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Introduction: Phenomenography inHigher EducationNoel Entwistle aa University of EdinburghPublished online: 01 Nov 2006.

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Higher Education Research & Development, Vol. 16, No. 2, 1997 127

Introduction: Phenomenography inHigher EducationNOEL ENTWISTLEUniversity of Edinburgh

Conceptions and the Origin of Phenomenography

When introducing the idea of differing conceptions to students, I often ask them toexplain the meaning of a word like "antidote". The students all know what the wordmeans but have some difficulty in arriving at an agreed description of it. They oftenstart with an example of having to give an antidote for a snake bite to exemplify itsmeaning, and then from other instances build up a more complete description. Theysoon realise that we do not store definitions in memory, but rather that the meaningresides within the interconnections of remembered instances, and has to be reconsti-tuted in providing an explanation. Moving from a relatively straightforward conceptto a more problematic one, like "justice", immediately demonstrates the somewhatidiosyncratic way in which we each understand abstract ideas. Phenomenographyseeks to explore these different conceptions, or structures of awareness (Marton &Booth, 1997), which people constitute from the world of their experience.

An understanding of the contribution that phenomenography has made to re-search in higher education depends on recognising its origins and its subsequentdevelopment as a research approach. Its starting point was, as most readers willknow, an experiment with first-year university students (Marton & Säljö, 1976;Svensson, 1977). Students were asked to read an academic article and to be readyto answer questions on it. The answers to a general question about the author'smessage showed qualitatively different levels of understanding, while an analysis ofstudents' descriptions of how they had treated the task produced the distinctionbetween deep and surface approaches to learning which has had such a markedinfluence on subsequent research and development work on student learning (e.g.,Gibbs, 1992; Marton, Hounsell & Entwistle, 1997).

While this initial study, itself, cannot be strictly described as phenomenographic,it certainly developed the techniques of rigorous qualitative analysis which havebecome one the hallmarks of phenomenography. Also, in the discussion of thecategories describing different outcomes, there was a detailed consideration of therelationships between the separate categories, and with the author's intended mess-age. Again, in going beyond the description of categories to the detection ofunderlying meaning, it is recognisably phenomenographic. Moreover, the way inwhich students' approaches to learning were discussed in relation to the content ofthe article, and the conditions under which the study had been conducted, high-

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lighted the relational character of learning. Much of what subsequently becamephenomenography can thus be found in the writings of the original research groupfrom Gothenburg in the 1970s.

Besides recognising how the phenomenographic approach originated, it is worthreflecting on the purposes of the original experiment. These purposes are mentionedin several of the articles which follow, but is most succinctly summarised by Säljö,in the following terms:

What eventually became codified as phenomenographic research startedout as an attempt to scrutinise and understand human learning by focusingon what people are in fact doing in situated practices and when studying.In particular, the approach was driven by an attempt to replace the abstractand empirically unverifiable conceptual frameworks, such as those whichimplied that people "process" or "store" information in various processingdevices of dubious ontological status . . . . The aim was one of reinstating atruly empirical approach to learning as a human and institutional phenom-enon, with an interest in clarifying functional relationships between whatpeople do when they engage in learning activities and the nature ofunderstanding they end up with. . . . The spirit . . .was one of addingsensitivity to understanding by showing that content and context wereessential, and that any attempt to do away with these would lead toabstractions.

The Validity of Phenomenography in Studying Higher Education

Since the first experiment in Gothenburg, phenomenography has emerged and hasbeen widely used as a research tool in studying learning and teaching in highereducation. Its very popularity has, however, created problems and challenges. Somequalitative research, claiming to be phenomenographic, has been conducted withoutthe necessary rigour, either in design or analysis. One of the reasons for that,however, may be the lack of precise descriptions of what is necessarily involved inphenomenography. The practical details of the research procedures used in identify-ing categories were not explained sufficiently fully in the early publications to allowother researchers to ensure the quality of their own methods. And still the path frominterviews through inference to categories can be difficult to follow, leaving thefindings unconvincing. It is thus quite a challenge for researchers coming fresh to thefield to see, and utilise effectively, the crucial strengths of the approach.

