Doing phenomenology in science education: a research review

Abstract

This article is a review of applications of phenomenology, as a philosophy of knowledge and qualitative research approach, to the field of science education (SE). The purpose is to give an overview of work that has been done as well as to assess it and discuss its possibilities of future development. We ask: what attempts for connecting phenomenology and SE do we find in the research literature, and what possible effects could such connections have for teaching and learning? In approaching this field we distinguish between three sources of phenomenological SE: (1) Goethe’s phenomenology of nature; (2) philosophical phenomenology; and (3) anthropological phenomenology. Existing research based on phenomenological approaches is categorised as phenomenology of SE, phenomenology in SE, and phenomenology and SE integrated. Research examples from each category are critically evaluated and discussed. Finally we discuss the question of the relevance of phenomenology to science teaching. Our review indicates that phenomenology has considerable potential as a method for investigating science learning as a holistic process. It also seems that phenomenology and SE meet most fruitfully when phenomenology is done in the classroom, that is, when it is turned into actual efforts for promoting learning.

Keywords:

• phenomenology
• science education
• Goethean science
• ontology
• reductionism

Notes

1. The term ‘perceptual power of thinking’ is Schieren’s (personal communication) own translation of Goethe’s original concept ‘anschauende Urteilskraft’, which Goethe used to describe the essence of his own method.

2. ‘To the things themselves’ is the English translation of the German zu den Sachen selbst. However, ‘things’ could also be translated back into German as Dinge, which in German has a more objective connotation than Sache. Sache carries some of the connotation of ‘a case’ – as in ‘what is the case here?’ – which includes more of the subjective aspect. A case does not seem to exist without someone experiencing it, whereas a thing does.

3. This does not mean that scientific knowledge is seen as ‘merely subjective’. As Gordon (2006) maintains, phenomenology is compatible with scientific realism (at least a certain form of it).

4. As Ströker (1987, p. 132ff) points out, it is somewhat of a paradox that the lifeworld is both presupposed by science and informed by it. To resolve this paradox, a historical dimension has to be introduced; not, however, the ordinary history of external events, but what Husserl called the ‘inner history’ of science in terms of acts of meaning constitution. The reader is referred to Ströker’s work for an interesting and more thorough analysis of Husserl’s concept of the life‐world and its significance for natural science.

5. Whereas phenomenology is focusing on investigating phenomena in the world, the object of research in phenomenography is the variation in the ways certain phenomena are experienced or handled by people of interest (Marton, 1981; Marton & Booth, 1997). According to Marton and Booth (1997) phenomenography is a branch on the tree of phenomenology. As categorisation of ways of understanding is an essential part of the phenomenographic approach (see for instance Ebenezer & Fraser, 2001; Ingerman & Booth, 2003), the relevance of establishing such categories is not discussed from the viewpoint of the students’ learning process, but from the point of view of science itself. The great variety of students’ concepts and experiences are reduced in order to fit into categories, which are mutually exclusive and hierarchically ordered, going from the incomplete to the most complete and correct answer. Thus, students’ experiences are not treated (strictly) phenomenologically, but as mere illustrations of analytically established categories of (mis)conceptions.

6. This is somewhat analogous to the reversing back of the ‘ontological reversal’ described above.

7. Peirce’s semiotic triad has been the subject of much discussion within philosophy, linguistics and cognitive psychology; see, for instance, Eco (2000) and Ketner (1995).

8. See also below on Wagenschein’s genetic method of instruction. The common factor is the focus on the bringing forth of understanding, but how this occurs is described in somewhat different terms by Wagenschein.

9. The authors mention Michael Faraday as being acutely aware of this problem. About Faraday as a phenomenologist avant la lettre, see below.

10. This ‘history of science’ approach to science education has a certain parallel with the phenomenographic approach described above (note 5), but instead of using the variation of conceptions among the students as material for instruction, one uses the variation of conceptions that have emerged in history.

11. The possibility of ‘letting nature herself speak’, that is, of a ‘virgin’ perception, untouched by culture, history and language, is nowadays considered obsolete. Most of the inheritors of Husserl’s philosophy (Heidegger, Gadamer, Merleau‐Ponty) denied this possibility, seeing all perception as necessarily enmeshed in language and determined by the horizon of the lifeworld (cf Gadamer, 1976). Nevertheless, there is a value in not abolishing the notion of ‘nature’s own voice’, in order not to let our capacities for careful observation, intense listening to and dwelling in the phenomena dwindle.

12. Other German studies discussing or taking a point of departure in Wagenschein’s science education are Dahlmann (1997), Jung (1997), Redeker (1995) and Rehm (2006).

13. Connected to the first edition of Goethe’s complete works, Kürchners Gestamtausgabe, in the 1880s and 1890s, Steiner did the editing and commenting on Goethe’s scientific writings (Steiner, 2000).