A topic in research methodology
The text 'Gill: A vignette', included in my M.Sc. dissertation, reported on Gill's experiences of school physics – but Gill was a figment of my imagination. I would probably have not written a narrative piece like with without the advice of my research supervisor at the time (Dr. Pam Denicolo) who suggested this would be a useful and reader-friendly way to bring together the various findings from the study (which had included classroom observation, interviews with students, interviews with staff, questionnaires, and a small intervention).
“The extract is from the penultimate chapter in my own Master’s thesis from some years ago now. It describes the experiences and attitudes of Gill and Barry, two pupils in the school where I was teaching, and where I undertook a case study. This section of the thesis is described as being a ‘vignette’…
Research writing should be non-fiction, but Gill and Barry did not exist. This is not an admission of research fraud, as all the data reported in my thesis were genuine – collected and analysed as reported. Moreover, there is no question of dishonest reporting in the thesis either, as it is explicitly reported that this particular chapter offered “a description of the perceptions and experiences which could be ascribed to a ‘typical’ female pupil passing through the school in comparison to her ‘typical’ male peers” but that “in reality all pupils are unique individuals, and probably no real girl in the school would recognise this composite report as being a precise account of her own case” (p. 224).
So Gill and Barry are not real people, but are narrative devices – inventions used to summarise a great deal of analysis in a simple, readable account that gets across the main messages of the study. This kind of approach is common in some types of research writing…, but it is important to make sure that no reader could misinterpret such vignettes as actual reports of individuals, rather than composite summary accounts.”
This takes much further the idea of the narrative account described above, where one data source (an interview transcript) was reworked to aid analysis – as the vignette … draws upon a wide range of data [typical in a case study] collected from a great many participants (through interviews, classroom observations, and questionnaires), and offers a preview or advanced organiser for the more detailed conclusions discussed in the subsequent rather ‘dense’ final chapter of the thesis.”
Taber, 2013: 303
Sources cited:
Taber, K. S. (2013). Classroom-based Research and Evidence-based Practice: An introduction (2nd ed.). London: Sage.
My introduction to educational research:
Taber, K. S. (2013). Classroom-based Research and Evidence-based Practice: An introduction (2nd ed.). London: Sage.
