Similar documents
Phenomenology. psychology, biology, or sociology; rather it is the study or inquiry into how things appear,

The ecstatic-poetic phenomenology of Jennifer Anna Gosetti-Ferencei

PH 8122: Topics in Philosophy: Phenomenology and the Problem of Passivity Fall 2013 Thursdays, 6-9 p.m, 440 JORG

Phenomenology Glossary

Engineering: Education and Innovation

Heideggerian Ontology: A Philosophic Base for Arts and Humanties Education

1. What is Phenomenology?


The Scholarly and Pathic Cavalier: Max van Manen s Phenomenology of Practice

Qualitative Design and Measurement Objectives 1. Describe five approaches to questions posed in qualitative research 2. Describe the relationship betw

Philosophy of phenomenology: how understanding aids research

Recommended: Dermot Moran, Introduction to Phenomenology (New York and London: Routledge, 2000).

TROUBLING QUALITATIVE INQUIRY: ACCOUNTS AS DATA, AND AS PRODUCTS

CHAPTER IV RETROSPECT

Hans-Georg Gadamer, Truth and Method, 2d ed. transl. by Joel Weinsheimer and Donald G. Marshall (London : Sheed & Ward, 1989), pp [1960].

Phenomenological Pedagogy and the Question of Meaning

The Experience of Knowing:

SocioBrains THE INTEGRATED APPROACH TO THE STUDY OF ART

Mass Communication Theory

Truth and Method in Unification Thought: A Preparatory Analysis

PHI 8119: Phenomenology and Existentialism Winter 2016 Wednesdays, 4:30-7:30 p.m, 440 JORG

Kęstas Kirtiklis Vilnius University Not by Communication Alone: The Importance of Epistemology in the Field of Communication Theory.

Tolkien and Phenomenology: On the concepts of recovery and epoché

Phenomenology of Practice


An Intense Defence of Gadamer s Significance for Aesthetics

REVIEW ARTICLE IDEAL EMBODIMENT: KANT S THEORY OF SENSIBILITY

CHAPTER 2 THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK

Researching Lived Experience: Human Science /ç for an Action Sensitive Pedagogy by Max van Manen, London, ON: Aithouse Press, 1990

Indo-Pacific Journal of Phenomenology Volume 17, Edition 1 July 2017 Page 1 of 12

Review of David Woodruff Smith and Amie L. Thomasson, eds., Phenomenology and the Philosophy of Mind, 2005, Oxford University Press.

HERMENEUTIC PHILOSOPHY AND DATA COLLECTION: A PRACTICAL FRAMEWORK

The phenomenological tradition conceptualizes

RESPONSE AND REJOINDER

Colloque Écritures: sur les traces de Jack Goody - Lyon, January 2008

that would join theoretical philosophy (metaphysics) and practical philosophy (ethics)?

Phenomenology in Its Original Sense

Necessity in Kant; Subjective and Objective

Editor s Introduction

Penultimate Draft- Final version forthcoming in Philosophical Psychology

Accepted for Publication in Volume 17

The subject matter of phenomenological research: Existentials, modes, and prejudices

Vinod Lakshmipathy Phil 591- Hermeneutics Prof. Theodore Kisiel

PH 360 CROSS-CULTURAL PHILOSOPHY IES Abroad Vienna

P executes intuition in its particular way of looking at the experience(s) reflected upon and sees its structures and dynamics. c.

Cover artist: Laura Sava The cover displays a digital painting of Orpheus and Eurydice.

Qualitative Economics A Perspective on Organization and Economic Science

Philosophy in the educational process: Understanding what cannot be taught

By Tetsushi Hirano. PHENOMENOLOGY at the University College of Dublin on June 21 st 2013)

NATIONAL SEMINAR ON EDUCATIONAL RESEARCH: ISSUES AND CONCERNS 1 ST AND 2 ND MARCH, 2013

Ithaque : Revue de philosophie de l'université de Montréal

Action, Criticism & Theory for Music Education

Towards a Phenomenology of Development

Writing an Honors Preface

Debating Phenomenological Research Methods

The Debate on Research in the Arts

PHIL 415 Continental Philosophy: Key Problems Spring 2013

Art, Vision, and the Necessity of a Post-Analytic Phenomenology

Gadamer s Hermeneutic Contribution to a Theory of Time-Consciousness

Peircean concept of sign. How many concepts of normative sign are needed. How to clarify the meaning of the Peircean concept of sign?

