Reading have always been a very important activity, which further paves the way for excellence in life both academically and non-academically. It is a fundamental skill that unlocks learning and provides individual’s benefits. Reading habit and attitude become an interest topic to discuss because it can be the key success in learning. This study aimed to examine the reading habits and attitudes of big city residents in Pakistan towards books with Chinese themes, available in Chinese, English, or Urdu language. Using (...) a survey design and simple random sampling, data was collected from 300 respondents through a pre-tested questionnaire based on Smith's (1991) Adult Survey of Reading Attitude. The study analyzed data from 11 online bookstores and publishers in Pakistan used to provide recent insights. We used two keywords (China, Chinese: چائ نا , چائ ن یز ) to collect data from online bookstores. The results of the study, with a reliability test score of 0.79, showed that the participants had a positive attitude towards reading Chinese themed books. The findings of this study can inform the development of educational programs to enhance reading skills and cultural understanding for users of Chinese-themed books in Pakistan. (shrink)

Where do a child’s morals come from? Interactions with other human beings provide arguably the primary contexts for moral development: family, friends, teachers and other people. It is the artistic products of human activity that this essay considers: literature, film, art, music. Specifically, I will consider some philosophical issues concerning the influence of folk and fairy tales on moral development. I will discuss issues of representation and reduction: in particular, how far should stories for children elide the complexities inherent to (...) many folk and fairy tales? Drawing on a distinction between a problematic reductionism and an appropriate pedagogical reduction, I suggest that pedagogical issues of representation require us to think about how to represent complexity in ways that are reductive without being reductionist, that can delight and engage without being horrifying or tedious. While there is a place for horror and for boredom, it is primarily a matter of timing... (shrink)

Support in different modes, expressions and actions is at the core of the public welfare culture. In this paper, support is examined as an everyday interpersonal phenomenon with a variety of expressions in language and ways of relating, and its essential meaning is explored. The fulcrum for reflection is the lived experience shared by a young woman with mental health problems of her respective encounters with two professionals in mental health facilities. A phenomenological analysis of the contrasting accounts suggests that, (...) when the professional relationship includes openness and risk, a certain degree of freedom of action is possible for both parties involved in the inevitably asymmetrical relationship. Support as “given” eludes controllable and measurable objectives, but imposes itself on the lived experiences of both the giver and the receiver as subject to readiness for acceptance. By not making assumptions about what support is, we open ourselves to the possibility of reciprocally experiencing moments revealing the essential meaning of support as lived. (shrink)

How can we theoretically and philosophically study the problem of values and authority in the context of education? The chapter uses the framework of action theoretical semiotics developed mainly on the conceptual structures of Greimassian semiotic theory. This detailed and elaborated theory of human discourse (utilized usually in terms of literary and “cultural” texts) will be expanded by biosemiotic and Peircean points of view to fit in the special problem area of education as transformation or extension from the biosemiotic and (...) zoosemiotic sphere to anthroposemiotic sphere: from nature to culture. The main theoretical starting point for action theoretical semiotics is the concept of meaning which is defined as relationship of an object to the action of the subject. The chapter will connect the action theoretical semiotics to the conception of Bildung and modern idea of the normativity of the rational inference by, e.g., contemporary philosopher of semantics Robert Brandom, to consider the educational implications of this semiotic view. (shrink)

This chapter discusses a form of pedagogy of reflection suggested to be defined as the dialogical-reflective professional-development school (DRPDS)
a framework that develops and empowers students by engaging them in a process of continual improvement, responding to diverse situations, providing stimuli for learning, and giving anchors for mediation. The pedagogy of reflection relates to dialogue not only from a theoretical historical context but also by way of example
that is, it offers empowering dialogues within the traditional teacher-training framework. (...) This chapter outlines the importance of the pedagogy of reflection in the multicultural educational space of the preservice education field in Israel, analyzing the first university PDS model. The pedagogy of reflection in the context of the educational dialogue of educators is outlined as a tool for student empowerment, achieved through a community of learners who dedicate space to the development of their whole personality within the profession, taking a moral stance toward the educational discourse, minimizing judgmentalism and prejudice, creating national/gender equality with the goal of examining the fundamental question of educational performance, and reinforcing their sense of organizational belonging within the system. In these contexts, the chapter is based on the elements of dialogical philosophy exemplified in the thought of Burbules, Nelson, Isaacs, Bohm, and Heckmann and the reflective basis of educational and organizational performance exemplified in the writings of van Manen. The chapter also presents two examples from a project in which teaching units based on dialogue and reflection were developed within a dialogic community that represents in its very being collective empowerment, the possibility of coping with problems that are too large for an individual to solve on his/her own, and an alternative to sealed and alienated organizations. (shrink)

