View/Open - Scholarly Commons Home

Chapter Two Part Two
Methodology
This chapter is a discussion of concepts and approaches drawn from relevant literature
to provide a theoretical framing for the thesis, both substantively and methodologically.
An important point in relation to methodology is that this study involves the
construction by a practitioner of an approach from within their own practice experience,
in an example of practitioner research. As such, it functions primarily as an
exemplification. 1 The direction of the development of knowledge is thus ‘inside-out’,
rather than the more usual direction of investigation, from the ‘outside-in’. A
consequence of this is that the approach may be more readily accessible by
‘practitioners’ (principally those with a clinical or similar background or perspective).
Refining the theoretical and philosophical orientation of the
study
In Part One of Chapter Two I have examined some concerns and contributions from a
group of disciplines, and assembled some of those contributions into an embryonic
conceptual apparatus to begin the study of the learning group. In what follows now, I
will refine this apparatus into the basis of a novel methodology.
1 I am grateful here to Professor Victoria Grace for her articulation of this notion, which in my view
neatly encompasses what this thesis represents. The process of this exemplification is to explore practice
from a particular participant-observer perspective, making use of theoretical notions which have usefully
informed practice in the field and thus created practice wisdom, and to take the opportunity to reflect on
this exemplification for what it can contribute to the understanding and practice of others.