PHENOMENOLOGICAL INQUIRYPrepared by Jane M. Gangi, Ph.D.

March 10, 2011

PHENOMENOLOGY: A PHILOSOPHICAL CRITIQUE OF POSITIVISM

In the 19th century Auguste Comte founded sociology with the notion that the human sciences—or social sciences—are like the natural sciences and should, therefore, use the methods of the natural sciences (the scientific method).

Positivism in education:quantitative studies: experimental, quasi-experimental, correlational, causal/comparative

Positivistic learning theories: Behaviorism, Cognitive Information Processing

INTERPRETIVISM

German philosopher William Dilthey disagreed with Comte that the methods of the natural sciences and the social sciences could be the same. He defined different types of knowledge:

Erklärung—explanatory knowledge, as in the natural sciences (Naturwissenschaft)

Verstehen—understanding, as appropriate for Geisteswissenschaft—the human or social sciences

The different types of knowledge should not use the same methods (adapted from Willis, Jost, & Nilkanta, 2007, p. 100).

WHAT USE IS INTEPRETIVE, QUALITATIVE RESEARCH?

Willis, Jost, & Nilakanta (2007):

Not rules or laws, as in the natural sciences

Instead, “understanding in context”

This understanding in context “can be communicated to others, who use it as part of their context for making decisions….Understanding informs a decision maker….” (emphasis added, p. 121).

PHENOMENOLOGY: RECOGNITION OF CONSCIOUSNESSNaturwissenschaft:Research in the natural sciences—life, earth, space science do not, like humans, have consciousness. Geisteswissenschaft:Research in the social sciences—humans have consciousness (like the researcher)

Recall slide 25 in my Foundations of Qualitative Research powerpoint: On Alfred Schutz that human beings are not simply molecules. They must be studied “through the meanings that people give to that reality.”

PHENOMENOLOGICAL TERMS

Noumena: things that are real

Phenomena: the perceptions humans bring to noumena

Epoché: “bracketing of past knowledge” (Giorgi, 2009, p. 91)

Eidetic: “marked by or involving extraordinarily accurate and vivid recall especially of visual images” (Merriam Webster)

PHENOMENOLOGICAL TERMS, CONT.

Danaher and Briod (2005):“Intentionality (the notion “consciousness is never an empty vessel for thought, but always ‘intends’ and ‘object’”) led Husserl “to overcome the split between person and world—between subjective and objective thinking—and to investigate the perceptions and experiences of the intersubjective life-world (Lebenswelt)” (p. 219).

EDMUND HUSSERL (1859-1938): “BACK TO THE THINGS THEMSELVES”

How does a person understand her own experience?

Examined in-depth, “essential qualities” would be revealed

“These essential features of an experience would transcend the particular circumstances”

Essences “might then illuminate a given experience for others too” (Smith, Flowers, and Larkin (2009, p. 12)

To discover essence the researcher brackets out his own assumptions

HOW PHENOMENOLOGY DIFFERS FROM POSITIVISM

For phenomenologists, subject-object distinctions are problematic.

VanMaanen (1988), a phenomenologist:

“…my stance is opposed to the power of positivist thinking, since…the relation between the knower and the known [is]… anything but independent in cultural studies. This is a phenomenological war whoop declaring that there is no way of seeing, hearing, or representing the world of others that is absolutely, universally valid or correct.” (pp. 34-35).

PHENOMENOLOGICAL METHODS

Giorgi: The phenomenological researcher elicits descriptions of experience either by oral interviews (which are transcribed) or by asking participants to write about their experience (adapted from Willis, Jost, & Nilakanta, 2007, p. 173).

The researcher then examines the data for “underlying structures” (Willis, Jost, & Nilakanta, 2007, p. 173).

PHENOMENOLOGICAL METHODS, CONT.

Danaher and Briod (2005):“1. The researcher develops a guiding question or concern in the light of lived experiences that are seriously interesting and commit us to better understand the experiencer’s life-world.2. When investigating experience as lived, preconceptions, assumptions, and beliefs are either set aside or brought into the open.3. Themes or meanings essential to the experience are both intuitively (passively) and imaginatively (actively) discovered.4. A narrative and descriptive general structure of the experiential phenomenon is offered (following van Manen, 1990: 30)” (p. 217).

ASSUMPTION: THE CONSTRUCT OF “ESSENCE”

Patton:“…there is an essence or essences to shared experience...The experiences of different people are bracketed, analyzed, and compared to identify the essences of the phenomenon, for example, the essences of loneliness, the essence of being a mother, or the essence of being a participant in a particular program. The assumption of essence, like the ethnographer’s assumption that culture exists and is important, becomes the defining characteristic of a purely phenomenological study” (as cited in Merriam, 1998, p. 15).

INTERPRETATIVE PHENOMENOLOGICAL ANALYSIS (IPA)

Smith, Flowers, & Larkin (2009):

“IPA is committed to the detailed examination of the particular case. It wants to know in detail what the experience for this person is like, what sense this particular person is making of what is happening to them. This is what we mean when we say IPA is idiographic. IPA studies usually have a small number of participants and the aim is to reveal something of the experience of each of those individuals” (p. 3).

THE DOUBLE HERMENEUTIC

Smith, Flowers, and Larkin (2009):

“It can be said that the IPA researcher is engaged in a double hermeneutic because the researcher is trying to make sense of the participant trying to make sense of what is happening them….the researcher’s sense-making is second order; he/she only has access to the participant’s own account of it” (p. 3).

WEBSITES

Bruce and Gerber: Annotations of phenomenolgical studies:http://sky.fit.qut.edu.au/~bruce/phen/annbib/g.jsp

Phenomenology: http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/phenomenology/

Phenomenology Center: http://www.phenomenologycenter.org/phenom.htm

Stan Lester Developments, Taunton http://www.sld.demon.co.uk/resmethy.pdf

Phenomenology as an educational research method—van Manen. Retrieved from http://otal.umd.edu/~paulette/Dissertation/methodology/phenomenology.html

Van Manen: Phenomenology online: http://www.phenomenologyonline.com/

REFERENCESDanaher, T., & Briod, M. (2005). Phenomenological approaches to research with children. In S.Greene & D. Hogan (Eds.), Researching children’s experiences: Approaches and methods (pp. 216-235). London, U.K.: Sage.

Giorgi, A. (2009). The descriptive phenomenological method in psychology. Pittsburgh, PA: Duquesne University Press.

Merriam, S. B. (1998). Qualitative research and case study applications in education. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

Smith, J. A., Flowers, P., & Larkin, M. (2009). Interpretive phenomenological analysis: Theory, methods and research. Los Angeles, CA: Sage.

Spiegelberg, H. A. (1965). The phenomenological movement vol. 2 how to do in apa. The Hague, Netherlands: Marinus Nijhoff.

VanMaanen, J. (1988). Tales of the field: On writing ethnography. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Willis, J., Jost, M., & Nilkanta, R. (2007). Foundations of qualitative research: Interpretive and critical approaches. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.