1

WHAT ROLE, IF ANY, SHOULD CLIFFORD GEERTZ’S ‘THICK

DESCRIPTION’ PLAY IN EDUCATIONAL RESEARCH

The lesson of the master, like that of one or two contemporaries, is that the discipline of

ethnographic attention to the variety of human doings is primary. Describing thickly and

truthfully the real things which are there is the first, best duty of the human scientist and

intellectual.

(Inglis 2000, 26)

ABSTRACT

In this paper the author will attempt to outline the possible purposes of educational

research and to identify and define the two major methodologies within educational

research. Clifford Geertz’s ‘thick description’ is encompassed in one of these

methodologies and this method of data collection and its usefulness to educational

research will be the focus of the paper.

INTRODUCTION

The purpose of research is to generate knowledge either through descriptions,

explanations or generalizations. Based on the purpose of the research the researcher will

gather data. This data will then be analyzed. One type of data collection is termed ‘thick

description’ the purpose of which is to add specific understanding to a particular

situation.

2

Although there is no doubt that the practice itself can add to the deeper understanding of

a particular subject in a particular time and place under specific circumstances, is the

research applicable in any other environment---is it generalizable to a wider research

field? The question posed in this paper is: does this type of specific data collection serve

the purpose of adding new understanding or knowledge to the field of education or is it

too limited in its scope to be of value?

BACKGROUND AND CONTEXT: Educational Research Methodologies

Research as the systematic exploration of an issue, must serve the purpose of adding

something new to existing knowledge in a field. Educational research lies within the

field of social science and is expected to generate knowledge for one of four reasons: for

the sake of itself, to test existing understanding, to inform decision and policy making, or

to improve practice. The knowledge generated (be it to describe, to increase

understanding, to predict, to improve decision making, or to better practice) is done so for

the purpose of describing, explaining or generalizing.

A basic element of generating new knowledge is data collection. The term data is used to

mean all information collected systematically in order to investigate a theory or question.

Data collected for educational research are usually concerned with understanding human

behavior in relation to issues about teaching and learning. Data can take a variety of

forms and are collected in relation to individuals, groups or institutions in order to

describe, compare, contrast, classify, analyze and interpret those relationships. The ways

3

in which educational research (including data collection) may be conducted is based on

the goals and basic assumptions which underlie both researcher and project.

Research can be empirical with new or primary data gathered to answer the research

question or literature-based with secondary information derived from an analysis and

synthesis of existing literature and documents. It can also be a combination of several

types. The methods of collecting empirical data can be quantitative (objective, statistical,

nomothetic) or qualitative (subjective, descriptive, ideographic). Quantitative is used

when doing positivist research, when wanting to prove something or nonothetic, when

stating laws. The qualitative is a method of understanding situations, events and

ideographic meaning.

Data collection within the two methodologies differs. Quantitative researchers employ

tools such as surveys, documentary methods, observation, sociometry, experiments.

Qualitative methods of data collection include those of quantitative researchers but the

principles that guide the research are different for the focus is on the subject, the object or

development. Therefore, the tools may also include case studies, interviews, thick

description, etc.

Quantitative methodology has its roots in the positivist paradigm which means the

research often attempts to prove a hypothesis or to answer a question posed by the

researcher and is “based on theories that the researcher seeks to test” (Creswell 2003,

4

119). A theory, says Creswell, is “an interrelated set of constructs (variables) formed into

propositions, or hypotheses, that specify the relationship among variables (typically in

terms of magnitude or direction)” (120). Creswell says that in quantitative studies a

theory appears at the beginning of the plan and is used deductively as a point to verify

rather than develop.

On the other hand, qualitative methodology is associated with many diverse methods of

research but is in contrast to quantitative methodology. It is an alternative to the

traditional positivism paradigm; therefore, the principles which underlie it are based on

the assumption that “the social world is always a human creation” unlike in quantitative

methodology where it is a discovery (Saratakos 1998, 46). The tools or methods of

qualitative methodology seek to capture the essence of life through understanding not

through measurement.

Qualitative research focuses on the quality of social life and tries to interpret human

activity rather than generalize about it. But this epistemology assumes that there is more

than one truth unlike the positivist paradigm. This idea is important as we move on to the

way in which research is conducted and the epistemology which underpins the qualitative

research process. According to Denzin and Lincoln in The Landscape of Qualitative

Research the process, qualitative or otherwise, should be divided into five phases: the

researcher as a multicultural subject; theoretical paradigms and perspectives; research

strategies; methods of collection and analysis; the art, practices and politics of

interpretation and presentation (Denzin and Lincoln 2003). This five phase process

5

means that early on the researcher must identify the paradigms and perspectives which

guide his or her project. For the educational researcher who falls under the notions of the

sociologist, this means realizing that more than one truth exists as the subjects studied are

evolving themselves as well as creating the society in which they live. Qualitative

research is then the most appropriate methodology if one is considering education

through a sociologist’s eyes, and especially through an anthropologist’s eyes.

