While debate about the meaning of hermeneutics and phenomenology for educational research continues, the notion of lived experience, and its application to reflective practice, has become a feature of much that goes by the name of phenomenological within this area. The prevalence of the lived experience model can be attributed in large part to the influential work of Max van Manen in translating phenomenology and hermeneutics from the philosophical arena into the context of educational research. His research model, based on the notion of lived experience, has provided a basis for educational researchers to reflect on their own personal experience as educators, educational theorists, managers and policy makers. Does lived experience offer educational researchers an effective model upon which to base reflective practice and, moreover, one that fully utilises the potentialities of phenomenological thought? This article addresses this question through an examination of how the other of lived experience, non-lived experience, is constituted within reflection on lived experience. What are the implications for educational research of how reflection on lived experience is framed in relation to what does not count as lived experience? In addressing these questions, an opportunity is provided to rethink the possible role and scope of phenomenology within educational research. The notion of lived experience came to prominence within education through the work of van Manen, particularly his 1990 volume, "Researching Lived Experience." Van Manen attributes his notion of lived experience to Edmund Husserl's concept of the "Lebenswelt," or life-world. A brief account of Husserl's notion of life-world demonstrates the centrality of lived experience to phenomenology. (Contains 1 note.)