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International Journal of Nursing Studies 42 (2005) 695704 www.elsevier.com/locate/ijnurstu

Knowing and doing phenomenology: The implications of the critique of nursing phenomenology for a phenomenological inquiry: A discussion paper
Martin S. McNamara
School of Nursing & Midwifery, University College Dublin, Beleld, Dublin 4, Ireland Received 1 December 2004; received in revised form 19 January 2005; accepted 8 February 2005

Abstract Phenomenological research in nursing has come under sustained attack in recent years with some nurse researchers accused of betraying the fundamental tenets of phenomenology and of misconstruing its key concepts. This paper aims to show how a study informed by the critique of nursing phenomenology was designed and conducted. In particular, the implications of the key phenomenological concepts of intentionality and bracketing for data collection, data analysis and the presentation of ndings are explored in relation to an investigation of the concept of the Clinical Placement Coordinator (CPC), an innovative student support role in Irish nursing education. The paper shows how an understanding of the key phenomenological notions of bracketing and intentionality, and careful consideration of their implications for research design and conduct, can enrich nursing research by retaining the objectivity and critique central to the phenomenological method. The illumination and clarication of contested and complex concepts can be achieved by encouraging both researcher and co-researchers to get back to the things themselves by taking a fresh unprejudiced look at the necessary and sufcient elements of phenomena of interest to nursing as they appear to those who experience them. r 2005 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Keywords: Nursing phenomenology; Intentionality; Bracketing; Clinical placement coordinator; Ireland

1. Introduction Michael Crottys book, Phenomenology and Nursing Research, published in 1996, took nurse researchers to task for misinterpreting and misusing the methodology and methods of phenomenology (Barkway, 2001). Since then phenomenological nursing research has been the target of sustained criticism for, inter alia: detaching key philosophical notions from phenomenological methodology (Yegdich, 2000); misunderstanding the key
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concepts of Husserlian phenomenology, resulting in an incoherent research programme centred on gathering subjects na ve accounts of phenomena (Paley, 1997; Yegdich, 2000); and misinterpreting Heideggers notion of being-in-the-world to create a genre of lived experience research in which individuals subjective accounts of the external world are treated as sacrosanct while questions of their correspondence with an underlying reality are disregarded (Paley 1998). In short, nurse researchers stand accused of having done phenomenology without knowing phenomenology (Porter, 1998, p. 18). Crotty (1996) offers a method for those wishing to avoid the reverse error of knowing

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phenomenology without doing phenomenology (Yegdich, 2000, p. 31). Caelli (2001) expresses surprise at the general lack of literature providing concrete advice for addressing the technical aspects of conducting a phenomenological study, while Darbyshire et al. (1999) note the absence of studies based on Crottys specic approach and speculate about what they might look like. This paper explores how the critique of phenomenological nursing research was used to inform a research project, the aim of which was to illuminate the necessary and sufcient elements of the role of the Clinical Placement Coordinator (CPC), an innovative student support role in Irish nursing education. The account focuses in particular on the implications of a sound understanding of the notions of bracketing and intentionality for the research process.

study is informed by recent critiques of phenomenological research in nursing and, in particular, teases out the implications of the key phenomenological concepts of bracketing and intentionality for the design and conduct of phenomenological inquiry.

3. Delineating the research focus The aim of this study was to illuminate the phenomenon of the CPC as revealed in and through the experiences of CPCs themselves; it was not to explore CPCs lived experiences as such. First-person accounts of how phenomena manifest to experiencing subjects are of interest for what they tell us about what is experienced. Subjects must be led back to their accounts again and again, all the time interrogating them to see what they reveal about the sine qua non, the essential elements that make a phenomenon unique and distinctive. The aim is to render clear, explicit and complete (Paley, 1997, p. 190) those features of the phenomenon that have been taken-for-granted and embedded in everyday practice without resort to theoretical concepts whose meanings are ambiguous, contested and serve only to conceal what is of the essence. The research question was: what are the necessary and sufcient elements of the CPC role?

