Stephen C Yanchar
Biographic Data
| ID | 453836 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Stephen C Yanchar |
| GIVEN NAMES | Stephen C |
| FAMILY NAME | Yanchar |
| SIGNATURE | YANCHAR S C |
| AFFILIATIONS | Brigham Young University |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-2739-5386 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 28 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 31 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 28 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1997 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 2 |
Agency-in-lived-tensions as a framework for qualitative research
The Moral Ecology of Unstructured Speaking on Study Abroad: Finding Speaking Opportunities
This report describes the moral phenomena that students in an intensive Arabic study abroad program encountered as they tried to find speaking opportunities for themselves outside of institutional arrangements. The ways that participants went about speaking activities were accompanied by tensions that they had to deal with throughout the program. They found themselves obliged to consider values such as decisiveness, independence, and fairness as …
Phenomenology as a subversive practice
Understanding Trust in Online Course Design
Human Agency in the Tensional Space of Existence
This article presents lived tensions as a significant aspect of human agency and suggests what this concept can contribute to the formulation of rich understandings of psychological phenomena. In this argument, the notion of lived tensions refers to the competing demands, contradictions, oppositions, strains, resistances, and pulls that are ubiquitously encountered as part of meaningful, agential involvement in the world. An indication of how liv…
Questioning Consilience and Autonomy in Self‐Determination Theory: A Critique and Hermeneutic‐Phenomenological Alternative
This paper offers a theoretical analysis of Self‐Determination Theory (SDT) and its claims regarding human autonomy. Self‐determination theorists have advanced a form of self‐regulated, engaged behavior (i.e., autonomy), founded upon on a consilient account of human motivation that assumes multiple, hierarchical levels of organization and causation (e.g., biological, psychological, and social). Autonomy, from this perspective, is taken to emerge …
Concern and control in human agency
Human agency is typically theorized as a unique form of control or countercontrol in a determinant world. Thus, the nature of world (as a closed, determinant space) is taken for granted, creating a notoriously difficult theoretical problem: formulating a persuasive account of how agency as countercontrol might coherently fit within the world conceived and prioritized in this way. Based on hermeneutic thought, I contend that a primary focus on age…
Routledge International Handbook of Theoretical and Philosophical Psychology: Critiques, Problems, and Alternatives to Psychological Ideas
Moral Complexities of Student Question-Asking in Classroom Practice
Prior research on student question-asking has primarily been conducted from a cognitive, epistemological standpoint. In contrast, we present a hermeneutic-phenomenological investigation that emphasizes the moral-practical context in which question-asking functions as a situated way of being in the midst of practice. More particularly, we present a hermeneutic study of student question-asking in a graduate seminar on design theory (i.e., a seminar…
Towards a view of originary theory in instructional design
Question Asking and the Common Good: A Hermeneutic Investigation of Student Questioning in Moral Configurations of Classroom Practice
This qualitative study (based on a hermeneutic moral-realist interpretive frame (Yanchar & Slife, 2017)) explored question asking as it unfolded in the everyday practice of being a student in a graduate course on design thinking (with an emphasis on design in education). Findings are presented as four key tensions that occurred within the complex classroom setting under investigation: “theory and overlapping practices,” “convergence and divergenc…
Empathy in Distance Learning Design Practice
Instructional Design as Manipulation of, or Cooperation with, Learners
Identity, interpretation, and the moral ecology of learning
Within hermeneutic theory, human identity has been conceptualized as a form of self-interpretation, situated within value-laden practices that offer moral points of reference and standards for cultural engagement. Central to the notion of identity, from this perspective, is a kind of practical-moral position-taking in which a person is an expression of what it means to be human within a particular moral space. This article extends this argument b…
Theorizing inquiry in the moral space of practice
Moral realism has been advanced as a central theme in contemporary hermeneutic thought. From this standpoint, participation in cultural practices is made possible and meaningful by ontologically real moral goods and reference points. Cultural practices thus constitute a moral referential totality for human action. This article suggests that these and related hermeneutic insights offer a unique perspective for taking account of practical involveme…
The Moral Call to Learn: A Qualitative Investigation of Encounters with Unfamiliarity in Everyday Life
This qualitative study explored the moral aspects of learners’ “encounters with unfamiliarity” in their everyday experiences. The encounter with unfamiliarity, as a basic phenomenon within the conceptual framework of embodied familiarization, was investigated using a multiple case study approach (Stake, 2006). Findings from this study are presented first as brief case narratives and second as themes based on a cross-case analysis. Themes of the s…
