Rigour and Complexity in Educational Research (2)

Kincheloe, J., & Berry, K. (2004). Open University Press.

1. Introduction (pp. 1-22)
This book deals with bricolage as research methodology and bricoleur's role in it. The author, following the delineation of Lincoln (2001), defines bricoleurs as researchers who employ eclectic research methods given circumstances and engage in multidisciplines for the purpose of social changes. According to him, knowing is an interpretative act and discursive and contextual analyses are its main dimensions, thus, knowledge or interpretation is subject to perspectives and background questionning empirical data. Then, which position should researchers undertake? Kincheloe expands the bricolage into the power dimension. "Discourse cannot be removed from power relations and the struggle to create particular meanings and legitimate specific voices...Power creeps in on little cat's feet to accomplish its regulation and fiscipline of various individuals and groups...Indeed, it works best when everyting seems normal and comfortable" (p.7). He also emphasizes that researchers employ philosophical inquiry, such as ontology, epistemology, cosmology, axiology (study of values) and teleology (study of purpose), in order to develop the logic and pshchology of research strategies and do that in historical context--historicity. Therefore, the interpretative dimension of bricolage connects to critical hermeneutics because research is intended to reveal power relations that operate to shape or construct meanings and lived consequences. Kincheloe contends that accepting multiple interpretations and differences and realizing the tensions of differences may bring insights that move researchers to new understanding of the subject, and simultaneously urges researchers to employ hermeneutic circle to understand the whole beyond the parts we deal with.

4. Redefining and interpreting the object of study (pp.82-102)
Kincheloe classifies the interpretative act, a central dimension of bricolage, into two concepts: critical hermeneutics to denote power inscription in words/knowledge and symbiotic hermeneutics to emphasize an interpretation in relation to others. The symbiotic hermeneutics is more specified by him with the term of hermeneutic circle, which is a process of meaning making through systematic collisions between parts or betweem part and whole that interconnects parts. He stresses that bricolage by and large based on multiperspectivism moves to a higher step through hermeneutic circle, however, does not anticipate the finality by summing up all parts as the reality is constructed multidimensionally and ever-changing and every aspect of knowing--interpretation--is 'fugitive' and 'elusive.' He quotes hermeneut Hans-Gerg Gadamer's argument that all meaning-making is historically and culturally specific, thus, prodedualized methods only disconnet research from living experience, therefore different procedures should be employed in different purpose and divergent circumstances.