The Analytical Framework

What Is PSWA?

Six letters. Each one enforces a different analytical move. Together they form the complete method behind every essay in this library.

What Is Phenomenological-Structural Worldview Analysis (PSWA)?

Phenomenological-Structural Worldview Analysis (PSWA) is NFA’s six-letter analytical framework — a disciplined method for reading historical evidence, power, and structural constraint the way historians actually do. Every NFA subject, across every stage and every track, moves through the same six analytical letters. PSWA doesn’t just hand you facts to memorize. It teaches you how to think about evidence — what it proves, and where it stops proving anything. NFA does not just teach facts. NFA TEACHES METHOD. We train learners to ask what the evidence can prove — and where honest history must stop.

The whole record. Not a footnote.

The Six Letters

A — Worldview (Phenomenological)

The subject’s own framework — what they believed, what they valued, what shaped their decisions.

A anchors every PSWA analysis in the subject’s lived experience — their beliefs, their self-understanding, the cultural and conceptual frameworks available to them. It asks: what did this person or community understand themselves to be doing? What world were they operating inside of? This letter resists the temptation to impose modern categories on historical actors. It demands that you see them as they saw themselves before you interpret what they did.

B — Historical Conditions

The conditions the subject operated inside — what happened, and what constrained what could happen.

B establishes the factual record — events, dates, laws, economic conditions, demographic realities, institutional arrangements. It asks: what was actually happening? What structures were in place? What options were available and what options were foreclosed? This letter enforces the discipline of the archive. You cannot analyze what a subject did without understanding what was possible.

C — Structural Forces

The institutions, economic systems, laws, and power arrangements that shaped the subject’s world.

C zooms out from the individual to the structures that surrounded them. It asks: what institutions governed this person’s life? What economic systems determined their possibilities? What legal architecture constrained their choices? What power arrangements did they navigate? This letter connects individual experience to structural reality.

D — Power Analysis

Who held power, how it was exercised, and how the subject related to it.

D isolates power as an analytical category. It asks: who had power in this situation? What kind of power — legal, economic, military, cultural, institutional? How was power exercised, resisted, negotiated? Where did the subject stand in relation to power? This letter refuses to treat power as background. It makes power the foreground of analysis.

E — Evidence

What the sources say, what they don’t say, and what can and cannot be concluded.

E is the letter of source discipline. It asks: what evidence do we have? Where does it come from? Whose voice does it preserve and whose does it leave out? What can we conclude from this evidence and — critically — what can we not conclude? This letter trains learners to recognize the ceiling of the archive. Every source has limits. Every interpretation must respect them.

F — Argument Synthesis

Bringing the analysis together — what the evidence proves, what it suggests, and what it cannot confirm.

F synthesizes the preceding five letters into a coherent, evidence-disciplined argument. It asks: given everything we have analyzed — the subject’s worldview, their historical conditions, the structures surrounding them, the power dynamics at play, and the evidence available — what can we say? What is proven? What is likely? What remains uncertain? This letter is where analysis becomes argument — disciplined, grounded, and honest about its limits.

Two Floors: A Worked Example

Every PSWA lesson moves through two analytical floors — Each Floor and All Floors.

Each Floor takes one subject and one PSWA letter and asks: what does this letter reveal about this subject? For example: Floor A-Estevanico examines Mustafa ibn Muhammad’s worldview — his self-understanding as a Moroccan-born man navigating Spanish, Indigenous, and African worlds in the sixteenth century. What did he believe about himself? What frameworks did he carry? What did the colonial archive record of his perspective — and what did it erase?

All Floors takes one subject and moves through all six PSWA letters sequentially, building a complete analysis. Estevanico’s All Floors analysis would ask: what was his worldview (A), set against what historical conditions (B), inside what structural forces (C), navigating what power dynamics (D), documented by what evidence (E), and yielding what defensible argument (F)? Each letter deepens the analysis. Together, they produce something no single letter could reach.

These two floors are the architecture of every NFA lesson. Each Floor for disciplinary depth. All Floors for analytical integration. Every subject. Every stage. Every track.

Epistemic Status Tags

Every PSWA-governed essay carries an epistemic status tag — a label that tells the reader what kind of claim they are reading and what level of confidence attaches to it.

Proven. The claim is supported by direct, corroborated primary-source evidence. No reasonable historian would dispute it given the available record.

Well-Supported. The claim is supported by strong evidence that admits some interpretive variation. Most historians would accept it, though nuance remains.

Informed Inference. The claim is a reasonable inference from available evidence but cannot be proven directly. The evidence points here; it does not confirm here.

Interpretive. The claim is one of several defensible readings of the evidence. It represents the author’s analytical judgment, grounded in the record but not compelled by it.

Speculative. The claim extends beyond what the evidence can bear. It is offered as a thought experiment, a possibility, or a question — explicitly flagged to prevent confusion with established fact.

The Stopping Rule

PSWA enforces a stopping rule: where the evidence ends, analysis must acknowledge the limit.

Every PSWA analysis explicitly states what the available evidence can prove, what it cannot, and where interpretation goes beyond the archive. This is not hedge language. It is an analytical discipline — the same discipline that historians use when they distinguish between established fact, reasonable inference, and speculation.

The stopping rule is the difference between honest history and storytelling. NFA teaches both — and labels which is which.

How Rigorous Is NFA?

Every NFA subject is built on an evidence base of primary sources, secondary scholarship, and structural contextualization. The research labor behind each subject is tracked, reviewed, and disclosed. These are not marketing numbers. They are the basis of the method.

Production stage	Subjects	Min. hours/subject	Hours total
Library entry (identity + vitals verified)	1,239	2h min.	2,478
Packet complete (full writer packet + validator pass)	0	22h min.	0
Production ready (+ image kit + lesson generation)	0	26h min.	0
Learner-facing (+ QA review + published)	7	28h min.	196
Total documented research hours			2,674

Human-equivalent research hours under AI-assisted, human-directed workflows. Human review required at every NFA governance gate.

These are human-equivalent research hours — the intellectual labor each subject requires under NFA’s governance standards. All research is conducted using AI-assisted workflows under human direction, with human review at every governance gate.

PSWA Across Disciplines

PSWA was developed for historical analysis, but its structure — move from experience to conditions, from structures to power, from evidence to argument — applies across disciplines. NFA is building PSWA-governed curriculum in seven tracks, plus a Hybrid Support Layer that prepares learners for the deeper conditions around every subject.

NFA History (PSWA-HIST)

In NFA History, the six PSWA letters are the curriculum. Each letter is a disciplined analytical move applied to documented historical evidence about a specific subject.

Science (PSWA-SCI)

In Science, PSWA becomes an inquiry discipline for moving from observation to explanation. Learners identify the phenomenon being studied, examine the evidence, explain the mechanism, recognize variables and controls, and name the limits of a model or experiment.

Subtracks: Scientific Inquiry & Lab Skills · Physical Science · Life Science · Earth & Space Science · Biology · Chemistry · Physics · Environmental Science