ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses an account of how 'being-in-question' in the lived experience of questioning itself changes the shape of research inquiry. 'Being-in-question' elucidates a process for bringing to light the significance that lies beneath the research endeavour. The chapter describes some thoughts on the experiential learning that took place, primarily in the first half of a doctoral journey, as a non-Indigenous researcher engaged in a study of experience and meaning in caregiving, ageing and dementia with family members of an older Aboriginal person in urban New South Wales. These early encounters and occurrences become something of a template for the remainder of the research as they signal the significance of the ontological-existential dimension of experience as a way into understanding and interpretation. The conceptual framework from existential, hermeneutic phenomenology, which Todres and Wheeler, describe as 'natural bedfellows'. The emphasis is less on hermeneutic phenomenology as a philosophy and methodology and more on its living expression as a mode of research practice.
