Chap­ter 3:

Method­ol­ogy

This chap­ter con­sists of five main sec­tions: The first sec­tion dis­cusses the research design thought­fully devel­oped to interpret-describe the phe­nom­e­non of nakakaluwag, and jus­ti­fies its selec­tion as an appro­pri­ate plan in con­duct­ing this hermeneutic-phenomenological research. The sec­ond sec­tion describes the rel­e­vant sub­jects of the study com­pris­ing the pur­posely selected four­teen (14) Co-Rs who multi-sectorally (directly and indi­rectly) rep­re­sent the edu­ca­tional com­mu­nity of De La Salle-College of Saint Benilde (DLS-CSB).  The third sec­tion is the pro­file of the Co-Rs cat­e­go­rized accord­ing to their age, gen­der, edu­ca­tional attain­ment, and occu­pa­tion. The fourth sec­tion details these three (3) meth­ods of data col­lec­tion that com­ple­ment one another as a suit­able pro­ce­dure for data gen­er­a­tion: (1) reflec­tive jour­nal entries (RJE), (2) nar­ra­tive expe­ri­ence accounts (NEA), and (3) face-to-face inter­view exchanges (FIE). And finally, the fifth sec­tion spells out the five (5) steps of doing the­matic analy­sis based on the work of Aron­son (1994): Step 1 Col­lect­ing all the data, Step 2 Iden­ti­fy­ing pat­terns of expe­ri­ences, Step 3 Cat­a­logu­ing related pat­terns into sub-themes and themes, Step 4 Obtain­ing feed­back from the infor­mants and Step 5 Telling the whole story.

The detailed out­line of all the sec­tions and sub-sections of this chap­ter is as follow:

Chap­ter 3: Methodology

A. Research Design

1. Hermeneutic-Phenomenological Process

2. Fusion of Horizons

2.1 Pre-understanding

2.2 Inter­pre­tive Framework

2.3 Source of Information

2.3.1 Imag­i­na­tion

2.3.2 Hermeneu­tic Circle

2.3.3 Lan­guage

2.3.4 Read­ing and Writing

B. Sub­jects of the Study

C. Pro­file of the Subjects

D. Data Gath­er­ing: Co-Rs’ TEXT

1. Reflec­tive Jour­nal Entries (RJE)

2. Nar­ra­tive Expe­ri­ence Accounts (NEA)

3. Face-to-Face Inter­view Exchanges (FIE)

E. Data Analy­sis: Five (5) Steps of The­matic Analysis

Step 1 Col­lect­ing all the data

Step 2 Iden­ti­fy­ing pat­terns of experiences

Step 3 Cat­a­logu­ing related pat­terns into sub-themes and themes

Step 4 Obtain­ing feed­back from the informants

Step 5 Telling the whole story

Research Design

In a paper enti­tled ‘Indi­ca­tors of Qual­i­ta­tive Research,’ which was pre­sented on Sep­tem­ber 24, 2007 at the 42^nd Philip­pine Asso­ci­a­tion for Grad­u­ate Edu­ca­tion (PAGE) National Assem­bly, Manila Hotel, Philip­pines, Ramirez (2007) posits that at the heart of research is the basic uni­ver­sal val­ues regard­ing human dig­nity of the per­son, integrity of cre­ation, the whole­ness of life and all life forms, for with­out which research will be mean­ing­less and risks itself to be empty rit­ual (p. 1).

Actively fos­ter­ing par­tic­i­pa­tory research towards trans­for­ma­tive edu­ca­tion, Ramirez (2002) claims, in a paper enti­tled ‘Duty of Par­ents to Teenagers and Young Adults,’ which was pre­sented on April 8, 2002 at the Inter­gen­er­a­tional Sol­i­dar­ity, Eighth Ple­nary Ses­sion, Vat­i­can City, that she holds Phe­nom­e­nol­ogy in high regard as a qual­i­ta­tive approach to research:

As a phe­nom­e­nol­o­gist, I con­sider research, together with two other com­po­nents of learn­ing – namely: edu­ca­tion and action – as inte­gral com­po­nents of a trans­for­ma­tional process both for the researcher and the sub­jects of research. Research in this sense is par­tic­i­pa­tory, edu­ca­tional, and action-oriented (Ramirez, 2002, p. 114).

The author Susann M. Laverty, in an arti­cle, ‘Hermeneu­tic Phe­nom­e­nol­ogy and Phe­nom­e­nol­ogy: A Com­par­i­son of His­tor­i­cal and Method­olog­i­cal Con­sid­er­a­tions,’ describes Husser­lian Phe­nom­e­nol­ogy, in the fol­low­ing words as:

[E]ssentially the study of lived expe­ri­ence or the life world (as cited in van Manen, 1997). Its empha­sis is on the world as lived by a per­son, not the world or real­ity as some­thing sep­a­rate from the per­son (as cited in Valle et al., 1989). This inquiry asks “What is this expe­ri­ence like?” as it attempts to unfold mean­ings as they are lived in every­day exis­tence. [She, quot­ing Polk­ing­horne, 1983] iden­ti­fied this focus as try­ing to under­stand or com­pre­hend mean­ings of human expe­ri­ence as it is lived. The ‘life world’ is under­stood as what we expe­ri­ence pre-reflectively, with­out resort­ing to cat­e­go­riza­tion or con­cep­tu­al­iza­tion, and quite often includes what is taken for granted or those things that are com­mon sense (Husserl as cited in Laverty, 2003, p.3).

Ramirez (2006) also defines Phe­nom­e­nol­ogy in an arti­cle enti­tled, ‘The­o­riz­ing from Expe­ri­ence: Focus on A Research and Ped­a­gog­i­cal Approach for Social Trans­for­ma­tion,’ in the fol­low­ing terms:

Phe­nom­e­nol­ogy is an approach in research by which the sub­jects of research may know them­selves, ques­tion them­selves, and con­sciously reflect on the real­ity of their lives, their col­lec­tive expe­ri­ences in the con­text of their socio-cultural milieu. This approach is also ped­a­gog­i­cal approach that cre­ates equal­ity between a researcher and peo­ple and com­mu­ni­ties (as sub­jects, not objects of research), between so-called change facil­i­ta­tors and com­mu­nity mem­bers who are co-participants of a change process, between teach­ers and stu­dents in a com­mon search for under­stand­ing or in striv­ing to under­stand the mean­ing of a phe­nom­e­non (p.22).

Laverty (2003) observes that although Husser­lian phe­nom­e­nol­ogy and Heideggerian-Gadamerian hermeneu­tic phe­nom­e­nol­ogy have shared some sim­i­lar com­po­nents, shared the same begin­nings and com­mon inter­est in lived expe­ri­ence, dif­fer­ences in direc­tion arise between these two tra­di­tions . She claims that based from her per­spec­tive “these dif­fer­ences emerge within onto­log­i­cal, epis­te­mo­log­i­cal, and method­olog­i­cal realms[1]” (Laverty, 2003, p. 11).

Like Husser­lian phe­nom­e­nol­ogy, Laverty (refer­ring to Wil­son & Hutchin­son’ mean­ing, 1991) defines Heideggerian-Gadamerian hermeneu­tic phe­nom­e­nol­ogy as:

con­cerned with the life world or human expe­ri­ence as it is lived. The focus is toward illu­mi­nat­ing details and seem­ingly triv­ial aspects within expe­ri­ence that may be taken for granted in our lives, with a goal of cre­at­ing mean­ing and achiev­ing a sense of under­stand­ing (p. 7).