Challenges to the approach have come from both quantitative researchers whoquestion the subjectivity involved in establishing categories of description, fromqualitative researchers who see benefits in other methods, and from theorists whosee phenomenography as an errant branch of some better established methodologi-cal tradition. It is particularly interesting to see, also, that criticisms of the 'pure'form of phenomenography practised by Marton and his current research collabora-tors are now coming from former colleagues. For researchers in higher education,

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however, the test is generally not its theoretical purity, but its value in producinguseful insights into teaching and learning.

There are good reasons why phenomenography has been taken up enthusiasti-cally. In higher education, we are generally intending to encourage the developmentof conceptual understanding in students, so a method which so vividly portraysdiffering conceptualisations must have direct relevance to teaching and learning.And so it has proved. The interviews which provide the data are designed toencourage respondents to reflect on their own experience. As the analyses concen-trate on interpreting the respondent's meaning, rather than on linguistic forms orpre-defined technical concepts, the analyses are readable and accessible to non-specialists. Staff in higher education often do not have a good appreciation of howteaching is affecting students. The interview extracts used to delimit the categoriesof description communicate these experiences in a very direct way through thediffering perspectives found among the students. Finally, phenomenography seeslearning as relational—it takes place through an interaction between the student, thecontent of learning material, and the overall learning environment (Biggs, 1993;Entwistle, in press-a). This is a conception which offers a powerful insight to manystaff in higher education who have not thought about teaching and learning in thisway before (Biggs, 1989; Ramsden, 1993; Laurillard, 1994). Indeed, that insightcan bring about a totally new conception of teaching (Trigwell & Prosser, 1996).

Recent phenomenographic work has taken the relational aspect much further byexamining cultural variations in the conception of learning, and in particular the"paradox of the Asian learner" who seems to rely on memorisation and yetunderstands deeply (Marton & Booth, 1997). This research has allowed furtherexploration of the experience of understanding, which has been one of my ownrecent concerns, too.

The Nature of Understanding

In our research at Edinburgh, qualitative studies have provided what seem to us tobe particularly fruitful insights into the ways in which students cope with academicstudy. For example, interviews with students who had just completed their finalexaminations enabled us to focus on the nature of the understanding which studentshad experienced, graphically displaying both emotional and cognitive components:

Understanding is the interconnection of lots of disparate things—the wayit all hangs together, the feeling that you understand how the whole thingis connected up—you can make sense of it internally . . . . It is as thoughone's mind has finally 'locked in' to the pattern . . . . If you really understandsomething, why it works, and what the idea is behind it, you can't notunderstand it afterwards—you can't "de-understand?' it! And you know youunderstand (when you can) construct an argument from scratch ... byyourself—can explain it so that you feel satisfied with the explanation(Entwistle, in press-b).

While these interviews were not designed to identify conceptions, they contained

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themes which offered opportunities for subsequent phenomenographic analysis.Students had sought different forms of understanding, which can be seen as contrast-ing approaches to revision, involving different intentions and processes. In consider-ing these categories, it became clear that there was a tension between students'attempts at following the framework offered by the lecturer and developing a morepersonally satisfying form of understanding (Entwistle & Entwistle, 1997; Entwistle& Smith, 1996; Entwistle, in press-b). And this tension reflected the students' ownlevels of confidence and their differing perceptions of the anticipated examinationquestions—a relational perspective.

The understandings which students described also drew attention to the import-ance of imagery both in memory and in the construction of explanations (Entwistle,in press-b). In talking about their use of schematic revision notes, students said, forexample:

A schematic acts a bit like a syllabus; it tells you what you should know,without actually telling you what it is. I think the facts are stored separately.I can see that virtually as a picture, and I can review it, and bring in morefacts about each part . . . . Looking at a particular part of the diagram sortof triggers off other thoughts. The general points are there, and the actualdetails all come flooding back ... I clear my mind and something comes. Itmay not actually be a visual memory, as such, but a visual expression of"central memory" ... (As I wrote), it was almost as though I could see it allfitting into an overall picture . . . . Following that logic through, it pulls inpictures and facts as it needs them and suddenly you know where you'regoing next... . You're ... developing what you know, and are playing it ina slightly different way.

Such comments on the way in which students had experienced their understand-ing, almost as an entity which they could review, led to the idea of knowledge objects(Entwistle & Marton, 1994). The characteristics and function of these tightlystructured, quasi-visual experiences emerged from phenomenographic analysis.