The following section will give the history of and attempt to define ‘thick description’

within the domain of qualitative research which will aid in the assessment of its

usefulness to educational research.

THE CENTRAL FOCUS: Clifford Geertz’s ‘thick description’

Anthropology, derived from the Greek meaning “human” or “person”, is the study of

humanity with an emphasis on the examination of context and cross-cultural

comparisons. Cultural anthropology grew up around the practice of ethnography which

is a holistic research method founded on the idea that a system’s properties cannot

necessarily be accurately understood independently of each other.

Ethnographies study groups and/or cultures over a period of time. Ethnography, an

entirely fieldwork based research method, is the direct, first hand observation of daily

behavior where the researcher may even participate in the actual process as a participant

observer. Cultural phenomena is observed as it occurs real time and gives the researcher

6

the worldview of his subjects. The goal of this type of research is to comprehend a

particular culture or group with research being completed using various methods;

however, the researcher is usually immersed within the group for an extended period of

time allowing for a more detailed collection of information.

According to Clifford Geertz, the role of the ethnographer is more or less to observe,

record, and analyze a culture. In his book The Interpretation of Cultures, Geertz begins

by defining and explaining the role of anthropology in the study of culture. He uses the

words of Max Weber to exemplify his own view of culture: “Man is an animal

suspended in webs of significance he himself has spun, I take culture to be those webs,

and the analysis of it to be therefore not an experimental science of law but an

interpretive one in search of meaning” (Geertz 1993, 5).

In an attempt to make sense of the webs of culture, Geertz uses a term he adopted from

the philosopher Gilbert Ryle. In the book above, Geertz dedicates a chapter to the term

that he took from Ryle but popularized himself. It is in this chapter “Thick Description:

Toward an Interpretive Theory of Culture” that Geertz attempts to clarify the definition,

validity and usefulness of the ethnographic form of data collection called thick

description. He weaves the definition and usefulness of thick description with criticism

of the method. First, the definition will be looked at and then the criticisms.

In brief, thick description is the detailed observation of a subject in a particular situation

and, according to Geertz, is necessary to understand cultural meaning. Geertz says that to

understand any strain of science one needs to look at what the practitioners do. In the

7

case of social anthropology, he says, the practitioners “do” ethnography. He claims that

anthropology is a form of knowledge and understanding; ethnography will aid in

comprehending that form of knowledge. He says that although a technical definition of

what anthropologists do is possible (“establishing rapport, selecting informants,

transcribing texts, taking genealogies, mapping fields, keeping a diary, and so on”),

ethnography is the intellectual effort of ‘thick description’ (Geertz 1993, 6).

Geertz uses Ryle’s explanation of a wink to define thick description. Ryle explained that

without understanding of context, if someone winks, one does not know what that wink

means: attraction, secret communication, understanding, etc. As the context changes so

does the meaning of the wink. Geertz argues that this is true for all human behavior. A

thin description would be of the wink itself but a thick description would include the

context and meanings within the society and for the individual himself:

Two boys rapidly contracting the eyelids of their right eyes. In one, this is an

involuntary twitch; in the other, a conspiratorial signal to a friend. The two

movements are, as movements, identical . . . Yet the difference, however

unphotographical, between a twitch and a wink is vast; as anyone unfortunate

enough to have had the first taken for the second know. The winker is

communicating, and indeed communicating in a quite precise and special way . . .

(Geertz 1993, 6)

Geertz claims that between the thin description (the action itself) and the thick (what and

why the boy winks within a context), lies the object of ethnography: “a stratified

hierarchy of meaningful structures in terms of which twitches, winks, fake-winks,

parodies, rehearsals of parodies are produced, perceived, and interpreted, and without

which they would not . . . in fact exist” (Geertz 1993, 7).

8

He goes on to explain that “the point for now is only that ethnography is thick

description. What the ethnographer is in fact faced with---except when (as, of course, he

must do) he is pursuing the more automatized routines of data collection---is a

multiplicity of complex conceptual structure, many of them superimposed upon or

knotted into one another, which are at once strange, irregular, and inexplicit, and which

he must contrive somehow first to grasp and then to render” (Geertz 1993, 10). Geertz

likens the job of an anthropologist (doing ethnography as he puts it) to reading an ancient,

foreign manuscript not through symbols of sound but through symbols of behavior.

