Between lived experience and history: toward an interpretive-dialectical reason in qualitative educational research

Authors

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.5212/PraxEduc.v.20.25104.090

Abstract

This article proposes a critical reflection on the current challenges of qualitative research in education, particularly in light of the trend toward an uncritical valorization of subjectivity and the reduction of lived experience to impressionistic accounts lacking theoretical depth. Based on the critiques formulated by Devechi and Trevisan (2010), it argues that Jean-Paul Sartre’s progressive-regressive method offers an interpretive-dialectical path to reinscribe the lived into history and social totality. Far from being a technical model, this method is presented as an epistemological gesture that articulates biography and structure, freedom and determination, subject and context. By reclaiming the critical and engaged dimension of research, it proposes a theoretical horizon capable of repositioning the role of the researcher as a committed interpreter of educational reality. Thus, the article contributes to strengthening an interpretive-dialectical reasoning in qualitative educational research, committed to social transformation and to the intelligibility of human meanings in their historical concreteness.

Keywords: Qualitative research in education. Subjectivity and history; Progressive-regressive method. 

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Author Biography

  • Amarildo Luiz Trevisan, Federal University of Rio Grande do Norte

    Professor Titular aposentado da Universidade Federal de Santa Maria (UFSM), atua como Professor Visitante no Programa de Pós-Graduação em Educação da Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Norte (UFRN). Pesquisador de Produtividade em Pesquisa do CNPq e da FAPERGS.

Published

2025-10-02

How to Cite

Between lived experience and history: toward an interpretive-dialectical reason in qualitative educational research. Práxis Educativa, [S. l.], v. 20, p. 1–16, 2025. DOI: 10.5212/PraxEduc.v.20.25104.090. Disponível em: https://revistas.uepg.br/index.php/praxiseducativa/article/view/25104. Acesso em: 21 may. 2026.

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