WHAT IS PHENOMENOLOGICAL RESEARCH?

WHAT IS PHENOMENOLOGICAL
RESEARCH?
Dr. Blaine E. Hatt
Schulich School of Education
Nipissing University
Research Symposium – Brantford Campus
08 December 2011
PHENOMENOLOGICAL INQUIRY
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Write a short, detailed account of what
it was for you to experience being one
of the following:
“a digital native”
“a digital immigrant”
“a digital refugee”.
PHENOMENOLOGICAL INQUIRY
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What is an experience, recorded in an
interview or conversation, that might be
associated with being a “digital native”;
“digital immigrant”, or “digital
refugee”?
What are some themes that might be
associated with being a “digital native”;
“digital immigrant”, or “digital
refugee”?
PHENOMENOLOGICAL INQUIRY
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Origins:
German philosopher Husserl
Transcendental phenomenology
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A scientific study of the appearance of
things, of phenomena just as we see them
and as they appear to us in the
subconscious
PHENOMENOLOGICAL INQUIRY
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Intentionality, noema and noesis are
concepts central to phenomenology.
Noema is that which is expereinced
Noesis is the way in which it is experienced
Husserl’s “back to things themselves” is a
way of emphasizing knowledge that is rooted
in meanings, rather than in an analysis of
physical objects.
PHENOMENOLOGICAL INQUIRY
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Origins:
French phenomenologist Merleau-Ponty
Termed: Classical phenomenologist
approach (Crotty, 1996)
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The phenomenological enterprise is more
of a philosophical enterprise
PHENOMENOLOGICAL INQUIRY
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Van Manen (1990/1997):
Hermeneutical phenomenology
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Phenomenological inquiry is the essence of
lived experience and the interpretation of
that essence which leads to a different way
of knowledge being constructed
PHENOMENOLOGICAL INQUIRY
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The content of this power point
presentation is heavily excerpted from
the following text:
van Manen, M. (1997) Researching lived
experience: Human science for an
action sensitive pedagogy. London, ON:
The Althouse Press
PHENOMENOLOGICAL INQUIRY
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Possibilities of hermeneutical
phenomenological research are
inexhaustive because we are able to
research almost any phenomenon, any
lived experience, as human response.
PHENOMENOLOGICAL INQUIRY
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Limitation of hermeneutical
phenomenology: it does not go beyond
interpretation; it does not become
emancipatory
Critics of phenomenological inquiry –
research needs to do more than offer
understanding about human
experience.
PHENOMENOLOGICAL INQUIRY
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However, the importance of interpretive
models such as hermeneutical
phenomenology place human
situatedness central and are based on
the belief that we can best understand
human beings from the experiential
reality of their lifeworlds (xi)
PHENOMENOLOGICAL INQUIRY
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How do we experience the lifeworld?
In order to turn to the lifeworld we
must be as unbiased as possible – we
must dislodge and confront our
unexamined assumptions (xii).
PHENOMENOLOGICAL INQUIRY
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The world is given to us and actively
constituted by us, reflecting on it
phenomenologically, we are presented
with possibilities of individual and
collective self-understanding and
thoughtful praxis (xi)
PHENOMENOLOGICAL INQUIRY
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Divergent inquiry models make us aware of
enduring and shared human science concerns
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Autobiography brings home the uniqueness of
personal experience and the priority of the self
Narrative inquiry has shown the power of the
story to shape personal and collective history
Feminism and cultural studies prove the
importance of contextualizing interpretive meaning
Poststructuralism makes us more pointedly aware
of the subjective and intersubjective roots of
meaning
PHENOMENOLOGICAL INQUIRY
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Approaching lived experiences as unbiased as
possible.
Recognize the theme of uniqueness:
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Language is simply inadequate in describing experience
Words fall short –language is essentially social – only
through the collectivity of language can we access our own
experience and that of others
Language creates and describes an inter-subjective world –
we live in collective realms of meanings
Language lets us know what is experience-able
PHENOMENOLOGICAL INQUIRY
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Recognize the theme of uniqueness:
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Hermeneutic phenomenology employs modes of discourse
that try to merge cognitive and non-cognitive, gnostic and
pathic ways of knowing
We understand things intellectually or conceptually but we
also experience things in corporeal, relational, enactive, and
situational modalites
Hermeneutic phenomenology tries to explicate meanings
that in some sense are implicit inour actions – we know
things through our bodies, through our relations with others,
through interaction with the things of the world
PHENOMENOLOGICAL INQUIRY
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Recognize the theme of essences:
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Essence is not a single, fixed property by which we know
something; rather, it is meaning constituted by a complex
array of aspects, properties, and qualities – some of which
are incidental and some of which are more critical to the
being of things
Essence asks what something “is”, without which it would
no longer be what it is and it asks the question while being
aware of context, (inter)subjectivity, language, etc.