The purpose of this article is to develop a critical and extended understanding of creative practices in organisation from a phenomenological point of view. To develop such an understanding of practice, this paper will first outline a phenomenological understanding of creative practice, understood particularly with Merleau-Ponty as an embodied and situated nexus of action. Subsequently, the paper will show the contribution of pragmatism to an interpretation of practice as an experience-based reality and will describe the significance of habits. After briefly (...) comparing common characteristics of both pro-experiential philosophies, some perspectives on a creative "inter-practice" and an inclusive "pheno-pragma-practice" will be explored. Furthermore, improvisation is discussed as a form and medium for the actual realisation of an embodied, situational inter-practice. Finally, some practical, political, theoretical and methodological implications and perspectives on creative pheno-pragmatic practices in organisation will be outlined. (shrink)

Abstract : This article makes the case that teacher’s personal qualities should be considered to be of great importance to being a teacher and that pre- and in- service teacher education has a social responsibility mandate. Developing personal qualities in teacher education is an important way in which teacher education can address its social responsibility mandate and, conversely, this mandate can provide the perspective from which the value of teacher’s personal qualities for teaching can be judged. Finally, the article discusses (...) the role of reflective thinking and reflective practice in addressing the social responsibility mandate of teacher education and identifies characteristics of reflective practices that seem particularly suitable for developing a teacher’s personal qualities relevant for addressing the social responsibility mandate of teacher education. Résumé : Cet article fait état des qualités personnelles de l’enseignant qui doivent être considérées comme d’une grande importance pour être un enseignant et que l’éducation initiale des enseignants et la formation continue a un mandat de responsabilité sociale. Le développement de qualités personnelles dans la formation des enseignants est un moyen important par lequel la formation des enseignants peut s’acquitter de son mandat de responsabilité sociale et, inversement, ce mandat peut fournir la perspective selon laquelle la valeur des qualités personnelles de l’enseignant pour l’enseignement peut être jugé. Enfin, l’article examine le rôle de la réflexivité et de la pratique réflexive à travers ce mandat de responsabilité sociale de la formation des enseignants et identifie les caractéristiques des pratiques réflexives qui semblent particulièrement appropriées pour le développement des qualités personnelles de l’enseignant pertinents pour atteindre les objectifs de ce mandat de responsabilité sociale de la formation des enseignants. -/- . (shrink)

Almost a hundred years ago, John Dewey clarified the relationship between democracy and education. However, the enactment of a 'deeply democratic' educational practice has proven elusive throughout the ensuing century, overridden by managerial approaches to schooling young people and to the standardized, technical preparation and professional development of teachers and educational leaders. A powerful counter-narrative to this 'standardized management paradigm' exists in the field of curriculum studies, but is largely ignored by mainstream approaches to the professional development of educators. This (...) paper argues for a reconceptualized, differentiated, and 'disciplined' approach to the professional development of educators in democratic societies that builds capacity for curriculum leadership. In support of this proposal, we amplify the tenets of Dewey's pragmatic social and educational philosophy, which have long been at the heart of democratic educational thought, with Badiou's more contemporary thinking about the important relationships between truth as inspirational awakening, subjectification as existential commitment, and ethical fidelity as 'for all' action. (shrink)

This paper promotes a philosophy derived from the direct distribution of goods to needs that occur in mothering and invisibly in many other aspects of life. Such a philosophy is suggested as an alternative to market based values, which currently permeate society. It is important to bring alternative values to consciousness and validate them for both teachers and children so that the orientation towards the other that characterizes the gift paradigm will not be lost in the fight for survival endemic (...) to a market society. The hope is that we can find solutions that are viable for all. After presenting this philosophy, we show how it already exists among educators and children, and we suggest ways in which it may be validated and promoted in early childhood education. (shrink)

What significance does the body have in the process of teaching and learning? In what way can the thoughts of a contemporary junior-level teacher in this regard be connected to the theory of the lived body formulated by the French phenomenologist philosopher Maurice Merleau-Ponty, and vice versa? The aim of this paper is to illuminate, enable understanding and discuss the meaning of the body in the learning process, with specific focus on the learning of writing as embodied experience. In the (...) process, the boundaries of learning are also explored. While understanding the significance both of learning as embodied experience and of the boundaries of learning is essential within the educational field, in this paper the discussion is limited to exploring how learning as embodied experience and the boundaries of learning can be viewed by taking Merleau-Ponty’s notions as theoretical starting points. In an attempt to answer the aim and connect the paper’s theoretical point of departure with a voice from a teacher, an interview with a junior-level teacher was conducted. The paper thus offers a theoretical contribution to the field of educational research, but one in which the theory is exemplified by, and connected to, a teacher’s voice. Accordingly, the paper concludes by summarising the common understandings of learning held theoretically by Merleau-Ponty and made real in the activities of the contemporary junior-level teacher. (shrink)

