Experiential Education

Self <=> Other: A Brief Exercise in Autophenomethnograpic Methodology

Presented to Dr. Mary Ziskin Indiana University

In partial fulfillment of the requirements for Y611, Qualitative Inquiry in Education

by Ray Woodcock December 12, 2005

Experiential Education Contents

Introduction How to Make Decisions Autophenomethnography The Research Question and Data Collection Overview Phenomenological Analysis of ExEd Field Worker Interviews Autoethnographic Exploration of ExEd Scholarship Synthesis Appendix I: Phenomenological Data Analysis Procedure Appendix II: Phenomenological Data Analysis Example References

3 4 8 16 20 23 30 32 37 40

Experiential Education

Self <=> Other: A Brief Exercise in Autophenomethnograpic Methodology

There are people who know what they want to be when they grow up. This paper is for those who dont. It is, more specifically, for those who dont entirely know what they want to be, but have at least an inkling that, whatever it is, it will hopefully not be indoors. This is the very perspective that I have had while making my own career decision. Like many others, I have found that career decisions and their consequences can be painful. No doubt pain, from that source and others, has influenced my inclination to treat serious subjects, sometimes, in a humorous way. I trust it will not prove necessary to explore the thought that laughing about ones errors and foibles can be therapeutic (e.g., Godfrey, 2004; Rosner, 2002), and that instead I may be permitted to proceed directly to the recounting of same. I dont mean that this is supposed to be a humorous work. I just mean that if I say something really stupid, its OK if yall laugh at me. You are furthering the cause of science. Having said that, I wonder whether it may be too late to point out that this piece also adopts a slightly informal tone. In that regard, I take inspiration from Richardson (2000), who says, It seems foolish at best, and narcissistic and self-absorbed at worst, to spend months or years doing research that ends up not being read (p. 924). People seem more inclined to read informal writing. I suspect it is because of an instinct, honed over the millenia, by which you sense that someone who talks very informally could be intoxicated and may be about to do something dangerous, and had therefore better be watched carefully. So. Regarding the career decision: in recent years, I have done a fair amount of camping in all seasons. I have backpacked in desert and mountains. As a kid, I spent huge amounts of

Experiential Education time outdoors. Eventually, I gravitated to a ropes course, where I became one of the gang and came to understand that we were part of a larger movement called experiential education. It

was pretty exciting. I wanted to learn what this field was all about, and I finally went to an international ExEd conference, where I met some cool people and heard a lot of different theories. I wondered whether I should pursue a career in ExEd and, if so, what kind of career it should be. I got myself into a graduate program where I had the opportunity to pursue it, if that seemed to be the direction to go, or where I could instead proceed in some other outdoor-related direction. So switching into the present tense, because I want this to be a very real-world and contemporaneous research project I find myself looking for a starting definition of the field. I go to the website of the Association for Experiential Education (AEE) (2005). It says, Defining the work we do, the values we hold and the principles that guide us is part of the experience of being a life-long learner and an active member of the Association for Experiential Education. We invite our members, educators and practitioners to engage in the ongoing conversation about what defines experiential education. In translation, it appears they dont know exactly what ExEd is either. Evidently I cant just define myself into or out of this field. It is many things to many people. But what is it to me or, more to the point, what could or should it be?

How to Make Decisions ExEd goes by a number of different names, using various combinations of terms (e.g., adventure, camping, challenge, outdoor, wilderness). You can find references to ExEd, by one name or another, in the literatures of a variety of fields, including occupational therapy (Stein &

Experiential Education Cutler, 2002), social work (Collins, 2003), recreational therapy (Peterson & Stumbo, 2000), marriage and family therapy (Gillis & Gass, 1993), counseling psychology (Fletcher & Hinkle, 2002), and environmental education (Haluza-Delay, 2001). ExEd also contains a variety of themes that spill over into other endeavors, where you might not be practicing ExEd per se but might be drawing upon your ExEd knowledge. On the

active side, for example, your interest in flow experiences (Csikszentmihalyi, 1990) might pull you toward sport psychology (Russell, 2001), or your desire to work with lots of people in the outdoors might incline you to outdoor adventure tourism (Weber, 2001). If you happen to be especially attuned to the recreational, educational, or therapeutic effects of mere contact with nature, you could explore experiential interaction with plants and animals in connection with horticultural therapy (Simson & Straus, 1998), animal-assisted therapy (Austin, 1997), landscape architecture (Sacklin, 1998), or environmental psychology (Kaplan & Kaplan, 1989). Or if spirituality causeth your heart to sing, you could meditate upon a vast number of ties between the outdoors and philosophy and religion, as in the Native American vision quest (Martinez, 2004; Dugan, 1985), deep ecology (Naess, 1986; Metzner, 1999), the Judeo-Christian heritage (e.g., Psalms 23), Romanticism (Nash, 1967), Hinduism (Choudhury, 1994), and so on. As you may have guessed, your author did not become aware of so many different possibilities by being clear and decisive about his career decision. This brings us to the topic at hand, viz., how to make a decision. One way to do so is to identify your immediate topic, and then study everything except that topic everything else that may have anything to do with it. That, as you may have guessed, was the approach that led to the foregoing list of citations. This approach does not help you decide whether to enter the target field. It does provide valuable

Experiential Education information on what your next steps will be later in the game, however, when you have entered the target field and then change your mind and find yourself looking for a transition out. That forward-looking thought process has heretofore faciltated evasion of my ExEd

career decision. It seemed I might need the assistance of some cognitive mechanism that would automate provision of the desired answer. While the flipping of a coin theoretically suffices for such purpose, in practice that method is ironically thought to lack gravitas. The suitably scholarly alternative is to roll out the sesquipedalian artillery to resort, that is, to really big words. As I review the scholarly literatures of various disciplines, I perceive that this technique invariably generates decisive insights that would remain undetected, were one to view the available data through the primitive spectacles of monosyllabic synonymity. Qualitative research, which this paper uses, is an excellent source of big words, and is therefore the first place I would recommend looking if you are faced with a difficult decision. Among qualitative approaches, I was not able to draw upon ethnomethodological techniques for this paper, though I certainly tried. I was pretty much resigned to using ethnography, but then a careful counting of letters revealed that autoethnography would be the more suitable tool. It also appeared certain that, somehow, I would be able to derive insights from existential-phenomenological psychology, so I have drawn upon that tradition as well. Lacking a suitable moniker for this menagerie of methods, I coined autophenomethnography. It is sometimes said that qualitative research methods lack rigor. I do not find this to be the case. I jest at the expense of qualitative terminology, but this, I assure you, is strictly gallows humor. The march of the syllables is, in reality, like the footfalls of so many thousands of soldiers striding your way, each to be dealt with as a distinct, impossible decision on some factoid or other. If you think the nomenclature is intimidating, you should see the data.

