The motivation and importance of this study was influenced by my own experience of transitioning from traditional face-to-face to online instruction. For this study, I conducted telephone interviews with 12 instructors meeting the specified qualifications. I also conducted email interviews with participants for 5 weeks. Transcripts of all interviews are located in the appendices. I used a combination of first person, hermeneutic and existential phenomenological approaches to investigate the lived experiences of college and university instructors who have transitioned from traditional face-to-face to online instruction. Several minor themes were revealed. The overall theme is that the online classroom system is an emerging culture with some unique advantages. The paper ends with a major question to be further examined: Would the results be different if less experienced instructors were interviewed? / Ph. D.

No / The overall aim of this paper is to explore the nature of the methodology employed in research published in some of the top business and management journals, with a view to understanding aspects of the creation of management knowledge. The article commences with a review of earlier research and commentary on the nature and appropriateness of competing research methodologies and designs. It reports the early bias in favour of positivism and quantitative methodologies, and explores the evolving recognition of the potential contribution of phenomenological research design and qualitative methodologies. An analysis was conducted of the research methodologies adopted by 120 articles drawn from twenty leading management journals published between 1991 and 2000. The findings section discusses key characteristics of authorship, and aspects of the research methodologies adopted. The conclusion notes the wide range of different methodological approaches adopted in pursuit of the development of management knowledge, and different research agendas. Further research needs to characterize and profile the relationship between these agendas and specific methodological approaches, and to develop understanding of the specific contributions of quantitative and qualitative approaches and their associated paradigms.

An associate degree in nursing is obtained in the community college setting and is designed to be completed in 2 years of full-time study. Approximately 70% of practicing registered nurses (RNs) are educated at the associate degree or diploma (vocational training) level with only 15% moving on to achieve a degree past the associate level. The purpose of this phenomenological research is to study the lived experiences of registered nurses who obtained an associate degree in nursing and, while working in a health care setting, returned to school to attain a baccalaureate degree in nursing (BSN). Data gathered during individual interviews will provide documentation of the benefits of attaining a BSN as well as identifying barriers that associate degree RNs must overcome to pursue a BSN education.

Este estudo busca desvelar o que é isto a prática da profissional enfermeira em hospitais públicos, segundo abordagem fenomenológica na tentativa de compreender as experiências vividas pelas enfermeiras no cotidiano de hospitais públicos. O processo de compreensão está fundamentado na fenomenologia social de Alfred Schütz, o que possibilitou desvelar a ação social da profissional enfermeira. O acesso às vivências das enfermeiras deu-se através de entrevista não diretiva diante da questão orientadora: Poderia me dizer como é o seu trabalho como enfermeira aqui no hospital? A análise das descrições permitiram a compreensão do típico da prática da enfermeira revelando revestir-se de grande complexidade. Os graus de complexidade são derivados da intensa relação face a face que acontece no ato de cuidar de outro na sua singularidade; das relações com as outras práticas de atenção a saúde; das limitações da formação técnica da enfermeira que se mostra insuficiente para dar conta dos fenômenos sociais presentes no mundo vivido no hospital; dos enfrentamentos cotidianos diante dos avanços científicos e tecnológicos que exigem reflexão profissional para incorporar-los no cuidado. A fenomenologia social de Alfred Schütz contribuiu para compreender a ação social das enfermeiras como grupo que se insere numa trama de relações sociais intersubjetivas derivadas da coexistência e convivência de uma temporalidade e um espaço comum de trabalho. / This study aimed to uncover the practice of nursing professionals in public hospitals, adopting a phenomenological approach, in an attempt to understand the experiences of nurses in the daily reality of public hospitals. The understanding process is based on the social phenomenology of Alfred Schütz, which allowed us to uncover the social action of nursing professionals. Access to nursing experiences was obtained through non-directive interviews, in view of the question: Could you tell me how your work is as a nurse here at the hospital? The analysis of their descriptions allowed for the understanding of what is typical about nursing practice, which revealed to be highly complex. The complexity levels derive from the intense face-to-face relation that occurs in caring for the singularity of others; from the relations with other health care practices; from limitations in technical nursing formation, which reveals to be insufficient for dealing with the social phenomena present in the hospital world; from the daily confrontations with scientific and technological advances, which require professional reflection to be incorporated into care. The social phenomenology of Alfred Schütz contributed to the understanding of nurses’ social actions as a group that is inserted in a web of intersubjective social relations, which derive from the coexistence and experience of a common time and work space.

