The use of phenomenology and phenomenography as a method in the educational research literature has risen in popularity, particularly by researchers who are interested in understanding and generati...

It is often said that ‘what it is like’-knowledge cannot be acquired by consulting testimony or reading books [Lewis 1998; Paul 2014; 2015a]. However, people also routinely consult books like What It Is Like to Go to War [Marlantes 2014], and countless ‘what it is like’ articles and youtube videos, in the apparent hope of gaining knowledge about what it is like to have experiences they have not had themselves. This article examines this puzzle and tries to solve it by (...) appealing to recent work on knowing-wh ascriptions. In closing I indicate the wider significance of these ideas by showing how they can help us to evaluate prominent arguments by Paul [2014; 2015a] concerning transformative experiences. (shrink)

Phenomenology originated as a novel way of doing philosophy early in the twentieth century. In the writings of Husserl and Heidegger, regarded as its founders, it was a non-empirical kind of philosophical enquiry. Although this tradition has continued in a variety of forms, 'phenomenology' is now also used to denote an empirical form of qualitative research, especially in health, psychology and education. However, the methods adopted by researchers in these disciplines have never been subject to detailed critical analysis; nor have (...) the methods advocated by methodological writers who are regularly cited in the research literature. This book examines these methods closely, offering a detailed analysis of worked-through examples in three influential textbooks by Giorgi, van Manen, and Smith, Flowers and Larkin. Paley argues that the methods described in these texts are radically under-specified, and suggests alternatives to PQR as an approach to qualitative research, particularly the use of interview data in the construction of models designed to explain phenomena rather than merely describe or interpret them. This book also analyses, and aims to develop, the implicit theory of 'meaning' found in PQR writings. The author establishes an account of 'meaning' as an inference marker, and explores the methodological implications of this view. This book evaluates the methods used in phenomenology-as-qualitative-research, and formulates a more fully theorised alternative. It will appeal to researchers and students in the areas of health, nursing, psychology, education, public health, sociology, anthropology, political science, philosophy and logic. (shrink)

This paper examines the relationship between Heidegger’s critique of educational comportment and his analysis of space in Being and Time. It posits that providing an educational corrective to the practice of tacit rational, described as ‘circumspection’ in Being and Time, would provide an opportunity to reorient Dasein toward clearer awareness of the spatial context. A phenomenological approach to education might be framed as a process that reorganizes how changes are anticipated by comported expectations. Addressing conditions of spatial comportment in education (...) reveals that while models of learning illusorily claim to provide infinite opportunities, contingent upon mastery of delimited knowledge, a phenomenological approach to education begins by first delimiting illusions of possibility. (shrink)