Experiential Education Consider, if you will, the coin. You flip it; it produces an answer. One coin, two

possibilities. Very simple. This is, in a nutshell or, I guess, a coin the nature of quantitative research. You stack up the Yeses and Nos, you tot up the dollars spent, and pretty soon you have a mountain of fundamentally simple datums that you can mangle and shred with the aid of various statistical techniques. Some of those techniques are confusing enough to approach the point of genuine polysyllabic befuddlement, and at that point maybe you begin to achieve some truly scholarly insights. But about that coin. Sadly for me and, I suspect, for you, the hunt goes on for the coin that has the really important heads-or-tails question embossed upon its surfaces. The reason we are indecisive is that we dont even know where the hell to start. Theres too much to know before you can make an informed decision. Sure, you can lop off the heads (or tails) of some of those decisions; you can render them artificially simplistic. You can put them on a list of pluses and minuses, and chew on that for a while; but then, tomorrow, you awaken in a funky mood, and half the pluses look hokey, and the minuses are actually sounding pretty good and, presto, just like that, you have to start over. Which leads to qualitative research. Qualitative research is just plain research. Research is where you go out into the world and look into something. Maybe you want to understand it better; maybe you want to be able to explain or predict it, or answer some question about it. Whatever. In some cases, you can use quantitative techniques to slice and dice some basic facts about it. In other cases, you cant. When it comes to my own career decisions, they havent yet cooked up the questionnaire that says, Ray will enjoy satisfying and meaningful career experiences with 83.6% of the clients he serves as an outdoor guide, but will frustrate the decisive 50% of the global population. They havent done that research yet. So I dont know.

Experiential Education The other thing is that I dont have all day. I need to be moving along with this career decision thing, sometime before I shuffle off the mortal coil. By the time I work out the 23 defensible questionnaires that would be needed to address all my questions, and made sure that their questions were not worded or arranged in such a way as to influence the outcome, and by the time I distribute those questionnaires and calculate their findings and so forth, my decision window is going to be closed. Itll be too late. Like it or not, I need something that can get me in touch with as much data as possible, on a pretty short timeframe, in a vaguely coherent

manner, where maybe theres even some space for incorporating my own thoughts into the mix. This real-world orientation fits very well with the bricoleur spirit of qualitative research, in which you use what youve got, handyman-style (Lvi-Strauss, 1962). I mean, its not just any data were talking about; this is my data, about me. That may be especially obvious in the case of a personal career decision, but its also true in a lot of other areas. The topic matters to you. Lets be honest about that, and try to figure out why, and what research approach will do the best job of capturing the information in a form you can work with. In my case, Ive done that thinking. Ive examined the options; Ive consulted the texts; and you know, now, what I have come up with. It is: Autophenomethnography I have seen people wince when I merely utter the name of existential-phenomenological psychology. I dont want to hurt anyone. So let me warn you: we can do this the easy way, or we can do it the hard way. The hard way has the advantage of killing more time before you have to come up with a decision, so of course I have already explored that avenue. So lets do it the easy way: let me just summarize what Ive found.

Experiential Education What is phenomenology? On the first page of a book that they have the audacity to

entitle Understanding Phenomenology, Hammond, Howarth, and Keat (1991) respond by saying, To answer that question directly, even if it were possible, would require the introduction of too many technical concepts to be helpful at this point (p. 1). Sokolowski (2000), doing his bit to clarify matters, provides An Initial Statement of What Phenomenology Is in a chapter of some 23 pages in a book that Giorgi (2000) praises as being straightforward, although deceptively simple (p. 232). Small wonder that Giorgi (1998) bemoans the fact that people dont want to study the subject. For practical purposes, normal people may simply conclude that phenomenology is a kind of philosophy studied by phenomenologists. Existential phenomenology is, in turn, a kind of phenomenology studied by you guessed it existential phenomenologists. This leaves one more question: what is existentialphenomenological psychology? The solution to this question is trivial, and is left as an exercise for the reader. What we really care about, on the quick-and-dirty level, is the method. How does existential-phenomenological psychology (EPP) facilitate the answering or, better yet, the avoidance of difficult questions? One answer is that phenomenology in general can be misused as a cool buzzword that just means qualitative research, to the consternation of people who know better (cf. Nakayama, 1994; Baker, Wuest, and Stern, 1992). Another answer is that, if you use it like youre supposed to, you have a series of relatively simple steps that will help you to produce your very own EPP research. More on that shortly. But what do you do with it? The idea of EPP, as in other forms of psychology, is to get inside someones head. But you dont want their cognitive processes, their logical arguments and rationalizations (Churchill, 2000). Those are just overlays on their actual experience. The

Experiential Education mind is always entangled with the body; hence, conscious mental life is coherent only by reference back to lived experience (Compton, 1997). This is why phenomenology tries to get down to the level of ones life-world, with all its messy contradictions (Sokolowski, 2000; Stelter, 2000). So, for example, if you feel closer to your sister in China than you feel to your neighbor next door, this is the level where you can essentially say you are closer to the cousin in China. In the life-world, you count distance, not in feet and miles, but in the way you experience it. There are different strains within phenomenology. I am describing, here, the existen-

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tialist strain. It is postmodern, in the sense that it doubts that anyone can sit back and play God. Nobody has a kind of consciousness that functions on an abstract, philosophical level; our consciousness is always in the world (Strasser, 1967). Try as you may, you cant set aside your personal interests and preconceptions before beginning research (Lindseth & Norberg, 2004). To the contrary, in the existential perspective, the researchers subjective experience is inextricably mixed into the data (Giorgi, 1997). Thus, the researcher is obligated to acknowledge and explain his/her thoughts, responses, and decision-making process . . . throughout the entire research process (Donalek, 2004, p. 516). So when I decided to use EPP to approach career decisions, what I am really saying is that I thought I would make more headway, not by getting lost in arcane psychological theories, or by trying to design quantitative research that would answer all my questions, but rather by doing intensive phenomenological interviews that would take me directly to the lived phenomena of the people who interest me so that I could enter into their experiential world, while trying to remain aware of my own reactions to the material (Yalom, 1980). At this point, I ask myself, is my experiential world really different from theirs? Im bringing a lot of my own baggage to the station. I see these ExEd people three, four, five days a

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week. Were in some of the same classes ExEd classes, in fact. I dont know that I am entirely separate from these friends of mine. It seems we have a Relationship, which could be a scary word to many a male; but now that the dread thought has been uttered, it seems incumbent upon me to determine just what kind of relationship it is. Fine (1998) speaks of the Self-Other border (p. 150). But her presentation of it as border emphasizes distinct identities. Thats OK, in a modernist perspective that says theres an objective world out there and a subjective world inside me. In a postmodern perspective, however, Bubers (1958) statement applies: The I of the primary word I-Thou is a different I from that of the primary word I-It. . . . There is no I taken in itself, but only the I of the primary word I-Thou and the I of the primary word I-It (pp. 3-4). For Fine, the analysis ends when someone in the group being studied says, Im tired of hearing you speak for me. Only I can speak for myself; for her, there is a tension between two sides (p. 151). But in this case, thats where the analysis begins that place where I am, in part, a member of the studied group. If you look at the hyphen in Self-Other as a minus sign that subtracts the one from the other and keeps us forever distinct, other possibilities come to mind: Self+Other, where I am part of the combined whole and yet add something recognizable to its very content, as in a family; Self=Other, where you could pretty much study me to get an idea of what the group is about, or study someone else in the group to get an idea of what Im about; and Self > Other (using the greater than sign) or Self < (i.e., less than) Other, where we both have some quantity in common but, beyond that point, the one leads but the other does not follow. I wouldnt be questioning my relationship to ExEd if I were a dyed-in-the-wool member of the clan. I dont yet have the credentials that those people have a Wilderness First Responder certification, for example and in that sense its a Self < Other relationship. Then again, I think in some ways I

