Phenomenological Inquiry in Education: Theories, Practices, Provocations and Directions 9780367250324, 9780367250317, 9780429285646

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PHENOMENOLOGICAL INQUIRY IN EDUCATION

Phenomenological Inquiry in Education is an edited collection of 16 chapters that offers a fascinating and diverse range of approaches and views about phenomenological inquiry as applied in educational research. Written by a group of international scholars concerned about understanding lived experience, the editors assemble theoretical ideas, methodological approaches and empirical research to create a distinctive transdisciplinary outlook. Embodying many unique and useful insights the book provokes thought about the possibilities for phenomenology in contemporary educational research. The international contributors highlight what an exploration of lived experience can offer qualitative research and extend on methodologies commonly used in educational research. By grounding phenomenological inquiry in the complexities of doing research across discipline areas in education, the writers of the book forge links between theory and empirical research, and give their unique perspectives about how phenomenological ideas are being and might be employed in educational research. The book is thus carefully crafted to address both phenomenology as a philosophical tradition and its possibilities for educational research. This scholarly work will appeal to educational researchers, as well as those in broader social research. It taps into the growing international interest in phenomenological research in education which brings attention to lived experience and the highly important affective dimension of learning. Edwin Creely is a Lecturer in the Faculty of Education at Monash University, Australia. His research interests include creativity, poetry, literacy, digital pedagogy and school leadership. Edwin has a strong interest in phenomenological research and theory, as well as ethnography, and explores new models for educational research.

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Jane Southcott is a Professor in the Faculty of Education at Monash University, Australia. As a phenomenologist, Jane researches education, cultural identities and hybridity, and community engagement with the arts focusing on lifelong education. A revisionist historian, Jane researches music education in Australia, Europe, England and the USA. Kelly Carabott is an academic in the Faculty of Education at Monash University, Australia. Her research focuses strongly on digital competence, digital pedagogies, literacy learning and partnership work. Kelly draws on her experiences of being an early childhood, primary and tertiary teacher and also an academic to focus her phenomenological work. Damien Lyons is a Lecturer in the Faculty of Education at Monash University, Australia. He is a qualitative researcher with expertise in hermeneutic phenomenology and narrative inquiry. Damien’s research interests focus on pedagogies for 21st century literacy teaching and learning. Currently Damien is investigating literacy transitions between primary and secondary school using phenomenology.

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PHENOMENOLOGICAL INQUIRY IN EDUCATION Theories, Practices, Provocations and Directions

Edited by Edwin Creely, Jane Southcott, Kelly Carabott and Damien Lyons

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First published 2021 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN and by Routledge 52 Vanderbilt Avenue, New York, NY 10017 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2021 selection and editorial matter, Edwin Creely, Jane Southcott, Kelly Carabott and Damien Lyons; individual chapters, the contributors The right of Edwin Creely, Jane Southcott, Kelly Carabott and Damien Lyons to be identified as the authors of the editorial material, and of the authors for their individual chapters, has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Creely, Edwin, editor. | Southcott, Jane, editor. | Carabott, Kelly, editor. | Lyons, Damien, editor. Title: Phenomenological inquiry in education : theories, practices, provocations and directions / edited by Edwin Creely, Jane Southcott, Kelly Carabott and Damien Lyons. Description: New York : Routledge, 2021. | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2020038202 (print) | LCCN 2020038203 (ebook) | ISBN 9780367250324 (Hardback) | ISBN 9780367250317 (Paperback) | ISBN 9780429285646 (eBook) Subjects: LCSH: Education--Philosophy. | Phenomenology. | Educational psychology. Classification: LCC LB14.7 .P53 2021 (print) | LCC LB14.7 (ebook) | DDC 370.1--dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020038202 LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020038203 ISBN: 978-0-367-25032-4 (hbk) ISBN: 978-0-367-25031-7 (pbk) ISBN: 978-0-429-28564-6 (ebk) Typeset in Bembo by KnowledgeWorks Global Ltd.

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CONTENTS

Figures and tables viii Contributorsx Introductionxv SECTION 1

Introduction to section 1: Theoretical considerations Edwin Creely 1 Some possible ways into the question of how a phenomenology of education might be Stuart Grant 2 Epoché and objectivity in phenomenological meaning: Making in educational research Leon De Bruin 3 Walking into the posts Jennifer J. Clifden and Mark D. Vagle 4 Phenomenological human science via phenomenological philosophy: A phenomenomethodological approach to education research John Quay, Irena Martinkova and Jim Parry 5 The challenges of researching lived experience in education Erika Goble

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1

5

21 36

52 68

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vi  Contents

SECTION 2

Introduction to section 2: Issues and contexts Kelly Carabott and Damien Lyons 6 The best fit: Methodology, methods, process and outcomes – a teacher investigates her own practice Karin Greenhead

83

87

7 Unexplored terrain: The valley between creativity and creative practice Megan Workmon Larsen, Danah Henriksen and Rohit Mehta

104

8 Australian educational leader’s lived experiences of power within literacy education Damien Lyons and Kelly Carabott

119

9 Towards a phenomenology of teacher responsibility Alex Kostogriz

135

10 Making meaning through lived technological experiences Sebnem Cilesiz

148

11 Using phenomenology to understand and respond to gender inequality in higher education Lori Jarmon

161

SECTION 3

Introduction to section 3: Research applications Jane Southcott 12 Understanding the experiences of international doctoral students: Charting a troubled geography of doctoral supervision Janinka Greenwood 13 “I can’t do without my poetry”: A post-qualitative, phenomenological investigation of a poetry class of older Australians Edwin Creely and Jane Southcott 14 Truth-telling through phenomenological inquiry Davina Woods

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173

177

196 210

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Contents vii

15 STEM inspiration: A phenomenological investigation exploring beyond the solution Roland Gesthuizen, Gillian Kidman, Hazel Tan, Dominador Mangao and Simone Macdonald 16 Phenomenology: The missing pieces of the puzzle in educational psychology Stella Laletas and Christine Grove

225

243

Conclusion256 Index259

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FIGURES AND TABLES

Figures 3.1 4.1 4.2 4.3 6.1

6.2 12.1 12.2 12.3 15.1 15.2 15.3 15.4 15.5 15.6 15.7

River at Ballynahinch Castle, Connemara, Ireland Two meanings of phenomenon Phenomenological concepts and traditional concepts Two phenomenomethodological directions This figure from the thesis shows the tripartite nature of DE, the supporting theories and principles (derived from the practice) and its applications The DR process as shown in the thesis [Tuki’s map], HM830/1793a, S13–151b, Hocken collections, Uare Taoka o Ha¯ kena, University of Otago Gains from the doctorate Development and value of a learning community Maker-box with manipulatives Some were thinking, some were tinkering Playing with a solution prototype Graphing distance vs magnetic field strength I can work this out myself The scientist and the mathematician A learning conveyor model to enable learning growth

46 55 60 62

179 186 188 229 230 233 234 235 236 240

The list of tables as it appears in the thesis The engines of dialogue Interview participant overview

96 98 108

88 90

Tables 6.1 6.2 7.1

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Figures and tables ix

11.1 11.2 11.3 11.4 15.1 15.2

Phenomenology data analytical approach Perceptions of the glass ceiling for women in higher education Tools and resources needed Overcoming obstacles and advice in higher education Participants and contexts Mapping domains and teaching to emergent learnings

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166 167 169 170 228 237

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CONTRIBUTORS

Leon de Bruin i s a Lecturer in Music at the Conservatorium of Music, University of Melbourne. His research work across behavioural, cognitive, social, cultural and relational/affective perspectives impacts developing educational capacities spanning learning and teaching and creative processes across visual and performing arts, teacher education and training, particularly in music and music education. Kelly Carabott i s an academic in the Faculty of Education at Monash University. Her research and publications focus strongly on digital competence, digital pedagogies, literacy learning and partnership work. Kelly has a strong focus on using partnerships as a way to scaffold teacher education. Kelly draws on her experiences of being an early childhood, primary and tertiary teacher and also an academic to focus her phenomenological work. Sebnem Cilesiz i s the Patrick Rutherford/BORSF Professor of Education at the

University of Louisiana at Lafayette. She earned her PhD from the University of Florida. Her research focuses on qualitative research methodology, critical perspectives on educational policy and leadership and social and cultural contexts of educational technology. Jennifer J. Clifden i s the founder Present Well-Being LLC and is the coordinator

for the Minnesota Grow Your Own Teachers (MNGOT) program at the University of Minnesota’s College of Education + Human Development. Jennifer received her PhD from the University of Minnesota where she researches educator stress-resilience. Edwin Creely is a lecturer in the Faculty of Education at Monash University in Melbourne Australia. He is an educator, academic and writer with research

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Contributors xi

interest in graduate education, literacy, poetry, creativity, philosophy, performance studies, digital pedagogy and educational leadership. Edwin has a specialised interest in phenomenology and its applications in research, and the place of theory in research. He has published widely in peer-reviewed journals and he is also an experienced reviewer. Edwin has a growing list of publications based on phenomenological inquiry. Roland Gesthuizen is a Data Analytics Learning Specialist with the Department

of Education and Training Victoria and DLTV Journal editor. His teaching interests span Science, Digitech and STEM education. His work has been recognised with ACCE and ISTE Awards. Roland is a PhD student at Monash University (Faculty of Education), exploring the nature and role of inspiration in STEM education. Erika Goble, PhD, is the Associate Dean of Research at NorQuest College,

as well as an Adjunct Assistant Professor with the Faculty of Rehabilitation Medicine, University of Alberta and a Policy Fellow with the Education Policy Research Initiative, University of Ottawa. Her current research interests include the phenomenology of practice, moral distress in higher education and the intersection of ethics and aesthetics in lived experience. As a committed community-based applied researcher, Goble also supports a range of local community healthcare organizations to plan, undertake and evaluate social innovation projects Stuart Grant works at an outer suburban university in Australia. He sings in a punk band and runs a small ecological performance company. He has published widely in the field of ‘performance phenomenology’ and is a core convenor of the performance philosophy network. Christine Grove, PhD, is an Educational and Developmental Psychologist and Senior Lecturer in the Faculty of Education at Monash University. She has extensive experience supporting the inclusion and mental health and wellbeing of children, young people and adults through research, education, policy development and in clinical practice roles. Karin Greenhead t rained initially as a pianist/violinist and singer, and developed

an international career as a freelance, Dalcroze practitioner working chiefly with musicians and dancers in addition to training Dalcroze teachers. She teaches at the Royal Northern College of Music, is Director of Studies for Dalcroze UK and is increasingly engaged in research and publication. Janinka Greenwood is a Professor Emeritus at the University of Canterbury. She has strong interests in learning communities, cultural difference, postcolonialisms and practice-based research methodologies. She works with local

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xii  Contributors

and international students and collaborates with colleagues in Asian and Europe, as well as New Zealand. Her publications are found on http://www.canterbury. ac.nz/spark/Researcher.aspx?researcherid=2020212. Danah Henriksen is an Associate Professor of Educational Leadership and

Innovation in the Mary Lou Fulton Teachers College at Arizona State University. She is interested in creativity at all levels—and her research has focused on issues related to creativity, technology and design thinking for educational contexts. Lori Jarmon, PhD, is Assistant Director of the Engineering Research Institute at

Iowa State University. She is an innovative professional with over two decades of progressive responsibility in research administration leadership. Through this role as an administrator in higher education, she has developed a research interest in equity issues surrounding women in higher education. Associate Professor Gillian Kidman is a STEM education researcher from Monash University. Her teaching, curriculum design and professional development programmmes in inquiry-based learning and teaching in the sciences is award winning. With expertise in the integration of science and mathematics, and transdisciplinary thinking, Gillian is well-known throughout South East Asia, working with the SEAMEO RECSAM in teacher professional development. Alex Kostogriz is a Professor of Languages Education and Deputy Dean of

the Faculty of Education, Monash University. His research and publications are focused on teacher education reforms, professional practice and ethics and experiences of beginning teachers Stella Laletas is an educational psychologist, teacher and researcher in the field

of educational psychology and inclusive education at Monash University. She has published several papers that explore the experiences of educators teaching and supporting children who experience adversity in their lives. Her professional profile also includes years of experience in student wellbeing leadership role with the Department of Education and Training in Victoria, Australia. This role involved working in collaborative teams with teachers, school heads, student support services (psychologists and counsellors) and other specialist professionals to support student needs. Her research interest lies in exploring ways to best support vulnerable populations in their everyday lives. Phenomenological inquiry features centrally in her research. Damien Lyons  is a qualitative researcher with expertise in Hermeneutic

Phenomenology and Narrative Inquiry. Damien’s research interests centre around pedagogies for 21st-century literacy teaching and learning. Damien has worked in senior leadership positions leading whole school curriculum change. He has

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Contributors xiii

formed partnerships with government education bodies, has consulted nationally and internationally on 21st-century literacy pedagogies and has presented and published in the areas of leadership, teacher education and pedagogy. Simone Macdonald  is an Early Childhood and Primary Teacher with the

Department of Education and Training Victoria. She has extensive experience providing professional development to Southeast Asian teachers. Simone is a PhD student at Monash University (Faculty of Education), exploring the benefits of ‘failure’ in STEM education. Dominador Dizon Mangao is a senior Science Education Specialist at Southeast Asian Ministers of Education Organisation – Regional Centre for Education in Science and Mathematics (SEAMEO RECSAM) in Penang, Malaysia. Dominador has worked in teacher professional development for 15 years, and is a former primary school principal, regional science supervisor and supervising education program specialist in Philippines. Irena Martinkova is an Associate Professor in Kinanthropology in the Faculty

of Physical Education and Sport, Charles University, Prague, Czech Republic and Vice-President of the European Association of Philosophy of Sport (EAPS). Her interests lie in the philosophy of sport and sports ethics, and especially in phenomenology, Olympism, martial arts and Eastern thought. Rohit Mehta is an Assistant Professor of Secondary Curriculum with Instructional

Technology in the Department of Curriculum and Instruction at California State University, Fresno. He conducts decolonizing and humanizing research on technology, creativity and literacies to design inclusive and equitable learning environments for teachers across disciplines John Quay is an Associate Professor in the Graduate School of Education at the

University of Melbourne. His interest in phenomenology grew from a concern with how experience and education inform each other. His research and teaching have followed the pathway that this concern revealed, with numerous twists and turns and tangents. Jim Parry  is a Visiting Professor, Faculty of Physical Education and Sport, Charles University, Prague; and formerly Head of the Department of Philosophy, University of Leeds, UK. His interests are in sports ethics and social and political philosophy. He is former Chair of the British Universities Physical Education Association and Founding Director, British Olympic Academy. Jane Southcott i s a Professor, Faculty of Education, Monash University, Australia.

Jane is a revisionist historian, researching music curriculum in Australia, America and Europe, and she is also a phenomenologist researching community

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xiv  Contributors

engagement with the arts, multicultural music education and cultural identity with a focus on lifelong education. Jane teaches in post-graduate programs and supervises many post-graduate research students. Dr Southcott is editor of the International Journal of Music Education, a member of the editorial boards of international and national refereed journals and a Life Member of the Australian and New Zealand Association for Research in Music Education. Hazel Tan is a STEM education researcher from Monash University specialising in mathematics education. She has expertise in conducting research on teacher education, technology use for teaching and learning and mathematics and STEM education. Hazel has also designed and conducted teacher professional development in Southeast Asia, Australia and SEAMEO RECSAM. Mark D. Vagle  is a Professor and Department Chair of Curriculum and

Instruction at the University of Minnesota. He has written extensively on phenomenological research. Currently, Vagle is using his conception of postintentional phenomenology to critically examine various ways in which issues related to social class, race and gender are provoked and produced in the curriculum and pedagogies of elementary education. Davina B Woods PhD has worked in learning, specifically the education about,

the Aboriginal peoples of Australia since the 1980s. The granddaughter of an Aboriginal child taken after a massacre in 1881, she and her extended family have only in her generation began to uncover the truth of their Aboriginal grandfather’s life. Through her grandfather, she relates to far north Queensland. Particularly, from the sea to the savanna, the countries of the Kuku-Yalanji and KukuDjungan peoples. Her current work encompasses explaining the philosophy of the Dreaming and how she adheres to that philosophy in the 21st century. Using the latest modes of communication in knowledge distribution, she has a website Let’s Work Together. Archived there are several of her writings from the 1990s. As a volunteer for her community and independent academic, Woods plans to continue working towards a more informed and equitable Australian society, by guiding Non-Indigenous people to a better understanding of the shared history. Megan Workmon Larsen is a researcher, student affairs practitioner, musician and artist in the Herberger Institute for Design and the Arts at Arizona State University. She is interested in how individuals work together to build community, utilize inspiration to find motivation, learn how to navigate failure and embrace risk and create positive change through interdisciplinary collaboration.

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INTRODUCTION

When you hear the word ‘phenomenology’ what first comes to mind? Is it, ‘What’s that?’ Is it a vague curiosity about an obscure philosophical preoccupation? Or maybe you just stumble over saying the word back, and through the stumbling suggest its lack of relevance to, or impact on, academic work. It even appears to have little traction in contemporary portrayals of philosophical thought or in the popular imagination. Some scholars have even criticised the philosophical movement behind the word as being too smug, elitist and niche about its attempts to understand human experience; or suggest that what phenomenology attempts to do is rather soft and fuzzy—lacking veracity and precision. Real scholarly work is far more rigorous after all. Indeed, can one really get to consciousness and human experience? It might be felt or experienced but that’s not the same as being observed, measured or understood. So, the word ‘phenomenology’ may have a mixed reception from researchers across the broad field of education and be limited through its seeming impenetrability and theoretical complexity. Mention ‘lived experience’, on the other hand, and understanding springs to life. But ‘lived experience’ is not phenomenology—it is merely the content for phenomenological work, and lots of researchers who do not use phenomenology as their theoretical position care about lived experience. Further to the reception of the word is the etymology and common usage of the word itself. When we think of ‘phenomenology’ it is often in its singular form. It is one approach, one movement and one set of ideas to look at human embodied experience. Derived from the Greek word, phainomenon, which means the appearance of things, phenomenology has tended to be siloed as a single or immutable philosophical entity. Even in books on phenomenology or methodology textbooks it is posited this way. And yet, like the telephone box–the anywhere, anywhen Tardis–of the British sci-fi series, Dr Who, that seems such a

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xvi  Introduction

small, self-enclosed oddity at first glance, phenomenology is unveiled and transformed once you look inside into a vast and diverse world, and you begin to see things that you have never seen before. You begin to realise that what might appear to be a singularity is actually a landscape of multiplicity with a set of debates and approaches that are rich and diverse, layered and convoluted—filled with as many complexities and contradictions as certainties. But isn’t that exactly what it means to live, experience and learn as a human being? We are, Ed, Jane, Damien and Kelly and the Faculty of Education at Monash University, Melbourne is our current home. We are a diverse, yet aligned, foursome of academics who have differing approaches to phenomenology, different research interests and different career stages. And yet, it was in these differences that the nub of similarity—our interest in human experience and the crafting of phenomenological research–that drew us together. Just like the Tardis, our conversations traversed time and space as we debated, discussed, challenged and agreed on foundational and contemporary phenomenological ideas. We became inspired as we interrogated our craft, analysed our own ideas and wrestled over how these could be used as a lens for understanding our research interests in education. Through dwelling in this nourishing intellectual space, our desire to extend our conversation by connecting with other educational researchers who were also applying a phenomenological lens was strong. We envisaged a book that started to bring together both foundational and contemporary phenomenological ideas as they continue to meander and mingle through time. Indeed, just like the Tardis, which is remarkably small on the outside, we knew that when we opened the door to reveal the vastness of the interior dimensions of phenomenology, we would find an intricate oasis where humanistic experiences are valued. We invite our fellow educational phenomenologists to join us in being playful and provocative with phenomenology, to open up new vistas, or bring to light that which may be buried. As the book unfolded, our authors formed and reformed their chapters through rich conversations with colleagues and the editorial team. No chapter, including our own, escaped this ongoing dialogue and shaping. We come to this book recognising the challenges and opportunities in communicating the potential of phenomenology as a powerful philosophical basis for engaging with educational issues and as a useful theoretical perspective and research approach to serve the needs of those who conduct educational research. We also come with the desire to refute the notion of immutability or obscurity and open out the importance of the plurality of phenomenology as part of a suite of research orientations needed in education. Our purpose in this work is thus practical as well as theoretical. The editors and authors of this book are scholars who find phenomenology useful as a tool for research and pivotal to our ways of thinking about learning in all its experiential and embodied dimensions. For us it is not soft and fuzzy at all, nor is it opaque. In looking with these lenses, we actually see with clarity, though what we see is open for interpretation and we are not shying away from the challenges of understanding phenomenology.

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Introduction xvii

Thus, our vision for the book is not about pursuing the ‘pure’ philosophical debates that are claimed as the domain of philosophers but rather engaging in explorations, dialogue and provocations to do with thinking, research and practice in education. We argue that phenomenology should not be siloed according to theoretical foundations or approaches, rather we view phenomenology as potentially syncretistic—of merging and finding a hybrid space with other approaches to knowing. We are certainly interested in understanding the philosophical field of phenomenology; but, more importantly, we are also imagining (and on a quest to find) what it might provide, especially as applied and understood in educational research contexts. We do not suggest that this book has one answer to this quest; rather, we have endeavoured to open up the ‘possibilities’ of phenomenology. We strive to embrace the plurality of phenomenological inquiry, as indeed, the very history of phenomenological thought is one of diversity, debate, reinterpretation and provocation. Having said all this, we also acknowledge that the use of the word ‘phenomenology’ as applied to educational research is a contested space. We would argue that through the active application of philosophy to educational research overlaps, tensions and controversies begin to emerge. At the same time, we also begin to see the common concerns which bring philosophical issues and educational issues together. As you open the doors and wander into the rooms of the Tardis, each holding a unique world, we hope that this book draws attention to the contextual nature of engaging in educational phenomenological work. The situatedness of education requires a unique shaping of ideas and methods that both embrace phenomenological questions, but are also embedded into the places, issues and circumstances that matter in education. But we also hear a dissenting voice coming from outside: this is all very well, but it might beg the question about why phenomenology is useful in the first place. Sure, this philosophical space might be interesting and perhaps useful, but as a distinct way of doing research and as a paradigmatic shift–now that might be going too far. Let’s cut to the chase and ask what phenomenology can do that other conceptual approaches might not be able to do in educational research–or at least not do as well. What is distinct about phenomenology as a research epistemology? What can we know and how can we know it? First of all, phenomenologists take the lived experience of the individual seriously as a research focus. A researcher using phenomenology may well ask questions about what constitutes the experience of learning for the individual. This is not to diminish the significant research work done through other approaches. But at the very heart of phenomenology is the possibility of understanding the meaning of personal experience in and of itself, with penetrating depth, ontologically and hermeneutically. This is controversial, of course. Sociocultural theory points to the embeddedness of the individual within the frames of culture, language and society. Post-structuralist approaches suggest that experience is also mediated through language and the interstices of the social group and reflects structures of power and perhaps privilege. We are not arguing against these ideas

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xviii  Introduction

(actually embracing them) but reestablishing the importance of a return to what is experienced as the ground for research. We are saying that only the individual can actually experience the world of things and people, so it is important to investigate these experiences with depth and pervasiveness. Secondly, and an extension of the first point, phenomenology offers the chance to return also to the body–to our groundedness through embodied connection with the world, to the visceral nature of our existence as material and interactional beings. It is little wonder that the arts have strongly embraced phenomenology more than any other broad discipline area. In the arts embodiments and entanglements between the world and the experiences of the individual matter, and we are hoping that it matters as much in other discipline areas. Learning is also bound up in the embodied connections with all that constitutes a person’s lifeworld–materiality, sensorial connections (including touch), the somatic, the interconnections to the social and the meanings that emerge through all the rich textures of embodiment. Education is primarily concerned with learning. Indeed, it is within the situatedness of people’s experiences, relational, situational, embodied and cognitive, that learning occurs. An understanding of how these experiences both shape and are shaped in educational contexts provides an intellectual space where educational phenomenologists can start to wonder, reflect, describe, interpret and create meanings that reflect both individual lived experiences and the collective experiences that we share. Phenomenological educational research that draws on foundational and contemporary ideas invites an alternative vista of learning or a new horizon of possibilities. The outside of the Tardis is immediately recognisable and in a sense simplistic; it is not until you uncover what is beyond the door and look inside the Tardis to see the multiplicity of doors to other spaces, that complexity is recognised. Comparisons can be drawn to the narrow standardised and quantitative research agenda that is being driven by educational stakeholders to achieve some form of measure of learning. This view that a multifarious educational context can be measured does not take into consideration the complexity of everyday experiences of each student, each teacher and each school, nor, importantly, does it value lived experiences. When we look beyond this narrowness and employ a fusion of phenomenological lenses our view of education widens and the horizons of our understandings of learning deepen. Despite our call for another way of looking at educational issues and the experiences of learning, we also want to make it clear that phenomenological research has no definitive answers, nor does it seek them. Instead it illuminates experiences through evocative descriptions and interpretation to make visible that which may have been previously invisible. Just as the Tardis takes Doctor Who to where they needed to go, not where they wanted to go, the phenomenological reduction allows us to follow the path of the experience rather than imposing bounded constraints on what the research should or should not find. This paves the ways for more nuanced understandings of learning and teaching experiences.

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Introduction xix

Through a multiplicity of voices, our book embraces a plurality of educational phenomenologists from varying philosophical orientations and methodological approaches. Indeed, there is a syncretism of phenomenology with other intellectual traditions on offer in this book, or a sort of phenomenological mélange, suggesting that phenomenology is not immutable and is open to be intermingled with other theoretical positions. We also argue that alongside the plurality of ideas, the richness of the book lies in the diverseness of chapters authored by a variety of academics. Some who are early career researchers and others who have been in academia for substantially longer. There are authors who have an extensive knowledge of phenomenology, and some have just started playing in the phenomenological space. This makes for an eclectic, yet evocative reading experience. Just as Doctor Who and the Tardis traverse time and space, our authors invite you, as readers, to journey through a universe of ideas. It is our hope that this journey will make you wonder; it will evoke debate and contradiction and even leave things unsolved. The places you are invited to visit juxtapose different perspectives and open up a myriad of spaces. Indeed, not all of the perspectives in the book agree with each other, but we argue that this is where the strength of the journey lies. This book is not about consensus, nor do we claim to have solutions to the emerging issues, trends and ideas. It is, however, our shared wish to elevate the importance of experience that allows us to consider what phenomenology is and could be in educational research contexts. The book is divided in three sections. The first section traverses through chapters that consider phenomenology as a philosophical tradition and also offers an explication of ideas from phenomenology pertinent to education and more broadly to social sciences researchers. The second section journeys through chapters that chart themes and territories in applying phenomenological inquiry to education. The third and final section travels through chapters of empirical research using a phenomenological approach to inquiry. Each of these sections has its own introduction that invites you to think about the work through the use of metaphor. We, as the editors, have enjoyed playing with metaphors and thinking about how these can frame both our own and also others’ understandings of phenomenology. We invite you also to play, to enjoy the disruption that the metaphors may have on your thinking; indeed, the metaphorical may be a way to open new vistas for your own thinking in educational research. On behalf of the editorial team and our authors we hope that our book promotes thinking about phenomenology and facilitates seeing its rich possibilities in educational research. The writers in this work speak into these possibilities, and this is the position that drove us as fellow writers and editors. We are wearing our phenomenological hearts on our sleeves. We invite you, as the reader, to enjoy playing in this phenomenological space and to come into the Tardis with us to explore the spaces within.

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SECTION 1

Introduction to section 1: Theoretical considerations Edwin Creely MONASH UNIVERSITY, AUSTRALIA

The first section of this book is a tasty theoretical and philosophical beginning. It is not an entrée, but the first of three main courses. We hope the reader’s appetite is whetted with this opening section, and you come to the table with curiosity, as the authors of the five chapters engage vigorously and expansively with the field of phenomenology and position this terrain as the philosophical ground for educational researchers interested in a phenomenological approach in their research. The items on the menu are diverse but they share a common ingredient—phenomenology as a way of describing, interpreting and understanding human experience of the world. Phenomenology is a complex and diverse philosophical field that emerged in the early 20th century as a strand of European philosophy. The beginning of phenomenology is widely attributed to German philosopher, Edmund Husserl, but the thinking that undergirds phenomenology has a long tradition whose roots arguably go back to the ancient Greek philosophers. The field is primarily about explanations in regard to human experiences of being in the world, and how these experiences shape both meaning and human action. The centre of phenomenology is thus about getting to the fundamental relations between the appearances (or phenomena) of the world given in the structures or essences of our experience (in the content of consciousness) and the constitution of the world through our embodiments within it. The nexus between essences and embodiments are intentionalities or the senses that emerge as humans encounter the world, take from the world and embody in the world. The phenomenology-oriented researcher investigates these fundamental relations in order to ‘get inside’ the nature of what is being experience of the world. Since the time of Husserl, and his descriptive phenomenology, a variety of approaches to understanding the fundamental relations have emerged, including

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ones labelled as hermeneutical phenomenology that are concerned with interpretations of what it means to be in the world. There is often a distinction made between descriptive and interpretive approaches to phenomenology, with the understanding in the latter case that experience and meaning making are mediated through language and situated in culture. From this point of view experience can only be known through how it is communicated. Our common ingredient, phenomenology, is prepared in a variety of ways, which add to the complex flavours of this opening section. Once the preserve of philosophers in the first half of the 20th century, more recently the field of phenomenology (and the foundational phenomenologists such as Scheler, Husserl, Heidegger, Gadamer, Marcel, Merleau-Ponty, Levinas and Ricoeur) has entered the menus of many human research fields and contexts, including psychology and education, and provides a rich source of flavours: new thinking and approaches that bring research back to the importance of understanding first-hand human experience. Those who employ phenomenological ideas in research often refer to what they do as phenomenological inquiry or phenomenological research. From these ideas, an assortment of methodological approaches has emerged as ways for conducting phenomenologically oriented research. Our first main course opens with a quite delicious chapter by Stuart Grant, ‘Some possible ways into the question of how a phenomenology of education might be’. It is written from the stance of a philosopher of performance who makes no claim to be in the field of education yet speaks provocatively, addressing its very foundations. Stuart asks what a phenomenology of education might look like and daringly calls for thought about what should constitute an authentic ground for such a phenomenology. Stuart’s wide-ranging engagement with this ground, and his concerns with what is widely touted as constituting education, resolves on Heidegger’s idea of Ereignis—education as being primarily about the formation of a genuine thinking and experiencing being. Stuart asks us to consider what we are actually looking at as educational researchers. Leon de Bruin adds his own distinct flavours to this opening section through his examination of the core attitude that constitutes phenomenological research in education. His chapter, ‘Epoché and objectivity in phenomenological meaning-making in educational research’, examines the notion of the epoché or bracketing—the suspension of judgments and preconceptions in order to understand a phenomenon in and of itself. Leon points not only to the philosophical meanings of this term but also discusses it as the primary orientation or attitude of the phenomenological researcher. In our experience, all researchers come to research with preconceptions, but it is in the attitude of letting go (of such preconceptions) and the movement to ‘pure seeing’ what is there that phenomena can fully unfold their meaning. Leon leaves an aftertaste for the reader of his chapter: what might be the approaches of educational researchers who want to engage the epoché? In their chapter, ‘Walking into the posts’, Jennifer J. Clifden and Mark D. Vagle discuss a well-formed approach to doing phenomenological inquiry called

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Theoretical considerations 3

post-intentional phenomenological research. This approach to research is now on the menus of many researchers internationally. The writers discuss this research approach by noting its origins in both phenomenology and poststructuralist thought, thus pointing to its hybridity and the complexity of its flavours, like an aging fine wine. According to the writers, phenomenological inquiry needs to account for the reality of coming in to research at multiple points, and into fluid meaning making that is constituted in situated communication. They believe that this condition characterizes all research. There are multiple and shifting intentionalities, and all research is a process of negotiation that depends on language, context and the disposition of human relationships. The chapter offers insights into how this approach to phenomenological research might be applied. That there are myriad flavours to phenomenology as applied in educational research is also explored in the chapter ‘Phenomenological human science via phenomenological philosophy: a phenomenomethodological approach to education research’ by John Quay, Irena Martinkova and Jim Parry. They argue, taking the line of Heidegger, for conceiving phenomenology as a methodological term, not in the sense of a recipe or formula (certainly not) but as a coherent approach to conceiving human research and meaning making. The writers set up a distinction between what philosophers do with phenomenology and how those in human research (including education) use phenomenology, though they are at pains to point out that such a distinction is not absolute in the work that researchers do—there is significant crossover. Their notion of phenomenomethodology traverses a substantial range of analytical tools and thinking valuable to the educational researcher. Our menu is certainly building to a grand feast of ideas, with multiple courses and diverse influences. We come now to the last morsel on the multi-textured plate of this theoretical feast, no less tasty than the chapters that proceeded it. Erika Goble’s ‘The challenges of researching lived experience in education’ draws on a substantial range of theoretical and practical ideas and offers a critical examination of the difficult but rewarding space of doing phenomenological research in education and examining lived experience. Despite recognising that phenomenological research has conceptual and practical complications, there is a profound passion for this approach that emerges in the chapter—for phenomenology offer up rich potential that is worth exploring in the tasting. We recognise that the varied opening course of our banquet may contain items that are not to everyone’s taste or might prompt diverse reactions from delight to dismissal. The role of this section is not to offer neat definitive answers (there are none) but to provoke thought about the nature of the ground of phenomenological research in education. This section thus acts as a prolegomenon for the next two courses.