Then she dis­tin­guishes the dif­fer­ence of phe­nom­e­no­log­i­cal from hermeneu­tic phe­nom­e­no­log­i­cal approach with the fol­low­ing words:

a hermeneu­ti­cal approach asks the researcher to engage in a process of self-reflection to quite a dif­fer­ent end than that of phe­nom­e­nol­ogy. Specif­i­cally, the biases and assump­tions of the researcher are not brack­eted or set aside, but rather are embed­ded and essen­tial to inter­pre­tive process. The researcher is called, on an ongo­ing basis, to give con­sid­er­able thought to their own expe­ri­ence and to explic­itly claim the ways in which their posi­tion or expe­ri­ence relates to the issues being researched. The final doc­u­ment may include the per­sonal assump­tions of the researcher and the philo­soph­i­cal bases from which inter­pre­ta­tion has occurred (Allen; Cot­ter­ill & Letherby as cited in Laverty, 2003, p. 17).

1. Hermeneutic-Phenomenological Process

In the spirit of par­tic­i­pa­tory research towards a trans­for­ma­tive ped­a­gogy for sus­tain­able liv­ing and sus­tained future, the writer chooses a hermeneu­tic phe­nom­e­no­log­i­cal approach as a suit­able research method­ol­ogy for this qual­i­ta­tive study. This hermeneu­tic phe­nom­e­no­log­i­cal study seeks to fur­ther under­stand the Fil­ipino value nakakaluwag that are embed­ded in the shared-beliefs and embod­ied in the shared-practices of the four­teen (14) pur­posely selected Co-Rs, the key infor­mants from De La Salle-College of Saint Benilde (DLS-CSB). Hermeneu­tic phe­nom­e­nol­ogy is inter­ested in bring­ing the inter­pre­ta­tion of these phe­nom­ena to life by focus­ing on the lived expe­ri­ences of peo­ple (Van Manen as cited in Fogel, 2009). Like­wise, Ajjawi & Higgs (2007) com­mend how the adop­tion of “hermeneu­tic phe­nom­e­nol­ogy enabled the explo­ration of par­tic­i­pants’ expe­ri­ences with fur­ther abstrac­tion and inter­pre­ta­tion by the researchers based on researchers’ the­o­ret­i­cal and per­sonal knowl­edge” (p. 616). As an appro­pri­ate research method­ol­ogy pre­ferred by the writer, the goal is to uncover their lived expe­ri­ence, and in view of holis­tic rela­tion­al­ity derived from which the cosmic-anthropological emerg­ing themes from the lived-experience-narratives that will be col­lected. Together with the writer’s the­o­ret­i­cal and per­sonal knowl­edge, these gath­ered data will be pre­sented, iden­ti­fied, ana­lyzed, reflected, inter­preted and used as basis to deter­mine the trans­for­ma­tive ped­a­gog­i­cal impli­ca­tions for sus­tain­able living.

“Hermeneu­tic phe­nom­e­nol­ogy, accord­ing to Osborne (1994), inves­ti­gates and describes [inter­prets] a phe­nom­e­non as expe­ri­enced in life through phe­nom­e­no­log­i­cal reflec­tion and writ­ing, devel­op­ing a descrip­tion [inter­pre­ta­tion] of the phe­nom­e­non that leads to an under­stand­ing of the mean­ing of the expe­ri­ence” (as cited in Flood, 2010, p. 10). There are two main [but sep­a­rate] phe­nom­e­no­log­i­cal approaches: descrip­tive (eidetic) and inter­pre­tive (hermeneu­tic). How­ever, based on an under­stand­ing of the search for mean­ing, expe­ri­ence or phe­nom­e­non, Koch (1999) pro­poses that we may either choose to bracket our under­stand­ings (fol­low­ing Husserl) or incor­po­rate these in our inter­pre­ta­tion or story (Hei­deg­ger & Gadamer) (p. 27).  (Cohen & Omery, 1994 as cited in Flood, 2010, p. 8). Dou­glas & Wykowski (2001), on the other hand, con­tend that hermeneutic-phenomenology is a com­bined dis­ci­pline, which is (1) inter­pre­tive because it seeks mean­ing, and it is (2) descrip­tive because it attends to how things appear. In short, hermeneu­tics is inter­pre­tive and phe­nom­e­nol­ogy is descrip­tive (p. 90–91).

The writer, tak­ing the role as a hermeneutic-phenomenologist in this study, focused on interpreting-describing the mean­ings of his Co-Rs nakakaluwag–lived expe­ri­ences or nakakaluwag-‘dasein’ (‘the sit­u­ated mean­ing of a human in the world’) and how these mean­ings present them­selves as (1) a con­di­tion con­ducive to live sus­tain­ably in view of holis­tic rela­tion­al­ity, (2) a pedagogically-oriented frame for a sus­tain­able liv­ing and (3) a sus­tain­able ini­tia­tive towards jus­tice, peace and integrity of cre­ation. His pur­pose in engag­ing in an interpretive-descriptive process is bet­ter expressed in the words of Poggemiller (1998): “Hermeneu­tics is not an end in itself, but a means to an end. Hermeneu­tics must be con­sid­ered so that inter­pre­ta­tion can be conducted.”

In a the­sis enti­tled ‘An Inves­ti­ga­tion Into Pre-Service Teach­ers’ Math­e­mat­i­cal Behav­iour in An Appli­ca­tion and Mod­el­ling Con­text,’ Lebeta (2006) con­tends that “hermeneu­tics argue that under­stand­ing is a con­di­tion of human beings, and this under­stand­ing is par­tic­i­pa­tive, con­ver­sa­tional, and dia­logic (p. 100).  Hermeneu­tic phe­nom­e­nol­ogy then is an invi­ta­tion to the par­tic­i­pants to engage into an ongo­ing con­ver­sa­tion, although it does not pro­vide a set method­ol­ogy. Through a fusion of hori­zons under­stand­ing hap­pens, which is a dialec­tic [dia­logic] between the pre-understandings of the research process, the inter­pre­tive frame­work and the sources of infor­ma­tion” (Koch as cited in Laverty 2003, p. 21).

2. Fusion of Horizons

Laverty con­firms (quot­ing Polk­ing­horne, 1983) Gadamer’s view on inter­pre­ta­tion as a fusion of horizons:

[which is] a dialec­ti­cal inter­ac­tion between the expec­ta­tion of the inter­preter and the mean­ing of the text. A ‘hori­zon’ is a range of vision that includes every­thing seen from a par­tic­u­lar van­tage point. A per­son with no hori­zon… does not see far enough and over­val­ues what is near­est at hand, whereas to have a hori­zon means being able to see beyond what is close at hand (p. 10)

Husserl’s descrip­tive phe­nom­e­no­log­i­cal approach to inquiry brings out the essen­tial com­po­nents of the lived expe­ri­ences, which requires researchers to bracket all prior per­sonal knowl­edge to pre­vent their biases and pre­con­cep­tions influ­enc­ing the study (Drew, 1999 as cited in Flood 2010). How­ever, Hei­deg­ger (1962) empha­sizes that it is impos­si­ble to rid the mind of the back­ground of under­stand­ings (as cited in Flood, 2010). In the first place, the writer’s back­ground of under­stand­ings has led him to con­sider the phe­nom­e­non of nakakaluwag as a topic wor­thy of research. Like­wise, Geanel­los insists that [the writer’s] per­sonal knowl­edge is use­ful and nec­es­sary to phe­nom­e­no­log­i­cal research (as cited in Flood, 2010).

