This methodological contribution offers a phenomenological approach to education research, specifically for understanding the various effects of education reform vis-à-vis the intricate conditions of schooling that such reforms encounter in specific socio-economic places with their particular histories and contexts. In reaching beyond narrow ideas of data as evidence, the approach captures the various ways in which reforms manifest in schooling through collecting the experiences of those involved and systematizing those experiences into a structure of experience of reform. Such work is markedly different from evaluation, implementation or best practice research that inevitably presuppose a degree of sameness of the experience of schooling (Salmen, 2021, S. 6), i.e. that schooling is the same for everyone who experiences it. Human experience, however, is unique: the same event is different events to different people, and renders contrary conclusions and actions. This position counters current research tendencies to "homogenize the heterogeneous reality of education through abstract and context-indifferent standards and outcome metrics" (Mayer et al., 2014, p. 2). The approach is a viable alternative to technocratic ideas of teaching and learning that narrow schooling and student achievement to test scores, grades, and meeting expectations (Hopmann, 2008). Instead, the phenomenologically oriented researcher affirms through their work that those involved in schooling act on what they understand to be good reasons. Their actions make sense against their horizons and in the context of their intentionality, and to elicit their mindsets and lines of reasoning in order to learn about their sense-making provides unique insights into the dynamics of schooling, a "complex entity with a character of its own" (Tröhler, 2008, p. 10). The aim is to understand school reform and schooling in the way it presents itself to those involved in schooling, and to let them assign meaning and relevance to their experiences. Such inquiry focuses on schooling as specific to its place and its people; it highlights the conditions of schooling and the way those involved in it construct their practice.

The approach understands a social structure through the elements that sustain and negotiate it (Labaree, 2020, p. 100) rather than assuming that individuals' trajectories are a mere result of their choices: “All roles appear more solid and defined than they really are. (…) Structures appear concrete but are actually emergent patterns that depend on people to keep the pattern going.” (Labaree, 2020, p. 102) Social structures include caveats of flexibility that rich descriptions may be able to carve out and use to understand "the causes that derive from social relations (as) more than personal traits" (Labaree, 2020, p. 102) and therefore leave the linear presumption of accountability.  Schooling may then be approached not primarily as an instrument for social efficacy or social mobility but as a place shaped by democratic ways of living and learning. (Salmen, 2021, S. 59)

This approach embraces human diversity through accounting for diverse histories and contexts, perspectives and lifeworlds throughout the research design. Rather than seeking to identify schooling universals, the approach affirms multiple realities (Schütz, 1975) of experiencing schooling as equally relevant to ongoing discussions about the quality of public schooling. Multiple realities in the phenomenological understanding of the social world suggests that "objectively the same behavior may have (…) very different meanings or no meaning at all" (Schütz, 1945, p. 535) for the individual because "meaning (…) is not a quality inherent to certain experiences (…) but the result of an interpretation of a past experience looked at from the present Now with a reflective attitude." (ibid.) Empirically, this interpretation is elicited through synthesizing Bevan’s (2014) structure of phenomenological interviewing and Kolbe’s (2016) existential communication.

A central part of empirically applied phenomenological research as it is outlined in this contribution is purposefully and carefully eliciting rich and dense descriptions of interviewees' lifeworlds, their horizons and their ends-in-view so to understand their experiences and their sense-making of those experiences. A part of that effort is the phenomenological interview following Bevan’s (2014) structure of contextualization, apprehension and clarification of a phenomenon that serves as the frame within which to work “free(ly) to structure his or her interview in a way that enables a thorough investigation” (Bevan, 2014, p. 138). The structure provides orientation to the interviewer yet it allows for as many or as few questions to be asked, in whatever sequence is deemed useful to the endeavor of eliciting experience, filled with whatever content. In my doctoral thesis, for example, I utilized this structure to ask principals and superintendents in Alabama about their experience of gap management (Knapp/Hopmann, 2017) between the stringent reform requirements of the paradigmatic accountability policy No Child Left Behind (Salmen, 2021) and the state of Alabama, rich in historical roots that still define schooling and otherwise drenched with poverty. After the usual introduction and assurance of anonymity, I began each interview with my sincere request: “Assume I know nothing and want to understand everything” (Salmen, 2021, S. 84) It allowed the interviewees to begin with wherever they deemed necessary and appropriate, in whatever sequence they chose, yet each of the eight individuals began by elaborating on their background, their biography and fundamental ideas about schooling that provided fruitful ground for apprehending the phenomenon that was NCLB. I asked various carefully prepared clarifying questions throughout the interview (specifics, elaboration on sidenotes, details, names, roles) that seemed minor but were key to understanding completely – in all detail and richness – what their experience of this reform, their experience of schooling, had been like. For leading the conversation, Kolbe’s (2016) pillars for existential communication offered concrete communicative techniques to elicit authentic and relevant impressions by making the conversation substantially meaningful to both conversation partners, but most importantly, the interviewees themselves. A good phenomenological interview is immediately connected and relevant to the individuals’ lifeworlds by which it gains significance; it is a meeting of the interests of both individuals, one researching and one curious to think together about practices that sit at the heart of the profession they represent.

The approach and its methods showcase a decidedly non-constructivist framework that renders not merely arbitrary collections of narratives and summaries of what was said, but represents a structured way of systematizing the dynamics that underly reform manifestations based on the experiences of those involved, and their assigned meaning to those experiences. It leads reform research back to inquiring about the intricacies and the dynamics of the place called school (Goodlad, 1989); it may also incorporate a variety of secondary context data about a socio-economic place and the specific conditions under which schooling takes place. Reform research from the vantage point of this intellectual foundation allows for research that results in truly counter-intuitive findings that surprise the researcher. Anecdotes are particularly valuable as the compact, condensed essence of a phenomenon that often encapsulates the immediacy and urgency of an aspect. Similarly, employing imaginative variation in the interview (Bevan, 2014, p. 138) can yield extraordinary insight for both the person developing it and the interviewer. My doctoral work provides examples of these and other applications of both methods in unison that exemplify the approach and what it can yield: I explored Alabama based on secondary context data first, then created a soundboard of principals and superintendents who mediated and mitigated policy expectations vis-á-vis their schools' and communities' constituencies. In doing so, I separated reform intensions from those upon who they fell; their experiences of schooling during accountability speaks to the structure of the experience of balancing policy intentions against what is feasible within the conditions at hand (Tröhler, 2008, p. 13). The approach and the methods illuminate existing data (the what) that cannot explain their how; but mostly, it strengthens the difference of people, their histories and contexts in specific places, and affirms all experiences as relevant to diversifying education.

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