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have adopted middle-aged perspectives that some of my youthful colleagues are still developing, and in those ways perhaps it is Self > Other. As noted a moment ago, I began thinking of ethnography as another qualitative approach that might work. There was still that tricky question of what it is. To illustrate the problem, Clair (2003) says that ethnography was originally part of the colonial mentality, where we are going out to observe the primitives and maybe save them. This, she says, was nave ethnography, in which Western scholars evidenced arrogance through their judgmental interpretations of Others (p. 4). Clair, presumably not a Spaniard, has unkind judgments for some Others, namely, the Spaniards who abused Native Americans who, she says, were the true Westerners, such that we should not use the term Western to refer to white scholars, as she does. Colonialism eventually came to include a desire to save those native cultures, as in Clairs defense of the Native Americans; but those days of nave ethnography are over, she says, if indeed they ever truly existed (p. 3). Instead, we now have postmodern ethnography. The main weakness of postmodern ethnography, she says, is that its theoretical foundation is plagued with paradoxes (p. 17) and postcolonial studies . . . are entrenched in what may be inescapable ironies (p. 19). Generally, Marcus (1998) observes that, while many writers bandy about the word postmodern in their descriptions of others, very few identify themselves as postmodernist, and those who do so produce work that seems, finally, limiting or runs into serious contradictions (p. 388). When I heard that, I realized that I had better get in my mentions of postmodernism right away, as in the preceding paragraphs, so that I could promptly commence the process of backing away from it. So youll hear no praise of the postmodern critique from the likes of me, not in so many words. I might revert to the topic in some other paper, where a concern for proper methodology may compel me to go through these same steps; but nevermore in this one.

Experiential Education As Clair (2003) illustrates, the definition of ethnography has been subject to controversy (Atkinson & Hammersley, 1994, p. 248). Some, including Atkinson and Hammersley, define it in general terms that broadly apply to a wide variety of qualitative research styles (cf. Marshall & Rossman, 1995; Denzin & Lincoln, 1998): exploring social

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phenomena rather than testing hypotheses about them; working with data that, at the time of data collection, have not been coded into a closed set of analytic categories; investigating just one case, or only a few, in detail; and presenting data analysis in descriptive and explanatory terms. It appeared that people have added extra ingredients to ethnography, or have used it for a variety of purposes; but I wanted to know the minimal requirements that something has to have and be ethnographic. To Fetterman (1998), ethnography is the art and science of describing a group or culture (p. 1). Marcus (1998) says ethnography is cultural translation (p. 389). According to Hackley (2003), The ethnographer engages in close study of a particular social group in order to understand the cultural norms, values and behaviour of that group (p. 128). Interviews are the most important data collection technique in both ethnography and in phenomenology (Fetterman, 1998, p. 37; Moustakas, 1994). There is typically some difference in intensity, though; ethnography and other qualitative approaches often call for collecting data in everyday (i.e., non-experimental) contexts, using multiple data sources (especially conversations, interviews, observations, and documents) (Sheppard, 2004; Hackley, 2003). As Clair (2003) demonstrates, classic, formalist, nave ethnography is very much alive and well (Coffey, 2002). For example, Hackley (2003) says that ethnographers should retain a sense of scientific detachment so that they can understand the meanings and dynamics of a social group better than the participants themselves (p. 128). Id revise that to say that an objectivist ethnographer might be especially skilled at translating the terms of a group into language that

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will make sense to the ethnographers audience. But in the present case (a) aside from you, I am my own audience, and (b) I cant very well claim to be scientifically detached from the culture that I am, in some ways, a part of. Nor did I want to swing over to the left-hand extreme of the Self-Other divide, and selfconsciously treat myself as an alien intruder (cf. Coffey, 2002) who might intersperse his account of the target group with extraneous prattle about, say, how his exposure to the target group has affected his own, very different and essentially unrelated life. In this analysis, I wanted to know more about Ray < > ExEd, and about the possibility and desirability of achieving Ray = ExEd. Krizek (2003) puts his finger on it when he describes the experience in which the participants stories correspond to some aspect of her identities that, upon hearing, rings true such that the researcher makes a connection . . . at the level of identity, the most basic level of human understanding but not merely as happenstance, where the subjects narratives will, at times, intersect with those of the ethnographer (p. 147). What I was really trying to do, it seemed, was autoethnography. Autoethnography, in its simplest and original form, is an anthropological term for a study, by an individual, of his/her own culture (Smith, 2005, citing Hayano, 1979). As Smith says of her research, I felt I needed to include my opinions, views, and feelings on the subject, because I am from the same culture as the studys participants (p. 3). In autoethnography, according to Duncan (2004), you tell about your experience as a participant observer, but you also confirm or triangulate with other data. The challenge lies in mastering the art of self-reflection through use of a suitable system of keeping reflections (p. 6). In Duncans (2004) case, the research question was, How do I improve my practice of hypermedia design? (p. 3), undertaken in 1993, when that kind of work was new. She had to

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figure out, largely on her own, what she could do better. The idea was to externalize her internal decisionmaking process. In addition to reflective notebooks, she documented the internal design experience with workplace artifacts (p. 7) (e.g., computer screen prints, diagrams) and data on contextual factors (e.g., government reports, reference books, computer log entries). She identified the six key issues defining the quality of her study as being study boundaries, instrumental utility (i.e., how can others use it?), construct validity (i.e., verification through consultation with involved others and with identification of themes in multiple sources of data), external validity (i.e., intending, not generalizability of findings, but process element identifiability in, or applicability to, other situations), reliability (i.e., establishing a protocol that would allow others to follow the research procedures), and scholarly writing (i.e., analysis, full disclosure of motivations (e.g., interest group advocacy), connecting research to theory, and defensibility). Full disclosure? Oh, all right. I had to write this paper for a class. There. Ive said it. And unlike Duncan, I didnt have six years to study this. More like six days. I needed insight into my career, and I needed it fast. What would be externalizable from my study would not be my admirable exploration of a bazillion different sources of data. What would be externalizable would be the fact that, if I didnt get this thing done pronto, I would be totally well, you know. Just like a lot of people in the real world, I was under the gun. The autoethnography approach looked good. But I decided to preserve the existentialphenomenological psychology methodology for purposes of structuring my approach to interviews. Not just to maximize syllabic intimidation, like the reason why semi trucks have 18 thunderous wheels. It seemed that the phenomenological emphasis, focusing upon intensive exploration of the other persons life-world, would help to preserve awareness that, when I am

