Phenomenology in Education: A Case Study in Educational Leadership

Abstract

The author presents an overview of what he terms empirical or interpretive phenomenology - in contrast to Husserlian phenomenoly. The latter uses the researcher's subjective experience as a heuristic to arrive at truth claims. The former by contrast is grounded in the same notion of a subjective reality, and therefore focuses on participants' lived experiences as mirrored and revealed in their stories/own descriptions and responses. There is adherence to allowing the particpants' voices to speak, representing participants as holistically as possible, while also interpreting their experiences in the relevant socio-cultural and historical contexts. The paper presents a sample of a phenomenological study of leader experiences.