Exploring participation from a pedagogical perspective: a methodological reflection on the use of the phenomenological-hermeneutic approach

This paper represents an initial methodological reflection on the design of a research project dedicated to youth participation. In particular, it is intended here to explore what are the characteristics of a phenomenological-hermeneutic paradigm in educational inquiry, what are its potentialities, challenges and implications for the researcher and co-researchers, and subjects of the interviews. To this end, the hermeneutic approach – which shifts its focus from describing the phenomenon to understanding the meaning that the experiences have for the subjects of the research – will be brought into dialogue both with the broader ecological epistemic framework and with the biographical methods that will constitute the references for field research. In the first case, because lived experience becomes the privileged observatory for understanding what networks and meanings are and have been structured, moving away from positivist assumptions of separation and generalizability toward a richer and fuller understanding of the connection between experiences. In the second case, because these assumptions deliver the value and opportunity that narrative methods and tools can offer as they give centrality to transformative events in the formal and informal contexts of education in which they are situated. The subjects and object of the research constitute an additional element of interest, since around them move some important tensions with respect to the purposes of the research. First, the involvement of young people in the research constitutes a space for them to reflect and grow in awareness, allowing a context for learning and developing identity and belonging at a crucial stage of their lives. Moreover, looking at participation being subject-centered means defining it as both the object and the very process of research: here the dimensions of power between youth and adulthood, researcher and subject, researcher and object of inquiry take on jointly ethical and epistemological connotations.