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Environmental EducationResearch as Profession, asScience, as Art and as Craft:Implications for guidelines inqualitative researchStephen Gough & Alan ReidPublished online: 01 Jul 2010.

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Environmental Education Research, Vol. 6, No. 1, 2000

Environmental Education Research as

Profession, as Science, as Art and as Craft:

implications for guidelines in qualitative

research

STEPHEN GOUGH & ALAN REID University of Bath, UK

SUMMARY The view taken by any particular educational researcher of the desirabilityand potential usefulness of guidelines for qualitative research seems likely to dependupon the way in which the activity of `doing educational research’ is itself conceptu-alised. The implications of a number of possible positions on this question are examined.It is argued that the existence of such a range of positions is likely to continue, but thatthere may be, nevertheless, a limited role for generally applicable research guidelines iftheir purpose is appropriately de® ned.

Introduction

Clearly the project of identifying guidelines for researchers in environmentaleducation presupposes the possibility of establishing a consensus of some sortabout appropriate research standards. One possible explanation for the observ-able elusiveness of such a consensus is that different researchers hold, implicitlyor explicitly, rather different views about what sort of activity researching’ ineducation actually is. If this is so, it is unsurprising, given the well-establishedperception that different teachers (and other stakeholders in education) mayhave quite different views about what sort of activity teaching’ actually is. Wiseet al. (1984) identi® ed four ideal-typical views, or perspectives, of this kind.Teaching, they proposed, may be seen as labour, as a craft, as a profession, or asan art.

Certainly, and as will be argued in more detail below, this method ofclassi® cation does not transfer wholesale to a consideration of ways in whicheducational researchers might think about what they do. However, in this articlewe use it both as a starting point and as basis for keeping the question `what sort

1350-4622/00/010047-11 Ó 2000 Taylor & Francis Ltd

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48 S. Gough & A. Reid

of activity is research in education?’ open while exploring the cases for andagainst guidelines for qualitative research. We argue, in particular, that re-searchers’ views about whether there should be research guidelines and, if so,what form they should take, are likely to depend upon whether they see theirwork as a science-based profession, as a profession based to a greater or lesserextent in something other than science, or as something other than a profession.We conclude by examining the notion of educational research as a craft, andexploring the implications for the development of research guidelines inherentin such a conceptualisation.

Environmental Education Research as a Profession of Scienti® c Enquiry

In his development and re-presentation of Wise et al’s (1984) work on teaching,Bennett (1997) identi® es the following characteristics of a profession:

· diagnostic skills;· skills in the evaluation and implementation of possible courses of action· agreed standards of understanding and competence justi® ed by reference to

theory;· con® dence that ® delity to agreed standards will produce desired results.

Of course, professional attempts at diagnosis, evaluation, implementation andstandard-setting in environmental education research need not necessarily begrounded in a scienti® c worldview. Equally clearly, however, some researchershave seen them as being so grounded. This is explicit, for example, in thecharacterisation of quantitative research which was used as an introductoryresource in the workshop reported by Smith-Sebasto (2000, Fig. 3), and implicitin the claim (Smith-Sebasto, 2000, p. 10) that quantitative and positivist researchare the same thing, as also are postpositivist and qualitative research. There areenvironmental education researchers who believe in:

· the existence of social facts with a single objective reality’;· observable and objective social truth;· the possibility of avoidance of bias through researcher detachment from the

research setting;· the ef® cacy of adherence to predetermined, in¯ exible research procedures;

and who further subscribe to the justi® catory notion that they and `natural andphysical’ science practitioners are the joint custodians of these perceptions(Smith-Sebasto, 2000, Fig. 3). The point here is not that all these suppositionshave been rendered at best questionable by a very substantial body of literature(see, for an overview, Reid & Gough, 2000), but that those who adhere uncom-promisingly to such a `professional-scientist’ view (as we term it here) of theirwork in environmental education research are not just likely to support thenotion of research guidelines, but to regard them as indispensable as a means ofexcluding from the canon research which is insuf® ciently objective, detached,pre-planned or, in sum, scienti® cally professional. Given this, the questionarises: why do professional-scientist researchers in environmental educationwant to engage with what is commonly referred to as qualitative research at all?

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Implications for Guidelines in Qualitative Research 49

One possible answer lies in the sheer, inescapable stubbornness with whichhuman subjects refuse to behave in the manner thought proper for the foci ofpositivist social research. The point is nicely illustrated in Smith-Sebasto’s (2000)article, in which the following claims or observations are separately made:

· humans are the ultimate focus of environmental education research (p. 9);· the human character is complex and inconsistent (p. 16);· quantitative research often assumes stasis regarding the research focus (p. 18).

