When assessing the quality and trustworthiness of this research it should be kept in mind that it is a qualitative research, and it presents only one, well-argued interpretation or truth about the phenomenon being studied. It does not aim to be objective in traditional, positivistic sense, holding that reality is objective and external to the mind, and knowledge is reliable based on observed objects and events. Instead, in phenomenography the world and the people are considered inseparable which means that it is impossible to investigate reality as such, separated from human interpretation (Bowden, 2005). Thus the tradi-tional positivistic concepts of reliability and validity do not apply in this re-search as such because they derive from positivistic rere-search tradition reflecting whole different ontological and epistemic views than the philosophical founda-tions of this research (see for example Tynjälä, 1991; Cope, 2004; Sin, 2010).
In all research, however, and especially in qualitative research, the truth-fulness, trustworthiness and ethics of the research process, findings and inter-pretations should be assessable for the reader, even though there are no clear and unambiguous criteria for doing that (see Tynjälä, 1992). Though, there is a common agreement that for securing the reliability or trustworthiness of a qual-itative research a researcher must be rigorous in conducting a systematic and transparent research process and credible when stating his/her claims (Sin, 2010). In this research I have followed these guidelines by reporting and de-scribing the whole process accurately and by using data transcripts as evidence when arguing for my interpretations. Also the ethical issues have been consid-ered throughout the research process, so that it would not do any harm to the participants. The privacy and anonymity of the participants was guaranteed and no identifying information about the individuals was revealed in written report or other communication during the research process.
However, there are some issues related to the research settings that might have affected the outcomes of this research and should therefore be raised up to readers’ consideration. First issue concerns the data collection and the general settings of the research. As it was mentioned earlier, the data consisted of the
33 reflective essays of the students, which served also as a requirement for course completion. The assignment for the essay encouraged students to reflect hon-estly about their experiences, both positive and negative ones. However, even though the assignment encouraged students to be sincere in their answers, the fact that the essays were part of their course completion can be seen as prob-lematic from the viewpoint of the trustworthiness of the data. It might be that in their essays some students, either consciously or unconsciously, wanted to please the university teachers who read the papers. They might, for example, emphasize their learning and positive experiences and put less attention to their negative experiences. The data collection can also be problematized from the viewpoint of research ethics: Is it right to connect data collection to course as-signment? Did the students possibly feel pressurized to participate in the study as it was so tightly linked to the assignment? This risk was acknowledged but seen as minor one because after being informed about the research the students could also choose not to participate in it.
Another issue to be raised up is the subjective position of the researcher.
In qualitative research the outcomes are always constituted in relation with the researcher and the phenomenon being studied. This means that researcher al-ways investigates the phenomenon through his/her own lenses which are af-fected by cultural background, values, orientations and previous experiences.
Consequently, for securing the transparency of the research the researcher’s background must be acknowledged because it is crucial part of the context where the analysis takes place (Cope, 2004; Tynjälä, 1991). According to Sand-berg (1997), as the researcher cannot escape from his/her interpretations in the research process, one possible criterion for the reliability in researching concep-tions would be the researcher’s interpretative awareness. By interpretative awareness he means that researcher must acknowledges and explicitly deal with his/her subjectivity throughout the research process instead of overlook-ing it. In case of this research my subjective perspective as researcher has been affected by the personal experience of participating in one Paedeia Café group as a student participant. The participation did not directly relate to the research
project but necessarily it affected on my understanding about the phenomenon.
The analysis, however, is based only on the data collected from the participants.
During the analysis process, I strived to hold back my own prejudices and theo-ries in order to fully see what the students told about their experiences. Howev-er, I also think that the personal experience and knowledge about Paedeia Café helped me to bracket and contextualize the knowledge that was relevant to the issue at hand and in this way enabled me to gain a deeper understanding about the phenomenon being studied.
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