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Abstract In this article the concepts of research tradition, research programme, research tool and research orientation are used to clarify the character of phenomenography. Phenomenography is said to be fundamentally a research orientation and to be characterised by the delimitation of an aim in relation to a kind of object. The aim is to describe and the kind of object is a conception. Phenomenographic research also has common characteristics of method of a general kind related to the orientation and these are called a research approach. The orientation and approach together are said to represent a research specialisation. The historical roots and the ontological, epistemological and methodological assumptions of this research specialisation are described and summarised. Lastly, phenomenography is described as a reaction against and an alternative to dominant positivistic, behaviouristic and quantitative research and as making its own ontological, epistemological and methodological assumptions with inspiration from, and similarities to, several older and concomitant traditions, without agreeing entirely with any of those.
Lennart Svensson (Sun,) studied this question.