Hermeneutic phenomenology is a combination of theory, reflection and practice that interweaves vivid descriptions of lived experience (phenomenology) together with reflective interpretations of their meanings (hermeneutics). This method is popular among researchers in education, nursing and other caring and nurturing practices and professions. Practical and adaptable, it can be at the same time poetic and evocative. As this collection shows, hermeneutic phenomenology gives voice to everyday aspects of educational practice –particularly emotional, embodied and empathic moments– that may be all too easily overlooked in other research approaches. By explicating, illustrating and demonstrating hermeneutic phenomenology as a method for research in education specifically, this book offers an excellent resource for beginning as well as more advanced researchers.

Philosophical hermeneutics has rich implications for the theory and practice of education, yet the topic has often been ignored. Education, Dialogue and Hermeneutics takes a variety of principles and themes from philosophical hermeneutics, drawing on insights from major figures such as Martin Heidegger, Hans-Georg Gadamer and Paul Ricoeur, and applies them to issues in education and the philosophy of education. Topics covered include the relevance and nature of dialogue and understanding in an educational setting, the nature of educational experience and the concept of Bildung, narrative and tradition.Timely and original, Education, Dialogue and Hermeneutics draws together eight original chapters written by leading scholars in the field of hermeneutics.

Considering the role of compulsory mass education and schooling in a democratic society, this book introduces an alternative vision for K-12 education as an "adventurous endeavour." Grounded in a strong theoretical framework, Yosef-Hassidim reveals the negative impact of instrumentalization of schools: when education is considered a social and political instrument, it serves dominant social forces’ interests rather than students’ or humanity as a whole. Offering conceptual and pragmatic frameworks to limit political influence on schooling, the author proposes a new hermeneutical structure that restores education’s agency and separates it from external social forces, and provides the foundation for regarding K-12 education as a sovereign social sphere in its own right.

A Hermeneutics of Poetic Education: The Play of the In-Between explores the ways in which both play and poetry orient us toward what surpasses us. Catherine Homan develops an original account of poetic education that builds on Friedrich Hölderlin’s idea of poetry as a teacher of humanity. Whereas aesthetic education emphasizes judgments of taste and rational autonomy, poetic education foregrounds self-formation and openness to the other. Critically engaging the works of Eugen Fink, Hans-Georg Gadamer, and Paul Celan, this book argues that poetry and play call for a particular stance in the world and with others. Open toward the infinite while simultaneously reaching toward its own finitude, the poetic work addresses us and invites our response. Poetry reveals the human condition as “in-between” and dialogical, even at the limits of language. Although many philosophers mistakenly view play as frivolous, Homan takes play seriously. Play--spontaneous and creative--resists mastery and instead requires an active attunement to the to-and-fro movement of the world, of others, and ourselves. A Hermeneutics of Poetic Education demonstrates that poetic education, as learning to listen, provides vital resources for responding to alterity in meaningful ways that resist totalization.

A hermeneutics of education pays special attention not to educational structures, but the central role of conversation in the educational process. The key issue is the formation of the person as a unique reality of being and acting while supporting intersubjective understanding. The polyphony of understanding places the human search for meaning within the horizon of incompleteness and allows for both, spontaneity and rigor, in order to reach an understanding of what is happening to us and in us when we understand. Reflection on education is always inseparable from educational practice.

In these essays, appearing for the first time in English, Gadamer addresses practical questions about recent politics in Europe, about education and university reform, and about the role of poetry in the modern world. This book also includes a series of interviews that the editors conducted in 1986. Gadamer elaborates on his experiences in education and politics, touching on the collapse of the Weimar Republic, the early Frankfurt School, Heidegger and the Nazis, university life in East Germany, and the prospects for Europe in the coming years. Hans-Georg Gadamer was probably Heidegger's leading interpreter in Germany, and in the 1950s and 1960s he became the world's leading exponent of hermeneutics. His hermeneutical theory explains how it is that ancient art and philosophy still speak to us today. His influential idea of the "fusion of horizons" also shows how it is that we understand what is remote form our own culture.