Phenomenology and hermeneutic phenomenology: the philosophy, the methodologies, and using hermeneutic phenomenology to investigate lecturers’ experiences of curriculum design

This article investigates the philosophy of phenomenology, continuing to examine and describe it as a methodology. There are different methods of phenomenology, divided by their different perspectives of what phenomenology is: largely grouped into the two types of descriptive and interpretive phenomenology. The focal methodology is hermeneutic phenomenology—one type of phenomenological methodology among interpretive phenomenological methodologies. The context for phenomenology and the location of hermeneutic phenomenology is explained through its historic antecedents. When using phenomenology as a methodology there are criteria for data gathering and data analysis and examples of these are cited in this paper. Also in this paper we give examples from a study of curriculum design of thematic statements, defining whether they are useful data for a hermeneutic phenomenological study. Copyright Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2014