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1 SOME POSSIBLE WAYS INTO THE QUESTION OF HOW A PHENOMENOLOGY OF EDUCATION MIGHT BE Stuart Grant MONASH UNIVERSITY, AUSTRALIA

What this essay tries to do? When I was asked to contribute to this volume on phenomenology of education, I was excited. I am not a philosopher of education by trade, but I am an educator and a phenomenologist. My field of expertise is phenomenology of performance, so the overlaps are many. As an educator, I am aware of my own and the students’ performances, and of the performer-audience dimension of my relations with students. I am also aware of the idea of corporate performance that tacitly determines my actions in the classroom. I am further aware of the increasing dissonance and incompatibility between these performances. The implicit definitions that underlie my vocation as a scholar and educator are increasingly inappropriate to perform the tasks required of me by the institutional world in which I practice. As a phenomenologist, it is clear that this dissonance emanates from different and incompatible definitions of education itself. There is no firmly grounded understanding of what education is. I saw this essay as an opportunity to examine the extent to which the fundamental questions of education have been asked, and to bring my more than 20 years of experience as a phenomenologist and educator to this critical situation in my own life. First, it is necessary to lay out a few definitions. It is a tired truism to say that the term phenomenology refers to many things: many practices, many processes, many concepts, and many approaches. It is indisputable to say that the term education also refers to many practices, processes, concepts, and approaches. There are no universally accepted definitions or clear guidelines for how to understand or do either. And when these two sets of many practices, processes, concepts, and approaches are brought together, the difficulties of finding any consistencies, practical or definitional, are compounded. Education is a widely “understood” and universally experienced fundamental pillar of advanced Western capitalist democracies. Phenomenology is an opaque philosophical obscurity, little known beyond the

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world of its exponents, and more renowned for the difficulty of its pronunciation than its relevance to anything that might be of use in the everyday life of society. So this essay, as the first in a book on phenomenology of education, begins by laying out a complex of problems associated with the need to understand the two primary terms and the conceptual fields to which they refer. This immediately reveals a mire of, in one case, a history of taken-for-grantedness, ill-definition, misunderstanding, political manipulation, and in the current climate, a duplicitous attempt to impose a regime of a utilitarian instrumentalism, dressed up as innovation and standardization; and on the other hand, a genealogy of deliberate slippages and reinterpretations of interpretations aiming at an impossible but ever-sought refinement of a nonetheless ultimately unachievable clarity. This, in a nutshell, is the problem, purpose, and necessity of this essay and this book. How might a book on phenomenology of education seek to ground its matter to a sufficient degree to be of any worth at all, and what might this essay contribute to that? I would venture that the only realistic aim is to lay out the problematic fields and ask a few basic questions which might set up some beginnings, which, if addressed with any efficacy, might provide some framing for the endeavor of how a phenomenology of education might be thinkable. The urgency of these questions is evinced by the increasing number of approaches to the question of education which brand themselves phenomenology. It would be good to have guidelines to understand what these approaches think they are doing, and why. First, how they claim to be grounded as phenomenology; second, how they seek to ground the question of education; and third, how phenomenology might work specifically in that grounding.

Some thoughts on education The briefest of fundamental phenomenological questioning demonstrates the problem. All of you who are reading this essay know how to do something called reading. This presupposes that you have undergone some sort of education. You have most likely been to an institution called a school, where you sat with others of a similar age, and were instructed by people who had undergone governmentally accredited training which allowed them to call themselves and operate within government sanctioned institutions as teachers. You were led  through structured content programs called curricula that had been researched and approved as producing the desired results in the transmission of skills and knowledges conventionally agreed to be requirements for successful participation in society. This first glance would suggest that initially what we call education is a government enforced method of social control. But it is not customary in an everyday sense to think of education primarily as a means of social control. The common rhetoric holds education to be the opposite, a pathway to freedom and power. This requires further investigation. We in the West habitually speak as though we know what education is. We have all experienced it. It is so close to us, so in us, so what is nearest to us, that we

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How a phenomenology of education might be 7

do not question what it is. Those of us who do think about education are bound up in questions of policies, methods, and calculations of the measurability of its and our own effectiveness. We speak as though we share certain common understandings of what the term connotes. Images of classes, of students, of teachers, of curricula, and of institutions come readily to mind. There are psychologies, sociologies, and anthropologies of learning and education, philosophies of pedagogy, mountains of reports of classroom practices, education design teams, curriculum theories, and the grouping of all these under the term “sciences of education,” which gives a hint to an increasing imperative to represent all human behavior in quantitative scales which will allow the rationalization of where to put increasingly shrinking financial and economic resources. We are told that education is in crisis, that we are falling behind other countries, that our literacy and numeracy rates are falling, that our schools are underfunded, and that we need to give our children an exclusive private education to not get lost in the public system. In this sense of crisis, education is understood entirely teleologically, in terms of which avenues it affords to what social advancements. But the real crisis lies elsewhere. In a basic Husserlian phenomenological sense, the crisis is that the study of education remains ungrounded, or to rephrase in Heideggerian terms, we have not yet begun to ask the fundamental questions of education. Beyond and underlying questions of skills, knowledge, assessments, and curricula, what are the grounds of education? What is teaching? What is learning? What are students? What are teachers? What are schools? What are the relationships between them? And then, beyond these initial, mundane, descriptive questions, what has our neglect of these questions created? And what other possibilities might arise in a more substantially questioned and grounded sense of the meaning of education? This is the task of a fundamental phenomenology of education. As I will point out in this essay, it is not correct to say that we have not yet begun, but, more accurately, that we are in the very early stages of framing these questions. I will discuss some of these beginnings here. For the rest of this essay, I will, in the most partial fashion, outline some different kinds of phenomenologies, discuss how these shape some of the work which calls itself phenomenology of education, take an overview of some of the more fundamental approaches, and point toward some possibilities for further understandings. It is not irrelevant that I am writing this essay on an earth which is entering a phase of rapidly deteriorating habitability for humans, at a crisis point where the very forces, philosophies, worldviews, thinkings, and basic dispositions shaping education systems in the Western world are precisely those same forces, philosophies, worldviews, thinkings, and basic dispositions that are wreaking the devastation. These are the stakes. There is not just a crisis of education, but a crisis for education. The basic problems of mass extinctions of species, degradation of environment, and catastrophic climate change are not only occurring parallel to and co-symptomatic with the utilitarian degradation of the meaning of education, but are, to a significant extent, caused by the ungroundedness of what we mean when we say education. Education determines

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8  Stuart Grant

what and how we know, think, do, and be. Simply put, we are educating our way to extinction and planetary devastation. We must find the way to the answers to these crises through a questioning and shift in the substance and purpose of what we mean when we say the word education. In this task, education must be understood in its most fundamental etymological sense of educere, a leading away from one condition to another. Having laid out some problems concerning the question of education, the next step is to lay out some problems concerning the question of phenomenology.

Some thoughts on phenomenology Phenomenology begins with Husserl’s discovery that the sciences, understood more broadly as knowledges, or disciplines (Wissenschaften), despite their efficacy, remain theoretically incomplete and ungrounded (Husserl, 2001, p. 16). Husserl proposed phenomenology as the remedy, the universal science grounding all the sciences (Husserl, 1997, p. 175). The parallel argument regarding education would be that despite, or perhaps because of, the skill and dedication of teachers at the coalface, the study of education and its fundamental conditions remain ungrounded, their presuppositions unanalyzed. A phenomenology of education would undertake such a grounding. There is, nevertheless, a rapidly burgeoning application of self-described phenomenological methodologies to the study of education, many of which do not overtly appear to be aiming at the task of raising the discipline of education “above all theoretical doubt” (Husserl, 2001). I would argue that this is symptomatic not of any flaw or impossibility in education itself, but of a necessary condition of phenomenology, that in the quest of ever more fundamental questioning, it has splintered into multiple definitions and approaches, many of which retain scant relation to Husserl’s original purpose. The use of phenomenology in the study of education imports the fundamental heterogeneity of phenomenological theories and methodologies. This questioning and overturning of phenomenology from within is a fundamental phenomenological principle because it is an infinite task of mining ever deeper, taken-for-granted, unthought presuppositions underlying presuppositions. However, this does not mean that all research that calls itself phenomenological deserves the label. A great deal of the relevant work in the field of education uses the term phenomenology to refer to a qualitative research practice examining and reporting on the experiences of students and teachers, and the effects and efficacy of specific methods and curricula. As Rocha puts it, “the impact of phenomenology within educational research has largely been reduced to theoretical or methodological applications within social scientific mixed and qualitative studies” (Rocha, 2016b, p. 750). Again, this is a feature of the field of contemporary phenomenology itself. Recent debates between phenomenological psychology pioneer, Amadeo Giorgi; Jonathan Smith, the inventor of Interpretive Phenomenological Analysis (IPA); philosopher Dan Zahavi; and Max van Manen, a prominent early progenitor of the

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use of phenomenology in the human sciences, are indicative of a kind of boundary drawing or gatekeeping which is merely the most recent phase of a long-standing struggle between the philosophical and practical schools of phenomenology. IPA is an increasingly used methodology in the human sciences, including the study of education. It is used for intensive studies of small samples. Giorgi (2011) and Van Manen (2017, 2018) question whether Smith’s IPA is authentically phenomenological or merely another qualitative method. Smith (2018) replies with a definition of phenomenology based in an insight of Heideggerian hermeneutics where we are all always already, at the basis of our understanding, in a phenomenological process. Giorgi, Van Manen, and Zahavi (2018) dispute this. However, the debate splinters further in that Zahavi also takes objection to van Manen’s use of the term phenomenology on the basis of the centrality of the description of lived experience in his work (Zahavi, 2018). Zahavi insists that Van Manen’s emphasis on revealing the taken-for-granted in everyday lived experience is not enough, and that the original philosophical aim of phenomenology must be adhered to. When phenomenological philosophers are providing the kind of analyses that van Manen is interested in, they are doing so for a systematic purpose. The descriptions in question are means rather than ends. To think otherwise is fundamentally to misconceive the philosophical character of phenomenology. Zahavi, 2018, p. 902 Zahavi points out that “Husserl’s phenomenology offers a fundamental account of the nature of reality and objectivity,” and that “anybody promoting a method, procedure, or approach that is supposed to merit the label ‘phenomenological’ should be familiar with phenomenological theory and with its philosophical origin” (p. 903). Most recently, van Manen (2019) has replied to Zahavi’s criticism, accusing him of limiting the definition of philosophy itself, and of misunderstanding the central concern of Husserl’s project to get back to things themselves. A further front in the debate has broken out from Giorgi’s (2010, 2012) insistence in his critique of IPA that to be truly phenomenological, phenomenology must employ both the reduction and the epoche¯ . In response to this, Zahavi (2019), despite his resolve that phenomenology must retain a strong relation into Husserl’s initial philosophical aim, argues that the epoche¯ is not necessary for the reduction. It should be stressed that these debates arise from origins at least as old as phenomenology itself. Heidegger’s work is a phenomenology of the limit and presuppositions of Husserl’s methods and concepts. Levinas’ and Derrida’s work is a phenomenology of the limits and presuppositions of Heidegger’s work. Heidegger almost completely dispensed with Husserl’s methodological language of the epoche¯ and the reduction, yet it can be argued that Heidegger’s obsession with the fundamentality of the question of Being is the most profound of phenomenological reductions. Our most fundamental taken-for-granted unquestioned assumption is Being, that we and things are. Even Husserl himself was not entirely consistent on the subject of the reduction. In the exchanges with

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Heidegger around the article on phenomenology that he was commissioned to write for the Encyclopedia Britannica, Husserl (1997) grapples with trying to clarify the complexity and shifts in his own differing and changing ideas of the various reductions. Maurice Natanson (1973, p. 65) notes that one commentator, Quentin Lauer, counts six different reductions in various stages of Husserl’s work. Despite different variations of nomenclature, it appears to me that there are four basic primary reductions. In a nutshell, the phenomenological reduction occurs in two phases: first, the worldly, or psychological-phenomenological reduction, which consists in describing mundane phenomena. This acts as a propaedeutic phase for a second, transcendental-­phenomenological reduction, which reduces these phenomena to their philosophical constituent grounds. Husserl also used the eidetic reduction which reduces phenomena to invariant structures through free variation in the imagination to establish what something is and is not (Husserl, 1973, pp. 339–363); and in the Cartesian Meditations (Husserl, 1960, pp. 89–150), he outlines the primordial reduction, the “reduction to my transcendental sphere of peculiar ownness” (p. 93) as the necessary methodological step to prepare for understanding the apprehension of the other person. This is clearly a brute oversimplification of the complexities of these key phenomenological methods, but this is not the main business at hand here. I would venture to say that the definition which holds phenomenology to be a method for the revealing of taken-for-granted structures of the everyday lifeworld is predominant in most so-called phenomenological studies outside of the discipline of philosophy. In my reckoning, in Husserlian terms, many of these works remain in the mundane phase of the reduction. The danger of such studies in the field of education is that they can only take us further from the necessary true phenomenological questioning because they reinforce a set of basic categories as givens. Teaching, learning, students, teachers, disciplines, schooling, classes, curricula, or assessments, all remain unexamined as taken-for-granted basic categories rather than the very apparatus of a concealment that limits and determines the field, rather than opening out the authentic possibilities of what it might become. Nevertheless, while I share Zahavi’s frustration with the loose use of the term phenomenology and its perversion in coming to mean description of lived experience and first person accounts thereof, I come from a discipline of performance studies, where embodied performative practices are claiming status as phenomenological, so I need to remain open to such claims and ask in what ways and to what ends the claims are being made. I am not closed to the possibility that the scope of validity of phenomenological enquiry might not be enlargeable. I think the most open yet inclusive definition to work from is the simplicity of Dufrenne’s “description which aims at an essence” (Dufrenne, 1973, p. xlvii). Faced with the history of phenomenology that contains thinkers and writers as diverse as Husserl, Heidegger, van Manen, Casey, Schutz, Scheler, Derrida, Irigaray, Levinas, Marion, Merleau-Ponty, Marcel, Fink, Dufrenne, Henry, Giorgi, Seamon, and others, with such profoundly different ideological, methodological, and ontological commitments, and trying to come to terms with a

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growing body of practice research work deeming itself phenomenological in my own discipline, I have attempted, in a previous work (Grant, 2019), to provide a guideline that would allow for a broader and more inclusive scheme of what might constitute a study as phenomenological. Despite the differences in the positions and conceptualisations in this history of phenomenological intentionality, they all share certain characteristics. They deal with the relationships of humans to their worlds; they move towards fundamental explanations; and they attempt to reveal takenfor-granted underlying presuppositions. These are the fundamental tenets of phenomenology. Grant, 2019, p. 30 I believe that these three tendencies: intentional description and analysis, reduction to essentials, and a revelation of hidden strata in everyday experience, encompass all the central tendencies of everything I have encountered which deservingly calls itself phenomenology, from Schmitz to Smith, from Boss to Binswanger, from Husserl to Heidegger, from Scheler to Schutz, from Marion to Marcel, and from Gurwitz to Giorgi. The obvious rejoinder is that the argument could be made that other, non-phenomenological work might also share these tendencies. I address this in the cited article, fleshing details of how, through specialist language, and specific methodological and conceptual apparatus, it is also necessary to explicitly place oneself in a clearly recognizable phenomenological tradition. For example, there are many writings within the traditions of analytical philosophies of mind that use the term intentionality, but they do so in a very different sense than the phenomenological definition. In another paper, soon to be published, I expand and refigure the list thus as: (a) the movement toward essencing, (b) something like a variation of a reductive method, (c) calling into question and undermining of a taken-for-granted presuppositions, and (d) description of the structures of intentionality (Grant, 2020, forthcoming). I employ the use of moderating terms such as “movement toward” and “something like” to create an inclusiveness. I am more interested in growing the field of phenomenology, to increase its influenceand to promote its ability to shape reunderstandings of the world than I am in any sense of propriety or purism. So, in this spirit, how might we approach the question, the key phenomenological question concerning education: “What is education?” This is, in a preliminary sense, the question of the is-ness, the being of education, a question of the esse of education, and of what is essential to that which we call education. What is it that makes education education and that makes all things that are not education not education? What are the essential elements that constitute education? According to the phenomenological tendencies I have laid out above, this essence of education needs to be enjoined through “something like” a reductional methodology, it needs to question and take out of play taken-for-granted assumptions, and it needs to be an intentional analysis.

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I have observed that the word education in everyday parlance brings with it certain presupposed elements. Images of schools, teachers, classrooms, curricula, institutions, students, desks and chairs, writing implements, computers, whiteboards, PowerPoint presentations, lecture theatres, standards and guidelines, meetings, tests, exams, knowledges, skills, and other things. The phenomenological question, the esse question, is: what is essential among these things, and what is incidental, peripheral, or inessential? The classical Husserlian way to do this would be to question which of these can be taken away and still leave education itself intact. This is the eidetic reduction, which questions what constitutes a thing as what it is, and what it is not. I reinforce here that most phenomenologies do not directly apply the letter of Husserl’s law. What is necessary or essential is to describe what is given, to question taken-for-granted assumptions and presuppositions, and to take them out of play in order to reduce to invariant structures. Briefly, the eidetic reduction is a process of “free variation in the imagination,” beginning with experienced, contingent, specific, and individual entities; running through infinitely possible variations of “a multiplicity of figures” to establish a “necessary general form” (eidos) to which the individual belongs (Husserl, 1973, p. 341). Practically, the phenomenologist runs through, for example, all imaginable instances of chairs in order to arrive at an essence of “chairness” of which individual chairs are instantiating variations. Husserl states many differently nuanced versions of the eidetic reduction throughout the course of his work, but there is always the move toward ultimate giving of invariant essence through free variation in the imagination. Space demands that I cannot demonstrate the eidetic reduction, but it is evident how it might yield clarity on the fundamental question of education. Nevertheless, it sheds limited light on the specific question with which I began, of why I feel that my definition of education is inappropriate to the contemporary university environment in which I find myself. This question requires a Heideggerian framing.

Some Heideggerian beginnings As stated, the initial impulse of Husserlian phenomenology was to provide a grounding for the sciences, through an approach that moves in stages toward a fundamental apodictic certainty. Heidegger points out that it is not the sciences, but the very idea of certainty that is the problem. He proclaims that Western thinking has “been guided by the predominance of an empty and thereby fantastic idea of certainty and evidence” (Heidegger, 2005, p. 33). So in a Heideggerian sense, by attempting to provide this certainty to the sciences, Husserl is reimposing the problem on itself. As remedy, Heidegger’s central early contribution to phenomenology is the introduction of hermeneutics, which is based in an infinite circle of interpretation. Heidegger is as concerned with ground and essence as is Husserl, but for Heidegger, essencing (wesen) is a process, and ground is abyssal (abgrund). Still, as a phenomenologist, he always aims at the most fundamental questioning. For the rest of this essay, I will examine some key Heideggerian approaches with an aim to clarify my initial question of why my approach to education is

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inappropriate to the environment in which I find myself. This pertains directly to Heidegger’s central quest for the end of metaphysics, the urgent need for a new kind of thinking, and the role of education in those aims. I assert that the contemporary university and other education systems have been entirely colonized by what Heidegger has termed calculative, representative, metaphysical thinking, which entails the abandonment of Being and the devastation of earth, and that in the current dangerous phase of advanced capitalism, our institutions of what is currently called education are complicit as we calculate and standardize our way to our own destruction. There is a wealth of possible approaches to a Heideggerian questioning of education. Vasco d’Agnese and Babette Babich have both drawn extensive bibliographies (Babich, 2017; d’Agnese, 2017). They point to a variety of applications, including studies of specific disciplines, technological considerations, meaning-making, hermeneutics in education, and authenticity. Among these, certain key works stand out as having particular significance. Peters and Allen’s (2002) edited collection lays key groundposts in the range of possible applications of Heideggerian thinking to the study of education. Much of the work since is refinement of possibilities and issues raised in this collection. Special mention must also be made of the contribution of the philosopher, Iain Thomson. Thomson (2001, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2011, 2016) has written consistently from a radically ontological standpoint based in Heideggerian philosophy, dealing with fundamental questions concerning education. For my purposes, the most radical and relevant treatment of Heideggerian possibilities for education can be found in Carolyn Thomas’ dissertation (2016), notably conducted under the advisement of Iain Thomson. Thomas threads together the references Heidegger made concerning education throughout his career, and places them firmly in the service of the aim and method of Heidegger’s ultimate project, to rethink thinking and Being in a way which would create a new epoch of Western history. For Heidegger, education should participate in a new beginning for the relationship of the human with everything else. Rather than disciplines which study beings categorized in representative schemata; this education would instantiate learning to be. Key to this is Heidegger’s assertion that “Paidaea is not education [Bildung], but…that which prevails as our ownmost being” (Heidegger 2002a, p. 83, cited in Thomas, 2016, p. 56); and the German word Bildung [formation] comes closest to capturing the word paideia, but not entirely, and it comes closest only if Bildung is restored to its original power as a word, [wherein] Bildung means ‘forming people’. Heidegger 1998b, p. 166, cited in Thomas, 2016, p. 61 So according to Heidegger, the meaning of education needs to be “restored” to a concept of “forming people.” This aligns with his concern expressed in his “Rectoral Address,” given when he was appointed to the University of Freibourg in 1933, to return to a questioning which “shatters the division of the sciences

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into rigidly separated specialties” (Heidegger, 2003, p. 6). For Heidegger, the breaking up into disciplines in education is intrinsically tied to the problem of metaphysics. To remedy this, it is essential for students, teachers, and the university itself to “no longer permit Knowledge Service (Wissensdienst) to be the dull and quick training for a ‘distinguished’ profession” (p. 8). Thomas explains “Heidegger’s mature philosophy of education as that which prepares human being for the thinking and gathering of being itself, which Heidegger calls Ereignis” (Thomas, 2016, p. iv). Ereignis—the happening, of thinking that may lead to the real education that turns human thinkers out of plighted metaphysical thought and into human learners-as-thinkers-essentially-being within the essential domains of questioning and thinking of the new beginning. Thomas, 2016, p. 91 This conception of education as Ereignis is key to my argument. Beyond phenomenology conceived as merely another qualitative methodology for studying what happens in classrooms, here the most essential phenomenologizing reveals education as the site where the plight of Western metaphysics, and its consequent calculative devastation, can find the way to its remedy. Heidegger is explicit on this. The essence of paideia does not consist in merely pouring knowledge into the unprepared soul as if it were some container held out empty and waiting. On the contrary, genuine education takes hold of our very soul and transforms it in its entirety by first of all leading us to the place of our essential being and accustoming us to it. Heidegger, cited in Thomas, 2016, pp. 60–61 Heidegger himself was a great educator. The bulk of written works we have by him are transcriptions of lectures he gave. They are detailed rigorous phenomenological workings—thorough concepts and thought processes which he spoke before rooms of students. They are living performances of thinking, demonstrations of philosophy in process, sites where new concepts are brought into being, and old concepts and works questioned and redefined. For Heidegger, education is a place where a fundamental, inceptual occurrence of thinking happens. His lectures do not merely talk about their subject matter but are living invitations to enjoin the way of thinking along which he is trying to lead the students. In his lectures, he performs new ways of thinking. In his performative writings, particularly of the years 1936–1942 (Heidegger, 2006, 2012, 2013, 2015), he writes the new way of thinking. In his educative practice, he leads the students in this path of thinking. A clue to a Heideggerian understanding of education can be found in the “Letter on ‘Humanism,’” in the concept of accomplishment (Vollbringen) as the essence of action, “to unfold something into the fullness of its essence, to lead it

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forth into this fullness - producere” (Heidegger, 1998, p. 239). This could also be thought as a key to Heidegger’s ideas on education. The sense of leading, ducere, is also the root of the English word education. Educere is to lead something from out of itself toward its fullness. Moreover, “only what already is can really be accomplished” (p. 239). Education is the leading of the student out of themselves toward what they already are, toward the fullness of their essence, their Being, their ownness, Ereignis. Heidegger approaches this directly in the lecture series, What is Called Thinking (1968). Here he poses one of the most important questions of his later years: “What is most thought-provoking for our thought-provoking time is that we are still not thinking” (Heidegger, 1968, p. 17), and that “we must for our part get underway to learn thinking” (p. 25). He states further that this consists in part in learning to understand “the relation between teaching and learning” (p. 22), and that in attempting to learn thinking “we are attempting to let ourselves become involved in this relatedness to Being” (p. 86). This outlines the whole problem. It brings together teaching, learning, thinking, and Being, in a set of questions that sets the scene for the most fundamental questioning of what we mean when we say the word education and how it manifests in the way we are inculcated in Being. This approach plays out in a recent issue of the journal, Educational Philosophy and Theory 48(8) (2016). Samuel D Rocha, the editor, claims that the issue is a response to the exigency that Phenomenology within educational research has largely been reduced to theoretical or methodological applications within social scientific mixed and qualitative studies… instrumentalized…lost its identity as a humanistic and philosophical tradition and practice of thought…primarily nostalgic and scholastic or unwittingly scientific. Rocha, 2016b, p. 750 According to Carl Mika (2016) this results in a situation where, Education has never really looked at itself… because it sets in advance the ontological area in which things are to be understood and by which they are to be oriented towards, and in its dominant form it simply cannot find its very essence through its own methods. Mika, 2016, p. 828 Mika poses the question in entirely Heideggerian terms thus: “Commonly posed questions about pedagogy and curriculum do not get to the crux of our problem of what gives rise to education as a potential coloniser of Dasein” (p. 828). This is key to my problem. The version of schooling which we, without thought or grounding, call education, so profoundly determines the values and specific subjectivities available in the contemporary world, but it has never really conducted a fundamental questioning of itself. It has evolved so much in the service of the

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creation of a specific societal normalizing and control that it is, as Mika suggests, a “colonizing,” an increasingly narrowing function of providing bodies, tamed, and instrumentalized, to the purposes of neoliberal capitalism. This begins at the earliest levels of primary education and carries through the specializations of “work integrated learning” in universities. This should clearly be a concern for the study, practice, and content of education, where the question of how we conceive the world and our most fundamental values and categories are maintained and carried forward. If, as Heidegger (1968, p. 6) asserts, we have not yet begun to think, then an education that leads to its own understanding of how it thinks and acts would be a site where thinking learns what it means to think and being learns what it means to be. Mika urges the importance of this, because Neither student nor teacher, at least in Western societies, is really taught to think about the limits of their own thinking, to speculate on what lies between and beyond their representation of a thing, the thing itself, and the thing’s interrelationality. Mika, 2016, p. 829 Michael Ehrmantraut attributes this to the “oblivion of Being” in modernity (Ehrmantraut, 2016, p. 777). In an age in which education becomes “wholly instrumental” in the service of “‘professional expertise’ within a specialized field of activity” (Ehrmantraut, 2016, pp. 779–780), this leads to an idea that education is complicit in the problem of planetary domination by the human. Ehrmantraut asks what other kind of an education might be conceivable. He finds a clue in Heidegger’s plea, What is important is only that learners in thinking learn together [mitlernen] and, at the same time, in their own way, remain on the path as fellow teachers [mitlehrend] and are there at the right moment. Heidegger, cited in Ehrmantraut, 2016, p. 782 This accords with Thomson’s (2016) concept of ontological education, developed in the context of his reflection on his own teaching. For Thomson, in learning to learn and leading others to learn, we undertake a commitment to what he terms ontological response-ability. He reminds that the word respond originally means “to promise to answer, once again” (p. 846) and paraphrases Heidegger, “learning means actively allowing ourselves to respond to what is essential in that which always addresses us” (p. 847). This enables him to conclude that “thought ontologically….learning is responding” (p. 847). He claims, “to be is to learn,” so the “highest and most exemplary form of learning is teaching learning” (p. 850). Through learning with our students, in the act of teaching, “when we genuinely respond we are learning, and when we genuinely learn we are responding (p. 847). Moreover, as our students come along with us, we are disclosing the world together, thereby enabling them “to come into their own along with us” (p. 847). This is education thought as Ereignis, placing education

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at the core of the human project. Fundamentally, humans are learners engaged in “a broad-spectrum existential lesson in becoming who we are” (p. 849). In service of this aim, Eduardo Duarte proposes a writing about and from education that would be a showing-forth…that shows or reveals a new way by making a new way. Such is the work of a thinking happening through a poiein: a writing forming new ways for thought in education. Duarte, 2016, p. 803 This new, inceptual, performative way of writing, thinking, and being education would itself be the education into a new way of thinking. This is thinking’s Ereignis. There is no separation here between teaching and learning, between teacher and learner, between learner and that which is being learnt, and between education and Being. This requires a performative language, which does not stand over against something which it is about, but a saying which is, which does, which performs, brings into being, what it says. In his own teaching, Heidegger spent the last few decades of his life trying to perform or enact the new thinking in the performative writings, the lectures, and the seminars. The challenge and the offer, to the reader, the hearer, or the student, are to enjoin with him on the way to the new thinking, together.

