Abstract: Pedagogy, with its distinctive cultural characteristics and attributes of discipline, is not only a social science, but also a spiritual science. This paper explores the differences between the phenomenological educational research and the educational research of positivism from the theoretical perspective of seeing and thinking. "Seeing" the "probability" theory and "ductility" theory help distinguish the essential difference between "essence intuition" and objective gaze. After comparing the technical orientation and spiritual growth orientation of thinking, the authors elaborate the thinking path of education research under the guidance of phenomenological theory. And from the triple structure of ego-cogito-cogitatum, the authors argue that phenomenological paradigm focuses on the subject's thinking of existence and thinking of freedom, which will strengthen its own non-reflective self-consciousness and eventually pull off from the objectification vision of the wrong path.

Key words: educational research, phenomenological paradigm, positivism paradigm