Hence, one might argue that the suggested guideline question for qualitativeresearchers: `Have you adequately described the evolving relationship betweenthe emerging research question(s) and the data?’ (Smith-Sebasto, 2000, p. 18) isevery bit as appropriate for quantitative researchers too, though there wouldseem to be dif® culties in squaring an af® rmative answer to it with a preferencefor pre-determined and in¯ exibly applied research procedures (Smith-Sebasto,2000, Fig. 3).

The problem posed for positivist research by complex and inconsistent humanbehaviour would be greatly reduced if behaviour as a whole could be separatedinto two discrete parts, with the inconsistent bits hived off to qualitative or`postpositivist’ (Smith-Sebasto, 2000, p. 18) research and the rest isolated forinvestigation using objective, `scienti® c’ methods. Something of the sort has, infact, been proposed within the ® eld of environmental education research byChawla (1998, p. 384), who refers to an `emotional and interpretive side ofhuman experience’ which she sees as the proper focus of qualitative research. Inthis conceptualisation the role of qualitative research guidelines would seem tobe a gatekeeping one, designed to exclude all those qualitative researchers whomight be disinclined to see their own endeavours as a supplement to those of theprofessional- scientists, but prefer to argue instead that their work representedan alternative, and in many ways superior, approach to the complexity ofeducational experience in its entirety. This group would seem likely to includenot only most of those qualitative researchers who would reject a `postpositivist’label for themselves, but also many of those who would accept one. Interest-ingly, it would clearly further include many who were not the least shy of usingquantitative techniques to inform or advance qualitative research when thisseemed appropriate (see, for example, Silverman, 1993, pp. 162± 165).

There is a further possible reason for the engagement of professional-scienti® c,positivist/quantitative researchers in environmental education with qualitativeresearch which also implies a need for the development of research guidelines.The positivist appeal to the natural sciences as a model for social-scienti® cresearch has embedded within it a conception of a community of scientists ableto check, replicate and verify each others’ work. This implies some measure ofagreement about what research is properly to be done, and how. Examples ofresearch in environmental education to which to this notion of scienti® c com-munity is intrinsic include Hungerford et al.’s (1980) development of goals forcurriculum development in environmental education, and Roth’s (1970)identi® cation of fundamental concepts for environmental management edu-cation.

However, the word `community’ has sometimes seemed rather stretchedwhen applied to that group of individuals who consider themselves to beenvironmental education researchers. Writing in 1987, for example, Ian Robot-

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50 S. Gough & A. Reid

tom accused Harold Hungerford and his colleagues of seeking to foreclosedebate about the de® nitions, aims and guiding principles of environmentaleducation in a way which protected their own interests (Hungerford et al., 1983;Robottom, 1987). In 1993, Robottom and Hart, referring to positivist approaches,observed that environmental education research was:

in some areas at least ¼ ® rmly in the grip of an insular researchparadigm that has little prospect of contributing to the achievement ofthe very purposes espoused in the founding of modern environmentaleducation some two decades ago. (Robottom & Hart, 1993, p. 3)

Whatever the truth or otherwise of these particular claims, ideas abouteducational research in general, and environmental education research in par-ticular, have continued to change and develop, partly as a result of contestationbetween researchers. Some aspects of these changes are discussed in more detailbelow. For now, however, it suf® ces to say that while the research perspectiveof those classi® ed here as `professional-scientists’ is still widely respected, it isvery questionable whether it is any longer dominant within the ® eld, as itcertainly was in, say, 1987. In this changed situation, postpositivism providesprofessional-scienti® c researchers with a pragmatic way of behaving inclusivelytowards colleagues who do not espouse positivism, but are nevertheless countedin increasing numbers, de facto, among the academy’s eminent and respectedpersons, because it too permits appeals to the authority of a form of objectiveknowledge which is constructed and validated through the joint endeavours ofa community of scientists with shared standards (Seale, in press). Though agreedstandards and research guidelines may therefore shift or widen a little (perhapsthrough managed processes such as workshops and special editions of academicjournals), the perceived need for them remains as strong as ever. A cynic mightfurther argue that since the designation `qualitative’ has itself now become, defacto, quite respectable when applied to research, the attempt to con¯ ate it with`postpositivist’ is no more than a (possibly unconscious) attempt to re-deny thatrespectability to those within the qualitative research community who are notpostpositivists and who appear to reject or even threaten the notion of acoherent research community or ® eld’.

