Validity as intended: ‘bursting forth toward’ bridling in phenomenological research

In this theoretical manuscript, I use Sartre’s image of intentionality as a ‘bursting forth toward’ to describe what it was like for me to bridle my pre‐understandings and developing understandings as I studied moments middle grades teachers recognize and respond when students do not understand something during instruction. In doing so, I suggest that throughout the study I consistently found myself in resistance to a giving‐finding meaning dualism that divides the two primary approaches to conducting phenomenological research – interpretive (from Heidegger) and descriptive (from Husserl). To this end, I theorize that validity in phenomenological research might best be described through intentionality, because the validity will always move with and through the researcher’s intentional relationship with the phenomenon – not simply in the researcher, in the participants, in the text, in their power positions, but in the dynamic intentional relationships that tie participants, the researcher, the produced text, and their positionality together.