presentation made by Kibbie Naidoo at the SOTL @ UJ seminar series

1. What will the world look like if we
were not working with Archer?
Exploring the possibilities of theory
enrichment (theorising) in AD/HE.
Kibbie Naidoo
19 February 2015

2. The argument
In order for research to be of value it needs to
extend the boundaries of what is known or possible
(Kahn, et al) and I am not sure that we always do
this. HE and AD in SA provides a rich and exciting
space for research. While research emerging from
SA is growing and we are engaging with theory, very
few of us are using this exciting space and its socio-
historical context to enrich theory.
Ashwin (2012) makes this point in relation to HE
research in general.

3. HE/AD Context
• Research is messy and HE research and more specifically
AD research (practice based research) produces rich (but
complex data)
• Need theory to make sense of this messiness. But what
theory?
• Ashwin (2012) argue that HE research seems to move
through a succession of theoretical lenses, the use of which
appears to be largely a matter of fashion
• Theory is political – there are theoretical moves that are
conservative (aimed purely funding and maintaining the
status quo) and progressive (making a difference and
challenge dominant thought)
• SoTL for Social Justice will fit into the latter

4. A word on theory in SoTL
Theory has been described by Hutchins (2007) as
the ‘elephant in the room’
Ashwin (2013) argues that there is a difference
between the role of theory in educative practice
and carrying out educational research
SoTL is problematic - it straddles both theory and
practice AND
Raises questions about discipline specific and
educational theory
Theoretical Pluralism (Hutchins, 2007; Hutchins and
Taylor Huber, 2008)

5. My concerns relating Agency
• My concern with approaching my work with blinkers
on (even though theory helps us make sense of the
messiness)
• Sociological background (understanding the
relationship between the individual and society;
structure/culture and agency – Giddens and Archer;
disciplines – Bernstein)
• AD research
• Plugging ‘fashionable’ theory not extending or building
on it (Wenger-Trayner’s notion of plug and play)
• Concern that by using a particular lens I was ignoring
things that matter to people (see Sayer 2011)

6. Archer’s Account of Human Agency
• Archer provides a useful heuristic for the consideration of
the interplay of structure, culture and agency, we need
other concepts to help us make sense of the specific socio-
historical context that we are working in
• More importantly, Archer’s framework to account on the
interplay of structure, culture and agency was developed in
relation to social theory and not in relation to education.
• Awareness that Archer’s work on reflexivity is informed by
a very specific context (historical and contextual)
• Raises the problem of using theories in uncritical
decontextualised ways

7. The challenge
• How do we shape theory so that it can speak
more powerfully to data and context?
• Need to step back and take a new look at the
research with a broader lens - idea of the
Sociological Imagination

8. Sociological Imagination – stepping
back and examine a situation anew
C Wright Mills (2000) was critical of both grand
theory and abstracted empiricism that began to
dominate Sociology.
He proposed the idea of the SI as a way of
examining the relationship between the
individual and society
He defined the SI as ‘the vivid awareness of the
relationship between experience and the wider
society’

9. • Implies being able to ‘think ourselves away’
from the familiar routines of our daily lives
(practices) in order to look at them anew
• Being acutely aware that social outcomes are
shaped by social context, actors, cultures,
history and social actions –interconnections
that inform the fabric of human societies

10. To have a SI you need to
• Be systematic and structured – but not linear
‘that we have to start with theory to justify
research problem is complete nonsense’ (Howard
Becker, 2014) – read broadly and widely
• Enter into dialogue with the academic community (not
just fashionable ones) but
• Avoid strict adherence to one methodology and one
theory
more importantly
• Enter into dialogue with the research context (the
actual experience of the participants and the socio-
cultural and historical contexts)

11. The Challenge: Dialogue
How do we begin dialogue which is able to
engage with the best that is known in this
context and which does not by definition
position knowledge either favourably or
negatively simply by virtue of where it comes
from? (Soudien, 2014)

12. Some illustrations
• Dorothy E Smith’s (2005) work on institutional
ethnography
• Starting with the actualities of people’s lives –
research as discovery rather than explication
of theory as analysis of empirical
• Expanding peoples’ knowledge and not
narrowing it down by framing it within a
particular theoretical lens

13. Along similar lines in educational
contexts
Sfard (2013)suggests discursive research where
researchers dig deep under the familiar and the
obvious, looking for unsuspected, but highly
consequential differences; and rather than
trying to tell teachers what is going to work in
their classrooms, the researcher should help
them craft tailor-made solutions for their
specific problems.

14. More radical - Walter Mignolo’s (2013) work on
decoloniality – coveys a similar theme on the
importance of context from a third world
perspective. The proposes delinking from western
knowledge and ‘changing the terms of the
conversation and the content’ – going back to the
reservoir of ways of life and thinking that is often
dismissed by western theories.
Connell (2007, 244) provides an argument for the
need for theory from the south or periphery. “social
science in the periphery also… injects themes that
are relatively uncommon in metropolitan thought” .

15. So What does this mean for us?
• Use our experience/practice as our intellectual work
• But constantly asking questions of it, use multiple lenses to
interpret it
• Be critical – step back and ask questions about the theories
that we are using; about the links between power and the
production of the texts we are reading, about the
possibilities of missing stuff and resist the comfort of
‘closure’ – approach is anew.
• We need to take risks in explaining the data, allow
ourselves to be more vulnerable – be more mindful of the
rich and exciting context that we research
• Theorising as process rather than product (Sue Clegg, 2012)
and engage with it in more nuanced ways.

16. The picture may look different
without the blinkers
Thank you!

17. References
• Ashwin, P. (2012) How often are theories developed through empirical research
into higher education?, Studies in Higher Education. 37. 8:941-955.
• Clegg, S (2012) On the problem of theorising: an insider account of research
practice, Higher Education Research and Development, 31.3. 407-418
• Hutchings, P. (2007) Theory: The Elephant in the Scholarship of Teaching and
Learning Room. International Journal for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning
• Mills C. Wright (2000) The Sociological Imagination: 40th Anniversary Edition. USA.
Oxford University Press.
• Sayer A (2011) Why Things Matter to People: Social Science, Values and Ethical
Life. Cambridge University Press
• Sfard, A. (2013) Not just so stories: practising discursive research for the benefit of
educational practice. In: Farnsworth, V. and Solomon, Y. (Eds) Reframing
Educational Research: Resisting the ‘what works’ agenda. Abingdon:
Routledge.139 – 150.
• Soudien, C (2012) ‘Inclusion, Innovation and Excellence: Higher Education in South
Africa and its role in Social Development’. Keynote address at the annual Heltasa
Conference, Stellenbosch University. 27-29 November 2012.
• Wenger-Trayner, E. 2013. The practice of theory: confessions of a social learning
theorist. In: Farnsworth, V. and Solomon, Y. (Eds) Reframing Educational Research:
Resisting the ‘what works’ agenda. Abingdon: Routledge. 105 - 118.