p.11 When I consider an issue, problem, or question, I enter into it fully. I focus on it with unwavering
attention and interest. I search introspectively, meditatively, and reflectively into its nature and meaning. My
primary task is to recognize whatever exists in my consciousness as a fundamental awareness, to receive and accept it, and
then dwell on its nature and possible meanings. With full and unqualified interest, I am determined to extend my understanding
and knowledge of an experience. I begin the heuristic investigation with my own self-awareness and explicate that
awareness with reference to a question or problem until an essential insight is achieved, one that will throw a beginning
light onto a critical human experience.
p.13 I begin the heuristic journey with something that has called to me from within my life experience...
In such an odyssey, I know little of the territory through which I must travel. But one thing is certain, the mystery summons
me and lures me "to let go of the known and swim in an unknown current."
p.15 Heuristic inquiry is a process that begins with a question or problem which the researcher
seeks to illuminate or answer. The question is one that has been a personal challenge and puzzlement in the
search to understand one's self and the world in which one lives... Heuristics is a way of engaging in scientific search through
methods and processes aimed at discovery... The deepest currents of meaning and knowledge take place within the individual
through one's senses, perceptions, beliefs, and judgments. This requires a passionate, disciplined commitment to remain with
a question intensely and continuously until it is illuminated or answered.
p.16 Heuristic inquiry requires that one be open, receptive, and attuned to all facets of one's experience
of a phenomenon
p.23 The more that intuition is exercised and tested, the more likely one will develop an advanced perceptiveness
and sensitivity to what is essential in the discovery of knowledge... Intuition makes possible the perceiving of things
as wholes... Intuition is an essential characteristic of seeking knowledge.
p.27 Six phases of heuristic research guide unfolding investigations and comprise the basic
research design. They include: the initial engagement, immersion into the topic and question, incubation, illumination,
explication, and culmination of the research in a creative synthesis.
p.31-32 The final phase of heuristic research is the process of creative synthesis. The
researcher in entering this process is thoroughly familiar with all the data in its major constituents, qualities, and themes
and in the explication of the meanings and details of the experience as a whole. The creative synthesis can only be achieved
through tacit and intuitive powers. Once the researcher has mastered knowledge of the material that illuminates and
explicates the question, the researcher is challenged to put the components and core themes into a creative synthesis.
p.40 All heuristic inquiry begins with the internal search to discover, with an encompassing puzzlement,
a passionate desire to know, a devotion and commitment to pursue a question that is strongly connected to one's own identity
and selfhood. The awakening of such a question comes through an inward clearing, and an intentional readiness and determination
to discover a fundamental truth regarding the meaning and essence of one's own experience and that of others.
p.40-41 Discovering a significant problem or question that will hold the wandering gaze and passionate commitment
of the researcher is the essential opening of the heuristic process... Field (1979) emphasizes... We have to learn
to be so accurate with our questions that the answer is as clear and simple as possible... The question as such should
reveal itself immediately and evidently, in a way that one knows what one is seeking. The question itself provides
the crucial beginning and meaning, the nature of the searcher's quest... The researcher's excitement and curiosity inspire
the search
p.43 Solving a problem means finding one's way... Methods of heuristic research are open-ended.
p.49 Transcriptions, notes, and personal documents are gathered together and organized by the investigator
into a sequence that tells the story of each research participant. Essential to the process of heuristic analysis
is comprehensive knowledge of all materials for each participant and for the group of participants collectively. The
task involves timeless immersion into the data, with intervals of rest and return to the data until intimate knowledge is
obtained.