Narrative Dimensions of Philosophy

What counts as a convincing scientific argument? Are the standards for such evaluation

FORUM: QUALITATIVE SOCIAL RESEARCH SOZIALFORSCHUNG

Discourse analysis is an umbrella term for a range of methodological approaches that

ESSAYS IN PHENOMENOLOGY

Phenomenology as Philosophy of Research: An Introductory Essay

By Rahel Jaeggi Suhrkamp, 2014, pbk 20, ISBN , 451pp. by Hans Arentshorst

Four Characteristic Research Paradigms

Phenomenology, Organisation and Technology: An Account of the Phenomenological Method of Investigation and an Illustration of Its Application

Meaning, Being and Expression: A Phenomenological Justification for Interdisciplinary Scholarship

6AANB th Century Continental Philosophy. Basic information. Module description. Assessment methods and deadlines. Syllabus Academic year 2016/17

Phenomenology and Non-Conceptual Content

VALUES AND VALUING [Adapted from Carl Mitcham, ed., Encyclopedia of Science, Technology, and Ethics (New York: Macmillan Reference, 2005).

Action Theory for Creativity and Process

High School Photography 1 Curriculum Essentials Document

Intersubjectivity and Language

A Comprehensive Critical Study of Gadamer s Hermeneutics

A Copernican Revolution in IS: Using Kant's Critique of Pure Reason for Describing Epistemological Trends in IS

Joona Taipale, Phenomenology and Embodiment: Husserl and the Constitution of Subjectivity

ON GESTURAL MEANING IN ACTS OF EXPRESSION

REFERENCES. 2004), that much of the recent literature in institutional theory adopts a realist position, pos-

Society for the Study of Symbolic Interaction SSSI/ASA 2002 Conference, Chicago

Introduction. Doing Phenomenology State University of New York Press, Albany

THE ECOLOGICAL MEANING OF EMBODIMENT

Imagination and the Image: A Revised Phenomenology of Imagination and Affectivity

Conclusion. One way of characterizing the project Kant undertakes in the Critique of Pure Reason is by

Situated actions. Plans are represetitntiom of nction. Plans are representations of action

Hermeneutics as Embodied Existence

PROFESSION WITHOUT DISCIPLINE WOULD BE BLIND

ARCHITECTURE AND EDUCATION: THE QUESTION OF EXPERTISE AND THE CHALLENGE OF ART

Goals and Rationales

A Confusion of the term Subjectivity in the philosophy of Mind *

Hear hear. Århus, 11 January An acoustemological manifesto

Part I I On the Methodology oj the Social Sciences

Philosophical foundations for a zigzag theory structure

Sidestepping the holes of holism

Back to Basics: Appreciating Appreciative Inquiry as Not Normal Science

On the Interrelation between Phenomenology and Externalism

Natika Newton, Foundations of Understanding. (John Benjamins, 1996). 210 pages, $34.95.

Apodicticity and Transcendental Phenomenology

Transcription:

This article was originally published in the International Encyclopedia of Education published by Elsevier, and the attached copy is provided by Elsevier for the author's benefit and for the benefit of the author's institution, for noncommercial research and educational use including without limitation use in instruction at your institution, sending it to specific colleagues who you know, and providing a copy to your institution s administrator. All other uses, reproduction and distribution, including without limitation commercial reprints, selling or licensing copies or access, or posting on open internet sites, your personal or institution s website or repository, are prohibited. For exceptions, permission may be sought for such use through Elsevier's permissions site at: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/permissionusematerial van Manen M and Adams C A (2010), Phenomenology. In: Penelope Peterson, Eva Baker, Barry McGaw, (Editors), International Encyclopedia of Education. volume 6, pp. 449-455. Oxford: Elsevier.