Final thoughts Certainly, in a world where schools policy and curriculum are determined by ever greater instrumentalism, where universities have become degree factories, research funding procurement and management agencies, and real estate developers, these noble Heideggerian aims have a very limited place. However, in the context of Heidegger’s thinking, such radical approaches are necessary, precisely because the education systems we have are training our young to participate in the thinking which is destroying the earth and perpetuating ever widening inequities as we swarm across the earth devouring all in our path. In the context of this book, if phenomenology in education is to be anything other than just another qualitative research method, it must take up this radical fundamental call. This is the job of phenomenology: not to make our teaching methods more efficient, cheaper, more “innovative,” or award-winning, but to radically question what education is, what it is for, and how we do it. The good news is that this is actually happening despite our best efforts to ignore it. We are, as Thomson reveals, always already in a mutual state of learning to be ourselves with others at all times. This aspect of the educative process is merely hidden behind an increasingly instrumentalist interpretation and application of the understanding of what education is. Duarte shines a light of hope: We might describe originary thinking as originating philosophy of education. We are beginners, Arendt says, so we can begin things. In this

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sense, the ‘other’ beginning describes the ontology of education itself as that event, or set of experiences, where the human condition of natality, our revolutionary potential to begin and initiate, is cultivated in the highest and deepest and widest ways. Duarte, 2016, p. 807 As educators, we experience this all the time, in greater or lesser degrees of awareness, despite the regimes of calculation in which we are forced to operate, and which obscure these processes from us. In those fleeting moments where we are touched by an encounter of shared learning with a student, through a recognition in their eye, or a gush of their enthusiasm, or in the spark of knowing that somebody is affected by what we are doing, or when some unexpected strategy works, the complexity of the learnings in the exchanges and relations, the way they emerge, the way they sustain and dissolve, the way they endure and change beneath subsequent stages of the relationships, emerges from its concealment, where it usually lies obscured beyond our awareness, precisely to the extent that we are compelled to grade, to measure, to adhere to standards, and to obey a regime of economic fear in which our jobs are under threat at all times. An education that functioned, unfolded, and enacted as a shared originary thinking would hold to, foreground, and perpetuate its own process. I would argue that as the devastation caused by the calculative, instrumentalist thinking which dominates and determines education and all other spheres of Western metaphysical human endeavor progresses and accelerates, and as the earth becomes less habitable, that this kind of performative educative Ereignis of thinking is not only desirable but necessary to restore the earth and secure human dwelling. We need to become new kinds of teachers and scholars, for whom the performance of teaching, learning, that which is taught and learnt, student, teacher, self, and being, all collapse into the event of shared coming forth as that which we are. It might be possible, perhaps even tempting at this point, to finish up with neatly tied platitudes on mutuality, sharing, being, ethics, or other self-serving, virtuous-sounding clichés. This essay has definitely veered close to the edge in that direction at times, but that is not the point here. The problem with such an ending would not be in the fine high-sounding noble intentions, but in the very act of trying to tie up this essay neatly. This is not a neat business. This work has not yet begun in any substantial fashion. To pretend that we know the answers, or even what we seek, would miss the mark. The fact is we do not yet fully know what an inceptual, originary, fundamental phenomenology of education would look like, or what it might find. If Heidegger’s forays in the Contributions are any guide, it would be an essentially abyssal enterprise, failing over and over again, most mundanely in that it would need to continually avoid sinking into the world of beings with qualities and attributes, but more profoundly in that it must participate in its own simultaneous coming forth and disappearance. This essay, as the title says, has merely sought “some possible ways in to the question.” To leave it then, in the far more poetic words of Samuel Rocha: “This thing— education—is itself still a mystery” (Rocha, 2016a, p. 824).

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But one thing is certain. For the rhetoric and reality of what we mean when we say education to come into some sort of alignment, it will be necessary for the contemporary university to stop peddling the duplicitous narrative of inclusion, diversity, innovation, and environmentalism on the one hand, while perpetuating the ruthless policies of economic rationalist neoliberalism in the day-to-day reality of the way they run their affairs and treat their staff and their students. A Heideggerian reading of contemporary ideas of education, as embodied in the obsessive, numbing regime of standards, standardization, testing, measurement, and market research customer satisfaction surveys, reveals that the degree factories, research funding procurement and management agencies, and real estate developers of the contemporary university are directly contributing to, complicit in, and perpetuating the problem, and are moving further away from the essence of education.

References Babich, B. (2017). On Heidegger on Education and Questioning. In M. A. Peters (Ed.), Encyclopedia of Educational Philosophy and Theory (p. 75). d’Agnese, V. (2017). Chasing Heideggerian circles: Freedom, call, and our educational ground. Educational Philosophy and Theory, 49(10), 946–956. doi: 10.1080/ 00131857.2016.1248338. Duarte, E. (2016). Heidegger’s prognostic: Originary thinking at the end of philosophy of education. Educational Philosophy and Theory, 48(8), 798–810. doi: 10.1080/ 00131857.2016.1165014. Dufrenne, M. (1973). The phenomenology of aesthetic experience. Northwestern University Press. Ehrmantraut, M. (2016). Nihilism and education in Heidegger’s essay: ‘Nietzsche’s word: “God is dead”’. Educational Philosophy and Theory, 48(8), 764–784. doi: 10.1080/00131857.2016.1165012. Giorgi, A. (2010). Phenomenology and the practice of science. Existential Analysis, 21, 3. Giorgi, A. (2011). IPA and science: A response to Jonathan Smith. Journal of Phenomenological Psychology, 42(2), 195–216. Giorgi, A. (2012). The descriptive phenomenological psychological method. Journal of Phenomenological Psychology, 43, 3. Grant, S. (2019). The essential question: So what’s phenomenological about performance phenomenology? In S. Grant, J. McNeilly-Renaudie, & M. Wagner (Eds.), Performance phenomenology: To thing itself (pp. 19–37). Palgrave Macmillan. Grant, S. (2021 Forthcoming). Entering into this fundamental occurrence. In M. Leach, L. Douse, & M. Hay (Eds.), Heidegger and performance. Rowman and Littlefied. Heidegger, M. (1968). What is called thinking? (F. D. Wieck, & J. G. Gray, Trans.). Harper & Row. Heidegger, M. (1998). Letter on humanism. In W. McNeill (Ed.), Pathmarks (pp. 239–276). Cambridge University Press. Heidegger, M. (2003). Philosophical and political writings (M. Stassen, Ed.). Continuum. Heidegger, M. (2005). Introduction to phenomenological research (D. O. Dahlstrom, Trans.). Indiana University Press. Heidegger, M. (2006). Mindfulness (P. Emad, & T. Kalary, Trans.). Continuum. Heidegger, M. (2012). Contributions to philosophy (of the event) (R. Rojcewicz,  & D. Vallega-Neu, Trans.). Indiana University Press.

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Heidegger, M. (2013). The event (R. Rojcewicz, Trans.). Indiana University Press. Heidegger, M. (2015). The history of Beyng (W. McNeill, & J. Powell, Trans.). Indiana University Press. Husserl, E. (1960). Cartesian meditations: An introduction to phenomenology. M. Nijhoff. Husserl, E. (1973). Experience and judgment. Northwestern University Press. Husserl, E. (1997). Psychological and transcendental phenomenology and the confrontation with Heidegger (1927-1931): The encyclopaedia britannica article, the Amsterdam lectures, “Phenomenology and anthropology,” and Husserl’s marginal notes in Being and time and Kant and the problem of metaphysics. Kluwer Academic Publishers. Husserl, E. (2001). Logical investigations ( J. N. Findlay, Trans., Vol. 1). Routledge. Mika, C. (2016). Some thinking from, and away from, Heidegger. Educational Philosophy and Theory, 48(8), 827–831. doi: 10.1080/00131857.2016.1165016. Natanson, M. A. (1973). Edmund Husserl; philosopher of infinite tasks. Northwestern University Press. Peters, M., & Allen, V. (Eds.). (2002). Heidegger, education, and modernity. Rowman & Littlefield. Rocha, S. D. (2016a). Education as mystery: The enchanting hope of desire. Educational Philosophy and Theory, 48(8), 811–826. doi: 10.1080/00131857.2016.1165015. Rocha, S. D. (2016b). Untimely phenomenological research: Introduction to Heidegger and education. Educational Philosophy and Theory, 48(8), 749–751. doi: 10.1080/ 00131857.2016.1165010. Smith, J. A. (2018). “Yes It Is phenomenological”: A reply to Max Van Manen’s critique of interpretative phenomenological analysis. Qualitative Health Research, 28(12), 1955–1958. doi: 10.1177/1049732318799577. Thomas, C. (2016). Heidegger’s contributions to education. (PhD). University of New Mexico. Thomson, I. D. (2001). Heidegger on ontological education, or: How we become what we are. Inquiry, 44, 243–268. Thomson, I. D. (2003). Heidegger and the politics of the university. Journal of the History of Philosophy, 41, 515–542. Thomson, I. D. (2004). Heidegger’s perfectionist philosophy of education in being and time. Continental Philosophy Review, 37, 439–467. Thomson, I. D. (2005). Heidegger on ontotheology: Technology and the politics of education. Cambridge University Press. Thomson, I. D. (2011). Heidegger, art, and postmodernity. Cambridge University Press. Thomson, I. D. (2016). Rethinking education after Heidegger: Teaching learning as ontological response-ability. Educational Philosophy and Theory, 48(8), 846–861. van Manen, M. (2017). But is it phenomenology? Qualitative Health Research, 27(6), 775–779. doi: 10.1177/1049732317699570. van Manen, M. (2018). Rebuttal rejoinder: Present IPA for what it is—Interpretative psychological analysis. Qualitative Health Research, 28(12), 1959–1968. doi: 10.1177/ 1049732318795474. van Manen, M. (2019). Rebuttal: Doing phenomenology on the things. Qualitative Health Research, 29(6), 908–925. doi: 10.1177/1049732319827293. Zahavi, D. (2018). Collective Intentionality and Plural Pre‐Reflective Self‐Awareness. Journal of Social Philosophy, 49(1), 61–75. https://doi.org/10.1111/josp.12218. Zahavi, D. (2018). Getting it quite wrong: Van Manen and Smith on phenomenology. Qualitative Health Research, 29(6), 900–907. doi: 10.1177/1049732318817547. Zahavi, D. (2019). Applied phenomenology: Why it is safe to ignore the epoché. Continental Philosophy Review. doi: 10.1007/s11007-019-09463-y.

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2 EPOCHÉ AND OBJECTIVITY IN PHENOMENOLOGICAL MEANING Making in educational research Leon De Bruin THE UNIVERSITY OF MELBOURNE, AUSTRALIA

Introduction Phenomenology has impacted 20th-century thinking not only because of the rigorous descriptive approach it brings to research, but also because it offers a concept for accessing the difficult phenomena of human experience. Widely understood as the study of essence, phenomenology can be further refined through hermeneutics and the processes of interpretation. Within this refining and delineating process is embedded a tension that phenomenological researchers must negotiate, traversing the phenomenology of being concerned with finding the essence of the things, whilst balancing the hermeneutics of a phenomena in which we see that everything has its being in language and interpretation. Hermeneutic phenomenology is dynamic and evolving (Speigelberg, 1960), and is essentially the study of ‘lived experience’ (van Manen, 1990), with its emphasis on the world as lived by a person, not the world or reality as something separate from the person (Valle et al.,1989). This requires the researcher to adopt an investigative position that focuses the researcher’s interpretative skills to comprehending ‘What is this experience like?’ for the subject (Polkinghorne, 1983). Phenomenology in the field of education can encapsulate the anthropological and epistemological interest in the meaning of events via presenting understandings of the phenomenological lived quality of particular educational situations, acknowledging the personal, cultural and social remembrances of the phenomenon under question. Phenomenology and the role of the educational researcher is to seek to understand the ‘lifeworld’ of ‘participants’, without resorting to categorisation or conceptualisation. Here, the phenomenological orientation towards lived, situated experience informs how educational researchers may construct their investigative lens

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of inquiry. This relation between phenomenology and education requires an informed yet responsibly detached approach to researching and comprehending the character of experiences, situations and practices. This stance or attitude involves a process of extricating essences of experience and the bracketing of presuppositions whilst being the vessel for interactive engagement, reflecting the embeddedness of researchers’ interconnectivity, relationality and intersubjectivity to the phenomenon. It is this aspect that remains the most dynamic and evolving nature of phenomenology. For all phenomenologist researchers, the phenomenological ‘stance’ applies rigorous acknowledgement of the role of consciousness, through the observation and analysis of individual and personal epistemological realities as they arise from their unique perceptions (Pietersma, 2006). Phenomenology provides a compelling and complex orientation to understanding subjective perceptions of participants, and analysis of data via the process of phenomenological reduction or bracketing is a development to the process adopted by Husserl (Osborne, 1994). Husserl proposed the need to ‘bracket’ out the outer world as well as individual biases of the researcher to achieve contact with essences of a subject’s lifeworld. The practice of ‘the epoché’ (henceforth termed ‘epoché’) is a process of bracketing or mindfully separating particular beliefs about the investigated phenomena to see and understand it clearly and purely. Epoché can be described as the researchers’ conceptual and cognitive synthesis of the phenomenological reduction and researcher intuition towards the essences derived from the studied phenomenon. This perceptual processing conducted by the researcher is mediated by conceptual development by numerous phenomenological scholars that have extended our understanding of epoché through the consideration of dialogue, text, historicity of the subject at hand, as well as various conceptualisations of embodiment, the suspension of assumptions and cultivations of doubt. Rather than be daunted, the educational researcher should partake and experience this aspect of phenomenological enquiry with excitement.

What is epoché? Epokhe¯ is an ancient Greek term typically translated as the ‘suspension of judgment’ and also means ‘withholding of assent’, which is originally a principle of ancient Greek scepticism (Mates, 1996). The Pyrrhonist philosopher Sextus Empiricus claimed that ‘epoché’ is a state of the intellect ‘on account of which we neither deny nor affirm anything’ (Empiricus & Bury, 1933, p. l.4) and remains a cornerstone of academic scepticism. In practice, this requires an intentional disruption of researchers’ tendencies to overlay personal assumptions on interpretations of the experiences and perceptions of others. Thus, the tendency to retreat to personal beliefs in the interpretation of phenomena can result in a ‘pseudodoxia’ – an apparent or surmised comprehension that can

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potentially lead to false conclusions about the subjective perceptual realities of others. The novice phenomenological researcher may well ask as to how does one go about the process of epoché? Surveying a considerable evolution of phenomenological analysis, this chapter provides meaningful insights into how various philosophers and researchers have applied their interpretative stance – and hence their cognitive and procedural ways of embarking on epoché.

The researcher’s stance – the ‘natural attitude’ Husserl viewed consciousness as a co-constituted dialogue between a person and the world (Valle et al., 1989) and saw access to the structures of consciousness not as a matter of induction or generalisation, but as a result of direct grasping of a phenomenon. Husserl took his starting point from what he called the ‘natural attitude’, the beginning of the process of coming face-to-face with the ultimate structures of consciousness, or essences (Edie, 1987). By giving meaning to the subject’s subjective field of experience whilst eliminating all presuppositions, Husserl’s epoché acquired a specific content of its own that concentrated on the pre-interpreted world of perception. Husserl’s goal in undertaking epoché was to perceive things through intuitive ‘seeing’. He sought to show the purely immanent character of the subject’s conscious experience by means of careful description. However, the meanings that arise in and through such experience are not simply subjective or arbitrary. Husserl saw experience occurring between the active making of meaning and its passive reception, arising both through active passivity and passive intention on the part of researcher and participant (Husserl, 1913/1983). The goal of phenomenology for Husserl is a descriptive, detached analysis of consciousness in which objects, as its correlates, are constituted by the subject. Husserl applied as a principle of his philosophy the procedure of ‘bracketing’ all common-sensical beliefs. This was just one of a series of reductions that Husserl proposed to ensure that the researcher presupposed nothing. Husserl referred to bracketing our existence of the world and making accessible participant consciousness so that essences can be grasped. Husserl referred to this as Wesensschau, the intuition of essences and essential structures that help the researcher form and maintain a multiplicity of variations whilst remaining objectively aloof and unchanged by it. Such eidetic, or descriptive reduction, is a method by which the philosopher moves from the consciousness of individual and concrete objects to pure essences with the aim of achieving an intuition of the ‘thing or being’ ( Juntunen, 1986). Husserl considered a third layer or reductive essentialising, the transcendental reduction or transcendental-phenomenological reduction that provides the researcher with access to ‘the transcendental ego’, or ‘pure consciousness’ of the participants accounts. This extended reductive process of bracketing or epoché draws researcher perceptions of meaning transmitted through language, Husserl asserting that the logic we seek through analysis is

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founded through using language as ‘a calculus that is useful for special logical aims’ (Husserl, 1979, p. 21) involving describing how pure consciousness actually works for the subject.

The existential analytic of lived experience Whilst both Husserl and Heidegger took exception to the Cartesian split between mind and body ( Jones, 1975), it was Husserl’s protégé Heidegger who developed phenomenology further with the concept of Dasein (being-in-the-world) and the assertion that researchers need to investigate the experience of the phenomenon (Guignon, 1993). Heidegger (1982) conceptualised a hermeneutic – a phenomenology of existence where bildung, or personal formation and the phenomenological meaning-making process became an existential and co-existential practice, an engagement in the production and creation of meaning that evolved provisionally. While Husserl focused more on the epistemological question of the relationship between the knower and the object of study, Heidegger moved to the ontological question of the nature of reality and ‘being’ in the world. This led to another of the basic tenets of phenomenology; that of the exploration of the ‘lifeworld’ or ‘lived experience’, examined entirely from ‘being in’ that experience. The way this exploration of lived experience proceeds is where Husserl and Heidegger disagreed; Husserl focused on understanding beings or phenomena, while Heidegger focused on the situated meaning of a human in the world. Husserl forged the necessary advancement from general psychological thinking to ones’ personal existence in the world. Husserl was interested in acts of attending, perceiving, recalling and thinking about the world where human beings are understood primarily as knowers, whilst Heidegger in contrast viewed humans as being primarily concerned with an emphasis on their fate within the world (Annells, 1996). Heidegger established the ongoing critique and examination of both researcher and subject consciousness being not separate from the world but thinking and acting as a formation of one’s background or situatedness in the world as their historically lived experience. He believed that understanding is not a way we know the world, but rather the way we are, and that utilising what he termed an ‘existential analytic’ – our perception of this ‘lived experience’ is indissolubly related across cultural, social and historical contexts (Munhall, 1989). This initial philosophical outlining begins to map the negotiative and transactional nature of phenomenological enquiry. The need for researchers to balance many factors in the application of epoché; the objectivity and suppression of assumptions, the cognizance of a priori stances we adopt. Implicitly or explicitly, these positions have important consequences for the practical conduct of inquiry, as well as for the interpretation of findings. This realm of meaning-making is engaged with the realisation that hermeneutic-phenomenological research is not simply because we always understand and interpret things, but that as researchers we too are reflective and evolving practitioners whose interpretive powers and palette develop over time. It highlights the relevance of how the subject of

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investigation is constituted: whether cognitively or in a more distributed fashion that integrates knowing and acting. This problematises a focus on epistemology (knowing) that overlooks ontology (being/becoming). Based on these concerns, phenomenologists have evolved a stratum of meaning-making stances and hermeneutic-interpretative concepts.

Hermeneutics Whilst phenomenology is usually described as studying the essence, the study of hermeneutics is of the processes of interpretation. Philosophical approaches that consider different approaches and stances to hermeneutic interpretation have through critique, reflexivity, reflection, rigour and pragmatism continued to make phenomenology a vibrant and intriguing methodology. This evolutionary development has facilitated a concomitant development in the approach, usage and application of epoché, and the success of phenomenology as a rigorous and robust science. This development is evident in hermeneutical stratification and complexity that can influence the reductive process – the epoché. Originating from the Greek word meaning to translate or interpret, ‘hermeneutics’ is one of the earliest Western philosophical ideas to deal with the relationship between language and logic in a comprehensive, explicit and formal way. More recently, in his explorations of the nature of understanding, Friedrich Schleiermacher included all human texts and modes of communication. Schleiermacher referred to hermeneutics as the science of linguistic understanding, whose principles served as the foundation for all kinds of textual interpretation (Ricoeur, 2008, p. 51). To this aspect, Schleiermacher drew a clear distinction between speaking and understanding that comes in the form of a dialogical relationship through which the goal of the researcher is to understand the mental process or true meaning of the participant. Schleiermacher distinguished between grammatical interpretation and psychological interpretation, both of which are required in the interpretation of the inner thoughts of the subject and the language used in written text (Schleiermacher et al., 1978).

Meaning-making through merging ‘horizons’ Hans-Georg Gadamer extended this work into practical application, not by developing a hermeneutic procedure of understanding, but by clarifying further the conditions in which understanding itself takes place (Gadamer, 1976). Arguing the ‘matter’ through which researchers interpret, he asserted that hermeneutics must start from the position that a person seeking to understand something has a bond to the subject matter that comes into language through text and has, or acquires, a connection with the tradition from which it speaks (Gadamer, 1960/1998). Gadamer labelled the hermeneutic experience Ehrfahrung and viewed interpretation as a dialectical interaction between the expectation of the interpreter and

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the meaning of the text he termed a ‘fusion of horizons’ (Gadamer, 1976). This term added further complexity to the prejudicial concerns raised by Heidegger in which a ‘horizon’ represents an investigative range of vision that includes everything seen from a particular vantage point. Gadamer argues that having a horizon ‘means not being limited to what is nearby, but to being able to see beyond it … [W]orking out of the hermeneutical situation means the achievement of the right horizon of inquiry for the questions evoked by the encounter with tradition’ (Gadamer, 1998, p. 302). A person with no horizon does not see far enough and overvalues what is nearest at hand, whereas to have a horizon means being able to see beyond. Questioning of the self as insider and analyst, and the constraint and affordance of limitation or possibility the researcher situates thinking as researcher, as well as of the participant are an essential aspect of the interpretive process. It is this depth of consideration that helps make new horizons, re-interpret and fuse perspectives through an iterative reflective process. Gadamer (1998, p. 375) adds: Understanding is always more than merely re-creating someone else’s meaning. Questioning opens up possibilities of meaning, and thus what is meaningful passes into one’s own thinking on the subject … To reach an understanding in a dialogue is not merely a matter of putting oneself forward and successfully asserting one’s own point of view but being transformed into a communion in which we do not remain what we were. For Gadamer, understanding and interpretation are bound together, that interpretation is always an evolving process, challenging definitive interpretation (Annells, 1996). Gadamer argued that as researchers, we bring to interpretation and analysis a historically-effected consciousness that will involve some prejudice. He did not support the notion that a knower can leave his/her immediate situation in the present merely by adopting an ‘attitude’. His view acknowledged the unquestionable presence of a particular history and culture that shaped them and worked to extend the perspective that these positions play a positive role in the researchers search for meaning. Gadamer argued that ‘truth’ and ‘method’ sat at odds with one another and took this ontological step further by questioning the relationship of language and text to being, understanding and existence. To Gadamer, hermeneutics is not a process in which an interpreter finds a particular meaning, but a philosophical effort to account for understanding as an ontological process, incorporating a dialogism within the hermeneutic experience that enables the researcher to see something different than previously thought. This exploratory research experience both conforms and confirms our expectations and the possibility to exceed and illuminate further. As our horizon is changed in an experience, our future anticipations change, as do our understandings of experiences from the past. To Gadamer, the researcher’s experience is one where nothing ever appears the same again following a hermeneutic experience. That is, we see ordinary things

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from one world view or paradigm – a ‘horizon’, that becomes juxtaposed with difference from which we conceive new entities. This can allow the educational researcher’s world as teacher in classroom immersed in language, dialogic pedagogy and interplay of evolving new learner and teacher understandings. The teacher acts as reflective practitioner in and on action (Schon, 1983), and as such, all teachers are in effect researchers of their own practices with the capacity to cast new horizons of understanding in their classrooms. Whilst Husserl asserted the reduction through intentionality and constituted objects, and Heidegger a second conceptual reduction of ‘being-in-the-world’ and transcendence of being, then French phenomenologist Jean-Luc Marion urged a third kind of reduction – the interloqué (Marion, 1998). Marion’s reduction process maintained a stance of questioning particular phenomenon. Marion contended that ‘there are phenomena of such overwhelming givenness or overflowing fulfillment that the intentional acts aimed at these phenomena are overrun, flooded—or saturated’ (Caputo, 2007, p. 164). Marion thus attends to reduction and the epoché through an intriguing perspective, that is, entirely on the phenomenon as it gives itself without the mediating act of the subject or of consciousness. He explains: Even for a gaze aiming objectively, the pupil remains a living refutation of objectivity, an irremediable denial of the object; here for the first time, in the very midst of the visible, there is nothing to see, except an invisible and untargetable (invisible) void … hides the very horizon of the visible. Marion, 2002, pp. 81–82 This interpretative standpoint suppresses assumptions of intentionality by exploring the difference between the self who intentionally sees objects and the (reflexive) self who is intentionally seen by a counter-consciousness, whether the counter-conscious likes it or not. Marion defines this aspect of intentionality as its invisibility; how one can see objects through intentionality, but in the invisibility of the counter-conscious other, the self is seen. It is this consideration to epoché and the perceiving of what is real and a lived experience that is at the crux of phenomenological development and evolution. In the stratification of hermeneutic phenomenology, nowhere has the diversity of the researcher stance been more prevalent than in the application of the epoché to the analysis process. Philosophers who identify with the practice of phenomenology are extraordinarily diverse in their interests, in their interpretation of the central issues of phenomenology, in their application of what they understood to be the phenomenological method and in their development of what they took to be the phenomenological programme for the future of philosophy. Heidegger and Gadamer sought to uncover the lifeworld or human experience as it is lived. Their ontological and epistemological differences to perceiving and finding meaning-making in the lived experience have led to an ongoing exploration of this fundamental idea, and the way epoché is cognitively

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and processurally applied. It is from this tradition that hermeneutics is concerned with the solitary understanding and interpretation of being in the world, and how our different ways of being in the world are connected to our understanding of things. Yet, as phenomenology has become more established, schools of thought sought to adopt a more pragmatic phenomenological focus on topics and concerns that seemed relevant to professional practice and to everyday life. Hermeneutic phenomenology has developed through the increasing complexity to which the researchers deduce their natural stance and the interpretation of the subjects ‘lifeworld’ that ‘display “styles” and measures of depth that are each very unique and at the same time universal’ (van Manen, 2019, p. 912).

Embodied knowing and attunement of perception The evolution of hermeneutic phenomenology has also grown to focus on how the educational researcher attunes to the phenomenon, the embodied human subject, the relationship with objects or other people and how this may be perceived and interpreted. Meanings arise from the spatial and temporal relationships we have of our existence that embody our relationship with different temporal dimensions. Not only towards our embodied knowledge and the shaping of both what and how we experience, think, mean, imagine, reason and communicate, but of the plurality of meanings that arise according to one’s position, context and intersubjectivities that impact on the ways meaning-making – and reduction/epoché is deduced. The educational researcher/teacher should be cognizant of the asymmetric relationship between adult and child and how this phenomenology is intertwined within institutional culture, the interpretation of education presupposed as bildung and the possibility of personal and cultural resistance and transgression of educational purposes and aims (Friere, 1993). Numerous phenomenologists illuminate investigative pathways the educational researcher may utilise in exploring these facets of attunement to perception. Jean-Paul Sartre established an existential humanism that considered the emotions, cognitions, desires as well as perceptions apparent to the human condition (Sartre, 2002). His key proposition and ontological argument was the priority of existential over essential; that ‘existence precedes essence’ (Baggini, 2002), and thus had a direct impact on the way experience is perceived and interpreted. Merleau-Ponty emphasised the body as the locus through which we are knowing of the world and maintained that the body – and that which it perceived could not be disentangled from each other. This primacy of embodiment led him away from phenomenology towards what he called an ‘indirect ontology’ or the ontology of ‘the flesh of the world’ (Merleau-Ponty, 1945/1962). He regarded consciousness and the human body as perceiving, intricately intertwined and mutually ‘engaged’ and considered a bodily cognizance ‘communing with’ experiences that incarnate a personal subjectivity into the educational researchers’ meaning-making process. It is through this knowing ‘body in the world’

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that intentionality is perceived through a pre-conscious and pre-predicative understanding of the world’s makeup. Merleau-Ponty conceived experience upon which our body has a ‘grip’ (prise), while this grip itself is a function of our co-naturality with the world’s things where sense of self is an emergent phenomenon in an ongoing ‘becoming’. The educational researcher should act with awareness and discernment of such grip and embodiment as they elucidate an objectivity between themselves, the subject and environment, aware of the linguistic and cultural baggage incumbent in the analysis of action, intentionality and perception. In light of this, the hermeneutic-phenomenological approach developed by Max van Manen describes a reflection consisting ‘of the ability, or rather the art of being sensitive– sensitive to the subtle undertones of language, in the way language speaks when it allows the thing themselves to speak’ (van Manen, 1990, p. 111). This argument of finding the essence and hermeneutic interpretation through language, text and embodiment correlates with how subtlety and finesse epoché allows an attunement to words uttered in the presence of the actual lived experiences (van Manen, 1990, pp. 8–9). Confounding these subtleties of interpretation and epoché, Derrida problematised logo-centrist perspectives by arguing that the researcher is confronted with a multiplicity of ‘language games’ and ‘lifeworlds’ that can deeply challenge notions that would allow an assemblage of knowledge to synthesise into a coherent system (Derrida, 2016). Hermeneutic phenomenology has and continues to evolve, and interpretivist frameworks of inquiry and analysis in educational research support the ontological perspective of the belief in the existence of not just one reality, but of multiple realities that can be specifically constructed and more or less informed (Denzin & Lincoln, 2011).The implication I contend is that the input the researcher plays is vitally important to the process, analysis and ultimate outcomes of inquiry, and that through the process of epoché educators and teachers as researchers investigate and surmise various realities. van Manen raises the beginning researchers very own self-reflective existential questioning – How does the novice researcher apply expertise and the art of being sensitive when they lack the very experience deemed necessary in applying phenomenological and hermeneutic knowledge? Herein lies the journey of the researcher to engage in the philosophical underpinnings of phenomenology and from your own understandings, rich experiences, mentoring and guidance from an experienced phenomenological researcher develop your own phenomenological and hermeneutic skill and knowledge.

Using hermeneutic phenomenology and epoché as a methodology In the application of hermeneutic phenomenology and epoché, Lincoln and Guba (1985) remind us of the ontological questions that frame our investigations: ‘What is the form and nature of reality and, therefore, what is there that can be

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known about it?’ and epistemologically, ‘what is the nature of the relationship between the knower or would-be knower and what can be known?’ (p. 108). Their methodological probing of the essential aspects of self-critique in conducting qualitative research maintains distance and objectivity devoid of values or biases – assuming the stance of a ‘disinterested scientist’ whilst maintaining protocols of reliability, validity and trustworthiness in reducing experiences to core themes and structures of experience. The phenomenologist must tread mindfully between this distancing and acquaintance with the subject and the phenomenon, directing ‘the gaze toward the regions where meaning originates, wells up, percolates through the porous membranes of past sedimentations—and then infuses us, permeates us, infects us, touches us, stirs us, exercises a formative affect’ (van Manen, 2007, p. 11). If we seek to understand what Heidegger (1982) calls ‘in-being’ – the everyday beinginvolved-with the things of our world, then the process of reduction and epoché is the extricating and maintaining of essences from the researcher’s ‘in-seeing’. Phenomenology in practice as a practical application is not a method or a planned program of procedures or techniques. Rather, it is a style of thinking and an attitude of reflective attentiveness to the primordialities of human existence that provide an intelligible meaning to our lifeworlds.

