Hermeneutics: Understanding Educational Experience

Far from something theoretical or abstract, the main concern of hermeneutics is to uncover what actually happens in human experience when understanding, in better or worse forms, occurs. Crucial insights are yielded for educators. Today, the heart of educational experience is routinely bypassed by preoccupations with measurable outcomes and rankings; preoccupations increasingly shared by policy-making in education and by educational research and evaluation. Hermeneutics provides imaginative and practical resources for remedying this loss: for revealing distortions and dogmas and for reclaiming the fullness of educational thought and action. The main ideas of hermeneutics are explored in the book and the more central concerns of educational practice are then reviewed in the light of these ideas.