According to Geertz the role of anthropology as a scientific strain is to understand

culture. Culture he says is public because meaning is public: “Not a power, something to

which social events, behaviors, institutions, or processes can be causally attributed; it is a

context, something within which they can be intelligibly---that is thickly---described”

(Geertz 1993, 14). Therefore, Geertz is saying that thick description is the means by

which culture can be described, understood and interpreted. It is in effect a form of data

collection but perhaps more than that.

Geertz says that a good interpretation of anything including culture must take us into the

heart of that which is being interpreted and if the interpretation takes us somewhere else

then it is something other than an interpretation of the original task: “A piece of

anthropological interpretation consists in: tracing the curve of a social discourse; fixing it

into an inspectable form . . . The ethnographer ‘inscribes’ the social discourse; he writes

it down. In so doing, he turns it from a passing event, which exists only in its own

9

moment of occurrence, into an account, which exists in its inscriptions and can be

reconsulted” (Geertz 1993, 19).

He concludes his discussion on ethnographic description which is indeed thick

description with its four characteristics: “it is interpretive; what it is interpretive of is the

flow of social discourse; and the interpreting involved consists in trying to rescue the

‘said’ of such discourse from its perishing occasions and fix it in perusable terms . . it is

microscopic” (Geertz 1993, 21).

Geertz then moves into the theory underpinning thick description. Although he believes

that theory in any interpretive discipline is difficult to articulate and assess, he says that

when beginning thick description one should not arrive with no theoretical base:

Although one starts any effort at thick description, beyond the obvious and

superficial, from a state of general bewilderment as to what the devil is going on--

-trying to find one’s feet---one does not start (or ought not) intellectually empty-

handed. Theoretical ideas are not created wholly anew in each study, as I have

said, they are adopted from other, related studies, and, refined in the process,

applied to new interpretive problems (Geertz 1993, 27).

For Geertz, thick description is the ultimate way in which to understand culture.

However, even he himself recognizes the limitations of the method. The criticism against

ethnography is that the observers’ presence may in itself contribute to results that are

inaccurate. This is because the observed subjects may act in a manner that is different

from norm due to the presence of the observer. Since the observed behavior is not usual

behavior, the derived results are false because it does not depict normal behavior:

10

What we call our data are really our own constructions of other people’s

constructions of what they and their compatriots are up to---is obscured because

most of what we need to comprehend a particular event, ritual, custom, idea or

whatever is insinuated as background information before the thing itself is

directly examined . . . there is nothing particularly wrong with this, and it is in any

case inevitable. But it does lead to a view of anthropological research as rather

more of an observational and rather less of an interpretive activity than it really is

(Geertz 1993, 9).

Geertz says that anthropological writings “are themselves interpretations, and second and

third order ones to boot . . . They are, thus, fictions; fictions, in the sense that they are

‘something made,’ ‘something fashioned’---the original meaning of fiction---not that they

are false, unfactual, or merely ‘as if’ thought experiments” (Geertz 1993, 15). He goes

on with not what could be a called a criticism but certainly what could be called a

limitation in terms of positivist thinking: “The line between mode of representation and

substantive content is as undrawable in cultural analysis as it is in painting; and that fact

in turn seems to threaten the objective status of anthropological knowledge by suggesting

that its source is not social reality but scholarly artifice” (16). He claims that this threat

to the ethnographic account is hollow because the real purpose of the anthropologist is in

his ability to capture, carry home and clarify culture:

If ethnography is thick description and ethnographers those who are doing the

describing, then the determining question for any given example of it, whether a

field journal squib or a Malinowski-sized monograph, is whether it sorts winks

from twitches and real winks from mimicked ones (16).

Once Geertz has established a definition and the characteristics of ethnography and its

method, he goes on to address the issue of how to move from thick description to its

usefulness. He criticizes those theories which would indicate that it is possible to find the

11

“essence of national societies, civilizations, great religions, or whatever summed up and

simplified in so-called ‘typical’ small towns and villages is palpable nonsense” (Geertz

1993, 22). The anthropologist does not study a village but “in” a village and the

methodological problem posed by the microscopic-ness of ethnography cannot be

resolved by imagining that a piece of the whole is indeed the whole. Geertz does not

truly provide an answer to this dilemma except to say that thick description must be taken

at face value and used to understand what it is meant to understand and not more or less

than that.

On the other hand, Geertz spends time criticizing those who would “bleach” human

behavior on the assumption that culture is merely a symbolic system and that by looking

at its elements and characterizing the system in a general way we can assume to

understand it. He says that instead “whatever, or wherever, symbol systems ‘in their own

terms’ may be, we gain empirical access to them by inspecting events, not by arranging

abstracted entities into unified patterns” (Geertz 1993, 17).

