ISSUES IN GENDER AND PHENOMENOGRAPHY

Elizabeth Hazel, University of Technology, Sydney

Linda Conrad, Griffith University

Elaine Martin, Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology

Abstract

Phenomenographic research has been used in two main ways in science education: to look at what is learned (for example, students’ conceptions of acceleration) and to look at the experience of being a student or teacher of science. A critical feature of phenomenographic research is the generation of the "outcome space" in which the results of the study are summarised. The central idea underlying this paper is that women may be "lost in space" - the phenomenographic outcome space. First, women seem to be literally missing in the majority of phenomenographic studies, especially those based in the physical sciences where women are under-represented and in research samples in which women have not been present. Second, the traditional disciplines of study, the values of which largely determine the structure of the typically hierarchical outcome space, are distinctly patriarchal. Without attention to the hidden as well as the explicit aspects of what learners are coming to know, the understanding that we gain from the outcome space may be distorted. Third, the outcome space tends to be defined in many studies in cognitive terms, with such dimensions as the affective and aesthetic, often associated with women, being excluded or neglected.

Introduction

Hasselgren and Beach (1997) describe five different kinds of phenomenography - and there are, of course, many kinds of feminism. However, at the risk of oversimplifying both phenomenography and feminism, we would like to address issues that arise when taking a feminist perspective on phenomenography. Phenomenographic analysis has been described as having the aim of developing ‘categories of description denoting different ways of understanding a phenomenon’, with these then yielding a map of what Marton has called the ‘collective mind’ (Marton, 1995). The emphasis is on analysing accounts of experience, reducing the variations identified to a limited number of qualitatively different ways of experiencing (Marton, 1992).

Phenomenography and feminism share a number of claims:

• the nonseparability of what is taught (content) and how it is taught (process);

• the importance of experience as a basis for research;

• the non-dualistic construction of the world; and

• an understanding of phenomena as inter-relational and contextual.

However, phenomenographic practice presents a number of possible areas of conflict with feminism; many of these have to do with a separation of the data from the "bodies" of those who are its source. It is often the case that, in phenomenographic studies,

• the experience of the persons interviewed is subordinate to the abstract categories of analysis;

• the thinking of the subjects is decontextualised and disembodied early in the analysis.

Furthermore, phenomenographic categories of description in studies of learning assume the values of the discipline in the research is being conducted, but this creates conflict with feminist critiques of traditional disciplines and ways of constructing knowledge, especially in the sciences.The lack of women in phenomenographic research - as researchers and as subjects - is another significant reason for concern.

In this paper we seek further to explore the theory and practices of phenomenography (or, rather phenomenographies) in relation to the experiences of women in ways which enable us to ask "Are women missing? Does it matter? If phenomenography has been impoverished by their neglect, then are there ways in which their acknowledgement might enrich the practice of phenomenography for all?" The intention is to highlight at least one kind of feminist perspective and to stimulate debate which has the potential to extend and improve practice.

Women's voices: Are they heard?

From the 1970s it has been clearly identified that women's voices were not heard in much social science and education research, and this finding is closely linked to the growth of a separate field of studies "women's studies". Concern that women's ways of knowing do not seem represented and that women's voices are not heard has not been confined to phenomenography but has also been expressed in fields closely related, in parts of psychology and in research on developmental theories (Gilligan,1982; Belenky, Clinchy, Goldberger and Tarule,1986; Magolda, 1987, 1992)

Methodological discussions in phenomenography often call for a purposive sample of subjects, seeking to include relevant sources of variation. Yet an obvious factor associated with variation - gender - has been seen as unproblematic to most phenomenographers. The issue of gender has not been addressed directly, even in traditional terms as a source of variation or as a topic for post hoc analyses of sex differences. There is hardly a published study pre-1995 where the gender balance of a group of subjects is cited let alone defended.

An example of one of the studies on learning and teaching where one imagines that almost all of the subjects would be male is that where Trigwell, Prosser and Taylor (1994) looked at qualitative differences in approaches to teaching first year university chemistry and physics. Phenomenographic analysis showed approaches ranging from a teacher-focussed strategy with the intention of transmitting information to students through a hierarchy of five, to a student-focussed strategy aimed at the changing of students' conceptions. The gender of the 24 teachers was not identified, but unless a gender purposive sample was chosen, then the sample is likely to reflect the profile of tenured academic staff of the physical sciences in Australian universities: 80-90% male. Women's voices seem to be missing. We do not know in what respects they would have been similar to or different from men's voices. In their report, Trigwell, Prosser and Taylor (1994) were very careful to restrict their comments to physical sciences and to first year. However, there is potentially a problem when others use the results, referring to these conceptions of teaching in discipline settings which are more closely associated with female students or greater numbers of female teachers. This is what Säljö meant by the danger of conceptions taking on a life of their own.

