PDF (Whole Thesis) - USQ ePrints - University of Southern ...

Settler and Savage: One hundred years ago in Australia (De Boos, 1906), whereby ‘settler’ is
code for European, usually from Great Britain and ‘savage’ is code for Indigenous
Australian living in a traditional tribal environment.
1.5 The Epistemological Domain of Research
This dissertation encompasses aspects of a variety of research fields (with education and
history as the most prominent), and methodological approaches (with Critical Discourse
Analysis as the lead methodology, and incorporating contributions from visual analysis, and
historical methodology). Methodological approaches have been selected that complement
each other so that the research method, data collection and analysis are strengthened. A
strengthened methodology has been achieved by framing the research within a broad
bricolage approach. The deployment of a hotchpotch methodology (a criticism that could
potentially be made of a bricolage approach when not grounded with a strong theoretical
base) is avoided by ensuring that the selected approaches epistemologically complement each
other.
In considering the current direction of qualitative research in the broad discipline area of
education, the work of researchers such as Kincheloe, Denzin and Lincoln (2006) is drawn on
in this project. A focus to introduce contexts of qualitative research approaches comes from
Kincheloe and Tobin who write:
In the epistemological domain we begin to realize that knowledge is stripped of its
meaning when it stands alone. This holds profound implications in education and
research because more positivistic forms of educational science have studied the
world in a way that isolates the object of study, abstracts it from the contexts and
interrelationships that give it meaning. Thus, to be a critical researcher that takes the
complexity of the lived world into account, we have to study the world ‘in context.’
(2006, p. 5)
Adopting Kincheloe and Tobin’s approach of investigating the complexity of the lived world
in which this project is positioned means placing it within a number of contexts. This
dissertation is clear about framing the research—from conceptualisation to data gathering to
analysis—in a range of contexts, appropriately matched between stage of research and
underpinning theories. Contexts are thus enacted as detailed below.
• First, the context known as ‘disclosure of researcher’.
8