A Phenomenological Study On Children’s Lived Experiences Of Hope

Starting from the anecdotes of hope that children experienced, this dissertation deeply investigates the phenomena of hope in children’s lives and their experiences of hope using the approach of educational phenomenology, and then provides illuminating practical strategies for parents and teachers to create a better educative environment full of hopes. During the implementation process, this research study has collected life anecdotes of 32 children from year 10 to 11, on-line stories and narrations in other texts, and then formulated phenomenological texts on the basis of deep description and reflection, to explore the essence, internal structure, content dimensions and pedagogical meanings of hope, by employing multiple data gathering methods such as literature review, content analysis, close observation and dialogical interview.Generally speaking, this dissertation is divided into five sections:Section 1:the author presents the background and motivation of this research study, reviews all relevant literature, explains the two central concepts, and reveals the objectives, problems and values of the dissertation.Section 2:the author tells us the essence, basic procedures of the educational phenomenological method, data collection and analysis are the two stages which have been particularly described.Section 3:from the perspectives of linguistics, philosophy, theology, psychology and film literature, the author illustrates the complex meanings of hope in both texts and our daily lives, including the essence, structure and meanings of the hope and its values for children’s development.Section 4:children’s lived experience on the four structural elements (cognition, emotion, will and action) and four critical dimensions (care, respect, forgiveness and recognition) of the hope are thickly described.Section 5:the pedagogical meanings of hope are analyzed here, followed by some detailed suggestions to family education and schooling, which include the forgiveness and care to children, the respect to children’s reality, the confidence to children’s potentials, and the proper transcendence of children’s development.