Experiential Education interviewing someone, this is not to be a nice, Today-show kind of gloss over a bunch of superficial inanities. Im supposed to get deep into the persons lived experience. I also appreciated having a structured procedure by which to convert the interview transcript into other terms. That procedure, sketched out in Appendix I, gave me step-by-step guidance. Smith (2005) acknowledges her concern that her own experience with the phenomenon under study would lead her to filter her interviewees words through her personal experience, and speaks as though she were able to relinquish my views and understandings to grasp the full significance of what the participants were saying (p. 4), which is what positivist researchers hope or claim to be able to do. I felt, in this light, that the postm*dern perspective

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built into EPP provides an important awareness that you dont just relinquish your views, that they are always part of the story and they tend to be, even in positivist research, when you, yourself, have had a profound experience of the type you are studying. Finally, it seemed that EPPs philosophical roots can liberate a person from what Buytendijk (1967, p. 355, quoting Binswangers (1942) untranslated German-language book) calls the Cartesian cancer of psychology, i.e., the positivist inclination to discard philosophical reflection on human nature and behavior. Reflection and creative variation of interviewees statements, as incorporated in the steps in Appendix I, yields a uniquely intensive and provocative scrutiny of interviewees statements, as shown below. The Research Question and Data Collection Overview Should I go into ExEd? Or, in Relationship terms, can/should I be one with it? Perhaps it is the wrong word. The field is about people. You and your colleagues lead people into the woods to make a difference in their lives. The woods arent absolutely central, here, like they might be in the study of natural resources, or in the practice of paganism. Or maybe its both,

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although both are still people-centered: the Thou is your colleagues and clients; the It is the (hopefully) life-changing practice. In relationship terms, I pondered the link between myself and my peers in the field. Did I, or could/should I, share their interests and motivations? I decided this question had two parts. In the past, yes, I had definitely liked working with people in outdoor activities. So I wanted to resurrect that to refresh, in particular, my ropes course experience from several years ago. And then, in the second part, I wanted to see where this was going. Instead of treating it like a static Ray = ExEd, or Ray < and/or > ExEd, I wanted to identify whether it had been one way and was now tending to be another. The variety of mathematical signs in the preceding sentence makes clear that I am not talking about a linear relationship between a mere two parties, me and it (or them), as of a given moment in time. Its more like were having a conversation, where there are more things to say than time and words and ideas to say them, and the whole outcome depends upon the semirandom order in which we do happen to get to this subject, or that one, within the hour we have together. If I focus on the one thing, Ill feel the one way; if I focus on something else, I might feel very different. If you could stick labels onto sentences, you might have some labeled Ray > ExEd and some not. So, in a sense, there is this meta-inquiry into what makes one label glow brighter than another, for purposes of this career decision. Phenomenological interviewing appealed to me because I wanted to talk to people who epitomized what I found most appealing about the field people who were really excited about their work. I didnt have time for many interviews, and for this purpose I wasnt sure I needed them. I already had a sense of what ExEd people would say. Its more like I wanted to hear and

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see them as they said it, and then combine this with my previous notes from high and low points arising from my involvement with ExEd enterprises, to recover a sense of how it has felt for me. In that sense, interviews would provide one way of gathering data about the interpersonal aspect of the It/Them/me interface, in terms of both what it has been and what it could/should be. Interviews would make a lot of sense for getting into the feel of field work in ExEd, especially when theres snow on the ground, as at this December end-of-semester time, such that observation of actual ExEd practice is unlikely. But is field work what Im all about, when it comes to ExEd? If that were the case, wouldnt I be doing that, instead of trooping off to graduate school, where were talking about theory, reading articles, and doing research? It seems I have entered a different line of work, here. A Ph.D. from this program will equip me to teach field workers, not necessarily to be one of them. In that capacity, as this article attests, I might be examining boundaries and approaches to ExEd, but I wont actually be doing ExEd. But since this graduate school stuff evidently appeals to me too, I have to examine how it fits into the picture. What is the Ray <=> ExEd relationship in this context? Or how would I even begin to find out? It doesn't seem that observation of, or interviews with, a professor or a classmate would be as informative, regarding my complete experience, as would be an analysis of that experience directly. In other words, field observation or phenomenological interviews seem very appropriate for reminding me of my lived experience in the field, but a self-aware engagement in scholarly activities will be especially useful for knowing more about the lived experience in the academic context. Naturally, a scholarly paper has to include a literature review. You would normally use it to tell you how far others have gotten, so as to advise your own further steps. But nobody has researched my career decision. I did go in for career counseling one time, but they were just

Experiential Education handing me literature and phone numbers and telling me to go to it. The question of where to

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begin remained unanswered, probably because it entailed the necessarity of making decisions. I guess in that sense graduate school is my answer to the career counseling quandary of how to construct ones career: if you come, they will build it. So now we are facing the question of how you make a career decision, and I am saying a good way is to conduct some autophenomethnographic research. I mean, if you really want to be sure, you had better do it right, allowing at least six days before the end of the semester for the process. And what I would recommend, within this process, if youre dealing with a career path that allows the alternatives of going more toward practice or more toward research, is to do some in-depth interviews that will evoke the gut feelings of being one of the gang, and also get into the literature to see what thats like. In other words, I dont want a literature review that will tell me about ExEd, or even about ExEd careers. Ive already read that stuff. Enough of it, anyway. What I want is a literature review that will tell me what its like for me to experience the process of doing a literature review. So I will do a literature review. Except whats this? I happen to have already done one, in another class that just ended. Sweet! So Ill just use that. But its just a literature review. What I need from it is a sense of what it was like, for me, to do it. Examining that will also serve the phenomenological purpose of identifying the attitudes that I took with me into the interviews, which at this writing are already done. In other words, the literature review functions on multiple levels here. On the explicit level, it conveys my views about topics in the field. On an implicit level, what I chose to put into this particular literature review says a lot about what I think is important, for me, in the field; and as I review the thoughts and decisions that went into producing it, I will become more aware of

Experiential Education the unstated content of my thinking about what led me to write it the way I did. In that sense, in addition to being a guide to phenomenological self-examination, the literature review will serve as a data source yielding material for both (a) my feelings and judgments about the field and (b) my experience of doing scholarly work within the field. For additional insight in these

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regards, I will contemplate my literature review in light of another literature review, produced by one of my classmates, who also happens to be one of the two people I interviewed. In short, I believe my research question is something like this: What is the nature of the progression in the Ray <=> ExEd relationship, in terms of field and research experiences? And the way in which I will approach that question at this time of year is, very simply, to interview field workers who are excited about ExEd, and to delve directly into the scholarly experience by an examination of literature reviews. Phenomenological Analysis of ExEd Field Worker Interviews For the best quality of data, the phenomenological researcher should select a number of interviewees from several relevant contexts (Sadala & Adorno, 2002, citing Martins, 1992), so as to provide a spectrum of reactions from interviewees who have had the experience in question and are able to provide full and sensitive descriptions of it (Polkinghorne, 1989). Interviewees should not have a familiarity with the researchers theories or biases that may compel them to debate theory rather than describe lived experience (Giorgi, 1985b). Thompson, Locander, and Pollio (1989) describe EPP research as holistic and apodictic (i.e., pattern-seeking), where the interviewer functions as a non-directive listener to respondents who speak freely. The intense interest in inner phenomena common to phenomenological research varies noticeably from the relatively relaxed ethnographic perspective in which Weiss can say, You will generally want to obtain information regarding some of the inner events that accompanied

Experiential Education the outer events (p. 75), where Marshall and Rossman (1995) echo the interest in events and behaviors (p. 82). Polkinghorne (1989) indicates that EPP data collection can also employ focus groups, telephone interviews, and subjects written statements, though the last may facilitate responses that are reflective and cerebral rather than experiential. One of my two interviews is, in fact, a phone interview and, later, in this paper, I will be looking at the other interviewees literature review in terms like those applicable to my own, as discussed above, in an attempt to understand the mindset beneath the material.