Contemporary applications of epoché The proliferation of a wide range of translated texts from German sociology and human sciences has influenced educational researchers and the approaches and processes they may undertake. A range of approaches to phenomenology both as an empirical method and as an insight for pedagogy and practices have arisen. Such pluralist perspectives in educational research have considered the gradual acquisition of skilful coping or expertise such as Hubert and Stuart Dreyfus’ phenomenology of skill acquisition (Dreyfus & Dreyfus, 2004). Their eschewing of a rule-bound cognitive-oriented information processing approach and support of an ecological and dynamical approach highlights how phenomenology can inform education of effective, engaging pedagogical thought, application and practice. Approaching educational research with such a stance to epoché can reveal how things in our learning and teaching worlds show up as meaningful, and how we as educators and education researchers are able to act intelligibly. Things are given meaning according to the ways they are integrated into our practices – we are thus able to act because our background practices dispose us to responding in a certain way to the things and people we encounter in our going about in the world. Phenomenological accounts in education can reveal even deeper understandings of what it invariably means to live and develop as a learner in various education settings and circumstances. With appropriate epoché, research can evoke and detail felt awareness of learners’ and teachers’ development, rather than reify antiseptic awareness of ‘universal stages’ of development. Such accounts

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can reveal isolated characteristics of cognition, affect, socialisation and morality distilled from participant lifeworlds and their attendant cultures. An important aspect of educational research is acknowledging that the phenomenology of child development rests upon our capacity to revisit our own childhoods, that the autoethnographic remembering of one’s childhood is not a reliving of it; rather we ‘suspend’ our adult awareness to reconnect with the child within and find that such bracketing can only occur and be told as remembering adults, shaping our meaning-making processes. Researcher positioning of this kind can promote reflective and reflexive actions and judgements towards educational practices, thinking and the ethics and conduct of educational practice. Epoché contributes a deliberative sophistication and acumen to the study of ethical expertise. A researcher’s stance or natural attitude into the ethics and morals of teacher practice (Friere, 1993) involves a moral consciousness that begins with involved ethical comportment on the part of the researcher. It is from this strategic positioning that researchers may deeply consider and research moral questions from a hypothetical perspective (Habermas, 1982). Educational research of a phenomenological orientation can contribute significantly to the reparation of embodied relations and theory-practice problems in curricula oriented to human issues. It can reveal for critique the complex and contradictory nature of social experiences, problematise curriculum and pedagogy development, institutional aims and charters and highlight social and personal implications from the use of technologies. Researcher stance and epoché can reveal teacher impacts, student receptiveness, motivation and efficacy and other dynamic and contested aspects of the educational milieu. Epoché can thus impart a researchers’ educational sophistication of understanding, interpretation and acumen. Phenomenology calls for the researcher to use prudent judgement and responsible principles rather than strict adherence to rules to guide the research process. Though there are many and varied descriptions of the analysis process which essentially involves wrangling with text (in every form), identifying ‘emergent themes’, synthesising meaning units into a consistent statement regarding the participant’s experiences that provide a structure of the experience. van Manen advocates setting thoughts to paper (1990). Smith and Osborn (2003) favour creating idiographic narrative accounts with verbatim extracts which may trigger re-coding and re-organising of thoughts towards educational theory, practice and concomitant categorising of themes. Throughout all this, the researcher performs epoché. The cognitive oscillation between previous interpretation and deeper re-interpretation occurs through stages of analysis. Through the analysis process of reduction, epoché takes a central and cerebral oversight by reducing meanings to the being-in-the-world descriptive essences of the phenomenon. Bracketing and epoché are incorporated into intentional focusing on the experience throughout the multiple stages of interpretation that allow patterns to emerge, criticality maintained in the interpretive process and reflection of how

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interpretations arise from the data remaining crucial (Koch, 1996). This process requires the ability of the researchers to be pathic, reflective, insightful, sensitive to language, and their position of authority and power over the participant, working to connect phenomenological, the relational and the educationally contextual (Polkinghorne, 1983). Core to the analysis and production of meaning in phenomenological methodology and strategy is reading and writing. This interpretive and iterative process involves dialectical reworking, revisiting and reimagining as an embodying of the participants’ life-language-world and a fusing of horizons of possibilities. This requires researcher discernment (Giorgi, 1985) as well as faithfulness to the lived description (Beck, 1993), fulfilling a self-validating insight and textual testament of an experience (Husserl, 1970). Researchers studying a group, organisation or prevalent culture can not only operate as a neutral and static outsider but can also utilise phenomenological methodologies as an ‘insider’ (Bonner & Tolhurst, 2002; Hewitt-Taylor, 2002). Often intimately engaged with(in) their research domains, insider researchers bring richness and insight to apposite methodological and ethical issues regarding phenomena. Dahlberg’s (2006) term of ‘bridling’ refers to the bracketing or epoché process, acknowledging the restraining of insider pre-understandings of phenomena. Dahlberg adopts a reflective stance that helps ‘slacken’ the firm intentional threads that tie us to our experiences (Merleau-Ponty, 1945/1962). Wickins and Crossley (2016) argue that critical attention and reflexivity of insider perspectives can be foregrounded through an ‘alongsider’ approach to phenomenological investigation. Their telling metaphor of the ‘research ship’ in rough seas, rather than observing the ‘data ship’ blurred and from afar, carefully steering beside, influenced by the same elemental forces and context but retaining a separate identity and perspective that can allow the researcher to engage as proximal participant. Such research highlights the duality of researchers as insider-outsider, their role as both observer and provocateur in the data gathering process, and the complexity of their stance and process of epoché and the self-awareness of the evolving and changing researcher positionality as insider/outsider. The researcher can even be an empowering conduit to finding truth through providing agency, trust, voice and educational change to those most susceptible to ambivalence, inaction and even neglect and abuse within educational institutions. The analysis/process of epoché relies on the insightfulness and at times improvisatory capacity of the researcher to pursue illuminating experiences or feelings. Deconstructed hermeneutic positioning highlights the researcher demands of self-reflexivity, an ongoing self-conversation about the experience while simultaneously contemplating the moment, constructing interpretations of the experience whilst mindfully questioning how interpretations came about (Hertz, 1997) and how analytic themes may be developed. Common to all is epoché as a hermeneutic process that invites participants into an ongoing conversation, a dialectic between the pre-understandings of the research process, the interpretive framework and the sources of information at their grasp.

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Final thoughts The idea of epoché for phenomenological researchers resides in the object of research as a real, intentional and profound existential questioning for the subject in question. Epoché is not only a method or process, but also a necessary attitude required for descriptive and hermeneutic variants of phenomenological methodology. It is the enabling of a value judgement that cautions the researcher to refrain from valuation and subjectivity. It is constitutive through the sense-making and artefact rendering in that it produces necessary features out of itself, urging us to suspend our position for or against the content of analysis as the researcher elucidates a reality and truth through method. This means maintaining a psychological stance, seemingly at odds with our natural attitude of mind – though it functions as an instrument of the mind. Epoché and the way we bracket stems from what Heidegger terms our ‘inceptuality’ of the lifeworld and the phenomenon, that is, our stance towards the source and beginning of meaning, and how we may transform it (Heidegger, 2012). It is a creative and flexible process that represents the complex interplay and interweaving of the phenomenological account of the participant through the interpretative role of the researcher by giving voice to specific experiences. It requires an array of intellectual and intuitive and imaginative capacities, a balance of the technical and systematic and the interpretive and expressive that allows our curiosity to flourish – all the while bracketing our assumptions. Phenomenological inquiry requires a threshold of proficiency in a range of complex skills – interviewing, analysis, interpretation, writing – and researchers at different stages will have different degrees of fluency and adeptness at these skills. In this chapter, I have unlocked and clarified aspects of our responsibly in engaging with epoché and understanding its centrality to phenomenology. I hope to prompt and promote further investigation and application of the philosophical constructs driving the evolution of reduction and epoché. In educational research, embodied perspectives and the ways in which teachers and students ‘commune with’ aspects of learning, teaching, environments and educative relationships remain fertile and underexplored. Whilst discourse pertaining to where the researchers position themselves across the descriptive/hermeneutic spectrum is prevalent, I hope to spark reflective scholarly discourse into how the concepts of reduction and epoché evolve across the professional lifespan of practitioners of phenomenological practice. Novice and experienced phenomenologists alike should reflect on the, at times, complex and personal evolution and growth in researcher conceptualisations and expertise in observing and analysing ‘the things as they are’ through ones’ research life.

References Annells, M. (1996). Hermeneutic phenomenology: Philosophical perspectives and current use in nursing research. Journal of Advanced Nursing, 23, 705–713.

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Baggini J. (2002). Jean-Paul Sartre: Existentialism and Humanism (1947). Philosophy: Key Texts. Palgrave Macmillan. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4039-1370-8_6 Beck, C. (1993). Qualitative research: The evaluation of its credibility, fittingness, and auditability. Western Journal of Nursing Research, 15(2), 263–266. Bonner, A., & Tolhurst, G. (2002). Insider-outsider perspectives of participant observation. Nurse Researcher, 9(4), 7–15. Caputo, J. D. (2007). The erotic phenomenon by Jean-Luc Marion. Ethics, 118(1), 164–168. https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1086/521585 Dahlberg, K. (2006). The essence of essences–the search for meaning structures in phenomenological analysis of lifeworld phenomena. International Journal of Qualitative Studies on Health and Well-being, 1(1), 11–19. Denzin, N. K., & Lincoln, Y. S. (Eds.). (2011). The sage handbook of qualitative research. Sage. Derrida, J. (2016). Of grammatology. JHU Press. Dreyfus, H. L., & Dreyfus, S. E. (2004). The ethical implications of the five-stage skill-acquisition model. Bulletin of Science, Technology & Society, 24(3), 251–264. Edie, J. M. (1987). Edmund Husserl’s phenomenology: A critical commentary. Indiana University Press. Empiricus, S., & Bury, R. G.. (1933). Outlines of pyrrhonism (R. G. Bury, Trans., Vol. 1). Harvard University Press. Friere, P. (1993). Pedagogy of the oppressed: New revised 20th anniversary edition. Continuum. Gadamer, H. G. (1960/1998). Truth and method (2nd ed.). Continuum. Gadamer, H. G. (1976). Philosophical hermeneutics. University of California Press. Giorgi, A. (1985). Phenomenology and psychological research. Duquesne University Press. Guignon, C. (Ed.). (1993). The Cambridge companion to Heidegger. Cambridge University Press. Habermas, J. (1982). A reply to my critics. In J. B. Thompson, & D. Held (Eds.), Habermas (pp. 219–283). Palgrave. Heidegger, M. (2012). Contributions to philosophy (of the event) (R. Rojcewicz, & D. Vallega-Neu, Trans.). Indiana University Press. Hertz, R. (1997). Reflexivity and voice. Sage. Hewitt-Taylor, J. (2002). Inside knowledge: Issues in insider research. Nursing Standard, 16(46), 33. Husserl, E. (1913/1983). Ideas pertaining to a pure phenomenology and to a phenomenological philosophy. First book: General introduction to a pure phenomenology. Martinus Nijoff Publishers. Husserl, E. (1970). The crisis of European sciences and transcendental phenomenology: An introduction to phenomenological philosophy (D. Carr, Trans.). Northwestern University Press. Husserl, E. (1979). Early logical writings in the philosophy of logic and mathematics. D. Willard, Trans. Kluwer. Jones, W. T. (1975). The twentieth century to Wittgenstein and Sarte (2nd revised ed.). Harcourt Brace Jovanovich. Juntunen, M. (1986). Edmund Husserlin filosofia [Philosophy of Edmund Husserl]. Gaudeamus. Koch, T. (1996). Implementation of a hermeneutic inquiry in nursing: Philosophy, rigor and representation. Journal of Advanced Nursing, 24, 174–184. Lincoln, Y. S., & Guba, E. G. (1985). Naturalistic inquiry. Sage. Marion, J.-L. (1998). Reduction and givenness: Investigations of Husserl, Heidegger, and phenomenology. Northwestern University Press. Marion, J.-L. (2002). Prolegomena to charity (S. E. Lewis, Trans.). Fordham University Press. Mates, B. (1996). The sceptic way: Sextus Empiricus’s outlines of pyrrhonism. Oxford University Press.

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Merleau-Ponty, M. (1945/1962). Phenomenology of perception (C. Smith, Trans.). Humanities Press. Munhall, P. (1989). Philosophical ponderings on qualitative research methods in nursing. Nursing Science Quarterly, 2(1), 20–28. Osborne, J. (1994). Some similarities and differences among phenomenological and other methods of psychological qualitative research. Canadian Psychology, 35(2), 167–189. Pietersma, H. (2006). Phenomenological epistemology. Oxford University Press Polkinghorne, D. (1983). Methodology for the human sciences: Systems of inquiry. State University of New York Press. Ricoeur, P. (2008). From text to action: Essays in hermeneutics, II (Vol. 2). Bloomsbury Publishing. Sartre, J. P. (1948). Existentialism and humanism. In Philosophy: Key texts (p. 115). Sartre, J. P. (2002). Jean-Paul Sartre: Basic writings. Routledge. Schleiermacher, F. D. E., Wojik, J., & Haas, R. (1978). The hermeneutics: Outline of the 1819 lectures. New Literacy History, 10(1), 1–16. Schön, D. A. (1983). The reflective practitioner: How professionals think in action. Basic Books. Smith, J. A., & Osborn, M. (2003). Interpretative phenomenological analysis. In J. A. Smith (Ed.), Qualitative psychology: A practical guide to methods (pp. 51–80). Sage. Speigelberg, H. (1960). The phenomenological movement: A historical introduction (2nd ed.). Nijhoff. Valle, R., King, M., & Halling, S. (1989). An introduction to existential-phenomenological thought in psychology. In R. Valle, & S. Halling (Eds.), Existential-phenomenoligical perspective in psychology (pp. 3–16). Plenum Press. van Manen, M. (1990). Researching lived experience: Human science for an action sensitive pedagogy. State University of New York Press. van Manen, M. (2007). Phenomenology of practice. Phenomenology & Practice, 1(1), 11–30. van Manen, M. (2019). Rebuttal: Doing phenomenology on the things. Qualitative Health Research, 29(6), 908–925. Wickins, E. D., & Crossley, M. (2016). Coming alongside in the co-construction of professional knowledge: A fluid approach to researcher positioning on the insider-outsider continuum. In C. Crossley, L. Arthur, & E. McNess (Eds.), Revisiting insider-outsider research in comparative and international education (pp. 225–240). Symposium Books.

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3 WALKING INTO THE POSTS Jennifer J. Clifden and Mark D. Vagle UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA, USA

Introduction Since its inception a decade ago (Vagle, 2010, 2011, 2014, 2018, 2019), post-­ intentional phenomenology has generally been described as a type of phenomenological research that brings together some phenomenological concepts and some post-structural concepts in dynamic ways—with the goal of trying to see what might be produced at the edges and margins (Pinar et al., 2002) of these two, presumably, incommensurate ontologies and methodologies. To many, what post-intentional phenomenology has done and continues to try to do does not make much sense—as it violates lines and boundaries between and among multiple philosophies, ontologies, epistemologies, and methodologies. And for post-intentional phenomenologists, this is the whole point. Post-intentional phenomenology is not one thing—it is many. In fact, it is as many as there are qualitative inquirers who take it up. It is, by its very nature, a malleable ontology-methodology in a constant state of becoming. There are folks who put post-intentional phenomenology in dialogue with arts-based methodologies (e.g., Hofsess, 2013), mindfulness theories (e.g., Clifden, 2018), neuroscience theories (e.g., Hamel, 2019), critical race theory (e.g., Gardner, 2013), critical whiteness studies (e.g., Sterner, 2019), and critical discourse analysis (e.g., Christensen, 2018) to name a few. And we would argue that what gets provoked and produced through these inquiries was made possible, in part, by post-intentional phenomenology’s (and most certainly, the individual souls who have enacted it) irreverence for lines and boundaries. With this irreverence in mind, in this chapter, we first trace some of the important ways that phenomenological and post-structuralist philosophical concepts and ideas have been used, together, to explore phenomena—paying particular attention to how the phenomenological concept intentionality is conceived

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differently in a post-phenomenological sense. That is, a post-phenemonological conception of intentionality opens up phenomena to be shaped, constructed, and deconstructed through any number of actants—including human experience, discourses, traditions, contexts, and the social to name a few. We then settle into some of the ways in which Jen (first author) put mindfulness in dialogue with post-intentional phenomenology to produce an exploration of the phenomenon of teacher Presence. It is important to note that we very purposefully, for the following reasons, do not trace early phenomenological concepts and ideas, nor do we juxtapose post-intentional phenomenology with other types of phenomenology (e.g., descriptive, interpretive). First, Mark (second author) has written about these matters quite extensively elsewhere, and it feels redundant to do the same in this chapter. We encourage readers to refer to Mark’s publications cited here for these considerations (e.g., Vagle, 2010, 2014, 2015, 2018, 2019). Second, we do not see post-intentional phenomenology as simply a moniker for all things phenomenological, post-Husserl and post-Heidegger. Rather, we see it as a phenomenological variant, in its own right. This is not to say that it is any more or less special than any other phenomenological variant. It is to say that after a decade it has now been taken up, deepened, widened, stretched, and extended enough that we believe it can be dropped into immediately instead of on-ramped vis-à-vis phenomenology writ large. And finally, from a purely logistical standpoint, there is simply not enough space in this chapter to do an adequate job tracing and juxtaposing various phenomenologies and providing enough concreteness and depth with the post-intentional.

Theoretical underpinnings of post-intentional phenomenology Phenomenology, writ large, has been described as a descriptive science of subjective lived experience (Schües et al., 2011) and is a “working philosophy that is not only meant to engage, but also aims to provide a meaningful space for philosophical research” (Luft & Overgaard, 2013, p. 1). Phenomenology, in its early days, was seen as the study of how a phenomenon manifests and appears. Husserl and Heidegger laid the philosophical foundation of phenomenology (Sokolowski, 2000; Vagle, 2014, 2015). It is important to note when considering this point that phenomenologists do tend not to believe that human beings are the primary constructors of a phenomenological experience (Vagle, 2015). Rather phenomenologists are committed to exploring the ways that humans come to “find themselves in the experience…; a careful, reflexive, contemplative examination of how it is to BE in the world” (Vagle, 2015, pp. 20–21). Phenomenologically, this interconnectedness between ourselves (the human subjects) and the objects in the world (ideas, concepts, things, etc.) is called intentionality. For phenomenologists, intentionality is not about the purely subjective intentions (e.g., purposes or objectives) we have toward the world as

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individuals, but rather the way meaning “comes-to-be” in relationship to the world (Vagle, 2015). “In this way, intentionality means those in between spaces where individuals find-themselves-intentionally in relations with others in the world” (Vagle, 2015, p. 9). Post-intentional phenomenology (Vagle, 2014, 2015, 2018, 2019) rests on post-structural commitments that perceive knowledge, being, and becoming as situated, partial, unstable, and endlessly deferred. “A post-intentional phenomenological research approach resists a stable intentionality, yet still embraces intentionality as ways of being that run through human relations with the world and one another” (Vagle, 2014, p. 31). Focusing attention on these in-between spaces requires the researcher to be an artist with her perceptions and to artistically philosophize, contemplate, and be curious about what is perpetually becoming of the phenomenon. Taking up such an artistic philosophical pursuit in post-intentional phenomenology implores the researcher to lean into and become comfortable with post-structural values of instability, malleability, and shape-shifting (Vagle, 2018).

“Posting” intentionality Posting in post-intentional phenomenology does not mean after, in opposition to, or as a refusal. Rather it means to entangle post-structural concepts and phenomenological concepts to see what might come of such entangling. Post-intentional phenomenologists, then, try to keep working the hyphen, the entanglement among various ontologies, epistemologies, and methodologies. A central and important phenomenological concept that is posted in post-intentional phenomenology, of course, is intentionality. Multiple intentionalities are assumed in post-intentional phenomenology. Merleau-Ponty (1947/1964) regards intentionality as “meaning threads that tie us to the world, and Sartre (2002) describes it as the meaningful ways in which we burst forth toward the world” (Vagle & Hofsess, 2016, p. 3). In post-intentional phenomenology, intentionality becomes pluralistic and deviant. Vagle (2014) writes about the deliberate move to conceptualize intentionality in pluralistic, multiple ways: I think it signifies interconnectedness, moves away from subjective knowing, and allows for consideration of a circulation of meanings… Perhaps unlike Merleau-Ponty, I think those threads are constantly being constructed, deconstructed, blurred, and disrupted. For me, intentionality is running all over the place, all the time…. p. 113) Resisting a stable essence or singular intentionality in posting intentionality allows for understanding and meaning making to move with and through a researcher’s intentional relationship with a phenomenon (Vagle, 2018). It is as if there is more spaciousness in the relationship between the subject and object for

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multiple manifestations of the phenomenon to flow unobstructed. In the spaces in-between, there are assumed multiple intentional relations binding, connecting, and tying researcher, participants, text, and positionality all together. Embracing the multiplicity and situated-ness of the phenomenon in the context in which it is manifesting allows the post-intentional phenomenologist to enter into a dialogue with intentional meanings that shifts awareness and attention from a search for essence and signifies a post-intentional move toward the partial manifestations that are perpetually making, remaking, doing, and undoing themselves (Vagle, 2018). It is neither possible nor desirable to trace intentionalities if one is to be committed to the art of post-intentional phenomenology. One has to assume an “okay-ed-ness” with the unknown and uncertainty in this regard. Meanings are always on the move, coming in, going out, and vanishing before our very eyes or conceptual consciousness before we even finish our thoughts about what they are becoming. “Posting” intentionality is a courageous maneuver in phenomenological research as it requires a reverential way of being with phenomena, as opposed to looking at and trying to figure out the phenomena in an attempt to name it for what it “is.” In Jen’s study of the cultivation of the phenomenon of teacher Presence, as the researcher, she consciously made an effort to ready her mind and body before, during, and after engaging the phenomenon with the dispositions of wonder and reverence. In a deliberate effort to intimately “become-with” the data so to produce an onto-epistemological knowing in being-ness that is inspired by Barad’s (2007) theory of intra-action, Jen’s “knowing” about the phenomenon as a researcher was intended to be inter-connected, mutually implicated, and continually constitutive with her “being-ness” with the phenomenological material. As a post-intentional phenomenologist and qualitative researcher, she was deliberately aware that as she engaged in an exploration of the phenomenon of the cultivation of teacher Presence, that she was immersing herself in the middle of its tentative and perpetual manifestations given that phenomena are always exploding through relations (Vagle, 2014), and post-intentional phenomenologists are committed to following and flowing with the bursting of lines of flight of the phenomenon. This focus on exploring the phenomenon’s becoming as socially situated and produced, not just belonging to the individual, requires the researcher to approach the phenomenon with reverence and respect so to allow difference and multiplicity to be evoked, engaged, and embodied. Jen’s research demonstrates a way of approaching and conceptualizing the cultivation of the phenomenon of teacher Presence through lived experiences and knowledge as well as allowing her thinking to be like lines of flight and allowing the phenomenon to “take off’ in ways that one may not be able to anticipate (Vagle, 2014). As Jen explored the cultivation of the phenomenon of teacher Presence through this research, she constantly oriented herself to be open and receptive to the ways the phenomenon might become through the bursting forth of lines of flight that “resist the tying down of lived experience and knowledge” (Vagle, 2014, p. 135).

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Throughout the rest of this chapter, we try to make concrete what we have discussed thus far by engaging Jen’s study of teacher Presence. First, we walk into her work theoretically and then into some of her methodological work.

Teaching as spiritual practice: cultivating teacher Presence through mindfulness a post-intentional phenomenological exploration (Niedzielski (now Clifden), 2018) Walking into Jen’s work theoretically As a post-intentional phenomenologist, it is important to orient oneself as the researcher onto-epistemologically in our thinking with theory and data. For Jen, in her study, this meant engaging mind/body being-ness in relationship to the phenomenon of teacher Presence, not for the purpose of essentialising it, but rather to explore the inter-connected, entangled constructions that are simultaneously materially and discursively produced. The phenomenological research in Jen’s study suggests that teacher Presence is akin to how O’Donohue (1999) speaks about one’s personal Presence; thus, it is capitalized to signify the way a person’s name is capitalized to signify the distinct naming of a person: “Presence is mainly the atmosphere of spirit that is behind them and comes through them” (p. 53). The phenomenon of teacher Presence has no definable essential core, rather it is conceptualized as an ineffable yet palpable and energetically recognizable soul/spiritual signature of the individual teacher that is always making, undoing, and remaking itself through her relationship to the world, another human being, and herself. While there are multiple theories Jen could have used in her analysis, Jen placed post-phenomenology in dialogue with two particular post-structuralist theories, Deleuze and Guattari’s (1987) thinking with desire and Barad’s (2007) thinking with intra-action, to explore and analyze her data.

Deleuze and Guattari: thinking with desire, lines of flight, multiplicity, and assemblages Thinking with desire Post-intentional phenomenology draws on several key concepts from the work of Deleuze and Guattari (1980/1987) that allow for difference and multiplicity to be evoked, engaged, and embodied. Deleuze’s commitment to “thinking life beyond its humanized and already constituted forms” (Colebrook, 2006, p. 17) provides a conceptual and philosophical foundation for post-intentional phenomenology to do the generative work it desires to do—imagine the unthinkable, open up possibility, and see what transforms and transpires at the edges (and Jen would add, within the contradictions) of things. Jen chose Deleuze’s theory of desire for this study, in part, because of its synergy with the conceptual grounding of the “posts” and the assumption in

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post-intentional phenomenology that phenomena are always in the process of making and unmaking themselves and that our knowledge of phenomena are always partial and ever-changing (Vagle & Hofsess, 2016). This conceptual grounding allows Jen to explore the phenomenon of teacher Presence as a nonlinear, recursive process where one’s state of being in the moments of teaching influences how a teacher engages her own becoming. For Deleuze (1987), “becoming is not a transcendent, linear process between two points. There is no origin, no destination, no end point, no goal… Becoming is the movement through a unique event that produces experimentation and change” ( Jackson & Mazzei, 2012, p. 87). Moreover, thinking through Deleuze’s theory of desire, desire is about production: Desire’s production is active, becoming, transformative. It produces out of a multiplicity of forces which form an assemblage. We desire, not because we lack something that we do not have, but because of the productive force of intensities and connections of desire. Jackson & Mazzei, 2012, p. 86 It is a productive agent that originates out of a force of one’s imagination was chosen as a theory to “think through” for Jen’s exploration of teacher Presence because much of what teachers conveyed through interview conversations and lived experience descriptions (LEDs) resonated with a profound desire to become-teacher they, in their heart and soul, deeply desired to be. Ostensibly, when they felt this desire was suppressed or oppressed, a sense of dis-integration in their self-hood seemed to create a feeling of heaviness of energy that inhibited their capacity to become that imagined teacher. Thinking through Deleuze’s (1987) theory of desire and the manner in which it positions becoming-ness as movement through a unique event that produces experimentation and change resonated with the idea that the phenomenon of teacher Presence becomes. It also resonated with the idea that teacher Presence is often produced through a “unique event,” like a stressful moment that is contingent (i.e., dependent on the context) and recursive (i.e., occurring over and over again) process that invites a teacher into a threshold. A threshold is “a place of great transformation” (O’Donohue, 2008, p. 194), where a micro-miracle moment may be created that further invites the teacher and student into an authentic moment of connection that produces a sacred space for a teacher’s self-actualization of her desires so to become the teacher she imagines herself to be. “What does desire produce? How does desire work?” As Jen explored this phenomenon, these were the primary questions in which she put Deleuze’s thinking with desire to work. For Deleuze, and the aims of this phenomenological exploration, thinking through desire expanded possibilities to explore the power of desire as a persistent force, a “coming together of forces/drives/intensities that produce something” ( Jackson & Mazzei, 2012, p. 93). For this exploration, Jen explored how desire produces a teacher’s being-ness in the present moment and the way

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this being-ness, which is intimately connected to her desires and imagination of who she wants to be as a teacher, produces and influences who she becomes. Lines of flight. Since post-intentional phenomenology rests on the notion that we are always entering in the middle of things and that post-intentional relations become (Vagle & Hofsess, 2016), the Deleuzoguattarian philosophical conceptualization of lines of flight can help phenomenologists to orient their perspective of “things as fluid, shape-shifting assemblages continually on the move in interacting with the world, rather than perceiving them as stable essences” (Vagle & Hofsess, 2016, p. 4). As a philosophical construct, lines of flight evoke an elusive, shape-shifting, entangling, and fleeing feel and energy in relation to the phenomenon. It helps us, as post-intentional phenomenologists, feel our way through our chasing down of a phenomenon’s perpetually free-flowing assemblage in the process of its becoming. Line of flight is a concept that not only slows one down and reorients one’s thinking but it also provokes a thinking beyond one’s experience of the phenomenon and a breaking free from the shackles of binary, either/or logic. Phenomena are always exploding through relations (Vagle, 2014, 2018), and as post-intentional phenomenologists committed to following and flowing with the bursting of lines of flight, we think differently about phenomena. We go beyond conceptualizing phenomena through lived experience and knowledge, and we allow our thinking to be like lines of flight and ‘“take off’ in ways that we may not be able to anticipate” (Vagle, 2014, p. 119). Colebrook (2006) says Deleuze argues that the synthesis beyond finite and bounded forms unhinges the subject, producing discordance and a shock to thought. Far from giving us the feeling of an underlying harmony or reasoning subject, the synthesis can be liberated from an ‘image of thought’ and extended beyond the human point of view (p. 151). Liberating oneself from an image of thought and extending thinking beyond the human point of view is inherent in post-intentional phenomenology. Concepts like lines of flight are useful to phenomenologists because “it can help us see philosophically-oriented work as generative, creative, and complicated” (Vagle, 2014, p. 118). As we engage this boundless thinking capacity, we create space to see what the phenomenon might become through the bursting forth of lines of flight that “resist the tying down of lived experience and knowledge” (Vagle, 2014, p. 135). This space is a necessary condition for the becoming or production of a phenomenon. The beauty of lines of flight in phenomenological work is that they evoke reverence and respect as they “aim to flee the tight boundaries of any theoretical framework and method” (Vagle, 2014, p. 119), simultaneously luring us as craftspeople to also flee the pull to rigidity and structure and embrace the tension as the flights of intentionalities swell and surge with varying intensities (Vagle, 2014, 2018). Multiplicity and assemblages. Deleuzoguattarian concepts privilege how things are interconnected. Post-intentional phenomenology pays particular attention to the connections, or multiple intentionalities, in the spaces between and among assumed unstable, partial, and shape-shifting subjects, objects, ideas,

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and beliefs. In post-intentional phenomenology, the phenomenologist’s art is to follow the phenomenon’s lines of flight that are perpetually fleeing and bursting through relations. In doing so, we enter into the shape-shifting assemblages, the interconnected, gnarled, lines of flight that are perpetually moving and interacting with the world and us. Shape shifting assemblages in post-intentional phenomenology require us to conceptualize a phenomenon in its multiplicity as opposed to seeking a singular essential nature. For Deleuze and Guattari (1980/1987), “[a] multiplicity has neither subject nor object, only determinations, magnitudes, and dimensions that cannot increase in number without the multiplicity changing the nature (the laws of combination therefore increase in number as the multiplicity grows)” (p. 8). Conceiving of phenomena as always intricately intertwined helps us to see that when we engage with phenomena, we enter in the middle of deeply entangled assemblages which are “precisely this increase in the dimensions of multiplicity that necessarily changes in nature as it expands its connections” (Deleuze & Guattari, 1980/1987, p. 8). Exploring this expansive connectedness that represents a phenomenon’s perpetual becoming is how post-intentional phenomenologists practice phenomenological research.

