A phenomenological perspective

My enquiry explored what it is like to be a Chinese post-graduate student at a UK university. A phenomenological perspective helped me drill down into the heart of this experience, because phenomenology aims to find out, from the individuals involved, what it feels like to be in a particular place or position (Smith,

1996; O’Leary, 2005), thereby exploring “social phenomena from the actors’ own perspectives”

(Brinkmann & Kvale, 2015:30) [3.10]. The objective

of phenomenological enquiry, therefore, is “a rigorous description of human life as it is lived […] in all of its first-person concreteness, urgency, and ambiguity”

(Pollio et al., 1997). In addition, phenomenological perspectives allow the researcher to establish “a theory of the unique” (van Manen, 2001:7), as they focus on interrogating the lived experience of a particular group of people in a defined setting, thus allowing us to see human beings as individuals, rather than as numerical data: in all phenomenological enquiry, the researcher is less interested in rules and patterns and more in understanding

[3.10_{] This sounds complex, but in}

fact I would argue that we are all phenomenologists on a daily basis. When we listen to and respond to a friend’s description of an event or situation in their life (“It sounds like you’ve had a tough few days”), we are being phenomenological because we are interpreting what it is like to be in a particular place or position.

the “deep meanings of a person’s experiences and how she articulates these experiences” (Rossman & Rallis, 2003:97). Phenomenology does not attempt to classify or theorise – rather, it seeks “plausible insights” (van Manen, 2001:9) into how people perceive and “live out” an experience. For these reasons, it has become a distinctive approach in qualitative enquiry (Norlyk & Harder, 2010), and was suited to help me respond to my two research questions in my own unique setting.

Phenomenology can trace its roots back to Edmund Husserl, whose philosophy centres on the concept of “intentionality” – in other words, the internal experience of “being aware” of something. Husserl famously urged those who explored experience to “go back to the things themselves” (Smith et al., 2009:12), by which he meant that the exploration of lived

experience should be predicated on, and described in terms of, the informant’s description of the experience alone, rather than endeavouring to fit aspects of the life-world into

predetermined categories.

However, as with all schools of thought, different conceptualisations of the nature and scope of

phenomenology can be identified [3.11]. It is a

complex concept in that it can be both a way of examining the world from an abstracted

(“philosophical”) perspective and also an approach to applied (“empirical”) research (Norlyk & Harder, 2010), despite that fact that none of the historical voices in the phenomenological tradition gave much thought to application. In attempting to make sense of these various conceptualisations, I found it useful to place them on a continuum. At one end of the continuum is Husserl’s own transcendental phenomenology, in which the phenomenologist is expected to “bracket off” her/his

own assumptions about the world, in order to provide a fully unbiased, objective – yet still rigorous – description of the central nature of the phenomenon under scrutiny. The objective is to identify what the essence of an experience or concept may be, and which goes beyond the purely subjective (in other words, it transcends the subjective). This involves the

reduction of the phenomenon to its essence, as described by the participants alone: there is no

[3.11_{] When I embarked on this}

EdD project, one of the aspects of the process which caused me not insignificant angst was the need (or expectation) to grapple with wider ontological and epistemological considerations regarding my enquiry. The opening chapters of many methodology books, which typically provide a theoretical underpinning for what follows, seemed opaque, dealing with concepts which were impenetrable to me (although the more practical later chapters were much more readable). It was only half way through the journey that I began to see some light. (In fact, one pleasing aspect of my doctoral journey has been returning to those texts I engaged with in the first two years and realise they do, finally, mean something.)

room for the researcher’s own response to the data. I decided to reject a fully Husserlian approach because I feel that bracketing off my own assumptions, biases and experiences (see 1.7.1) is impossible, given the nature and focus of my enquiry: I know too much about this context (see 1.3 and 1.4), and have strong beliefs about the challenges brought about by the current state of higher education (see 2.3), to be able to put my own perspectives to one side.

At the opposite end of the continuum, Ricouer and Gadamer viewed phenomenological enquiry as dialogic in nature, with both the researcher and the researched fully and equally involved in a reciprocal, two-way process of interpretation and meaning making, in which bracketing is eschewed since it hinders the researcher from “getting at the real world” (Pellauer, 2007). I judged that this form of dialogic phenomenology was unlikely to be effective for my project, given the setting and the profile of my participants: from

professional experience, I knew that it was likely that the participants would expect me to manage the shape and thrust of the enquiry. This has been discussed elsewhere in the literature: university research in China is customarily top-down, with university leaders sometimes consulted, but students rarely so (Boshier, 2017). Asking participants to work with me in constructing meaning may therefore have

been put them in unfamiliar and potentially

uncomfortable situation [3.12_{] which they felt unable}

to refuse (as this would be discourteous), thereby obliging them to do something against their will.

A mid-point on this phenomenological continuum is a Heideggerian position. Heidegger acknowledged Husserl’s intellectual influence on his thinking, but rejected the transcendental element of his former

teacher’s work. For Heidegger, making sense of phenomena involves an awareness of the way we, as individual actors, are involved with the world. This he termed Dasein – the unique quality of “being human”. He took a more reflexive view of phenomenological research, which recognised the fundamental and ineluctable role a researcher plays in any study, and argued that the researcher should reflect on their involvement in, and influence on, the interpretation of their participants’ lifeworlds, acknowledging the way(s) in which their location in the world affects and informs the research process. This acknowledgement leads to more hermeneutic ways of working (see 3.7.2).

[3.12_{] This presented me with a}

dilemma: I was concerned that I was making a priori judgements about my participants, and taking an essentialist view of Chinese

students, to the point of perpetuating stereotypes. I was also concerned about failing to give them a full opportunity to make their voices heard. On reflection, though, I stand by the decision made to not adopt a fully dialogic Ricoeurian position – as it was the least likely to cause awkwardness, and, pragmatically, was most likely to allow me to explore their experiences effectively.

For me, and for my setting, this was the most convincing phenomenological stance to take, since it recognises that the lifeworld is far too complex and intricate to be either fully understood (van Manen, 2001) or to be written about impartially. Since my enquiry takes a socially and politically critical position, I know that I can never be “un-neutral” (Newby, 2014) in relation to my participants and their experiences, and so this Heideggerian position is fitting.

As illustrated above, there are many interpretations of phenomenology-as-praxis – in fact, Dowling (2007) argues that there are as many phenomenological approaches to research as there are phenomenologists. That said, there are three principal steps in the analysis of data (ibid.) in phenomenological research:

1. The accounts are divided into smaller units for analysis.

2. These units are transformed by the researcher into a number of different phenomenological concepts.

3. These concepts are drawn together to provide an interpretation of the experience.

In 4.2 and 6.3, I give an account of how I followed these steps in my analysis of my participants’ experience.