nurturing servant leaders in religious education - Scholarly ...

au/Auckland. In order to create triangulation of methods I also carried out three
ongoing, unannounced classroom observations and document analysis of several
documents and publications pertinent to the CES.
Theoretical framework
This project attempts to obtain from participants their lived experiences of servant
leadership. As such, the study is set in the interpretive paradigm, meaning that it is
intended to explore the nature of a phenomenon as it is experienced in the lives of
people. Grant & Giddings (2002) explained “as a researcher in the interpretive
paradigm, you relate and interact with your participants in an effort to come to
understand their experiences and the meaning they ascribe to them” (pp. 16-17). The
qualitative methodology of this project allowed me to interact with the participants,
build rapport, and establish an environment conducive to discussion before data
gathering began, whether it was over the course of extended time, or briefly before
interviews and focus groups began. The follow-up and transcript-checking phase also
allowed for additional chances to build and further establish relationships.
Why a qualitative study
Consistent with the aims of the study, I employed a qualitative methodology to “study
a phenomenon/situation in detail, holistically and in context” (Punch, 2000, p. 51).
Conducting the study within the qualitative framework encouraged my eye to be
consistently conscious of multiple levels of meaning as they applied throughout the
research cycle. A further purpose of qualitative methodology is to “capture and
discover meaning once the researcher becomes immersed in the data” (Neuman, 2003,
p. 145). Hence, multiple and evolving meanings were sown as established knowledge
met with new knowledge reaped in this study. Further, Conger (1998) has suggested
that the study of leadership lends itself to qualitative methodology as leadership is a
highly complex phenomenon. He further suggested that a qualitative approach is able
to bring “paradigm shifts, insights into the role of context, and longitudinal
perspectives that other methods often fail to capture” (ibid., 1998, ¶ 1). Because
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