2019 Significant Award: Phenomenography as a Foundation for Mixed Methods in Measurement

• In Event: AERA Division D Invited Session for 2019 and 2020 Awardees

Abstract

Phenomenography is a methodological paradigm, which emphasizes personal conceptions as a necessary construct to understand the relationship between the physical events that people experience and the personal meanings that they derive from those experiences. This perspective provides a useful framework for mixed methodology research, because its ontology provides both equal legitimacy to objective and subjective phenomena and an integrated paradigm within which one can jointly engage quantitative and qualitative methods. On this basis, measurement development and subsequent statistical models can be constructed to match the level of incommensurability inherent in a given qualitative analysis. In so doing, the tools of quantitative research can be applied to qualitatively constructed meanings without losing the idiographic nature of qualitative data. Building from this basic strategy, this work engages issues of context that affect measurement and the inference that can be drawn from analyses of data obtained through measurement.

Dr. David Feldon is a Professor of Instructional Technology and Learning Sciences at Utah State University. Using a mixed methodological framework, his scholarship identifies mechanisms of postsecondary learning, instruction, and assessment that facilitate the equitable development of expertise in STEM disciplines. His research attempts to build bridges from a deep understanding of motivation and cognition to broader cultural and structural influences that shape divergent pathways to expertise and modes of professional success. Dr. Colby Tofel-Grehl is an associate professor of STEM education in the School of Teacher Education and Leadership at Utah State University. Her research focuses on the affordances of technology for improving under-represented youth, most notably rural youth, interest and engagement in STEM. She received the prestigious National Science Foundation Early Career Grant Award for her work for developing a job embedded education model of professional learning for rural teachers of native Hawaiian youth.

Authors

• David F. Feldon, Utah State University

• Colby Tofel-Grehl, Utah State University