Phenomenological Research Methods on Teaching and Learning

Phenomenological Research Methods on Teaching and LearningThe importance of phenomenological research methods on the subject of teaching and learning has been well-documented by scholars and writers over the past several decades. In the short time in which we've been living, academic research in the humanities has undergone an incredibly significant change. In the past, scholars of literature and education simply went about their business doing their jobs; but now, more than ever, they are engaged in a battle of ideas and a scientific study of human beings in order to make the academic world more creative and innovative. So, how does this new paradigm of academic research affect our classroom?Teaching and learning are at the heart of our education system and in a more important sense our society as a whole. What we teach, how we teach it, and even what we view ourselves as and what we would like to be are all impacted by the tools of scholarly research. But let's be clear about one t hing: research is not simply about gathering information or writing an analysis. Research is about finding out something.Research is focused on the soul of teaching and learning. When it comes to students and teachers, however, 'research' is often about 'doing' things rather than 'seeing' things. Academic research is about assembling a body of facts in order to answer questions, make connections, and discover some deeper understanding of what is being taught and learned. What is needed in order to successfully do this research is a creative, inquisitive spirit that can and will ask questions of knowledge and especially knowledge of something as abstract as what we know. This spirit is best found in faculty members whose minds can 'find' meaning in the material and who ask compelling questions.In addition to new research methods, professors and other educators must also take the time to create new models for teaching. However, in order to formulate new models for teaching and learnin g, academics must also find new ways to think about the problems that they are trying to solve in the classroom. For instance, in the current classroom, the norms are that when the subject matter is difficult or overwhelming, students have very little time to make sense of it. The teacher has limited time to put together an effective lesson plan, which often leads to an overload of information or a misunderstanding of it.To overcome this problem, educators will need to use phenomenological research methods. Here, the research is used to model human learning, which enables the teacher to see the lesson from a wider perspective and to model different ways of presenting it to the class. How to do this successfully requires constant communication and a critical eye to determine which model will be best for the particular lesson.A major benefit of phenomenological research is that it provides a classroom with a way to present concepts to students in a wide variety of ways. Rather than al ways putting forward a model for teaching, teachers can model different ways of presenting the same lesson so that the student will have an opportunity to see the lesson from a variety of perspectives.