Using Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis from a Realist Perspective

In the article, we, practitioners and researchers in English for Academic Purposes (EAP), report how a study in our field used the qualitative methodology, interpretative phenomenological analysis (IPA) (Smith, Flowers, & Larkin, 2009), from a realist perspective. The presentation is based on a PhD research project that one of us undertook, to investigate the acquisition of second language academic literacy skills by eight international doctoral students at a New Zealand university. English language has become the most commonly used language for academic communication. Researchers and university teachers have tried to support students using English as an additional language with programmes and materials focusing on academic literacies. In the middle of such trial and effort, the field of EAP emerged as a subfield of educational research (Flowerdew & Peacock, 2001). Since EAP was established, a considerable number of research studies have been carried out, such as those published in the Journal of English for Academic Purposes, or the Journal of Specific Purposes. Various methodological approaches have been introduced by these studies, and some of them are concerned with competences of doctoral students or students in the context of higher education. However, the issue encountered was that the realism that the study takes as the research paradigm hardly aligns with the majority of EAP ethnographic studies taking postmodernist approaches. The decision for using IPA was made after a long search for a methodology that suits the realist orientation as wells as the aim of the study. IPA is “concerned with the detailed examination of personal lived experience, the meaning of experience to participants and how participants make sense of that experience” (Smith, 2011, p. 9). It emerged in the mid-1990s in medical psychology, and continued to form its own theoretical orientations, and data collection analysis procedures (Smith, Flowers & Larkin, 2009). The founders of IPA indicate that the methodology challenges postmodern approaches to some extent (see Smith et al., 2009). It is also known for following realism in a broad way (Reid, Flowers, & Larkin, 2005). Nevertheless, as we will discuss in the following section, some principles of IPA diverge from the realist perspective that the study is based on, which made the use of the methodology cautious and selective. The next section describes the rationale behind the methodological decisions that were made. We then report the research procedures, with great detail for data analysis process in particular, to demonstrate how the realist perspective has realised in the IPA practice of the study. Finally, the evaluation of the study against the realist criteria is reported, and some implications of using IPA based on realism for educational research are discussed. Rational for Using IPA from a Realist Perspective Like qualitative educational research in general, qualitative EAP studies have been influenced by postmodern thinkers, such as Foucault (1972) or Lincoln and Guba (1985) (see Hyland, 2006; Usher, Bryant, & Johnston, 1997; Wilson, 1997). These EAP studies claim that research findings are not what the researcher actually finds out, but what the researcher and participants co-constructed (e.g., Jacoby & Ochs, 1995). They also argue that “reality” does not exist objectively, but is constructed as multiple subjective realities (Hyland, 2009). Their methodological procedures serve to co-construct findings with their participants. A postmodern study is evaluated against the extent to which the co-construction process was reflective and transparent. In addition, a number of EAP ethnographic studies undertake social, cultural approaches to students’ learning or acquisition. They look at interactional or social processes of learning, or how interpersonally distributed knowledge or competence, such as of academic literacies is internalised into the individual mind