The paper exemplifies how we as teachers see children, and indicates ways of understanding the existential educational meanings of what we see. The authors suggest that the phenomenon of seeing is a personal and relational intentional act that opens up, as well as delimits educational practice. A hermeneutic phenomenological approach to education is suggested and the thought of seeing and telling as interwoven representations is put forth. However, despite a phenomenological inquiry’s immense qualities as a pre-reflective experiential source to understanding, (...) the authors believe that phenomenology cannot overcome or erase the aporetic unavailability of a pedagogical practice and a pedagogical-ethical language. The paper intends to show that seeing pedagogically always will be more complex, paradoxical and unsettled than what can be shown and told phenomenologically. (shrink)

It is generally acknowledged that much contemporary education takes place within a dominant audit culture, in which accountability becomes a powerful driver of educational practices. In this culture, both pupils and teachers risk being configured as a means to an assessment and target-driven end: pupils are schooled within a particular paradigm of education. The article discusses some ethical issues raised by such schooling, particularly the tensions arising for teachers, and by implication, teacher educators who prepare and support teachers for work (...) in situations where vocational aims and beliefs may be in conflict with instrumental aims. The article offers De Certeau's concept of la perruque to suggest an opening to playful engagement for human ends in education, as a way of contending with and managing the tensions generated. I use the concept to recover an idea of solidarity for teacher educators and teachers to enable ethical teaching in difficult times. (shrink)

This paper explores the experience of pedagogical hope from educators’ viewpoints. Starting from a multidisciplinary study, it has been developed through the collection and analysis of descriptions of experiences lived by educators, which have revealed some essential points: realism, sense of wonder, patience, and openness, among others. The discovery of the powerful and fundamental influence of hope in the lives of teachers exercising their role, assistants, school counselors, as well as in the lives of the children and youth whom they (...) have been entrusted, leads us to preserve and attest to it. (shrink)

In this paper, the authors explore the pedagogical call as an articulated or unarticulated appeal from children in classroom settings and the many facets of pedagogical responsivity as they in vignettes stemming from a research project, funded nation-wide in Austria. While instruction can be planned, the pedagogical call can be understood as an appeal that occurs in medias res, in the midst of an event in the pedagogical situation, and can at best be anticipated. This dilemma of planning for the (...) unplannable is constitutive of the pedagogical relation and addressed in the discourse regarding pedagogical tact in both North America and Europe. In seeking to gain insight into educational processes and learning through the lived experiences of 5th-grade students in Austria’s “New Middle School” reform pilot, researchers were faced with a similar dilemma: How to capture the experiences of others, of children at school in medias res? The authors therefore provide background to their vignette research as a framework for their readings oriented to the pedagogical call as they arise in two vignettes. While articulated calls, and articulated responses, tend to be more straightforward, the authors address the difficulty of recognizing an unarticulated call of which the student is unaware, as well as recognizing no response as a response on the part of the teacher. Refraining from judgment as to the pedagogical quality of the teachers' actions, the authors conclude by addressing two critical aspects of the discourse on pedagogical tact driven by the principle of individuality: the underlying assumption that the other can be understood and the inherent concept of the pedagogical situation as one-to-one contact, the former ignoring the inaccessibility of the other and the latter neglecting the institutional laws that govern school reality. (shrink)

In virtual learning environments students often find themselves in front of a computer, looking at a bright screen, interacting with classmates and teachers through a keyboard and a mouse, and, in most cases, listening and watching someone who is not physically present. Virtual components are not rare, and growing concern is currently surfacing about students’ potential feeling of isolation, which has been found to increase educational barriers such as lack of motivation or engagement, or poor academic achievement. We may therefore (...) begin to wonder whether VLE allows for the necessary interpersonal involvement required for learning. Using a qualitative phenomenological research methodology called phenomenology of practice, the aim of this study was to understand what it is like to experience a sense of closeness to others in a VLE. Data was gathered by means of in-depth phenomenological interviews with five adult university students recruited via snowball sampling who had previous experience in VLE settings. The findings revealed that students may experience closeness with their classmates and teachers when they suddenly look beyond the superficial technological hurdles and find the humanity in the virtual others, when they share a difficult group experience, or when they create a personal virtual space. This study showed that closeness is indeed essential in education, and that even online we repeatedly find ourselves in a continuum of closeness to others, moving from an experience of togetherness to an experience of loneliness, or vice versa. (shrink)