Barad’s intra-action Barad’s intra-action refers to the “relationships between multiple bodies (human and non-human) that are understood not to have clear or distinct boundaries from one another: rather they are always affecting our being affected by each other in an interdependent and mutual relationship as conditions for their existence” (Taguchi, 2012, p. 271). As part of this thinking with intra-action and reading the interview data diffractively, Jen tried to remain attentive and deliberate in her post-reflexions of the analysis process to ask herself how she was being impacted by her encounters with the data. Post-reflexing is a post-intentional methodological practice (Vagle, 2014, 2018) in which the researcher works to “see what frames their seeing” of the phenomenon before, during, and after the inquiry. This involves identifying one’s assumptions and bottom line beliefs about the phenomenon and how it might take shape throughout the inquiry. Post-reflexing and diffractive reading, for Jen, involved more than the oft-used phenomenological dwelling-with-the-data. Reading diffractively for Jen focused on working across binaries and either-or logic with regard to any number of actants that were at work–producing and provoking the phenomenon. For instance, Jen’s intention to be in full awareness of the ways her “bodymind” was both engaging and interfering with the data is captured in her post-reflexion journal where she layered excerpts of data collection from researcher observations and participant interview data with and alongside her capturing of the simultaneity of her experience of the phenomenon’s production through her as the teacher. When Jen was teaching a mindfulness session to a group of educators, engaging them in a guided meditation and then asking them

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about their experiences of the meditation, Jen was also attuning to her own experience of the cultivation of the phenomenon of teacher Presence (as the teacher) in that moment. In moments of her teaching teachers, she would both take observational notes in her post-reflexion journal about the ways the phenomenon of teacher Presence appeared to be taking shape in that particular context and environment, while also using a different colored pen to note her own lived experience of the phenomenon of teacher Presence moving through her in that exact same context. This is an example of Jen’s practice of “intra-action” and body/mind self-awareness that Jen captured in her post-reflexion journal immediately after she conducted a guided meditation with a group of teachers with one teacher in particular who moved her body out of the meditation circle in the middle of the meditation: She was angry in that moment she moved out of the circle. She said that writing about the meditation experience after it happened helped her to process her anger and understand where it came from. When she shared out to the group, she said she did not initially want to share her feelings with me. She said that as she wrote, she swore she would not tell me about how mad she was….at me….for talking….and making her think….during a meditation….when you are not “supposed” to think….which made her think….some more.…that she was a bad meditator….and that she was bad at whatever she tried so hard to do. I could feel it; my teacher Presence in that moment was swelling in the space between us. My dispositional being-ness was pulsing and radiating a very soft and heartfelt compassion and care for her. In the moment she began to share her annoyance and anger, I recall feeling light, loving, and curious. I was fully there. In this moment of authentic connection between the two of us, it felt as if everyone else in the room disappeared. I believe that my desire to be present for this teacher coupled with a non-judgmental and curious attitude created a moment where she was invited to process through strong feelings which then lead to a transfiguration of the emotional energy within her body and between us from that of anger to understanding….

Walking into Jen’s work concretely Teaching as a Spiritual1 Practice: Cultivating Teacher Presence through Mindfulness is a provocative invitation into disrupting and decentering conceptions of what it means to be called to teach and be of service to youth, our communities, and ourselves as educators. Creating space in our consciousness as teachers and teacher educators to deliberately re-perceive and conceive Teaching as a Spiritual practice produces a push toward thinking beyond how one has come to embody and conceptualize the role and purpose of being and becoming a teacher. It suggests that seeing teaching as a practice of self-liberation, self-reverence, and self-love invites one to “be-do-live something differently” (St. Pierre, 2014, p. 4) in terms of teacher mental, emotional, and spiritual burnout that is widespread in the profession.

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Self-care in the healing and helping professions, like teaching, is not a luxury, it is a professional responsibility. Since we know the practitioner is the instrument (Kreitzer & Koithan, 2014) of peace, healing, compassion, and love, this instrument must be tuned, well-functioning, and healthy so that she can do her job effectively. “Caring for myself is not self-indulgence, it is self-preservation, and that is an act of political warfare” (Lorde, 1988). As Lorde (1998) powerfully conveys here, selfcare and self-love is not self-indulgence, it is a powerful act of self-preservation. For those called to the healing and helping professions, self-preservation is paramount. As the phenomenological material in this study illuminates, when a human service professional loses touch with their Eros (i.e., passion), emotions, intuitive insights, and sense of self, they can lose the heart and soul of their being-ness that animates their work and their becoming teacher through the stress of the profession. Given the epidemic state of burnout and moral injury in the teaching profession, in Jen’s study, it became essential to acknowledge “that there is an aspect of our work as teachers that is sacred…that our work is not merely to share information but to share in the intellectual and spiritual growth of our students” (hooks, 1994, p. 13). It is with this realization that Jen deliberately made post-intentional and post-structural choices to re-frame, re-perceive, and re-conceptualize what it might mean to be called to teach and be of service to the youth in our classrooms in a way that not only protects, but produces mental, emotional, and spiritual health of our nation’s educators while they serve children with reverence, respect, and dignity. Driven by this commitment and goal, Jen thought with ( Jackson & Mazzei, 2012) the Deleuzoguattarian concepts discussed in the theoretical perspectives section of this chapter in order to explore the post-intentional phenomenological phenomenon teacher Presence. In this final section, Jen discusses how the phenomenon of teacher Presence was provoked and produced in ways that illustrate how a teacher’s identity is not fixed, stable, or has an identifiable essential core. Rather, the phenomenological material here demonstrates how the “soul texture” (O’Donohue, 1991) of the teacher, her teacher Presence, is assumed to be situated, partial, unstable, and can never able to pinned down (i.e., endlessly deferred). This perspective re-imagines a different way of conceptualizing and conversing about the elusive and invisible inner work that constitutes becoming a teacher and its direct alignment with the physical enactment and embodiment of being a teacher. This study illuminated some of the myriad ways a teacher’s beingness in the present moment entangles with her trajectory of becoming her most authentic, radiant, and passionate self through her calling.

In post-intentional phenomenology, it is assumed that a singular intentional relationship cannot be traced because intentionalities are perpetually becoming through the act of deconstruction, reconstruction, blurring, and disruption.

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Excerpt of phenomenological material

FIGURE 3.1 

River at Ballynahinch Castle, Connemara, Ireland

Fluent I would love to live Like a river flows, Carried by the surprise Of its own unfolding. (O’Donohue, 2007)

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Jen’s study explored the cultivation of the invisible phenomenon of teacher Presence—an ineffable, yet energetically palpable, state of emotional, mental, physical, and spiritual well-being-ness and well-becoming that takes shape and is made manifest through the stress inherent in the teaching profession. She used this poem, Fluent, by the Irish poet John O’Donohue (2007) and the image of a river flowing on the grounds of Ballynahinch Castle in Connemara, Ireland (see Figure 3.1) to try to capture the way in which the phenomenon of teacher Presence embodies the post-intentional conceptualization of phenomenon as perpetually shape-shifting, fluid, flowing, and swelling (Hofsess, 2013). Given the featured (top of prior page) post-intentional phenomenological philosophical concept that assumes a singular intentional relationship cannot be traced because intentionalities are perpetually becoming through the act of deconstruction, reconconstruction, blurring, and disruption, Jen’s work illustrates the way this concept takes shape in teacher well-being research. The phenomenon of teacher Presence assumes a necessary and desirable unbecoming of limited perceptions and ways of being through moments of stress so to deliberately reconstruct and become in alignment with one’s desired state of being through the moments of stress. Jen’s study perceives moments of stress in the act of teaching as productive contexts of disruption that serve to “dis-orient” (Mezirow, 1997) the teacher so she can break free, and flee from enacting limited states of perceiving, being, and behaving that do not align with her core calling as a teacher. In this way, teacher Presence, post-intentionally speaking, is inherently partial, ever changing, and seeks to flee through and across different contexts of disorienting dilemmas. Jen’s study explored the cultivation of the phenomenon of teacher Presence through theory, Celtic Spirituality, interview material, LEDs, and her researcher post-reflexion of the phenomenological material. Her study examined the ways the aforementioned phenomenological material intra-acted (Barad, 2007) and formed “relationships between multiple bodies (both human and non-human) that were understood not to have clear or distinct boundaries from on another” (Taguchi, 2012, p. 271) so to function as an “assemblage” (Deleuze & Guattari, 1987) or hub of connection that produces the phenomenon’s “lines of flight” (Deleuze & Guattari, 1987). In this excerpt of phenomenological material from Jen’s study, she shares how teachers who embodied a mindfulness practice of connecting with their breath, when they noticed themselves becoming stressed, produced and provoked a line of flight. The Deleuzogauttarian concept of “lines of flight” (Deleuze & Guattari, 1987) suggests the unique ways the phenomenon takes off through the phenomenological material “in ways that we may not be able to anticipate” (Vagle, 2015, p. 119) and becomes manifest. In this excerpt, Jen illuminates the way a teacher’s being and becoming herself, (i.e., cultivating teacher Presence) cannot be traced or essentialised. Through her LED of a time when she felt her presence made a difference in her teaching, “Ryan” described how her breath became the core element to connect to the present moment in a way that allowed her to deconstruct a pattern of perception that provoked a stress response:

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During reading we started to read a new story. This story happened to have several characters from nursery rhymes. My students started to shout different characters out. As a teacher, I started to feel frustrated that my students were getting so loud and talking when I wanted to get started. At that moment, I took a breath and realized they weren’t talking to be disrespectful. They in fact were talking because they were excited to make connections. I stood silently and within a minute, my students were ready to begin the story. In this LED of how being present made a difference in her teaching, Ryan does several noteworthy things that may contribute to her cultivation of teacher Presence—her compassionate and patient being-ness with her students. First, she describes feeling aware of her interior experience of feeling frustrated, because she desired to get to the story and start the lesson. However, her students were talking. Ryan shared with Jen how her body initially interpreted the students talking as being off task and thus, it provoked a stress response in her body that then predicted a habitual reactive pattern of becoming reactive and frustrated. However, as Ryan has conditioned her body and mind to notice her breathing when dis-orienting dilemmas arise, she then engages in a Deleuzoguattarian line of flight where phenomena are conceptualized as “fluid, shape-shifting assemblages continually on the move in interacting with the world, rather than perceiving them as stable essences” (Vagle & Hofsess, 2016, p. 4) as she flees her patterned reaction of being stressed in that moment and reconstructs a new way of becoming in relationship with her students that is better aligned to desires to be patient, kind, and compassionate toward herself and her students. “I took a breath and realized they weren’t talking to be disrespectful. They were in fact talking because they were excited to make connections,” she said. Through becoming conscious of her breath, Ryan blurs her stress reaction and enables herself to consider another perspective that allows her to construct a new way of relating to the student’s desire to talk. In thinking with theory about this phenomenological material using Deleuze (1987) and his theory of desire, it is important to ask, what does desire produce? For Deleuze (1987), “desire is about production. We desire, not because we lack something that we do not have (as Lacan would insist), but because of the forces and actions that are actively becoming” ( Jackson & Mazzei, 2012, p. 87). Ryan’s desire to be present, patient, and calm as a teacher is produced and provoked in moments when she feels most triggered. For example, after Ryan took a conscious breath, she made a remarkable shift in perspective about her student’s behavior. When Jen works with teachers around exploring their emotional triggers in the classroom setting, a majority of the time the trigger can be distilled down to one primary line of thinking: I am not getting what I want from my students thus I unconsciously interpret student behavior as disrespectful to my needs and desires. In the moment that Ryan described in her LED writing, she appeared to illuminate her awareness of this unconscious storyline the moment

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she felt the inner agitation to keep moving when her students are talking. What is important to notice here is that Ryan appears to go beyond and transcend her initial reaction of reading the students’ behavior as problematic. In being present and feeling the agitation of wanting to go faster, she feels the tension in her body and can connect it to the thought that she is being disrespected. In this moment of awareness, coupled with her breath and her desire to be calm and centered as a teacher and her capacity to transcend her thought of being disrespected, it may be read that she becomes who she desires to be in this moment—a teacher who is patient, kind, and respectful towards her students. In thinking with theory and Deleuze’s (1987) desire as a productive force or “machine” that is “autonomous, self-constituting and creative, which functions as an ontology of change, transformation, or ‘becoming’” ( Jackson & Mazzei, 2012, p. 89), perhaps in this moment of desiring to be present, Ryan becomes herself as a teacher through the act of deterritorialization: Deterritorialization is the process of un-coding habitual relations, experiences, and usages of language in order to separate the foundational human image-opinion construct that orients thought in a specific manner. A re-composition or reterritorialization is the production of a higher quality of deterritorialization, which is the power of taking a quality beyond its actual occurrence and granting it a general extension, the power to actualize, to become differently. Jackson & Mazzei, 2012, p. 89 Jen reads Ryan’s desire to be present as producing not only her state of beingness in that moment but also producing her teacher Presence. For Ryan, taking a conscious breath appears to have produced a profound way of being with herself, the moment, and her students; a way of being that allowed her to teach from a place of inner balance and alignment with her core desires for how she wants to be as a teacher. She shared with Jen during her interview that she desires to be “balanced” as a teacher, and this LED provides evidence of how she did just that— she sensed in the present moment that she was getting agitated, took a breath, balanced her internal world, regained control by seeing the moment from a different vantage point which then produced an opportunity for her to both be and become the teacher she desired to be. Jen theorized this intra-action (Barad, 2007) between Ryan’s internal and external awareness through the power of her breath awareness, as a perpetual becoming through the act of deconstructing a stress reaction so to blur the boundaries of previous states of being-ness that were in mis-alignment with her desired state of becoming. The phenomenon of teacher Presence cannot be distilled down into an essence. It appears that teacher Presence is akin to how O’Donohue (1999) speaks about one’s personal Presence: “Presence is mainly the atmosphere of spirit that is behind them all and comes through them” (p. 53). Importantly, the phenomenon of teacher Presence has no definable essential core. Conversely, it may be the integration of the

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instability of the difference and diversity within and outside of the selfhood of the teacher that perpetually produces and re-produces the cultivation of a teacher’s Presence.

Concluding thoughts Although there is always much more to say about this (and all) phenomena than space allows, we now must briefly close the chapter by emphasizing that post-intentional phenomenology purposely and perhaps even fervently asks the researcher to walk into their inquiry not only with openness and wonder but also with an irreverence for, and a willingness to disrupt, boundaries. When Mark walked into the posts about a decade ago with post-intentional phenomenology, he could not yet see what might get provoked and produced. Ten years later this, of course, has become more clear. However, this clarity does not serve as a road map for what might get provoked and produced over the next ten years. Postintentional phenomenology tries not to “tell.” It tries to listen, adapt, and shape shift based on the interests, desires, and insights of each and every scholar who engages it—as they choose, as they walk into it.

Note 1 “Spiritual” in this study refers to a connection with the self in a way that allows one to move beyond and transcend one’s own psychological walls to experience the nature of things ( Jones, 2005); “By spiritual I mean the diverse ways we answer the heart’s longing to be connected with the largeness of life” (Palmer, 1997, p. 16).

References Barad, K. (2007). Meeting the universe halfway: Quantum physics and the entanglement of matter and meaning. Duke University Press. Christensen, L. (2018). Transforming the transformation: A post-intentional phenomenological exploration of Montessori teachers engaging in anti-bias and anti-racist self-reflection. Doctoral Dissertation. Clifden, J. (2018). Teaching as a spiritual practice: Cultivating teacher presence, a post-intentional phenomenological exploration. Doctoral Dissertation. Colebrook, C. (2006). Deleuze: A guide for the perplexed. A&C Black. Deleuze, G. & Guattari, F. (1987). A thousand plateaus: Capitalism and schizophrenia (B. Massumi, Trans.). University of Minnesota Press (Original work published 1980). Gardner, R. (2013) Reading race in a community space. Doctoral Dissertation. Hamel, T. (2019). The body talks back: An embodied expansion of critical consciousness. Doctoral Dissertation. Hofsess, B. (2013). Unfolding afterglow: Letters and conversations on teacher renewal. Sense Publishers. hooks, b. (1994). Teaching to transgress. Routledge. Jackson, A. Y., & Mazzei, L. A. (2012). Thinking with theory in qualitative research. Taylor & Francis. Jones, L. (2005). What does spirituality in education mean?. Journal of College and Character, 6(7). doi: 10.2202/1940-1639.1485.

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Kreitzer, M. J., & Koithan, M. (2014). Integrative nursing. Oxford University Press. Luft, S., & Overgaard, S. (eds.) (2013). The Routledge Companion to Phenomenology. Routledge. Mezirow, J. (1997). Transformative learning: Theory to practice. New Directions for Adult and Continuing Education, 1997(74), 5–12. O’Donohue, J. (1999). Eternal echoes. Random House. O’Donohue, J. (2007). Benedictus: A book of blessings. Random House. O’Donohue, J. (2008). To bless the space between us: A book of blessings. Harmony. Palmer, P. J. (1997). The heart of a teacher identity and integrity in teaching. Change: The Magazine of Higher Learning, 29(6), 14–21. Pinar, W. F., Reynolds, W. M., Slattery, P., & Taubmann, P. M. (2002). Understanding curriculum: An introduction to the study of historical and contemporary curriculum discourses. Peter Lang Publishing. Schües, C., Olkowski, D., & Fielding, H. (2011). Time in feminist phenomenology. Indiana University Press. St. Pierre, E. A. (2014). A brief and personal history of post-qualitative research: Toward “post inquiry”. JCT (Online), 30(2), 2. Sterner, S. (2019). A post-intentional phenomenological exploration of reading whitely. Doctoral Dissertation. Taguchi, H. L. (2012). A diffractive and Deleuzian approach to analysing interview data. Feminist Theory, 13(3), 265–281. Vagle, M. D. (2010). Re-framing Schön’s call for a phenomenology of practice: A post-­ intentional approach. Reflective Practice: International and Multidisciplinary Perspectives, 11(3), 393–407. Vagle, M. D. (2011). Lessons in contingent, recursive humility. Journal of Adolescent and Adult Literacy, 54(6), 362–370. Vagle, M. D. (2014). Crafting phenomenological research (1st ed.). Left Coast Press (now Routledge). Vagle, M. D. (2015). Curriculum as post-intentional phenomenological text: Working along the edges and margins of phenomenology using post-structuralist ideas. Journal of Curriculum Studies, 47(5), 594–612. Vagle, M. D., & Hofsess, B. A. (2016). Entangling a post-reflexivity through postintentional phenomenology. Qualitative Inquiry, 22(5), 334–344. Vagle, M. D. (2018). Crafting phenomenological research (2nd ed.). Routledge. Vagle, M. D. (2019). Post-intentional phenomenology and studies of social change in teaching. Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Education. doi: 10.1093/acrefore/ 9780190264093.013.350.

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4 PHENOMENOLOGICAL HUMAN SCIENCE VIA PHENOMENOLOGICAL PHILOSOPHY A phenomenomethodological approach to education research John Quay, Irena Martinkova and Jim Parry UNIVERSITY OF MELBOURNE, AUSTRALIA AND CHARLES UNIVERSITY, PRAGUE, CZECH REPUBLIC

Introduction As an ever-growing number of published books and papers attest, there is more than one understanding of phenomenology, especially when both philosophy and human science are considered. There is thus a need to comprehend this complex spread of phenomenologies in order to position these various approaches. This is the task we have undertaken in this chapter. Our aim is to support improved understanding of phenomenology, especially among those researching in education. In the first part of this chapter, we seek to comprehend the complex spread of phenomenologies, but not by tracing the many trails of phenomenological inquiry (Cibangu & Hepworth, 2016), or somehow conflating or reconciling them. Rather, we purposefully introduce the notion of phenomenomethodology to enable an inclusivity that is methodologically situated. Our position is supported by Heidegger’s (1985, p. 85) claim that “phenomenology is … a ‘methodological’ term.” In this vein, phenomenomethodology does not refer to a possible phenomenological method understood as an independent tool or “recipe” (Quay et al., 2018, p. 1). Rather, it means having a coherent methodological perspective—the coherence of the phenomenon—which “does not allow that method independence but, instead, absorbs it into itself ” (Heidegger, 2016, p. 49). This methodological coherence embraces both phenomenological philosophy (PhPhy) and phenomenological human science (PhHSc). But how?

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Again, this is a methodological question, and it is why we have determined to focus on Heidegger’s interpretation of phenomenology. For Heidegger, phenomenology “does not characterize the ‘what’ of the objects of philosophical research in terms of their content but the ‘how’ of such research” (1996, p. 24). Exploring this “how” of the phenomenon enables us to illuminate the coherence, but not conflation, of PhPhy and PhHSc, and in this way to respond to recent debates concerning the doing of phenomenology (Giorgi, 2011; Paley, 2017; Smith, 2010, 2018; van Manen, 2017a; Zahavi, 2019). This is a coherence that plays very subtly with difference, which Heidegger called “the ontological difference” (1982, p. 120). Difference-coherence is not conflation. In the second part of the chapter, we employ this phenomenomethodological difference-coherence to illuminate how investigations of education may be impacted by research which takes a phenomenomethodological stance. It is our position that such investigations are characterized by methodological movements across the ontological difference-coherence, movements involving both PhPhy and PhHSc. These methodological movements illuminate what it is that education researchers are doing when they are doing phenomenology, and what it is possible to do by way of phenomenology. So, while we do not provide many specific examples of phenomenological approaches to education research in this chapter, we instead offer understanding which should support improving the quality of such research.

Part 1: phenomenomethodological difference-coherence Questioning phenomenology We are very aware that phenomenological research in education and other fields is still plagued by questions such as “But is it phenomenology?” or, “Is this good phenomenology?” (van Manen, 2017a, p. 775). These questions point to the multiple versions and interpretations of phenomenology, making it difficult to understand and navigate the distinctions made, and to obtain clear justification for choosing phenomenology as suitable for a given research inquiry, which is confusing for the readership as well as for researchers. Furthermore, failure to adopt some kind of shared understanding among researchers vitiates the possibility of research comparison. A research program cannot achieve its goals in a context of unclear meanings, disputed theories, incommensurable models, and inconsistent operationalization of concepts. We suggest that the confusion first emerged with the differences of approach amongphilosophers. PhPhy is not one neat story, as exemplified in the divergences between Husserl, Heidegger, and Merleau-Ponty (Carman, 1999; Hopkins, 1993; Jacobs, 2018; Sheehan, 1997). In addition, the thinking of these phenomenological philosophers evolved over time, revealing internal inconsistencies. And yet, when the PhPhy of Husserl, the PhPhy of Heidegger, and the PhPhy of Merleau-Ponty (not to exclude other phenomenological philosophers)

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are employed in explanation and justification of PhHSc, their divergences are rarely addressed. A picture of accord in PhPhy is presented—which does not really exist—in order to underpin PhHSc. These divergences remain key to the arguments we are presenting in this chapter, but their detail sits beyond the chapter’s scope to fully explain. We recognize that when phenomenology is considered within the gamut of the human sciences it is the earlier work of Husserl which tends to be drawn upon. This is because Husserl’s earlier work in phenomenology, with its emphasis on consciousness, retains a closer affinity to human sciences such as psychology, leading to their potential and problematic conflation. Phenomenomethodology is an attempt to move beyond such conflation, by revealing PhPhy and PhHSc as connected methodologically through coherence across the ontological difference. It is Heidegger’s methodological concern with the ontological difference which, we believe, reveals the greatest insights. We state up front that we follow Heidegger in his interpretation of PhPhy, rather than Husserl or Merleau-Ponty, keeping in mind that Heidegger’s PhPhy developed over time. This is evident in the range of changing expressions Heidegger used to convey and communicate his understanding of PhPhy, some of which we shall introduce in this chapter. All of these expressions reveal his thinking about the phenomenon of phenomenology, which is the deeper concern. Clarifying phenomenology means addressing the question—what is the phenomenon? And as we shall show, the phenomenon cannot be simply expressed as lived experiences, which is how it is conveyed in much PhHSc. This positions us in a particular way in relation to more recent debates concerning the application of phenomenology in the human sciences (Giorgi, 2011; Paley, 2017; Smith, 2010, 2018; van Manen, 2017a; Zahavi, 2019). By sticking with Heidegger’s PhPhy in a methodological sense we take on his understanding of PhPhy as “phenomenological ontology” (1996, p. 34). Through this approach, we aim to circumvent some of the confusions and contribute to a more developed understanding of phenomenomethodology, especially where this informs connections, via the concept of phenomenon, between PhPhy and PhHSc. We also privilege Heidegger’s PhPhy because of the important connection between Heidegger’s understanding of ontology and education (Thomson, 2001, 2016). From this point on, when using the abbreviation PhPhy, we are referring to Heidegger’s understanding of PhPhy.

Two methodologically-connected meanings of phenomenon The word phenomenon is of Greek origin (phainomenon) and, according to Heidegger, it has two connected meanings: the same phenomenon can be understood in two ways (Figure 4.1). The primary meaning of phenomenon is “what shows itself in itself, what is manifest” (1996, p. 25), where “this self-showing” is “phenomenon in the genuine, original sense” (p. 27). Heidegger then shares a

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Primary meaning of phenomenon: Phenomenon as self-showing Phenomenon as environmental experience Phenomenon as ontological Phenomenon as Da-sein Phenomenon as there-being Phenomenon as being-in-the-world

FIGURE 4.1 

Ontological difference

The same phenomenon, two meanings, methodologically connected Secondary meaning of phenomenon: Phenomenon as semblance Phenomenon as thing experience Phenomenon as ontical Phenomenon as Dasein Phenomenon as being Phenomenon as a way of being-in-the-world

Two meanings of phenomenon

Note: Two different coherent meanings of phenomenon are shown, as expressed by Heidegger in a variety of ways.

secondary meaning of phenomenon, as “semblance” (p. 25). A phenomenon can be original (primary meaning), or it can be derived from the original, as like the original (secondary meaning). “Semblance is a modification of the manifest,” Heidegger (1985, p. 82) attests. Importantly, while the primary meaning of phenomenon and the secondary meaning are different, they cohere: “wherever something passes itself off as this or that [secondary meaning], what passes itself off retains the possibility of becoming manifest in itself [primary meaning]” (p. 139). This possibility is at the heart of phenomenological method, which works with phenomenon as a semblance in order to achieve phenomenon as self-showing. We argue that the primary meaning of phenomenon as self-showing is the phenomenon of PhPhy, while the secondary meaning of phenomenon as semblance is the phenomenon of PhHSc. Again, Heidegger stresses that it is important to understand how both meanings of phenomenon differ and cohere: “It is extremely important for a further understanding of the concept of phenomenon to see how what is named in both meanings of phainomenon (‘phenomenon’ as self-showing and ‘phenomenon’ as semblance) are structurally connected” (1996, p. 25). The issue then is how these two meanings of phenomenon are connected and how they differ and cohere. Heidegger’s (1985, p. 85) response is that the connection is methodological, for “phenomenology is … a ‘methodological’ term, inasmuch as it is only used to designate the mode of experience, apprehension, and determination of that which is thematized in [phenomenological] philosophy.” What is thematized is the phenomenon, in both of its meanings, in their connectedness; their coherence across the ontological difference. The two meanings of phenomenon reveal two modes of experiencing: one which is experiencing the phenomenon as semblance, and another which is experiencing the phenomenon as self-showing. Important to recognize here is that each mode of experiencing is not merely a means to access the phenomenon; rather, each mode of experiencing is itself the phenomenon, in its first meaning or second meaning. In broad terms, the phenomenon is experiencing, in two meanings, two modes; this is the difference-coherence (see Figure 4.1).

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In his earlier work, Heidegger (2000, p. 75) described these two modes of experience as “thing experience” and “environmental experience,” in an attempt to convey his understanding of the phenomenon in both its connected meanings. Thing experience is characterized as individual things interacting, and interacting as cause and effect, which is the basis for empirical science, for human science. Importantly for Heidegger, this is not the original phenomenon as self-showing, but a derivative of it: thing experience is phenomenon as semblance. The original phenomenon is environmental experience (a poor translation of the German umwelt as environment). Importantly, the term environmental experience should not be understood to evoke a sense of interaction with the environment (understood as a collection of surrounding things). Environmental experience does not draw attention to interaction between things, whereas thing experience does. In thing experience individual interacting things are focused on, whereas in environmental experience things are embedded, submerged; they are not attended to as discrete. For Heidegger (1996), environmental experience is a precursor to the term being-in-the-world, where “the compound expression ‘being-in-the-world’ indicates in the very way we have coined it, that it stands for a unified phenomenon. This primary datum [being-in-the-world: environmental experience] must be seen as a whole” (p. 49). This whole is world, welt, which is not a totality of things, but a meaningful experiential whole. From this point on, we shall refer to thing experiencing and environmental experiencing in order to better express their experiential character. This is perhaps the most challenging aspect of phenomenological method: to be aware of these different modes of experiencing and to move experientially between them; from experiencing experience as individual things interacting via cause and effect, to experiencing experience as meaningful experiential whole. Their connection is that they are the “same” experience, experienced differently. A person can move between these two modes, once they are aware of them. This is a methodological attainment. However, general lack of awareness of environmental experiencing means that thing experiencing is often considered the only mode. This presents a significant methodological challenge. Wishing to highlight the difference-coherence of phenomenon as semblance and phenomenon as self-showing, Heidegger (1996) asked, “what is it that is to be called ‘phenomenon’ in a distinctive sense?” (p. 31), where distinctive suggests the original phenomenon of PhPhy. “Manifestly it is something that does not show itself initially, … something that is concealed, in contrast to what initially … does show itself ” (p. 31). What initially shows itself is thing experiencing, this is what experience is conventionally characterized as. When reading, the text is the focus and the context assumed. Environmental experiencing does not show itself initially because it is concealed by the attention paid to interactions between things (the phenomenon as semblance of PhHSc). “But at the same time,” Heidegger declares environmental experiencing to be “something that essentially belongs to what initially … does show itself [thing experience],

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indeed in such a way that it constitutes its meaning and ground” (1996, p. 31). Environmental experiencing is the meaning and ground of thing experiencing, as context is to text. Yet Heidegger went further in his interpretation of these two modes of experiencing, diverging from Husserl’s work of the time. In this divergence, Heidegger (1996) pursues the link between phenomenology and ontology. “Phenomenology is the way of access to, and the demonstrative manner of determination of, what is to become the theme of ontology” (p. 31), he argues. As such, “ontology is only possible as phenomenology” (p. 31). This statement is important as it suggests that phenomenology must be practiced as method in order to access ontology, where “the task of ontology is to set in relief the being of beings and to explicate being itself ” (p. 24). Hence “the phenomenological concept of phenomenon, as self-showing, means the being of beings” (p. 31) (Figure 4.1). Comprehending these two meanings of phenomenon and their connectedness, in the various ways in which Heidegger expresses these two meanings, is a significant methodological challenge. It is characterized chiefly as phenomenological reduction. Performing phenomenological reduction is therefore at the heart of confusions concerning phenomenology. Without phenomenological reduction, the two meanings of phenomenon are conflated; the subtle difference-coherence remains hidden.