Artistry in the Profession of Environmental Education Research

Returning to our adaptation of the framework devised by Wise et al. (1984) anddeveloped by Bennett (1997), we have already described the way in which someresearchers in environmental education appear to see their work as `pro-fessional-scienti® c’ . While any researcher presently engaged in one of the choresof the job, transcription for example, might feel that the designation of researchas labour has much to recommend it. Nevertheless, it seems reasonable tosuggest that many qualitative researchers would have relatively few problemswith being designated as professional . It will be recalled that a key characteristicof work seen as a profession was its appeal to theory as a basis for establishingcompetence. `Professional-scienti® c’ , has been used here to describe researchersin environmental education who have appealed to a positivistic theory of sciencein this way.

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Implications for Guidelines in Qualitative Research 51

Writing about the view of teaching as an art, Bennett (1997, pp. 46± 47)observes that:

It does not deny the importance of techniques nor of standards ofpractice, but because teaching rests on individual, personal understand-ing of what is needed for a particular setting, these techniques may bedeployed in novel and unconventional ways. Rules and proceduresgive way to intuition, creativity, improvisation and expressiveness. Theteacher as artist, then, has to rely on personal insight as well astheoretically grounded knowledge, and therefore requires considerableautonomy and discretion in order to function effectively.

It seems likely that researchers may perceive their work not only as ascience-based profession, but also as an art-based profession, or as any numberof possible combinations of the two. A philosophically curious environmentaleducator travelling along this continuum might, in the course of her or hisjourney, visit all or some of the following methodological positions:

· the `single objective reality’ and in¯ exible procedures ¼ determined prior tobeginning the study and ¼ adhered to strictly’ (Smith-Sebasto, 2000, Fig. 3)position of positivists ;

· the `critical-realism and modi® ed objectivity’ of postpositivism (Connell, 1997,p. 121). Here the skill of the individual researcher is seen as crucial inobtaining the closest possible approximation to objectivity, which is seen as aregulatory but ultimately unobtainable ideal;

· grounded-theory approaches (Glaser & Strauss, 1967) which aim to developtheory from the researcher’s engagement with data, rather than test precon-ceived theory against data collected for the purpose. (Bryman & Burgess (1994,p. 221) note that grounded theory approaches are often characteristic of onlya `particular phase or aspect’ of a piece of research);

· interpretivist (Cantrell, 1993) or constructivist positions, which are concerned tore-present to their research audience the way in which particular socialrealities are constructed and imbued with meaning. It is from such a perspec-tive, for example, that the anthropologist Okely (1994, p. 32) has describeddata interpretation as a `creative experience’ ;

· transformative perspectives, including those of ecofeminism and/or socially-critical theory and/or ecosocialism, which may measure success in terms oftheir ability to contribute to political transformations and/or spiritual transfor-mations. These often take an extremely critical view of positivistic science(Giroux, 1985; Merchant, 1990; Plumwood, 1990; Fien, 1993; Huckle, 1993,1996; Sterling, 1993; 1996);

· postmodern approaches (Giroux, 1990) for which the concept of progressinformed by the cloistered deliberations of `scientists’ is a meta-narrativemeriting deconstruction. The appropriate limits of such deconstruction, andthe possiblities for subsequent reconstruction, are the subjects of a debate (e.g.Payne, 1997; Huckle, 1999; Sauve , 1999) which is clearly not amenable tosolution by positivist scienti® c means;

· poststructuralist thinking, according to which the entire project of science issubstantially misconceived, in that all explanations should be understood askinds of ® ction (Gough, N., 1991, 1999; Greenall Gough, 1993; Gough, A.,1997).

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52 S. Gough & A. Reid

We therefore propose to use the term `professional-artistic’ as an inclusive,blanket term which permits variations of degree within it. The positions listedabove are distinguished from each other by (among other things) their relativelevels of acceptance of the methodological claims of science, the relative levelsof `artistry’ they consider appropriate, and the forms that artistry takes. Thefurther they are towards the `professional-artistic’ end of the continuum, on thewhole, the more likely they are to respond to proposals for methodologicalguidelines with ¯ at rejection, rather than conditional acceptance or attempts atrede® nition. However, these professional-artistic groups tend to have in com-mon, both with each otherÐ and also, by virtue of their view of themselves as`professional’ , with professional-scienti® c researchersÐ a belief that the ways inwhich a piece of research is conducted should re¯ ect and be consistent with itsphilosophical underpinnings. As a result, they may have explicit or tacit guide-lines of their own which are employed in the evaluation of the work of otherresearchers.

