HUMAN SCIENCE RESEARCH
Phenomenological Inquiry and Writing - EDSE 611 (<6>)
This research seminar explores human science methodology and focuses on recent developments in hermeneutic phenomenology. Phenomenology evolved alongside the emergence and evolution of specific awarenesses with respect to the diversity of human experiences and the variety of ontologies underlying these experiences. The course investigates and develops descriptive, interpretive, vocative, addressive, and ethical dimensions of reflective writing. It is designed to help students acquire both practical and theoretical research knowledge and skills and apply these to a topic of their choice. This phenomenology-as-a-practice is especially relevant to persons interested in the study of lived meaning in the domains of education, psychology, counseling, the health sciences, and related academic and professional fields.
This course will be approached as a research seminar. The theoretical part of the course will consist of readings and discussions of selected topics at the hand of background materials. The practical part of the course will involve small-scale writing exercises, an individual paper, and collaborative discussions of the drafts of our papers. We practise interviewing, thematic analyzing of transcripts, conceptual clarification, evocation of texts, direct description, hermeneutic interpretation, and so forth. Meaning is the method of encountering the world by giving an account of the world in discursive forms: vocative and interpretive, pathic and gnostic, enactive and receptive. For this purpose we explore various aspects and approaches of a philosophy-based methodology for the study of lived experience and lived meaning.
Phenomenology requires an attitude and attentiveness marked by radical opennes to significations of the world in which we live: attentive to subtle signs, and observant of luminated landscapes of lived meaning. Just as we may discover the sensitivity of our own skin through the caress of another and another through the sensitivity of our own touch, so we may discover who we are, what we can say, feel, and think through the language of others and through the language we write and that writes us.
Sometimes we are surprised by insights in the ruptures of the conversational relations that suspend us in the niches and expanses of the intersubjective spaces-spaces that we inhabit and that inhabit us. In searching for meaning we traverse landscapes and brush over selected sites in different movements and directions. Just as the archeologist lays out gridworks to stake out and systematically comb a historical site for its formations and buried artifacts, so the phenomenologist frames experiential sites and combs them for their existential variations, linguistic structures, historic traces, contingent significations, moral allusions, and pragmatic meaning patterns.
While the phenomenological approach of the course is rooted in the rich traditions of the Geisteswissenschaften and in related human science and philosophical traditions as developed in countries such as Germany, France, Japan, Belgium, and the Netherlands, my intent is to remain open to the dynamic and challenging developments in contemporary social and human sciences and in the humanities. We may be interested in semiotics, deconstructionism, postmodern science, gender studies, narrative inquiry, concept analysis, media studies, critical inquiry, ÒnewÓ theory, etc. EDSE 611 is neither a course in pure philosophy nor a strictly educational foundations course--the rationale of this form of inquiry must be consistent with a form of reflection that is animated by the practical interests and responsibilities of our professional and personal lives: pedagogy, counseling, nursing, adult education, social work, geriatric care, health care, and so forth.
Overview
The topics of the course correspond in part to the text Researching Lived Experience: human science for an action sensitive pedagogy. This text is a write-up of the course themes as they have been presented and discussed in class over the past years. I hope the book is quite readable and does not need lengthy interpretation. Therefore, I assume that you are largely responsible for reading RLE through on your own. The book contains a glossary of common human science terminology as we may encounter in the course and in the readings.
The text Researching Lived Experience will be treated as introductory background reading for the course. You are encouraged to read the whole book through in the first few weeks. Many past participants of 611 have commented how early and repeated readings of the basic text have been helpful. Those who cannot find the time or who seem to procrastinate usually have more difficulty later in the course orienting themselves in their writing project.
PHENOMENOLOGYONLINE.COM is a website especially designed for this course. It contains various sources. In particular the Inquiry map shows a web of interrelated terms of phenomenological methodology.
We will organize our seminars around handouts and activities. What we will do from week to week will not necessarily run parallel to the themes of the chapters of Researching Lived Experience. The course will be taught partly in a workshop style and through seminar discussions of readings, your writings, and inquiries. However, you are invited, during any seminar, to raise issues or seek clarifications of the material as presented in the text and the course. You are also encouraged to request after or outside of class what kind of topics you would like to see discussed or what questions you would like to see addressed.
