ABSTRACT
This chapter provides an overview and example of research based on a hermeneutic moral realist interpretive frame. It first lays out key assumptions that provide a general methodological orientation, the main objective of which is to explore the moral fit and significance of phenomena with the moral space of practice. This chapter then describes an investigative approach, based on this interpretive frame, that was used to study the moral dynamics of student question asking in a graduate seminar on design thinking. In order to study the moral fit of question asking within this setting, this study emphasized hermeneutic notions such as situated participation, concernful involvement, part-whole relations, temporality, interpretation as a form of explication, and practice-endemic goods and values. It also employed a set of a priori codes that helped foreground relevant phenomena in terms of their fit within the moral configurations of student classroom practice. Findings from the study pointed to ways in which questions showed up when viewed from a moral realist perspective, the contextual importance of values such as honesty and humility, and complexities that arose in the midst of student participation. Research of this sort is not intended to be formulaic; this study provides one instance of how research into the moral configurations of practice can be conducted.