There are several different ways in which phenomenographic studies could become more gender sensitive. One is to use gender purposive samples. A second is to analyse data for women and men separately or at least to analyse for sex differences after a phenomenographic analysis is complete. A third way of eliciting a more nearly full account of experience and consciously listening for the personal voices of women as well as men is to choose research questions where the subject and object of the research are close.

An example of such a study is a study of students' learning in laboratories in first year physics (Hazel et al. 1994). A gender purposive sample was taken; of some 30 students, half were female, and data from women and men were analysed separately. One focus of the study was students' conceptions of investigating in the laboratory, something which seems close to the idea of science as a possible future career. Somewhat different ranges of categories of description were found with a greater sense of connectedness for women expressed as an interest in the interplay of theory and methodology. Those from the men showed rather more interest in action and problem solving. Bruce's recent (1996) study, which ensured equal numbers of males and females in the sample, identified in illustrative quotations the gender as well as the professional role of the interviewee, and developed categories of description that embedded affective elements such as intuition and wisdom. The study also suggested the connectedness of knowing in the interdependence of learners in an information society.

McCosker's (1994) work with women and the experience of domestic violence during childbearing years focused on a domain distinctive to women's experience, and women's experience was also directly tapped in a study by Dall'Alba (ND), who chose as her research question how students learn to be medical doctors during medical education. On the first day of their studies at medical school, all students at a Swedish medical school (57% female) were asked to reply in writing to questions about their understanding of the work of medical doctors. When gender differences were examined, it was found that female students tended more often to associate medical practice with connectedness. Female students, more often than male students, saw medical practice as interacting supportively with the patient and enabling the patient to better deal with his or her life situation, taking the point of departure in the patient's experience of the illness. Less frequently than the male students, women characterised medical practice as locating the problem and informing the patient - a characterisation which shows markedly less connectedness with the patient. This study has enabled women's voices to be heard, expressing qualitatively different ways of looking at medical practice, and revealing patterns of views that differ from those of men.

 The discplines and phenomenography

Marton (1981) and others have frequently suggested that one focal point for phenomenographers' exploration of learning is the content of learning, seen in terms of the discipline of study. Particularly (but not exclusively) in the sciences, the discipline is used as a source of values for constructing the outcome space in typically (but not exclusively) hierarchical terms. Yet the disciplines are not so much sources of stable values as they are sites of struggle. Furthermore, disciplines are masculinist in their formation, and the ideology embedded within them engages learners in forming not only visible conceptions but invisible conceptions which may undermine or distort learning. We do not mean simply to suggest that phenomenography must refer to the discipline as it should be instead of what it is. We argue that without knowing more about what the discipline is - in an ideological sense - we severely limit our understanding of learning and the learner's interaction with disciplinary knowledge.

Since one of the aims of Women's Studies programs has been to address "the invisibility of women in the construction of knowledge" (R. Perry 1996 p. 2) there is now an extensive literature pointing to the invisible ideology that is integral to the intellectual constructs of a discipline, reflecting the normative values of the scholarly community that positions women as marginal.

Although most, if not all disciplines, are patriarchal constructions, a useful example is from feminist critique of the biological sciences. Keller (1987) points out that a contest "has raged throughout this century between organismic and particular views of cellular organization - between what might be described as hierarchical and nonhierarchical theories." She says, "The proponents of hierarchy have won out" (p. 244), but the struggle goes on. If as we contend, the discipline is a site of struggle, then might students’ nonhierarchical interpretation of cellular organisation be categorised as a less desirable conception when it is only less central or less dominant than the hierarchical theory? Whose views within the discipline are of importance? Our question is related to a concern about learning: that an apparent failure to understand a hierarchical theory of cellular organisation may not be a misconception or a less desirable conception but discomfort with the metaphor of explanation in which a master molecule determines the future of an organism. A woman whose sex has precluded "mastery" in the very fabric of the language (a woman cannot be a "master") may experience a master molecule theory as an assault on the self. (Incidentally, Barbara McClintock's Nobel prize was long delayed because her work was inconsistent with that of the master molecule theorists who were in the majority.)