Phenomenology of practice is formative of sensitive practice, issuing from the pathic power of phenomenological reflections. Pathic knowing inheres in the sense and sensuality of our practical actions, in encounters with others and in the ways that our bodies are responsive to the things of our world and to the situations and relations in which we find ourselves. Phenomenology of practice is an ethical corrective of the technological and calculative modalities of contemporary life. It finds its source and impetus in (...) practical phenomenologies of reading and writing that open up possibilities for creating formative relations between being and acting, self and other, interiorities and exteriorities, between who we are and how we act. (shrink)

In this article, I attempt to deepen the Knowledge, Skills, and Dispositions discourse around good teaching by appropriating Dewey's (1938) assertion that intelligent theorizing proceeds in a deep and inclusive manner. First, I highlight Darling-Hammond and Bransford's (2005) framework for good teaching and learning. I then locate pedagogical knowledge within this framework and draw upon Garrison's (1997) notion of prophetic teaching and van Manen's (1991a) notion of tactful teaching. I close by reflecting on how these notions are part of a (...) larger project—one that strives to remain inclusive to dimensions of teaching that are not easily codified. (shrink)

This paper presents a particular aspect of ‘being online’: the embodied, lived experience of interacting with digital devices and computer screens, involving seeking and giving help to learn and teach skills and abilities that are often taken for granted in our “wired world”. The article includes analysis and reflection on a phenomenological study involving international students who arrived at their Canadian post-secondary institutions with limited or no background using computers and the Internet. This exploration leads to an enriched perspective on (...) technology support and training. Meaningful, hands-on, task-oriented support is revealed as an ethical inter-subjective lived relation, experienced as reciprocity in an intercultural community of student life. (shrink)

Through a phenomenological perspective, we frame the experiences of “hospitality” of racialized immigrant student teachers as they recount their field placements in a number of Canadian schools. This article presents the following themes which emerged from the study, and which also serve as section titles: 1) The classroom door as threshold: Crossing workaday and festive worlds; 2) More foreign than foreign; Stranger than strange; 3) You are who I think you are; Not who you know you are; 4) Actively inviting (...) the threshold; Passively accepting the barrier; 5) Sensing the cold: The hostility in hospitality as hostil/pitality?; 6) The hiddenness of potential: Growing in foreign soil; 7) The strangeness of Canadian students: Hospitality beyond hospitality; 8) Inspiriting the festive: Pedagogy as hospitality. The paper concludes by showing that living hospitably with the foreign-other on the Canadian school landscape is not so much a problem as it is an invitation for teachers to realize the call of their vocation. (shrink)

The idea of mentorship has become rather fashionable in academia today. Indeed mentorship is claimed, promoted and even mandated as something we can expect to experience as graduate students. Yet what is it really like to experience it? Drawing on concrete descriptions and phenomenological reflection I attend to graduate students’ actual experiences of mentorship to uncover aspects of the mentee experience for what it is rather than how it is claimed to be. Graduate students’ experiences reveal ways that mentoring moments (...) variously escape us as somehow deficient or in excess of what we expect them to be. From a vantage that attends specifically to the mentee experience, points of reflection are offered for reimagining what the mentorship experience could become. (shrink)

Exploring teaching as an upper secondary school teacher through lived experience offers pedagogical insights that have been challenged over a period of 25 years, when neoliberal educational policies gradually transformed the conditions for teaching in Swedish schools. The article is grounded in the assumption that the teaching profession is complex and there are multiple tacit dimensions inherent in being and becoming a teacher. Several of these dimensions are captured by the notion of pedagogical tact and have to be learned through (...) practice. However, over the past few decades, the implementation of neoliberal policies in the Swedish education sector have changed the conditions for teaching, and created an area of tension between the teacher’s pedagogical alignment and the educational practices influenced by neoliberal values. The aim of the study is to describe how the author experienced these tensions, and what they meant for her becoming and being a teacher in three different pedagogical sites: a higher education preparatory program, a vocational preparatory program, and in adult education. The description is grounded in the lifeworld phenomenological approach and carried out through personal narrative. (shrink)

This paper describes the moment when a new body technique is acquired, using a case study in which three puppeteers manipulate a single puppet together. Although phenomenology assumes that the world is always “already there” before reflection begins, we can still ask how a sequence of movements is acquired. Struggling to learn puppet choreography in a training session, the learner’s body encounters difficulties because it cannot easily imitate the proper movements. At the same time, the puppet master cannot easily explain (...) those movements because he or she is so familiar with them. The communication between instructor and learner requires a kind of reflection that helps the learner transform and attain competency; this reflection is different from a dualistic disembodied form of thinking thatuses abstract representation. The focus is on the precise coordination of gestures and onomatopoeic utterances that emerge through improvisation in the learner’s trial movements. It is not just “a process of thinking,” but an experience that evokes “a synchronizing change of my own existence, a transformation of my being”, through which the puppeteer facilitates his or her own body’s comprehension of new movements. Using puppetry as an example not only illuminates the phenomenon of learning a bodily skill, but also reveals the dynamics of our bodies, which can enliven our conversation, engender our transformation, and realize our being-in-the-world. (shrink)

