One problem addressed in teaching graduate students qualitative research methods is practising the cognitive and conative skills that students need to generate both rich data and meaningful analysis.

The aim of the study was to illuminate development in a group of pre-doctoral and doctoral students as they learnt the phenomenological hermeneutics research method.

In a course comprising 18 doctoral students we used the “guided path” pedagogical approach and decided to use a subject of which everyone has lived experience, “troubled conscience”, for the phenomenological hermeneutic analysis conducted with the students. As the students progressed in their learning experience of the research method, they analysed their data according to the steps in the method, and we as teachers conducted separate analyses of the same data.

The results point in the same direction as previous studies in the field. This is discussed in terms of strength of the pedagogical approach and the students’ learning, since despite the fact that their data are limited and not very detailed they were able to come up with results that were in line with previous research.