Phenomenology M van Manen and C A Adams, University of Alberta, Edmonton, AB, Canada ã 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. Phenomenological research in education is a project of careful and systematic reflection on the lived experience of educational (pedagogical, psychological, teaching, learning, and parenting) phenomena. Careful, in the sense that reflecting on experience must be as much as possible free from theoretical, prejudicial, and suppositional intoxications. Systematic, in the sense that phenomenology in education is an approach to inquiry that is guided by philosophical phenomenological methodology and assisted by human science procedures and techniques. However, phenomenology is not just a method that one can employ; it is also an attitude that relies on the perceptiveness, creative insight, interpretive sensitivity, scholarship, and writing competence of the researcher. The phenomenological attitude comprises a fascination with the uniqueness, the particularity of an experience or phenomenon. When I am in love and I reflect on the meaning and significance of this love, then I am compelled not by abstractions but by the concreteness of my experiences: the sweet taste of that last kiss this morning, the tenderness I feel when I look in my love s face, the longing I experience when reading the love letter, the desire I feel to be the object of my lover s desire, the arousal of voluptuosity. Thus, a phenomenology of love is not primarily pursued through a theoretical discourse or a conceptual analysis of the notion of love. It is pursued through attempts to awaken the experience as we live it, and make contact through concrete examples and reflection with the living sensibility of its uniqueness. Phenomenological research is oriented to the lifeworld as we immediately experience it prereflectively, rather than as we conceptualize, theorize, categorize, or reflect on it. It is the study of lived or experiential meaning and attempts to describe and interpret these meanings in the ways that they emerge and are shaped by consciousness, language, our cognitive and noncognitive sensibilities, the ontics of meaning, and our personal, social, and cultural preunderstandings. Phenomenology can be adopted to explore the unique meanings of any educational experience or phenomenon. For example, it may study what it is like to have a classroom conversation, how students experience difficulty in learning certain concepts, what it is like to read and write poetry, how tests and examinations are experienced, how digital media technologies such as PowerPoint shape the teaching-learning relation and the knowledge that students learn, how young people encounter success and failure, how students experience recognition and respect (or the lack of it) in schools, and so forth. Phenomenological inquiry also addresses larger questions of educational significance such as the technological presumptions of curriculum, the increasing instrumentalities of teaching and learning, the scientization of everyday life in schools and classrooms, or the rationalistic technocratic ontotheology that progressively dominates our thinking. Besides, phenomenology may concern itself with shifts in pedagogy due to new technologies, such as reading and writing online, and the changing quality of privacy, intimacy, and contact in virtual learning environments. In a broad sense, any human experience may become the focus of phenomenological research. Maurice Merleau-Ponty explained that a proper understanding of phenomenology is only accomplished through doing it. Phenomenological understanding needs to be practiced as method, and identified as a style of thinking a manner of orienting to experience as we live through it. Within the domain of phenomenological philosophy there exist a variety of traditions and orientations. These traditions have spawned different expressions in the manner that phenomenology is pursued in education and other professional disciplines. In addition, in education certain liberties are taken with the nomenclature of phenomenology. Some research texts classify ethnography, biography, narrative inquiry, and arts-based and action research approaches as falling under the purview of phenomenology, in part because all these social and human sciences have an interest in studying experience and have adopted some of the vocabulary of phenomenology. However, from a stricter phenomenological perspective as reflected in the thoughts and writings of scholars such as Edmund Husserl, Martin Heidegger, and Merleau-Ponty, phenomenology differs from other qualitative approaches in that it remains primarily concerned with the prereflective, preconceptual, prepredicative, and pretheoretic dimensions of existence. Phenomenological research aims for a certain effect, one that can lead us to suddenly see or grasp a human phenomenon in a way that enriches our understanding of everyday life experience. Such seeing may transform our being and thus our practices. The production of insight is not merely a cognitive affair but must proceed through the creation of a research text that appeals to our cognitive and noncognitive sensibilities. Thus, phenomenological understanding is distinctly existential, emotive, enactive, embodied, situational, and nontheoretic. A powerful 449

