Although clinical educators make an important and irreplaceable contribution to the education of students undertaking qualifications that will enable them to practise as health professionals, little is known about the day-to-day experiences of clinical educators and the complexities of clinical education that may contribute to the problems or to…

Spirituality has become an issue in many domains of the Norwegian society, but this is not reflected in public education. This paper discusses why this is so, and suggests some hermeneutical approaches to understanding spirituality that can include pre-school children's spirituality, with particular reference to a Norwegian context. Central to…

All tenured and tenure-track faculty know the trinity of promotion and tenure criteria: research, teaching, and service. While teaching and research are relatively well-defined areas of institutional focus and evaluation, service work is rarely tabulated or analyzed as a key aspect of higher education's political economy. Instead, service, silent…

This paper analyzes the ethically important moments that helped build, then break, and then negotiate the relationship between researchers and schools during an ethnographic-type study conducted by the team of researchers from a prominent private university. I posit that the researchers' unskilled approach culminated in producing written…

According to this document, the postmodern world needs a form of education which does not separate learning from its application to self, but encourages subjective experiencing of the world as self-encounter. The hermeneutical task is not a technical one, solved by logic, but is rather, an aesthetic journey of finding a sense of identity and…

This paper is an analysis of the ongoing work of philosopher Jacques Derrida and the immense body of work associated with him. Derrida's copious work is difficult to categorize since Derrida challenges the very concept that meaning can be grasped in its original moment or that meaning can be represented in the form of some proper, self-identical…

This paper provides a historical background of hermeneutics, a method of textual analysis that is an "artful" form of understanding and a process of exposing hidden meanings. The paper discusses the evolution of hermeneutics, as well as the philosophical influences of Edmund Husserl, Martin Heidegger, and Hans-Georg Gadamer. Noting that…

Differentiates positivist qualitative research from nonpositivist approaches (descriptive/phenomenological, interpretive/hermeneutic, and discourse analysis). (SK)

Makes a case for an alternative epistemology of research based on the hermeneutic-phenomenology of Max van Manen (1990). This interpretive approach to understanding the nature of a social phenomenon involves the researcher in making explicit the meaning of a particular lived experience and generating a pedagogical thoughtfulness in readers.…

Examines, from one participant's viewpoint, a summer workshop designed to enable three competing groups to work together to design a new general studies curriculum for the Community College of Philadelphia. Using hermeneutic methods, analyzes participants' progress as both vying interest groups and members of one dialogical community. (13…

Provides an introduction to and analysis of hermeneutics as an alternative research method for library and information science, discussing its philosophical advantages over quantitative research. The triadic process of interpretation is described as particularly suitable for advancing the theoretical foundations of library and information science.…

Responding to Arthur Blumberg's article, this article claims that Blumberg misses the opportunity to ground his argument in an already existing tradition of interpretive or hermeneutic research in supervision. The hermeneutic perspective studies human intentionality and seeks shared understanding as a goal. Includes eight references. (MLH)

Considers issues in rhetorical epistemology whose significance transcends religious communication and commitment. Examines consensus-based epistemology as a model for understanding religious belief. Discusses the implications of Jeffery Bineham's position for rhetorical criticism (presented in a previous article in this issue) as well as the…

Affirms Jeffery Bineham's general position on consensus theory (presented in a previous article in this issue), but identifies several problems in what Bineham sees as a consensus theory of rhetoric. Questions the necessity of prior truth for a genuine rhetoric, the relationship between consensus theory and independent existence, and the role of…

Discusses the role of language in mathematical understanding, focusing on a classic debate between two leading writers in hermeneutics, Gadamer and Habermas. Suggests that personal learning of mathematics is inseparable from the social practices within which learning occurs. (Author/MKR)