Phenomenomethodology: reduction, deconstruction, restruction Phenomenological reduction The experiential move required to access environmental experiencing (phenomenon as self-showing) is a move from thing experiencing (phenomenon as semblance), because thing experiencing is commonly considered the only mode of experiencing; awareness that there are two modes is a contingent challenge. Heidegger (1982) points out that this move is a “basic component of phenomenological method,” which Husserl had labelled “phenomenological reduction” (p. 21). Therefore, “we are … adopting a central term of Husserl’s phenomenology in its literal wording though not in its substantive intent” (p. 21). The disagreement as to intent relates to what the reduction achieves methodologically. For Heidegger, the reduction gives access to being, which is why he identifies the reduction with the ontological difference, describing it as “a ‘passageway’” (2012, p. 367). The word reduction, as applied in phenomenology, can be understood in the sense akin to remedying the dislocation of a joint in the body by “reducing” it: in medical terms a dislocated joint is restored via the act of reduction; it is reduced (led back, restored) to its original position. The original position (original phenomenon, phenomenon as self-showing) is achieved by way of reduction, which reduces the dislocation (phenomenon as semblance). Phenomenological reduction is thus moving apprehension of the phenomenon (experiencing) from thing experiencing to environmental experiencing.

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Expressed in terms of “phenomenological ontology” (1996, p. 34), Heidegger recognizes that with phenomenological reduction, “ontological investigation always turns, at first and necessarily, to some being [thing]; but then, in a precise way, it is led away from that being [thing] and led back to its being” (1982, p. 21). No longer describing phenomenology in terms of experiencing but now in terms of being (also a verb), Heidegger invokes Dasein. Dasein is Heidegger’s further understanding of the phenomenon (in both meanings), a further development on experience. In everyday, German Dasein means existence, and Heidegger (1982) is specifically interested in “the Dasein’s existence” (p. 276), where he is positioning Dasein as a being (in very broad terms as a thing, an entity). He designates Dasein as “a specific being which we ourselves are, the human Dasein” (p. 28), such that “we are at every moment a Dasein” (p. 28). Importantly for Heidegger, Dasein can also be understood as the hyphenated Da-sein (Da means there and sein means be), which is translated into English as being-there or there-being: “being the ‘there’ itself ” (1985, p. 253). Dasein is thus the being, and (as Da-sein) the being (there-being) of this being. Heidegger describes his phenomenological project as “a phenomenology of Dasein” (1985, p. 148). This will result in a “fundamental ontology” via “the [phenomenological] analysis of the existence of Dasein” (1984, p. 136). Heidegger (1985) points out that such analysis “does not mean that we now give a kind of biographical account of a particular Dasein as this individual Dasein in its everyday life” (p. 155), for this would be an analysis within thing experiencing. “We are reporting no particular everyday life,” he declares, “but we are seeking the everydayness of everyday life” (p. 155). Everyday life, a myriad of lived experiences, is the phenomenon as semblance, and the focus of PhHSc; what van Manen (1997, p. 40) proffers as “the starting point of phenomenological research,” which he suggests is “a matter of identifying what it is that deeply interests you or me and of identifying this interest as a true phenomenon, that is, as some experience that human beings live through” (p. 40, emphasis added). PhHSc is concerned with the phenomenon, but here it is phenomenon as semblance, which van Manen labels as the “true phenomenon” for PhHSc. “Any and every possible human experience (event, happening, incident, occurrence, object, relation, situation, thought, feeling, etc.) may become a topic for phenomenological inquiry,” van Manen (2017b, p. 812) attests. In other words, the phenomenon of PhHSc is some particular lived experience that has been decided upon as the focus for investigation. And as Heidegger notes, problematically for PhPhy, here “lived experiences become objects for lived experiences” (2012, p. 389). But Heidegger’s main concern is the “everydayness of everyday life” (1996, p. 15). The “of ” is very important here as it illuminates the methodological connection between the two: everydayness is of everyday life; being is of beings; phenomenon as self-showing is of phenomenon as semblance. Another way to understand this “of ” is to consider thing experiencing as secondary to environmental experiencing, which is primary. Heidegger’s phenomenological

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focus is on environmental experiencing (of thing experiencing); phenomenon as self-showing (of phenomenon as semblance); everydayness (of everyday life); being (of beings)—all of which come together as Da-sein (of Dasein). Heidegger’s use of Da-sein and Dasein builds on his consideration of human Dasein’s “uniqueness” (1996, p. 37), which does not signal an idiosyncratic individuality, but rather human Dasein’s significance as “ontic-ontological” (p. 13). This means, in terms of experiencing, that Dasein can apprehend both thing experiencing and environmental experiencing; Dasein is the human Dasein (ontical) and, as Da-sein, the there-being (ontological) of this human Dasein. This is the ontological difference-coherence. Hence Dasein, as “the entity which we ourselves are,” is to be “brought to the level of phenomenon [as self-showing], that is, experienced in such a way that it shows itself in itself ” (1985, p. 149). Thus “Dasein is … not only ontically decisive but also ontologically so for us as phenomenologists” (p. 148). This means that, as ontic-ontological (both ontical and ontological), Dasein, which we ourselves are, is capable of phenomenological reduction as an experiential move.

Phenomenological deconstruction But phenomenological method does not end with reduction. “Phenomenological reduction, as the leading of our vision from beings back to being … is not the only basic component of phenomenological method,” Heidegger (1982, p. 21) declares; “in fact, it is not even the central component.” Heidegger recognizes that, with the experiential uncovering of the phenomenon as self-showing, there-being—the being of human beings—can be interpreted and described. However, expressed in terms of phenomenon as experiencing, such description must not fall back into thing experiencing, as this would be a return to phenomenon as semblance: describing beings and not there-being. Instead, phenomenological interpretation and description must occur in the mode of experiencing that is environmental experiencing. Heidegger recognizes that such description of the being of beings involves “phenomenological construction” (p. 22) and “destruction—a critical process in which the traditional concepts, which at first must necessarily be employed, are deconstructed down to the sources from which they were drawn” (1982, p. 23). Here deconstruction is a combining of destruction and construction, neither of which can occur without reduction. Phenomenological method is reduction and deconstruction together, enabling development of a fundamental ontology as an “interpretation of the fundamental structures of Da-sein with regards to its usual and average way of being” (1996, p. 18): an interpretation of everydayness. These fundamental structures are expressed via “phenomenological concepts” (1985, p. 51). Thus, with this movement, “language changes essentially—not primarily in vocabulary—but the mode of saying and hearing” (2016, p. 19). By way of his phenomenological investigation, Heidegger characterizes “the basic phenomenon,” the original phenomenon, “with the expression

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Examples of phenomenological concepts (ontological): Phenomenon ‘“phenomenon’ as self-showing” (1996, p. 25) Care there-being as cares “Da-sein as care” (1996, p. 171) Understanding there-being as understanding “Da-sein as understanding” (1996, p. 134)

FIGURE 4.2 

Ontological difference

60  John Quay et al. Examples of traditional concepts (ontical): Phenomenon ‘“phenomenon’ as semblance” (1996, p. 25) Care specific care or cares, expressed as “worries and troubles” (1996, p. 183), but also in more positive ways Understanding specific understanding, “in the sense of one possible cognition amongst other” (1996, p. 134)

Phenomenological concepts and traditional concepts

Note: Examples of traditional concepts and deconstructed phenomenological concepts, as described by Heidegger (1996) in Being and Time. The same word has two meanings across the ontological difference-coherence.

being-in-the-world” (1984, p. 166). Being-in-the-world is a phenomenological concept. It forms the focus for Heidegger’s phenomenological “analytic of Da-sein” (p. 15), of there-being: “we must analyse a fundamental structure of Dasein: being-in-the-world” (1996, p. 37), he specifies. But Heidegger’s phenomenological analysis does not end with being-in-the-world. Heidegger describes the fruits of his further analysis—phenomenological concepts contributing to fundamental ontology—in Part One, Division One, of Being and Time (1996). He also discusses these phenomenological concepts—for example, care and understanding—in numerous lecture courses (Figure 4.2). While it is beyond the scope of this chapter to provide a detailed exposition of Heidegger’s phenomenological concepts, it must be stressed that they are central to phenomenomethodology: the difference-coherence of PhPhy and PhHSc. It is important to restate that these phenomenological concepts require the phenomenological reduction to be understood, because they must be experienced in environmental experiencing. For this reason, Heidegger emphasizes that “it is the essence of phenomenological investigations that they cannot be reviewed summarily but must in each case be rehearsed and repeated anew” (1985, p. 26). Such repetition requires environmental experiencing. It is repetition of environmental experiencing that must be undertaken by anyone coming to the research—even someone reading about it—in order to understand phenomenologically. This repetition further means that “fundamental ontology … is not a fixed discipline” (1984, p. 157). The phenomenological concepts of fundamental ontology must be interpreted anew each time they are engaged with, because of the required move to environmental experiencing that accompanies such engagement.

Phenomenological restruction Heidegger articulates another important but less well-known methodological innovation that works with methodological difference-coherence. This is another phenomenomethodological move: a move wherein access to and analysis

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of the phenomenon as self-showing (the phenomenon of PhPhy) can work in the other direction. In this other direction, phenomenological concepts can illuminate and inform understanding of the phenomenon as semblance (the phenomenon of PhHSc). As with reduction and deconstruction, this move draws on the ontic-ontological character of Dasein. In moving in the other direction, however, there is acknowledgement that, methodologically, “ontology has an ontical foundation” (1982, p. 19). Heidegger argues that, “to think [there-] being as the [there-]being of beings [human Dasein,] and to conceive the being problem radically and universally[,] means, at the same time, to make beings thematic in their totality in the light of [fundamental] ontology” (1984, p. 157). The phenomenon as self-showing, expressed as a fundamental ontology, can be directed back into its ontical foundation: the phenomenon as semblance. This is a move from the phenomenon of PhPhy to the phenomenon of PhHSc, which contrasts in direction with phenomenological reduction and deconstruction. For this reason, we refer to it as phenomenological restruction, playing on a similar word usage. Lived experiences, the ontical phenomenon of PhHSc, can be restructed, rebuilt, informed by fundamental ontology (phenomenological concepts) as the ontological phenomenon of PhPhy. This is a turning within ontology as phenomenology, wherein fundamental ontology is turned back toward ontic thing experiencing, via their methodological difference-coherence. Heidegger describes this move as metontology, playing on the Greek word metabole: change. “The radicalization of fundamental ontology brings about the above-mentioned overturning of ontology out of its very self ” (1984, p. 157), he argues; “and it is turned over into the metontology” (p. 158). Freeman (2010) paraphrases Heidegger’s position by saying that “metontology is fundamental ontology’s self-overturning that at the same time builds upon and develops itself in returning to the concrete, factical condition out of which it emerged” (p. 550). Metontology enables phenomenological concepts expressing everydayness to illuminate understanding of everyday life, rebuilding this understanding. Therefore, as Freeman claims, “from within the domain of metontology, we can question and reconsider ourselves, our surrounding, and our actions, in light of the preceding ontological analysis” (p. 550). Phenomenological restruction is hinted at in the PhHSc of van Manen, who recognizes that phenomenological concepts described in PhPhy can act as “guides to reflection” (1997, p. 101) in PhHSc. He signals this methodological understanding with the assertion, “a lived experience: a certain way of being-inthe-world” (1997, p. 39, emphasis added). Here ontological being-in-the-world is meant in its ontical particularity, in a certain way, informing understanding of a lived experience in everyday life. Individuating a certain way of being-in-theworld, one among others, involves phenomenological restruction. It could be said, with a generous spirit, that van Manen, aware of fundamental ontology, engages in metontology and reinterprets being-in-the-world in an ontic way, in order to inform, to illuminate, understanding of a lived experience as the focus of PhHSc research. Phenomenological restruction, acknowledging

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the “unity” of “fundamental ontology and metontology” (1984, p. 158), is an important contribution of phenomenomethodology, enabling achievements made within PhPhy to support PhHSc research.

Part 2: phenomenomethodological investigation of education Phenomenomethodology requires the researcher to engage with phenomenological reduction and deconstruction (PhPhy), to understand fundamental ontology, to rehearse, and repeat the attainment of fundamental ontology, as well as applying fundamental ontology via phenomenological restruction as metontology (PhHSc). These experiential moves have two directions: the methods of reduction and deconstruction in one direction and restruction in the other (see Figure 4.3). The first direction (reduction and deconstruction) enables interpretation and description of analogous phenomenological concepts, contributing to a fundamental ontology. This is specifically the work of PhPhy. As an education researcher, one does not need to develop phenomenological concepts and a fundamental ontology, as these exist in the work of PhPhy. However, interpretation of these phenomenological concepts must still occur, requiring engagement with reduction and deconstruction. It must be remembered that PhPhy does not identify a particular set of conceptual outcomes that can be “reviewed summarily” (Heidegger, 1985, p. 26), as this would involve manipulation in thing experiencing. Instead, “in each case,” PhPhy must “be rehearsed and repeated anew” (p. 26) in environmental experiencing, to be understood ontologically. The second direction (restruction) enables fundamental ontology, as metontology, to inform and illuminate the phenomenon of PhHSc: lived everyday experiences. This is the education researcher’s application of the work of PhPhy in aid of the aims of PhHSc. PhPhy and PhHSc are connected methodologically. PhPhy

Phenomenon as self-showing of PhPhy Phenomenon as environmental experience Phenomenon as ontological Phenomenon as Da-sein

Ontological difference

phenomenological reduction and de-construction from ontical to ontological (fundamental ontology) Phenomenon as semblance of PhHSc Phenomenon as thing experience Phenomenon as ontical Phenomenon as Dasein

PhHSc phenomenological reduction and restruction from ontological (fundamental ontology) to ontical (as metontology)

FIGURE 4.3 

Two phenomenomethodological directions

Note: Experiential movements are depicted that show the methodological difference-coherence of PhPhy and PhHSc.

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However, this phenomenomethodological connection should not be positioned as a simple linear relation: from phenomenon as semblance to phenomenon as self-showing and back again. Rather, each direction involves a significant experiential move (reduction–restruction) and consequential changes in meaning (deconstruction–restruction). Based on this understanding of phenomenomethodology, perhaps the most significant challenge for PhHSc research lies in comprehending and practicing phenomenological reduction. Heidegger (1972) recognizes this challenge in his own learning of phenomenological method: “My perplexity decreased slowly, my confusion dissolved laboriously, only after I met Husserl personally in his workshop” (p. 78). Worth emphasizing is that this is a pedagogical situation: the teaching and learning of phenomenological reduction. For much of his career, Heidegger was concerned with teaching others phenomenology, which must address the experientiality of learning phenomenology, a philosophical and pedagogical challenge reflected in comments made years later. True learning only occurs where the taking of what one already has is a self-giving and is experienced as such. Teaching, therefore, does not mean anything else than to let the others learn, i.e., to bring one another to learning. Heidegger, 1967, p. 73 The real teacher, in fact, lets nothing else be learned than – learning. His conduct, therefore, often produces the impression that we properly learn nothing from him, if by “learning” we now suddenly understand merely the procurement of useful information. The teacher is ahead of his apprentices in this alone, that he still has far more to learn than they – he has to learn to let them learn. Heidegger, 1968, p. 15 Letting others learn means to bring others to experiencing the phenomenon as self-showing; to educe (educate), or better, to evoke the phenomenon as self-showing. Without this, PhHSc research remains non-phenomenological human science research. With this, the possibility is opened for comprehending fundamental ontology, metontology, and phenomenological restruction: rebuilding understanding of the phenomenon as semblance, the phenomenon of PhHSc (lived experience) informed via the methodological connection with the original phenomenon (fundamental ontology). In this way, PhPhy can truly enrich PhHSc; only then would it make sense to call PhHSc “phenomenological.” Quay (2013, 2015) undertook such phenomenomethodological research to understand the lived experiences of Year 10 students at school camp, compared with their lived experiences of main school. PhHSc research data consisted of field notes documenting events shared by the researcher, who attended both school camp and school, with a particular group of students. Interview

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transcripts were developed from individual interviews with these students, built around discussion of photographs these students had taken during these lived experiences—school camp and school—in order to be shared as part of the research investigation. Analysis of the research data (lived everyday experiences) was informed by a phenomenological interpretation of Heidegger’s fundamental ontology (a repeating anew of Heidegger’s analysis by the researcher). In particular, the phenomenological concept being-in-the-world was restructed ontically as various ways of being-in-the-world, shortened in words but not meaning, as various ways of being. From an ontological interpretation of Dasein as being-in-the-world (fundamental ontology), to thinking about various lived experiences of Dasein as ontical while having the character of being-in-the-world (metontology), and applying this understanding to the multiplicity of different lived experiences by characterizing each as a certain way of being-in-the-world, some way of being. This is an example of phenomenological restruction, of fundamental ontology with metontology: understanding of the phenomenon of PhPhy informs understanding of the phenomenon of PhHSc. Heidegger employs the notion of dispersal (ontological dispersed ontically) to convey this ontic-ontological difference-coherence. With its facticity, the being-in-the-world of Dasein is already dispersed in definite ways of being-in, perhaps even split up. The multiplicity of these kinds of being-in can be indicated by the following examples: to have to do with something, to produce, order and take care of something, to use something, to give something up and let it get lost, to undertake, to accomplish, to find out, to ask about, to observe, to speak about, to determine. Heidegger, 1996, p. 53 Heidegger’s ontical ways of being-in-the-world are methodologically connected with ontological being-in-the-world. In this sense, each ontical way of beingin-the-world must be experienced via phenomenological reduction in order for its ontic-ontological character to be brought to awareness and understanding. In this connection, each ontical way of being-in-the-world is ontologically a “potentiality-for-being of Da-sein” (1996, p. 156), and “the potentiality-for-being for the sake of which Da-sein is, has itself the mode of being of being-in-the-world” (p. 181). Expressed in another way, each way of being is “being-a-possibility” (2005, p. 39). This phrasing—being-a-possibility—works well for individuating each possibility as a phenomenon of PhHSc, which in Quay’s (2015) analysis informed understanding of various ways of being described in interviews. For example, the lived experiences of school can be understood via “being-a-science-student,” “being-an-English-student,” and “being-a-PE-class-member,” among others; and the lived experiences of school camp can be understood via “being-a-sailor,” being-a-kayaker,” and “being-a-cooking-group-member.”

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These labels, conveying ontic-ontological understandings, can be considered as individual things interacting (thing experiencing) in PhHSc, with the awareness that their origin lies in environmental experiencing, requiring the phenomenological reduction and an understanding of PhPhy. Ontical ways of being are ontologically being-a-possibility analogous with being-in-the-world. Without this awareness, this research is not phenomenological, because it does not embrace the phenomenon. The researcher must express concepts so that the reader can experience them phenomenologically, in their self-showing. Mere textual acknowledgment which does not evoke the experiential move of reduction does not engage the reader with PhPhy, for the reader, too, must perform the reduction. Reduction and restruction work hand in hand to enable a PhHSc, one based in PhPhy.

Difference-coherence, not conflation Is it phenomenology? This question is being asked more fervently as researchers stake claims to the idea of phenomenology. Understanding is mired in confusions created by: (1) the methodological challenges of PhPhy, many of which emerged in the divergence of Heidegger’s work from Husserl’s (Hopkins, 1993; Sheehan, 1997) and (2) the associated challenges presented by the methodological connection between PhPhy and PhHSc, which have been exacerbated by confused interpretations of PhPhy made by many working with PhHSc, as recent debates have shown (Giorgi, 2011; Paley, 2017; Smith, 2010, 2018; van Manen, 2017a; Zahavi, 2019). These confusions are compounded by the challenges of reading and comprehending PhPhy. Even with significant support there is the added methodological challenge of having no universally agreed theory or neat recipe. These confusions seriously impact phenomenological approaches to research (Martinkova & Parry, 2011, 2013), including those investigating education. What is the phenomenon? This question is a more precise rendering of the issue. Heidegger’s awareness of the difference-coherence of phenomenon as self-showing and phenomenon as semblance offers the subtlety required to open methodological understanding of how the phenomenon spans PhPhy and PhHSc. This is the difference between the two meanings of phenomenon as two modes of experiencing the same phenomenon: original self-showing (PhPhy) and derived semblance (PhHSc). Heidegger refers to this difference-coherence as “the ontological difference”: “the difference between a being and being” (1982, p. 120). Importantly, this ontological difference is not difference only, rather “the ‘ontological difference’ is a passageway,” Heidegger (2012, p. 367) claims, an experiential passageway between two meanings of phenomenon, between two modes (Figure 4.1). This passageway is navigated experientially via phenomenological method, which opens the difference in both directions via reduction, deconstruction, and restruction. We have attempted to address the serious and subtle confusions within phenomenology by advocating for the broader notion of phenomenomethodology,

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informed by Heidegger’s PhPhy. Phenomenomethodology acknowledges research that focuses on both phenomenon as semblance and phenomenon as self-­ showing, and their methodological difference-coherence. This is ontic-­ ontological research, wherein phenomenomethodology locates PhPhy and PhHSc together, cohering but not conflating them. As Heidegger argues, “science is the explanation of beings” while “philosophy is the illumination of being” (2016, p. 184). Conflation, which ignores the ontological difference-coherence between the two meanings of phenomenon and thus between science and philosophy, is the bane of phenomenology. We hope an awareness of phenomenomethodology will support those engaging with PhHSc to better comprehend the phenomenon, and in this way strengthen the contributions of both PhHSc and PhPhy, to research focused on achieving better understandings of education.

References Carman, T. (1999). The body in Husserl and Merleau-Ponty. Philosophical Topics, 27(2), 205–226. Cibangu, S. K., & Hepworth, M. (2016). The uses of phenomenology and phenomenography: A critical review. Library & Information Science Research, 38(2), 148–160. Freeman, L. (2010). Metontology, moral particularism, and the “art of existing”: A dialogue between Heidegger, Aristotle, and Bernard Williams. Continental Philosophy Review, 43(4), 545–568. Giorgi, A. (2011). IPA and science: A response to Jonathan Smith. Journal of Phenomenological Psychology, 42(2), 195–216. Heidegger, M. (1967). What is a thing? (W. B. Barton Jr. & V. Deutsch, Trans.). Gateway Editions. Heidegger, M. (1968). What is called thinking? ( J. G. Gray, Trans.). Harper and Row. Heidegger, M. (1972). My way to phenomenology. In On time and being ( J. Stambaugh, Trans.) (pp. 74–82). Harper and Row. Heidegger, M. (1982). The basic problems of phenomenology (rev. ed.) (A. Hofstadter, Trans.). Indiana University Press. Heidegger, M. (1984). The metaphysical foundations of logic (M. Heim, Trans.). Indiana University Press. Heidegger, M. (1985). History of the concept of time: Prolegomena (T. Kisiel, Trans.). Indiana University Press. Heidegger, M. (1996). Being and time ( J. Stambaugh, Trans.). State University of New York Press. Heidegger, M. (2000). Towards the definition of philosophy (T. Sandler, Trans.). The Athlone Press. Heidegger, M. (2005). Introduction to phenomenological research (D. Dahlstrom, Trans.). Indiana University Press. Heidegger, M. (2012). Contributions to philosophy (of the event) (R. Rojcewicz & D. VallegaNeu, Trans.). Indiana University Press. Heidegger, M. (2016). Ponderings II-IV: Black notebooks 1931-1938 (R. Rojcewicz, Trans.). Indiana University Press. Hopkins, B. C. (1993). Intentionality in Husserl and Heidegger: The problem of the original method and phenomenon of phenomenology. Springer Science+Business Media.

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Jacobs, H. (2018). Husserl, Heidegger, and Merleau-Ponty on the world of experience. In D. Zahavi (Eds.), The Oxford handbook of the history of phenomenology (pp. 650–675). Oxford University Press. Martinkova, I., & Parry, J. (2011). An introduction to the phenomenological study of sport. Sport, Ethics and Philosophy, 5(3), 185–201. Martinkova, I., & Parry, J. (2013). Eichberg’s ‘phenomenology’ of sport: A phenomenal confusion. Sport, Ethics and Philosophy, 7(3), 331–341. Paley, J. (2017). Phenomenology as qualitative research: A critical analysis of meaning attribution. Routledge. Quay, J. (2013). Education, experience and existence: Engaging Dewey, Peirce and Heidegger. Routledge. Quay, J. (2015). Understanding life in school: From academic classroom to outdoor education. Palgrave Macmillan. Quay, J., Bleazby, J., Stolz, S. A., Toscano, M., & Webster, R. S. (2018). Locating theory in research: Opening a conversation. In J. Quay, J. Bleazby, S. A. Stolz, M. Toscano, & R. S. Webster (Eds.), Theory and philosophy in education research: Methodological dialogues (pp. 1–22). Routledge. Sheehan, T. (1997). Husserl and Heidegger: The making and unmaking of a relationship. In T. Sheehan and R. E. Palmer (Eds. & Trans.), Psychological and transcendental phenomenology and the confrontation with Heidegger (1927–1931). Springer Science and Business Media. Smith, J. A. (2010). Interpretative phenomenological analysis: A reply to Amedeo Giorgi. Existential Analysis, 21(2), 186–192. Smith, J. A. (2018). “Yes it is phenomenological”: A reply to Max van Manen’s critique of interpretative phenomenological analysis. Qualitative Health Research, 28(12), 1955–1958. Thomson, I. (2001). Heidegger on ontological education, or: How we become what we are. Inquiry, 44(3), 243–268. Thomson, I. (2016). Rethinking education after Heidegger: Teaching learning as ontological response-ability. Educational Philosophy and Theory, 48(8), 846–861. van Manen, M. (1997). Researching lived experience: Human science for an action sensitive pedagogy. The Althouse Press. van Manen, M. (2017a). But is it phenomenology? Qualitative Health Research, 27(6), 775–779. van Manen, M. (2017b). Phenomenology in its original sense. Qualitative Health Research, 27(6), 810–825. Zahavi, D. (2019). Getting it quite wrong: van Manen and Smith on phenomenology. Qualitative Health Research, 29(6), 900–907.

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5 THE CHALLENGES OF RESEARCHING LIVED EXPERIENCE IN EDUCATION Erika Goble UNIVERSITY OF ALBERTA, CANADA

Introduction: of the entwinement of education and phenomenology as a human science research methodology Phenomenology has long been associated with the field of education. As a form of human science research, rather than an exclusively philosophical practice, phenomenology originated in two disciplines: education and psychology. Although members of the “Utrecht School” were the first to practice phenomenology outside philosophy, it was Amadeo Giorgi (from psychology) and Max van Manen (from education) who articulated phenomenology as a qualitative methodology for their respective disciplines. Following the publication of their seminal texts—Psychology as a Human Science (Giorgi, 1970) and Researching Lived Experience (van Manen, 1990)—other scholars have adopted and refined their approaches, as well as developing variants of their own, including Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (Smith et al., 2009), Post-Intentional Phenomenology (Vagle, 2014), and Lifeworld Phenomenology (Dahlberg, 2006; Dalberg et al., 2008). Phenomenological research is now undertaken by scholars in many academic disciplines, but remains firmly linked to its two originary disciplines, each presenting its own difficulties and possibilities. In this chapter, I explore the challenges of researching lived experience in education. I identify challenges commonly encountered and examine the underlying reasons why these issues emerge in the educational context. I also consider the possibility that education, as a phenomenon, cannot be studied phenomenologically. I approach this discussion from the perspective of van Manen’s (2014) phenomenology of practice. By both training and temperament, I am a practitioner of this method. Therefore, while some of the challenges I discuss are common to all phenomenological approaches, a few are unique to the phenomenology of practice. Also in line with van Manen, I hold a continental understanding

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of education. Education, from this perspective, is more than the formal social institution of teaching youth. It encompasses the entirety of a child’s upbringing, both formal and informal. The phenomenology of practice was developed within this understanding of education and most educational scholars who employ the phenomenology of practice retain this perspective. Moreover, this perspective makes especially evident the underlying causes of the challenges phenomenologists of education encounter, whether or not they hold this view themselves.

The phenomenology of practice: an overview The phenomenology of practice, while being informed by phenomenological philosophy, engaging philosophical texts, and often generating philosophical insights, is a form of qualitative research that extends the focus of Husserl, Heidegger, and other phenomenological philosophers. The purpose of the phenomenology of practice is to reflect upon and develop insights into the pre-reflective meaning of human experience (van Manen, 2014). That is, its subject is the lived meaning of our experience as it occurs, before we theorize or conceptualize it, place it into a larger narrative of our life, or even think about it and put our experience into language (van Manen, 2017a). While Husserl (2019) believed that through the epoché and reduction, one could gain access to a universal givenness of phenomena and, thus, could serve as a first philosophy, following the work of Heidegger and subsequent scholars, phenomenologists have come to realize that how phenomena give themselves to us in the moment of being experienced (i.e., their living meaning) is also shaped by culture, history, age, and gender. As I tell students in my introduction to phenomenology workshops: “We are each historical, cultural, social, gendered, aged beings tied so closely to and through our world that our original experience of it cannot help but already be full of unique and varied meanings.” Importantly, phenomenology holds that our pre-reflective experience of the world is full of complex lived meaning. Rather than viewing human experience as an amorphous encounter that is subsequently “made sense of ” by an individual (i.e., given meaning after the fact), phenomenology posits that meaning already exists in our original experience; meaning that not only allows us to operate in the world but also shapes our experience in particular ways. For phenomenologists, it is these raw, meaningfully rich pre-reflective experiences that they seek in studying a given phenomenon—hence why we claim to research lived experience— and it is upon these experiences that they subsequently reflect in order to gain existential and ethical insights into human life. To prevent presumption of meaning, our reflections “must be thoughtful, and as much as possible, free from [our own] theoretical, prejudicial, and suppositional intoxications” (van Manen, 2007, p. 11). While Husserl believed that phenomenologists could bracket out all assumptions in order to allow phenomena to show themselves as they give themselves, contemporary practitioners recognize that it is impossible to hold all assumptions at bay. Instead, they “bracket-in” or “bridle” (Dahlberg, 2006),

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a reflexive practice whereby one identifies one’s assumptions in order to consider how they may be shaping one’s phenomenological reflections and prevent our interpretations from emerging too quickly or superficially. The goal of phenomenological reflection is to generate thoughtful, “pathic” texts (written or otherwise) that enable readerly insights or “in-seeing” (van Manen, 2007, p. 11). As Michael van Manen (2018) explains, phenomenological reflection “is an effortful questioning of experience, engaging with our own existent sensibilities, gaining an experiential grasp of being-in-the-world” (p. 3). The results of our studies are texts that do not explain, theorize, categorize, or summarize. They are merely and completely rich, evocative descriptions and interpretive explorations that evoke an embodied recognition and new awareness of the potential living meanings of the particular phenomenon in question.