Both these examples are intended to illustrate how this type of qualitative researchcan offer insights which are unlikely to have been achieved using another researchapproach, and which contribute to a better understanding of learning in highereducation. This Special Issue provides other, more detailed, examples of phe-nomenography in action.

The Theory of Phenomenography and its Applications in Higher Education

In this Special Issue, we have a range of articles considering both the theory ofphenomenography, and its applications as a research approach within higher edu-cation. We have articles which celebrate phenomenography and its products, andthose which query its methods, and even its fundamental validity. Taken together,they make substantial contributions to the debate on phenomenography whichbegan in the pages of Nordisk Pedadogik between 1993 and 1995, and has beencontinued through an article by Webb (1997), together with responses to it.

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Here, in the first article, Booth sets the scene with a general discussion of whatphenomenography has contributed to the re-conceptualisation of teaching andlearning. She shows how phenomenographic studies have focused attention on theexperiences of the learner, and so helped teachers to recognise their responsibility forguiding the conceptualisations reached by their students. She then draws on her ownstudy of computer programming to illustrate this point. Many tasks in highereducation are tackled by students in an unreflective manner which seriously under-mines opportunities for developing conceptual understanding. However, assign-ments can be designed to change the focus of students' awareness, shifting from theprocedural steps needed to achieve the right answer to a concern with conceptualelements within the problem. This can be seen as thematising "both the act and thecontent of learning in the very act of teaching", which Marton and Booth (1997) seeas the overarching principle in achieving high quality learning.

In their articles, Svensson and Saljo both examine the bases on which phe-nomenography came to be erected, and show that they stemmed, not from philo-sophical theory, but from a dissatisfaction with existing psychological conceptions ofknowledge and learning. This dissatisfaction led to a study which concentrated onqualitative differences in what students came to know, and moved from there toexplanations of the variations in the students' answers. The challenge of collectingand analysing data which could adequately portray qualitatively different learningoutcomes produced the approach which subsequently became phenomenography.Both of these former members of Marton's research group have become critical ofways in which the current research has diverged from the original study. They regretthe tendency, in some studies, to lose the contextualisation which was so stronglyrepresented initially. Saljo, in particular, is concerned about the abstractions whichare created through the categories of description, seeing them as being as doubtfulin their ontological status as the psychological constructs they were supposed toreplace. He also refutes the contention that these categories can describe differingexperiences, as the empirical evidence is only of people's accounts of their experi-ences.

Hasslegren and Beach argue that phenomenography should not be seen as a poorrelation of phenomenology, even if some of the studies conducted in its name fail tolive up to the highest standards. They also draw attention to the influence ofSmedslund's (1970) ideas on the interplay between logic and empirical data inestablishing the meaning of categories of description. Of course, the subjectivity ofthis form of interpretation has been roundly criticised by quantitative researchers,even where inter-rater reliability is established. As Sandberg points out measures ofinter-rater reliability are, in any case, drawn from an objectivist conception ofresearch which sits uncomfortably within reports of phenomenographic studies. Thecrucial element in phenomenographic analysis lies in identifying and describingdiffering conceptions, and Sandberg argues that there are ways in which interpretativeawareness can be used to strengthen the confidence we can have in the reportedcategorisations.

Hazel, Conrad, and Martin argue that phenomenography has failed to givesufficient attention to gender issues. Women's thinking is characterised as being

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"contextual and narrative", and as such, it would seem that phenomenographicanalysis would be an ideal medium through which to hear women's voices. How-ever, phenomenographic analysis is seen as abandoning the experiential too soonand so losing the individual voices of respondents, overemphasising the cognitiveagainst the emotional components of learning, and placing too much reliance ontraditional, "patriarchal" disciplinary frameworks in deciding the structure of out-come spaces. The authors attribute this situation to the disparity in the proportionof men and women involved in most phenomenographic studies, both as respon-dents and as researchers.

The final two articles are more directly concerned with the practice of teachingand learning in higher education. Mugler and Landbeck contribute to the theoreticaldebate on cultural variations in conceptions of learning, and also explore the waysin which students in the University of the South Pacific adapt to assessmentrequirements. They comment on the disparity between the conceptions of learningstudents hold and the strategic approaches to studying which stressful situationsinduce in them. Trigwell and Prosser draw on their recent phenomenographicanalyses of interviews with lecturers to show how conceptions of teaching may leadto equivalent approaches to teaching. But they also argue that the actual approachesused by both teachers and students are powerfully influenced by their previousexperiences, and by the constraints imposed by the institutional environment theyface.

