Hybridising methods towards narratives in an educational ICT inquiry

Abstract

This paper reports on a specific part of a larger inquiry at a Higher Education Institution (HEI) into how engagement with Information and Communication Technology (ICT) reflects change in epistemology and pedagogy of lecturers in an Education Faculty. In the larger inquiry, methods of gathering and analysing data were placed into a triangular hybrid of research methodologies that included components of the ethnographic, the ethnomethodological and the narrative tradition of qualitative inquiry. Lecturers had begun to question their 'ways of doing things' when confronted with technology and in some cases had even attempted to adapt their way of teaching. To illuminate this phenomenon, lecturers' personal experiences were woven into narrative segments based on data from each of the three components of the design hybrid. The findings of the inquiry show that it is in the narrative segments where the value of the research is to be found.