Although Geertz chapter on thick description is useful in identifying the role and purpose

of anthropology, ethnography and thick description, the argument that he raised against

the methodology was alluded to but never answered specifically. Thus, in this paper I

will try to identify how useful thick description can actually be to educational research.

THE CHARACTERISTICS OF EFFECTIVE RESEARCH

12

According to Noel Gough in his article “Blank spots, blind spots, and methodological

questions,” research has varying definitions from experimentation and observation to

measurement and statistics to surveys and interviews. He compares the Oxford English

Dictionary definition to how researchers see themselves to the history of research

approaches. He says that “in education we perennially address the practical problem of

what should be taught and learned . . . where the emphasis is on making defensible

decisions in specific circumstances rather than on constructing theoretic generalizations

that are more universally applicable” (Gough 2002, 2).

Gough quotes Jon Wagner who claims that “ignorance is a better starting place than truth

for assessing usefulness of educational research.” He says that “educational researchers

often invoke truth and truthfulness-and related concepts such as validity and reliability-as

criteria for judging research” (Gough 2002, 3). Whether from ignorance or from an

assumption, education and research must begin somewhere.

Determining the effectiveness of research one must take into consideration the purpose of

the research as well as the position and context of the subject and the researcher. As

mentioned under the section entitled “Background and Context”, perspective will

influence how one sees the truth which in turn will affect the approach taken to data

collection and interpretation. I will use the criteria from Mike Wallace and Louise

Poulson as a starting point to identify the effectiveness of educational research and then

apply this model to Geertz’s method of data collection.

13

In their book Educational Leadership & Management Wallace and Poulson begin their

discussion by defining research terminology. Their definition of knowledge will be

particularly useful to us. Firstly, they distinguish between three kinds of knowledge:

theoretical, research and practice. Theoretical knowledge involves a theory based on

claims about the social world and is developed through reflection on that world.

Research knowledge is claims about the social world supported by data collected and

analyzed through a systematic investigation. Practice knowledge is the interpretation and

evaluation of practice by practitioners which is developed through taking action. Their

diagram of the tools for thinking and the three kinds of knowledge is included below.

14

15

Beyond the aspect of knowledge, they cover the notion that intellectual projects are

produced for the purpose of increasing knowledge. They define these types of projects as

“a scheme of enquiry to generate the kinds of knowledge that will achieve specified

purposes” (Wallace and Poulson 2003, 23). They provide five different projects for

studying aspects of the social world as can be seen in the second table provided. As they

note, the source of the five projects can be found in Bolam’s work (1999). The categories

and definitions of each include:

o Knowledge-for-understanding – attempting to develop theoretical and research

knowledge from a disinterested standpoint towards an aspect of the social world, in

order to understand, rather than improve, practice and policy and their underlying

ideologies;

o Knowledge-for-critical evaluation – attempting to develop theoretical and research

knowledge from an explicitly negative standpoint towards practice and policy, in

order to criticize and expose the prevailing ideology underlying existing practice and

policy and to argue why it should be rejected, and sometimes advocating

improvement according to an alternative ideology;

o Knowledge-for-action – attempting to develop theoretical and research knowledge

with practical application from a positive standpoint towards practice and policy, in

order to inform improvement efforts within the prevailing ideology;

o Instrumentalism – attempting to impart practice knowledge and associated skills

through training and consultancy from a positive standpoint towards practice and

policy, in order directly to improve practice within the prevailing ideology;

o Reflexive action – attempting to develop and share practitioners’ own practice

knowledge from a constructively self-critical standpoint towards their work, in order

to improve their practice either within the prevailing ideology or according to an

alternative ideology.

(Wallace and Poulson 2003,

23)

Wallace and Poulson then look at each of the projects in terms of the possible rationale,

mode of working, value stance, questioning about the social world, theoretical

knowledge, published literature produced, and the target audience. The authors’ purpose

in doing so is to determine which types of knowledge are drawn upon in creating

16

literature. They give the example of education being an applied field of enquiry saying

that the authors of such literature would take concepts, models and theories from various

social science disciplines often making them applicable to improve practice.

I will use the Wallace and Poulson intellectual project model included below to look at

the extent to which Geertz’s thick description as a method of data collection is useful as a

generator of knowledge. Using this model one will have a tool by which to measure the

usefulness of thick description to educational research.

17

18

USING THE MODEL

If we look at Wallace and Poulson’s first category, knowledge-for-understanding, we see

that this intellectual project has no underlying objective except to increase understanding.

The purpose is merely to find out “what happens and why?” (24). This type of intellectual

project is disinterested towards policy and practice but may be used at a later date to

inform another intellectual project which could for example have the purpose of

improving practice.

