Theorizing Education and Educational Research

In this paper, I address the question of how a philosophically enriched view of method might inform both educational theory and educational research. The first part of the paper elaborates recent discussions on "philosophical method" in the educational-philosophical discourse. These discussions point toward the importance of analyzing the conceptual or categorical frameworks of educational processes. The second part of the paper discusses Martin Heidegger's work Being and Time to capture fully the challenges that a philosophical method faces in investigations of subjectivity: The focus lies on Heidegger's strategy to situate his philosophical work as a descriptive undertaking and simultaneously as a categorical outline of human existentiality ("Dasein"). This work serves to reflect a philosophical as well as empirical attitude or conduct in the final part of the paper, which briefly introduces "categorical research" with some examples.