450 Qualitative Research phenomenological text thrives on an irrevocable tension between what is unique and what is shared, between particular and transcendent spheres of the lifeworld. Without this tension, the qualitative research text tends to turn flat, shallow, boring, because it loses the power to break through the taken-for-granted dimensions of everyday life. Phenomenology may be described as the study of lived experience. The term lived experience is presently rather widely used among the disciplines, but it possesses special methodological significance for phenomenology. The term lived experience derives from the German Erlebnis experience as we live through it and recognize it as a particular type of experience. It could be argued that human experience is the main epistemological basis for many other qualitative research traditions, but the notion of lived experience, as used in the works of Husserl, Merleau-Ponty, and like-minded phenomenologists, announces the intent to explore directly the originary or prereflective dimensions of human existence. So, phenomenology prioritizes and investigates how the human being experiences the world; for example, how the teacher experiences the pedagogical encounter, how the student experiences a moment of failure, how a child experiences distress, and so forth. From a phenomenological perspective, we always exist (act, think, feel, etc.) in the present of the now. Even when we dwell in memories or in anticipations, or when we dream or hallucinate, we do so in the experiential immediacy of the present moment or the living now. Yet when we try to capture and reflect on the now of our experience, we are always too late. The strange fact is that we always live in the present of the temporal now and yet we can never capture this present. Or perhaps it is better to say that the present as we constantly recall and reconstruct it has never really existed. Phenomenology does not just research human experiences and phenomena, it also continually questions the assumptions and presuppositions that prevent us from adequately understanding and expressing in words the living moments of experience no matter how conceptually powerful or poetically evocative our words may be. So, phenomenological research or inquiry is interested in recovering somehow the living moment of the now even before we put language to it or describe it in words. At the same time, phenomenology tries to show how our words, concepts, and theories always shape (distort) and give structure to our experiences as we live them. For example, it is one thing to get lost in a novel but it is another to retrospectively capture what happened to us, just now, as we slipped into this textual space and began to dwell in the story. Similarly, we may identify and rate with empirical descriptors the nature and intensity of various forms of pain, but the actual experience of pain somehow seems to be beyond words. Phenomenological Traditions From a historical and philosophical perspective, phenomenology consists of a complex and diversified web of traditions starting well before Hegel in Germany, spreading all over Europe and eventually branching out to North America, Asia, and other continents and countries. Often these traditions are strongly associated with renowned phenomenological scholars. Here we mention a few of these traditions and briefly focus on selected terminology and the implications for research methods. Transcendental phenomenology is the name of the tradition that begins with Husserl. Transcendence refers to the realization that we can never see a thing from all sides or perspectives at once, so the full essence of a thing can only be appropriated in transcendental or pure consciousness in some sense abstracted from the perception of the experiential world. According to Husserl, consciousness has a transcendental structure. So phenomenology orients to the way that consciousness structures or constitutes the phenomena of the world. Early Husserlian phenomenology is understood as eidetic description: determining the essential nature and acts of consciousness. Phenomenological research proceeds through transcendental reflection as practiced through the eidetic reduction (bracketing) or epoché. In the transcendental reduction the researcher withdraws from the natural attitude of the taken-for-grantedness of the everyday world and of objective science and turns toward the intersubjective level of the transcendental ego. Husserl stresses that the phenomena (persons, things, objects, events, ideas, etc.) of which we are conscious are not simply in consciousness (as in a box), rather they are constituted as being what they are for us and as what they mean for us. Therefore, transcendental phenomenology could also be called constitutive phenomenology. It should be added that for Husserl, phenomenological intuition (the imaginative variation of the eidetic reduction) grasps the essence of things with all the vagueness that belongs (essentially) to them, and these are necessarily inexact essences. Only mathematical essences are exact. Ontological phenomenology inquires into the nature of human existence or modes-of-being in the world. Heidegger distanced himself from the Husserlian preoccupation with eidetics, consciousness and intentionality, in favor of an ontological and hermeneutic perspective. In Being and Time, Heidegger argues that human existence (Dasein) is always already embedded in a world of meanings. Things are not first of all phenomena that are constituted in consciousness; rather we encounter them immediately in the world where we use them. In his early work Heidegger shows through a variety of concrete topics how phenomenology captures in language how things such as a jug, a bridge, a tool, show themselves. In his later writing Heidegger uses an increasingly evocative and poetic

