Hermeneutic phenomenology for computing education research (workshop) Sue Sentance sue@raspberrypi.org Raspberry Pi Computing Education Research Centre, University of Cambridge Cambridge, UK Jane Waite jane.waite@raspberrypi.org Raspberry Pi Computing Education Research Centre, University of Cambridge Cambridge, UK ABSTRACT There are many diferent approaches to qualitative research which can be used in empirical studies, but often in computing education research we do not specify exactly the approach we are using. A phenomenological approach, which can be descriptive or hermeneu- tic (interpretive), involves investigating the ’lived experience’ of research participants. It relates to the whole research process, not just to how we analyse data. Hermeneutic phenomenology is one approach that has been widely used in some felds, for example, in nursing research and general education, but is rarely, if at all, used in computing education research. As research within computing education may beneft from hermeneutic phenomenology, the pur- pose of this workshop is to introduce this methodology and ofer participants some frst-hand experience of approaching a study through a phenomenological lens. CCS CONCEPTS · Social and professional topics → Computing education; · General and reference → Design; Empirical studies. KEYWORDS hermeneutic phenomenology,qualitative research ACM Reference Format: Sue Sentance and Jane Waite. 2021. Hermeneutic phenomenology for com- puting education research (workshop). In UKICER ’21,September 2-3, Glas- gow, UK. ACM, New York, NY, USA, 2 pages. https://doi.org/XXX 1 HERMENEUTIC PHENONOMENOLOGY Most researchers are aware that qualitative research can be a useful tool to provide the richness and detail needed to answer some research questions [9]. In particular, phenomenological research seeks to reveal and describe ‘lived experiences’ and to achieve a deeper understanding of the meaning of experience, generating an in-depth and comprehensive description of the phenomenon [11]. Phenomenological research can be descriptive or interpretive (hermeneutic), with a hermeneutic phenomenological approach involving interpreting and making meaning out of participants’ Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for proft or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the frst page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specifc permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from permissions@acm.org. UKICER ’21, September 2-3, Glasgow, UK © 2021 Association for Computing Machinery. ACM ISBN XXXXXXXXXX. . . $15.00 https://doi.org/XXX ‘lived experiences’. Hermeneutic phenomenology emerged from the work of hermeneutic philosophers, including Heidegger, Gadamer, and Ricoeur, who argue for our embeddedness in the world of language and social relationships, and the inescapable historicity of all understanding [4]. When using hermeneutic (interpretive) phenomenology as a methodology, it is not just the analysis and interpretation of data that draws on the phenomenological principles. The recruitment of participants, sampling, data collection and interview structure should also refect an interpretive approach [5]. Hermeneutic phe- nomenological research necessitates a homogenous group of indi- viduals; participants should demonstrate experience of the same phenomenon [3] but be diverse enough to enhance possibilities of łrich and unique storiesž [10, p. 29]. Purposive sampling is often used. When analysing data in a phenomenological way, we can adopt refexivity to help interpret the meanings discovered [13]. Refex- ivity involves intensive scrutiny about how something is known and/or understood [8] and involves researchers being conscious of, and refective of, how their questions, methods and subject position might impact the data [13]. Identifying themes is an iterative and recursive process and starts with the researcher’s engagement with the data during data collec- tion and the early stages of reading and re-reading the data. Memos are used extensively to record the thoughts of the researcher and to inform refection. Themes can be viewed as written interpretations of ‘lived experiences’ [13]. 2 COMPUTING EDUCATION AND PHENOMENOLOGY Although much computing education research benefts from qual- itative data collection and analysis, little has previously adopted a hemeneutic phenomenological approach. Sloan and Bowe [14] used this approach to conduct a study of computer science lectur- ers’ experience of curriculum design, and described the use of the hermeneutic circle in developing a set of themes around the per- spectives of the 12 lecturers in the study. Other studies have looked at experiences of students and educators using this methodology [1, 2, 6], and there are a small number of studies with a specifc focus on the stories of underrepresented groups and their relation- ship with computing [7, 12, 15] which use this methodology. It is clear that hermeneutic phenomenology facilitates in-depth in- terviews with participants, iterative and detailed identifcation of themes, and an awareness of the researcher’s role and perspective as a co-participant in the research.