An indi­vid­ual con­cept derives its mean­ing from a con­text or hori­zon or back­ground within which it stands; and yet the hori­zon is made up of the very ele­ments to which it gives mean­ing (Dou­glas & Wykowski, 2011, p. 93). Gadamer (1976) describes this as ‘fusion of hori­zons’ (or ‘fusion of back­grounds’) that com­prise these var­i­ous ele­ments: assump­tions, ideas, mean­ings and expe­ri­ences, which are fluid and open to change (as cited in Flood, 2010, p. 10). The ‘mean­ing’ is a mat­ter of con­text and expla­na­tion is con­tex­tual or hor­i­zon­tal [hori­zonal] (Bartholomew, 1996, p.126–127). As a con­se­quence, under­stand­ing the writer’s Co-Rs based on their per­sonal hori­zon of expe­ri­ences and mean­ings neces­si­tate a proper inter­pre­ta­tion to fully com­pre­hend them, which is “always bounded by the sep­a­rate, [but] inter­sect­ing hori­zons of researchers [the writer] and par­tic­i­pants [his Co-Rs] (Geanel­los, 2000 as cited in Flood, 2010). Despite the fact that we stand within the world of com­pet­ing inter­pre­ta­tions, we have a shared real­ity –a world, a tra­di­tion, a lan­guage, and because of this com­mon dimen­sion we can expe­ri­ence a ‘fusion of hori­zons,’ which occurs through a kind of con­ver­sa­tion in which we com­pare and con­trast our var­i­ous inter­pre­ta­tions (Koch, 1999, p. 25–26).Therefore, from the fusion of  all these hori­zons, a new, richer and  more devel­oped under­stand­ing can grow, which is greater than the orig­i­nal under­stand­ing (Vo, 2009, p 123–124).

Gadamer (1989) asserts that “the real mean­ing of a text, as it speaks to the inter­preter, does not depend on the con­tin­gen­cies of the author and his orig­i­nal audi­ence. It cer­tainly is not iden­ti­cal with them, for it is always co-determined also by the his­tor­i­cal sit­u­a­tion of the inter­preter and hence by the total­ity of the objec­tive course of his­tory” (p. 296). This asser­tion appears to show that Gadamer rejects the author-centered mean­ing and hence prefers the interpreter’s side and empha­sizes the impor­tance of the present sit­u­a­tion of the read­ers, how­ever as Geniusas con­tin­u­ally upholds, Gadamer’s hermeneu­tics starts from the pre­sup­po­si­tion that a bond links the inter­preter to the inter­preted and this pre­sup­po­si­tion does not sig­nify the abo­li­tion of the other [author] (2006, p. 243).

Poggemiller rec­og­nizes a truth emerg­ing from this hermeneu­ti­cal process wherein “as the fusion of the interpreter’s and the text’s hori­zons reaches crit­i­cal mass, the true mean­ing of the text radi­ates forth” (1998, p. 7). Geniusas (2006), con­versely, sees this as the con­di­tion of pos­si­bil­ity for the appear­ance of oth­er­ness. Thus, the one­ness of the hori­zon does not mean a sup­pres­sion of oth­er­ness, but “con­cerned with the open­ing of shared life in which one is able to hear the voice of the other” (Risser, 2002, as cited in Geniusas, 2006).

Vo (2009) main­tains that any­body can use one’s own inter­pre­ta­tion with­out set­ting aside her/his prej­u­dices, biases, assump­tions and pre­sup­po­si­tions, and may be even based on them.  Through “the one­ness of the hori­zon, [it] both lib­er­ates the text from its alien­ation by bring­ing it into the liv­ing present and con­sti­tutes the iden­tity of the inter­preter, for it is by approach­ing the text, by let­ting one­self be ques­tioned by it that the interpreter’s prej­u­dices are tested” (Geniusas, 2006, p. 252). It is no doubt why Gadamer “empha­sized the need for researchers to acknowl­edge their biases and prej­u­dices (pre-judgments) as part of the inter­pre­tive process of hermeneu­tics” (Pater­son & Higgs, 2005, p. 346). While, phe­nom­e­nol­ogy with all its rigor and rich­ness of descrip­tion, does not inter­pret, but seeks to explain the world and how it is expe­ri­enced free of prej­u­dices, biases, assump­tions and pre­sup­po­si­tions, hermeneu­tics, on the other hand, claims that these are unavoid­able in how humans con­tend with the world, includ­ing those who are engaged in research itself (Dou­glas & Wykowski, 2011, p. 92). Besides, these must be anchored in the ‘facts’ (expe­ri­ences) of the Co-Rs for they are con­sid­ered as the first ‘hori­zon of under­stand­ing’, which expands as one chooses to exam­ine and re-examine her/his Co-Rs’ own inter­pre­ta­tions (Vo, 2009, p.  123). Fur­ther­more, “the self-understanding of the inter­preter is con­sti­tuted within the one­ness of the hori­zon; the self is a part­ner in dia­logue and is invited to respond to the pro­pos­als of mean­ing stem­ming from the text in such a way as to reach a bet­ter under­stand­ing of herself/himself” (Geniusas, 2006, p. 253).

Con­se­quently, when the inter­preter asks his par­tic­i­pants to tell their story, s/he would accept that this story is their con­struc­tion of real­ity; then s/he would cre­ate con­struc­tions or a research prod­uct or a story together with the par­tic­i­pants, and per­haps s/he would reach con­sen­sus about the con­struc­tion that makes the most sense, which could be a con­struc­tion that gives read­ers a dif­fer­ent [but new] under­stand­ing (Koch, 1999, p. 24).

2.1 Pre-understanding. Accord­ing to Laverty (refer­ring to Heidegger’s def­i­n­i­tion, 1927 & 1962) Pre-understanding is:

a struc­ture for being in the world and the mean­ings or orga­ni­za­tion of a cul­ture that are present before we under­stand and become part of our his­tor­i­cal­ity of back­ground. Pre-understanding is not some­thing a per­son can step out­side of or put aside, as it is under­stood as already being with us in the world. Hei­deg­ger went as far as to claim that noth­ing can be encoun­tered with­out ref­er­ence to a person’s back­ground under­stand­ing (p. 8).

2.2 Inter­pre­tive Frame­work. Accord­ing to Laverty (refer­ring to Heidegger’s mean­ing, 1927 & 1962), inter­pre­ta­tion is:

seen as crit­i­cal to this process of under­stand­ing. Claim­ing that to be human was to inter­pret… that every encounter involves an inter­pre­ta­tion influ­enced by an individual’s back­ground or his­tor­i­cal­ity. [She (quot­ing Polk­ing­horne, 1983)] describes this inter­pre­tive process as con­cen­trat­ing on his­tor­i­cal mean­ings of expe­ri­ence and their devel­op­ment and cumu­la­tive effects on indi­vid­ual and social lev­els (p. 9).

2.3 Source of Infor­ma­tion. In hermeneu­tic phe­nom­e­nol­ogy, Laverty (2003) con­tends that the approach to data analy­sis as a process involves:

one of co-construction of the data with the par­tic­i­pant as they engage in a hermeneu­tic cir­cle of under­stand­ing. The researcher and par­tic­i­pant worked together to bring life to the expe­ri­ence being explored, through the use of imag­i­na­tion, the hermeneu­tic cir­cle and atten­tion to lan­guage and writ­ing [and read­ing] (p. 21).

