RESEARCH METHOD COHEN ok

A QUESTION OF TERMINOLOGY: THE NORMATIVE AND INTERPRETIVE PARADIGMS 21
Fidelity to the phenomena being studied is
fundamental.
People interpret events, contexts and situations,
and act on the bases of those events
(echoing Thomas’s (1928) famous dictum that
if people define their situations as real then
they are real in their consequences – if I
believe there is a mouse under the table, I will
act as though there is a mouse under the table,
whether there is or not (Morrison 1998)).
There are multiple interpretations of, and
perspectives on, single events and situations.
Reality is multilayered and complex.
Many events are not reducible to simplistic interpretation,
hence ‘thick descriptions’ (Geertz
1973b) are essential rather than reductionism,
that is to say thick descriptions representing
the complexity of situations are preferable to
simplistic ones.
We need to examine situations through the
eyes of participants rather than the researcher.
The anti-positivist movement in sociology
is represented by three schools of thought –
phenomenology, ethnomethodology and symbolic
interactionism. A common thread running
through the three schools is a concern with
phenomena, that is, the things we directly
apprehend through our senses as we go about
our daily lives, together with a consequent
emphasis on qualitative as opposed to quantitative
methodology. The differences between them and
the significant roles each phenomenon plays in
research in classrooms and schools are such as to
warrant a more extended consideration of them in
the discussion below.
Aquestionofterminology:thenormative
and interpretive paradigms
So far we have introduced and used a variety
of terms to describe the numerous branches and
schools of thought embraced by the positivist
and anti-positivist viewpoints. As a matter of
convenience and as an aid to communication,
we clarify at this point two generic terms
conventionally used to describe these two
perspectives and the categories subsumed under
each, particularly as they refer to social psychology
and sociology. The terms in question are
‘normative’ and ‘interpretive’. The normative
paradigm (or model) contains two major orienting
ideas (Douglas 1973): first, that human behaviour
is essentially rule-governed, and second, that it
should be investigated by the methods of natural
science. The interpretive paradigm, in contrast to
its normative counterpart, is characterized by a
concern for the individual. Whereas normative
studies are positivist, all theories constructed
within the context of the interpretive paradigm
tend to be anti-positivist. As we have seen,
the central endeavour in the context of the
interpretive paradigm is to understand the
subjective world of human experience. To retain
the integrity of the phenomena being investigated,
efforts are made to get inside the person and
to understand from within. The imposition of
external form and structure is resisted, since this
reflects the viewpoint of the observer as opposed
to that of the actor directly involved.
Two further differences between the two
paradigms may be identified at this stage: the
first concerns the concepts of ‘behaviour’ and
‘action’; the second, the different conceptions of
‘theory’. A key concept within the normative
paradigm, behaviour refers to responses either to
external environmental stimuli (another person,
or the demands of society, for instance) or to
internal stimuli (hunger, or the need to achieve, for
example). In either case, the cause of the behaviour
lies in the past. Interpretive approaches, on the
other hand, focus on action. This may be thought
of as behaviour-with-meaning; it is intentional
behaviour and as such, future oriented. Actions
are meaningful to us only in so far as we are
able to ascertain the intentions of actors to share
their experiences. A large number of our everyday
interactions with one another rely on such shared
experiences.
As regards theory, normative researchers try to
devise general theories of human behaviour and
to validate them through the use of increasingly
complex research methodologies which, some
believe, push them further and further from the
Chapter 1