Phenomenology

1
Phenomenology
2
Phenomenology

• Is not a unified position (e.g., Husserl,
  Merleau-Ponty, Sartre, Heidegger)
• A school of philosophical thought that underpins
  all of QL research.
• Emphasis on experience and interpretation
• Also is a set of tools

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Essence

• Focus of the study is on the essence or structure
  of an experience (phenomenon) (Merriam).
• The task of the phenomenologist is to depict this
  essence or basic structure of experience
  (Merriam).
• The assumption of essence, like the
  ethnographers assumption that culture exists and
  is important, becomes the defining characteristic
  of a purely phenomenological study (Merriam, p.
  15 quote from Patton, p 70).

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Further assumptions

• A philosophy without presuppositions suspend
  all judgments about what is real.
• Intentionality of consciousness consciousness
  is always directed toward an object, reality of
  an object is then related to ones consciousness
  of it.
• Refusal of the subject-object dichotomy without
  meaning by subject, no reality of object
  (Creswell, 1998).

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Phenomenologists . . .

• insist on careful description of ordinary
  conscious experience of everyday life (the
  life-world)a description of things (the
  essential structures of consciousness) as one
  experiences them (Schwandt, 2001, p. 191).
• Seek invariant structures (Creswell, 1998).

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What do we experience?

• include perception (hearing, seeing, etc.),
  believing, remembering, deciding, feeling,
  judging, evaluating, and all experiences of
  bodily action. Phenomenological descriptions of
  such things are possible only by turning from
  things to their meaning, from what is to the
  nature of what is (Schwandt, 2001, p. 191).

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Life-world

• the everyday world (Lebenswelt) is the
  intersubjective world of human experience and
  social action it is the world of commonsense
  knowledge of everyday life (Schwandt, 2001, p.
  147).
• is constituted by the thoughts and acts of
  individuals and the social expressions of those
  thoughts and acts (e.g., laws, institutions). The
  life-world (and its phenomena) is regarded as the
  primary object for study by the human sciences.
  Describing what the life-world consists ofthat
  is, the structures of experience and the
  principles and concepts that give form and
  meaning to the life-worldhas been the project of
  phenomenology (p. 147).

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• In qualitative research, phenomenology aims to
  identify and describe the subjective experience
  of respondents. It is a matter of studying
  everyday experience from the point of view of the
  subject, and it shuns critical evaluation of
  forms of social life (Schwandt, 2001, p. 192).
• Understanding of an event from the point of view
  of the participant (Barritt, et al., p. 2)

9

• The challenge facing the human science
  researcher is to describe things in themselves,
  to permit what is before one to enter
  consciousness and be understood in its meanings
  and essences in the light of intuition and
  self-reflection. The process involves a blending
  of what is really present with what is imagined
  as present from the vantage point of possible
  meanings thus a unit of the real and the idea
  (Merriam, p. 17, quote from Moustakas).

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How to . . .

• Reduce the phenomenon by bracketing or
  suspending . . . the natural attitude, which is
  the everyday assumption of the independent
  existence of what is perceived and thought about
  (Schwandt, 2001, p. 192).

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How to . . .

• Understand philosophical perspectives (Creswell).
• Must have an intuitive grasp of the phenomenon
  (Merriam).
• Writes research questions that explore the lived
  experiences of individuals (Creswell).
• Collects data from individual who have
  experienced the phenomena (Creswell),
  investigating several instances to gain a real
  sense of the essence (Merriam).

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How to . . .

• In analysis, divide statements, look for
  clusters of meanings, make general descriptions
  textural description of what was experienced and
  structured description of how it was experienced
  (Creswell), seeking to understand relationships
  among several essences (Merriam).
• In this, systematically explore The phenomena
  not only in the sense of what appears, whether
  particulars or general essences, but also of the
  way in which things appear (Merriam, p. 16,
  quote from Spiegelberg)

13
Barritt, et al. (1984)

• Lived experience playing games
• Life-world the everyday world in which games
  are played

14
Phenomenography

• Used (initially, mid 50s) to distinguish among
  schools of psychopathological research.
• a descriptive recording of immediate subjective
  experience as reported (Sonneman, 1954, p. 344 at
  http//www.ped.gu.se/biorn/phgraph/civil/main/firs
  tidea.html)

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Phenomenography

• has been used to investigate variation in ways
  of seeing or experiencing phenomena associated
  with learning (Pham, et al., 2005, p. 218).
• investigate the collective consciousness of
  research communities (p. 218).
• It allows us to examine variation in the
  internal relation between researchers and aspects
  of their world, investigating critical
  differences in how they are aware of some aspects
  of their world, and also in how that aspect of
  the world appears to them (p. 218).

16
Phan, Bruce, Stoodley (2005)

• Life-world the objects and territories of IT
• Lived experience how the experience of IT
  researchers constitutes the life-world.