ABSTRACT
An investigation of the interrelationship of hermeneutics, subjectivity, and aesthetics in the educational context could advance the discussion of the internationalization of curriculum research and move national educational practices beyond methodological and structuralist concerns toward a reconceptualized understanding committed to experience as proposed by Dewey (1938) in Experience and Education, by Hegel (1977) in his Phenomenology, and hermeneutic conversation as proposed by Rorty (1979). This perspective on hermeneutics resembles the process of organizing the events of our daily lives; the details are utterly unknown in advance as the process of living unfolds in a unique and unrepeatable sequence. This also describes the concept of experience that guides Hegel’s (1977) Phenomenology, philosophies of Bildung, and the understanding of reading and interpretation in Gadamer (1975, 1976). Here the process of interpretation follows from Schleiermacher’s 19th-century tradition of the hermeneutic circle and subsequent attention to the intersubjective nature of the hermeneutic endeavor. The intersubjective nature of hermeneutics serves as a model for contemporary efforts to internationalize curriculum research.