2. The clinical placement coordinator CPCs were introduced to Irish nursing education on a temporary and phased basis from 1994 in order to provide support to nursing students on clinical placement. The rst CPCs attempted to forge a unique role without role models or international precedent (Drennan, 2002). Conceptual confusion continues to surround the role and poses particular challenges for CPCs as they endeavour to develop their student support function in the context of the recent introduction of the Bachelor of Science (Nursing) degree as the sole route of entry to practice and the consequent full integration of Irish nursing education into the higher education sector. The uncertainty and conict arising from the plethora of models of clinical support and supervision is a recurring theme in the literature on the facilitation of nursing students clinical learning. Hyrkas et al. (1999) believe that conceptual vagueness and theoretical ambiguity have hampered research into the effectiveness of clinical learning support. Morton-Cooper and Palmer (2000) agree that semantic confusion has stied meaningful debate on the most appropriate models of support and has led to the coining of ever more colourful titles for those who support nursing students. Wilson-Barnett et al. (1995) recommend that fewer, more explicit titles and roles for those involved in providing support should be agreed. (p. 1157). Barlow (1991) believes that this terminological tangle confuses job titles with the processes, purposes and activities of student support roles and results in unchallenged and taken-for-granted assumptions with little contemplation of the core elements of the phenomenon per se (Hagerty, 1986). This study subjects the CPC role to the contemplation inherent in the phenomenological method in order to illuminate its necessary and sufcient elements. In striving to access the essential elements of the role through a process of phenomenological description, the

4. The phenomenological method Moran (2002) describes phenomenology as a way of seeing, the unprejudiced, descriptive study of whatever appears to consciousness, precisely in the manner in which it so appears (p. 1). Phenomenology endeavours to take a fresh look at phenomena uncontaminated by a priori common sense or scientic impositions. The aim is to capture the richness of a phenomenon as it manifests to the subject who experiences it (Moran, 2000, 2002). At the heart of the phenomenological approach is a critique of the subject-object split of scientic naturalism. Phenomenology is critical of objectivism because it holds that the notion of meaning independent of mind or being is inconceivable: meaning cannot inhere in an object independently of any subject. Phenomenology thus dissolves the Cartesian distinction between subject and object and constitutes an outright rejection of Cartesian dualism (Crotty, 1996; Paley, 1998). Moran (2000, p. 15) insists that the notion that there can only ever be objectivity-for-subjectivity does not warrant a wallowing in the subjective domain purely for its own sake. However, it is precisely such a wallowing in subjectivity of which nurse researchers are accused (Crotty, 1996, 1998; Paley, 1997, 1998). Crotty argues that nursing phenomenology (Crotty, 1996, p. 32) is obsessed with gathering the subjective

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meanings attached to the everyday, lived experience of individuals. It thus fundamentally misinterprets the phenomenological imperative to capture and describe in all its richness the objective phenomenon as it emerges at the heart of subjectivity (Moran, 2002, p. 5) for each individual untainted by presuppositions: What has emerged here under the rubric of phenomenology is a quite single-minded effort to identify, understand, describe and maintain the subjective experiences of the respondents. It is self-professedly subjectivist in approach y and expressly uncritical. (Crotty 1998, p. 83[italics in original]) Paley (1998) agrees that the lived experience research programme in nursing is characterized by a narrow band of subjectivity which is immune to external correction [and] alternative ways of construing (p. 822). He argues that nursing phenomenology sunders the indissoluble union between the subjective and objective domains, privileging subjective experience while ignoring the object that manifests to the subject: object here refers to things in the external world, facts, concepts y images, essences, anything (Paley 1997, p. 190). Nursing phenomenology thus disrupts the radical interrelatedness of subject and object, and of mind and world (Moran, 2002). Nurse researchers unsettle Husserls noetic-noematic correlation (Moran, 2002, p. 5) by misconstruing the fundamental interdependence between that which appears and is experienced (noema) and the mental apparatus of the experiencing, meaningconstituting subject (noesis) to which it appears. In addition, they fracture Heideggers peculiar union between being and the world (Paley, 1998) introducing a new Cartesian split between experience and reality, concerning themselves only with the individuals own mental picture of an externality with which the researcher does not have to concern herself (Paley, 1998, p. 823). Nursing phenomenology fails to get behind the mundane and banal which throw a veil over the objects of pre-reective experience. Nursing research is impoverished because it lacks both the note of objectivity and the exercise in critique (Crotty, 1998, pp. 8283) that should characterize phenomenological inquiry. Rather than generating a list of themes that subsume commonalities, shared, culture-bound meanings (Crotty, 1996, p. 84) must be set aside in order to analyse the objects of immediate experience to which they are attached. Instead, many nurse researchers appear to engage in a faithful exploration, via personal experiences, of prevailing cultural understandings (Crotty, 1998, p. 83).