2.3.1 Imag­i­na­tion. Laverty (quot­ing Smith, 1991) described “hermeneu­tic imag­i­na­tion as ask­ing for what is at work in par­tic­u­lar ways of speak­ing or act­ing to help facil­i­tate an ever-deepening appre­ci­a­tion of the world or lived expe­ri­ence. This requires an atten­tive­ness to ways in which lan­guage is used, an aware­ness of life as an inter­pre­tive expe­ri­ence, and an inter­est in human mean­ing and how we make sense of our lives” (p. 22). She adds that (refer­ring to Madison’s mean­ing, 1988) “to see some­thing in a new imag­i­na­tive way is to see it other than it has been seen before and to inte­grate it into a new seman­tic con­text” (p. 22).

2.3.2 Hermeneu­tic Cir­cle. The hermeneu­tic cir­cle, Ajjawi & Higgs (2007) define as a “metaphor for under­stand­ing and inter­pre­ta­tion, which is viewed as a move­ment between parts (data) and whole (evolv­ing under­stand­ing of the phe­nom­e­non), each giv­ing mean­ing to the other such that under­stand­ing is cir­cu­lar and iter­a­tive” (p. 622). Like­wise, through the use of the hermeneu­tic cir­cle pre-understanding is artic­u­lated and cor­rected i.e., through mov­ing back and forth between exam­in­ing the text, gen­er­at­ing inter­pre­ta­tions, and check­ing inter­pre­ta­tions against the text (Packer & Addi­son as cited in Nielsen & Cairns, S., 2009). Shk­lar (2004) pro­vides the ori­gin of the con­cept of hermeneu­tic cir­cle in the fol­low­ing words:

Her­mes car­ried the mes­sages of the gods, and hermeneu­tics is the art of read­ing them. The cir­cle with a mes­sage, the hermeneu­tic cir­cle, was a Neo-Platonic image designed to inti­mate the rela­tion of an infi­nite, eter­nal, and omnipresent God to his cre­ation… –God is a sphere whose cen­ter is every­where and whose cir­cum­fer­ence is nowhere. He is entirely in every part of this cir­cle (p. 656). –Protes­tants… built a sys­tem of bib­li­cal inter­pre­ta­tion in which the cir­cle has an obvi­ous place. Every part of the divine scrip­ture is related to every other and to the whole, as in a cir­cle, of which the author, God, maybe found. (pp. 656–657).

Laverty (refer­ring to the def­i­n­i­tion of Annells, 1996 &  Polk­ing­horne, 1983) claims that an “inter­pre­tive process is achieved through a hermeneu­tic cir­cle which moves from the parts of expe­ri­ence, to the whole of expe­ri­ence and back and forth again and again to increase the depth of engage­ment with and the under­stand­ing of texts” (p. 9). Shk­lar (2004) con­firms this by say­ing that an “inter­pre­ta­tion is said char­ac­ter­is­ti­cally to be the study of wholes in terms of their con­stituent parts, which are already iden­ti­fied by their places within that whole. It is a move­ment back and forth” (p. 657).

Gadamer (1989) claims that the hermeneu­tic cir­cle describes under­stand­ing as the inter­play of the move­ment of tra­di­tion and the move­ment of the inter­preter. He fur­ther elu­ci­dates that:

The antic­i­pa­tion of mean­ing that gov­erns our under­stand­ing of a text is not an act of sub­jec­tiv­ity, but pro­ceeds from the com­mon­al­ity that binds us to the tra­di­tion. But this com­mon­al­ity is con­stantly being formed in our rela­tion to tra­di­tion. Tra­di­tion is not sim­ply a per­ma­nent pre­con­di­tion; rather, we pro­duce it our­selves inas­much as we under­stand, par­tic­i­pate in the evo­lu­tion of tra­di­tion, and hence fur­ther deter­mine it our­selves (p. 293–294).

Under­stand­ing is always an inter­pre­ta­tion, and an inter­pre­ta­tion (of the inter­preter) is always spe­cific, an appli­ca­tion” (van Manen 1990 as cited in Wijesinghe, 2009. This dynamic move­ment of under­stand­ing from whole to part to whole con­sti­tutes the hermeneu­tic cir­cle of under­stand­ing and inter­pre­ta­tion (Wilcke, 2002, p. 5).

The hermeneu­tic cir­cle of under­stand­ing refers to a cir­cu­lar move­ment, an ever expand­ing cir­cle of under­stand­ing and inter­pre­ta­tion (Gadamer, 1997 as cited in Wilcke, 2002, p.5). In this cir­cle, “pre-understanding (the unre­flected expe­ri­ence, includ­ing the cus­toms, tra­di­tions, and beliefs that we have in com­mon, which binds and holds us together) is artic­u­lated and cor­rected through mov­ing back and forth between exam­in­ing the text, gen­er­at­ing inter­pre­ta­tions, and check­ing inter­pre­ta­tions against the text” (Packer & Addi­son as cited in Nielsen & Cairns, S., 2009). For instance, an indi­vid­ual word is under­stood by see­ing it in ref­er­ence to the whole of a sen­tence. Rec­i­p­ro­cally, a sentence’s mean­ing as a whole is depen­dent on the mean­ing of the indi­vid­ual parts. In the same way, the hermeneu­tic cir­cle as a whole defines the indi­vid­ual part, and the parts together form the cir­cle (Dou­glas & Wykowski, 2011, p. 93).

Iser (2000) also claims that, “the cir­cle of inter­link­ing part/whole… is a hall­mark of hermeneutics”:

[Whereby] no author­ity is dwelling in the text itself; and there­fore under­stand­ing is to be arrived at from within the text by means of man­i­fold cir­cu­lar oper­a­tions. –A to-and-fro move­ment between part and whole clar­i­fies what is vague. Cir­cu­lar pro­ce­dure alerts us to the fact that nei­ther word, nor sen­tence, nor mode, nor method has any def­i­nite mean­ing in itself. –the mean­ing to be under­stood arises out of and is sit­u­ated in rela­tion­ships (p. 52).

More­over, Bon­tekoe (1996 as cited in Pater­son & Higgs, 2005, p. 345) has pro­vided an in-depth review of the evolv­ing inter­pre­ta­tion and nature of the hermeneu­tic cir­cle. By using the con­cept and prac­tice of the hermeneu­tic circle:

[R]esearchers rec­og­nize that the phe­nom­e­non or object of com­pre­hen­sion is under­stood as a whole because its parts are inte­grated in the whole and define it. At the same time researchers rec­og­nize how the whole con­tex­tu­al­izes each of the parts, seek­ing to illu­mi­nate the phe­nom­e­non within its con­text. The process involves an exam­i­na­tion of the parts, defin­ing each com­po­nent before it is rein­te­grated into the whole (p. 345).

2.3.3 Lan­guage. Annells (1996 as cited in Laverty, 2003, p. 9) defines hermeneu­tics as “an inter­pre­tive process that seeks to bring under­stand­ing and dis­clo­sure of phe­nom­ena through lan­guage.” An unin­ter­preted phe­nom­ena is incon­ceiv­able (Dou­glas & Wykowski, 2011). “Lan­guage is the uni­ver­sal medium in which under­stand­ing occurs. Under­stand­ing occurs in inter­pret­ing” (Gadamer, 1960 &1998 as cited in Laverty, 2003, p. 10). For Gadamer, “lan­guage is where our under­stand­ing, our mode of being in the world, comes to real­iza­tion” (Moran , 2000, p. 269). “Under­stand­ing is always linked to lan­guage and is achieved only through the logic of ques­tion and answer. Under­stand­ing is some­thing that is pro­duced in dia­logue, not some­thing repro­duced by an inter­preter through an analy­sis of that which he or she seeks to under­stand” (Schwandt as cited in Lebeta, p. 100). On the one hand, Suazo (2006) explains that since every act of under­stand­ing involves an act of inter­pre­ta­tion, to use a lan­guage as an aid to under­stand­ing is an inter­pre­ta­tion. Every inter­pre­ta­tion is based on some prior under­stand­ing of the appre­hended phe­nom­e­non and at the same time involves lan­guage, which is typ­i­cally expressed in a dis­course. On the other hand, a dis­course in itself refers to the dia­logue that tran­spires between the speaker and the lis­tener. It is an event in that dia­logue or in that phe­nom­e­non of exchange which it claims to describe, express, or rep­re­sent (Suazo, 2006).