In line with authors such as Van den Berg, Langeveld, Bollnow, Bachelard, Lingis, and Moustakas, my approach to phenomenology is "practical", existential and hermeneutic (but not theoretically philosophical). Thus when the word "phenomenology" is used it usually means interpretive (hermeneutic) phenomenology. "Phenomenology" refers to the method associated with our attentiveness to the lifeworld or lived experience, and hermeneutics refers to the notion that all explication of meaning is always and inevitably interpretive. As well, phenomenology is a form of inquiry that always tries to gain a view of the assumptions, grounds, preunderstandings, and presuppositions associated with the ways in which we experience and understand the concerns of our lifeworld. In spite of our methodological excursions, ultimately phenomenology is without method: it distrusts any theory or preconceived set of rules for conducting research. Phenomenology is more like an attitude, it cannot be learned as an external set of skills or objective conceptsÑrather, it must be appropriated in a personal and pathic manner.
Not unlike poetry, phenomenological text must "speak" to you and you must learn to "speak it," as it were. In my experience it is difficult for most people to learn and practice phenomenological inquiry merely by self-study. A guided and collaborative approach seems to work best. Thus, rather than a mechanistic and linear approach, we will try to use a more workshop based orientation and developmental approach to the question of the nature of human science research.
You will apply interpretive approaches to a topic of your choice. This course is especially relevant to students interested in the study of lived meaning in education, psychology, counseling, the health sciences, and related fields. The following are just a few of the papers developed and published in this human science research course. Topics such as the following grew into successful thesis or dissertation projects (see the Textorium papers under Sources on the website phenomenologyonline).
Experiencing Obsessive Compulsive Behavior
Birthing Pain
To the Edge of Existence: Living through Grief
Memories of Breathing: Asthma as a Way of Becoming
Mathematics Teaching: Moving from Telling to Listening
Experiencing Diagnosis
Pedagogy in the Face of Wonder
The Computer Encounter: First Time Adult Computer Use
"The Look" in Teacher's Performance Evaluation
The Child's Loneliness
The Experience of Re-Reading
Drawing from Observation
Difficulty in the Lifeworld of the Child
Homesickness
Seeing a Risk
It speaks for itself that phenomenology is not for everyone. If you find that after the initial start-up of the course this is not really the kind of inquiry that will be helpful to you, then by all means let me know and transfer out of EDSE611. There are other inquiry oriented courses in our Faculty and in other Faculties that may be more appropriate for yopur purposes.
Due dates for drafts
The approach of the course is based on the premise that human science research cannot be separated from the reflective process of writing and rewriting (see Researching Lived Experience, chpt. 5). Accordingly each participant will be involved in a personal writing project. By midterm (Christmas time) a beginning should be made with one's personal paper, but the weight of the writing activity will lie in the second half of the course.
The following drafts should be prepared at the appropriate dates. The drafts will not be marked or graded; for the initial drafts feedback will be holistic and collaborative in our group seminar, the later drafts will be responded to and edited in a more detailed manner; only the final draft will be formally graded. Unless otherwise arranged during seminar negotiations, we will try to adhere to the following schedule:
- early November: one paragraph or one page outline of a paper topic/title at the hand of a research question (for the importance "the question" see especially chpt. 2).
- early December: creating a questioning opening; about one to four page draft-double spaced typed; also some thoughtful notes and/or parapraphs that will become part of the paper.
- mid January: include concrete lived experience material, interviews, anecdotal texts; about six to eight page draft-double spaced typed.
- early February: thematizations; about 10 page draft--double spaced typed.
- early March: more integrative writing, attend to tone of the text; 10+ page draft--double spaced typed.
- late March: final draft: 12+ plus pages, double spaced typed.
- early April: edited final draft.
Evaluation
Based on participation and development of understandings of methodological aspects of human science inquiry (30 %), and on the final course paper (70 %). The papers will be assessed holistically on the basis of criteria (such as heuristicness, richness, depth, strength, rigor, orientation) developed in the course. In the past most students have received an 8 or a 9 for their participation and course paper evaluation.