Ethnography in its purest form fits into the knowledge-for-understanding intellectual

project. Although as Geertz says one does not arrive at a project with no theoretical base,

the purpose and mindset is one of openness to the situation without a preconceived notion

which would guide the research methodology and data collection. As Wallace and

Poulson note themselves, the published literature produced may be a reference in the

associated policy literature for a target audience of policy makers, academics and

practitioners on advanced education programs (24).

The policy maker would need to generalize from the thick description to a wider group to

make the particular instance valuable to him or her. The academic in this situation would

be the one who would obviously stand to gain the most from the thick description

because he or she could use his or her own materials to match against the thick

description of another researcher which could then make the information transferable and

19

possibly even generalizable. The practitioner, on the other hand, might find the

information valuable to gain insight into a similar situation that he or she is experiencing

but should obviously keep in mind that not all information can be transferred.

Geertz says about this form of research methodology that the purpose is not to change

anyone or anything but merely to increase understanding of a cultural phenomenon which

may at a later stage be generalizable or transferable to another intellectual project (Geertz

1993). In this area thick description as a data collection method is paramount because if

the researcher does not include enough information the project loses its transferability

and thus its wider usefulness. Whether Geertz was working in Indonesia, Bali or

Morocco, he was always attempting to record for the sake of itself the data of the culture

but the data would then be used by himself or others to draw conclusions:

ln the remoter provinces of Morocco and Indonesia I have wrestled with the same

questions other social scientists have wrestled with in more central locations--for

example, how comes it that men's most importunate claims to humanity are cast

in the accents of group pride? and with about the same conclusiveness. One can

add a dimension--one much needed in the present climate of size-up-and-solve

social science; but that is all. There is a certain value, if you are going to run on

about the exploitation of the masses in having seen a Javanese sharecropper

turning earth in a tropical downpour or a Moroccan tailor embroidering kaftans by

the light of a twenty-watt bulb.

(Geertz 1993, 19)

In the next project entitled knowledge-for-critical evaluation, policy makers would be

using the thick description to generalize in some way. However, thick description cannot

be conducted in its purest form as the underlying purpose of this type of intellectual

project is to critically evaluate policy and practice by asking the typical question “what is

wrong with what happens and why?” (24). This type of intellectual project can be seen in

20

the work of Holliday, Hyde, and Kullman (2004) in their book Intercultural

Communication: and Advanced Resource Book.

The authors in this intellectual project have drawn upon their thick descriptions to

generalize and make assumptions about cultural diversity. They attempt to pull together

various situations through thick descriptions analyzing the various responses to

situations. Although for the most part the disciplines relate directly to the substantive

knowledge required for successful intercultural communication, there is also a research

methodology, focused on bracketing, thick description and emergent data, which comes

directly from mainstream qualitative research (Holliday, Hyde and Kullman 2004, 49).

Holliday, Hyde and Kullman have used the data of thick description to explore cultural

issues. They present the thick descriptions, deconstruct them and then generalize out

from them. They describe thick description which is important for the understanding of

their intentions:

Thick description as a term comes from anthropology and qualitative research and

involves two elements:

o deriving meaning from a broad view of social phenomena which pieces

together different, interconnected perspectives

o exploration, in which sense is made from an ongoing emergence of social

phenomena, which may not immediately seem to connect, and which may

indeed be unexpected (8).

In their first chapter they look at the concept of identity through case studies. A possible

example of thick description as a data collection method is the case study, but are they

the same? In a case study a researcher uses thick description to collect the data about the

subject and his/her environment. Thick description is a “matter of degree” according to

21

Gomm, Hammersley and Foster (2000, 101). How much of a description should be

included must be considered. All data collected cannot be useful; however, enough to

establish transferability must be included to render the research useful:

The person who wishes to make a judgment of transferability needs information

about both contexts to make that judgment well. Now an inquirer cannot know all

the contexts to which someone may wish to transfer working hypotheses; one

cannot reasonably expect him or her to indicate the range of contexts to which

there might be some transferability. But it is entirely reasonable to expect an

inquirer to provide sufficient information about the context in which an inquiry is

carried out so that anyone else interested in transferability has a base of

information appropriate to the judgment. We shall call that appropriate base of

information a ‘thick description’ (40).

It is important to remember that the accounts given by Holliday, Hyde and Kullman are

in third person which means that the authors have interpreted the actual words of their

subjects. From these accounts the authors expect that readers will be able to generalize

out; and in Section C there is an invitation for readers to bring their own cultural milieux

into research activities (xvi).

Theme 1 on identity is set out in the same way that the other themes are constructed: title,

aim, case study, deconstruction, analysis and recommendations (or generalizations) based

on the analysis. The final section in each unit focuses on what is needed (inferred from

the deconstruction of the case study) for successful communication.

