A Student’s Guide to
Methodology
Justifying Enquiry
3rd edition
PETER CLOUGH AND
CATHY NUTBROWN
Chapter 5
Reading: purpose and positionality
Radical reading provides the justification for
the critical adoption or rejection of existing
knowledge and practices.
‘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?
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.
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.
Six steps in critical social science
enquiry
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
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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)?