The phenomenographic approach to the study of qualitative differences in learning

Abstract

Our approach to describing qualitative differences in learning focuses very much on differences in meaning, regardless whether these differences are differences within or between individuals. We are thus not primarily interested in differences between individuals, and we do not make any assumptions about the stability or generalizability of the meanings expressed by them. We are simply interested in what different meanings of a certain phenomenon that can be found. So, how do we find these differing meanings? The answers given by the students to our (very) open-ended questions make up the “pool of meaning”. At the word level, all the answers are different, but we are looking for answers that differ at the word level, but not in terms of meaning, and which differ from other answers both at the word level and in terms of meaning. We are looking for critical differences between answers. These differences are supposed to be critical in relation to the object of learning (what the students are expected to learn). The object of learning is not defined as clearly in the beginning of the analysis as it is later on. In a way the object of learning gets defined through our efforts to relate different answers to it.