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The gist of Appendix I, which lays out the steps of phenomenological interview analysis, is this: using standard word processing software, I broke the interview transcripts down into meaning units (MUs) (i.e., points at which the interviewees attention went to another topic, typically within the space of a half-sentence to maybe two or three sentences); restated those MUs into generally more concise terms; transformed the restatements into more psychologically oriented language, sometimes taking a risk of imaginatively varying the terms into other terms that seemed like they might more fully express what the interviewee was saying; arranged the transformed MUs under topic headings; showed the resulting topical presentation (with its imaginative variations) to the interviewees; and revised the presentation in response to their reactions. Actually, I gave the interviewees all of the documents that I had generated in the process, so that they could trace the roots of any statement that I had made and could point out exactly where I had gone wrong. All of this combined to provide what is, I believe, a suitable audit trail (cf. Worthen, 2002). Appendix II provides an especially interesting example of the progress of some material through this process. With only two interviews, I didnt have the luxury of implementing step 6 (Appendix I) fully. That is, I couldnt focus on common points among all interviews and discard points that

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seemed to be specific to one interviewee. The interviewees were different enough, in experience and worldview, that it made more sense to draw interesting points from both of them. For the same reason, in this particular research it seemed important not to follow through with step 7, which entails working up a phenomenological general description of the phenomenon, based upon the common points of all interviews. Far from generalizing about the culture of the ExEd leader, I found that I wanted to draw from the most interesting aspects of each interviewees experiences. Hence, the most intriguing stage, for me, came in the transformation, when I was imaginatively varying their words into my own terms. This thoughtful, time-consuming process revealed several instances when I felt that the interviewees experiences and feelings were very like my own. Accordingly, I cooked up my own step 6. It is still an extraction of essential statements, but what makes them essential is not that they are crucial to understanding the external phenomenon of being an ExEd leader; rather, they are essential to my current-moment situation vis--vis ExEd leadership. For this reason, although I did invite interviewees reactions to my transformations, what I really cared about was what I had made of their words, not what they meant by them. The question at hand was, What do my reactions to the interviewees statements say about the Ray <=> ExEd progression? What I found, in this process of reviewing and responding to the high points of the interviews, was that there were two categories of situations. There were things that I found engaging or recoiled from, and then there were things to which I was indifferent. I became more aware of these variations during the process of the transformation in particular. It is probably just as well that I went through those multiple steps, rather than doing the seemingly more efficient thing of picking the interviewees brain right on the spot in a more directive and interrogative fashion. I had strong reactions in some instances. I wouldnt want to deter the

Experiential Education person from speaking freely. Really, if time permits, it is probably better to do it the way I did, going through a couple of cycles of thinking about and refining what the interviewee said.

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Phenomenology is just about capturing the persons lived experience. My revised step 6 goes beyond that, to identify and respond as just described. Because that is not pure phenomenology, I end this discussion of the phenomenological approach with a handshake and a wave and a hearty, See you in the next paragraph! Autoethnographic Exploration of ExEd Scholarship Capturing a persons lived experience is fine, as far as it goes. But I am trying to figure out how to make a decision here. I need to translate that persons experience into terms that matter in my life. For this purpose, I cant make practical use of Schwandts (1998) statement that what is real is a construction in the minds of individuals, that [t]ruth is a matter of the best-informed and most sophisticated construction on which there is consensus at a given time (p. 243, summarizing Guba & Lincoln, 1989). Consensus does not put that bear outside your tent at midnight. My dim recollection of undergraduate philosophy courses tells me that philosophers have been batting this around, in the form of realism versus (philosophical, not moral) idealism, since the days of Aristotle. I will just point out that it does not work to claim that this constructivism is a statement about the form and nature of [objective] reality (Guba & Lincoln, 1998, p. 201); it would be, if true, merely a statement about a constructed reality in ones own mind. What appears plausible is not that [r]eality is continually under construction (Holstein & Gubrium, 2004, p. 149); it is, more mildly framed, that many aspects of perceived reality are variantly susceptible of revision. The views and thoughts of the interviews participants may indeed be constantly developing (p. 150), but not always in important ways. Thus, I am

Experiential Education inclined toward the principles of an ethnographic ethic suggested by Altheide and Johnson (1994), particularly their analytic realism, which they liken to Hammersleys (1992, p. 52)

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subtle realism, as distinct from both nave realism and relativism. They reject the dichotomy of realism/idealism, and other conceptual dualisms, as being incompatible with the nature of lived experience (p. 489). My own preferences notwithstanding, there is a genuine question as to who should make such decisions. You are not necessarily falsifying if you provide your results in terms that your audience can understand and use. From the perspective of Hackleys (2003) text on consumer research, for example, navete might reside, not in a criterion of scientific detachment (p. 128) that the texts market might demand and that the likes of Hackley may achieve to some relative extent but rather in some academicians rigid insistence to the contrary. Reliable absolutes are hard to come by. As became clear in Clairs (2003) words about Spanish conquerors, objectivist work (whether quantitative or otherwise) can state the case for an oppressed group quite well. Moreover, as Fine (1998) shows, reflexivity is no guarantee that the researcher will, or can, avoid treating such a group as an Other. Between objectivism and relativism, Lvi-Strausss (1962) bricoleur is not famed for scrupulous attention to orthodoxy in either direction. In other words, the interviewees and I may have constructed a shared reality during our conversations. But I carry on with that process afterwards, on my own, in directions on which there is no possibility of consensus until I describe them. Step 6 in my modified phenomenological process leaves me sincerely departing from their lived experience to express my own reactions to the concept of outdoor leadership. What I expressed at length, in that step, has to do with my own thoughts about the outdoors, free from indeed, often opposed to their views.