Important to their suggestions is the notion that essentialist and reductive views are the

quick fix to understanding culture and which are the underlying causes of sexism, racism

and otherization:

22

Essentialism in the way we see people and culture is the same essentialism which

drives sexism and racism. The equivalent condition, culturism, similarly reduces

andotherizes the individual and underlies many of the problems in the world

today. By otherization we mean imagining someone as alien and different to ‘us’

in such a way that ‘they’ are excluded form ‘our’ ‘normal’, ‘superior’ and

‘civilized’ group. Indeed, it is by imagining a foreign Other in this way that ‘our’

group can become more confident and exclusive. Essentialism therefore needs to

be defined strongly, recognized and fought against wherever it is found (Holliday,

Hyde and Kullman 2004, 3).

Therefore, the authors try to distinguish between the essentialism and nonessentialism

through the case studies. These case studies are created from actual experience but have

been edited to protect the subjects. The authors do not feel this is an issue since the

readers experience of identifying with the subject should be the same as if the study were

accurately presented.

It will suffice for the purpose of argument to describe one unit within the first theme of

identity. The case study has been conducted on a young Iranian woman who has come to

a European city to participate in an international convention on food processing. The

problem identified by the researcher through the thick description is that Parisa’s

European colleagues “saw her in a particular way which just wasn’t her at all” (Holliday,

Hyde and Kullman 2004, 6). The case study goes on to describe how Parisa’s colleagues

might unknowingly show surprise when Parisa was creative, assertive or articulate or

they called her ‘Westernized’ and ‘not a real Iranian’.

Parisa was able to invite three of her colleagues to see a film showing at an Iranian film

festival. One of the female characters in the film was an independent, successful career

woman which surprised Parisa’s colleagues who admitted thinking that Muslim women

23

were supposed to be subservient. Later, another Iranian joined the convention. This

particularly pleased Parisa because “he was educated, worldly, urbane, well-dressed and

also extremely articulate” (Holliday, Hyde and Kullman 2004, 7).

The deconstruction of the thick description identifies the issues of being stereotyped and

otherized based on media images and a lack of examples. These issues the authors say

speak to the multi-facetness of Other people and societies and address the way people

talk which is not always intended to be offensive but at times can be unintentionally

offensive. Parisa’s experiences along with the others recorded in this unit are the piecing

together of different, interconnected perspectives. The authors claim that this is the

“principle of discovery implicit in thick description---seeing the complexity of a social

event by looking at it from different aspects” (Holliday, Hyde and Kullman 2004, 8)

Although the generalizations generate questions for this author in terms of the validity of

the conclusions drawn (what about other elements of Parisa’s character; is she naturally

defensive; is she overly sensitive; how can we assume that other Iranians feel the same as

she does?), these case studies (light forms of thick description) for the purpose of

informational knowledge looked at from various perspectives demonstrate the usefulness

of thick description not alone but when combined with other thick descriptions. Clearly

conclusions can and were drawn when many case studies were considered.

The last three categories of the intellectual project can be considered together in a group

that this author will call knowledge for an action-based objective. Although knowledge

24

for understanding could be considered an intellectual action as is knowledge for critical

evaluation, the last three categories (knowledge-for-action, instrumentalism, reflexive

action) have the purpose of informing to improve or actually improving practice whether

it be of oneself (reflexive) or of others (action, instrumentalism). Therefore, an

underlying motive exists and knowledge for the sake of itself is no longer possible.

Stephen Gough writes in Learning to Read Critically in Educational Leadership and

Management about a Caribbean field study funded by the UK government’s Department

for International Development. In the chapter “International development education:

managing change in countries”, Gough looks at the effectiveness of the study in terms of

Bolam’s model---the same one modified by Wallace and Poulson which is being used as

our model for usefulness here. Steve Gough and the research team (a consortium from the

University of Bath, King’s College and an environmental NGO, Field Studies Council)

have produced an intellectual project based on the knowledge for action aspect but as

they note the project runs into the other categories. But how useful and practical is thick

description in this type of intellectual project?

Gough clearly states that the Caribbean study falls under the category of knowledge-for-

action because of the underlying position of those funding the project and the purpose of

conducting the research:

. . . the research was centrally concerned with the intellectual project of

‘knowledge-for-action’. Taking a focus on a particular region, it aimed to

produce relevant, useful and applicable results which might enable the successful

management of a particular educational initiative by a particular organization at a

particular time (though this does not, as we shall see, entirely rule out some

subsequent generalization to other contexts). It was expected that, if successful,

25

the research would contribute to social goals judged desirable, but selecting,

defining and prioritizing these goals was considered to be the prerogative of the

sponsor, the DFID (Gough 2003, 177).

