Purpose: Reflexivity involves critical reflection by the qualitative researcher as to the influence of the researcher's culture, history and belief on the conduct and outcome of the research. It is often seen as a practice exercised in the analysis of results in order to attempt to objectify the research. The purpose of this paper is to argue that…

Phenomenology as a philosophy and a method of inquiry is not limited to an approach to knowing, it is rather an intellectual engagement in interpretations and meaning making that is used to understand the lived world of human beings at a conscious level. Historically, Husserl' (1913/1962) perspective of phenomenology is a science of understanding…

I argue that Ricoeur's "preunderstandings" can be used as a heuristic to aid researchers who collect narratives as data (1) to identify cultural meanings that become resources for participants' positioning work, (2) to ground the identified cultural meanings in participants' experiences, and (3) to understand participants'…

Hermeneutics is both a philosophical tradition and a methodological resource. In this qualitative study, hermeneutics provided, simultaneously, a framework and a methodology for understanding empathy in synchronous multimedia conferencing. As a framework for the design of the study, hermeneutics supported the overriding objective to understand the…

This article was authored by a university educator and a twelve year-old child. The first author was a visiting teacher to a small, rural, state primary school in Queensland Australia. She spent one day per week for nineteen weeks fostering an inquiry-based stance to teaching and learning. The second author is a student within the researched…

This research examined the ways politically active secondary teachers, involved either in formal politics or in social movements, practiced citizenship education in Porto Alegre, Brazil, and Toronto, Canada. The author's aim was to explore the complex ways and multiple spaces in which these teachers' roles as both citizens and citizenship…