This research focuses on dinner conversations in family-style group care. Children, who cannot live with their biological families anymore, are given shelter in these family-style group care settings. For the development of an attachment relationship between children and their Professional Foster Parents, it is important that the children feel that they are listened to in order to get an affective and intimate relationship with the parents. In this conversation-analytic research we analysed PFPs’ involvement in multiple activities simultaneously, namely listening and (...) eating, which is referred to as ‘multi-activity’. The analyses have shown systematic ways in which PFPs coordinate their involvement in the activities of ‘doing’ listening and eating, which are when parents avert their gaze from the telling child, they break the social rule which states that hearers need to look at speakers during the telling. We found that when averting their gaze, PFPs do head nods and linguistic means or positioning their bodies in the direction of the telling child. This research contributes to knowledge about interaction between adolescents and PFPs. It further contributes to knowledge about how human beings are able to coordinate multiple activities simultaneously. (shrink)

In this paper the author explores certain fulfilling personal experiences that he describes as the presencing of space, i.e. the way in which an individual’s spatial involvement may put him or her in contact with reality as a whole. These experiences are investigated from a phenomenological perspective, and the differences between them and other similar experiences, such as that of the sublime or topophilia, are highlighted. A neologism is introduced: topoaletheia to name a distinctive type of spatial experience. This concept (...) may enrich the discussion about our involvement with space in our built environments. (shrink)

My intention in writing this article is to illustrate how I engage with the process of orienting to the meaning of pedagogy by inquiring into several moments in my life where I am able to fully experience its um. I begin this phenomenological inquiry by plunging into my experience on a teeter-totter as a young child, and use the sense of ups and downs as a metaphor for the tensions of weight and weightlessness, comfort and challenge that characterize the pedagogical (...) world. I then attempt to gain a more perceptual understanding of pedagogy by narrowing in on the suspended moment, which becomes a metaphor for the pedagogical moments of support, vulnerability, and opening that emanate from this tension. In these particular moments, I am able to dwell in the spaces in-between my everyday ups and downs and become existentially conscious and pedagogically connected to the world around me. By metaphorically connecting each of these moments to my teeter-totter experience, I illustrate how embracing the tensions of life and allowing myself to dwell in a suspended moment, deepens my perceptual understanding of pedagogy and influences my current pedagogical practice as a new teacher and master’s student. (shrink)

This study examined elementary school teachers’ experience of pandemic preparedness efforts by provincial and local agencies in Nova Scotia, Canada during the 2009 H1N1 flu pandemic. Eleven elementary teachers were surveyed and interviewed and their responses analyzed to determine themes that have pedagogical significance for both education and health promotion. Teachers surveyed experienced a profound sense of responsibility for the children for whom they act in loco parentis. Teachers perceived themselves to be infection control agents and acted on behalf of (...) students to mitigate the spread of the disease. Due to the unique relationship between elementary teachers and children there were high levels of fear and anxiety experienced. Teachers felt fearful for their personal safety and for the health and well-being of their students and reported high levels of anxiety in children. Elementary teachers, who are on the front line of pandemic response, need to be central to administrative efforts to prepare, educate and provide training for those in contact with a high number of vulnerable populations. Further research is required on the experiences of middle school, secondary teachers and principals at all levels of schooling. (shrink)

Action research began as an ambitious epistemological and social intervention. As the concept has become reified, packaged for methodology textbooks and professional development workshops, it has degenerated into a cure that may be worse than the disease. The point is not the trivial one that action research, like any practice, sometimes shows up in cheap or corrupt forms. The very idea that action research already exists as a live option is mystifying, distracting us from the deep challenge that action research (...) ultimately represents. Though Joseph Schwab is sometimes credited as a forerunner of action research, it is likely that he would see the new talk of ‘the teacher as researcher’ as indicative of the very epitomization of which he warned. Dewey’s new conception of knowledge, action, and communication – and the vision of the teacher as learner it entails – requires nothing short of a radical rethinking of teaching and inquiry, schooling and teacher education. This essay recalls the promise of... (shrink)