These points may be illustrated by reference to an important, continuing, andparticularly well-documented debate within environmental education research.Robottom and Hart’s (1993) work on environmental education research repre-sented a challenge to all workers in the ® eld, particularly those of a positivistorientation. As the subtitle of their book made clear, these authors saw theirwork in terms of `engaging the debate’. They were at some pains to avoid anysuggestion that what they themselves were proposing was a single best ap-proach, or set of guidelines, for environmental education research. At the sametime, they made clear their own dissatisfaction with the notion of `best ap-proaches’ in principle.

If we can agree that educational inquiry is multiparadigmatic there isno need to fuse, no reason or need to ® nd compromise, but there is aneed to value different perspectives, assuming that knowledge is asocial construction of communities of inquirers operating from variousparadigmatic perspectives (each shaped by their unique distinctmetatheoretical and methodological assumptions). (Robottom & Hart,1993, p. 16)

It is therefore odd, on the face of it at least, to ® nd the research approachadvocated by Robottom and Hart being roundly condemned by other re-searchers for:

· prejudging problems and ignoring the ideas of educational practitioners(Walker, 1997);

· being deliberately antagonistic towards other methodological positions andseeking to foreclose debate (Connell, 1997).

It will be remembered that this same charge, of wishing to foreclose method-ological debate, had been made by Robottom, with reference to Hungerford andhis colleagues, in 1987.

We suggest that this situation may be understood as an inevitable product ofthe insistence, which is quite explicit in Robottom and Hart’s (1993, especiallych. 4) work, that the `metatheoretical and methodological assumptions’ whichunderpin a particular research approach must ® nd expression in every aspect of

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Implications for Guidelines in Qualitative Research 53

the research activity itself. Hence what they term `participatory action research’is claimed as the only appropriate form of environmental education researchbecause it is uniquely consistent with an ecophilosophical worldview which, inturn, is uniquely appropriate to environmental education.

If environmental education inquiry is to be compatible with an emerg-ing worldview which underpins all environmental education activitythen a new view of research is required. (Robottom & Hart, 1993, p. 52,emphasis added)

As a result, and in spite of what we believe to be the most genuine of goodintentions, a new boundary of environmental education research acceptability isdrawn. New guidelines for research come tacitly into being. It is to these thatConnell and Walker, in their different ways, and from their different positionson the continuum we have identi® ed, object. Walker insists that the problem-de® nitions and constructions of environmental education practitioners, whichRobottom and Hart want to transform in a fashion consistent with their`metatheoretical assumptions’, should be explored and respected. Connell be-lieves, for example, that even though facts and values are more closely entwinedthat positivists would accept there is still a point trying to separate them.Robottom and Hart (1993, pp. 46± 47), by contrast, make a case for the merit of`personal, value-based knowledge’.

Conclusion: multiple perspectives and limited ambitions

We consider that all the examples of environmental education research men-tioned in this article are valuable contributions to the ® eld. Indeed, for all thearguments (and occasional animosity) between researchers, it is very hard toimagine any single part of this corpus without the rest. One might argue that theapproach of Harold Hungerford and his colleagues preceded that of most others,but recent work, including that of Smith-Sebasto (2000) clearly shows a degreeof awareness of and responsiveness to contrary views.

It might seem, then, that our position is similar to the `multiparadigmatic’formulation of Robottom and Hart, but we would wish to emphasise two points.First, it is not enough to accept the existence of multiple research perspectives,and attribute their differences to different foundational assumptions, if underly-ing such a view is the notion that one perspectiveÐ the one with the bestassumptionsÐ will ultimately be proved right. What might really put an end to`animosity, antagonism, or hegemony regarding methods of inquiry’ and `ad-vance the efforts of EE researchers’ (Smith-Sebasto, 2000, p. 19), we argue, wouldbe to respond to the present situation in which, let us be clear, nobody knowswhat actions by environmental education researchers might best serve eithereducation or the environment in the short term (let alone the very long term), byaccepting the existence of socially-constructed multiple truths. Though thisnecessarily involves a dif® cult confrontation with the Aristotelian roots of ourWestern thinking, the case for its possibility, its potential ef® cacy, and itsintellectual rigour has been powerfully argued from different academic perspec-tives by, for example, Thompson (1990, 1997), and Haste (in press). This view isnot a relativistic one for which there is no such thing as truth, and does not

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54 S. Gough & A. Reid

suggest that facts about the environment, education, and the relationshipsbetween them do not exist. It argues, rather, that:

· it is not possible for any researcher to have a detached view of her or his ownresearch activity. We may see ourselves as `objective scientists’ , transforma-tive intellectuals’ , reconstructive postmodernists’ or anything else, but all ofthese are stories we use to make sense, to ourselves and others, of what we do;

· these stories make all the difference to how we interpret the facts weencounter;

· there is no prospect whatsoever, within any imaginable time frame, ofreaching a ® nal judgement on the relative merits of these stories.

