Applying Epistemology to Research

In my thesis I intend to explore how members of the wireless generation experience live theatre. Although much remains to be decided, I would guess that my research methodology will involve watching a series of plays with grade 12 students and then meeting with them in focus groups to discuss, in a semi-structured interview format, how they felt about the experience.

How might my introduction to epistemology help to underpin this process?

• The epistemological experience will be constructivist, because I’m pretty sure there are no objective truths waiting for me to discover. Instead, I will be probing the ways in which “subject and object emerge as partners in the generation of meaning” (Crotty, p. 9).
• My findings will fall under post-positivism: I will be seeking to “approximate the truth rather than grasp its totality” (p. 29). 
• I will be a social constructionist in my research, because I believe that “culture is best seen as the source rather than the result of human thought and behavior” (p. 53). My students have been “born into a world of meaning” (p. 54), and my job is to explore what the world is, and how is affects their experience of live theatre.
• Having spent some reading Joe Kincheloe and Shirley Steinberg, I may also bring a critical thinking lens to the research, since I suspect that student use of technology is not as benign as many imagine. Students may believe that they are “thinking different” as they turn on the iPhones at the theatre, but that very act places them within the conflict between consumerist and artistic culture. 

This will, I hope, clarify the purpose of my research and help to frame and support its findings.