Truth and Disclosure in Qualitative Research: Implications of Hermeneutic Realism
The purpose of this essay is to describe hermeneutic realism as an overarching philosophical commitment for qualitative research and to present its principal implications. Hermeneutic realism, based on the work of Martin Heidegger and other hermeneutic philosophers, emphasizes an expressivist ontology and meaningful human participation, or what might be termed concernful involvement. Concernful involvement allows for the disclosure of truth about…
Learning for Another: From Self-Interest to Altruism
This qualitative study offers an examination of the learning experiences of six individuals, each of whom initially learned for self-interested purposes, but later experienced a shift in their desire and pursued learning to benefit others. We conducted interviews that described this phenomenon and provided insight into the following question: What is the experience of a learner who transitions from learning out of self-interest to learning for th…
Embodied Cognition, Representationalism, and Mechanism: A Review and Analysis
Embodied cognition has attracted significant attention within cognitive science and related fields in recent years. It is most noteworthy for its emphasis on the inextricable connection between mental functioning and embodied activity and thus for its departure from standard cognitive science's implicit commitment to the unembodied mind. This article offers a review of embodied cognition's recent empirical and theoretical contributions and sugges…
Using numerical data in explicitly interpretive, contextual inquiry: A “practical discourse” framework and examples from Engeström’s research on activity systems
This article discusses the potential contribution of certain types of numerical data to explicitly interpretive, contextual inquiry (i.e., inquiry commonly associated with the use of “practical discourse” and “qualitative” methods) and extends an earlier argument on this topic. Three example studies that clarify this earlier argument, drawn from the research program of Yrjö Engeström, are presented. These examples provide concrete demonstrations …
Changing the terms of the debate: Quantitative methods in explicitly interpretive research
We introduce this special issue by arguing that quantitative and qualitative research methods do not line up neatly with the guiding philosophical commitments of the two sides of the schism in the field between the mainstream, natural science approach, and the minority, human science position. This leads to the motivating idea for the issue, the view that quantitative methods, when used appropriately, can contribute to interpretive inquiry in psy…
Reconsidering the Compatibility Thesis and Eclecticism: Five Proposed Guidelines for Method Use
This essay examines calls for methodological eclecticism based on the “compatibility thesis,” arguing that they fail to take seriously the assumptions of method and, in so doing, fail to provide a methodological perspective that adequately incorporates the centrally important task of critically examining the theoretical background of methods and conceptual frameworks for research. The authors offer an alternative view of method use and a set of g…
On the Nature of a Critical Methodology
This article describes an expanded view of methodology— termed a critical methodology—in the wake of criticisms of the received view of scientific method. A critical methodology would involve a deemphasis on method per se, the need for methodological innovation and the continual critical examination of the assumptions that undergird methods and other research resources. It is argued that under a critical methodology, the processes of theory const…
What Is Psychology About? Toward An Explicit Ontology
Commentators have criticized psychology's overemphasis on method and its simultaneous neglect of questions regarding the subject matter and purpose of psychology. This article summarizes four problems that have resulted from the privileging of method, and in each case illustrates how an explicit ontology provides at least partial solutions to these problems. This article also suggests three metatheoretical assumptions based on the thinking of Wil…
Some problems with Humean causality
Reconsidering the Compatibility Thesis and Eclecticism: Five Proposed Guidelines for Method Use
This essay examines calls for methodological eclecticism based on the “compatibility thesis,” arguing that they fail to take seriously the assumptions of method and, in so doing, fail to provide a methodological perspective that adequately incorporates the centrally important task of critically examining the theoretical background of methods and conceptual frameworks for research. The authors offer an alternative view of method use and a set of g…
What Is Psychology About? Toward An Explicit Ontology
Commentators have criticized psychology's overemphasis on method and its simultaneous neglect of questions regarding the subject matter and purpose of psychology. This article summarizes four problems that have resulted from the privileging of method, and in each case illustrates how an explicit ontology provides at least partial solutions to these problems. This article also suggests three metatheoretical assumptions based on the thinking of Wil…
Theorizing inquiry in the moral space of practice
