Presentation at HEA-funded workshop 'A dialogue between phenomenology and realism in pedagogical and educational research '. The workshop aimed to stimulate debate around the philosophical underpinnings of different research methodologies, whose shared terminology is often interpreted in radically contrasting ways, and in particular, to encourage dialogue between realist and phenomenological research traditions. The workshop was aimed at pedagogical and educational researchers who are looking to expand their methodological repertoire and to explore new ways of teaching research methods. This presentation is part of a related blog post that provides an overview of the event: http://bit.ly/1oww6m1 For further details of the HEA's work on teaching research methods in the Social Sciences see: http://bit.ly/RIZtTz

1. Phenomenology in
educational
research
Controversies, contradictions, confluences
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2. What I talk of when I talk of
education
• Historical detour
Education as interdisciplinary field of study or moral-laden
interest?
• After Bologna
Ex. 1 The tool-school
Ex. 2 The unsuccessful child
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3. Existential education
• Education as interpretive practice
All theories focus on morality, relation, asymmetry
• The relation between adult and child is basis
A continous reflection on ideal/real, freedom/control,
dependence / independence
• The professional teacher is not a master teacher
The adult is being authorized by the child
• Child and adult inhabit the same world in different
ways
The unique child is in dialogue with the world
• Child and adult each are subjects and origins of
action
We are dependent of others in our action
• Education is about the ability and willingness to be
addressed
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4. What I talk of when I talk of
phenomenology
• Phenomenology as a method is not applied to
education as a philosophical understanding but is
subject to educational interests, purposes, and moral
considerations, from which it cannot be separated (Saevi
2014, 2).
• Phenomenology (of practice) is an endeavor that “aims
to open up possibilities for creating formative relations
between being and acting, between who we are and
how we act, between thoughtfulness and tact” (van
Manen 2007, 13).
• Phenomenology is about making visible and thus
“reflectable” the relation between the human being and
the world. The strength of phenomenology comes from its
immersion with the concrete reality and thus the lived
“experience is the decisive factor” (Levering 2012,140).
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5. • The concrete lived-through experience
The German term Erlebnis differs from the English term
experience by its lived-through quality
• The pathic grasp
Theory “thinks” the world, practice “grasps” the world pathically
• Responsible insight
A caring act where we wants to know that which is most
significant to being” (van Manen 1997,5)
• Rigorous methods
Phenomenology as a method involves the enigma of the
epoche and the reduction , and the vocative - philosophical
and philological methods
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6. Phenomenology in education
Examples
• It is Monday morning in the City-park of Bergen. A father
and his little son just left the bus and are on their way
through the park to kindergarten. The three-year-old
walks a few meters ahead of his father, stops by the low
fence separating the pathway from the lawn down to
the lake, and stands for a few moments looking at the
ducks swimming down there. The father also stops and
looks at his son. After a few moments, he says: “Come
now, let us continue.” The little boy starts walking again
and his father is close behind.
• Somewhere else in the City-park another little boy about
the same age walks with his father on his way to
kindergarten. The son lets go of his father’s hand and runs
toward the low fence to have a look at the ducks.
“Come back! You are supposed to walk with me” the
father says immediately, grasps his son’s hand and
continues.
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9. Phenomenology in education –
examples of ways of living and acting
• Presupposes a broad understanding of education
Maintain the lived -through quality of the particular educational
situation and acknowledge a personal and cultural remembrance
of what it means to be a child and young person
• Orients to experience, interpretation, language
The world already always is there as unreflective and pre-
conscious experience, before any analytic explanations can
happen
• Starts in the lived experience of the child
Education starts from the “tension between education as a
primordial human phenomenon and as a cultural
phenomenon” (van Manen 2012, 2)
• Asks educational questions to phenomenological
education
Moral questions of the aims, purpose and relationships of
education are examples of phenomenological educational
questions
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10. Responsible for the life of
the child
• The existential question that can distinguish this
particular phenomenological educational
practice/research from other educational and
phenomenological practices/researches is the
following: “In what way am I responsible for this
child and his or her life and how can I responsibly
respond to this responsibility in this particular
situation?”
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11. Ending
• What do we disagree about?
• What are the contradictions?
• What seems to come together?
• What NOW?
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