Readings
Handouts
To be determined. Many class discussions and activities will evolve around class handouts. Duplicating costs of about $ 30 need to be collected for the full year course. Students who plan to use a human science methodology for further research or for thesis purposes are encouraged to read extensively recommended literature and original sources mentioned during seminar discussions. Develop your own library.
Texts
Various texts will be mentioned and recommended throughout the course. Students who want to develop expertise in this kind of inquiry need to read widely. Some texts are available on loan from the university library. For those who want to have some basic texts in their own library, a limited number of copies have been ordered of some selected texts through the U of A bookstore. An etymological dictionary (Klein or Oxford) and a good Dictionary of Philosopy (Oxford is available in paperback) is recommended. Please check the relevant reference sections in the Student Union Bookstore for literature. You may also want to browse the philosophy, literature, and humanities sections for texts by earlier and more contemporary phenomenologically oriented human science authors: Husserl, Merleau-Ponty, Heidegger, Sartre, Arendt, Dilthey, Gadamer, Levinas, Marcel, Van den Berg, Bachelard, Wittgenstein, Barthes, Ricoeur, Schutz, Strasser, Steiner, Derrida, Kristeva, Lingis, Zizek, Ihde, Kockelmans, Levin, Cataldi, Dreyfus, Benner, and so forth. My own texts that have a phenomenological orientation such as The Tone of Teaching (temporarily out of print); The Tact of Teaching; and Childhood's Secrets can also be found in the U of A bookstore reference or staff section.
Required reading
Max van Manen (1997) Second edition with new expanded preface. Researching Lived Experience: human science for an action sensitive pedagogy. London, Ontario: Althouse Press.
Sokolowski Robert (2000). Introduction to Phenomenology. Cambridge University Press.
Max van Manen (ed.) (2002) Writing in the Dark: Phenomenological Studies in Interpretive Inquiry. London, Ont.: Althouse Press.
Additional course texts available from the U of A bookstore (2001-2002 term). These texts may not be in stock until early October. Some copies of Merleau-Ponty are available in the philosophy reference section. The Kundera book is a novel, you may find in any bookstore.
Van Manen, M. (2002). The Tone of Teaching. (new and completely revised edition) London, Ont.: Althouse Press.
Van Manen, Max and Levering, Bas (1996). Childhood's Secrets: Intimacy, Privacy, and the Self Reconsidereds. New York: Teachers College Press.
Strongly recommended readings see: http://www.phenomenologyonline.com/articles/sources.html
TEXTORIUM texts include just some of the past student papers of this course. Most of these papers and others have been published in referee journals or books.
ARTICLES ONLINE are full text articles
Examples of other recommended readings
Bachelard, Gaston (1969). The Poetics of Space. Boston: Beacon Press.
Benner, Patricia (ed.) (1994). Interpretive Phenomenology. Thousand Oaks: Sage.
Blanchot, Maurice (1995). The Writing of Disaster. London: University of Nebraska Press.
Cataldi, S.L. Emotion, Depth, and Flesh: A Study of Lived Space. Albany, N.Y.: SUNY Press.
De Boer, Theodore (1997). The Rationality of Transcendence. Amsterdam: J.C. Gieben, Publ.
Derrida, Jacques (1995). The Gift of Death. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.
Eagleton, T. (1996). The Illusions of Postmodernism. London: Blackwell.
Foucault, Michel (1988) Luther, H.M., Gutman, H., Hutton, P.H. (editors). Technologies of the Self. Amherst: University of Press.
Gadamer, Hans-Georg (1975). Truth and Method. New York: Seabury.
Gadamer, Hans-Georg (1975). The Relevance of the Beautiful. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Gadamer, Hans-Georg (1993). The Enigma of Health. Stanford, Cal: Stanford University Press.
Giorgi, A. (1970). Psychology as a Human Science: a Phenomenologically Based Approach. New York: Harper and Row.
Giorgi, A. (1985). Sketch of a psychological phenomenological method. Phenomenology and Psychological Research. A. Giorgi (ed.). Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press.
Grondin, Jean (1994). Introduction to Philosophical Hermeneutics. New Haven: Yale University Press.
Hammond, Michael; Jane Howarth and Russell Keat (1991). Understanding Phenomenology. Cambridge, Mass.: Blackwell.
Heidegger, M. (1962). Being and Time. New York: Harper and Row.