“It is impor­tant to empha­size the cen­tral role of lan­guage and other cul­tur­ally inher­ited under­stand­ings in how we make sense of the world of expe­ri­ence” (Graves, 2006, p. 86). “The cul­tural dimen­sion, Vail­lan­court (2009) also argues, becomes cul­tural sources of mean­ing as peo­ple from var­i­ous cul­tures live the expe­ri­ence of every­day life within a cul­tural con­text.” Fur­ther­more, “lan­guage does not just reflect human being but actu­ally makes humans be, brings about human exis­tence as com­mu­nal under­stand­ing and self-understanding” (Moran, 2000, p. 269).

In an essay, ‘A Phe­nom­e­nol­ogy of the Taga­log Notions of Hiya and Dan­gal,’ Tab­bada (2005) claims that an expe­ri­ence itself (refer­ring to the cul­tural value-experience) should be made man­i­fest within the var­i­ous con­texts from which it derives its mean­ing, accord­ingly the proper response to this is a phe­nom­e­nol­ogy that “does not revert to the ossi­fi­ca­tion of expe­ri­ences in con­cepts or terms of a spe­cific lan­guage but rather focuses on the var­i­ous mean­ings derived from the way the terms are con­tex­tu­al­ized in a state­ment” (pars. 2). Like­wise, “phe­nom­e­nol­o­gists rec­og­nize that human phe­nom­ena always acquire their sig­nif­i­cance in cul­tural con­texts” (Van Manen as cited in Vail­lan­court, 2009).

With the goal in writer’s mind to uncover the cul­tural (hori­zonal) sig­nif­i­cance of the phe­nom­e­non of the nakakaluwag lived expe­ri­ences of his Co-Rs and achieve a sense of in-depth lin­guis­tic under­stand­ing, he, tak­ing the role as a hermeneutic-phenomenology researcher, is tasked to care­fully interpret-describe (by pre­sent­ing, ana­lyz­ing, reflect­ing and syn­the­siz­ing) the mean­ings of what they actu­ally shared in their own par­tic­u­lar cul­tural cir­cum­stances as they expressed them both in writ­ten and spo­ken lan­guages. “In seek­ing out spo­ken or writ­ten expres­sions of unre­flected expe­ri­ence (pre-understanding), hermeneu­tic phe­nom­e­no­log­i­cal research oper­ates at the level of reflected [or inter­preted] mean­ings that emerge in descrip­tions of what is ini­tially unre­flected expe­ri­ence (Van Manen, 1990 as cited in Graves, 2006, p. 86). While hermeneu­ti­cal approach pro­vides an inter­pre­ta­tion of the phe­nom­e­non in ques­tion, a phe­nom­e­no­log­i­cal approach pro­vides a valid descrip­tion of that same phe­nom­e­non (Dou­glas & Wykowski, 2011, p. 92).

The under­ly­ing prin­ci­ple behind this method­olog­i­cal tool, which is employed with phe­nom­e­nol­ogy in research, is philo­soph­i­cal hermeneu­tics whereby one of the tasks is to inter­pret the mean­ings behind descrip­tive phe­nom­e­no­log­i­cal texts that have been obtained from [the] Co-Rs (Wijesinghe, 2009). “Hermeneu­tic phe­nom­e­nol­ogy there­fore appro­pri­ates ele­ments of descrip­tive phe­nom­e­nol­ogy, mod­i­fies them and incor­po­rates them with the hermeneu­tic process of under­stand­ing” (Wilcke, 2002, p. 3). In descrip­tive phe­nom­e­nol­ogy, the “find­ings are offered through explicit descrip­tions, [in] hermeneu­tic phe­nom­e­nol­ogy [it] seeks to go beyond descrip­tion in order to dis­cover [the] mean­ings that are not imme­di­ately appar­ent (Merleau-Ponty, 1996 as cited in Wilcke, 2002). Mean­ing emerges, Koch (1999) clar­i­fies, as the text and the inquirer engage in a dia­logue, in a hermeneu­tic con­ver­sa­tion whose goal is an inter­sec­tion of the hori­zon of the par­tic­i­pant and the hori­zon of the inquirer. Rather than cre­at­ing knowl­edge, the aim of hermeneu­tic inquiry is under­stand­ing (p. 26). Ricoeur (1976, as cited in van Leeuwen, 1981) claims that hermeneu­tics begins where dia­logue ends. Inter­pre­ta­tion is not the rep­e­ti­tion of some orig­i­nal encounter of writer and reader, but a new event: a con­fronta­tion with what the text says (p. 84). Gadamer’s notion of what is involved in read­ing a text is not that the reader sim­ply reads what is there in the text before him, rather a per­son read­ing a text is him­self part of the mean­ing he appre­hends. As Gadamer puts it:

He belongs to the text that he is read­ing. The line of mean­ing that the text man­i­fests to him as he reads it always and nec­es­sar­ily breaks off in an open inde­ter­mi­nacy [uncer­tainty]. He can, indeed he must, accept the fact that future gen­er­a­tions will under­stand dif­fer­ently what he has read in the text (1989, p.335).

Thus, in inter­pret­ing a text, Gadamer asserts, we can­not sep­a­rate our­selves or escape from the mean­ing of the text, as under­stand­ing is not an iso­lated activ­ity of human beings but a basic struc­ture of our expe­ri­ence of life (Wijesinghe, 2009, p. 163). Wilcke (2002) explains that Gadamer devel­oped his own approach to the process of under­stand­ing by stress­ing the impor­tance of lan­guage in shap­ing both our expe­ri­ence and our inter­pre­ta­tions (p. 3). Thomas & Pol­lio (2002 as cited in Graves, 2006) insist that “while lin­guis­tic expres­sions of expe­ri­ence are in some senses second-order rep­re­sen­ta­tions of direct, unre­flected expe­ri­ence, they are the only means we have to share another’s experience.

2.3.4 Read­ing and Writ­ing. Hermeneu­tics is “a process of co-creation between the researcher and par­tic­i­pant, in which the very pro­duc­tion of mean­ing occurs through a cir­cle of read­ings, reflec­tive writ­ing and inter­pre­ta­tions” (Gadamer, 1960 &1998 as cited in Laverty 2003, p. 22). Laverty (refer­ring to Allen, 1995) “stressed the impor­tance of read­ing and writ­ing as core to the pro­duc­tion of mean­ing in hermeneu­tic strat­egy” (p. 21). “The use of a reflec­tive jour­nal is one way in which a hermeneu­tic cir­cle can be engaged, mov­ing back and forth between the parts and the whole of the text (Hei­deg­ger, 1927/1962 as cited in Laverty 2003, p. 22). Laverty (refer­ring to van Manen, 1997) believes that “writ­ing forces an indi­vid­ual into a reflec­tive atti­tude in which one writes them in a deeply col­lec­tive way” (p.22).

Table 5 presents an overview and ori­en­ta­tion of this study, and the var­i­ous sec­tions and actions that will be taken in con­duct­ing this research.