Everyday teaching involves emotional and relational irrationalities, and these aspects of pedagogical sensitivity and sense are critical for beginning teachers as they develop their practice. The complex elements of what it means to teach are often impossible to grasp from an instrumental approach to teacher education, which emphasizes subject matter knowledge and practical behavioral know-how. Increased educational standardisation and a new teacher training paradigm in Sweden have resulted in positioning future teachers as responsible only for communicating official school knowledge and (...) assessing their learning process. This narrowed understanding of teachers’ practice requires another perspective of teaching to be articulated. This article explores the internships of beginning teachers from a phenomenological perspective, drawing on storytelling in teacher education as a way to reveal student teachers’ lived experiences. These beginning teachers are learning professional ways of being, which reveal the complexities of teaching, and their accounts have the potential to counter the dominance of neoliberalism in education. (shrink)

Family-focused community education implies a relational pedagogy, whereby people of different ages and experiences, including children, engage interdependently in the education of selves and others. Educational projects grow out of lived experiences and relationships, evolving in dynamic conditions of community self-organisation and self-expression, however partial and approximate, as opposed to habitual and repetitive actions. In developing educational activities through radical listening, community educators aim to reflect the character of the neighbourhood and build on local knowledge and expertise. The paper reports (...) on ways in which one community school invited, encouraged and supported children as co-educators through projects that promoted collaborative leadership and unfolded, rather than being delivered through planned and scripted lessons. These were creative projects of cultural significance, characterised by attentive listening and aiming to promote intergenerational conversation. Through such transformative projects children emerged as educators by acting as catalysts of change, as cultural producers and as conversationalists, as did their parents and other members of the school community. The paper concludes that community co-education ideas should be re-visited to breathe new life into educational and social actions today. (shrink)

This paper explores the ways in which narratives speak to issues of national identity - its production, reproduction, and contextual performance. Drawing first upon literature in history education, the paper explores the multivoiced nature of the historical narratives which structure American national identity projects. The paper next employs phenomenological methodology in order to explore the narratives produced by students in speaking about school experiences, which they found to have a national component. In this section, there is a particular focus on (...) the teacher as a powerful text as read by students - a curriculum of its own right. The paper concludes by moving to theorize, using phenomenological and post-structural analyses, the relationship between the personal and the national, lived and historical experiences - while maintaining a focus on the civic and pedagogical implications of the data analysis. (shrink)

Starting high school can be a challenging but also exciting time for students. The focus of this paper lies with students' experiences of transition into secondary school. Sixteen students from one government school in New South Wales kept a journal for their first ten weeks in high school as a way of recording their experiences. Their journal entries were studied utilising a phenomenological psychological approach following Giorgi (1985a, 1985b ). The aim of this research approach is to produce clear and (...) accurate descriptions of a particular aspect of human experience ( Polkinghorne, 1989 ) in order to reveal the essential structure of the phenomenon under investigation. Emerging from the study were seven themes about transition: the pivotal role of peers in helping or hindering settling into high school; the place of school support through programs and activities; the challenges of new procedures; different types of learning activities; feelings of confidence and success that can enhance transitional experiences; the place of homework in the academic curriculum; and the role of teachers in affecting student integration into high school. The paper concludes by raising some important issues and implications for school based practitioners. (shrink)

This paper investigates how principals can be supported in their work as teacher leaders. My focus is on how principals can help teachers respond ethically to classroom challenges. I argue that in aiding teachers, school leaders themselves need support and ongoing development. I turn to the care of the self to conceptually explore ethical self-cultivation. I then argue that a practice, Descriptive Inquiry, serves as a way for principals to care for themselves. To make this argument, I draw on a (...) qualitative study of four long-term elementary school principals. (shrink)

Neoliberal assaults upon public education have been grounded upon the supposition that schools are failing to prepare students to respond to local and global economic needs and realities. The result has left the relational between pupils and teachers as a taken-for-granted practice. Lived experiences often can show and capture the unexpressed in taken for granted moments. This discussion presents teaching as relational moments, shared between beginning teachers and pupils. We employ a phenomenological sensitivity as we unravel the anecdotal evidence to (...) bring into language a “lived through” dimension of human relations. As teacher educators, we ask: what is experienced when relationality is the focus for beginning teachers? The importance of this question is due to the prevalence of neoliberal forces that now guide, and to large extent, control what it means to teach in schools across Canada. In an effort to understand this emerging view of teaching, we explore what four preservice teachers from Nova Scotia experienced in becoming teachers, as they completed their final Field Experience in Bergen, Norway. We share these anecdotal representations to help teachers see how the relational informs identity in becoming a teacher and allows teacher educators to deconstruct the “taken-for-granted-ness” of teaching stuck in the rational-technical model. (shrink)

