Discovering Critical Realism - The Seminar that Never Happened

 

I discovered critical realism this year and it really made a lot of sense to me.  A few months ago I had hoped to run a short seminar for my fellow students to share what I was learning and to discuss the pros and cons of this paradigm, sharing what I liked about it and what I didn't like about it.  But life took over and that seminar never happened.  So here I wanted to share a little bit about what I've discovered about critical realism and how it has informed my research so far.  

("The last thing one discovers..." by id-iom is licensed under CC BY-NC 2.0.)

1.  What is critical realism?  

In my view, it's a philosophy of science that is supposed to transcend the positivist/interpretivist divide.  Roy Bhaskar (2014), one of the founders of this paradigm, commented that critical realism in his view was a maximally inclusive midpoint between these two perspectives.  How is that possible you might ask?  

Ryan (2018) explains the distinction between positivism and interpretivism in a brilliantly simple way:

" Realists believe that a world exists outside the influence of the researcher (the world is there to be discovered), while relativists believe that the world depends on how the individual views and experiences it (the world is different to different people)."

Using this as a starting point, I therefore came to an understanding that critical realists don't subscribe to an either/or view of the world, but instead hold that both can be true.  Yes, the world is there to be discovered.  But if the world is different to different people, then this process of discovery is, by definition, relational and depends very much on the researcher's ability to understand the views and experiences of the individual.

But this left me in quandary because for the first time, my mathematical undergrad training came into direct conflict with my ongoing research.  Or at least so I thought at the time.  But in reflection, as a teacher, much of what I do is based on my own views and own experience both as a student and as a teacher.  So as a maths teacher, my work requires me to be both a positivist and an interpretivist at the same time pulling on both my knowledge of empirical facts, numbers, correlations and causations while at the same time making best use of my own experience to support my students.

So, what's the difference with critical realism?  Critical realists have a very different concept of causation.  While positivists might refer to correlations that infer causal relationships, critical realists refer to social structures and mechanisms that, if they have an effect, they are real.  So while physical scientists might say that bacteria cause infections, or acceleration is caused by the application of a force, as social scientists, critical realists might argue that there are structures and causal mechanisms that occur in the social world that explain people's behaviours and actions.  These might include the peer relationships that influence the professional behaviour of teachers and the hierarchical structures of educational institutions that can both constrain and/or enable enhanced practice.  

Again, Bhaskar (2014) commented that:

“even false beliefs and illusions, when causally efficacious, [can] be real”

("Theory vs reality" by quinn.anya is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0.)

This might sound great - but it rested on the notion of causality!  The converse of this statement implies that nothing is real unless it is part of some causal chain seems reductive.  To imply that human experience isn't real unless it can be explained in terms of generality is to deny the uniqueness and individuality of context.  In my own research I'm not interested in causality or in identifying causal mechanisms.  I'm more interested in developing an understanding of the experiences of others, developing insight if you will.  So at this point I almost found myself retreating from this philosophy a little because I wasn't 100% sure if it would help.   

However, while the suggestion of false beliefs implied here in Bhaskar's statement implies a preformulated value judgement with regard to the beliefs of the other, I understand the point that Bhaskar is making here is that, even if the researcher believes their participants beliefs to be wrong, there is a need to suspend one's own beliefs in the recognition that these beliefs have an impact on the behaviours of our research participants.

There already exists a wealth of knowledge about the neo-liberal mechanisms that constrain teachers and influence education (Ball, 2018; Grek and Ozga, 2010 ; Biesta, 2007) and I don't claim that my research can add to the writing on this subject.  But I'm interested in the experiences of the individual and how the professionalism of lecturers in the Scottish Further Education (FE) Sector is influenced by infrastructure.  So, at this point I found myself on the fence, not sure if critical realism was the way I wanted to go or not.  However, what I got out of my explorations in critical realism up to that point was that adopting a critical realist perspective did not preclude the importance and uniqueness of individual human experience.  

2.  Going beyond causality

("7/365 - fallible" by bott.richard is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0.)

I'm glad I kept digging because other writers on the paradigm of critical realism in more depth.  What I discovered was that critical realists:

• Acknowledge the fallibility of knowledge.  They recognise the potential for mistakes, surprise and contradiction, all issues that researchers and academics wrestle with daily.  Moreover, this isn't just an academic issue - such problems occur in teaching practice.