4.1. Excluding the natural attitude: bracketing and the phenomenological reduction The natural attitude is our normal engaged, absorbed attitude that conceals the extraordinary in the ordinary; the strange in the commonplace; the hidden in the obvious. For Moran (2002, p. 15) it is a complex constellation of attitudes, attitudes which underlie our sense of a world itself and which mask the fundamental correlation between consciousness and its object. The phenomenological attitude, in contrast, requires a change of orientation, a detachment or disengagement from everyday understandings (Moran, 2002, p. 5). This is the phenomenological reduction and is achieved through bracketing. Bracketing involves staying away or abstaining from and refers to the setting aside of preconceived notions and biases about phenomena (Moustakas, 1994; Holloway, 1997; Creswell, 1998). Things cannot be truly known in advance, from an external frame of reference; rather they must come to be known through internal reection. Bracketing provides an original vantage point, a clearing of mind, space and time, a holding in abeyance of whatever colours the experience or directs us (Moustakas, 1994, p. 86). Bracketing thus entails abandoning the culturally and socially derived understandings with which we operate in the natural attitude and which mask what is of the essence. It requires a purication of consciousness from unexamined assumptions (Holloway, 1997). Crucially, bracketing is always a rst person, reexive process involving a turn from a na ve understanding of the object to the object itself, understood intuitively as it presents to consciousness in an original and direct fashion. Paley (1997) is clear that the phenomenological reduction is a solo effort and must be performed alone. I carry it out, qua philosopher, but also qua solipsist. (Paley, 1997, p. 191). Crotty (1996, 1998) agrees that phenomena must be intuited and grasped, and then described, by the subject, not by the researcher: The phenomenology of the phenomenological movement is a rst-person exercise. Each of us must explore our own experience, not the experience of others, for no one can take that step back to the things themselves on our behalf. (Crotty, 1998, p. 82) Paley (1997) believes that nurse researchers often misunderstand the concept of the phenomenological reduction, resulting in a quest that is both incoherent and unintelligible. Although there is reference to attempts to suspend the preconceptions of the researcher, no mention is made of the subjects na ve assumptions. Indeed, the focus appears to be on exploring these as faithfully as possible. This fundamental

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misconception of the notion of bracketing means that, rather than bracketing the natural attitude, nurse phenomenologists typically bracket in the natural attitude in order to remain faithful to their subjects experiences, not to the phenomena or the things themselves (Yegdich, 2000, p. 32). Yegdich (2000) accuses nurse researchers of erroneously treating phenomena as if they were synonymous with subjective experiences and of restricting inquiry to their respondents prejudices, not to investigating the essence of the phenomenon under study (Yegdich, 2000, p. 33). However, as Crotty insists: Phenomenology is about saying No! to the meaning system bequeathed to usyFar from inviting us to explore our everyday meanings as they stand, it calls upon us to put them in abeyance and open ourselves to the phenomena in their stark immediacy to see what emerges for us. (Crotty, 1998, p. 82)

5. Research design This critique challenges nurse researchers to design projects that respect rather than betray the fundamental tenets of the phenomenological method. The key concepts of bracketing and intentionality have important implications for the selection of participants, for methods of data collection and analysis as well as for the nature of the research outcomes and the manner in which they are represented. 5.1. Selection of apt co-researchers Crotty (1996) points out that it is simply not possible to collect others peoples accounts of their experiences and then strip away everyday interpretations to access the phenomenon as it reveals itself to them, rather: People must do that for themselvesyEach person involved must engage in phenomenological seeing in relation to her or his own experience. (Crotty, 1996, p. 171)