The challenge of education Although education is one of the two disciplines where phenomenology first developed outside of philosophy, we must begin with a simple question: Is it even possible to do a phenomenological study of education? I ask this question in all seriousness. I ask it despite the work of Max van Manen (1991, 2002, 2015; van Manen & Levering, 1996), Catherine Adams (Adams, 2010; Adams & Turville, 2018; Yin et al., 2015), Tone Saevi (2011, 2014), Patrick Howard (Howard et al., in press), Mark Vagle (2009, 2014), and all the other educational phenomenologists. I ask it despite the writings on education and upbringing by phenomenological philosophers like Mollenhauer (1983), Arendt (1961), and Merleau-Ponty (2011), as well as the work of the Utrecht School. I ask it despite numerous articles reporting results of educational phenomenological and the thousands of graduate students in educational programs currently undertaking phenomenological dissertations and theses. I ask it despite my own work. I ask this question because it needs to be asked: Is a phenomenology of education possible? Can we study “education” phenomenologically? Or, is what we are doing a mere approximation? Might these studies, rather, be a series of phenomenological examinations of things in and around, or related to, the elements of education, but not direct and explicit phenomenological studies of education in themselves? To answer this question, we must first understand what we mean by “education.” Only then can we contemplate whether it is a possible subject for phenomenological study.

What is education? Like many terms, education initially appears self-evident. An education is what you “receive” when you go to school. It is the social institution that turns purportedly wild children into responsible adults, and it is the economic system in which teachers’ work produces future members of society. Worldwide, educational

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systems are divided into elementary, secondary, and post-secondary education. The first two are largely mandatory and the third optional. A “well educated person” has traditionally been someone who has spent many years learning subjects in depth. From the Continental perspective, education encompasses both formal and informal processes by which society prepares children and youth to become adults. Here, “education” is paired with “upbringing,” as the actions of teachers and parents are seen as complementary (see: Mollenhauer, 1983). Indeed, our commonly accepted definition of education reflects this multiplicity of understandings. According to the Oxford Dictionary, education (n.) is: 1. The process of receiving or giving systematic instruction, especially at a school or university 1.1. The theory and practice of teaching, 1.2. A body of knowledge acquired while being educated 1.3. Information about or training in a particular subject 2. An enlightening experience Lexico, 2019 Under this definition, education comprises both learners and teachers, often within a formal (and frequently physical) institution. It encompasses both how one teaches and how one learns, as well as what is conveyed or transmitted. And the experience of being educated is understood to change how one exists in the world. Education, both in theory and practice, appears to be a deeply existential phenomenon that changes our way of being in the world (Goble, in press). Since etymology can identify latent or hidden meanings, consider how the word is derived from the Latin educare, meaning “to train or mould,” and educere, “to draw out” (Lexico, 2019). Together, they show the integral dualities of education: the subject (child or student) and the one who shapes them (parent or teacher); and the acts of fostering existing but latent potential of an individual and of externally imposing and exerting control upon that individual. With this understanding, everything we associate with education— pedagogy, curriculum, instruction and assessment, schools, homework, teachers, students, grades, etc.—can be seen as elements (or component phenomena) of the larger phenomenon of education. Given this, can education be examined phenomenologically?

On the matter of scale and focus… Phenomenologists attempt to study phenomena as they are experienced in the moment of our living through them, even as we realize that we can never access truly primordial experience, but are always limited by our need to use language. This significantly differs from other qualitative methods, even though many describe their focus as being “lived experience.” For instance, the “lived experience” that narrative researchers gather are stories people tell about their  lives

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(see:  Clandinin,  2006), while in Interpretive Description, they are accounts, interpretations, and opinions (see: Lasiuk et al., 2013; Thorne et al., 1997). Even some grounded theory researchers claim to collect “lived experiences” (see: Protudjer et al., 2014). But all of these “lived experiences” differ from the subject of phenomenological studies. In phenomenology, researching lived experience means collecting and reflecting upon the pre-reflective human experience: the living moment uninterpreted. While phenomenologists can never directly access this moment due to our need for language, we are interested in getting as close as possible to the meanings that manifest in direct human experience. Understanding this “closeness” is central to determining if education can be studied phenomenologically. There appear to be two conditions for undertaking phenomenological studies. First, the experience under study must be directly experienced by a being (i.e., it is a potential human experience). Second, those experiences must be articulated in concrete descriptive accounts (i.e., instances of its manifestation can be put into language). Is this possible with the phenomenon of education? From the outset, we recognize that the question, What is the lived experience of education? is too broad for direct study. Faced with the question, “Tell me your experience of being educated?” an interviewee would flounder or offer general assessments of their experience (which is not what phenomenologists seek). Phenomenology only works with specific lived moments, but the phenomenon of education spans years involves multiple people and is made up of millions of specific lived moments. We must, therefore, narrow our focus. What of the elements identified above? When posed as a phenomenological question, What is the lived experience of “the process of receiving (or giving, in the case of teachers) systematic instruction?” remains too large and becomes theoretical. Similarly, the lived experience of “information about or training in a particular subject” becomes strangely conceptual. To ask, What is the lived experience of “the theory and practice of teaching”? is nonsensical—teaching theory and practice are not directly experienced, but are concepts imposed upon experience after the fact—as is the lived experience of “the body of knowledge acquired while being educated,” which bypasses the human altogether. Even the lived experience of education as an “enlightening experience” proves difficult. How we do define an “enlightening experience”? Is it the moment of enlightenment, or that which leads up to it, or how our new view changes how we experience the world? Or all of the above? The phenomenologist seeks the concrete: the enlightening experience of a kairos moment in teaching (van Manen, 2015) or the retroactive kairos moment for the student (Goble, in press). But even as we might study them, we also recognize that enlightening moments do not comprise the totality of the phenomenon of education. Perhaps, then, we ought to focus on who. The lived experience of teachers seems more direct, as one can ask a teacher to describe a moment of being a teacher. One can do the same with students. However, the being-ness of teachers and students remains too large for a single study: each can be one’s subject for an

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entire career (see van Manen for example). Further refinement is necessary. Yet when we narrow down our subject to something manageable, such as the lived experience of educational online discussion (Frieson, 2005), we discover that our study is no longer commensurate with the phenomenology of education. The latter, we begin to recognize, is much more than the little piece we are able to manage; there are important elements that we have inadvertently excluded. In our attempts to develop manageable phenomena to study, we cease to do phenomenologies of education. Or rather, our studies are so narrow as to only minimally directly contribute to a phenomenology of education.

Existential challenges for researching lived experience in education As the above discussion demonstrates, conducting a phenomenological study of education requires a narrow focus. But even with a reduced scope, challenges abound, for educational phenomena appears to resist the phenomenological method.

On the issue of relationality in education… Consider for instance, the pedagogical relation. It is an essential component of education. Whether occurring between parent and child or teacher and student, education cannot occur without the existence of a pedagogical relation. And it has been the subject of many studies (Foran & Robinson, 2017; Henriksson, 2012; Saevi, 2011; van Manen 1991, 2002, 2015; van Manen & Levering, 1996). One can study these relationships as lived directly? For instance, one can begin with a particular teacher–student encounter, such as when a teacher calls a student by name (van Manen et al., 2007). But the pedagogical relationship is much more than direct encounters. It is a relation that exerts its influence even when one party is not present. But how does one phenomenologically examine non-present moments? Some explore them when one is absent but present, such as an unborn child might be to a mother (Bergum, 1997). Or, they may be explored in moments of technological mediation (Adams, 2014; Adams et al., 2014; Frieson, 2005). Indeed, technological advances in education present unique challenges for understanding pedagogical relations. In her examination of online teaching, Adams (2014) describes how the experience of identifying others in an online class is both similar to and different from face-to-face classes. While initially there is no identification, it is quickly overcome through online engagement. In another study, however, Adams and colleagues explore how Massive Open Online Courses (courses with 10,000+ students and pre-recorded lectures) can generate an experience of an individualized “tutorial sphere” for the students, despite the instructor’s complete absence (Adams et al., 2014). This research questions a deep assumption we hold about education: that education necessarily involves a direct pedagogical relation. This work challenges us to consider whether a pedagogical relation can exist with teacher and learner

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occupying different times and spaces and never meeting? Such questions fundamentally challenge researchers and education at large.

Regarding aesthetics… As Adams’ (2014) studies of online education demonstrate educational moments tend to be lived in subtle, fleeting moments: on how one recognizes a student’s name online or how one identifies with the teacher in a video. Educationally rich moments tend to be very small—like a moment of eye contact with a student (Yin, 2013) or the tone a teacher takes with you (van Manen, 2002)—indeed, so small, that other qualitative approaches tend to overlook them. And yet, these small moments carry deep meaning—less in what specifically occurs than in how they feel—which can fundamentally shape our learning and educational experiences (see: Goble, 2017). Moreover, when phenomenologists of education adopt specific subjects to examine and begin to dive into their topics, they quickly discover their “specific topic” is, in fact, comprised of innumerable smaller moments, each deserving of study. Consider the first day of school. This phenomenon encompasses the first time we wake up anticipating (or dreading) going to school, the first time we enter the school building, the first time we hear the bell, the first time we enter the classroom, the first time we meet our teacher, the first time we are given an assignment, the first time we are called upon in class, the first time we try to play with a classmate, the first time we have a school lunch, the first time we are disciplined by the teacher for not putting up our hand, the first time we head to the bus, the first time we ride the bus home, the first time a parent asks us “How was school?”, the first time we realize that we’re going back the next day… All these specific moments and many more comprise “the first day of school,” and each can be broken down into smaller and smaller components, all of which deserve study of phenomenological study because all of them are important. There is infinite detail to phenomena. Detail of experience, it appears, is never exhausted. Rather than ever reaching a conclusion, one simply chooses when to stop digging.

And ethics… From a phenomenological perspective, questions of pedagogy, education, and upbringing are inherently ethical (van Manen, 2015). And yet, there is ample evidence of poor child-rearing practices and unethical, harmful behaviors undertaken by adults in the name of education. In Canada, for instance, we are struggling to understand and rectify the impacts of 150 years of harmful educational practices that we inflicted upon our Indigenous communities, practices that are markedly unethical and resulted in extensive abuse, death, trauma, and genocide. The unethical in education, however, is frequently excluded from phenomenological considerations because the unethical is contradictory to the pedagogical,

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which is the root of education. Pedagogical philosophy is marked by discussions of what is right and good in children’s upbringing; therefore, unethical action cannot be pedagogical and becomes suspect when posed as a topic. But more than simply being a questionable element of education, unethical phenomena are also difficult to study. Conducting qualitative research involves “emotional work” (Dickson-Swift et al., 2009; Gilbert, 2001), and the phenomenologist’s investment is great. One necessarily undertakes an in-depth exploration of one’s subject’s potential meanings, frequently living with the topic for months, if not years. To research subjects like “the lived experience of hate” is to delve into the existential nature of hate as manifest in the human world. As many phenomenologists will note, deep into a project, one increasingly sees throughout the world what one is studying. Therefore, if we study hate, we risk becoming hateful(l). Just as phenomenology is more easily undertaken with focused, concrete phenomena, so too, does it facilitate the consideration of ethical, positive phenomena.

On time and the latency of education… Any phenomenological study depends on the researcher’s obtaining concrete experiential data upon which to reflect. Data are often in the form of descriptive accounts collected in interviews or via written texts, but they can also be from previously published works (biographies, diaries, etc.), observations, or imagination (van Manen, 1997, 2014). While the range of potential sources for phenomenological data is a boon, they also present a challenge for educational subjects. As we have noted, important elements of education often appear small, subtle, and incidental. By their very nuance, these moments may pass unnoticed. Moreover, we face a deeper issue: while we can ask people to recall their first day of school or their favorite teacher, we cannot know if these moments are truly relevant to the phenomenon of education or are simply memorable. What is meaningful in one’s educational experience is not always evident in lived experience—this is true both immediately and after the fact. A teacher may not know how their stern look fundamentally shapes a child’s experience of being disciplined. Similarly, someone may not be able to recall the moment they learned mathematics, even though it may be of great import to the child’s adult life. Phenomenology is a study of lived moments and yet true learning can only be rarely tied to particular, memorable instances. More often, education manifests as an accumulation of non-memorable moments. To further complicate matters, there can be moments in a child’s life that initially seem incidental but, over time, come to take on greater educative meaning (Goble, 2017). And there are moments that can seem very important but which, as the child ages, lose their prominence. Phenomenology as a methodology requires that the lived moment be recalled—and yet much of what makes up education and fundamentally shapes us can rarely be remembered as originally experienced.

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There are, of course, highly memorable moments that stay with us. But more often than not, educational moments are quickly forgotten or pass unnoticed. Consider Adams’ (2008, 2010) study of PowerPoint. Many individuals in her study could recount instances when PowerPoint failed to work as planned, but few recalled moments when it operated seamlessly in their teaching. Undoubtedly, the moments where the PowerPoint worked played a far more important role in the education occurring in the classroom, yet neither teacher not student recalled them. In all of these instances, what challenges phenomenologists of education is that education, as a phenomenon, can be only known after the fact. Despite teacher and students each engaging in innumerable educational activities, being educated can only be determined after it has occurred. While we can create the conditions to enable education’s occurrence—empathic teachers, an appropriate curriculum, a group of learning peers, and adequate social supports—one cannot mandate the moment of learning. The results of our actions are largely unknown. We might even say that the event (Marion, 2002) of education is not given during its tenure— the time of education—only evidenced after the fact; and even then, it is impossible to attribute to it any particular set of moments during its occurrence.

On the challenge of language… To phenomenologically study education, then, becomes a study of potential, but not assured, educational moments. We study moments that comprise “education,” for which we can only guess their import. But even if we accept this fundamental limitation and even if we find particular moments that can be readily recalled, we then face the difficulty of putting the experience into language. More than merely telling us what happened in a given moment, participants must articulate their experience as it was lived pre-reflectively. As anyone who has attempted it will attest, recalling an event without slipping into interpretation, explanation, or theorization is difficult. To put into language is to interpret; we are therefore asking our participants to offer an interpretation that is as close to being uninterpreted as possible. This is the paradox of phenomenology: we make sense of our world using the interpreting and simplifying lens of language, but also try to return to the messy immediate experience of existence via language. Phenomenological descriptions (both of participants and of the researcher) must therefore reveal—or at least point to—that which its language hides. Phenomenologists employ various techniques to draw out the complexity of participants’ lived experience. This can include having participants recount an incident multiple times. It can involve combining interview with written description and even art. It may even involve having the participant engage in a hermeneutic conversation. That which is collected is often messy and inchoate but full of potential. And while phenomenologists often heavily edit their transcripts to remove theorization and generalizations and weave back accounts together in anecdotes offering a semblance of the lived experience, they are always aware of

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the challenge of language, not in the least because phenomenological research is, at root, phenomenological writing (van Manen, 1997, 2014). To write is to bring to life. Not only must phenomenologists compile the descriptive accounts and generate insightful reflective texts but their texts must also linguistically embody their phenomenon (van Manen, 2014).

Especially with children… Beyond the basic challenge of needing participants to recount pre-reflective experience and embodying that phenomenon in language, phenomenologists of education face another challenge: many of their subjects are children. They must either wait until the student is of age and can recall their experience or attempt to collect experiential data from children. As has already been noted, retroactive collection risks the meaning of the phenomenon changing over time. Immediate collection, however, presents the challenge of obtaining from children a type of description that is not easily explained. While these challenges can be overcome, it does require phenomenological researchers to identify alternative, child-sensitive data collection methods (Kirova-Petrova, 2000; Kirova & Emme, 2006). There are some participants, however, who are simply too young to be engaged in participative research, no matter how inventive one’s conversational approach. Consider Michael van Manen’s (2018) Phenomenology of the Newborn, a study that attempts to understand the lifeworld of the newly born. Both too young to speak and a phase of life no one remembers, van Manen describes his approach as “constative reflecting, uncovering plausible truths, against a constant background of unknowing and wonder” (p. xi) drawing heavily on observations and accounts from parents and healthcare professionals.

On the unseen materiality of educational phenomena… The challenges faced by phenomenologist of education thus far have largely appeared to be relational, temporal, and linguistic in nature. However, they are also material challenges. Adams’ study of PowerPoint, for instance, reveals far more than merely that educative moments can go unnoticed by students and teachers. It also demonstrates the importance of materiality in education: education is not possible without our teaching tools, even when these go unseen and unrecognized. Too frequently, the things of the educational world are overlooked in favor of emotional responses and perceptual changes. Whether in observation or account, the phenomenologist is challenged to recognize the materiality of the educational world and how each item transforms our experience: how the pen becomes an extension of the arm, or the Learning Management System an extension of the classroom. Some scholars, particularly phenomenologists of technology (Harman, 2011; Ihde, 1990), provide frameworks to guide reflections on the meaning of human–thing interactions, but before they can be employed, the things of the world must first be noticed.

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And the educated body… Much like educational phenomena’s materiality, education’s corporeal nature is frequently overlooked—despite the fact that education is, at root, an embodied experience. As I write this chapter, I reflect on typing, a skill I learned in school. Ihde (1990) describes how technology extends our physical bodies: the keyboard enables my writing and my connection to the online world. But typing is also embodied knowledge: if I think too hard about it, I can no longer do it with the facility, ease, and lived meaning it normally has in my life. Thinking of its mechanics, I cannot do it and I can no longer engage in the online chat. Like materiality, corporeality is often only noticed when it is impaired. Yet, genuine learning is often embodied and, as embodied, is largely indescribable. Traditional phenomenological methods have difficulty accounting for it. To address this gap, Lloyd and Smith (2019) have developed a phenomenological approach that attempts to capture—through the researchers themselves learning specific physical practices—the embodied elements of different phenomena. And yet, this is only possible with phenomena that are not yet known and embodied by the researchers. But many of educational embodied phenomena are already known by researchers, thereby precluding this approach. While we may easily recall our struggles to learn how to do something, articulating embodied knowing is much more difficult. Indeed, its enmeshment in our lives is an integral part of its living meaning. In bringing its implicitness forward, we risk losing its originary meaning and applying spurious or superficial meanings in its place.

On the space of education… Much like engaging with the giveness of the corporeality of education, phenomenologists of education are challenged by simply trying to identify where education takes place. Education, broadly speaking, refers to a social practice that is timebound. But, it is also largely located. Schools are the primary space of education, but by no means are they exclusive. Educational phenomena can also occur in the home, on school grounds, the bus, and elsewhere. For phenomenologists, our challenge is not only to identify where education occurs but also to articulate how those spaces change as particular educational phenomena manifest. For instance, the living room may become an extension of the classroom when schooling goes online. We may also consider how the students, themselves, are shaped by their education spaces. In the current moment of isolation due to a global pandemic and students learn from home, how do they experience being global citizens?

The challenge of “doing phenomenology in education” is the challenge of doing phenomenology Thus far, the challenges explored have been couched in the difficulties that emerge when undertaking phenomenological studies of education. But many of the identified challenges are also due to the methodology, itself. The following

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outlines the most common challenges of doing any phenomenological study. While many are re-articulations of issues addressed previously, a few are new. First, researching lived experience is challenging because developing a good phenomenological question is hard. Not only must one find a “workable” phenomenon to study, one must have an abiding concern about it (van Manen, 2014) in order to generate the investment and in-depth understanding necessary for the project to generate meaningful insights. In addition, phenomenology’s subject is pre-reflective lived experience—experience as it lived through before we think about it—but we can only gain access to that experience after it has happened. We are always working retroactively and bound by the limits of language, both in terms of the articulation of lived experience and the generation of our phenomenological texts. But language can never fully capture experience and phenomena as lived eschew articulation. Researching lived experience contains multitudes (to quote Walt Whitman). Our participants’ retroactive descriptions of experience, no matter how in-depth, will always be insufficient in capturing their true complexity and living meaning. Similarly, the meaning we discover through our phenomenological reflections and the insights we generate will only ever be a pale shadow of the phenomenon’s true depth. A phenomenological study of any subject, therefore, is never complete. We simply stop working on it. While a phenomenological study will never be exhausted, researchers are further challenged by their impatience for discoveries. It is difficult to spend the time necessary with a phenomenon to move beyond superficial analysis into genuine reflection. Too many studies end early and too few phenomenologists understand the depths of the reflections they ought to generate. Similarly, too few phenomenologists (outside of the field of philosophy) engage with philosophical phenomenological texts, resulting in a loss of potential depth of understanding. Additionally, the requirements of what constitutes “good phenomenological data” are rigorous and we frequently collect unusable data. Unfortunately, contemporary phenomenologists, like all qualitative researchers, tend to fetishize the research interview. By doing so, we not only fail to access other potential sources of lived experience, we also want to keep interview data that is decidedly non-phenomenological (i.e., it is descriptively weak, full of theories, and/or offers only generalizations) simply because “our participants shared them.” Using this type of data results in poor studies and weak phenomenological texts. Phenomenological researchers are also challenged by the fact that there is no prescribed approach to doing phenomenology. While there are many different ways to collect data and begin analysis, each new study must discover its own way of coming to understanding. Van Manen likens it to “writing in the dark” (2005). And even when we do find an approach that works for our unique phenomenon, we then discover that phenomenological analysis is ultimately and only ever a matter of writing. We may prepare, but until one begins to write, one is not doing phenomenology. In doing phenomenology, one must write and repeatedly re-write one’s texts, always working toward insight and clarity. But this re-writing takes time, patience, and exploration, and many researchers lose

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patience before reaching the depth of phenomenological insight that would enable readers’ embodied pathic response. Time and patience are essential in phenomenology, and not just for one’s writing. Phenomenology is a philosophy, a research methodology, a practice, and a way of being. One cannot learn it quickly—indeed, many phenomenologists claim to be continuously learning it—nor readily shift into its mindset. Becoming phenomenologically ready, much less doing phenomenology requires dedicated time and a consistent commitment, which challenges many contemporary academics who have multiple competing priorities on any given day. Finally, phenomenologists, like all researchers, experience the demand for expediency, practicality, and applicability of research results. Phenomenological studies, however, only produce phenomenological texts, not guidance, advice, “how-to’s,” or even implications for practice. Therefore, those undertaking phenomenological studies must remain firm against the urge to directly apply our work, especially in education. As van Manen (2017b) urges, we must always ask (of our studies, our intentions, and our orientations) “But is it phenomenology?” This entreaty is not for phenomenology to remain unchanged and unchallenged, but is an urgent appeal for us to recognize the value of what phenomenology does brings to our understanding of educational phenomena and, by extension, to education itself: that education and all that comprises it—small and large, remembered and forgotten—is only and utterly a matter of becoming human and human becoming.

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Dalberg, K., Dalhberg, H., Nystrom, M., & Drew, N. (2008). Reflexive lifeworld research. Studentlitteratur. ISBN: 978-91-44-04925-0. Dickson-Swift, V., James, E. L., Kippen, S., & Liamputtong, P. (2009). Researching sensitive topics: Qualitative research as emotion work. Qualitative Health Research, 9(1), 61–79. doi: https://doi.org/10.1177/1468794108098031. Foran, A., & Robinson, D. B. (2017). Mollenhauer’s representation: The role of preservice teachers in the practices of upbringing. In Education, 23(2), 3–24. Retrieved from https://ineducation.ca/ineducation/article/view/354/944. Frieson, N. (2005). Is there a body in this class? In M. van Manen’s (Ed.), Writing in the dark: Phenomenological studies in interpretive inquiry (pp. 223–236). Althouse Press. Gilbert, K. R. (2001). The emotional nature of qualitative research. CRC Press. Giorgi, A. (1970). Psychology as a human science. Harper & Row. Goble, E. (2017). Visual phenomenology: Encountering the sublime through art. Routledge. Goble, E. (in press). Chapter 14: The lived time of education. In P. Howard, T. Saevi, A. Foran, & G. Biesta’s (Eds.), Phenomenology and educational theory in conversation: Back to education itself. Taylor & Francis. Harman, G. (2011). The quadruple object. Zero Books. Henriksson, C. (2012). Hermeneutic phenomenology and pedagogical practice. In N. Friesen’s, et al. (Eds.), Hermeneutic phenomenology in education (pp. 119–137). Sense Publishers. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-6091-834-6_7. Howard, P., Saevi, T., Foran, A., & Biesta, G. (in press). Phenomenology and educational theory in conversation: Back to education itself. Taylor & Francis. Husserl, E. (2019). First philosophy: Lectures 1923/24 and related texts from the manuscripts (1920-1925) (S. Luft & T.M. Naberhaus, Eds). Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/ 978-94-024-1597-1 Ihde, D. (1990). Technology and the lifeworld: From garden to earth. Indiana University Press. Kirova, A., & Emme, M. (2006). Using photography as a means of phenomenological seeing: “doing phenomenology” with immigrant children. Indo-Pacific Journal of Phenomenology, 6(1), 1–12. doi: https://doi.org/10.1080/20797222.2006.11433934. Kirova-Petrova, A. (2000). Researching young children’s lived experiences of loneliness: Pedagogical implications for linguistically diverse students. Alberta Journal of Educational Research, 2(Summer), 99–116. doi: https://doi.org/10.1177/1525822X02239572. Lasiuk, G., Comeau, T., & Newburn-Cook, C. (2013). Unexpected: An interpretive description of parental traumas’ associated with preterm birth. BMC Pregnancy and Childbirth, 13(Suppl 1). Retrieved from https://link.springer.com/article/10.1186/ 1471-2393-13-S1-S13. Lexico. (2019). ‘Education.’ Oxford dictionaries. Retrieved from https://www.lexico.com/ en/definition/education. Lloyd, R., & Smith, S. (2019). The interactive life project. Retrieved from http:// function2flow.ca/. Marion, J. (2002). In excess: Studies in saturated phenomena (R. Horner & V. Berraud, Trans.). Fordham University Press. Merleau-Ponty., M. (2011). Child psychology and pedagogy: The Sorbonne lectures 1946-1952 (T. Welsh, Trans.). Northwestern University Press. Mollenhauer, M. (1983/2013). Forgotten connections: On culture and upbringing (N. Friesen, Trans.). Routledge. Protudjer, J. L., Dumontet, J., & McGavock, J. M. (2014). My voice: A grounded theory analysis of the lived experience of type 2 diabetes in adolescence. Canadian Journal of Diabetes, 38(3), 229–236. doi: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jcjd.2014.05.008.

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Saevi, T. (2011). Lived relationality as the fulcrum of pedagogical-ethical practice. Studies in Philosophy and Education, 30(5), 455–461. doi: https://doi.org/10.1007/ s11217-011-9244-9. Saevi, T. (2014). Phenomenology in educational research. Oxford bibliographies. Retrieved from https://www.oxfordbibliographies.com/view/document/obo-9780199756810/ obo-9780199756810-0042.xml. Smith, J. A., & Flowers, P., & Larkin M. (2009). Interpretative phenomenological analysis: Theory, method, and research. London. Thorne, S., Kirkham, S. R., & MacDonald-Emes, J. (1997). Interpretive description: A noncategorial qualitative alternative for developing nursing knowledge. Research in Nursing & Health, 20, 169–177. doi: https://doi.org/10.1002/(SICI)1098-240X(199704)20: 2≤169::AID-NUR9≥3.0.CO;2-I. Vagle, M. (2009). Locating and exploring teacher perception in the reflective thinking process. Teachers and Teaching, 15(5), 579–599. doi: https://doi.org/10.1080/ 13540600903139597. Vagle, M. D. (2014). Crafting phenomenological research. Left Coast Press. van Manen, M. (1990). Researching lived experience: Human science for an action sensitive pedagogy. Althouse Press. van Manen, M. (1991). The tact of teaching: The meaning of pedagogical thoughtfulness. Althouse Press. van Manen, M. (2002). The tone of teaching: The language of pedagogy. Althouse Press. van Manen, M. (2005). Writing in the dark. In van Manen’s (Ed.) Writing in the dark: Phenomenological studies in interpretive inquiry (pp. 237–251). Althouse Press. van Manen, M. (2007). Phenomenology of practice. Phenomenology & Practice, 1(1), 11–30. van Manen, M. (2014). Phenomenology of practice: Meaning-giving methods in phenomenological research and writing. Left Coast Press. van Manen, M. (2015). Pedagogical tact: Knowing what to do when you don’t know what to do. Routledge. van Manen, M. (2017a). Phenomenology in its original sense. Qualitative Health Research, 27(6), 810–825. doi: https://doi.org/10.1177/104973231769938. van Manen, M. (2017b). But is it phenomenology? Qualitative Health Research, 27(6), 775–779. doi: https://doi.org/10.1177/1049732317699570. van Manen, M., & Levering, B. (1996). Childhood’s secrets: Intimacy, privacy, and the self reconsidered. Teachers College Press. van Manen, M., McCleland, J., & Plihal, J. (2007). Naming student experiences and experiencing student naming. In D. Thiessen & A. Cook-Sather’s (Eds.), International handbook of student experience in elementary and secondary school (pp. 85–98). Springer Publishing Company. van Manen, M. A. (2018). The phenomenology of the newborn. Routledge. Yin, Y. (2013). Contact with my teacher’s eyes. Phenomenology & Practice, 7(1), 69–81. Yin, Y., Adams, C., Goble, E., & Vargas Madriz, F. L. (2015). A classroom at home: Children and the lived world of MOOCs. Educational Media International, 52(2), 88–99. doi: https://doi.org/10.1080/09523987.2015.1053287.

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SECTION 2

Introduction to section 2: Issues and contexts Kelly Carabott and Damien Lyons MONASH UNIVERSITY, AUSTRALIA

In Section 1, we found ourselves immersed in an exploration of theoretical and philosophical phenomenological thinking which prompted us to mull over the complexities of phenomenological philosophy. This section builds on these insights through exploring how the diverse philosophical threads of phenomenology can be tangled to shape deep and evocative explorations of experiences as they are lived. Vagle’s (2018, p. 67) idea of the phenomenological craftsperson have been drawn on to show the ways that similar and diverse threads that can be interlaced. Each of the six chapters gives insight into how phenomenological strands can be intertwined to create a distinctive methodological fabric that can be applied to educational research. Our authors invite you, as the reader, to peak behind the fabric, to think about their crafting, to observe the ways that phenomenology have opened up alternative spaces for them to gather human experiences and to describe and interpret the pre-reflective experiences that are core to phenomenological methods. Thus, the weaving and fashioning of each phenomenological fabric is not uniform, rather they have meandering threads and different textures that has been shaped through the gnarliness of life. It is through this tailoring of the fabric that allows our authors to reflect on different research questions, acknowledge alternate contexts and embrace the multiple ways in which a phenomenon might be explored. Education as a field is multifarious, and thus a phenomenological fabric embraces the complex interweaving of subjective and humanistic experiences. In these chapters, our writers tackle some of the leading issues in education: power, teacher accountability, digital technology, creativity, music education and the impacts of gender constructs. It is through the exquisite entanglements of these issues and phenomenology that allows for heterogeneous ways of thinking about and understanding complex educational issues.