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I cannot express all of the areas of agreement or opposition here. Step 6 lays them out at length. The overarching theme that came to me, however, was one of dissent. Both S1 and S2 are positive individuals whom I selected as epitomizing some great aspects of ExEd leadership. I believe in the importance of the positive. I can learn much from people like my interviewees. But I also search for the contrary, the distinction. I am interested in the study of ExEd leader anxiety by Bunyan and Boniface (2000); I am interested in the challenge to fundamental ExEd leader assumptions posed by Wolfe and Samdahl (2005); and when Berman and Dene-Berman (2005) propose positive psychology as a model for ExEd, I immediately cite Helds (2002) piece on the tyranny of the positive attitude in America. This is, I believe, adaptive behavior (cf. Norem & Chang, 2002). As my poor S2 interviewee noted, the experience of being an excited, upbeat ExEd field leader sometimes does not seem to have much to do with the grinding experience of being an ExEd graduate student, steeped in theory and redolent of acadeeem. As I consider her perspective, then, I ask: what message does this place wish to convey to my planet? Specifically, what can I learn from the literature reviews that she and I prepared for the same class? Well, I am stunned to see that Clair (2003) has sections on personal narratives as expressions of ethnography, short stories as expressions of ethnography, novels as expressions of ethnography but not a word on ExEd literature reviews as expressions of ethnography. As another surprise, Fetterman (1998) suggests that written documents, properly used, can save the ethnographer years of work (p. 59). I think they actually create years of work. You have a document. What is its significance? Nobody asked until you created it. As Prior (2004) puts it, statistics may not be a mirror on the world so much as a source of the question of the ways in

Experiential Education which they are assembled and produced (p. 325). Therein lies the task through which, according to Marshall and Rossman (1995), document review can provide useful triangulation.

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I decided the main thing was to look at my classmates paper, so as to find fault with it. I am almost serious. After the interviews, which impressed me with my colleagues ExEd leadership experience, I was feeling highly Ray < ExEd, and it seemed like I needed to right the scales by justifying myself. I was not sure whether the result would be Ray = ExEd (i.e., I fit) or Ray > ExEd (I think they should be more like me). But with this preoccupation on my mind, I turned to the question of how my classmates literature review differed from mine, and why I hadnt written one like hers. Technically, I decided to conduct this examination by putting our papers into Adobe PDF format and marking up the PDFs using Acrobat. That examination left me uncertain about the boundaries of autoethnography and the Ray = ExEd relationship. Duncan (2004), above, could certainly talk about herself as hypermedia designer; she was hip-deep in that subject, at a time when few were. But I havent even spent one year not even one month as a wilderness leader like S2. Do I count as part of her culture just by reading about it, having a few exposures to trips like the ones she has led, working at a ropes course, hanging out with people like her, attending relevant classes, and doing my own solo or pair wilderness trips? It sure didnt feel that way, after our interview. Nor am I sure who should make the identification decision. Insiders might expect a lot of me before accepting my qualifications to speak for them; outsiders might learn valuable things even (or should I say especially) from my moderately involved perspective. I reviewed S2s literature review, and got partway through my own, before I came up against a question that has bothered me for some time now. I am a doctoral student in leisure studies. It is like being a doctoral student in the study of humor. You have all these serious,

Experiential Education stressful assignments and expectations really, the structure of a whole academic discipline that has precious little to do with either humor or leisure. It is as if someone set up a religion studies program and then said, Alright, lets see how nasty and uninspiring we can make this. Its not that I couldnt drag the outdoors, kicking and screaming, into this program.

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There are experiential courses and internships. But theres no hiding the fact that the heart of the Ph.D. program is not intrinsically, inescapably experiential. You could definitely pass these years by staying indoors the whole time. I suppose you could have a humor studies program whose best students would be absolutely humorless. But I am not sure you would want to bring your best comedians in and make them study this stuff in order to become better comedians. I would almost think that a comedian who got a masters degree in humor would be someone who, like me, has moved beyond the practice of the art (regardless of his/her aptitude for that art per se) and is now in a very different world of studying the history of humor, or its management, or something like that. The people who study humor or leisure may better be employed as planners or researchers or marketers as people who will create the conditions in which the artists will function optimally but not as practitioners of the art themselves. That is, indeed, what our professors have said. You dont need a masters degree, much less a Ph.D., to lead groups in the wilderness. Were not training for that. Or if you need a masters, what you need is one in counseling or therapeutic recreation, but not in outdoor leadership. Therefore, when S2 came into this graduate program in which our paths crossed, I believe the best description is that she joined me in her version of a Ray > ExEd status; that is, I believe we are both prepared to move beyond mere field leadership. Her > status is based upon great experience in the field, but that is not the only way. Mine derives from extensive exposure to

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relevant concepts, limited field exposure to ExEd per se, and a sense that (as S1 seemed to feel) the practice of debriefing an experience, although key, is not presently, reliably producing the kinds of insights or results that one would expect from its descriptions in the ExEd literature. Both S2 and I were looking beyond field experience when we entered graduate school. But she was looking for things from beyond that she could take back to the field as she knows it, albeit in a partly managerial or other capacity one step removed, while I am looking beyond ExEd practice for a kind of endeavor that rings truer to me. Whether I will practice it, teach it, or research it, I do not presently know. I guess it depends on what it turns out to be. It would be one thing to do autoethnography of a law school or medical school experience, where scads of people proceed through a relatively cookie-cutter process. But a Ph.D. program in any field is highly individualized. I am viewing this paper as a tool in the process of defining that individualized program for me. But what is the ethnos with respect to which I am assembling this auto-graphia? I would like to say I am a member of a culture of persons who seek insight, for themselves and for others, in the realm of the therapeutic benefits of human exposure to nature, and particularly to those forms of nature that lie within noticeably different parts of the space-time continuum from that occupied by modern American life. But I dont know anyone else in this department who has precisely that take on it. Am I in the wrong program? Or would several other doctoral students say similar things about the uniqueness of their own pursuits under this larger ExEd umbrella? Our respective lit reviews certainly had different focuses. As just hinted, mine drew upon literature from outside the field, in a bid to expand my concept of what ExEd is and can be. Hers was more technically oriented toward ExEd as presently conceived. She looked at sources on e.g., diversity and efficacy within ExEd practice. Perfectly valid subjects, all, but different from

Experiential Education mine. Substantively, as if to support my claim to be onto something important, she cites McKenzie (2003) for the proposition that ExEd group participants derived the greatest benefit from the solo (i.e., not the guided or processed) portions of their ExEd experiences. I believe there is one striking difference between my literature review and S2s. Mine

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cites myriad sources, some discovered in previous research, because I am constructing a private ethnos of scholars who happen to have commented, directly or in passing, on matters in which we share at least a momentary interest. S2s community of field leaders who typically spend just a few days or weeks together may seem utterly ephemeral, when compared against the community in which I hope to make my eventual long-term home as a highly paid, tenured professor (humor! applause!); but that intense field comradeship must seem like an eternal gaze when compared to a students glances at areas of knowledge to which s/he may never return. I am just now getting first exposure to disembodied voices that I may be hearing again and again in the coming years, a few of whose possessors I may someday meet. I could write an ethnography of us, but whats the point? The most accurate and complete ethnography of our efforts is, I think, our effort itself, as captured in the full scope of literature, poetry, and private journaling by and about us. On that, no, I am not yet positioned to offer a knowledgeable summary. In other words, S2s literature review reveals things about the culture of ExEd field leaders who come to graduate school in hopes of graduating and going elsewhere, whereas mine is the literature review of a person who hopes to stay right here who is, although less comfortably ensconced than the aforementioned professors, nonetheless situated in roughly the intellectual region in which he hopes to remain. S2s will be an outdoors life, informed by parttime indoors pursuits (e.g., learning, management); mine will be just the opposite, as long as I