Table 5. An Overview of the Research Design used in this study

 

In the first col­umn, the head­ings are as fol­low: The­o­ret­i­cal Ori­en­ta­tion, Method­ol­ogy, Phe­nom­ena under Study, Sub­jects of the Study, Meth­ods of Data Col­lec­tion, Data Analy­sis and Product/Result. The sec­ond col­umn out­lines how is the writer going to carry out the research, pro­ceed with using the three (3) meth­ods of his choice in data gen­er­a­tion, interpret-describe the data on the phe­nom­e­non of nakakaluwag, syn­the­size these three (3) interpretive-descriptive phases, con­struct trans­for­ma­tive ped­a­gog­i­cal story that cre­ates con­di­tions con­ducive to sus­tain­able liv­ing. To encap­su­late the direc­tion of all these ideas dis­cussed above, Einstein’s ‘frame of ref­er­ence’ can best describe then in the fol­low­ing words:

For Ein­stein… every observer oper­ates from a par­tic­u­lar ‘frame of ref­er­ence’ from which she [he] bases her [his] mea­sure­ments, and this frame of ref­er­ence con­sti­tutes an essen­tial part of all descrip­tions of any phys­i­cal phe­nom­e­non (Scala, 2001, p. 9)[2].

Sub­jects of the Study

The writer embarked on iden­ti­fy­ing who would com­prise the four­teen (14) Co-Rs of this study, and towards the last week of June until the first two weeks of July he started recruit­ing them. He received the first sub­mis­sion of a writ­ten reflec­tion (jour­nal entry) by a Co-R on July 28 and the very last was on Octo­ber 4.

These four­teen (14) Co-Rs were pur­posely selected with the inten­tion to uncover the nakakaluwag lived-experience that are embed­ded in their shared-beliefs, and embod­ied in their shared-practices. They are the multi-sectoral rep­re­sen­ta­tives of the ter­tiary edu­ca­tional com­mu­nity of the De La Salle-College of Saint Benilde (DLS-CSB) who com­prised of the fol­low­ing: two (2) school admin­is­tra­tors, two (2) teach­ers, two (2) reg­u­lar staff, two (2) tuition-paying stu­dents, two (2) non-paying stu­dents, four (4) agency/concessionaire hired employees.

Pro­file of the Subjects

Table 6 presents the pro­file of the sub­jects based on the pro­file the fol­low­ing infor­ma­tion which is cat­e­go­rized accord­ing to age, gen­der, edu­ca­tional attain­ment, and occu­pa­tion. On age, the eigh­teen (18)[3] years old is the youngest, which is the legal age and qual­i­fi­ca­tion for her/him to vote, while the forty-nine (49) years of age is the old­est. On gen­der, the Co-Rs were dis­trib­uted equally accord­ing to the two gender-role cat­e­gories: seven (7) females and seven (7) males. On edu­ca­tional attain­ment, among them two (2) were high school grad­u­ates, (6) six were in col­lege, (1) one with a col­lege degree, (3) three with mas­teral degrees and (2) two with doc­toral degrees. On occu­pa­tion, please refer to the dis­cus­sion of Co-Rs on the pre­vi­ous para­graph.

Table 6. De La Salle-College of Saint Benilde (DLS-CSB)’s Multi-Sectoral Representatives

 

Data Gath­er­ing: Co-Rs’ TEXT

The meth­ods of data col­lec­tion used for this study were the fol­low­ing: (1) Reflec­tive Jour­nal Entries (RJE), (2) Nar­ra­tive Expe­ri­ence Accounts (NEA) and (3) Face-to-face Inter­view Exchanges (FIE). These meth­ods were cho­sen because the writer found them as appro­pri­ate with the the­matic analy­sis processes which entailed co-construction of the data with the Co-Rs engag­ing in a hermeneu­tic cir­cle of under­stand­ing. The Co-Rs’ RJE, NEA and FIE com­bined were re-named and here­inafter alter­nately referred to as the Co-Rs’ TEXT (all in cap­i­tal letters).

1. Reflec­tive Jour­nal Entries (RJE). In the above sec­tion on Read­ing and Writ­ing, Laverty noted that Hei­deg­ger (1927/1962) con­tends that one way why hermeneu­tic cir­cle can be engaged, mov­ing back and forth between the parts and the whole of the text is the use of a reflec­tive jour­nal (as cited in Laverty 2003, p. 22). Laverty also (refer­ring to van Manen, 1997) believes that “writ­ing forces an indi­vid­ual into a reflec­tive atti­tude…  (2003, p. 22). Thus, the writer asked the Co-Rs to write a reflec­tive jour­nal which would address a par­tic­u­lar topic. And in this case, each Co-R wrote a per­sonal reflec­tion on nakakaluwag lived expe­ri­ences before a sched­uled nar­ra­tive ses­sion took place. The writer col­lected all these RJE, then exam­ined and high­lighted com­mon themes, sim­i­lar­i­ties and con­trasts. He also explained to the Co-Rs that they should not worry about mis­spellings, gram­mat­i­cal mis­takes and neat­ness of hand­writ­ing in their reflec­tive jour­nal note­book or notesheet. The writer sim­ply wanted to make sure that they would write leg­i­bly enough that he would be able to read. The RJE was be used to help the Co-Rs reflect on their expe­ri­ences in rela­tion to the Fil­ipino value of nakakaluwag. Dur­ing an actual-narrative ses­sion with the Co-Rs and an interview-session with them, these RJE encour­aged them to explore deeper their own nakakaluwag lived experiences.

The RJE con­sisted of writ­ten answers to open-ended ques­tions of the infor­mants. The fol­low­ing ques­tions are based on the research questions:

1. Kailan mo naram­damang nakakaluwag ka sa buhay? (1. When do you feel/know that you are nakakaluwag in life?); 2. Ano ang paki­ram­dam ng nakakaluwag sa buhay? (2. What is the feel­ing of nakakaluwag in life?); 3. Sa mga pagkakataong nakakaluwag ka sa buhay, saang bahagi ng buhay mo matatag­puan ang mga sumusunod?  3.1 ang Diyos, 3.2 ang iyong sar­ili, 3.3 ang iyong kapwa, at 3.4 ang kalikasan (3. In the many sit­u­a­tions that you are nakakaluwag in life, what part of your life do you find the fol­low­ing? 3.1 God, 3.2 self, 3.3 fel­low being 3.4 cre­ation); 4. Anong mga aral ang itin­u­turo sayo ng mga karanasang nakakaluwag sa buhay? (4. What lessons do the expe­ri­ences of nakakaluwag in life teach you?) 5. Anong mga aral sa iyong paki­ram­dam na itu­turo mo sa iyong kapwa? (5. What lessons do you feel/think you will teach others?)

The four (4) objec­tives of this exer­cise were the fol­low­ing: first, to raise the aware­ness of the Co-Rs regard­ing their Fil­ipino value nakakaluwag and to explore within them all its pos­si­ble mean­ings. Sec­ond, to pre­pare the Co-Rs about the three (3) dif­fer­ent stages she/he would go through, namely, (1) First Interpretive-Descriptive Phase: Reflec­tive Jour­nal Entries (1^st IDP: RJE), (2) Sec­ond Interpretive-Descriptive Phase: Nar­ra­tive Expe­ri­ence Accounts (2^nd IDP: NEA) and (3) Third Interpretive-Descriptive Phase: Face-to-Face Inter­view Exchanges (3^rd IDP: FIE). Then thirdly was to pro­vide for the basis and focus for the NEA and a follow-up dis­cus­sion dur­ing their FIE. Lastly, the fourth was to pre­pare the writer to iden­tify areas and items that needed nec­es­sary adjust­ment and modification.

