EL CURRICULUM INTEGRADO COMO UN MEDIO PARA ALCANZAR LA EDUCACIÓN AMBIENTAL

From the many phenomenological approaches that have evolved from the work of

Husserl and Heidegger, two were adopted in the design of this research to respond

to the research question in a methodologically appropriate way. The two phases and

Table 5. Two phase methodology employed in this research

Phase and method Stages in research Purpose

Phase One

Heuristic Inquiry (Moustakas, 1990)

Stage One Self-inquiry into researcher’s own experience of silence in two areas:

Stage One, Part One Silence in researcher’s own spirituality

Stage One, Part Two Silence in researcher’s professional practice as a palliative care chaplain

Stage Two Unstructured interviews explored silence in the personal experience and spiritual care practice of a small sample (n=3-7) of other

palliative care chaplains.

To gain insight into researcher’s own experience and understanding of the phenomenon of silence, in both personal experience and professional practice, and to explicate tacit knowledge. To verify the researcher’s

experience and seek other experience in order to broaden the horizon of

understanding.

Phase Two

Hermeneutic Phenomenology (van Manen, 1990)

Specific examples of silence, encountered in palliative spiritual caregiving were sought from a larger sample (n=8-15) of palliative care chaplains, in conversation-style interviews. To produce a textural description and interpretation that allows the phenomenon to show itself in ways which deepen

understanding.

The purpose of this research was to explore palliative care chaplains’ lived

experience of silence in spiritual caregiving at the end of life. Van Manen (1990)

presents hermeneutic phenomenology in the context of pedagogy but his focus on

care translates into the context of palliative spiritual care and his emphasis on the

value of silence, within the research process, resonates with the interest of this

research.

The subjective-objective and interpretive nature of this inquiry, which uses the

researcher as the primary instrument of research (Boyd, 1993), demands a high level

informed the decision to design a preliminary research phase. An entry in my

research journal explains:

As both palliative care chaplain and researcher, I needed to explore my own understanding of silence, in my own ‘lifeworld’, in the every-day experience of my spiritual life and of my professional world of palliative spiritual care. Only in the light of this expanded self-awareness with recognitions of my own pre-assumptions and hermeneutic horizon (Gadamer, 1976) would I be open to the new dimensions of meaning that may arise from the experience of other palliative care chaplains (Journal 16/01/13).

The research method chosen for this initial phase was heuristic inquiry. Derived from

the Greek heuriskein, meaning “to discover or find out” (Moustakas, 1990:9),

heuristic inquiry focuses on human knowing, exemplified in the eureka moment of

Archimedes. It is a process of self-inquiry drawing on Moustakas’ (1990:15).

statement, “the heuristic process is autobiographic, yet with every question that

matters personally, there is also a social – perhaps universal – significance”.

The heuristic phase follows six stages outlined by Moustakas (1990):

Initial engagement acknowledges the autobiographical source of the question. A central tenet of heuristic inquiry is that the researcher has personal experience of

the phenomenon to be explored. Moustakas (1990:13) claims, “the initial data is

within me: the challenge is to discover and explicate its nature”.

Immersion describes staying fully with the experience of the phenomenon. There is no limitation on the sources of raw material for reflection, self-searching, pursuit of

“intuitive clues of hunches . . . and knowledge within the tacit dimension”

(Moustakas, 1990:28).

Incubation is a time of waiting, a retreat from the intense focus of immersion

drawing on the understanding of Polanyi, “that discovery does not ordinarily occur in

the deliberate mental operations and directed calculated thoughts” (Moustakas,

1990:29).

Illumination marks a change of perception and is dependent upon an attitude of perceptive awareness. Moustakas (1990:29) describes illumination as “a

breakthrough into conscious awareness of qualities and a clustering of qualities into

themes”.

Explication involves examining what has arisen in the form of reflexive writing and self-dialogue. It encourages new understanding and insights to emerge both from the

data and from reflection on the data.

Creative synthesis draws together threads and themes to bring the internal frame of reference into view (Kenny, 2012).

Phase One of the research enabled an exploration and evaluation of my personal

horizon of understanding of silence expanded by the experience of other palliative

care chaplains who participated in the process as ‘co-researchers’. Co-researcher is a

term used by Moustakas (1990) to emphasise the equality of relationship between

operative sharing in which both parties may open pathways to the other for deeper

understanding of the phenomenon being explored.

In addition, Phase One fostered the cultivation of phenomenological attitude before

embarking upon Phase Two which focused specifically on chaplains’ experience of

silence in spiritual caregiving relationships. Whilst ‘phenomenological attitude’,

described by Boeree (2000) as accepting the inter-subjectivity of self and world and

allowing the phenomenon to reveal itself, is introduced at this stage, it is engaged

throughout the research process.

In Phase Two a hermeneutic phenomenological approach was employed, defined by

van Manen (1990:180) as:

attentive to both terms of its methodology: it is a descriptive

(phenomenological) methodology because it wants to be attentive to how things appear, it wants to let things speak for themselves; it is an interpretive (hermeneutic) methodology because it claims that there are no such things as uninterpreted phenomena.

Hermeneutic phenomenology is a method that focuses on text for both data and

analysis. In the act of reading and writing, researchers open themselves to the

interpretive process (van Manen, 1990). In this research the initial text took the form

of interview transcripts, the process captured chaplains’ lived experience in

descriptive language and then used written text to interpret essential qualities.

Hermeneutic phenomenology has been described by Stirling (2010:40), a healthcare

care”. It offers a method which is sympathetic to spiritual care in intent and process

(Swinton and Mowat, 2006).