Doctor of Philosophy / Curriculum and Instruction / Thomas Vontz / This phenomenological study hermeneutically explores law professors’ felt experiences within online existential lifeworld spheres. Prose, poetry, color images, and virtual journeying provide descriptive and interpretive text suggesting expansion of Gadamer’s fusion of horizonal understanding. Law professors who teach asynchronously online selected five color images from pixabay.com corresponding with the five universal existential themes: body, space, time, relationships and material things/technology (van Manen, 2014) as catalysts to conversationally explore what it feels like to transition from classroom to online instruction. Multiple phenomenological, artistic, and scientific theories prismatically amplify and explain the study’s design: Gadamer’s hermeneutical circle of understanding (1960/2006), Termes six-point spherical perspective (2016), Einstein’s closed yet unbounded universe (Egdall, 2014), and Seamon’s concept of “at homeness” (2012). Dialogical understanding of Self and Other(s) through Gadamer’s call for festival and serious play (1960/2006) is activated: The reader is invited to interact with the study text through visual and auditory web experiences. Researcher’s hermeneutic and existential retelling of the professors’ conversations begins to unfold metaphorically around a table within a virtual forest. When researcher’s previously bracketed-away prejudice for incorporating synchronous modalities into online learning erupts, professors’ longing felt for classroom home actualizes and ultimately emerges as a sixth existential dimension proposed by the researcher. A culminating journey through virtual desert in search of online home continues the retelling and metaphorically incorporates all six existential themes. Dramatic changes in researcher’s lifeworld view, ways of knowing and being, self view, self action and pedagogical development as a result of conducting the study are summarized. Future research is implicated including exploration of professors’ existentially felt experiences while teaching synchronously online and deep-mining professorial empathy toward students. Factors that impinge on all law professors’ transitioning to online instruction contextually anchor the study: 1) Legal pedagogy’s evolution from 18th Century professional skills training through the late 19th Century intrusion of legal doctrine instruction, and 20th Century paralegal skills training; 2) The American Bar Association’s 21st century mandates for graduating students with both legal skills and legal doctrine training; 3) 21st Century pedagogical Immutables (teaching online, teaching legal job skills, teaching legal doctrine, teaching to standardized tests); and 4) 21st Century Protean Challenges (institution and student demand for technology-based instruction, the Global Legal Services Industry’s hierarchical control over legal education and practice, enrollment and tuition crises, multi-cultural limitations, and the pedagogical conundrum of choosing among multiple online design and delivery modalities).

Suicide attempt and completion rates are significantly higher for the transgender and gender-nonconforming (TGNC) population. TGNC adolescents experience many challenges and adversities, which are compounded when they live in rural communities. The lived experiences of rural TGNC adolescents with social media were unknown and created a gap in the research. This study was grounded in transgender, gender minority stress, and resiliency theories, along with the conceptual frameworks of rural communities and grit. The purpose of this descriptive phenomenological qualitative research study was to explore the lived experiences of rural TGNC individuals (18-24-year-olds) with social media during adolescence. Data was collected through a brief online survey and face-to-face interviews with 9 participants. Interviews were recorded and transcribed. Data analysis included clustering of themes into textual and structural descriptions, as described by Giorgi. Results explored the lived experience and the essence of social media for rural TGNC adolescents. Rural TGNC adolescents reported emotional awareness and insight with both positive and negative aspects of social media, along with frustration and isolation. These results and implications may inform mental health professionals and providers about the social media experiences of rural TGNC adolescents, including how to incorporate these findings, better serve the rural TGNC population, and increase grit. These findings were also a voice for a hidden population of TGNC individuals living in rural communities during adolescence.

This phenomenological research aimed to illuminate the nature and effects of ordinariness in nursing and to discover whether the phenomenon enhanced the nursing encounter. The researcher worked as a participant observer with six registered nurses in a Professorial Nursing Unit. Following each interaction, the researcher wrote her impressions in a personal-professional journal and audiotaped conversations with the respective nurses and patients to gain their impressions. Using a theoretical framework of the phenomenological concepts of lived experience, Dasein, Being-in-the-world and fusion of horizons as an underpinning methodology, an initial hermeneutical analysis and interpretation of the impressions generated qualities and activities indicative of the aspects of the phenomenon of ordinariness in nursing. The second phase of the analysis and interpretation sought to illuminate the nature of the phenomenon itself. Eight actualities of the nature of the phenomenon emerged: 'allowingness,' 'straightforwardness,' 'self-likeness,' 'homeliness,' 'favourableness,' 'intuneness,' 'lightheartedness' and 'connectedness.' These actualities were described in relation to the phenomenon of interest. The effects of the phenomenon were the creative potential to enhance the nursing encounter and included many and various effects of facilitation, fair play, familiarity, family, favouring, feelings, fun and friendship. The research found that nurses and patients shared a common sense of humanity, which enhanced the nursing encounter. Within the context of caring, the nurses were ordinary people, perceived as being extraordinarily effective, by the very ways in which their humanness shone through their knowledge and skills, to make their whole being with patients something more than just professional helping. The shared sense of ordinariness between nurses and patients made them as one in then- humanness and created a special place, in which the relative strangeness of the experience of being in a health care setting, could be made familiar and manageable.