Phenomenology 451 discourse. Phenomenology is the study of what shows itself in the unique manner that it shows itself to us. Every mode of being (such as the mode of being a student, a teacher, a reader, a scientist, a parent) is always simultaneously a way of understanding the world. These modes of being in the world need to be interpreted. So, ontological phenomenology becomes hermeneutical when its method is taken to be interpretive, rather than purely descriptive as in transcendental phenomenology. But the contrast between descriptive and interpretive phenomenology is sometimes over-simplified by researchers in the professional disciplines. Heidegger says that all description is always already interpretation. Every form of human awareness is interpretive. Hans-Georg Gadamer, Heidegger s student, continues the development of a hermeneutic phenomenology, especially in his famous text, Truth and Method. Although Heidegger and Gadamer do not offer a method for conducting phenomenological inquiry, their works are examples both in their form and content. In Truth and Method, Gadamer (1975) carefully explores the role of language, the nature of questioning, the phenomenology of human conversation, and the significance of prejudice, historicality, and tradition in the project of human understanding. All these topics have relevance for educational researchers. The works of Jean-Paul Sartre, Maurice Blanchot, Simone de Beauvoir, and Merleau-Ponty are known also as different forms of existential phenomenology. The relevance of existential phenomenology for education lies in its focus on the embodied, linguistic, gendered, and intersubjective dimensions of human existence. In his preface to the Phenomenology of Perception, Merleau-Ponty (1962) asks, What is phenomenology? and suggests that phenomenology begins in awakening and describing the basic experience of the world. Merleau-Ponty s clarification of the notions of intentionality, the reduction, wonder, and phenomenological reflection should be mandatory reading for those interested in developing more pragmatic approaches to phenomenological research. In the post-structuralist writings of Jacques Derrida and his French colleagues such as Julia Kristeva and Hélène Cixous, we can address a radical linguistic phenomenology. Derrida aims to show that meaning is always primarily linguistic. Meaning resides in language and the text rather than in the subject. His famous claim that there is nothing outside of the text illustrates this well. For Derrida intersubjectivity is intertextuality. In contrast to Husserl s search for an indubitable ground of human understanding in the cogito, Derrida points out the essentially unstable and undecidable character of the nature of signs and meaning. Through the method of deconstruction Derrida aims to demonstrate, not the invariance (essence) of human phenomena but the essential variance, the différance that destabilizes all meaningful distinctions and discernable identities. Ethical phenomenology originates with Max Scheler, a contemporary of Husserl. It also finds its origin in Jean- Paul Sartre s concern with ethical themes of freedom, responsibility, and choice. However, ethical phenomenology is especially associated with the original and influential work of Emmanuel Levinas intending to radicalize the thinking of Husserl and Heidegger into a phenomenology of otherness. For Levinas, the Husserlian focus on the essence of things and Heidegger s preoccupation with the modalities of being in the world all are manifestations of the primacy of the self or mine-ness in traditional philosophical phenomenology. For a truly profound understanding of the human reality, one must not ask for the meaning of being, self, or presence but for the meaning of what is otherwise than being, alterity, or difference. Levinas finds the phenomenological power of this question in the encounter with the face of the other who makes an appeal on us. In the vulnerability of the face of the other we experience an appeal: we are being called, addressed. Our response to the vulnerability of the other is experienced as a responsibility. This is an ethical experience, an ethical phenomenology. Phenomenology as a Human Science Next to these philosophic traditions, phenomenology became popular as a qualitative research approach in the social sciences. Although ethnography and ethnomethodology are characterized by their own distinct methodologies and epistemological assumptions, these disciplines prepared the way for a reception of phenomenological inquiry in North America. Ethnography offered ways of examining how subjects construct their own meanings and cultural reality; ethnomethodology enabled the social sciences to study the practices of everyday life and the meanings associated with those practices. At first, the rise of these qualitative approaches encountered considerable opposition. The root of the commotion was the challenge to traditional social science regarding their taken-forgranted assumptions about everyday life. It is especially through disciplines such as education, pedagogy, and psychology that phenomenology was introduced in the practical, applied, or professional fields. For example, in psychology there was the influence of the Duquesne University scholars such as psychologist Adrian van Kaam and social psychologist Rolf von Eckartsberg. The Duquesne School became especially known for publishing qualitative methodological explications of phenomenological research that lent itself for application to the more practical fields of counseling and clinical psychology. Before there was any significant interest in phenomenology in North America, a unique experiment had taken place in the Netherlands, Belgium, and Germany. For