The goal of the research project was to “make recommendations to the DFID on

managing a process of ‘mainstreaming environmental education into its global

development programmes” (Gough 2003, 171); therefore, Gough and the research team

had pre-designated institutional goals which focused the project including the

management of educational resources which in turn ruled out many questions which

might otherwise have been critical to the study (172).

The notion of preconceived purpose and ideas in and of itself goes against the purest

form of Geertz’s thick description which can be informed but must be guided by the

cultural information discovered not the asking of questions based on the research answers

required. However, Gough and the team did use a combination of case study and

problem-based methodology which could be considered a form of thick description.

They discuss the pros and cons of this type of data collection.

Gough says that the research team hoped to “provide qualitative data which, used with

appropriate skill and sensitivity to context, might subsequently facilitate purposive

actions by educational managers to achieve specified improvements in a variety of real

educational settings” (180). This they intended to achieve through both case study and

PBM. The difference between the two methodologies is that PBM focuses on a problem

while case study focuses on an instance; however, Gough contends that the two

methodologies overlap because both the problem and the instance overlap. Although

26

qualitative methods were considered the most effective tools for data collection the

drawback (as with thick description) was that “one cannot generalize from the findings of

this study directly to any sixth Caribbean country” (182).

Due to the time constraints and the purposive nature of the inquiry (or any intellectual

project from the last three categories of Wallace and Poulson’s model unless perhaps it

was a very long-term project), thick description as a data collection tool lacks the

practicality and generalizability necessary to conduct research to implement action be it

to inform or improve practice. Gough realizes the difficulty of time and financial

constraints even with the quicker forms of data collection he and the team employ:

Costs in terms of finance, time, physical resources and the patience of those being

researched were an issue. The overall research contract had been won through a

competitive tendering process, and the budget was constrained. What is more, it

was to be expected that the research would not necessarily be welcome among

some of those individuals and groups being researched. No researcher could be

entirely happy about this state of affair, since it suggests that what the researcher

actually did was at least as much a product of institutional pragmatism as of a

detached, critical scoping process (172).

Gough and the research team combined case study and other qualitative methods of data

collection to make recommendations to the commission regarding the best procedure to

employ. However, as Gough indicates above, it was nor practical or valid to use thick

description alone to make generalizable or transferable recommendations. This could be

true in any action-based project unless the scope of the project was specific and limited to

the situation in which the thick description occurred.

27

An example of this type of project might be in a specific school where analysis or

improvement is desired; however, the researcher would probably use the thick description

combined with another specific example for comparison in order to draw conclusions or

make recommendations. As with the above project, many interviews were conducted and

the results were compared. One observation was not sufficient to make recommendations

for improvement. Informational knowledge for the sake of itself would not lead to action

but would need to be combined with other information to be of value. When considering

the usefulness of case studies and thick description, of particular interest is the cross

section entitled main target audience for published literature where we can see how

policy makers, academics, and practitioners on advanced education programmes might

use a case study to inform their everyday practices.

CONCLUSIONS

Thick description is a method of data collection whereby specific data is collected by a

researcher from within a culture on that culture. Its aim is to gather information for the

sake of itself. To do the data collection method justice, we must consider it by degrees, at

least two. Examples of the purest form of thick description can be found in the work of

Geertz when he goes to places such as Bali or Morocco and lives amongst the peoples

there in order to collect information on those peoples, the purpose being merely to

increase understanding of the culture. In terms of Wallace and Poulson’s adaptation of

Bolam’s model, thick description adds new knowledge for the sake of itself in a pure (but

not without fault-as discussed earlier) sense and can be useful in educational research

28

simply to increase understanding when no action is necessary. However, it can also be

useful when paired with other research to draw conclusions which can then be used for

action-based purposes be it to evaluate policy or to improve practice.

The case study could be considered a watered-down form of thick description and when

used to support claims as in the work of Holliday, Hyde, and Kullman, can be valuable as

supporting details. Even in the work of Gough, case study and problem-based study was

paramount as a data collection method to provide the necessary understanding from

which to draw conclusions and recommendations. Whether for intellectual purposes

(critical analysis) or for action purposes (improvement), the case study is useful in adding

depth to research. It certainly must be said that whether in case study, problem-based

study or thick description a necessary element is enough data recorded within the study to

make the information transferable or generalizeable whether the study is for the sake of

itself or for action.

The research process includes several different stages and various authors have

represented this process with diverse models which illustrate the stages of the process.

Several of these models have been included in the appendix. When looking at the

process it becomes clear that the initial moments of any research design include

establishing a problem, identifying the conceptual framework, creating a research

statement or hypothesis, deciding on methods of investigation and appropriate data

gathering techniques, recording and analyzing the data and finally writing the report.