In higher education, the conventional design of educational programs emphasises imparting knowledge and skills, in line with traditional Western epistemology. This emphasis is particularly evident in the design and implementation of many undergraduate programs in which bodies of knowledge and skills are decontextualised from the practices to which they belong. In contrast, the notion of knowledge as foundational and absolute has been extensively challenged. A transformation and pluralisation has occurred: knowledge has come to be seen as situated and localized into (...) various 'knowledges', and the status of the body has taken on renewed significance in epistemological debates. Rather than thinking of knowledge as transcending the body, the embodiment of knowledge has become a key factor in understanding the nature of knowledge and what it means to know. In this paper, we adopt a phenomenological perspective in exploring the notion of embodied knowing as it relates to higher education programs and, more specifically, the ways in which information and communication technologies (ICTs) are used in these programs. (shrink)

The increased influence of neoliberalism in education has allowed the trend of evidence-based teaching to dominate professional development in many Western countries. Despite increased and persistent neoliberal measures in education, education critics argue that neoliberal reforms have a naive view of teaching. This narrowed neoliberal view both ignores the complexities involved in the everyday interaction between teacher and student and constrains the teacher’s judgement thereby limiting their contribution in the educational process. Many educators will note the significance of reflection in (...) learning as essential and often emotional. However, the emotional experiences embedded in teacher reflections are often ignored, even discounted, in the discussion of teachers’ professional development. Investigating this phenomenon of emotions in teacher reflections, analysed by drawing on lifeworld theory, revealed how emotional experiences can be a resource in teachers’ professional development. To acknowledge teachers’ emotional experiences means recognizing that the teacher’s subjective and lived body is involved in the reflective and learning process of becoming professional. (shrink)

John Dewey talks about child as an «agency of doing» which, by its action, strives to create meaning. From this view, Dewey offers new teaching principles focusing on learning in a context of free activity rather than in a context of restrictive discipline. The child is no longer just invited to represent the phenomenon to understand, it is somehow invited to meet it, to experience it, experience being defined as a transaction between the human being and physical and social environment. (...) Dewey also said that the lack of continuity in the experience marks the beginning of the learning process, he called inquiry, no longer described as essentially individualistic, which bases his epistemic perception of democracy. After briefly describing our meeting with Dewey’s educational thought, we will try to establish, from his conception of action, inquiry and democracy, how his thought can be considered as a foundation for a major innovation educational innovation symbolizing education reform in Quebec of the 2000s: the project approach. (shrink)

This article explores the lived experiences of Advanced Placement English teachers in public high school, as the author addresses the question: "What is it like to teach Advanced Placement English while caught in the tension between teaching and testing?" The phenomenological text constructed from conversations and written reflections with six Advanced Placement teachers brings forth aspects of the experience of dwelling aright in the Zone of Between in AP English teaching: between teaching and testing, high school and college, and childhood (...) and adulthood. The teachers use the exam as a foundation for courage and encouragement, confidence and passion building, and creative ways-of-being with students. The study suggests a need for Advanced Placement teachers to participate in the development of curriculum, to retain the autonomy to teach from the self, and to be trusted to provide students with meaningful experiences in the art and craft of literature study. The article also reveals the importance of widening the narrow definition of student achievement to include more than test scores. (shrink)

In this article a group of professionals working in education and health care explore professional practices and interactions from a phenomenological perspective, drawing on Max van Manen’s conceptualization of the phenomenology of practice and his knowledge interest in understanding and furthering sensitive, caring professional practice. Posing the question what is the meaning of interaction in encounters within education and health care, we look at practice experiences drawn from close observations and interviews during research concerning special needs education, physiotherapy and weight (...) loss programs. Three anecdotes are offered as a way to ‘show,’ rather than interpret, the processes involved. Each anecdote is followed by reflections in which we draw on van Manen’s notion of pathic knowledge and Nancy’s ideas about co-existence to develop phenomenological insights about temporal, embodied and relational qualities of the phenomenon of interaction in professional practice. Such interaction seems to involve continuous negotiation. It emerges as a process of exchange, a movement back and forth between supporting and letting oneself be supported; between confronting and being confronted; between pushing and being pushed. Moments of active engagement give way to periods of waiting for the other to act. The experience is one of continuous back and forth movement in the relational space in-between. (shrink)

This methodological article explores issues related to having the ontological ground for phenomenological empirical research present throughout the research process. We discuss how ontology needs to be taken into consideration regarding the phenomena to be studied and how ontological aspects of phenomena need to be highlighted during various data collection and analysis procedures. Here, we discuss how philosophical works can be used in the context of specific research projects. In illustrating our statements, we present four empirical examples connected to the (...) themes of life changes and learning processes with the purpose of exemplifying and discussing how general lifeworld ontology can be integrated as an active resource in empirical phenomenological research. (shrink)

