Ueda Kayoko    Department   Kawasaki University of Medical Welfare  ,    Position   Associate Professor
Language	English
Title	The Meaning of Students' Volunteer Experience in Welfare Education -Demonstrating "Phenomenological Reduction" as a Healthcare Research Method
Conference	31st International Human Science Research Conference
Conference Type	International society and overseas society
Presentation Type	Speech
Lecture Type	General
Publisher and common publisher	◎Kayoko Ueda
Date	2012/06/26
Venue (city and name of the country)	Montreal, CANADA
Society abstract	31st International Human Science Research Conference GUIDE 63
Summary	The purpose of this study is to elucidate the meaning of students’ volunteer experiences using the concept of “phenomenological reduction”. As volunteer activity in welfare education is considered to be difficult to teach and evaluate due to the diversity of activity and students’ individuality, it is necessary to reveal how they actually perceive their volunteer experience in helping others. This study also aims to demonstrate “phenomenological reduction” as a healthcare research method, in place of previous literary or abstract phenomenological methods. “Phenomenological reduction” is a valid interpretation of “phenomena” (e.g. statements, actions, and expressions) based on the subject’s ‘embodiment’ & ‘desire’, which explain the subject’s “existence”. The statements presented by volunteer students were reduced that they were initially drawn to others’ vulnerability, which encouraged them to volunteer. However, students gradually realized how distinctively different the actual needs and desires of those they had assisted were, than from what they originally imagined. Some students experienced it as a failure, others as a marvelous pleasure, finding “the other” to develop a new side of themselves. This result suggests that volunteer experience would awaken students’ consciousness of vulnerable people from “weak and helpless” to as “precious others”. “Co-existence society” - the goal of welfare education- would be formed not on the equal relationship between self and others, but rather on the awe and yearning for “the other” through discovering “the other” transcended self. Thus “Phenomenological reduction” would be a fundamental principle to bring holistic human understanding, through mutually exploring “phenomena” and “existence”.