Background: This paper discusses a leadership model grounded in an investigation of the phenomenon of principal leadership in Hong Kong Protestant Christian secondary schools of one denomination, two years after the change of sovereignty to China (1st July, 1997). Focus of discussion and comments: Using a hermeneutic phenomenological methodology,…

Hermeneutics is the study of interpretation as a fundamental human experience and activity. It is also the interpretation of meaning, the realization that human expression contains a meaningful component which must be recognized as such and transposed into one's own system of values and meanings. It describes what seems to happen in conversation,…

A study of literature cannot be divorced from cultural contexts, nor can it ignore the humanist vision in interpreting literary texts. To discover dialogic bonds and boundaries between the reader and the text, or the writer and the audience, English classes should have two objectives: (1) to explore the diversity of perspectives, and (2) to relate…

In language which can be understood by ordinary people with college backgrounds, this book introduces philosophical hermeneutics (the interpretive theory of the humanities) to English teachers, with their role in writing instruction especially in mind. The book contrasts philosophical hermeneutics with other theories of interpretation and…

This study investigated college students' levels of understanding of texts and reading processes, noting how they changed through a cycle of individual reading and writing followed by classroom comparison of students' responses, text re-reading, and re-writing. The study, which followed 17 students of continuing Italian over 6 weeks, involved…

Interviews with four African-American nursing students in a predominantly white program elicited themes or constitutive patterns: being different/being the same, student as teacher, and resoluteness. Being black in a white educational setting made a difference, and a great deal of personal resources were needed to persist. Students' lived…

Argues for the importance of Emmanuel Levinas's work for re-opening educational questions. Addresses the problem of remembrance as a question of and for history, as a force of inhabitation, as an inheritance we are obligated to live within, that intertwines with our sense of limits and possibilities, hopes and fears, identities and distinctions.…

Discusses the mutually opposed stances towards learning represented by early formulations of deconstruction and of hermeneutics. Identifies shifts in later formulations of both which provides a more inclusive context for understanding learning as a human undertaking, including the identification of tensions that are more promising than the…

Claims that mind and mental objects form a societal mental structure enabling children to assimilate the society and become co-constructing members. Cites evidence that competence to create mental objects, symbols, and meanings separated from action is the evolutionary evolved human capacity for society and culture. Vygotsky's "natural"…

Part 1 explains a methodology for studying problem-based learning (PBL) in nursing education that combined hermeneutic phenomenology with e-mail sampling and video interviews. Part 2 describes themes identified by 10 tutors related to when and how to intervene in PBL. Part 1 contains 30 references; part 2 contains 41 references. (SK)

Refutes David Tukey's argument that the consensus theory of epistemic rhetoric reduces spiritual experience to a social construct which denies the possibility of a divine reality. Examines Walter Rauschenbusch's "A Theology for the Social Gospel" to prove that consensus theory accounts for religious beliefs, providing a useful framework…

Presents a "development-in-action" study, in which children's development is approached as a situated accomplishment, the product of adults' and children's interaction in everyday settings. Suggests that analysis of the play's cultural work helps to understand how everyday social activity reproduces the social order that conditions it…

Critiques the ideas espoused by Packer (PS 522 550) in this issue. Observes that Packer fails to indicate the vast and important differences that exist between adults' and children's abilities. Suggests that reliance on play as a source for self-fashioning lessens with development, as children's autonomy is limited to a few social roles spread…

The paper describes various epistemological assumptions underpinning three accounts of action research (technical, practical, and emancipatory) found in the physical education literature. It examines the problematic nature of language and meaning-making and recognizes that what stands for action research has been interpreted differently by many…

Considers radical constructivism in light of poststructuralism and hermeneutic phenomenology and shows how this forces a reassertion of the teacher's role in the student's constructing of mathematical knowledge. (48 references) (Author/MKR)