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Academic critique

• Academic critique does not necessarily mean
  taking issue with a text but rather asking
  questions of it. Any critical account seeks to
  be rational, but will also reflect the values and
  beliefs of its author. It is the presence of the
  persuasive in a critical account which reveals
  the full range of values at work.

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Six steps in critical social science enquiry
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Six operational steps and their radical processes
of critical social science enquiry
Operational step
1 Framing a research question This cannot be successfully achieved without some radical reading of the research literature and/or the theatre of research
2 Finding out what existing answers there are to that question Essential here is engagement with the research literature critical reading
3 Establishing what is missing from those answers Some radical looking is necessary here seeing beyond the known to find the precise focus of the study which makes your study unique. Criticality in the radical reading of literature and theatre
4 Getting information which will answer the question More reading of the literature and radical listening and looking in the ethical generation of data.
5 Making meanings from the information which helps to answer your research question Radical looking and radical reading of the meanings within the evidence at the stage of analytical and ethical interpretation of data critical reflection
6 Presenting a report which highlights the significance of the research report in your study Telling the research story. Accounting for the findings through persuasive ways which make explicit the findings, the purpose of the study, the position of the researcher and the political nature of the research act. The research report brings together these radical processes of Looking, Listening, Questioning and Reading and ultimately justifies the responsible and ethical enquiry
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The critical literature review

• Practically radical reading means asking the
  following questions of what you read
• What is the author trying to say?
• To whom is the author speaking?
• Why has this account of this research been
  written?
• What does the author ultimately want to achieve?
• What authority does s/he appeal to?
• What evidence does the author offer to
  substantiate the claims?
• Do I accept this evidence?
• Does this account accord with what I know of the
  world?
• What is my view?
• What evidence do I have for this view?
• Do I find this account credible within the
  compass of my experience and knowledge?

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Electronic and digital sources of literature

• There has never been such an abundance of
  resources available to those undertaking academic
  writing and research. In addition to the well
  established academic libraries hard copy
  resources there is now a proliferation of web
  based literature, e-books and e-journals being
  the tip of the literature iceberg. Many archives
  are digitised and accessible online, the number
  of free and open access journals is increasing.
  It is important to take advantage of such
  resources and benefit from the variety of Web
  directories, gateways and other resources.

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Using research questions to identify sources for
a literature review

• Research questions are pivotal in planning a
  suitably focused literature search and in writing
  a critical literature review. One technique for
  planning a literature search from research
  questions is to map the key themes on to a Venn
  diagram. It can help to try to identify three key
  themes from the research questions in order to
  develop sufficient focus for the search. If these
  are mapped on to the Venn diagram the focus of
  the literature search becomes clearer.

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Literature and positionality

• One function of the critical literature review is
  to locate the positionality of the research being
  reported within its field and to identify how
  that research is unique.
• One way of positioning oneself in a study is to
  identify with a particular theory or a set of
  theoretical constructs. Here, it can be tempting
  to rush headlong into data collection and the
  excitement of what we might call the field,
  but without a clear appreciation of the
  theoretical underpinnings of a particular study,
  little of value will emerge from those data if
  they can even be called that, for data are only
  ever made sensible by the theory which is used to
  explain them.

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Being critical in your own research

• A final form of critical response to texts and
  situations is in respect of researchers own
  radical reading of their research report. Whilst
  writing your dissertation or thesis, bear in mind
  the skills of radical reading which you brought
  to bear on the writing of others and employ these
  to read your own writing within a critical frame.

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Ethics pause for reflection

• We suggest that criticality being critical
  is a matter of ethical practice and that a
  diligent and thorough critical review of the
  literature is in itself an ethical act.
• Consider the ethical issues at work in the act of
  radical reading to justify the critical adoption
  or rejection of knowledge and practices.
• To what extent is the need for theory in research
  a matter of ethics?
• What are the ethical implications of taking
  readings from noticeboards and other
  documentation and events in institutions and
  public places?
• What are the particular ethical implications
  around researching gender, or age, or race, or
  disability (or any aspect of human difference)? 

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