These processes can be linear or circular moving back and forth between the stages and

29

steps. At the beginning of the process if the problem is unknown, thick description could

be a useful tool.

Thick description as the gathering of all data from a subject or subjects could also be a

way of generating questions when the problem is still unclear. From the data collected

the researcher could then identify a problem and perhaps decide to determine if the issue

is generalizable in broader terms. In this way thick description could be particularly

useful to the research process.

On the other hand, the data itself can be lengthy and much of it can be irrelevant to the

study. The whole of the thick description could actually be useless if not managed. In

the final report, thick description would be so specific and lengthy that its actual

significance to a wider body of knowledge could be lost. Therefore, thick description

could be considered a useful way of generating questions and even a way of generating a

research statement or a hypothesis. In addition it could be useful when compared with

other thick descriptions to draw conclusions, analyze or make recommendations.

On its own as data collection the nature of the data collected could actually be rendered

less than useful in many cases because at the end the data is so specific and time

consuming to gather that the knowledge gained from it brings into question its value as a

research tool. In quantitative terms thick description may seem uselessly time consuming

and valueless due to its overall data. The positivist would see the data as far too specific

30

from which to draw conclusions and as a research tool it would not be replicable as

indicated by Gough:

There are clearly problems with such an approach [naturalistic inquiry] if one

considers that a research study should be replicable. Not only were the interviews

impossible to replicate in practice (because of the impossibility of assembling the

same individuals in the same places more than once), they were impossible to

replicate in principle, since it would not have been possible to brief another

researcher to conduct the same interview in exactly the same way (Gough 2006,

184).

The action needed in the positivist’s mind must be discovered which, to the positivist, is

the role of the researcher. On the other hand, the qualitative researcher sees culture as

something created and observation of this creation is paramount to the understanding of

it. Thick description, in its purest form or in the watered-down version, can add

understanding to the quantitative or is valid in and of itself for the qualitative researcher.

Geertz would argue that what the positivist does could be considered pointless:

It is not against a body of uninterpreted data, radically thinned descriptions, that

we must measure the cogency of our explications, but against the power of the

scientific imagination to bring us into touch with the lives of strangers. It is not

worth it, as Thoreau said, to go around the world to count the cats in Zanzibar

(Geertz 1993, 16).

31

REFERENCES

Blaxter, L., Hughes, C. and Tight, M. (1996) How to Research, Buckingham: Open

University Press

Bolam, R. (1999) ‘Educational administration, leadership and management: towards a

research agenda’, in T. Bush, L. Bell, R. Bolam, R. Glatter and P. Ribbins (eds),

Educational Management: Redefining Theory, Policy and Practice, London: Paul

Chapman

Creswell, J. W. (2003) Research Design: Qualitative, Quantitative, and Mixed Methods

Approaches, 2nd edition, Thousand Oaks: Sage Publications

Denzin, N.K. & Lincoln, Y.S. (eds.) (2003) The Landscape of Qualitative Research,

London: Sage Publications

Geertz, C. (1993) The Interpretation of Cultures, London: Fontana Press

Gomm, R, Hammersley, M. and Foster, P. (2000) Case Study Method, London: Sage

Publications

Gough, N. (2002) ‘Blank spots, blind spots, and methodological questions in

postgraduate research’, Deakin University, Postgraduate Research Conference

32

Gough, S. (2003) ‘International development education: managing change in Caribbean

countries’, in Wallace, M. and Poulson, L. (2003) Learning to Read Critically in

Educational Leadership and Management, London: Sage Publications, pp. 170-193

Holliday, A.R. (2002) Doing and Writing Qualitative Research, London: Sage.

Holliday, A., Hyde, M. & Kullman, J. (2004) Inter-cultural Communication: An

Advanced Resource Book, London: Routledge.

Inglis, F. (2000) Clifford Geertz: Culture, Custom and Ethics, Cambridge, Polity Press

McNiff, J. (1988) Action Research: Principles and Practice, London: Routledge

Sarantakos, S. (1998) Social Research, 2nd Ed., Basingstoke: Macmillan, pp. 31-58

Spradley, J.P. (1980) Participant Observation, London: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich

College Publishers

Wallace, M. and Poulson, L. (2003) Learning to Read Critically in Educational

Leadership and Management, London: Sage Publications

33

APPENDIX I

(Blaxter, Hughes & Tight 1996)

34

APPENDIX II

(Blaxter, Hughes & Tight 1996)

35

APPENDIX III

(Spradley 1980)

36

APPENDIX IV

(Blaxter, Hughes & Tight 1996)

37

APPENDIX V

(McNiff 1988)