2. Nar­ra­tive Expe­ri­ence Accounts (NEA). Accord­ing to Thomas (2003) expe­ri­ence nar­ra­tive is a per­sonal story.  It refers to an account of an event—or of sev­eral related events—as described by a per­son who [is] involved in the described episodes, either as an active par­tic­i­pant or as an observer (p.38).  He adds that “an expe­ri­ence nar­ra­tive encom­passes a more lim­ited time period and focuses on more restricted sub­ject mat­ter” (Thomas, 2003, p. 38). The pur­pose of expe­ri­ence nar­ra­tives, as Thomas (2003) explains, is to reveal indi­vid­u­al­is­tic per­cep­tions of selected life episodes, whose empha­sis is on [the] dif­fer­ences among peo­ple in their expe­ri­ences and in their ways of view­ing their lives…” (p. 38). Rather than describ­ing solely an account in the researcher’s words, it includes indi­vid­u­als vary­ing modes of communication—words, ges­tures, songs, dances, sym­bols, art works— (Thomas, 2003, p. 38). In this experience-narrative approach, the researcher is the main orga­nizer or com­piler of the nar­ra­tives. How­ever since this study was a coop­er­a­tive effort between the writer and the infor­mant of the study, both have been cred­ited with being Co-Rs (Thomas, 2003, p. 38).

With some mod­i­fi­ca­tions, below were the five (5) steps of experience-narrative method which the writer had adapted based from the work of Thomas & Brubaker (as cited in Thomas, 2003, pp. 38–39).

1. After the infor­mants were for­mally invited to par­tic­i­pate in this study, the writer explained to them the realm of life expe­ri­ences, which is the focus of atten­tion. For the pur­pose of this study, the focus was on their nakakaluwag lived expe­ri­ences in view of the holis­tic relationality.

2. The writer expected them to freely under­stand and agree with the pur­pose of this study, which con­sisted of explor­ing their very own nakakaluwag lived expe­ri­ences. They were informed that this study would not stop nor pre­vent them from with­draw­ing at any time they wished nor required them to give any rea­son for with­draw­ing. Since their involve­ment was valu­able to this study, the writer expected them to share and nar­rate their sto­ries fully and clearly.

3. To enliven the nar­ra­tion, the writer ini­tially posted an open-ended ques­tion to the infor­mant to encour­age active think­ing, rea­son­ing and reflec­tion. If it was nec­es­sary, follow-up ques­tions would be asked dur­ing the con­ver­sa­tion. The ini­tial ques­tions asked were the fol­low­ing: 1. Paano mo masasabing nakakaluwag ka sa buhay? (1. How can you tell that you are nakakaluwag in life?) 2. Ano ang pagkakataon na naram­daman mong nakakaluwag ka?, at ano ang kinala­man (o kaug­nayan) ng (a) Diyos, (b) ng iyong sar­ili, (k) ng iyong kapwa at (d) ng kalikasan sa karanasang mong nakakaluwag? (2. In what con­di­tion (or sit­u­a­tion) that you feel you are nakakaluwag?, and what is the con­nec­tion and rela­tion of (a) God, (b) your­self, © your fel­low being and (d) cre­ation in your nakakaluwag expe­ri­ence) 3. Anong mga aral ang natu­tu­nan mo? (3. What lessons did you learn?) 4. Anong mga aral ang itu­turo mo sa iyong kapwa? (4. What lessons do you teach others?)

Respond­ing to the ques­tions above, each Co-R spoke freely about her/his sig­nif­i­cant nakakaluwag lived expe­ri­ences as the writer recorded the nar­ra­tion ver­ba­tim through the use of an audio and/or video recorder so the nar­ra­tive account would be accu­rate. Even though the writer was aware that note-taking is a must and he should imme­di­ately record the infor­ma­tion he lis­tened to after the ses­sion, he explained to the Co-R the neces­sity of using the audio/video recorder. How­ever, hav­ing in mind that uncon­trol­lable event might hap­pen such that the equip­ment would unavail­able or not func­tion­ing or the Co-R might object to its use, the writer saw to it that while audio/video recorder was avail­able dur­ing the ses­sion, he explained to the infor­mant that such equip­ment was nec­es­sary to accu­rately record the nar­ra­tive account for the pur­pose of truth and accuracy.

4. Dur­ing the nar­ra­tion, the com­piler felt it nec­es­sary to offer prompts that would keep the infor­mant on the topic and encour­age an elab­o­ra­tion of aspects that were unclear or inad­e­quately developed.

5. In pre­sent­ing the recorded nar­ra­tive in this study, the writer opted to pref­ace the nar­ra­tive with a descrip­tion of the fol­low­ing:  (1) the topic, that is, the aspect of life which was the focus of the Co-R’s story i.e., her/his nakakaluwag lived expe­ri­ences in view of the holis­tic rela­tion­al­ity; (2) who the Co-R was and why such a Co-R was a suit­able source of infor­ma­tion i.e., as one of the multi-sectoral rep­re­sen­ta­tives of the ter­tiary edu­ca­tional com­mu­nity of  DLS-CSB (directly or indi­rectly); (3) the divi­sion of labor between the Co-R and the com­piler in the con­duct of the research i.e.,  as con­sid­ered nec­es­sary source of nakakaluwag lived expe­ri­ences’ through her/his Reflec­tive Jour­nal Entries (RJE), Nar­ra­tive Expe­ri­ence Accounts (NEA) and Face-to-Face Inter­view Exchanges (FIE); (4) the con­text of the nar­ra­tive ses­sion, i.e., she/he gen­er­ally rep­re­sented a mem­ber of the edu­ca­tional com­mu­nity of  DLS-CSB and specif­i­cally rep­re­sented any of the fol­low­ing roles:  a school admin­is­tra­tor, a teacher, a reg­u­lar staff, a tuition-paying stu­dent, a non-paying stu­dent, an agency/concessionaire hired employee and finally, (5) any con­di­tions that could have influ­enced the out­come of the ses­sion, i.e., her/his per­sonal prob­lem, fam­ily prob­lem, studies-related prob­lem, work-related prob­lems, and all the other related prob­lems that could have occurred.

Through these steps, Thomas (2003) reminds the writer that the experience-narrative research assumes a com­par­a­tive form when two or more indi­vid­u­als’ accounts [sto­ries] are shared in the study (p. 39). In cases such as this, the writer “will point out com­mon themes, sim­i­lar­i­ties and con­trasts which appear in the sev­eral accounts [sto­ries]” (Thomas, 2003, p. 39).

3. Face-to-Face Inter­view Exchanges (FIE).   In an arti­cle enti­tled, ‘Con­duct­ing An Inter­view,’ Dr. Mar­tin Davies (2007) dis­tin­guishes from each other the fol­low­ing four types of inter­views, namely Infor­mal con­ver­sa­tions, Semi-structured inter­views, Stan­dard struc­tured inter­views and Focus group inter­views and group interviews:

[The infor­mal con­ver­sa­tions] are spon­ta­neous… [and] have the advan­tage of allow­ing free-ranging responses. —The inter­vie­wee feels at ease and does not real­ize they are being inter­viewed. [How­ever, the] data col­lected is very hard to ana­lyze. [The semi-structured inter­views] use a gen­eral guide and a list of top­ics and ques­tions [and] have the advan­tage of allow­ing an inter­viewer to con­cen­trate on spe­cific top­ics and issues…. [The stan­dard struc­tured inter­views] are very well-structured… [and] have the advan­tage of con­sis­tency. —They are easy to ana­lyze because the ques­tions are pre­cisely worded. [The focus group inter­views and group inter­views] use a selected group of rep­re­sen­ta­tive peo­ple in order to col­lect data about a larger pop­u­la­tion. —The aim in a focus group inter­view is to start with gen­eral ques­tions, —then move to the focus ques­tions… (Davies, 2007, pp. 2–3).

