Principles in Lived Experience
16 In order to prevent that, the texts need to be well-oriented, strong, rich, and
deep Van Manen, 1990, pp. 151-153. The texts need to be oriented to the research purpose. The texts need to be strengthened in order to reach understanding and
interpretation. The texts need to be rich in order to discover the phenomenon. The texts need to be deep. Van Manen 1990, p.152 says that depth is what provides
the phenomenon or lived experience to which we orient ourselves its meaning and its resistance to our fuller understanding.
6 Balancing the Research Context by Considering Parts and Whole
Van Manen 1990, p.33 states that one has to measure the overall design of the studytext against the importance that the parts must play in the total textual
structure. Hence, the researcher will be lost in the process of writing since the writing of parts is going to make up the whole writing. Therefore, a well-organized
writing is highly important. The texts are written thematically, analytically, exemplificatively, exegetically, and existentially Van Manen, 1990, pp. 168-172.
The text is written based on the theme as the guidance. The text is analyzed through anecdotes. The text is exemplificatively through rendering the nature of the
phenomenon and filling out the initial description by systematically varying the examples Van Manen, 1990, p. 171. The text is exegetically through seeing other
works. The text is existentially through seeing lived time, lived space, lived body,
and lived relationship to others. b. Fields in Lived Experience
Lived Experience has five important elements namley understanding, belief, intention, action, and feeling. Those five elements will be discussed further in this
section.
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1 Understanding
Lived experience attempts to understand the meaning of phenomenon. I discover the phenomenon and grasp the meaning through understanding it. Lived
experience is included in human science. It is as stated by Van Manen 1990, p.40 that human science is to explicate the meaning of human phenomena and to
understand the lived structure of meaning. It is also supported by Alvesson and Skoldberg 2000, p.56 that understanding relates to comprehending the past
experience emphatically in each individual. Additionally it is also done in the form of depth understanding. Likewise, Van Manen 1990, p. 156 emphasizes that
phenomenological research requires a depthful understanding. Heidegger as cited by Palmer 1969, p.131 also states that understanding attempts to gain the
experience of the existence of human being.
2 Belief
Lived experience of the students has relation to students’ belief. Students’ belief influences the action and feeling that they have. Tatto and Coupland 2003,
p.124 describe that belief is “as a tenet or body tenet of some statement or the
reality of some being or phenomenon, especially when based on examination of evidence”. Therefore, it can be concluded that belief can be obtained through
experiencing the phenomenon. Belief in this research refers to the belief toward project based learning. Each student as the participant absolutely has his or her own
belief on project based learning.
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3 Intention
Intention is one of the parts of lived experience. Intention can be inferred as a plan or a goal. It is what people intend to do or to achieve. Intention is almost
similar with expectation which means a prediction or an estimate or subjective probability that a behavior will actually be performed. Willis 2001 retained
Husserl’s idea of intentionality that human thinking always linked to something as an end point to the act of thinking.
Setiya 2014 proposes three areas of intention. The first is intention for the future, as when I intend to finish my study this semester. The second is intention
with which someone acts, as I am typing with the further intention of writing a thesis. The last one is intentional action, as in the fact that I am typing this thesis
intentionally.
4 Action
Lived experience is closely related to action. Van Manen 1990, p. 154 describes that human science focuses on action in which hermeneutic
phenomenological reflection deepens thought and thus creates fundamental thinking and the acting that comes from it. In conclusion, this theory attempts to
say that lived experience included in the hermeneutic phenomenology focuses on how people behave toward the reflection. Moreover, Van Manen, himself, 1990,
p.154 emphasizes that phenomenology refers to a philosophy of action in personal and situated sense. In other words, each person has his or her own action in his or
her experience. Action is also closely related to feeling and understanding. Van Manen
1990, p. 155 provides an example that “as I act towards children, I feel responsible to act out of a full understanding of what it is like to be in this world as
19 a child”. From the example, it can be inferred that action of experience results in
feeling and understanding of the experience.
5 Feeling
Lived experience focuses on how people feels the experience that they have. Patton 2002, p.104 emphasizes that lived experience is about how people
experience some phenomenon. It also about how they perceive it, how they feel about it, how they judge it, how they remember it, how they make sense of it, and
how they talk about it with others. Therefore, feeling is included in the lived experience. Husserl as cited by Patton 2002, p. 105 also emphasizes that
phenomenology is in accordance with the study of how people describe things and then experience them through their senses. In other words, people do use their
senses to experience and then feel the experience. The aforementioned fields of lived experience are shaped or caused by
intentionality, historicity, ideology or belief, and awareness. Each individual has unique lived experience which is different from one another. The differences are
resulted from the aforementioned structures. The first structure is intentionality. According to Husserl’s phenomenology
1963, one’s experience is intended or represented toward things through particular concepts, thoughts, ideas, or images. In Husserl’s phenomenology, intentionality is
the base of consciousness. It represents one’s consciousness or awareness which shapes and causes one’s understanding, belief, feeling, action, and intention
towards things in the world McIntyre Smith, 1989. It explains how one sees an object based on previously experienced phenomenon.
20 The second structure is historicity. Individual consciousness, as the essential
structure of phenomenology, is historical Drummond, 2000, p. 133. First, it can be characterized as having historicity which means that it is formed by one’s prior
experience. Secondly, individual consciousness has its own place in objective history. It is situated in a certain time and
place and circumstance. Therefore, one’s understanding, belief, action, feeling, and intention are influenced by his her
historicity. The third structure is ideology. Eagleton 1991 defines ideology as “the
process of production of meaning, signs, and v alues in social life”. Ideology, as a
set of beliefs, signifies one’s thought on an object or phenomenon. With regard to the purpose of phenomenology i.e. to assign essential meaning of lived experience,
ideology forms how one sees the life world. The last
structure is awareness. In Husserl’s phenomenology, awareness is structure that makes experience conscious Smith, 2013. To put it in other words,
a certain awareness of the experience one has while living through or performing it is what makes experience conscious. Moreover, Smith 2013 points out that
awareness is also a defining characteristic of conscious experience which gives the experience a first-person perspective of the object of the study. Therefore,
awareness allows an individual to have a first-person perspective on certain experience.
In sum, intentionality, historicity, ideology of belief, and awareness are the structures that form the
ELS students’ lived experience. The meaning of their lived experience is manifested in their understanding, belief, feeling, action, and
intention.
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