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am able to find ways to bring this particular brand of humor studies somewhat closer to the realm of those woodland comedians whose hard work justifies my own. Synthesis My interviewees remind me that the best people in ExEd are not, after all, arrogant about their abilities, or exclusionistic in their social attitudes. They also remind me that ExEd, as practiced here, is very much a matter of largely city-oriented, largely college-educated, largely white people taking their own kind out into the wilderness for brief periods of time, during which some of the most important benefits arise from mere exposure to nature, to solitude, and to simple exercise, as in hiking or rowing. Their comments about their concept of community remind me of my own Outward Bound experience with a dozen people who became, for a week, my best friends. There is that experience of being driven, willingly, into near-kinship with fellow travelers in the wilderness. Sadly, my newfound friends from Outward Bound melted back into America almost as rapidly as they had assembled; our budding friendships swiftly lapsed into desuetude. I believe community can, and must, be far more than that and that it calls for concepts of nature and wilderness that come into the neighborhood, rather than lying out yonder. For instance, during the semester in which I undertook this research, I also came across literature from the field of environmental education, such as the work in which Haluza-Delay (2001) finds that participants in outdoor trips in exotic locations may unfortunately conclude that nature does not exist in their own neighborhoods (even in e.g., a familiar 550-acre nature center) that, among other things, there is no nature worth protecting back home. My phenomenological data analysis took me through a project of wringing shades of meaning out of my interviewees statements, and reponding to those statements as evocative of

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ExEd perspectives I had encountered previously. My comparison of literature reviews provided a mildly stunning contrast in perspectives, between the culture of the outdoor leader who comes to graduate school (e.g., S2) and the graduate student who studies the outdoors (e.g., me). From these results, I conclude (without much surprise) that there is the potential for multiple lived experiences, and for the manifestations of such, within a given relationship, such that Self <=> Other analysis is most likely to provide clear information where one can explicate and substantially narrow down the characteristics of that Other. I guess I was not in a rush to do that. In the present research, the primary benefit of the analysis undertaken is (of course) not so much that it has facilitated a decision, as that it has ameliorated anxiety about the lack thereof. I still do not know exactly what ExEd is or can become, or who its most effective or interesting practitioners are or will be. I find myself considerably more encouraged, however, in the belief that I have standing among persons who scrutinize the goals and concepts underlying ExEd, and that, as such, I occupy a position no less valid than that of the skilled wilderness leader. I regret that time and space do not permit a fuller exploration of the material already uncovered, and of other material to boot; but I believe this effort will have had the beneficial effect of stimulating further thought, narrowing down the scope of feasible indecision despite all odds.

Experiential Education Appendix I Phenomenological Data Analysis Procedure Polkinghorne (1989, pp. 51-55) indicates that van Kaam (1969), Giorgi (1975), and Colaizzi (1978) devised procedures for analyzing phenomenological research data. Moustakas (1994, p. 120) states that his procedure is a modification of van Kaams. Giorgi (1985a) also

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provides a description of his procedure. Except as otherwise indicated, the following paragraphs rely upon these various sources, synthesizing them into a novel set of procedures that incorporate the strengths of these several authorities. The description, below, adds clarifying comments at points of difficulty or obscurity, so as to yield a set of steps that will guide the present research. Incorporated within the following descriptions, the reader will find comments regarding the ways in which these various steps contribute to the trustworthiness of the research. (1) Transcription and Reading. First, the researcher reads the entire transcript or other description of the experience, in order to get a sense of the whole. This may require more than one reading, especially when the description is long and complex. (2) Identification of Meaning Units. The researcher then reads the transcript again, looking specifically for units of psychological meaning relevant to the topic under study. A distinct meaning unit arises whenever the subject makes a statement about the topic that is distinguishable from what the subject has said before, such as a change in subject matter or a change in the activities being described. An example of meaning change arises where the subject switches from thinking about his own feelings about a gift that he is giving to his son, to a recognition of the sons excitement about it. Meaning units vary in length, but typically consist of at least two or three sentences. The researcher must approach the material from a psychological orientation, and should mark each psychologically sensitive change in meaning,

Experiential Education for the subject, within the situation that s/he is describing. These marks go directly onto a copy of the transcript. Approaching the material from a psychological orientation means assuming that psychological reality is not pre-existing in the world, but is rather constituted by the psychologist. Phenomenologically, the meaning units do not exist in the text per se; they exist only in relation to the researchers perspective. The same raw material might equally well

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support a sociological or anthropological analysis; and even within psychology, it might equally well support an examination of perceptions or, instead, of emotions. Ideally, there would be several judges who would reach consensus upon the division of the description into meaning units; but in any case, the emphasis here is on developing a system for discovery rather than verification. (3) Restatement of Meaning Units. For each meaning unit, the researcher writes out a complete restatement of the subjects words, with a preference for the anonymous third person, using simple language where possible, but always retaining the subjects meaning. Example: John looked at me. I could tell from the look on his face that he was confused. He had no idea what I was talking about could become Son looked at S[ubject]. S saw confusion in his sons face. Son did not know what S was talking about. Each restated meaning unit is written in a separate paragraph, so as to clarify where one ends and the next begins. Material that is not part of a distinct meaning unit (e.g., vague, redundant, verbose, plainly extraneous) need not be restated. For example, unless the study entails some special reason to distinguish the two statements, I feel a hundred pounds lighter and I have a load off my chest may be summarized as, S feels relieved. (4) Transformation of Meaning Units. The researcher transforms each restated meaning unit into language that is focused upon mental phenomena and that is relevant to the research.

Experiential Education Again, wording can be condensed, as long as no significant meaning is lost. Example: in researching what it feels like to communicate with ones child, the researcher could transform Son looked at S. S saw confusion in his sons face. Son did not know what S was talking about into S felt that his sons face showed confusion caused by Ss statement. To

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accomplish this transformation, the researcher reflects upon the wording of the restated meaning unit (paragraph 3, above) the researcher goes through it to find what it is really saying. (It can be helpful to present this transformation in a second column on the same sheet of paper, next to the column produced by the restatement.) The researcher imaginatively varies that wording to bring out psychologically oriented features pertinent to the phenomenon being investigated by adding a reference to what S felt, in the foregoing example. My own variation is to substitute the first- or second-person singular to put it in terms of more intense statements of what I or you feel. I have also tended to be creative in my transformation of the previous material; I have aggressively sought to tease out possible meanings, knowing that my interviewees would be reviewing my handiwork. The researcher then rejects those variations that cannot stand up to criticism that leave out something important, for example, or that distort the subjects statements, or that incorporate non-phenomenological language (e.g., logic, justification). This step aims to set up themes (e.g., feelings, perceptions, intentions) that can help the nave description to evolve into a more psychologically useful form. As with other steps, if done properly, this step also underscores the validity of the results where, for example, the researcher provides explanations or results that make the selected variations seem superior to other possible variations.] (5) Case-Specific Description of Psychological Phenomenon. Having transformed individual meaning units into psychological language, the researcher now reassembles them all