It is the argument of this paper that the "what" of learning needs to be problematised in phenomenographic research in order to be tapped more fully. Because gender is a crucial factor in constructing the object (content) or body of knowledge in which learning is the researcher's focus of study, we believe that awareness of the ideological framework of knowledge and its discourse is necessary if the researcher is to recognise fully the nuances of the learner's awareness. The phenomenographic outcome space needs to reflect an exploration of the set of knowledge values that influence the nature of the experience itself. Although the root word of phenomenography implies that phenomena occur "naturally" and have the legitimacy of "givens", phenomena, as we understand them, are constructed socially and culturally and do not merely occur. There is a link between our own concerns about the ideologies of disciplines and the concerns of Säljö (1994), when he suggests that "we do not simply experience things in the sense suggested by phenomenography. . . [W]e experience the world as it is mediated for us in discursive and social practices" (pp78-9).

Because content is so important to phenomenography, it is critical that the content be viewed from a meta-position in which it is seen as both socially constructed and constructed by a constituency that has been largely male. This may mean that it will be necessary for those who have knowledge of feminist critiques of the disciplines to conduct phenomenographic studies with an attempt to be sensitive to the nuances of interviewees' responses - or for phenomenographers to familiarise themselves with disciplinary critiques and to become more sensitive to learners' interaction with disciplines that construct them in particular ways.

Already phenomenography has been altered by studies that have been sensitive to cultural differences associated with national backgrounds (e.g., Biggs, 1990). Parallel studies concerned with the different cultural backgrounds of men and women may may yield similarly useful contributions, showing gender-related responses to disciplines that are socially constructed in gender-related ways - in ways that have a strong impact on the very identity and sense of agency of learners. If we take the female voice seriously, it could potentially change not only our understanding of learning but also the structure of the disciplines themselves. This is related to looking at the world from a second-order perspective in phenomenography.

The affective and phenomenography

Feeling and thinking are intimately related, even inseparable; and this may be acknowledged in the present move by Marton and Booth (in press) toward using the term "awareness" which may incorporate both. Yet phenomenography in practice - in its very discourse - has tended to deal only with the cognitive. The relation between emotion and cognition is the basis for the last part of our response to phenomenography.

There is a great temptation to think dualistically about emotion and thought, that is, to see them as quite separate and incompatible compartments of the mind. Plato, Aristotle and Descartes have all been advocates of such a position, as were Bloom and associates in their construction of separate affective and cognitive domains (Bloom et al, 1956). It seems as though phenomenography as well as some of its critics may be perpetuating this dualistic fallacy: the critics in suggesting that affect and thought may be too different to coexist within the structure of a single experience; phenomenography in focusing almost relentlessly on cognition. Phenomenography has laboured hard to overcome the Cartesian dualism of dividing human beings from their world, but has promoted the dualism of thought and emotion by emphasising the former at the expense of the latter.

The majority of phenomenographic studies undertaken to date have been of learning scholarly content, and their focus has been on conceptual knowing. Marton’s (1994a) paper on intuition has proved a useful guide to addressing questions of the role of emotion in coming to understand, the representation of emotion within phenomenography and, in particular, its mapping into the outcome space. The paper characterises the experience of intuition in a series of descriptions which suggest, at the simplest level, that it is a vague feeling which is focusing direction and which is non-rational. At a higher level it is described as a feeling of stronger direction and greater certainty but little clarity. Finally, there is a leap to the conscious perception of a solution and this is accompanied by an overwhelming sensation of elation at having arrived at a certain knowing. This involves the sudden grasp of the whole solution and exists long before it is possible to build a logical justification.

We suggest that the non-logical, quasi-sensory leap is not just the prerogative of Nobel Laureates but is at the heart of all conceptual learning. The sensations of having grasped something new, of seeing something in a different way and the feelings of excitement and satisfaction of the discovery are what give purpose and value to learning and make such learning valued and sought after within higher education. (See, for example, Ramsden, 1992; Marton, Hounsell and Entwistle, 1984.)

What is the role of emotion, and how does it contribute to our understanding? De Sousa (1991) has suggested that for a limited time an emotion limits the range of information that an individual will take into account, although the inferences are actually drawn from a potential infinity. This view suggests that emotions set the agenda, guide the processes of reasoning, or distort them, depending on the describer's assessment: emotions are the manipulators of reason that shift attention.

De Sousa (1991) argues that we are made familiar with the vocabulary of emotion by association with what he calls ‘paradigm scenarios’. The key idea is that our emotions are learned rather like a language and that they get their meaning from their relation to a type of situation which defines roles, feelings and reactions characteristic of that emotion. These are drawn first from our daily life as small children and are later reinforced in the stories, art and culture to which we are exposed.

