This monograph addresses the issues in phenomenology as applied to educational research. The first chapter discusses problems with the following traditional goals of scientific methodology when applied by social scientists to educational research: measurement, control, objectivity, generalizability, and prediction. The second chapter explains the development of phenomenology and uses the teachings of phenomenology to free educational researchers from the constraints of scientific methodology. Transcendental, existential, and hermeneutic phenomenology all seek to understand human life through experience. Results of phenomenology research are not predictable beforehand, and experience takes precedence over models, tests, controls outcomes, and norms. The experimental positivistic tradition seeks to discover laws; the phenomenological tradition hopes to achieve an awareness of different ways of thinking and acting. In the third chapter several examples illustrate phenomenological research. Suggestions for conducting research precede passages describing each example. Chapter four discusses some frequently heard criticisms of phenomenology and responses to them. Eight objections are answered in detail. Chapter five presents a number of published phenomenological studies. References include philosophical studies of the human sciences, as well as books about the history and philosophy of science. (LMO)