Every interpretation can be called into question; every
inquiry we can begin anew; every hermeneutical
phenomenological conversation is unending
PHENOMENOLOGICAL INQUIRY
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Recognize the theme of
(in)commensurability:
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Experience is personal and influenced by factors
such as gender, culture, etc.
Is the phenomenological attitude compatible with
the feminist one?
Both attempt ot find mode of discourse, voice, and
expression that can reveal felt meaning that goes
beyond the prevailing paradigm of logic, cognition,
prediction, and control. In this sense hermeneutic
phenomenology seems to be quite amenable to
feminine forms of knowing, inquiring, and writing.
PHENOMENOLOGICAL INQUIRY
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Recognize the theme of language:
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Hermeneutic phenomenological inquiry is not a closed
system
Experience is always more immediate, more enigmatic, more
complex more ambiguous than any description in langugae
can do justice to
The human researcher is a scholar-author who must be able
to maintain an almost unreasonable faith in the power of
language to make intelligible and understandable what
always seems to lie beyond language
Herein lies the relevant and continuing contribution of
hermeneutic phenomenology for the epsitemology of
profesional practice
PHENOMENOLOGICAL INQUIRY
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Research using phenomenology seeks
to uncover the meanings in our
everyday existence.
Phenomenological research/writing
succeeds when we make these things
recognizable.
PHENOMENOLOGICAL INQUIRY
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Hermeneutic phenomenological
research is an interplay of six research
activities:
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1) turning to a phenomenon that seriously
interests us and commits us to the world
2investigating experience as we live it
rahter than as we conceptualize it
Reflectiong on the essential themes which
characterize the phenomenon
PHENOMENOLOGICAL INQUIRY
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4) describing the phenomenon through the
art of writing and rewriting
5) manipulating a strong and oriented
pedagogical relation to the phenomenon
6) balancing the research context by
considering parts and whole (pp. 30-31)
PHENOMENOLOGICAL INQUIRY
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Producing lived experience descriptions:
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1) describe the experience as you live9d) through
it avoiding, where possible, causal explanations,
generalizations, or abstract interpretations
2) describe the experience from the inside like a
state of mind: the feelings, the mood, the
emotions, etc.
3) focus on a particular example or incident of the
object of experience: describe specific events, an
adventure, a happening, a particular experience.
PHENOMENOLOGICAL INQUIRY
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4) focus on an example of the experience which
stands out for its vividness, or as it was the first
time.
5) attend to how the body feels, how things
smell(ed), how they sound(ed), etc.
6) avoid trying to beautify your account with fancy
phrases or flowery terminology (pp. 66-67).
The description is less concerned with factual
accuracy and more focused on the person’s living
sense of the experience. What is it like to live
though an experience?
PHENOMENOLOGICAL INQUIRY
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“To do human science research is to be
involved in the crafting of text. In order
to come to grips with the structure of
meaning of the text… in terms of
meaning units, structures of meaning or
themes. Reflecting on lived experience
then becomes reflectively analyzing the
structural or thematic aspects of that
experience” (p. 78).
PHENOMENOLOGICAL INQUIRY
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Isolating thematic statements:
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1) the wholistic or sententious approach which is
more global, seeking overall meaning of the text
2) the highlighting approach which focuses on
phrases or sentences that stand out in the text
3) the detailed line-by-line approach which is a
close examination of the text sentence by
sentence
The structuring of meaning with themes sets the
stage for the process of “bringing speech to
something”, the art of writing and re-writing
PHENOMENOLOGICAL INQUIRY
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“Human science research is a form of writing.
Creating a phenomenological text is the object of this
research process” (p. 111).
“All writing is a kind of alienated speech, and its
signs need to be transformed back into speech and
meaning. Because this meaning has undergone selfalienation through being written down, this
transformation back is the real hermeneutical task”
(Gadamer, 1994/1960, p. 393).
The research process itself is practically inseparable
from the writing process (p. 167).
PHENOMENOLOGICAL INQUIRY
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Hermeneutical phenomenology of a lived
experience is a search for an organizational
form and organic wholeness of the text
consistent with the methodological emphasis
of the research approach.
1) Thematically: use the emerging themes as
generative guides for writing the research
study – divide the study into chapters, parts
or sections that articulate the theme that is
being described.
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One’s writing analytically of the research is
an ever-widening search for ground.
If the research involves in-depth
conversational interviews with certain
persons, then those interviews may be
reworked into restructured life stories, or
analyzed for relevant anecdotes, or incidents
described in the interviews may be used to
construct fictionalized antinomous accounts
that bring out contrasting ways of seeing or
acting in concrete situations (p. 170).
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In reconstructing life stories or selecting
anecdotes include only material that
illustrates or highlights a theme. This
theme becomes the hermeneutic tool
by which the phenomenon under study
can be meaningful understood.
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Hermeneutical phenomenological
research reintegrates part and whole,
the contingent and the essential, value
and desire…. It makes us thoughtfully
aware of the consequential in the
inconsequential, the significant in the
taken-for-granted. Phenomenological
descriptions, if done well, are
compelling and insightful (p. 8).