Moral realism has been advanced as a central theme in contemporary hermeneutic thought. From this standpoint, participation in cultural practices is made possible and meaningful by ontologically real moral goods and reference points. Cultural practices thus constitute a moral referential totality for human action. This article suggests that these and related hermeneutic insights offer a unique perspective for taking account of practical involveme…
Truth and Disclosure in Qualitative Research: Implications of Hermeneutic Realism
The purpose of this essay is to describe hermeneutic realism as an overarching philosophical commitment for qualitative research and to present its principal implications. Hermeneutic realism, based on the work of Martin Heidegger and other hermeneutic philosophers, emphasizes an expressivist ontology and meaningful human participation, or what might be termed concernful involvement. Concernful involvement allows for the disclosure of truth about…
Empathy in Distance Learning Design Practice
Instructional Design as Manipulation of, or Cooperation with, Learners
The Moral Call to Learn: A Qualitative Investigation of Encounters with Unfamiliarity in Everyday Life
This qualitative study explored the moral aspects of learners’ “encounters with unfamiliarity” in their everyday experiences. The encounter with unfamiliarity, as a basic phenomenon within the conceptual framework of embodied familiarization, was investigated using a multiple case study approach (Stake, 2006). Findings from this study are presented first as brief case narratives and second as themes based on a cross-case analysis. Themes of the s…
Learning for Another: From Self-Interest to Altruism
This qualitative study offers an examination of the learning experiences of six individuals, each of whom initially learned for self-interested purposes, but later experienced a shift in their desire and pursued learning to benefit others. We conducted interviews that described this phenomenon and provided insight into the following question: What is the experience of a learner who transitions from learning out of self-interest to learning for th…
Parallels between multiculturalism and disunity in psychology
Parallels between multiculturalism and disunity in psychology
Some problems with Humean causality
Some problems with Humean causality
What Is Psychology About? Toward An Explicit Ontology
Commentators have criticized psychology's overemphasis on method and its simultaneous neglect of questions regarding the subject matter and purpose of psychology. This article summarizes four problems that have resulted from the privileging of method, and in each case illustrates how an explicit ontology provides at least partial solutions to these problems. This article also suggests three metatheoretical assumptions based on the thinking of Wil…
On the Nature of a Critical Methodology
This article describes an expanded view of methodology— termed a critical methodology—in the wake of criticisms of the received view of scientific method. A critical methodology would involve a deemphasis on method per se, the need for methodological innovation and the continual critical examination of the assumptions that undergird methods and other research resources. It is argued that under a critical methodology, the processes of theory const…
Reconsidering the Compatibility Thesis and Eclecticism: Five Proposed Guidelines for Method Use
This essay examines calls for methodological eclecticism based on the “compatibility thesis,” arguing that they fail to take seriously the assumptions of method and, in so doing, fail to provide a methodological perspective that adequately incorporates the centrally important task of critically examining the theoretical background of methods and conceptual frameworks for research. The authors offer an alternative view of method use and a set of g…
Using numerical data in explicitly interpretive, contextual inquiry: A “practical discourse” framework and examples from Engeström’s research on activity systems
This article discusses the potential contribution of certain types of numerical data to explicitly interpretive, contextual inquiry (i.e., inquiry commonly associated with the use of “practical discourse” and “qualitative” methods) and extends an earlier argument on this topic. Three example studies that clarify this earlier argument, drawn from the research program of Yrjö Engeström, are presented. These examples provide concrete demonstrations …
Changing the terms of the debate: Quantitative methods in explicitly interpretive research
We introduce this special issue by arguing that quantitative and qualitative research methods do not line up neatly with the guiding philosophical commitments of the two sides of the schism in the field between the mainstream, natural science approach, and the minority, human science position. This leads to the motivating idea for the issue, the view that quantitative methods, when used appropriately, can contribute to interpretive inquiry in psy…
Embodied Cognition, Representationalism, and Mechanism: A Review and Analysis
Embodied cognition has attracted significant attention within cognitive science and related fields in recent years. It is most noteworthy for its emphasis on the inextricable connection between mental functioning and embodied activity and thus for its departure from standard cognitive science's implicit commitment to the unembodied mind. This article offers a review of embodied cognition's recent empirical and theoretical contributions and sugges…
Truth and Disclosure in Qualitative Research: Implications of Hermeneutic Realism