• Maintain a commitment to anti-reductionism.  This is an accusation often levelled at positivists but in reality, sometimes it is necessary to simplify the way a problem is understood in order to fully comprehend how specific mechanisms or variables contribute to a more complex picture.  As a mathematician this challenges me because I was taught to simplify a problem in order to obtain a mathematical model of a situation by either deterministic or stochastic means.  Once a simple model is established more variables can then be added to obtain a more realistic model.  However, I found myself understanding here was that for critical realists there is a fine line between simplification and reductivism (or over-simplification).  

• Place value in broad critical examination of the world. and, in doing so, allow space for the development of mixed methods and collaborative approaches to research.  However, Mingers (2004) provides a valuable insight whereby he suggests that, rather than thinking about mixed methods research in terms of the QUANT/QUAL distinction, it can be useful to think of mixed methods as the combination of descriptive models and structural models which together paint a more vivid picture.

So, in terms of my own research, these were aspects of the critical realist paradigm that really appealed to me since each of these specific points are, in my view, issues that lie at the heart of good scholarship.  What troubled me however was that there seemed to be an underlying tone of critique in all of the literature that I read.  Stephens (2021) put this eloquently in referring to "a commitment to realism and critique".  This bothers me because such a view positions critical realists as academic, anti-interpretivist nay-sayers who are committed to doing little more than finding holes and flaws in other people's work.  In my opinion, this is very far from the idea of critical realism as a research paradigm that is better suited to social research as distinct from paradigms which are arguably better suited to the physical sciences.

3.  Insight versus Understanding

Ultimately I realised, through this exploration of critical realism, that the crux of my own research rested on what my aims were.  Was I aiming to develop an understanding of a new problem?  Or was I trying to provide new insight into an existing problem?

Simply dictionary definitions highlight that understanding is about demonstrating comprehension.  However, by definition insight refers to...

So the difference between insight and comprehension lies in the accuracy of description and the depth of understanding achieved.  In realising that what I was aiming for was insight in my research, I realised that part of my research aims are to enhance the accuracy of the existing knowledge by enhancing the depth of our understanding.  Since my research focus is to examine the effects of infrastructure and infrastructural change on the professionalism of lecturers in the Scottish FE sector, then I have a responsibility to describe accurately the experience of lecturers and enhance the depth of comprehension that academics, leaders and managers in the sector have in this area.  

The irony of publishing this blog on the 7th of June 2024, three days the Education (Scotland) Bill was introduced, is not lost on me.  While this bill clearly sets out, "to provide for the establisment and functions of Qualifications Scotland [and] to provide for the establishment and functions of the office of His Majesty's Chief Inspector of Education in Scotland", at an operational level it remains to be seen whether the changes set out in this document provide a better context within which the professionalism of lecturers in the Scottish FE sector can flourish.  However, it does deepen my own insight into the broader national context.  In short, more change is coming.    

References

Bhaskar, R. (2014) ‘Foreword’, in Edwards, P. K., O’Mahoney, J. and Vincent, S. (eds) Studying Organisations Using Critical Realism: A Practical Guide, Oxford, Oxford University Press.

Biesta, G. (2007) 'Why "What Works" Won't Work:  Evidence-Based Research Practice and the Democratic Deficit in Educational Research', Educational Theory, Vol. 57, No. 1.

Grek, S. and Ozga, J. (2010) ‘Governing education through data: Scotland, England and the European education policy space’, British Educational Research Journal, Vol. 36, No. 6, pp. 937 – 952.

Mingers, J. (2004) ‘Future directions in management science modelling: Critical realism and multimethodology’, in Fleetwood, S. and Ackroyd, S. (Eds.) Critical Realist Applications in Organisation and Management Studies, London, Routledge.

Ryan, G. (2018) 'Introduction to positivism, interpretivism and critical theory', Nurse Researcher, Vol. 25, No. (4), pp. 41–49, DOI: https://doi.org/10.7748/nr.2018.e1466. 

The Scottish Parliament (2024) Education (Scotland) Bill [Online].  Available at:  Education (Scotland) Bill – Bills (proposed laws) – Scottish Parliament | Scottish Parliament Website (Accessed 7th June 2024).