Cautions in Conducting Phenomenographic Research

Some of the criticisms in this set of articles may seem to undermine the validity andthe value the phenomenographic approach altogether, and so question the credibilityof its findings. However, many of the criticisms can be viewed, not as a dismissal,but as a caution—as a warning to researchers about the pitfalls which lie in theirpath. The cautions can be summarised as follows.

1. Most phenomenographic studies in higher education derive their data frominterviews in which staff or students are invited to describe their actions andreflect on their experience. It is essential that the questions are posed in a waywhich allows the students to account for their actions within their own frame ofreference, rather than one imposed by the researcher. It is also better to move inthe questioning, from actions to experience, and from concrete to abstract.

2. The categories of description which are the outcomes of phenomenographicanalysis need to be presented with sufficient extracts to delimit the meaning ofthe category fully, and also to show, where appropriate, the contextual relation-ships which exist. The summary description of a category serves an importantpurpose in drawing attention to salient features which distinguish it from othercategories, but the description isolated from the interview extracts cannot be fullyunderstood by the reader. The meaning resides in the essence of the commentsfrom which the category has been constituted.

3. Great care must be taken in establishing the categories in ways which most fairly

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reflect the responses made, and discussions with others in the process of formu-lating the reported categories will be an important safeguard. The possibility ofgender differences in identifying categories should also be kept in mind. Eventhen, the categories need to be treated as provisional descriptions. They willremain to some extent subjective interpretations, which further research willchallenge and modify. It is important to recognise that qualitative research isnecessarily interpretative, developing like historical research as much from con-tested interpretations as from definitive findings.

4. Having established the categories of description, phenomenography explores therelationships between them. Where the categories refer to scientific concepts,these relationships can often be seen in the history of science, but when dealingwith conceptions of learning or teaching, for example, it is usually previousstudies which will suggest the most salient aspects to consider. Above all, thisstage involves the researcher in an analysis of the meaning of each category inrelation to every other one, a consideration of individual variations in the wayseach category is exemplified by individual respondents, and a thorough logicalanalysis of meaning of these differences.

Alternative Interpretations

Several of the disputes which have arisen from phenomenographic studies seem toinvolve deeply held, and opposing, viewpoints. For example, in the early work on thedeep and surface dichotomy, the Gothenburg group emphasised that an approachwas the individual's reaction to a specific content within a particular context. Othersdetected a certain consistency in students' approaches, leading to the design ofinventories indicating typical study strategies (see, for example, Biggs, 1993). So, isan approach stable or variable? Both, up to a point. An approach to learning cansurely be accepted as to some extent stable—as a habitual response to learningsituations which a student commonly meets—and yet also variable in response to theteaching, learning environment, and assessment demands in a specific course or ona particular occasion. It depends on both the research design and the level ofanalysis—a single experiment looking at content and context may emphasise thespecificity of the learning outcomes, while a survey looking at everyday studying ismore likely to find elements of both similarity and difference.

Another example comes from the debate about whether phenomenographicresearch produces descriptions simply of accounts, as Säljö argues, or of theexperiences themselves on which the respondents have been asked to reflect, asMarton concludes. Which view is correct? The validity of a response made to aninterview question certainly depends on the degree of overlap between the discoursepractices of the participants, and it is entirely appropriate to make discourse the focalpoint of an enquiry. Yet, that set of responses can also be used as a starting pointfor analysing actions and experiences, as long as the limitations of individualaccounts are also taken into account. This is very much a question of figure andground in considering the data, and depends also on the purpose of the research andthe audience for whom it is intended.

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The arguments which continue to develop around phenomenography demon-strate its vigour, and its impact on educational research generally. However, thereseems no reason to expect answers to the ambiguities and conflicts which researchinevitably produces. The oppositional stances taken up are a part of the academicculture of disputation, but generally there are elements of truth in each stance.Clarification comes from recognising the reasons for alternative formulations andthe conditions under which each is most appropriately applied.

Address for correspondence: Professor Noel Entwistle, Centre for Research on Learn-ing and Instruction, Institute for the Study of Education and Society, University ofEdinburgh, 10 Buccleuch Place, Edinburgh EH8 9JT, Scotland, UK.

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