Students' experiences of philosophy classes in higher education: A case study

Abstract

The current paper addresses research question of how do students of one university (in our case study-Lithuanian Sports University, LSU) experience the educational effect of introductory philosophy course. To answer this question, method of interpretative phenomenological analysis (IPA) was employed. In accordance with this qualitative approach, we used method of purposive sampling. Sample of current study consist of 8 participants (3 females and 5 males). All participants are first year undergraduate students form study program "Physical education and sport" (continuing studies) in LSU. As a data collection method, semi-structured interview was applied. In our research it was found that students more tend to share their cognitive experience of philosophy classes than their emotional experience. Among nine qualitative categories (codes) which are the most prominent in our interview records, two of them were found to be especially frequent-"Philosophical technical language poses a great challenge for a common reader" and "In philosophy everything has a deeper meaning". © 2019 by Academic Publishing House Researcher s.r.o.