Many graduating dentists leave dental school feeling that they are not prepared to start and run a dental practice. The aim of this pilot study was to explore the knowledge and perceptions dental graduates have in the area of practice management. A twenty‐item survey was mailed in the fall of 2008 to nearly half of the University of Michigan dental school alumni who had graduated between the years of 1997 and 2007. Respondents were asked about their demographics, practice characteristics, and perceptions of knowledge/experience regarding practice management skills at the present time as well as at graduation. Data were analyzed using descriptive and inferential statistics. The majority of respondents were general practitioners (84 percent) aged thirty to thirty‐nine practicing between six and ten years with practice incomes reported to be greater than $300,000 per year (79 percent). Most dentists reported being either an owner or co‐owner of the practice (57 percent), and 33 percent reported being an associate in the practice. Upon graduation, 7 percent of the respondents felt that they had a strong knowledge of accounting or human resource issues; this perception increased to 47 percent at the present time. Similarly, less than 6 percent of respondents felt they understood issues pertaining to dental insurance upon graduation; this perception increased to 68 percent after having spent time in the workforce. In contrast to the large increase in knowledge/experience in business aspects of dentistry that had accrued since graduation, most alumni reported only a 7 percent increase in their knowledge of the legal aspects of dental practice. Results from this study indicate that interventions are needed to increase graduating dentists’ knowledge of practice management and close the gap between their knowledge and its application in real life. The majority of alumni believed there is a need to improve the curriculum focused on these aspects of dental practice.

The individualistic tendencies in occupational science can be explained in part by its proponents’ reliance on “the interpretive tradition” originating in Weberian sociology and phenomenological philosophy, and taking account of what an actor from his or her first‐person perspective means by an action. From within this interpretive perspective, one can take account of actors’ interrelationship with their contexts but in such a way that that relationship cannot be explained as simply the result of physical‐causal processes. An approach to occupational science based on the model of an “organism‐in‐relationship‐to‐its‐environment” may help elucidate the holistic, environmentally interconnected dimensions of occupation. But such a theoretical perspective risks overlooking the first‐person perspective of actors that mere organisms lack, that an adequate occupational science must consider, and that debates about the methods appropriate to occupational science themselves presuppose.

Phenomenology frees us from prejudices and enables us to see things, people, and human activity freshly. It supplements and enriches the natural and social sciences by clarifying the everyday world they explain and by illuminating how actors from a first‐person point of view experience their world and the meaning of their actions. As such, phenomenology assists occupational science in understanding what occupation means to one engaged in it. Furthermore, phenomenologists have already made significant contributions to clarifying three areas of crucial importance for occupational science: human activity, narrative, and ethical responsibility. Human activity involves a three‐tiered structure of purposes, automatic behaviors, and neural‐physiological processes. Narrative, the regular method of commonsense self‐explanation, entails recovering past motives correlative to the future‐oriented purposes that direct occupations. Ethical responsibility is evoked by other persons and experienced face to face. It underlies the commencement and execution of occupations, and both informs and reconfigures narratives when they are interrupted.

Dan Zahavi has questioned whether the use of a transcendental phenomenological epoché is essential for phenomenological psychology. He criticizes the views of Amedeo Giorgi by asserting that Husserl did not view the transcendental reduction as needed for an entrance into phenomenological psychology and that, if one thinks so, phenomenological psychology would be in danger of being absorbed within transcendental phenomenology. Thirdly, rather than envisioning transcendental phenomenology as a purification for phenomenological psychology, Zahavi recommends a dialogue between transcendental phenomenologists and psychologists. However, the two disciplines are closer for Husserl who also conceives phenomenological psychology as a self-standing science, and Giorgi is not as rigid on the necessity of transcendental phenomenology for phenomenological psychology. Alfred Schutz, following Husserl’s “Nachwort,” develops his own distinctive phenomenological psychology that appreciates disciplinary convergences and respects boundaries, while also articulating a wider understanding of epoché as an anthropological fact operative beyond the limits of transcendental phenomenology.

Following Alfred Schutz’s “On Multiple Realities,” the religious province of meaning, like the provinces of phantasy, dreaming, and theoretical contemplation, differs from the “world of working,” everyday life’s form of spontaneity, because its tension of consciousness is more relaxed. The relative passivity characterizing the religious province, which depends on a benevolent transcendent accompanying everyday projects and overcoming the distance between the believer and itself, appears also in religion’s release of subliminal processes (e.g., in religious dreams) and in its reliance on passive syntheses. Such syntheses occur in appresentative pairing and apperceptual transfers among diverse symbols and between symbols and the transcendent. Consequently, the religious province becomes a very important site for the “appresentative mindset.” In addition, the peculiar epoché of the province is symbolically induced when the very symbol (e.g. temple or ritual) that serves as the gateway into the province and separates it from the “profane” world of everyday life also appresents the transcendent. The unrestrained reliance on appresentative pairing within the religious province overflows its boundaries as the mundane events of everyday life come to appresent the transcendent. The release of subliminal processes and unreflective, passive synthesizing, however, requires critique through theory, Levinasian ethics, and legal and social restraints.