10. Phenomenography and collective awareness

Phenomenography initially commenced as a distinctive research approach based on two primary goals: to improve our understanding of learning from the students’ perspective; and to describe humanity’s collective awareness of different phenomena in the world. To date, the majority of phenomenographic research has focused on the former, educational goal. This means that the potential of research based on the second goal, investigating collective understanding of socially significant phenomena, has been underdeveloped. This forms the focus of this final chapter in the book. I start by unpacking the ongoing interest in collective awareness throughout the history of phenomenography, with examples of where phenomenographic research has been used outside of education. To help envisage the ways in which phenomenographic research might integrate with other social science research, I also outline phenomenography’s implicit position on the socially-mediated nature of human experience, and present a number of examples of studies that have integrated phenomenographic research with social and practice theories. The chapter is forward looking, with the aim of encouraging future research into collective awareness of phenomena within specific socially, culturally and historically situated groups, using phenomenographic methods.