452 Qualitative Research example, the University of Utrecht School a loosely associated group of phenomenologically oriented psychologists, educators, pedagogs, pediatricians, sociologists, criminologists, jurists, psychiatrists, and other medical doctors can be considered a genuinely original contribution to the international discussion about phenomenology as a research perspective in the professions. Among these, scholars such as J. H. van den Berg wrote about the changing nature of childhood; the pedagogue-philosopher O. F. F. Bollnow wrote on the pedagogical atmosphere; the educator M. J. Langeveld established the field of phenomenological pedagogy. In recent years, further developments in phenomenological methodology, inspired by continental scholars, are found in all the major professional disciplines. Practically oriented explications of phenomenological research methods are found in psychology through the efforts of Amadeo Georgi and Clark E. Moustakas, and in education through the writings of Max van Manen. Early phenomenological authors in education carved their own unique paths through the complexity of strands and traditions. Maxine Greene focuses especially on the writing of Hannah Arendt. Donald Vandenberg orients to the Husserlian philosopher Stephen Strasser and the educational thoughts of O.F. Bollnow. Madeleine Grumet and William Pinar experiment with gender based and post-structuralist phenomenologies. More recently, there is a growing interest in the pedagogical import of the phenomenology of technology and media, such as in Catherine Adams study of PowerPoint and the pedagogy of digital media technology, and Iain Thomson s critique of the culture of technology and modern university education in light of Heidegger. The Method of the Reduction The idea of the reduction occupies a special place in phenomenological method. Reduction is the technical term that describes the phenomenological device which permits us to discover the experiential surge of the lifeworld. The aim of the reduction is to reachieve a direct and primal contact with the world as we experience it rather than as we conceptualize it. But the discovery of the prereflective lifeworld through the technique of the reduction always transcends the lifeworld: when we bracket lived experience we experience meaning. The method of reduction is meant to bring the aspects of meaning that belong to the phenomena of our lifeworld into nearness. In particular, it aims to bring into focus the uniqueness of the particular phenomenon to which we are oriented. There exist many philosophical investigations and explications of the reduction that can make this topic complex and confusing. This is not surprising in view of the fact that the project of phenomenology can be understood in a variety of ways. Below several levels or dimensions of the reduction are distinguished for their eclectic value and methodological usefulness: wonder or heuristic reduction, openness or hermeneutic reduction, concreteness or experiential reduction, and universality in contingency or eidetic reduction. Each of these dimensions of the reduction needs to be practiced as if in concert. Yet it may be helpful to deal with them separately while keeping the integrity of the larger phenomenological project in view. At the most basic level, the heuristic reduction consists of the attitude or mood of wonder in the face of the world. What does this mean? It implies an approach that can shatter the taken-for-grantedness of our everyday reality. Wonder is the unwilled willingness to meet what is utterly strange in what is most familiar. To wonder is to step back and let things speak to us, a radical passive receptivity to let the things of the world present themselves in their own terms. When we are struck with wonder we seem to have evaporated momentarily our present preoccupations. We are suddenly struck by the strangeness of this thing, this phenomenon. Perhaps it is strange to speak of wonder as a method. But if we understand method as methodos, as path or way, then we may indeed consider wonder an important motive in human science inquiry. The way to knowledge and understanding begins in wonder. So methodologically the heuristic reduction requires discovering the miraculous moment of wonder; and in this moment a question may emerge that addresses us. The heuristic reduction involves the awakening of a profound sense of amazement at the mysteriousness of the belief in the world. This fundamental amazement may animate one s questioning of the meaning of the lived experience of the world. In terms of the particular research project in which one is engaged the heuristic reduction challenges the researcher to be receptive and awakened to a profound sense of wonder. But it also challenges the researcher to write in such a way that the reader of the phenomenological text is similarly stirred to the same sense of wondering attentiveness to the topic under investigation. Phenomenological inquiry continually edifies a wondering attitude of attentiveness. At the level of the hermeneutic reduction, the phenomenologist needs to reflect on his or her own preunderstandings, frameworks, and biases regarding the psychological, political, and ideological motivation and the nature of the question. This is a search for genuine openness to engage in a conversational relation with the phenomenon. On the one hand, this means that one needs to practice a critical selfawareness with respect to the assumptions that prevent one from being as open as possible to the sense and significance of the phenomenon. The researcher needs to forget as it were vested interests and preunderstandings. On the other hand, it means that one needs to realize that forgetting