The purpose of this essay is to describe hermeneutic realism as an overarching philosophical commitment for qualitative research and to present its principal implications. Hermeneutic realism, based on the work of Martin Heidegger and other hermeneutic philosophers, emphasizes an expressivist ontology and meaningful human participation, or what might be termed concernful involvement. Concernful involvement allows for the disclosure of truth about…
Learning for Another: From Self-Interest to Altruism
This qualitative study offers an examination of the learning experiences of six individuals, each of whom initially learned for self-interested purposes, but later experienced a shift in their desire and pursued learning to benefit others. We conducted interviews that described this phenomenon and provided insight into the following question: What is the experience of a learner who transitions from learning out of self-interest to learning for th…
Identity, interpretation, and the moral ecology of learning
Within hermeneutic theory, human identity has been conceptualized as a form of self-interpretation, situated within value-laden practices that offer moral points of reference and standards for cultural engagement. Central to the notion of identity, from this perspective, is a kind of practical-moral position-taking in which a person is an expression of what it means to be human within a particular moral space. This article extends this argument b…
Theorizing inquiry in the moral space of practice
Moral realism has been advanced as a central theme in contemporary hermeneutic thought. From this standpoint, participation in cultural practices is made possible and meaningful by ontologically real moral goods and reference points. Cultural practices thus constitute a moral referential totality for human action. This article suggests that these and related hermeneutic insights offer a unique perspective for taking account of practical involveme…
The Moral Call to Learn: A Qualitative Investigation of Encounters with Unfamiliarity in Everyday Life
This qualitative study explored the moral aspects of learners’ “encounters with unfamiliarity” in their everyday experiences. The encounter with unfamiliarity, as a basic phenomenon within the conceptual framework of embodied familiarization, was investigated using a multiple case study approach (Stake, 2006). Findings from this study are presented first as brief case narratives and second as themes based on a cross-case analysis. Themes of the s…
Empathy in Distance Learning Design Practice
Instructional Design as Manipulation of, or Cooperation with, Learners
Question Asking and the Common Good: A Hermeneutic Investigation of Student Questioning in Moral Configurations of Classroom Practice
This qualitative study (based on a hermeneutic moral-realist interpretive frame (Yanchar & Slife, 2017)) explored question asking as it unfolded in the everyday practice of being a student in a graduate course on design thinking (with an emphasis on design in education). Findings are presented as four key tensions that occurred within the complex classroom setting under investigation: “theory and overlapping practices,” “convergence and divergenc…
Moral Complexities of Student Question-Asking in Classroom Practice
Prior research on student question-asking has primarily been conducted from a cognitive, epistemological standpoint. In contrast, we present a hermeneutic-phenomenological investigation that emphasizes the moral-practical context in which question-asking functions as a situated way of being in the midst of practice. More particularly, we present a hermeneutic study of student question-asking in a graduate seminar on design theory (i.e., a seminar…
Towards a view of originary theory in instructional design
Concern and control in human agency
Human agency is typically theorized as a unique form of control or countercontrol in a determinant world. Thus, the nature of world (as a closed, determinant space) is taken for granted, creating a notoriously difficult theoretical problem: formulating a persuasive account of how agency as countercontrol might coherently fit within the world conceived and prioritized in this way. Based on hermeneutic thought, I contend that a primary focus on age…
Routledge International Handbook of Theoretical and Philosophical Psychology: Critiques, Problems, and Alternatives to Psychological Ideas
Questioning Consilience and Autonomy in Self‐Determination Theory: A Critique and Hermeneutic‐Phenomenological Alternative
This paper offers a theoretical analysis of Self‐Determination Theory (SDT) and its claims regarding human autonomy. Self‐determination theorists have advanced a form of self‐regulated, engaged behavior (i.e., autonomy), founded upon on a consilient account of human motivation that assumes multiple, hierarchical levels of organization and causation (e.g., biological, psychological, and social). Autonomy, from this perspective, is taken to emerge …
The Moral Ecology of Unstructured Speaking on Study Abroad: Finding Speaking Opportunities
This report describes the moral phenomena that students in an intensive Arabic study abroad program encountered as they tried to find speaking opportunities for themselves outside of institutional arrangements. The ways that participants went about speaking activities were accompanied by tensions that they had to deal with throughout the program. They found themselves obliged to consider values such as decisiveness, independence, and fairness as …
Phenomenology as a subversive practice
Epistemology (23 works) · Psychology (21 works) · Philosophy (20 works) · Sociology (17 works) · Computer Science (11 works) · Social Psychology (10 works) · Pedagogy (8 works) · Qualitative research (7 works) · Social Psychology (7 works) · Philosophy (5 works)