Heidegger, Martin (1977). Basic Writings. New York: Harper and Row.
Husserl, E. (1913/82). Ideas Pertaining to a Pure Phenomenology and to a Phenomenological Philosophy: General Introduction to a Pure Phenomenology. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff.
Husserl, E. (1964). The Phenomenology of Internal Time-consciousness. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
Husserl, E. (1970). The Crisis of European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology. Evanston: Northwestern University Press.
Husserl, E. (1970). The Idea of Phenomenology. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff.
Ihde, D. (1979). Technics and Praxis. Boston: D. Reidel.
Jodalen, Harald & Vetlesen, Arne Johan (1997). Closeness: an Ethics. Oslo: Scandinavian University Press.
Kearney, Richard (1991). Poetics of Imagining: From Husserl to Lyotard. London: HarperCollins.
Kockelmans, Joseph J. (ed.) (1992). Phenomenological Psychology. Dordrecht: Nijhoff.
Kristeva, J. (1980). Desire in language: a semiotic approach to literature and art. New York: Columbia University Press.
Kristeva, Julia (1996). Interviews. New York: Columbia University Press.
Levinas, Emmanuel (1993). Outside the Subject. London: The Athlone Press.
Lingis, Alphonso (1994). The Community of Those Who have Nothing in Common. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
Lingis, Alphonso (1994). Abuses. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Lingis, Alphonso (1998). The Imperative. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
L¿gstrup, Knud Ejler (1997). The Ethical Demand. Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press.
Marcel, G. (1950). Mystery of Being. Volume 1 and 2. South Bend, Indiana: Gateway Editions.
Merleau-Ponty, Maurice (1962). The Phenomenology of Perception. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.
Merleau-Ponty, M. (1964). The Primacy of Perception. Evanston: Northwestern University Press.
Merleau-Ponty, M. (1964). Signs. Evanston: Northwestern University Press.
Merleau-Ponty, Maurice (1962). The Visible and the Invisible. Evanston: Northwestern University Press.
Moustakas, C. (1994). Phenomenological Research Methods. Thousand Oaks, Cal: Sage .
Nancy, Jean-Luc (1997). The Sense of the World. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Nussbaum, Martha C. (1994). The Therapy of Desire. Princeton, NJ: The Princeton University Press.
Ricoeur, Paul (1981). Hermeneutics and the Human Sciences. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Van den Berg, J.H. (1972). A Different Existence: Principles of Phenomenological Psychopathology. Pittsburgh: Duquesne.
Zizek, Slavoj. (2000). The Ticklish Subject: the Absent Center of Political Ontology. New York: VERSO
Some recommended dissertations
Austin, W. (1997). Phenomenology of Adolescent Love. University of Alberta
Bergum, V. (1989). From Woman to Mother. Granby, Mass.: Bergin & Garvey.
Cameron, B. (1998). Understanding Nursing and its Practices. University of Alberta
Clark, G. (1994). Phenomenology of Grief Counseling. University of Alberta.
Evans, R. (1989). Ministrative Insight: Educational Administration as Pedagogic Practice. University of Alberta.
Hayne, Yvonne (2001). The Experience of Diagnosis of mental Illness. University of Alberta.
Hove, P. (1999). Wonder and Agencies of Retreat. University of Alberta.
Maeda-Fujita, C. (1990). Understanding Lifeworlds of Mentally Handicapped Children. University of Alberta.
Kirova-Petrova, A. (1996). The Experience of Loneliness in Young Children. University of Alberta.
Montgomery-Whicher, R. (1997). The Phenomenology of Drawing. The University of Alberta.
Olson, C. (1993). The Life of Illness. Albany, NY: SUNY Press.
Winning, A. (1991). The Language of Home and the Home of Language-a qualitative study of immigrant experience. University of Alberta.
Note:
Several dissertations are held in the Human Science Room 441 Education South (phone 492 8284) (next to my office). Amongst some other scattered literature there is a full set of issues of Phenomenology and Pedagogy. Note that most P+P articles are now accessible full-text on the website http://www.phenomenologyonline,com/
Please ask Sean Li or Gord Adnams for access to the Human Science Room. Books or dissertations should not be taken out of the room.