Phenomenology 453 one s preunderstandings is not really possible and, therefore, these various assumptions and interests may need to be explicated so as to exorcise them in an attempt to let speak that what wishes to speak. Practically, the hermeneutic reduction consists of reflectively examining and turning over in ones textual labor the various preunderstandings that seem to impinge on the reflective gaze. This does not mean that one must hope to arrive at some pure vantage point, as if such a pure gaze were possible. But it requires that the various dimensions of lived meaning of the selected human experience are investigated for their different sources and layers of meaning, rather than being overlaid with a particular frame of meaning. Phenomenological inquiry is continually open to questioning assumptions and preunderstanding. The experiential reduction requires that one avoids abstraction, theorizing, and generalization. Indeed, for any research project one must examine the available theories and discuss the body of knowledge about the topic. Theories need to be reviewed for how they inform (but fail) concreteness. Many theories contain some phenomenological material, or they are built on certain intuitions that presume phenomenological understandings. In the phenomenological reduction one needs to strip away the theoretical or scientific conceptions and thematizations that overlay the phenomenon one wishes to study, and that prevent one from seeing the phenomenon in a nonabstracting manner. The way in which to bracket theoretical meaning is not to ignore it but to examine it for possibilities of extracting phenomenological sensibilities. It is helpful to examine how the theories of conceptualizations gloss or hide the experiential reality upon which they ultimately must be based. Theories tend to explain phenomena that are not really understood in a lived or concrete sense. So one must ask: how is this topic actually experienced? What are examples of possible incidents or events? Phenomenological inquiry is continually oriented to the beginning, to the concrete, to experience as lived. The eidetic reduction is the most central to the phenomenological method, especially for those traditions that borrow from Husserl. The researcher asks: What makes this experience uniquely different from other related experiences? In the eidetic reduction one needs to see past or through the particularity of lived experience toward the essence or eidos that lies on the other side of the concreteness of lived meaning. The idea of phenomenological essence or eidos does not refer to some immutable universal or generalization about human nature of human life. This would be committing the fallacy of essentialism. Phenomenological inquiry is only concerned with possible human experiences not with experiences that are presumed to be universal or shared by all humans irrespective of time, culture, gender, or other circumstance. In addition, phenomenological determination of meaning is allusively and ultimately always indeterminate, always tentative, always incomplete, always inclined to question assumptions by returning again and again to lived experience itself, the beginnings of phenomenological inquiry. The eidetic reduction is partially accomplished by comparing the phenomenon with other related but different phenomena. For example, in exploring the phenomenology of secrecy one would practice the eidetic technique of variation in imagination. How is the experience of secrecy different from the experience of privacy or the experience of reserve? What makes keeping a secret different from lying? Are there different kinds of secrecy? How is keeping a secret different from lying? What are concrete examples of this experience? and so forth. In the eidetic reduction, patterns of meaning or themes seem to emerge. These are not themes in the sense of theoretical or conceptual abstractions; they do not belong to existing theories, taxonomies, genres, paradigms, philosophies, or conceptual frameworks. Phenomenological themes are the working material for phenomenological writing. The eidetic reduction differs from concept analysis in that the reduction does not claim to clarify linguistically the boundaries of a phenomenon or how a concept is being used in different contexts. Rather, the reduction attempts to offer intimations of meaningfulness. The eidetic reduction asks: Does this piece of text bring the experience into view? Does this phrase resonate with our prereflective sensibilities? Are these portrayals of lived meaning recognizable? Do they evoke something unique about this human experience? The eidetic reduction is not a simplification, fixation, or contraction of the world into a system of eidetic concepts rather it is the exact opposite: the eidetic reduction makes the world appear as it precedes every cognitive construction: in its full ambiguity, irreducibility, contingency, mystery, and ultimate indeterminacy. Human Science: Empirical and Reflective Methods and Procedures The reduction is the method that is central to the phenomenological study of the lifeworld. But as phenomenology is adopted by other disciplines, empirical and reflective methods are imported that are derived from the humanities and the social sciences. Empirical methods such as interviewing, observation, eliciting written descriptions, and borrowing from literary and artistic sources are now used to gather experiential material. Reflective methods of thematization, etymological analysis, and meaning analysis are used to facilitate the challenges involved in the various forms of the reduction. Our personal life experiences are immediately accessible to us in a way that no one else s are. However, the phenomenologist does not want to trouble the reader with purely private, autobiographical facticities of one s life.

