Phenomenography: From critical aspects to knowledge claim

In this description of phenomenography, we take a functional view of the theoretical underpinnings that have traditionally been used to support its trustworthiness as a qualitative research approach. The chapter has two objectives, first to serve as an introduction for those considering embarking on research with a phenomenographic framing, and second to enable the recognition of the quality and scope of the knowledge claim inherent in phenomenographic outcomes. Considering phenomenographic research The phenomenographic tradition emerged as an alternative to studying learning from a quasicognitive-psychological framing with focus being directed towards understanding the relationship between a student1 and a phenomenon in the world. It strives to explore and describe the world from the students’ perspective, and the ways in which it makes sense to them. A basic assumption is that the world makes sense to students, at least in the situations that phenomenography directs its interest toward. Phenomenography is fundamentally ‘an approach to identifying, formulating, and tackling certain sorts of research questions’ (Marton & Booth, 1997, p.111) and is typically pedagogically focused. These research questions are varied and include such diverse higher education themes as, for example, the challenges for new academics in adopting student-centred approaches to teaching (Sadler, 2012), student science teachers’ conceptions of sustainable development (Kilinc & Aydin, 2011), the understanding of Lutheranism and its implications for religious education (Hella, 2008), and understanding geoscience as an academic discipline (Stokes, 2011). In each case, the researcher is not asking ‘Why is this so?’ but rather questions such as ‘In what respect do these ways of understanding differ?’ In deciding whether phenomenography can help a researcher answer the question posed in their research, it is important to take care to frame the question appropriately. As the approach is directed towards understanding the relationship between a student and a phenomenon in the world, it is important that the phenomenon is one that is able to be clearly articulated and shared by those participating in the research. As the focus of the research is not on the phenomenon per se, but rather on describing how students may conceive of the phenomenon, a critical first step is the researcher ensuring that participants attend to the same phenomenon during the data collection process. This is often non-trivial as the nature of some phenomena is such that it is 1 In this text, given its focus on higher education, we have elected to refer to ‘students’ as having agency in relation to a phenomenon in question. This is purely for convenience and does not imply that students have any special value as participants in research activities. This article is © Emerald Group Publishing and permission has been granted for this version to appear here (open.uct.ac.za). Emerald does not grant permission for this article to be further copied/distributed or hosted elsewhere without the express permission from Emerald Group Publishing Limited. DOI: 10.1108/S1479-3628(2013)0000009016 Collier-Reed, B., & Ingerman, A. (2013). Phenomenography: From critical aspects to knowledge claim. In M. Tight & J. Huisman (Eds.), International Perspectives on Higher Education Research (Vol. 9, pp. 243-260).