Experiential Education back into one coherent description of the subjects psychological experience. The result should follow the tale told in the original description, but in more condensed and psychologically oriented terms. In addition to verifying that him/herself, the researcher may show the result to the subject and ask, How does my description compare with the experience you had? and Have I left anything out? Instead, or in addition, the researcher may submit either the transformed meaning units or this case-specific description to an independent third party for comparison against the subjects original statements, as another check upon the integrity of the

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transformation process. If any of these measures indicate that valuable meaning units have been omitted or garbled, the researcher makes adjustments to both the transformed meaning units (paragraph 4, above) and the case-specific description to eliminate all such errors. (6) Extraction of Essential Statements. The foregoing steps are repeated with other case descriptions, resulting in a set of verified case-specific descriptions. The researcher then returns to the transformed meaning units, for each of these case-specific descriptions, and summarizes those meaning units in brief phrases. For instance, in research oriented toward what it feels like to communicate with ones child, the researcher could summarize S felt that his sons face showed confusion caused by Ss statement as Feeling that parents statement confuses child. The purpose of this step is to identify those meaning units that appear in multiple cases, as distinct from those that appear to arise only in a limited number of cases and are therefore probably not essential aspects of the experience being studied. Ideally, the researcher will have captured a set of essential aspects sufficiently comprehensive to accommodate new instances. If, for example, a researcher identifies a half-dozen essential traits of some phenomenon, and then discovers that those are the very traits found in other persons experiences of that phenomenon, the researcher might reasonably assert some generalizability for his/her study.

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(Alternate step 6, used in this research: (6) Extraction of Provocative Material. Combine transformed meaning units from all interviews. Delete material that is not especially provocative (i.e., to which you have no strong positive or negative reaction) for purposes of the inquiry at hand. Annotate the remaining material: explain why it is provocative and what influenced the phrasing of the particular transformation, and otherwise elaborate upon its seeming significance for the project.) (7) Phenomenological General Description (also known as Synthesis or Eidetic Reduction) (not used in this research). Drawing from the essential statements, the final description departs from the specifics of individual cases as much as possible, in order to state the general meaning of the phenomenon. But this statement of generality should still be amenable to review in light of the subjects original statements, to see whether it bears a defensible relationship to them. Also, the final, general description should not exceed the scope of the accumulated knowledge. For example, in the rare case where there would be only one subject (which is most likely to occur where there is something unusual or special about that subject), it would be unlikely that the results of the study could be defensibly stated in terms of broad applicability. Having many subjects increases the number of variations and highlights the points that remain common to all, thus simplifying the process of identifying essential aspects of the phenomenon. Giorgi (1985b) provides the following example of a general description that resulted from a phenomenological study of learning: Learning is the acquisition of knowledge concerning, and the actual execution of, as well as the belief in ones ability to execute on ones own, on demand, a progressive steplike procedure which initially involved the clarification

Experiential Education through the mediation of others, of ambiguously lived-through moments on account of lack of knowledge or wrongly posited assumptions. (p. 56). Polkinghorne (1989) suggests that the researcher engages in imaginative variation again at this stage, testing the final general description against the transformed meanings to see what

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variations they will support. The result, he says, is that other researchers will agree that the final description is a possible description of the phenomena (p. 56). This approach surely can generate additional philosophical insights. It appears, however, to go beyond the approaches recommended by the several authorities whom he had been summarizing; it seems to discount a conclusion that, by the foregoing procedure, was eminently and specifically supported by the data examined.

Appendix II Phenomenological Data Analysis Example Step 1. Transcript. [Presenting the bulk of S2s reply, although only a fragment is extracted in the single meaning unit shown below.] R: Whats the best part of, uh, when youre teaching, like, what, when, when does it really

work? You know, whats that, whats that feel like, whats what does it what kind of experience is that? You know, do you just describe it for me, like, teaching, the way you do it. S2: [Material deleted.] I used to teach fifth-graders at Bradford Woods, like, fifth, sixth, and

seventh graders, their outdoor education, and, uh, when you work, like when it really works out well, was when I have my plan, and then, say that we have three hours, and we need to do five activities, like, five things that are going to teach whatever, that I know were going to get those five things done, but theres something different about the day. You know, maybe its a really

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sunny day, or maybe its pouring all day long, or, you know, just something uncontrollable about that fact, and somehow, through all the activities, we have extra time. And the kids are actually following, and theyre actually listening, and theyre getting things, and theyre pointing out things on their own, so theyre engaged, so somehow Ive helped set up an environment where theyre actually engaged and interested in what were doing, like, really interested, not just like, Oh, yeah, Im going to fill out my workbook, and stuff like that, but I dont know. Like, wed all be moving down the trail and theyd be pointing out things here and there and asking questions, and wed be singing songs, and wed have time to go play games like camouflage, and stuff like that. Its a game where you, uh, its almost like hide and go seek, except that you have to have a body part showing, so youre camouflaged, and its really fun, cause you get to run in the woods, and then theres just the element of discovery. [Material deleted.] [A]nd you just feel like a kid again, you know, you feel like youre part of a group in that sense, and youre having fun right along with them, and its just a very non-stressful feeling, like, I would take a hundred groups like that. Its really fun. Like, its, it just makes everything worthwhile. Um

Step 3. Meaning Units Restated. In an exceptional leadership experience, S2 segues from speaking as an instructor, where she is concerned with having created an engaging learning environment, to speaking as a participant, where they are asking questions of the knowledgeable instructor, but we have time to sing songs and play games. [Process note [preserved in Step 3 and presented again here for illustrative purposes]: I think my own slippage back and forth, between observer and phenomenological language [i.e., language of the actual lived experience, in which the foregoing might have been rendered as in Step 5, below], derives not just from the mix of phenomenology and ethnography, but also in what is, I think, a related matter from the sense that what S2 says is obvious or familiar to me in one

Experiential Education case, but remarkable or otherwise worth observing in another. I dont think its a function of what she is saying, but rather of how I am reacting to it.]

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Step 5. Case Description. Second Pass. When I visualize an exceptional learning environment, with all the pieces in place for the kids to really get into it and get excited, I slip from talking as an instructor to talking as a participant from what they are doing to what we are doing.

Step 6. Extraction of Provocative Material. [Repeat and then comment upon the preceding paragraph, as follows:] Thats the missing thing. The camaraderie is there in tiny bits, like S1s comment about how she felt that there was camaraderie because these group leaders would say hello to one another when they met on the trail. Thats pathetic. Now, if you told me that they sit down and made a feast and exchanged photos from back home, I would think you were on to something. What I think about ExEd leaders is that, in some cases, these people are out in the wilderness because they are not comfortable being around people much. Their primitive sense of community may be far better than that which a lot of people enjoy back in civilization. But its still a sad remnant of what community could and should be.

Experiential Education References

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