Systemic Contextualisation: Guiding Assumptions and Framing

This chapter concentrates on the focusing and framing aspects of systemic research contextualisationContextualisation. To provide focus, the researcher chooses one or more pattern(s) of guiding assumptions to underpin their intended research project/journey. To establish one’s guiding assumptions, we downplay the more restrictive notion of ‘paradigmParadigm’ (Kuhn, The structure of scientific revolutions. The Folio Society, 2012) and rely instead on the patterning of answers to pivotal questions about the specific orientation and intentions of the research. A pattern typically rules some methodological choices in and other choices out. We will see that every pattern of guiding assumptions invokes specific criteria for evaluating research quality. We also discuss meta-criteria for evaluating research quality, centred around the concept of convincingness, which transcend specific guiding assumption patterns (yet without ignoring or dispensing with pattern-specific considerations) and facilitate comparisons of research processes and outcomes arising under different patterns. Finally, we consider choices of research frame as a holistic and systemic way of capturingAudience(s)capturing the essence of the research journeyResearch journey, encompassing situating, positioning, and guiding assumption contextualisations, choices of mode of knowledge building/production, and learningGuiding assumptions, pivotal questionslearning focus for intended audiences. Within the ambit of a research frame, downstream methodological choices are scoped, configured, and implemented and approaches to communicating and sharing research learning are enacted.