4.2. Intentionality Intentionality means referentiality, relatedness or directedness and refers to the notion of the human mind reaching out and into the objects of which it is conscious (Crotty, 1996, p. 38). It expresses the radical interdependence of subject and object and the idea that human consciousness is always consciousness of something and is therefore, essentially related to objects. For Yegdich (2000) intentionality, in eliminating the subject-object divide y encapsulates Husserls radical departure from positivistic assumptions of objectication (p. 31). For Crotty (1996) nursing phenomenology is irredeemably subjective and is not based on the bringing together of objectivity and subjectivity as expressed in the notion of intentionality. From an existentialist viewpoint, intentionality refers to the manner in which consciousness comes into direct contact with the world and with being (Moran, 2000, p. 17). The radical interdependence of subject and world is captured in the notion of human beings as beings-in-theworld, always directed and open to their world. In this view, experience cannot be stripped off world (Paley, 1998, p. 823) as the lived experience research programme in nursing has done. Crotty (1996) is also clear on this point: experiences cannot be understood to constitute a separate sphere of reality which is subjective and stands in contrast to an objective realm of the external world y such a dichotomy between the subjective and the objective is untenable. (Crotty, 1996, p. 40) Phenomenological seeing is, as Crotty emphasizes, no easy task; it is difcult, laborious and exacting: the researcher must purposively select people who are equal to it. Research participants must be genuine coresearchers, inquiring into their own experiences of the phenomenon to elucidate its essential elements. These co-researchers must be hardy creatures, willing to challenge, and to be challenged about, their own takenfor-granted assumptions and understandings. The researcher acts as midwife to her co-researchers as they labour to cast received notions aside in order to look at the phenomenon anew. Yegdich (2000, p. 33) notes that this is a role not typically assumed by nurse phenomenologists: respondents are not assisted in bracketing their views; indeed these are actively sought and, in the nest humanistic tradition, accepted without question. As should now be clear the unchallenged subjective reports of uncritical respondents are indubitably not the stuff of phenomenology. 5.2. Access and ethical considerations As part of the process of obtaining their informed consent to participate, it is important that co-researchers are made aware of the demands of the phenomenological method and the challenges it will pose for them. As incumbents of an innovative and still-evolving role, CPCs were in several respects an ideal group for a phenomenological study as they have had to forge a new role in the fast-changing landscape of nursing education in Ireland, in the face, at times, of some hostility and considerable doubt and uncertainty (Drennan, 2002).

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5.3. Data collection: phenomenological questioning Crottys (1996) ve-step method for doing phenomenological research suggests a line of questioning designed to lead co-researchers into the clearings where the essence of the phenomenon may suddenly be illuminated for them (Box 1). The aim is to elicit phenomenological moments in a deliberate and methodical fashion (Crotty, 1996, p. 170) by facilitating the phenomenological reduction whereby co-researchers are

urged to ylook and describe; look again and describe; look again and describe (Moustakas, 1994, p. 90). The researcher constantly probes and challenges, bringing the co-researcher back again and again to a fresh contemplation of the phenomenon, using questions to help her strip away preconceptions and to move from accounts of her experiencing to what is experienced. For this study, in-depth one-to-one interviews with ve CPCs were tape-recorded and transcribed. Examples of some of the questions used are given in Box 2. These

Box 1 Crottys ve-step method of phenomenological data collection.

(Crotty, 1996, pp. 158176) 1. The phenomenon of interest is delineated as precisely as possible. The core questions are: what is the essence of the CPC role?y what does a CPC count as?ywhat is this thing? 2. The phenomenon is considered as precisely as possible. The CPC is taken purely as a phenomenon i.e. as it appears to co-researchers in their very experience of it. The core question is: what is it likeywhat does it strike you as being? 3. Precise description of what comes into view. CPCs are encouraged to say what the role appears to be in their immediate experience of it. They must describe the concept and not themselves. 4. Preservation of the phenomenological character of the description. Does it genuinely stem from their experience of being a CPC rather than from theories or other impositions? 5. Description of the essence of the phenomenon, i.e. the elements or elements in the phenomenon qua phenomenon that make it precisely what it is. How essential are these elements? What if they were taken away?

Box 2 Some questions designed to elicit phenomenological descriptions from co-researchers in the CPC study

 Have there been any specic incidents, events or situations that stand out for you because it made  Describe the role of the CPC as you have experienced it.  What is it about this role that makes you say that?  If the role appears to you to be made up of this or that element, how essential are these elements?  Would you still be a CPC if one or other of these elements were missing?  How do the elements distinguish the role from other, perhaps, similar roles?  To what extent do you think your notion of the role is contaminated by ideas about these other roles  What is it about the CPC role that makes it matter?  How does the role make a difference to students? To the clinical learning environment?  If someone from outside the nursing profession and the health care and education elds generally,  
say a family member, friend or neighbour, asked you what you did for a living, what would you say? How would you describe your job to them? If you had to sum up the role in one phrase or sentence, what would you say? Is this the essence of the CPC role or model as you see it? e.g. those of preceptor y mentor y clinical teacher y nurse tutor y facilitator y coach y? clear to you what your role was all about?

