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16 The blind man and the bubble': researching self-access Philip Riley Introduction A blind man has friends who talk to him about the world which they can see but which he cannot. Amongst th e things that interest him mos t ar e what hi s friend s cal l 'bubbles' . H e ha s a certai n amoun t o f factua l bu t second-hand knowledge about 'bubbles': they can be made from soap-andwater or washing-up liquid, for example, forming extremely thin spherical membranes whic h are very nearly as light as air, so they float. The y ar e beautiful, multi-coloured, fun to make and play with. Intrigued, the blind man asks his friends t o make him some bubbles, which they do, but since he cannot see them he is obliged to try to touch them. But not onl y are they difficult t o locate, when he does succeed i n finding one, his touch destroys it. For him, 'bubbles' will remain a matter of hearsay and a slight sensation of dampness on his fingertips. He simply does not have the appropriate tools for observing or experiencing the objects in question. Do we? That is, if we extrapolate from my analogy to our present area of interest, do we possess the methodological and conceptual tools which are appropriate to the study of autonomy, self-directed learnin g and selfaccess ? O r ar e w e teacher s an d researcher s i n thi s fiel d condemne d t o stumble aroun d lik e the blind, gesticulating wildl y an d the n destroyin g the very thing we want to understand? Is there any principled way round what Labov has called the "observer's paradox", where the simple presence of the observer suffices t o destroy or distort what is observed? Can school inspectors ever 'inspect' normal classroom behaviour when their entering into a classroom changes the situation and the behaviour of the participants? 252 Phili p Riley Epistemological problems of this kind, that is, problems about the status and quality of ou r knowledge , about access to knowledge an d abou t th e representation of knowledge are, of course, by no means limited to our little corner of the academic woods. They are the founding question s of all the world's intellectual, scientific and philosophical traditions, since, however different the answers they propose, there can by definition be no such thing as an 'intellectual tradition ' until coherent decision s about suc h matters, about wha t count s a s knowledge , hav e bee n reached . Tha t i s what a n 'intellectual tradition' is. In what follows , however , I will not be tryin g t o give som e kin d o f potted cours e i n epistemology , partl y becaus e I a m no t particularl y competent to do so, partly because I believe that the nature and development of self-access can be better understood within the framework of the sociology of knowledge as formulated b y Mannheim (1936 ) and Schutz (1962), but mainly because I feel it would be more realistic and more useful to look at some specific topics, requirements and procedures for research in our field. The question I will be addressing is a very general one, but very important, too: what point s d o we need t o keep i n mind, what precaution s d o w e need to take, when we design research projects and, above all, how can we ensure that the methodology we choose is appropriate, that we are not just bursting bubbles? So here is my agenda: first, I am going to take the term 'methodology ' itself for brief examination. I shall be asking what the term means and how we can tell the difference between a methodology and, say, a rule of thumb, speculation, or the mechanical application of a procedure. Secondly, I would like to make a few points about oppositions such as 'Positivist/Non-positivist' an d 'Quantitative/Qualitative ' approache s t o research, not because I want to rekindle the debate as to which is the 'best' or the most 'scientific', but because I believe that only by thinking carefull y about the differences between them can we choose appropriately according to the nature of our object of investigation and of our particular researc h project. Thirdly, I will be looking at...

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