Τι είναι το θέμα; Οι παραλλαγές της Θεματικής Ανάλυσης στην εκπαιδευτική έρευνα

Abstract

In this article we try to answer the question “what is the theme” when one carries out thematic analysis (TA). Our answer is structured in three parts: First, we critically present Virginia Braun and Victoria Clarke’s approach to TA from which most of educational research draws upon. We develop the argument that much of the criteria for constructing the themes, in the Braun-Clarke version, are left to researchers’ intuition which leads to the fact that the context of justification is lost from the methodological insight and that a discrepancy exists between the level of analysis and the level of abstraction. Second, we put forward our own version of TA which remedies the above drawbacks and which is inspired from realist epistemologies (critical realism and social network analysis). Finally, we present a deductive version of thematic analysis, called Template Analysis, which is more flexible and of which the level of abstraction depends on how the codebook has been structured.