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questions were framed to assist co-researchers to put aside, as far possible, all the ideas, feelings and assumptions that normally came to mind when they contemplated their role. In particular, the aim was to elicit accounts grounded in their everyday, absorbed and concernful (see Paley, 1998, p. 818) world of practice rather than in abstract and contested theoretical constructs deriving from the academic literature on, for example, preceptorship, mentorship and clinical supervision. The aim was for co-researchers to look at their role afresh, as if it were the rst time it had been encountered. The questions were also designed to facilitate imaginative variation which: yseek[s] possible meanings through the utilization of imagination, varying the frames of reference, employing polarities and reversals, and approaching the phenomenon from divergent perspectives, different positions, roles, or functions. (Moustakas, 1994, pp. 9798) 5.4. Data analysis: capturing the objective in the subjective Clark Moustakass 1994 book, Phenomenological Research Methods, goes some way towards addressing the dearth of literature on phenomenological methods identied by Caelli (2001) and deals in particular with the issue of deriving and constructing narratives from interview transcripts. Van Kaam is credited with operationalizing empirical phenomenological research in psychology (Moustakas, 1994, p. 12) and Moustakass (1994) adaptation of his method of phenomenological data analysis was chosen to analyse the data in this study (Box 3). The rationale for this choice was based on the belief that this method of data analysis offers a way to capture and preserve phenomenological moments in a way that honours the nature of what was experienced (the noema or texture) as revealed in and through the experiencing of each co-researcher (the noesis or structure) (Moustakas 1994, pp. 7899; 120121) (see Table 1). Individual textural descriptions sought to capture the what of the

CPC role; its precise nature and focus. The emphasis then shifted from the what of each co-researchers experience of and in the role to the how and why of that experience in order to construct individual structural accounts. The aim of the structural description is to provide a vivid account of the dynamics underpinning each experience of the phenomenon (Moustakas, 1994; Creswell, 1998). For this study, the nal step involved synthesis, an intuitive integration of the apparent and the hidden, as represented by the textural and structural accounts, respectively. The research outcome comprised texturalstructural descriptions representing: the essences at a particular time and place from the vantage point of an individual researcher following an exhaustive imaginative and reective study of the phenomenon. (Moustakas, 1994, p. 100) Texture and structure were woven together by means of an exhaustive integrated description of the phenomenon in an attempt to convey the essence of the CPC role as experienced by each co-researcher. The combining of textural and structural accounts gives practical expression to the concept of intentionality, the inextricable intertwining of outward meaning and inward consciousness (Crotty, 1996; Creswell, 1998). 5.5. Rigour: the struggle with language The phenomenological method guides each co-researcher to the essence of the phenomenon as revealed in her experience of it. An important test of validity is whether the nal description resonates with those who lived the experience (Oiler, 1982). The textural-structural synthesis aims to evoke a phenomenological reverberationthe the very Aha! we give when we nally describe what is of the essence (Crotty, 1996, p. 169). In this study, the full transcripts, meaningful statements, invariant constituents, textural, structural and texturalstructural descriptions as well as the core elements were submitted to each co-researcher for comment.

Box 3 Moustakas (1994) modication of Van Kaams method of phenomenological data analysis 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. Listing and preliminary grouping of meaningful statements. Reduction and elimination to determine invariant constituents. Clustering of invariant constituents. Final identication of the invariant constituents by applicationvalidation. Individual textural description. Individual structural description. Textural-structural description.