This being so, it is nothing more than due humility to open our minds to theinsights claimed by those whose stories we do not share.

Secondly, while this formulation might seem to exclude a useful role for anysingle set of research guidelines, this need not be so if the requirement that allresearch activity must be capable of justi® cation in terms of the theory which(however deeply) underpins it, is dropped. It will be recalled that this require-ment has, throughout this article, been regarded as fundamental to a professionalview of the activity of educational research. We now explore the possibility oftaking a view of educational researching as a craft.

With regard to teaching, Bennett (1997, p. 46) has written that a craft involves`acquiring a range of specialist techniques, and learning general rules about howand when they should be employed’. The idea of social research as primarily acraft skill has been developed by the medical sociologist Seale (in press), whosearguments resonate strongly with some of those explored in this article:

The widespread appeal of postmodern, political and constructivistconceptions of research is based on some fundamental dissatisfactionswith the scienti® c worldview. Quality does matter in qualitative re-search, but the modernist headings of `validity’ and reliability’ nolonger seem adequate to encapsulate the range of issues that a concernfor quality must raise. The constructivist critique of criteriology has ledus to see that `quality’ is a somewhat elusive phenomenon that cannotbe pre-speci® ed by methodological rules, though their reconstitution as`guidelines’, to be followed with intelligence and knowledge of theparticular research context, may assist us in moving towards goodquality work. A major threat to quality is in fact the idea that researchmust be carried out under the burden of ful® lling some philosophicalor methodological scheme. Practising social researchers can learn to dogood work from a variety of examples ¼ without needing to resolvemethodological disputes before beginning their work.

A notable characteristic of both Bennett’s and Seale’s formulations is the placethey give to learning in the acquisition of a craft skill. This may mean that noviceresearchers should be taught particular skills or knowledge, such as CAQDASskills or theory familiarity for example, as indeed they usually are. It mayfurther imply a need for manuals or guidelines and also, given that: (1) there isa need to distinguish the evaluation of research processes from research products(Lincoln & Guba, 1985); (2) criteria appropriate to one task may undermine those

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Implications for Guidelines in Qualitative Research 55

found useful in another; it may imply a need for a degree of craft specialisationamong researchers. Equally, however, the context-speci® c nature of qualitativeresearch makes it likely, in our view, that learning-by-doing will continue toplay a central part in the development of qualitative researchers.

Most importantly, and as Seale (in press) makes clear, to argue for a view ofeducational research as a craft is not to argue that philosophical and methodo-logical debates are unnecessary or irrelevant. On the contrary, they are essentialto the enrichment and improvement of research practice. What is unhelpful,however, is if researchers feel the need to pretend (for surely it must be apretence) to have sorted out once and for all the many questions of epistemol-ogy, ontology and methodology which bear on educational research beforemailing the ® rst questionnaire, or writing the ® rst word on an otherwise blanksheet of paper under the heading Interview Schedule’.

Seale’s (in press) work demonstrates that a wide range of craft skills inqualitative research do not have to be linked to particular paradigmatic ormethodological positions. Similarly, Burns (1989), for example, lists a minimumset of general capacities necessary for the adequate critique of a qualitativestudy:

· `context ¯ exibility’ (a willingness and ability to examine works from diverseperspectives);

· `skills in inductive reasoning’ (in following the logic of the researcher);· `skills in theory analysis’ (in critiquing conceptualisation, theoretical mod-

elling, and theory construction and development);· the capacity to follow and critique the transformation of ideas across levels of

abstraction’.

This being so, and given this consequently more modest conceptualisation of themeaning of `doing research’, there seems to us no reason why guidelines shouldnot be used in qualitative research to ensure the quality of work, withoutbecoming weapons on a methodological battle® eld. This is to say, not veryexcitingly perhaps, that it should be possible to say whether a member-check, anumerical analysis, or a piece of triangulation has been conducted well or badly,regardless of the view of society± environment± education interrelationships heldby its perpetrators.

Notes on Contributors

STEPHEN GOUGH is a member of the Centre for Research in Education and theEnvironment at the University of Bath. Correspondence:Department of Education,University of Bath, Bath BA2 7AY, UK.ALAN REID is a member of the Centre for Research in Education and theEnvironment at the University of Bath.

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