454 Qualitative Research In drawing on personal descriptions of lived experiences, the phenomenologist knows that the patterns of meaning of one s own experiences are also the possible experiences of others, and therefore may be recognizable by others. To conduct a personal description of a lived experience, the researcher aims to describe a phenomenon (lived experience) as much as possible in experiential terms. The focus is on direct description of a particular situation or event as it is lived through, without offering causal explanations or interpretive generalizations. It is to the extent that a personal experience can be recognized by others that the phenomenologist wants to be reflectively aware of certain experiential meanings. To gain access to the experience of young children, it may be important to play with them, talk with them, puppeteer, paint, draw, follow them into their play spaces and into the things they do while the researcher remains attentively aware of the way it is for children. Participatory activities and close observation may generate different forms of experiential material than is obtained through the written or the interview approach. Observational method may require that one be a participant and an observer at the same time, that one maintains an orientation of reflectivity while guarding against the more manipulative and artificial attitude that a reflective attitude tends to insert in a social situation and relation. Literature, such as novels and short stories, are sometimes excellent sources for experiential material. The phenomenological value of a novel, for example, is determined by what may be called the perceptiveness and the intuitive sensitivity of the author. Through a powerful novel one is given the chance of living through an experience that provides the opportunity of gaining insight into certain aspects of the human condition. Whereas empirical methods aim to explore the range and varieties of prereflective experiential material that is appropriate for the phenomenon under study, reflective methods aim to interpret the aspects of meaning or meaningfulness that are associated with the phenomenon and that assist with the reduction. Researchers commonly use the device of thematization to explore the qualitative dimensions of a phenomenon. For example, when we are interested in the phenomenology of reading a novel, we may soon notice some possible themes: (1) When we open a book we experience this wondrous sensation that this thing-like object, the book, can draw us into the otherworldly space of the text. (2) When we begin to read a book, we enter it, as it were. (3) Reading a novel means that we begin to care for the people who make up the novel. (4) While we read a story we experience action without having to act ourselves. (5) When we interrupt a book, we exit the world created by the word, etc. These kinds of themes are only fasteners or foci around which a web of phenomenological descriptions of the experience of reading a novel can be constructed. Ultimately the concept of theme is itself primarily of heuristic importance. It may be considered simply as a means to get at the phenomenon that the researcher is addressing. Thematic reflection can provide a measure of control and a sense of order in our research and writing. Our lived experiences and the structures of meanings (themes) in terms of which these lived experiences can be described and interpreted constitute the immense complexity of the lifeworld. We can even speak of the multiple and different lifeworlds that belong to different human existences and realities. For example, the lifeworld of the child has different experiential qualities from the lifeworld of the adult. There are the lifeworlds of the elderly, the sick, the man, the woman, the researcher, and so forth. Each of us may be seen to inhabit different lifeworlds at different times of the day, such as the lived world of school and the lived world of the home. One can also speak of existential themes that pervade the lifeworlds of all human beings, regardless of their historical, cultural, or social situatedness. Existential themes that may prove especially helpful as guides for reflection in the research process are lived space (spatiality), lived body (corporeality), lived time (temporality), and lived human relation (relationality). They are productive categories for the process of phenomenological questioning, reflecting, and writing. See also: Action Research in Education; Ethnography; Ethnomethodology in Education Research; Hermeneutics; Interpretive Research; Interviews and Interviewing; Life History; Narrative Inquiry. Bibliography Gadamer, H. -G. (1975). Truth and Method. New York: Seabury. Merleau-Ponty, M. (1962). Phenomenology of Perception. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. Further Reading Arendt, H. (1958). The Human Condition. Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press. Benner, P. (ed.) (1994). Interpretive Phenomenology. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Derrida, J. (1976). Of Grammatology. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press. Giorgi, A. (ed.) (1985). Sketch of a psychological phenomenological method. In Phenomenology and Psychological Research, pp 8 22. Pittsburgh, PA: Duquesne University Press. Greene, M. (1973). Teacher as Stranger. New York: Wadsworth. Greene, M. (2000). Releasing the Imagination: Essays on Education, the Arts, and Social Change. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley. Heidegger, M. (1962). Being and Time. New York: Harper & Row. Heidegger, M. (1977). Basic Writings. New York: Harper & Row. Husserl, E. (1970). The Crisis of European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology. Evanston: Northwestern University Press.

Phenomenology 455 Levinas, E. (1969). Totality and Infinity: An Essay on Exteriority. Pittsburgh, PA: Duquesne University Press. Lingis, A. (1998). The Imperative. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press. Løgstrup, K. E. (1997). The Ethical Demand. Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press. Moustakas, C. (1994). Phenomenological Research Methods. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Sartre, J. P. (1956). Being and Nothingness. New York: Philosophical Library. Scheler, M. (1973). Formalism in Ethics and Non-Formal Ethics of Values. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press. Sokolowski, R. (2000). Introduction to Phenomenology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Strasser, S. (1963). Phenomenology and the Human Sciences. Pittsburgh, PA: Duquesne University Press. Thomson, I. (2005). Heidegger on Ontotheology: Technology and the Politics of Education. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Toombs, S. K. (ed.) (2001). Handbook of Phenomenology and Medicine. Philosophy and Medicine Series. Dordrecht: Kluwer. Tymieniecka, T. (ed.) (2002). Phenomenology World-Wide. Dordrecht: Kluwer. Vandenberg, D. (1971). Being and Education. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall. van Manen, M. (1991). The Tact of Teaching: The Meaning of Pedagogical Thoughtfulness. London, ON: Althouse Press. van Manen, M. (1997). Researching Lived Experience: Human Science for an Action Sensitive Pedagogy. London, ON/Albany, NY: Althouse Press/SUNY Press.