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M.S. McNamara / International Journal of Nursing Studies 42 (2005) 695704 Table 1 Intentionality: the noema-noesis correlate Noema The textural account. The what of experience. Content or object of the act. What is experienced. The appearance of the thing, the manifestation of the phenomenon. Personal meanings. Noesis The structural account. The how and why of experience. The act of the subject. The experiencing. The manner of appearing, the deep, underlying or real structures that account for specic manifestations of the phenomena. The factors that account for these meanings. 701

Respondent validation raises a number of practical, representational, theoretical and ethical issues (Sandelowski, 1993; Hammersley and Atkinson, 1995). Sandelowski is concerned that members may be more interested in how she has rendered their personal accounts than in the constructions that conate these accounts with those of other participants. In fact, this should remind us of the imperative to defend the integrity of members individual descriptions from our much-criticized tendency to coalesce them and dress them in idiosyncratic nomenclature (Thorne, 1997, p. 291), a mystifying and obfuscating manoeuvre and the antithesis of the phenomenological method. Another concern relates to the impact of seeing in print what one has said, an experience described as bizarre and uncomfortable (Sandelowski, 1993, p. 6). The co-researchers in this study, experienced such discomfort. Many expressed dismay at the lack of uency of their interview transcripts. However, being lost for words is characteristic of phenomenological work, according to Crotty (1996) who notes that Heidegger apologized for his awkwardness and inelegance of expression (p. 166).

ings and essences of the experience, representing the group as a whole (Moustakas 1994, p. 121). Caution is required here, however, because, as Crotty (1996) insists, it is not the purpose of phenomenological research to seek out shared, common meanings and to discard individual meanings unless they are held in common with others. In this view, the ndings of phenomenological research can quite properly be presented as one or more rich and comprehensive narrative accounts of each individuals experience of a particular phenomenon. However, it would seem that the analyst needs to go one step further than this in order to illuminate the necessary and sufcient elements constituting a phenomenon that are embedded in co-researchers accounts. What is distinctive about the approach to phenomenology outlined here is the recognition that the proper goal of phenomenological research is not to faithfully recount the subjective experiences of ones co-researchers per se but rather to mine each painstakingly elaborated textural-structural description for the core attributes of that which is experienced. In this study, three core elements were found to pervade all ve accounts: 1. being a dedicated presence for nursing students, 2. facilitating the establishment, maintenance and development of the clinical learning partnership between staff nurse and nursing student, 3. orchestrating the forces comprising the clinical learning environment. The precise textural and structural attributes of each element were not always shared and were often unique to one participants experience. It is possible to think of each element as a coin with a manifest/textural and hidden/structural face. Phenomenological inquiry yields, for each co-researcher, not only a description of what they felt to be of the essence but also an account of why and how they experienced the phenomenon in that way.

6. Findings The critique of nursing phenomenology has implications for the nature of the research product and its representation. In this study, the ndings were presented as distinct textural-structural descriptions of each coresearchers experience of and in the role. The aim was to demonstrate how the essential elements of the phenomenon of clinical placement co-ordination were genuinely grounded in co-researchers sustained contemplation of the role as revealed to them in and through their everyday practical experience of being a CPC. Moustakass adaptation of Van Kaams method of data analysis incorporated a further stage involving the development of a Composite Description of the mean-

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702 M.S. McNamara / International Journal of Nursing Studies 42 (2005) 695704 Table 2 Some textural and structural attributes of core elements Textural correlates Core element 1  Being constantly thereon the spot  Being someone specialjust for students  Defending supernumerary learner statusnot pairs of hands; ghting their corner  Being available, accessible and approachable  Ensuring students are not overwhelmed/Shielding from stressors  Encouraging expression of learning needs Core element 2 Structural correlates Being a dedicated presence for nursing students  Meeting a neglected need  Struggling to dene role/ Being unsure  Seizing the moment  Deriving inspiration and motivation from own lack of support as a studentAlways being knocked down; Im never going to do that to anybody  Emerging from doubt and uncertainty  Being indispensable Facilitating the establishment, maintenance and development of the clinical teaching partnership between staff nurse and student  Ceaselessly struggling to be respected and accepted  Approaching cautiously  Being resented  Starting to belong  From apologising for existing to inuencewere not going away  Persisting/Forging ahead  Being alert to constraints on the partnership Orchestrating the forces comprising the clinical learning environment  Wearing many hats  Being an outsiderbreezing in, breezing out  Struggling to full potential  Preventing regression to old ways  Being in someone elses territory  Experiencing friction with educators  Being challenged  Being uncertain about the future  Changing the ethos from doing to learning

     

Being a change agent Ensuring staff and students are linked Catalysing the relationship between staff and students Harnessing staff expertisewhat they know counts;well get the expert Dispelling myths and misconceptions Creating an awareness of students learning needs/ Identifying learning opportunities

Core element 3

       

