Hermeneutic phenomenology is known as research method in the field of education and other human sciences for example nursing science. It is widely used method in Finland, but in many studies the hermeneutic phenomenological method is not clear and researchers does not have common understanding what it is. Thus my question is: What is this method? What are its philosophical backgrounds and how we can describe hermeneutic-phenomenological research?The hermeneutics and the phenomenology have their separate historical development. They are also connected together as hermeneutical phenomenology in Martin Heidegger's thinking, but Heidegger himself gives very specific definition to his phenomenology. Hermeneutical phenomenology is the research of the meaning of the Being as fundamental ontology.The phenomenology is usually described by saying that phenomenology studies meanings and hermeneutics is described by saying that hermeneutics is interpretation. The father of modern phenomenology is Edmund Husserl. Hans-Georg Gadamer is known as founder of philosophical hermeneutics. They are linked by Martin Heidegger and his philosophy. Heidegger was a student of Husserl and Gadamer was the student of Heidegger. They are all the most prominent philosophers and their philosophies have fundamental differences. There are other significant phenomelogist like Maurice Merleau-Ponty. He claims that we are our bodies, and that our lived experience of this body denies the detachment of subject from object. Paul Ricouer is best known for combining phenomenological description with hermeneutic interpretation. Merleau-Ponty is closer to Husserlian phenomenology and Ricouer is closer to Heideggerian and Gadamerian hermeneutics.I agree with Max van Manen, that all educational scientist and researchers do not need to be philosophers, if they use hermeneutic-phenomenological methodology. But if we do not know what we mean by this methodology, are we in trouble. And my argument is that there is inherent contradiction or tension between Husserlian phenomenology and Gadamerian hermeneutics. My question is how this tension is solved in hermeneutic phenomenological research. The first task in my paper is to show this contradiction and second task is to see how this tension has been tried to resolve. To put shortly this tension: phenomenology is concern to find the essence of the thing and hermeneutics thinks, that every thing has its being in language and in interpretation.To understand better hermenutic phenomenological methodology in the field of the educational research Gadamer: Truth and Method Heidegger: Sein und Zeit Husserl: Collected Works Ricouer: Hermeneutics and human science Van Manen: Researching lived Ecperience Maurice Merleau-Ponty: Phenomenology of Perception Wrathall: Essays in honor of Hubert L. Dreyfus