From this perspective, emotional experience is seen to have a structure which is comparable to the structural and referential components of the phenomenographic outcome space; the felt emotion relates to the object of the experience, the painting, the relationship, the individual, and might be seen as a referential component. The structural component relates to how the emotion is felt. What de Sousa argues is that increasingly complex responses emerge with the development of the ability to analyse and reflect upon both the object of the emotion and the response evoked. His work holds promise for those who would argue that emotion and reason are complementary aspects of the same whole and that emotional and aesthetic experiences might be mapped into a phenomenographic outcome space.

So long as phenomenography remains empty of emotion, the structure of the outcome space will fail to capture the existing range of variation. The views of those who come to understand readily through emotion, emotion in harmony with reason, will be lost. This will include both women and men but proportionally far more women. Exploring emotional responses to learning tasks and the ways of capitalising on them could not only enrich our understanding of learning but also improve it.

Closing

We have suggested that the notion of a collective experience reflected in the phenomenographic outcome space may not be defensible in a context in which the subjects of the vast majority of studies as well as the researchers themselves have been men. As women's representation in phenomenography increases (and there is evidence that this is occurring), the absence of women's researchers may be remedied. Certainly we see that it would be useful for the phenomenographer in considering a purposive sample to include gender as a basis for ensuring adequate variation, to attend to sex differences in the analysis, and to choose to explore areas of learning close to women's experience.

Furthermore, we have argued that phenomenography might interrogate the values of the discipline as a basis for developing a hierarchical outcome space. It would be useful for the phenomenographic study to tap implicit as well as explicit conceptions - to enact a critical awareness of the ideological framework of knowledge and its effect on learning that will make it possible to tap the awareness of the learner more effectively.

Finally, we have suggested that the affective, closely associated with women's ways of knowing, is inseparable from the cognitive dimension of knowledge and needs to be recognised in phenomenographic, as well as other kinds of, research.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Beaty, E.G., Dall'Alba, G. and Marton, F. (1990). Conceptions of academic learning. Educational Research and Development Unit, RMIT, Melbourne, occasional Paper 90:1.

Belenky, M.F., Clinchy B. KcV., Goldberger, N.R. and Tarule, J.M. (1986). Women's Ways of Knowing: the Development of Self, Voice and Mind. New York: Basic Books.

Belenky, M.F. (1990). Issues of gender in teaching and learning. Excellence in College Teaching, 1, 52-67.

Berman, R. (1989). From Aristotle's dualism to m aterialist dialectics: Feminist transformation of science and society. In A. M. Jaggar and S. R. Bordo (eds.) Gender/Body/Knowledge: Feminist Reconstructions of Being and Knowing. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 224-225.

Biggs, J. (1990). Asian students' approaches to learning: Implications for teaching overseas students. Keynote discussion paper, 8th Australasian Tertiary Learning Skills and Language Conference, Queensland University of Technology, 11-13 July.

Bloom, B.S. and Associates (1956).Taxonomy of Educational Objectives: Cognitive Domain. New York: McKay.

Bordo, S. (1987). The Flight to Objectivity: Essays on Cartesianism and Culture. Albany: State University of New York Press.

Bruce, C. (1996). Information literacy: a phenomenography. PhD Thesis

submitted for examination to the University of New England, Armidale, Australia.

Crawford, J., Kippax, S., Onyx, J., Gault, U. and Benton, P. (1992). Emotion and Gender: Constructing Meaning from Memory. London: Sage.

Dall'Alba, G. (1993). Reflections on phenomenography: Introduction to Part II. Nordisk Pedagogik, 3/1993, 130-133.

Dall'Alba, G. (ND). Learning to be a Medical Doctor: Orientations When Starting Out. Gold Report Series No. 60. Stockholm: MIP Karolinska Institute.

De Sousa, R. (1991). The Rationality of Emotion. Cambridge, Mass.: The MIT Press.

Ekeblad, E. (1996). Children, Learning, Numbers: A Phenomenographic Excursion into First-grade Children's Arithmetic. Göteborg Studies in Educational Sciences 105. Göteborg: Acta Universitatis Gothoburgensis.

Francis, H. (1993). Advancing phenomenography: Questions of method. Nordisk Pedagogik 2/1993, 68-75.

Gilligan, C. (1982). In a Different Voice. Mass.: Harvard University Press.