Building relationships with key stakeholders Monitoring the clinical learning environment Highlighting poor standards of care Facilitating appropriate role models Representing the clinical area in nursing education Establishing the conditions for learning Nourishing the learning environment Maintaining a safe learning environment

In Table 2 some of the textural attributes of each essential element are outlined together with the structural correlates that account for why and how those specic attributes came to be regarded as being of the essence. To illustrate further, the key notion of simply being there for nursing students in a variety of ways and contexts dominated all textural accounts. This was expressed again and again as co-researchers strived to get to the heart of their new role: being someone special just for them; Ill speak for them; Ill ght their corner; I can just concentrate on the students all day; They know that youre there for them; we were there just to make them feel safe. The emergence of this element as essential was grounded not only in the proximal context of coresearchers practical experience of their new role but also in the distal context of their own past experiencesthe structure or the how and why. Frequently it was inextricably bound up with their own negative experiences as nursing students:

when I was a student I always remember not having a support and wishing that I didyand on occasion as a student saying Im never going to do that to anybodyywhen I became a staff nurse I would have extra, extra time for students because of my own previous history with staff nurses. [Irene]. I would never treat someone like when I was training, some staff were horrible to me and I just thought I would never treat anyone like that. [Daisy].

7. Discussion Darbyshire et al. (1999) criticise Crottys approach as irredeemably self-referential and I centred (p. 23), missing his important point that phenomenological inquiry is inevitably a rst-person exercise. The researcher, by utilizing particular techniques of questioning, must facilitate an in-depth exploration of the

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phenomenon by those who have experienced it. This mandates that co-researchership be a genuine feature of the process for it to be phenomenological research at all (Crotty, 1996, p. 171). This study has shown how Crottys method of phenomenological questioning guides co-researchers towards a contemplation of the objective inherent in the subjective and unearths the what buried in the how and why of their experiences. Van Kaams guide to phenomenological data analysis aids the explication of the textural and structural facets of the essential elements of a phenomenon. Crottys approach compels co-researchers to contemplate the thing itself and does not permit them to narcissistically ponder subjective experience at the expense of an in-depth exploration of the phenomenon under investigation. Yet, in their endeavours to explicate the texture of the phenomenon, the structure too is revealed; indeed, the process of analysis shows the two to be mutually constitutive (Moustakas 1994, p. 79; Paley 1998, p. 822). This synthesis of texture and structure encapsulates and gives expression to the concept of intentionality. An appreciation of the implications of the concept of intentionality for phenomenological research can help nurse researchers to clarify their research aims. Phenomenological inquiry is not merely about illuminating the subjective, contextual, and contingent elements of a lived experience, nor is it concerned with determining essential reality independent of the mind that constructs it (Thorne, 1997, p. 289). Phenomenological inquiry entails the systematic and methodological exploration of what appears to the subject and the manner of its appearing with the explicit goal of describing and elucidating the nature of the phenomenon as an essentially human experience. It is: not just a study of subjects. What it studies in the subjects is the object of their experienceythere is an objectivity about phenomenological research. (Crotty, 1996, p. 36[italics in original])

istic of the phenomenological method. Because we necessarily draw on language and culture in describing what appears when we contemplate our immediate experience of phenomena, pure, presuppositionless descriptions of pure phenomena will always elude us. However, by striving to cast aside received meanings and dominant understandings, researchers, can in partnership with their co-researchers, aim for a reinterpretation and renewal of meaning leading to a fuller understanding and more authentic interpretation of phenomena. This is a modest and imperfect outcome, certainly, but has the potential to illuminate and clarify the nature of complex concepts of interest to nursing. As the late Michael Crotty puts it: To lay aside old meanings is to open ourselves to new meanings or, at the very least, to bring new life to the meanings we hold. To break the bonds of mindforgd manacles is to enjoy a new kind of freedom. To see the world with fresh eyes is to discover a whole new world. (Crotty 1996, p. 174).

References
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8. Conclusion The critique of nursing phenomenology challenges nurse researchers to reconsider the goals of phenomenological research and the methods they choose to achieve them. While Crotty is careful not to dismiss the potential signicance for nurses of studies into participants subjective understandings of experiences, he and other scholars are adamant that it is simply not possible to legitimate such research with reference to key phenomenological concepts. An appreciation of the key concepts of bracketing and intentionality can help nurse researchers to design studies that retain the objectivity and critique character-

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