In meetings between people in school our values are shown through, for example, our actions, our speech and body language. These meetings can be regarded as ethical situations, which can arouse strong emotional reactions that ordinary, everyday situations usually do not do. The aim of this paper is to illuminate, interpret and discuss students' lived experiences of ethical situations in their school. The participants in the study were students in a Swedish secondary school, and the empirical data consisted of written (...) reflections and interviews. The study is based on the lived experiences of students. The analysis of the empirical data resulted in two themes: response in speech and action , and power relations . The comprehensive understanding of the results is that healthy relationships play an important ethical role in the school. Finally, we discuss how ways of listening to students' voices and appreciating practice can develop an ethical school. (shrink)

Educational research has explored the potentials and problems inherent in student anonymity and pseudonymity in virtual learning environments. But few studies have attended to onymity, that is, the use of ones own and others given names in online courses. In part, this lack of attention is due to the taken-for-granted nature of using our names in everyday, “face-to-face” classrooms as well as in online learning situations. This research explores the experiential significance of student names in online classrooms. Specifically, the paper (...) reports on one relational thematic that surfaced in a phenomenological study investigating experiences of teaching and learning online. (shrink)

Teacher-student discourse is increasingly mediated through, by and with digital technologies. In-class discussions have found new, textually-rich venues online; chalk and whiteboard lectures are rapidly giving way to PowerPoint presentations. Yet, what does this mean experientially for students? This article investigates college students' experiences of PowerPoint in the classroom. The research asks: What are the tacit and pedagogical dimensions of the PowerPoint presentation for students? The method of inquiry is informed by a hermeneutic phenomenological approach and by the heuristic notions (...) of pedagogical tact and thoughtfulness. (shrink)

The study analyzes the theoretical basis of the Philosophy for Children (P4C) program elaborated by Matthew Lipman. The aim is, firstly, to identify the main philosophical and pedagogical principles of P4C based on American pragmatism, and to locate their pedagogization and possible problems in Lipman’s thinking. Here the discussion is especially targeted to the thinking of John Dewey and George H. Mead as well as Lev Vygotsky, whom Lipman himself names as the most pivotal sources for his own thinking. On (...) the other hand, the study aims at opening up new perspectives and thematizations on P4C from the viewpoint of the continental tradition of thought. The essential principles of P4C connected with reasonableness and judgment are ultimately interpreted as a neo-Aristotelian effort to contextualize philosophy by tracing it back to moderation, the man’s ability to consider and solve problems that he meets in practical life kata ton orthon logon — by doing right things in the right place at the right time in the right way. This phronetic idea of ‘humanizing modernity’ combined with the evolution of the adult-child concept is argued to be one of the conditions for the possibility of P4C, yet leaving unsolved the basic problems involving pedagogical action as such. John Dewey’s ideas arising from the critique of the modern philosophy of consciousness, focusing on the significance of philosophy in practical human life and linked to the basic nature of human knowing and intellectual growth and, further, to the ideal of a democratic community, are shown to form the main intellectual sources of P4C. Dewey’s philosophy as a general theory of education means a solid linking of the concepts of experience and inquiry to the practice of education. This is based on the naturalistic conception of man according to which man is built in dynamic transaction with his environment, experiencing the true meanings of his ideas in the consequences of his actions as he tries to solve problematic situations. So, inquiry as a method of reflective thinking forms the basis for education based on intellectual growth. A condition for it is a context meaningful for the child in which the paradigm of inquiry can be realized authentically. It is therefore important in education to provide circumstances that stimulate the child’s curiosity, initiating a process of inquiry that further enables, through the formation of reflective habits, the development of a democratic community. The purpose of the pedagogical interaction taking place in the process of inquiry is to produce educative experiences for the child, making the pedagogical relationship vanish at the same time. The idea is that in pedagogical action the child’s subjectivity, his desire and impulses are adapted to the tradition, yet generating at the same time a prospective, reflective habit, thus freeing the educatee to think intelligently for himself. The study shows the articulation of these principles in Lipman’s practical effort to convert the classroom into a community of inquiry, but it also argues that the above-mentioned Bildung theoretical core problem of pedagogical action, related to its paradoxical special characteristics to produce autonomous subjectivity, is not thematized. In connection with this issue, the educational thinking of Kant and Hegel is discussed especially from the viewpoint of philosophy teaching. To provide a new perspective for the discussion, the study outlines the community of inquiry as an ‘educative space’ from the viewpoints of the pedagogical relationship typical of hermeneutic pedagogy and of non-reflective functional structures and phenomena based on pedagogical intuition that are linked to it. (shrink)