With some mod­i­fi­ca­tions, the writer adapted the semi-structured inter­view as a suit­able data col­lec­tion method. The four­teen (14) Co-Rs were inter­viewed, but only after each of them had sub­mit­ted her/his RJE and freely shared her/his NEA on the sig­nif­i­cant nakakaluwag lived expe­ri­ences dur­ing the experience-narrative ses­sion. In the inter­view the writer made use of pre-narrative reflec­tive jour­nal guide ques­tions includ­ing her/his answers.

To con­firm and val­i­date them, the writer moved back and forth between her/his writ­ten answers and oral replies. As the inter­view ses­sion pro­gressed, it focused on spe­cific responses, top­ics, issues and items that the writer saw it fit to con­cen­trate on.

Table 7 presents the guide ques­tions used for each of the three (3) phases of data col­lec­tion. namely, 1^st IDP: RJE, 2^nd IDP: NEA and 3^rd IDP: FIE.

Table 7. The Guide Ques­tions at A Glance

 

 

Data Analy­sis: Five (5) Steps of The­matic Analysis

In an arti­cle, ‘A Prag­matic View of The­matic Analy­sis,’ Jodi Aron­son (1994) con­tends that, “once the infor­ma­tion is gath­ered, researchers are faced with the deci­sion on how to ana­lyze the data.”  Aron­son (refer­ring to Mahrer, 1988; Spradley, 1979; Tay­lor & Bog­dan, 1984) noted that, “There are many ways to ana­lyze infor­mants’ talk about their expe­ri­ences and the­matic analy­sis is one such way” (par. 1).

Accord­ing to Aron­son (1994) from any con­ver­sa­tions that take place in any face-to-face ses­sion, ideas that emerge can be bet­ter under­stood under the con­trol of a the­matic analy­sis, which focuses on iden­ti­fi­able themes and pat­terns… (par. 3).

The fol­low­ing were the five (5) steps of the­matic analy­sis based on the work of Aron­son (1994, pars. 1–9), which the writer adapted for this study with some mod­i­fi­ca­tions and applied to the suc­ceed­ing phases:  1^st IDP: RJE, 2^nd IDP: NEA and 3^rd IDP: FIE.

Step 1 Col­lect­ing all the data: The writer col­lected and secured the data from the co-researchers ordered into the fol­low­ing phases: 1^st IDP: RJE, 2^nd IDP: NEA and 3^rd IDP: FIE.  The 1^st IDP: RJE refers to their reflec­tions on the sig­nif­i­cant nakakaluwag lived-experiences as they were writ­ten in their jour­nal entries (writ­ten data). The 2^nd IDP: NEA refers to their nar­ra­tions on the sig­nif­i­cant nakakaluwag lived-experiences as they were audio recorded and tran­scribed ver­ba­tim (spo­ken data). And lastly, the 3^rd IDP: FIE, which refers to their exchanges with the writer dur­ing the face-to-face (semi-structured) inter­views on the sig­nif­i­cant nakakaluwag lived-experiences as they were also audio-recorded and tran­scribed verbatim.

Step 2 Iden­ti­fy­ing pat­terns of expe­ri­ences: On the basis of all the writ­ten reflec­tions (jour­nal entries), tran­scribed nar­ra­tions (expe­ri­ence accounts) and tran­scribed con­ver­sa­tions (inter­view exchanges), the writer iden­ti­fied and listed the pat­terns of expe­ri­ences. In other words, the writer iden­ti­fied all the data that relate to the already clas­si­fied pat­terns, then the iden­ti­fied pat­terns were expounded on. Aron­son (1994) sug­gests that “all of the talk that fits under the spe­cific pat­tern is iden­ti­fied and placed with the cor­re­spond­ing pat­tern” (par. 6).

Step 3 Cat­a­logu­ing related pat­terns into sub-themes and themes: The writer com­bined and cat­a­logued the related pat­terns into sub-themes. Themes, accord­ing to Aron­son (refer­ring to Tay­lor & Bogdan’s mean­ing, 1989) are “defined as units derived from pat­terns such as con­ver­sa­tion top­ics, vocab­u­lary, recur­ring activ­i­ties, mean­ings, feel­ings, or folk say­ings and proverbs” (par. 7). Aron­son (1994) points out that the “themes are iden­ti­fied by bring­ing together com­po­nents or frag­ments of ideas or expe­ri­ences, which often are mean­ing­less when viewed alone.” He adds that the “themes that emerge from the infor­mants’ sto­ries are pieced together to form a com­pre­hen­sive pic­ture of their col­lec­tive expe­ri­ence. Then, he claims that, “the coher­ence of ideas rests with the ana­lyst [writer] who has rig­or­ously stud­ied how dif­fer­ent ideas or com­po­nents fit together in a mean­ing­ful way when linked together” (Leininger as cited in Aron­son, 1994, par. 7).

Step 4 Obtain­ing feed­back from the infor­mants:  It is easy, accord­ing Aron­son (1994) to see a pat­tern emerg­ing when gath­er­ing sub-themes to obtain com­pre­hen­sive view of the information:

When pat­terns emerge it is best to obtain feed­back from the infor­mants about them. This can be done as the inter­view is tak­ing place or by ask­ing the infor­mants to give feed­back from the tran­scribed con­ver­sa­tions. [Either] the inter­viewer [/writer] uses the infor­mants’ feed­back to estab­lish the next ques­tions in the inter­view [or] the inter­viewer [/writer]  tran­scribes the inter­view…, and asks the infor­mants to pro­vide feed­back that is then incor­po­rated in the theme analy­sis (par. 8).

 

Step 5 Telling the whole story: The final task, accord­ing to Aron­son (1994) is to “build a valid argu­ment for choos­ing the themes” (par. 9).  By read­ing and refer­ring back to the related lit­er­a­ture, the [writer] gained infor­ma­tion that allowed [him­self] to make infer­ences from the [infor­mants’ reflec­tions, nar­ra­tives, and inter­views]… —Once the themes were col­lected and the lit­er­a­ture was stud­ied, the [writer] for­mu­lated theme-statements to develop a story line. A story line refers specif­i­cally to the nar­ra­tive thread or strand shared by an infor­mant which when woven by the writer together with the other threads or strands they make a whole story. More­over, when the lit­er­a­ture in view of holis­tic rela­tion­al­ity has been inter­wo­ven with the find­ings, the story that the [writer and the co-researchers] con­struct is one that stands with merit (par. 9).

Table 8. Overview of the five (5) steps of the the­matic analy­sis as applied to the Co-Rs TEXT

 

Table 8 above presents at a glance the sum­mary of five (5) steps of the the­matic analy­sis based on the work of Aron­son (1994, pars. 1–9) as applied to the Co-Rs TEXT: RJE, NEA and FIE. The work of Aron­son was adapted for this study but applied with some modifications.

The first col­umn pro­vides a com­plete and chrono­log­i­cally listed view of the five (5) steps, while the sec­ond col­umn describes how each step is care­fully imple­mented to the suc­ceed­ing phases to gen­er­ate newer and deeper coher­ent mean­ing on the phe­nom­e­non of the lived-experience of nakakaluwag.