ABSTRACT
This chapter assesses the usefulness of a phenomenological investigation for educational purposes. It introduces the systematic investigation of human experiences in the form of a philosophical tradition called ‘phenomenology’. The chapter presents some aspects of E. Husserl’s phenomenology as a structural investigation of consciousness. Cognitive psychology emerged between the 1950s and 1970s as the dominant approach to the investigation of the mind in a scientific manner. Husserl battles with mere physiological accounts of the mind, promoting his approach of assessing and describing the experiential dimensions that manifest themselves individually in relation to these physiological events. However, it would be naive to portray the suggested pairing of phenomenology and empirical research, be it for psychological or educational purposes, as one that is already sorted in all its aspects. While the teacher walks past the desks at which the learners sit, s/he can spot a coin on one of the desks.
