ABSTRACT
Below is an elaboration on how Habermas’ theoretical concepts served as analytical tools in four sub-studies under the above-mentioned overarching study (see the articles mentioned for further details). In the first sub-study, the theory of communicative action played a pivotal role (Tveit, 2009a). The purpose was to elaborate on how teachers’ and parents’ conversations were affected by their notions of truthfulness. The validity claims ‘truthfulness’, ‘strategic action’ and ‘communicative action’ served as the analytical framework. Interview data and observation data were triangulated and the analysis was based on a combination of a theory-driven approach and an open coding process, allowing the data to speak, as Strauss and Corbin (1998) put it. This was done by using NVivo, and from this a wide range of categories emerged out of the empirical material. A thorough study of these emerging categories revealed that the ones referring to ‘truthfulness’ might add new knowledge to the field of parental involvement. By bridging the theory and empirical material it became evident that the truthfulness of the interlocutors’ speech actions was impacted by the presence of the pupil, leading to the construction of the first category: ‘A careful point of view, gloss over it and talk about what is OK and not unpleasant’. Another category also emerged from bridging theory and empirical data: ‘Positive talk, decency and silence’. This refers to how the speech actions, more specifically ‘truthfulness’, were affected by an important value within special education, namely the aim of focusing on the positive aspects of the pupil’s school situation. A third category, ‘Acting communicatively in a strategic way’, was also clearly constructed according to the theory of communicative action and made it possible to notice that during the observation the teacher apparently expressed an intention to act communicatively, even if during the interview she revealed that she clearly had an agenda. Using the theory of communicative action, this was designated as ‘Acting communicatively in a strategic way’. The study revealed that the majority of the teachers and parents claimed that they were not truthful in all situations, while some of the parents and only one teacher claimed to be truthful at all times. The second sub-study focused on ‘deliberation’, the purpose being to develop an instrument that would make it possible to compare principles of deliberation with what actually takes place in professional conversations (Tveit and Walseth, 2012). The concept ‘deliberation’ is crucial for how the methodology is constructed, thus it was first necessary to study Habermas’ (1984, 1987, 1996) ideas on deliberation. According to this, the characteristics of deliberation were defined as: ‘the equal right to participate’, ‘equality’, ‘no use of coercion’, ‘mutual understanding’, ‘open to changing one’s mind when convinced’ and ‘fulfilment of the validity claims’ (the two latter characteristics were excluded as they cannot be revealed through observation of a professional conversation). The next step was to operationalise these deliberation principles, which involved a
search for relevant literature. But an examination of earlier research revealed that no other instruments could be used directly to identify deliberation principles in professional conversations. Even so, it is possible to find research on single subcategories of deliberation, for example, how participants may be constructed as half-members of an interaction (Hutchby and O’Reilly, 2010) and the role of questioning during the interaction (Linell et al., 1988). This is taken into consideration during the operationalisation process. On the other hand, the field of political science has studies that were strictly focused on measuring deliberation procedures, especially with respect to online discussions (Graham and Witschge, 2003; Hagemann, 2002; Trénel, 2004) and parliamentary debates (Steenbergen et al., 2003; Steiner, 2004). These studies served as a resource when we operationalised the deliberation principles. Actually, the compositions and components of the instrument were mainly derived from one of these studies (Steenbergen et al., 2003), and were used as a template and point of departure when each deliberation principle was operationalised into variables and indicators. Bearing these variables and indicators in mind, each statement in the interaction section has been judged by a coder who decides whether the deliberation principles are present (awarded one point) or absent (awarded zero points), and in the last step the points are summarised. The instrument was developed and adapted for practice by two coders who discussed the coding of four transcribed conversations until agreement was reached. Thus, the operationalisation process was also intertwined with the coding process. In the end, the inter-coder reliability of the instrument was tested on a new conversation and independently coded by the two coders. The conclusion reached is that although in need of further development, the instrument has been found to be an acceptable first version of a tool capable of identifying deliberative principles in professional conversations. In Study 3, the methodology also rests on ‘deliberation’ as an analytical tool, where the purpose was to study whether deliberation principles are vital to teachers’ and parents’ perceptions of dialogue (Tveit, 2014b). The first step was to operationalise ‘deliberation’ into the categories ‘Basic deliberation values’, ‘Procedural aspects of deliberation’ and ‘Validity claims’. The next step was to collate sequences of texts where the informants elaborated on ‘dialogue’ and sort these sequences of texts into these three categories. However, other qualities that are not core principles of deliberation were also observed and noted, leading to the analytical concept ‘Aspects beyond core elements of deliberation’. The conclusion reached is that deliberative principles are vital to the teachers’ and parents’ perception of dialogue, including basic deliberation values and procedural aspects. However, the empirical data also served to complement the deliberation principles by adding elements that are not core elements of deliberation. In the final sub-study the theory of communicative action served as the analytical framework (Tveit, 2014a). The purpose was to explore the ideal of dialogue by taking into account both an observed interaction session and how the participants perceived the interaction. With the theory of communicative action as the underpinning idea, I searched through all the observations to find an interaction
session that might illustrate communicative action. I approached the one selected session analytically through a process of ‘recontextualisation’, which meant logically identifying characteristics of the dialogue by applying the theory of communicative action, as described by Danermark et al. (2002). This use of the theory demonstrated how the pupil, parents and professionals used arguments and negotiated a common understanding of a boy’s performance in mathematics with an orientation towards agreement. Following this, the informants’ utterances during the interviews were studied and sequences of texts that could enlighten the interaction between the participants were collated, still with the theory of communicative action in mind. This expanded the understanding of the interaction session; when the interaction session was seen from the participants’ point of view, it fell short of fulfilling the ideal of dialogue. The findings disclosed that at least one of the professionals was acting strategically, that challenges arose when the interlocutors did not present their view, that the conclusion was vague and that power differences were present.
