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My analysis process is inspired by Fleming et al’s (2003) recommendations, but tailored to meet the needs of an autoethnographical study as opposed to a study of participant experiences, as described in Fleming et al (2003). They observed that Heidegger and Gadamer outlined and justified the principles of hermeneutics in their texts, but did not provide a step-by-step process for researchers to work with

of recommending a process for creating hermeneutic understandings, based on the original texts of Gadamer. It’s important to consider that the following steps are not rules for understanding. It is merely a transparent presentation of my process for creating understanding. As Gadamer (1975) believes, understanding does not need an awareness of rules, nor do rules precipitate understanding as they can burden the interpretive process (Fleming et al, 2003; Gadamer, 1975).

4.2.3.1

Purpose and Intent

As recommended by Denzin and Lincoln (2005), my process began by clearly outlining the purpose and intent of my research. This purpose followed me

throughout the analysis, flowing and changing with my understandings, yet anchored in the intent to know experiences of concepts of relationality in new ways. These boundaries both initiated and guided my process for understanding and

communicating meaningful experience (Denzin and Lincoln, 2005).

4.2.3.2

Provoke Pre-understandings

To create a meaningful foundation for understandings, we need a means to expose and communicate our pre-understandings, biases, and forestructures. Fleming et al (2003) suggests that pre-understandings can be illuminated through confronting and provoking conversation with a colleague, family member, or friend, followed by personal reflection and journaling. In addition to these methods, I use

connecting parenting experience with relational scholarship, and providing my audience with relational context.

Narrative is not a focus of Fleming et al’s (2003) method, but in this analysis

narration is my primary means of communicating and detangling experience. I kept a journal of personal, uncensored happenings, thoughts, and feelings surrounding my parenting experiences. I then composed and presented a textual collection of stories about significant experiences or relational themes. These stories were written and presented in the style of Ellis and Bochner’s evocative autoethnography (Ellis et al, 2011). Creative, and crafted with embedded meanings, these stories draw on

memories, feelings, audio recordings, notes, pictures, conversations, social media, or other inspirational material I had access to. My first intention was to get my audience to feel what I felt, appreciate my position, and become personally involved in my story (Ellis, 1999; Humphreys, 2005). My second intention was to communicate and interpret the meanings of my experiences as I experienced them. My narratives didn’t need to be accurate, referenced, documented or hard-evidenced in an appendix, although many are documented to assist with recall. The use of creative writing is intended to invite readers into the story, implore them to reflect upon their own experiences and co-create meaning about the research which is complex, innate, and both emotionally felt and critically understood (Ellis, 1999). As Ellis (1999)

describes to her autoethnography student:

Well, yes, if you viewed your project as closer to art than science, then your goal would not be so much to portray the facts of what happened to you accurately but instead to convey the meanings you attached to the experience. You’d want to tell a story that readers could enter and feel a part of. You’d write in a way to evoke readers

to feel and think about your life and their lives in relation to yours. You’d want them to experience the experience you’re writing about (Ellis, 1999, p. 674).

As I have a background in scientific writing, writing creatively was a challenging part of this project. Getting personal and using an evocative expression was difficult. There is value and rigour in communicating my research in a way that is personal and fits with my epistemology. The process is a little messy, but there is meaning in the mess (Sell-Smith and Lax, 2013). Transferring lived experience into static text can remove some of the ‘life’ from experienced phenomena. I cannot literally insert the audience into my perceived reality, so creative writing is a suitable and portable alternative, but it requires a particular skill set to achieve a rich and easily

understandable result (Ellis, 1999; Ferrarello, S., 2012). I propose that to produce a skilfully written autoethnography, I must write with the intent to convey meaning, rather than adhere to convention (Dauphinee, 2010; Koch, 1998). Every nuance of language has a particular effect on the reader, and as an autoethnographer I want to sculpt a clear but interesting means of communicating my understandings and insights (Sell-Smith and Lax, 2013).

4.2.3.3

Creating New Understandings

In the previous step, I provoked insights into my pre-understandings through writing and reflecting upon my parenting narratives. In this aspect of the analysis, I look to others to help me move my understandings forward and to help me look at relational situations or themes in new light. I approached this task through conversation with, and interpretation of, external information sources such as academic literature, social media, audio/visual media, new experiences, and personal conversations (Fleming et

al, 2003). My pre-understandings evolved through time, as I undertook analysis, read and conversed with others, mentally processed the multiplicity of tangled input surrounding my experience, and as I continued to experience life and parenting. This is the hermeneutic circle, cycling from pre-understandings to understandings to pre- understandings – continual change informed by more change. I shift from the parts to the whole of an experience and back again. No understandings are final truths. Finally, at the end of this thesis, I address my research question. My final insights are intended to be a reflexive response to my inquiry, revealing my evolving

understandings (changed pre-understandings) of the research phenomenon. These understandings summarise how I processed and presented my experiences in light of my pre-understandings, critically and openly informed by others (Fleming et al, 2003). New understandings inevitably toss up new questions about the phenomenon of relationality, some of which inspire further exploration in subsequent analysis chapters. In my life beyond this project, the hermeneutic circle will continue to change my understandings as I continue to experience relationality and parenting far beyond the bounds of this research.