Researcher As Bricoleur

Mass 'academic migration' of both prospective students and academics has changed the teaching landscape across the globe. Conducting research with a migratory research population of students studying part time evening courses, poses many challenges to the Researcher because of the often short term nature of their relationship with UK Higher Education. In this maelstrom, research design and approach became paradoxically intertwined with a need to rely on a broader application of the methodological tools of interpretative research. Alongside the core research question of ESOL student perceptions of academic assessment, this research explored how to create a working conceptual space within which the research could be conducted, using existing qualitative research paradigms in a creative way. The underlying methodological philosophy of 'Researcher as Bricoleur' underpinned the application of the interpretative framework for this research at a theoretical and methodological level and enabled the researcher to open up the process of data collection so that the research content and approach to conducting the research co-exist. This paper explores these concepts and the use of the blogging platform WordPress to create an online community of migratory research participants and non-participant voyeurs and how this mosaic contributed to the overall depth and richness of the resulting case study data. Grounded theory was used to analyse data to create the interpretative case study. The resulting montage enabled the Researcher to gain insight into the complex phenomena of both what and who is being researched, how to conduct the research and application of findings to solve real life problems in academia