Harding, S. and O'Barr, J. (eds) (1987). Sex and Scientific Inquiry. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Hasselgren, B. and Beach, D. (1997). Phenomenography - "a good-for-nothing brother" of phenomenology? Higher Education Research and Development, 16 (2), 191-202.

Hazel, E., Bond, C., Buckridge, M., Bain, J., Conrad, L. and Carriere, G. (1994). Gender and phenomenography (workshop material). In R. Ballantyne and C. Bruce (eds.) Phenomenography: Philosophy and Practice. Proceedings. Brisbane: Queensland University of Technology, 447.

Irani, K. and Myers, G. (1983). (eds.), Philosophical Studies. New York: Haven.

Jaret, P. and Nilsson, L. (1986). Photographs. Our immune system: The wars within. National Geographic, 169 (6), 702-734.

Keller, E. F. (1987). Feminism and science. InSex and Scientific Inquiry , edited by S. Harding and J. O'Barr. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 233-246.

Koestler, A. (1964). The Act of Creation. London: Pan Books.

Kohlberg, L. (1981).The Philosophy of Moral Development. San Francisco: Harper and Row.

Kroksmark, T. (1995). Teaching and teachers' "didaktic". Studies in Philosophy and Education, 14, 365-382.

McCosker, H. (1994). Phenomenographic interview applied to women and domestic violence: Potential conflict of interest. In R. Ballantyne and C. Bruce (eds) Phenomenography: Philosophy and Practice. Proceedings. Brisbane: Queensland University of Technology, 299-306.

Magolda, M. B. (1992). Knowing and Reasoning in College: Gender-Related Patterns in Students' Intellectual Development. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

Martin, E. and Balla, M. (1991). Conceptions of teaching and implications for learning. Research and Development in Higher Education, 13, 298-304.

Marton, F. (1981). Phenomenography - Describing conceptions of the world around us. Instructional Science, 10, 117-200.

Marton, F. (1992). Phernomenography and "the art of teaching all things to all men". Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education, 5, 253-267.

Marton, F. (1994a). A Nobel's eye view of scientific intuition: Discussions with the Nobel prize winners in physics, chemistry and medicine (1970-86). International Journal of Science Education, 16(4), 457-473.

Marton, F. (1994b). Phenomenography, The International Encyclopedia of Education, edited by T. Hsen and T.N. Postelthwaite, 2nd edition. Oxford: Pergamon Press, 4424-4429.

Marton, F. (1995). Cognosco ergo sum. Reflections on reflections. Nordisk Pedagogik, 15 (3), 165-180.

Marton, F. and Booth, S. (in press). Changing Approaches to Learning.

Marton, F., Hounsell, D. and Entwistle, N. (1984) (eds.) The Experience of Learning. Edinburgh: Scottish Academic Press.

Nielsen, J. M. (1990). Feminist Research Methods: Exemplary Readings in the Social Sciences. Boulder: Westview Press.

Perry, R. (1996). I brake for feminists: Debates and divisions within women's studies. Transformations. 7 (1), 1-14.

Perry, W. (1968). Forms of Intellectual and Ethical Development in the College Years. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston.

Piaget, J. (1965). The Moral Judgment of the Child (1932). New York: The Free Press.

Ramsden, P. (1992). Learning to Teach in Higher Education. London and New York: Routledge.

Rothenberg, P. (1996). The Politics of Discourse and the End of Argument. Creating an Inclusive College Curriculum: A Teaching Sourcebook from the New Jersey Project. E.G. Friedman, W. Kolmar, C. Flint, and P. Rothenberg (eds.) New York: Athene Series, Teachers College Press, Columbia University, 59-69.

Säljö, R. (1994). Minding action; conceiving of the world versus participating in cultural practices. Nordisk Pedagogik, 2, 71-80.

Schniedewind, N. and Maher, F. (1987). Special issue on pedagogy. Womens Studies Quarterly, 15 (3 and 4).

Sibley, F. (1965). Aesthetic and nonaesthetic. Philosophical Review, 74, 135-139.

Trigwell, K., Prosser, M. and Taylor, P. (1994). Qualitative differences in approaches to teaching first year university science. Higher Education, 27, 75-84.

Uljens, M. (1993). The essence and existence of phenomenography. Nordisk Pedagogik, 3, 134-147.

Webb, G. (1996). Deconstructing deep and surface: Towards a critique of phenomenography. Higher Education, 32, 1-18.

Walkerdine, V. (1988). The Mastery of Reason: Cognitive Development and the Production of Rationality. London: Routledge.