ABSTRACT

The concern of this study is the meaning of children in the lives of adults. Attention is given to the way the question of ontological meaning is eclipsed in the dominant traditions of child study, such that reflection about children has become separated off from adult self-reflection. The study attempts to show how living with children most fundamentally takes the form of a dialogue, in which the ontological horizons of adult and child become linked in an eternal conversation.

The study has five basic thrusts. In the first, a critique of the underlying epistemology of contemporary child study is given. The argument is made that the positivistic origins of the field essentially render children as objects, suitable for scientific investigation and social manipulation, perhaps, but cut off from any necessary connection with the broader adult community. Secondly, the question of the nature of human understanding is raised, as a prelude to asking what it could mean to claim an understanding of children. The historical rise of the hermeneutic tradition is traced with the intention of showing the genesis of the central issues in interpretive social science. Friedrich Schleiermacher, Wilhelm Dilthey, Martin Heidegger, and Hans-Georg G&damer are discussed as seminal figures.

A third interest is to discern how the key insights of the hermeneutic tradition bear on the conduct and interpretation of life-world research. The nature of human questioning and conversation is explored, particularly from the perspective of Gadamer's hermeneutic of the Platonic dialogues. This leads to the fourth aspect of the study which is a series of conversations with adults involved with children in both conventional and less conventional circumstances. For example, two unmarried teenage mothers-to-be are spoken with, as well as parents in a more traditional nuclear family. Representing people involved with children not their own, are five educators. All conversations are edited then reconstructed as a form of narrative text from which to show forms of ontological disclosure apparent within the speaking.

The ontological pointings, as they are referred to, form the basis of the fifth aspect of the study, which is an experiment in the art of hermeneutic writing. Hermeneutic writing, as a form of poetic, draws from the ideational character of human speaking and attempts to show what it is that is spoken through speech. As a poetic, it presents itself explicitly as one-sided, as an invitation to others to become engaged dialogically in that of which it speaks. Four themes or clusters are developed hermeneutically from the research conversations. These include "The Insistent Voice"~of children in the adult experience; children as eliciting adult reflection on "The Need for a Place"; "The Speaking of the Generations and the Sense of What is Right"; and "Extending Oneself, Watchinq Children Grow, Reaching Kids." The experience of the educators is discussed separately.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

CHAPTER

I. INTRODUCTION 1

II. THE FOUNDATIONS OF CONTEMPORARY KNOWLEDGE

ABOUT CHILDREN 13

Introduction 13

III. THE SEARCH FOR UNDERSTANDING: THE RISE OF THE HERMENEUTIC TRADITION AND THE QUESTION OF METHOD IN LIFE-WORLD RESEARCH 27

IV APPROACHING RESEARCH IN THE HUMAN LIFE-WORLD

HERMENEUTICALLY 71

Introduction 71

The Research Questions 73

Questioning 76

Conversation 79

The Manifest Course of Life-World Inquiry in this Study 84

V. BRINGING EXPERIENCE TO SPEECH THROUGH HERMEN EUTIC DIALOGUE: ESTABLISHING A GROUNDED TEXT 95

Mrs. Duquesne: A Retired Widow with Two Adult Children Living Away 151

Bill and Alice Nesbitt: Parents of a Mentally Handicapped Daughter and a

Normal Teenager 157

Eunice Dole: A Mother Judged Parentally' Incompetent by a Government Social

Service Agency' 163

How Other People's Children are Experienced in the Lives of Some of Those

Involved with Them: The Experience of Educators ' 166

Mrs. Ainsley: An Elementary School Principal 166

Kevin Souris: An Elementary School Vice-Principal 176

Wendy Bellum: A Grade One Teacher 186

James Paterna: A Teacher of Upper

Elementary Grades 197

Joan Underwood: A Teacher of Children Formally Labelled 'Educable Mentally

Retarded' 206

VI. OF WHAT DOES THE LANGUAGE OF LIVING WITH CHILD

REN SPEAK? 220

The Hermeneutic Writing 220

An Introduction 220

The Insistent Voice 228

The Ne,ed for A Place 233

The Speaking of the Generations and the Sense of What is Right 236

Extending Oneself, Watching Children Grow, Reaching Kids 243

Living and Working with Other People's 248 Children

The Experience of Some Educators 248

VII. SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION 260

REFERENCES

Notes To Chapters 268

Bibliography 277

APPENDIX A

on Hermeneutic Process 285

APPENDIX B

Transcript Samples 297

APPENDIX C

Biographical Statement and Reflection 366

VITA 374

© Max van Manen, 2002
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