It has become a great concern about how children may be affected and how teachers should use computers in their classroom activities effectively with the increased role of computers in early childhood

Bakgrund:  Långvarig smärta är idag ett mångfacetterat folkhälsoproblem. Smärtupplevelsen är komplex och påverkar människan utifrån flera dimensioner. Det vardagliga livet påverkas vilket skapar problem på såväl individ- som samhällsnivå. Sjuksköterskans roll är betydelsefull angående bemötandet och för patientens fortsatta utveckling av smärtupplevelsen. Syfte: Att beskriva patienters erfarenheter av att leva med långvarig muskuloskeletal smärta.  Metod: Littereraturöversikt baserad på tio kvalitativa vetenskapliga artiklar framsökta i databaserna CINAHL Complete och PubMed. Artiklarnas resultat analyserades och granskades utifrån skriftliga sammanfattningar och teman framställdes med hjälp av färgkodning. Resultat: Centrala erfarenheter som framkom var att deltagarna upplevde sig känslomässigt involverade, vilket även visades påverka smärtupplevelsen. Inställningen till och hanteringen av smärtan, livet och framtiden påverkades av yttre faktorer och förmågan till acceptans. Analysen genererade fem teman: smärtans påverkan i vardagen, smärtans påverkan av självbilden, strategier, bemötandet från hälso- och sjukvården och balans mellan hopp och förtvivlan. Diskussion: Livet med långvarig smärta innebär ofta ett stort lidande för människan. Eriksson beskrivning av livslidande, vårdlidande och sjukdomslidande ligger till grund för resultatdiskussionen. Även betydelsen av acceptans, omvårdnaden och hoppet diskuteras i förhållande till relevant forskning och litteraturöversiktens resultat.

Este estudo busca desvelar o que é isto a prática da profissional enfermeira em hospitais públicos, segundo abordagem fenomenológica na tentativa de compreender as experiências vividas pelas enfermeiras no cotidiano de hospitais públicos. O processo de compreensão está fundamentado na fenomenologia social de Alfred Schütz, o que possibilitou desvelar a ação social da profissional enfermeira. O acesso às vivências das enfermeiras deu-se através de entrevista não diretiva diante da questão orientadora: Poderia me dizer como é o seu trabalho como enfermeira aqui no hospital? A análise das descrições permitiram a compreensão do típico da prática da enfermeira revelando revestir-se de grande complexidade. Os graus de complexidade são derivados da intensa relação face a face que acontece no ato de cuidar de outro na sua singularidade; das relações com as outras práticas de atenção a saúde; das limitações da formação técnica da enfermeira que se mostra insuficiente para dar conta dos fenômenos sociais presentes no mundo vivido no hospital; dos enfrentamentos cotidianos diante dos avanços científicos e tecnológicos que exigem reflexão profissional para incorporar-los no cuidado. A fenomenologia social de Alfred Schütz contribuiu para compreender a ação social das enfermeiras como grupo que se insere numa trama de relações sociais intersubjetivas derivadas da coexistência e convivência de uma temporalidade e um espaço comum de trabalho. / This study aimed to uncover the practice of nursing professionals in public hospitals, adopting a phenomenological approach, in an attempt to understand the experiences of nurses in the daily reality of public hospitals. The understanding process is based on the social phenomenology of Alfred Schütz, which allowed us to uncover the social action of nursing professionals. Access to nursing experiences was obtained through non-directive interviews, in view of the question: Could you tell me how your work is as a nurse here at the hospital? The analysis of their descriptions allowed for the understanding of what is typical about nursing practice, which revealed to be highly complex. The complexity levels derive from the intense face-to-face relation that occurs in caring for the singularity of others; from the relations with other health care practices; from limitations in technical nursing formation, which reveals to be insufficient for dealing with the social phenomena present in the hospital world; from the daily confrontations with scientific and technological advances, which require professional reflection to be incorporated into care. The social phenomenology of Alfred Schütz contributed to the understanding of nurses’ social actions as a group that is inserted in a web of intersubjective social relations, which derive from the coexistence and experience of a common time and work space.