Phenomenography

Phenomenography is a qualitative research approach used mainly in education to study the different ways people experience, understand, perceive, or conceive a particular phenomenon. It originated in the 1970s with the work of Ference Marton and Roger Booth at the University of Gothenburg, Sweden. Distinct from phenomenology, which seeks the essence of experiences, phenomenography aims to describe the qualitatively different conceptions held by a group of people and to map the variation among them.

Central to phenomenography are the notions of second-order perspective, categories of description, and an outcome space. The second-order perspective focuses on how people experience the phenomenon rather than on the phenomenon itself. Researchers identify a limited set of categories of description, each representing a distinct way of understanding. These categories are arranged into an outcome space, a structural diagram that shows the logical relationships and range of conceptions across the studied group.

Methodologically, phenomenography typically collects data through semi-structured interviews, open-ended questionnaires, or tasks designed to reveal conceptions. Analyses proceed through familiarization, condensation, comparison, grouping into descriptive categories, articulation, and validation of the outcome space. The aim is to produce a compact, non-redundant set of categories that exhaustively describes the variation in understanding within the sample.

Applications often lie in education research, where researchers examine students’ conceptions of learning, teaching, knowledge, assessment, or specific topics. The resulting outcome space can inform instructional design, assessment practices, and curriculum development by highlighting common alternative conceptions and their structural relations.

Critiques focus on subjectivity, reliability, and generalizability given small, purposive samples and interpretive analysis. Proponents emphasize systematic procedures and transparency in the coding process, and the explanatory value of the outcome space.