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84  Kelly Carabott, Damien Lyons

Karin Greenhead weaves phenomenological threads of time, space and energy to examine her student’s perceptions of an embodied music learning and teaching approach known as Dalcroze Eurhythmics. In her chapter ‘The best fit: methodology, methods, process and outcomes – a teacher investigates her own practice’, Karin intertwines hermeneutic phenomenology with her own ‘insider’ knowledge as a music scholar and teacher. Karin argues that an understanding of the complexity of the experiences of her participants is achieved through the blending of her roles as researcher and teacher. Through this indwelling Karin explores the experiences of both her students and herself as an educator. In ‘Unexplored terrain: the valley between creativity and creative practice’, Megan Workmon Larsen, Danah Henriksen and Rohit Mehta, shape their phenomenological fabric to explore how creatives experience their craft. Readers of this chapter are taken on a meandering journey of creativity as lived by ‘creatives’. Through a tangling of hermeneutical phenomenology, history and the present, a space for the interpretation of creativity is opened which allows for a beautiful entwining of shared experiences. Damien Lyons and Kelly Carabott in their chapter, ‘Australian educational leader’s lived experiences of power within literacy education’, entangle the methodological orientation of hermeneutic phenomenology, with the ideas of Foucault, to explore how notions of power are situated and intertwined in the lived experiences of educational leaders. In this chapter Damien and Kelly argue that power is relational, and that the application of a phenomenological lens allows for an incisive interpretative account of relational power. As our fabric continues to grow and be shaped by our writers, Alex Kostogriz highlights how neo-liberal discourses have shaped conversations about teacher accountability and responsibility. Alex argues that the practice of external accountability results in negative experiences for beginning teachers. In his chapter, ‘Towards a phenomenology of teacher responsibility’, Alex deconstructs the idea of accountability and his dexterous weaving using a hermeneutic phenomenological perspective, creates a multidimensional cloth woven from the experiences of beginning teachers. In ‘Making meaning through lived technological experiences’, Sebnem Cilesiz explores the complex entwining of techno-human relationships and argues that a phenomenological lens can be applied to these relationships to provide valuable insights that allow alternative dialogues surrounding educational technology. Sebnem expertly weaves the experiences of her participants, and the resultant fabric is an example of what an empirical application of phenomenology looks like in the context of lived experiences with technology. She illuminates the threads that can be taken up for those who wish to find a way forward in this field. In her chapter, ‘Using phenomenology to understand and respond to gender inequality in higher education’, Lori Jarmon adds further details to our intricate fabric. She argues that phenomenologists are well positioned to provide valuable insights into the experiences of gender inequity. This experience of gender is

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Issues and contexts 85

contextualised in higher education and addresses the success of women in that domain. Using understandings gained through asking ‘why’ and ‘how’ gender disparities exist and how these are experienced, Lori provides a nuanced way of exploring this complex space and give many insights into the subjective experiences of women. The authors whose work constitutes this section encapsulate the complexities, the interweaving and the crafting of how educational researchers are using the philosophical foundations of phenomenology and applying them methodologically. This breadth of phenomenology as method and methodology captures some of the debates about what constitutes educational phenomenological research. Crafting a methodological approach involves pulling, weaving and threading contrasting colours and textures to create a unique phenomenological fabric that has diverse colours and textures, and it is through this unique fabric of approaches that the complex phenomenon of experiences in education can be explored. Each malleable phenomenological fabric can be woven so that educational research embraces experiences as they are lived, in particular contexts, and at particular times.

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6 THE BEST FIT Methodology, methods, process and outcomes – a teacher investigates her own practice Karin Greenhead ROYAL NORTHERN COLLEGE OF MUSIC, UK

Introduction Dalcroze eurhythmics (DE) is a music education in and through full body movement created by Émile Jaques-Dalcroze (1865–1950). It has a wide range of applications that has attracted increasing interest from educationalists, therapists and researchers in music education, dance, theatre and performance studies, early years, special educational needs and therapies, historical studies and neuroscience (Mathieu, 2017). It is a method of three, inter-related parts: group lessons in aural training, full-body movement (rhythmics) and improvisation (CIJD, 2019; Greenhead, 2019) (see Figure 6.1) that is able to address the educational and therapeutic, movement, musical, artistic, personal and social needs of children, students and adults today (del Bianco et al., 2017; Greenhead et al., 2016). As an experienced Dalcroze practitioner, I was interested in looking into the practice of DE. Many students reported having transformative experiences in their lessons, and I decided to investigate these in order to uncover what happens for them in these sessions while hoping to understand more about my own teaching. I was aware of the difficulty of writing about a practice that is known and transmitted through bodily sensory and kinaesthetic experience. This chapter looks at the process of choosing and shaping a methodology and methods to respond to my aims and questions and the research outcomes. The principal focus of my enquiry was dynamic rehearsal (DR) – a performance application I developed out of my DE practice. The following brief introduction to DE and DR is offered to help readers follow my research process. Owing to the inherent flexibility of its application, DE is sometimes referred to as an approach ( Juntunen, 2004) or process (Bachmann, 1991) rather than a method, although it stands on clear principles and its practice entails both traditional and emergent or evolving ways of teaching and learning (CIJD, 2019) it.

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88  Karin Greenhead

Dalcroze Eurhythmics: 3 in 1 Rhythmics

Dalcroze Eurhythmics Aural Training (Solfège/ Solfa)

Improvisation

Theory

Plastique Animée

Principles

Applications

Teaching Performing Therapy Original work FIGURE 6.1  This figure from the thesis shows the tripartite nature of DE, the supporting theories and principles (derived from the practice) and its applications1

I have taught DE, nationally and internationally, to a wide range of children and adults, musicians and dancers for many years, but most of my work has been in the education and training of musicians, conservatoire students and teachers of DE. To help students with musical communication and interpretation, I created a performance application of DE called DR by its students (Greenhead, 2016, 2017, 2019).

Dynamic rehearsal DR is an iterative process that I developed experimentally during which students perform a piece of repertoire in the traditional way followed by a performance standing on a rebounder (mini-trampoline) or sitting on a ball placed on a low stool. This change, correctly carried out, usually produces significant changes in resonance and tone colour and often additional changes to pulse or phrase shape (Greenhead, 2017, 2019). Performers are then asked to recall the piece in imagination: what it sounds or is intended to sound like with its motional and dynamic qualities and to show these in silent movement using a rhythmics gymnastics (RG) ball in place of the instrument. Performers must decide and show how and where the piece begins in the space relative to an audience, to change direction for every phrase, to bounce the ball at every moment of

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arrival to travel faster whenever the music becomes more intense and eventually to explore how the music deploys itself in space relative to the audience (such as approaching, withdrawing). Following these movement clarifications of how and where the music moves, the music is performed again on the trampoline/ball with the performer’s focus now on showing what the ball does and what it feels like to bounce, to change direction, to gain intensity or to approach the audience. The ball is the music and the performer shows how it moves. The process shown in Figure 6.2 is designed to help students engage with and communicate their own inner heard and felt sense of musical motion. A second phase involves attending more deeply to the score and asking more detailed questions (Greenhead, 2017, 2019). Although I was curious about students’ reports of transformative or epiphanic experiences during or following their DR sessions, there was very little time for discussion since my DR teaching always took place on short and intensive courses and I did not see the students when the course was over. Some of them published articles or wrote theses on my work, but it was not until an opportunity for doctoral research arose that I thought of researching my own practice. In undertaking such research, I had to address not only the benefits but the potential difficulties of being both teacher and researcher for the study.

Insider information leads to different questions The person living in a particular environment is “engaged in a dialogue with the things of his world which allows him to see things in a manner which we could not possibly share” (van Manen, 1990, p. 116). A conservatoire or a professional practice could be considered such an environment and the pianist Patricia Holmes acknowledged the advantage of insider knowledge of issues involved with solo performance generally in her study of an elite guitarist (Holmes, 2011). The anecdotes of practitioners offer potentially rich sources of information about a world hidden by nature from theorists and those who do not share the practice. For van Manen the anecdote does not merely illustrate: it can serve as a methodological device “for making comprehensible the phenomenon of the conversational relation which every human being maintains with his or her world… to make comprehensible some notion that easily eludes us” (van Manen, 1990, p. 116, emphasis original). While insider knowledge presented distinct advantages in my research, particular issues arose in the investigation of my own practice. I created DR and have taught DE and DR very widely. In the relatively small Dalcroze world, I have had an international reputation for my work for many years. It was possible that I might consciously or unconsciously seek, or be thought to seek, favourable outcomes of my enquiry or that participants might feel a need to please me as their teacher or as someone with a certain reputation. These considerations were, in part, responsible for my eventual choice of a hermeneutic phenomenological approach to my research as I considered the phenomenological reduction and epoché essential tools in monitoring any attempt to push the interviews or the

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90  Karin Greenhead

Preparatory rhythmics Perform repertoire in the conventional position (P1) Perform repertoire standing on the trampoline (P2) Rehearse inner hearing of repertoire in movement (RiM1) Perform repertoire reliving movement sensation (P3) Revise movement interpretation (RiM2) Perform revised movement interpretation (P4)

Consult score Perform revised and clarified movement interpretation (P5) Rehearse clarified inner hearing of repertoire in movement /on trampoline in imagined movement (RiM3/ P6) Perform repertoire in the conventional position reliving sensation of trampoline and performing repertoire in movement (P7)

FIGURE 6.2 

The DR process as shown in the thesis

data collected in unwarranted directions or in such a way as to subvert the aims of my enquiry. As far as the participants were concerned, it was unlikely that they would be aware of my reputation in that profession. Conservatoire students are concerned with their first study, instrumental and vocal teachers (Gaunt, 2010; Kenny, 2011; Kingsbury, 1988) who may be well-known performers able to help

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them gain entry into the profession: they do not usually consider those who teach musicianship or children’s classes as people they need to impress.

From teacher to researcher As an experienced teacher of DE, I had often been consulted by researchers and noticed that those without insider knowledge of the subject did not ask the kinds of questions I thought most relevant or interesting and, feeling there was a lot more to discover, I decided to research my own practice myself. I limited my investigations to DR and its preparation in DE. At the time I began contacting former students, I heard from a pianist I had worked with 10 years earlier. He wrote to ask if I would coach him and a singer in preparation for his final recital for a Masters in Accompaniment thus providing one real-time study in addition to the historical ones. Ultimately, I had nine interviewees covering the professional lifespan from 19 to 67. They comprised a singer, a guitarist, violinist, cellist, viola player, two pianists and two flautists: six women and three men from England, Scotland, Jersey, the Netherlands, Hong Kong, mainland China and the USA. My research questions were as follows: 1. What kinds of experiences did participants have in (a) DR and (b) DE; what did they feel about these experiences and what did they mean to them? 2. What have participants done with their experiences in DR and DE? 3. What insights can I gain into DE and DR and into my own teaching as a result of studying their accounts?

Methodology and methods My practice foregrounds knowing through experience and in action for both the student and the teacher. The tacit knowledge acquired pre-reflectively through bodily experience can be acted upon directly without reflection and also raised to conscious awareness and reflection (Polanyi, 1958/1962; Polanyi & Prosch, 1975/1977). Following this line of thinking, it is less by looking at my practice than through my double indwelling in the practice of research and the practice of teaching, that the possibility of a unique, multi-perspectival contribution to knowledge could be made. Further, an insider view, applied to teasing out the complex texture of multimodal experiences through a heuristic phenomenological investigation (Moustakas, 1990), may be found interesting and useful to others when it also encompasses an attempt to theorise about and understand the meaning of such experiences (Polanyi, 1958/1962, 1966/2009) as “Man is in the world and only in the world does he know himself ” (Merleau-Ponty, 1962, p. xi). The world only becomes meaningful for us through our consciousness of it and since consciousness relies on experience, our sense of meaning is registered experientially. MerleauPonty’s insights regarding experience, meaning and knowledge of the world and of oneself were all to be supported in the accounts given by the nine interviewees.

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92  Karin Greenhead

Practice as research I had long felt that my own situated practice, like most experienced and effective teachers I knew, was research-like because good teachers do much of what research requires. They engage in dialogue with the students, responding to what they do; they develop their practice, reflecting on and interrogating it, seeking and finding alternative or better solutions or ways of teaching. They revisit traditional resources, look at what other teachers do and test their ideas in action on the ground: “The skilful practitioner naturally engages in research-like activities” (Greenhead, 2019, pp. 82–83). In the case of DE, the method itself requires this since there is no set curriculum and each teacher must develop their own curriculum according to the teaching situation (CIJD, 2019). Practice-as-research and practice-led research have become increasingly popular methodologies for revealing practice or praxis, and occasionally sources of contention (Barrett & Bolt, 2007; Freeman, 2010; Smith & Dean, 2009). However, not all practices are research, and Nelson (2013) lists the adjustments required to move from practitioner to practitioner-researcher. These include specifying a research inquiry, collecting data, documenting the process, capturing moments of insight, locating the praxis in a lineage of similar practices and relating the inquiry to wider contemporary debate. Langdridge (2007) points out that approaches to phenomenology emphasising description are often set against an interpretative approach. These approaches could be seen as complementary if description brings phenomena to light and interpretation aids the researcher in moving beyond the data to the kind of understanding I seek (Langdridge, 2007). The understanding of the nature of things, events and their meanings often requires the recognition of dynamic complementarity between apparent opposites rather than, or in addition to, a polarised division into either/or (Sheets-Johnstone, 2016). My research project, as a whole and in its parts, relies on dynamically complementary relationships – indeed the name given to my rehearsal methods is precisely “Dynamic Rehearsal” – and my approach used both description and interpretation as is proper to a hermeneutic study (van Manen, 1990). Most of the decisions about my research aims, questions and methods (interview and fieldnotes) had been made before I had settled on the details of my phenomenological approach. Van Manen’s ideas about pedagogy and research in education by educators attracted me (van Manen, 1990) for its emphasis on “practical acting in concrete situations and relations” (p. 2), the notion of apprenticeship and the aim of “explicating the meanings of human phenomena” (p. 4). I connected with his notion of human science research as “a caring act” (p. 5). Van Manen’s assertion that “practice (or life) always comes first and theory comes later as a result of reflection” (p. 15) chimed with the ideas of Jaques-Dalcroze whose method is based on the principle that: “theory should follow practice” ( Jaques-Dalcroze, 1921/1967, p. 63, emphasis original).

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Coming from a background in practical work it has always seemed obvious to me that theory should follow practice and that a dialogue should develop between them in order to refine theory through the insights gained from experience on the ground, in vivo and in situ where all practice and theory is ultimately known and tested. (Greenhead, 2019, p. 85) Learning in DE begins with tuning in to bodily experience and the pre-reflective response to music before reflection, revision and analysis and DR, also begins with performers enacting the music heard and felt in imagination before entering into any discursive thought process (Greenhead, 2019). The content of the lifeworld: “lived time, lived space, lived body and lived human relation” (van Manen, 1990, p. 18) are also the content of classes in DE in which students study music as it deploys itself in time and space through their own body movement and in relation to others (CIJD; Greenhead, 2019). Inspired by Gadamer, van Manen approaches hermeneutic phenomenology (HP) as a method of “no method”. He mistrusts “any tendency toward constructing a predetermined set of fixed procedures, techniques and concepts that would rule-govern the research project” (van Manen, 1990, p. 29) while asserting a methodos – a way – of going about it, a tradition, a history and a body of knowledge: “the broad field of phenomenological scholarship can be considered as a set of guidelines and recommendations for a principled form of inquiry that neither simply rejects or ignores tradition, nor slavishly kneels in front of it” (p. 30). It seemed as if van Manen’s HP and DE were made for each other: HP as a philosophical underpinning for DE and DE and DR as concrete examples of how that philosophy might look in, or as, a practice.

The good fit Van Manen’s HP not only fitted my subject and research questions but it also fitted me personally. Since childhood I have been interested in the nature of things how and why they are what they are and how we can know. For me as a musician and teacher, the phenomenological attitude is the musicianly and pedagogical attitude of being present, here, now, open and listening to or for whatever will come. Van Manen’s emphasis on the need to “experiment with a methodologically informed inventiveness that fuses the reflective and the pre-reflective life of consciousness” sits well with me as an improviser and teacher of improvisation. The personal engagement in, or with, the subject of study combined with an ascetic and careful attention to our “dealings in and with the environment” (Heidegger, 1962, pp. 403–404) and the attempt to communicate through description and interpretation something of the lived experiences and meanings revealed, suggested that a HP could be an artistic endeavour (Dissanayake, 1995, 2000/2012). I felt that the reflective writing advocated by van Manen (2014) would be enriching while serving my research.

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94  Karin Greenhead

Van Manen suggests a “dynamic interplay” between six research procedures intended “to animate inventiveness and stimulate insight” rather than to be applied mechanistically: 1. Turning to a phenomenon that seriously interests us and commits us to the world; 2. Investigating experience as we live it rather than as we conceptualise it; 3. Reflecting on the essential themes that characterise the phenomenon; 4. Describing the phenomenon through the art of writing and rewriting; 5. Maintaining a strong and orientated pedagogical relation to the phenomenon; 6. Balancing the research context by considering parts and whole (van Manen, 1990, pp. 30–31). Since my study brings together several interconnected fields, I needed additional perspectives on my data. I looked to philosophers focussing on education such as Henriksson (2012), whose exploration of connections between educational research and pedagogical practice in its concrete situatedness complements Bowman (2004) on music education, Gendlin (2018) on the bodily felt sense and the living process, and Sheets-Johnstone (2011, 2016) with her wide ranging, interdisciplinary work on animate nature and movement in human being, action, cognition and relating. Since the DR session is an “event”, which befalls the participants, I looked at Romano (2009) and Žižek (2014) and since pre-reflective experience and knowledge are the first step in learning in DE and DR looked at the phenomenon of the background and implicit knowledge as explored by Radman (2012). Participants’ experiences took place in group lessons so I drew on social constructivist ideas inspired by Dewey, Piaget, Bruner and Vygotsky. What is constructed in learning in these classes is “the experiential knowledge of music in movement and through it, the self and all that is other” (Greenhead, 2019).

Bias, prejudice and the epoché My knowledge of the subject and my students determined the interview questions, the nature of discussions, the treatment of the emergent and the general direction of the research. While concerns with subjectivity and bias may arise regarding the validity or usefulness of the findings in other methodologies, a phenomenological approach suggests that personal involvement may be not only inevitable for all seekers of knowledge, as Polanyi (1958/1962) asserts, but once recognised, a positive advantage (Barrett & Bolt, 2007). Gadamer (1989/2004) considers no -one free of “prejudice”: the presumptions, attitudes, culture, tradition, theories, subject knowledge and personal experience that are inevitably part of every person. When we are aware of the presence of these elements in our habitus, these prejudices can play an important role in empathic understanding and in our ability to interpret or construct meaning from experiences recorded in the data collected. For Gadamer prejudice is a “condition of understanding”

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(p.  278), the recognition of which “gives the hermeneutical problem its real thrust” (Gadamer, 1989/2004 p. 272). Prejudices can become lenses to be brought in or excluded in order to understand a phenomenon or to see deeper into the nature of the human condition but before using them the seeker must engage the reflective, phenomenological attitude and abstain from “theoretical, polemical, suppositional and emotional intoxications” (van Manen, 2014, p. 222). This ascetic bridling of the natural attitude (Husserl’s epoché or “bracketing”) with its “preferences, inclinations or expectations that would prevent one from coming to terms with a phenomenon or experience as it is lived through” (van Manen, 1990, p. 185) helps seekers to “make the familiar strange”, to allow what is given to show itself stripped, as far as possible, of any presuppositions and to stand in wonder before the phenomenon revealed in all its strangeness. This phenomenological reduction is achieved by means of a thoughtful and attentive attitude and its purpose is “to gain access, via the epoché and the vocative [reflective writing], to the world of pre-reflective experience-as-lived in order to mine its meanings” (van Manen, 2014, p. 221). The seeker is then able “to return to the world as lived in an enriched and deepened fashion” (p. 227). By employing these traditional devices in order to see, the researcher is looking for or even inventing “an approach that might provide the best fit for the phenomenological topic under study” (van Manen, 2014, p. 226).

Data collection and analysis My interviews were very lightly structured. I had a list of things I wanted to know about including their first Dalcroze experiences; what it felt like when they stood on the trampoline to play and moved with the ball in silent rehearsal of their piece; what they felt about changes in their sound; what felt easy or difficult in DE and what they had done subsequently with these experiences. I followed wherever the interviewee seemed to want to go, sometimes checking that I had understood what they meant or asking for more detail. All were keen to talk and as the interviews proceeded it became clear that they were not only describing experiences, they were reflecting on the impact on them in the short and long term, what these experiences meant and how they had used what we had done. I decided to let them talk freely sometimes gradually steering the conversation back to the things I wanted to know. I sent them transcripts of their interviews to check that they agreed with the content or if they wanted to add or change anything. Some followed up with more information or said how important reliving the experience during the interview and reading the transcript had been. I am myself a source of data in this research. Although my field notes were taken during a year that did not relate to the interviewees, I was able to note what I was doing in lessons and kept a separate journal during the real-time study of the Dutch duo. I treated each interview ideographically, taking care to maintain its character and style in my writing. I looked for themes, key words and phrases, analysing the transcripts by hand since the use of software might deprive me of direct, immersive

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96  Karin Greenhead

contact with the text and consequently I might miss detail or implications in the way of saying and what was or was not said. I grouped the interviews into four chapters: (1) the students – one male, one female; (2) the young professionals – one female, one male; (3) a musical partnership – one male, one female and (4) the experienced professionals – three females, and at the end of the analysis of each interview I employed the epoché by adding two comments: one as the teacher; the second as the researcher. My teacher’s reflection related to how participants appeared in class; how they worked and engaged with others; what they did easily or with difficulty. My researcher’s comments focused on the content of the interview, the tone of voice, style of speech and the attitude displayed.

Cross-case analysis “Phenomenology is orientated to the singular, the phenomenality of the phenomenon made knowable through the example” (van Manen, 2014, p. 177). Cross-case analysis entailed looking at the events that befell each participant and attending to and positioning each example in relation to the phenomenon as a whole. In considering the data from all the interviews, it became clear that despite differences of culture, age and experience and the amount of experience of DE and DR there was a remarkable concordance in their accounts and many themes were common to all participants. I grouped these in sets of tables (Table 6.1): TABLE 6.1  The list of tables as it appears in the thesis

9.3 9.4 9.5 9.6 9.7

Summarises the desires, goals and hopes motivating their music-learning and music-making The characteristics, background/previous training and the abilities they brought to the DE and DR classes as they emerged in the interviews Summarises aspects of their sociability, attitude and connections to othersa Difficulties, constraints and impediments that they felt affected the ease or success of their music-making The approach, areas of interest and focus of their learning

The ability to connect with co-performers and audiences is important in all music-making and key to successful performance.

a

Each participant was affected by formative and transformative experiences: now the sudden and fleeting kairotic experience; now the slow dawning of realisation as the pieces of a complex jigsaw of experiences began to slot into place; now the development or enhancement of musical and technical skills, previously elusive despite years of training and practice using traditional methods. Each experienced joy, ease, new connections with music and their own performance and a sense of personal affirmation, agency and empowerment: “I can”.2 Greenhead, 2019

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It seemed that my classes in DE and DR are inherently what Van Manen identifies as pedagogical situations (van Manen, 2015). A further set of tables summarises the key themes of their experiences and discoveries all of which connect or lead to one another. These are presented under six headings: 1. transformation, epiphany and wonder arising through experiences in 2. kinetic, kinaesthetic and sensory experiences (linked with emotion and cognition), with feelings of 3. connection, combined with a sense of 4. ease and feeling natural and right, confirming a sense of 5. self, identity and self-awareness, in which appeals to 6. sociability played an essential role (Greenhead, 2019, p. 229) The data summarised in these tables revealed that these epiphanic and transformative experiences included changes to the sense of self and identity and were due to their sensory-kinaesthetic experiences and the making of various kinds of connections. Their accounts put into question the commonly accepted notion of movement as a metaphor for music (Greenhead, 2019, pp. 61–65) because what they spoke about was the direct and pre-reflective expression of sensation. They mentioned experiences of breakthroughs in the skilfulness of their playing (BiS) and their accounts expanded on Gabrielsson’s strong experiences with music (SEM) which focused on the experiences of listeners rather than performers (Gabrielsson, 2011). Their experiences also threw a new light on theories of emotion and feeling and of flow and peak experience. I had created DR simply to help them perform better, but they showed me many additional consequences of my work that suggested what “performing better” might entail or require. Their accounts of personal change led me to look at the work of Trevarthen on infant development, Dynamic Systems Theory (Thelen & Smith, 1994) and Buber. A picture emerges of human being, knowing, relating and music-making anchored in movement and kinaesthetic consciousness that chimes with the stance of both Husserl and Buber (Friedman, 1955/2002) regarding the relationship between human beings and the world,3 namely, that all learning, knowing, research, discovery and relationship, arises, comes about or is achieved at the liminal interface of self and other through interactions or dialogues of various kinds. Greenhead, 2019, p. 240 What my participants were showing me was the means by which the various kinds of dialogue they were engaged in took place. Deepening my analysis, I studied these “engines of dialogue” (Table 6.2) each of which implied, suggested or recalled the other and co-inhered in the overarching theme of Self and Dialogue (Greenhead, 2019).

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98  Karin Greenhead TABLE 6.2  The engines of dialogue

The engines of dialogue 1. Kinaesthesia: TactileMovement and gesture kinaesthetic consciousness a. Pre-reflective b. Reflective c. Considered, planned, reflexive d. Analytical 2. Space

Personal and shared space From communal to dramatic space Action and metaphor

3. Sensation

Touch Vision and visualisation Hearing Feel, feeling and feelings

4. Time

Kairos The continuing sense of self: memory, engraining and creativity

5. Authenticity

The mask and feeling “Fake”

6. Freedom

Empowerment and agency

7. Dialogue, connection and ethical relationships

“Everyday Dalcroze”: Eudaemonia

In showing me the different types of kinaesthetic consciousness that they experienced, my participants showed me how the rhythmic class in DE works. Their experiences relating to space and sensation showed me the role of space, the senses and of different kinds of feelings in their learning. Their time-related comments revealed its roles in their epiphanies, the engraining of knowledge in memory, the sense of self and their creativity. Their comments on authenticity, freedom and agency revealed how DE and DR appealed to and fostered these and their centrality to true learning. Finally, in revealing the connections, the dialogues and ethical relationships they experienced led me to realise that all the elements I identified as Engines of Dialogue, were an ordinary part of every good rhythmic class, so seemingly “usual” and expected in this context as to pass unnoticed. My participants’ data revealed both the power of DE and DR and why they are powerful and lead to transformation and eudaimonia or “flourishing” in participants. I had an epiphany of my own as a result. I realised that this teaching and learning process went beyond Buber’s I-It or I-Thou dialogical relationships since there were always at least three elements involved: the moving students, the music and the improvising teacher. Kansanen and Meri (1999) focus on the pedagogical relationship between student and teacher and, although they studied the triadic nature of teaching and learning (the teacher, the students and the subject), they recommend studying only two of the three at a time. My study considers all three and shows the way in which each becomes the means for the other’s learning. Through their movement response the teacher learns what the students know and need.

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The students learn from their own movement response to music (often improvised as part of the teacher’s dialogue with them). The music is the link between them both, the subject of study, and also, through movement, the means of learning.

Findings The most important finding of the thesis was the centrality of the role of self-movement in musical discovery, learning, understanding and in the development of performance and ensemble skills. Regardless of background, age or previous training their experiences of DR made an indelible impression on them in a very short time and they had no difficulty in accessing their memories of these experiences even when these had occurred many years previously. They had many different kinds of transformative experiences and although all had previously received intensive music education, they forged new and deeper connections to their musical awareness, their music making and their instruments and acquired more skill, security and confidence in interpretation and ensemble skills. They commented spontaneously on increases in their sense of personal freedom, agency, creativity and power of interpretative decision-making. The personal, social, musical and performance related aspects of their feelings, intentions and actions, their inner and outer worlds, all came together – in the words of one interviewee “I was the music” – and in this coming together music, space and working with others played a central part. From the outset, an appeal was made to their sense of their own bodies’ sensory-kinaesthetic ability in relation to music, space and other people. In connecting music and space through improvised movement they discovered their bodily selves and experimented with how they could play creatively with these elements controlling their balance and the size, shape and quality of their movement improvising with materials that invited a range of responses from them. So, they discovered a, or the, world outside themselves, relating it to their inner world of perception, sensation, feeling, emotion and thought in ways that were inherently experimental and creative. In doing this together, whether sharing space alone or in groups, they learnt to notice, consider and respond to other people, adapt their movement and show their intentions clearly while simultaneously and through their movement, the teacher is able to see what they know and can do, and can adjust and pace the lesson accordingly. The paths they followed were profoundly ethical. They heard, were heard and knew they were heard; saw, were seen and knew they were seen. They were placed in a situation in which ethical behaviour was not only encouraged but required since personal objectives such as performing the right rhythm at the right dynamic with a partner or group would not work without it. Most of these experiences were rhythmicised through music. When students take their own time to complete an action they can pause. When actions and experiences are rhythmicised, they are obliged to keep going, to fit in with the tempo of others, to release control where controlling a response is getting in the

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way of effective action. Sometimes they discover that letting go allows them to perform more effectively. This suggests that, used well, far from constraining students in negative terms, musical rhythm seems to help them to move on and let go of a fear of making mistakes, practicing hesitation or sticking in potholes deepened by constant excavation. Through this research I discovered much about the importance of the multi-­ sensory and multi-modal dimension of DE and DR and the richness of learning when vision, movement, sound and tactility are combined: sensory integration (of vision, hearing, touch and movement) is an important outcome of Dalcroze work. I discovered much about my own role in these processes. My teaching employs a kind of epoché since it is largely a question-asking rather than instructional process and the students felt that their performances were authentic because they made their own decisions based on their own sense of what the music is, how they hear and feel it and how they think they can communicate that to others: they felt empowered. I facilitate this process by not telling them what to do and although I have objectives for the lesson, my basic stance towards the class is one of unknowing or “beginner’s mind”. The performers in DR moved into the lived and living moment: here, now, in this place. All that is happening is this sound, this music that I show you. This may have contributed to their loss of anxiety about performing. The changes in performance and communication were often noticed immediately by audience members if not by the performer. Despite many years of conventional music training, all of them (including two dyslexics) acquired new, sometimes revelatory insights into music and improved skills in aural perception (harmony and polyphonic hearing), tempo, rhythm, phrase, dynamics and other musical elements through working in movement, often with materials and away from the instrument. They improved ensemble skills, learnt to work with others and reported developments in their confidence, sense of freedom and sense of themselves.

Implications Movement moves the mind and engraves knowledge in memory. By means of movement, the body latches on to and measures time, space, dynamics and emphasis, the phrase line, form and shape… and in so doing creates and shapes them for the mover and for the observer. Dynamic kinaesthetic memories are created, with their concomitant tactile, visual and aural sensations, emotional and other feelings alongside the memory of musical sound, shape and structural elements. The musical memory and imagination are thus furnished with a rich cocktail of structured, sensory-kinaesthetic and deeply rooted memories to draw on in interpretation, improvisation and performance. It seems that we have our own inner musical sense of pulse, rhythm, melody, structure – our “little” or first sense – and that that is expanded and developed in range, complexity and power through lived experience in DE and DR.

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This research has implications for music education and training at all levels from early childhood to the training of elite performers. The findings also suggest that not only music but general education would benefit from DE since it confers benefits beyond the purely musical in bodily self-knowledge and skilfulness, creativity, playfulness, ethical behaviour and social skills. Some of the effects of Dalcroze teaching and learning have been noted anecdotally, in the past. Through my research I had solid and detailed evidence of students’ experiences, a basis for theorising about the engines of these experiences and the long-term benefits of this kind of teaching. The process I followed could be useful to other teachers of practical subjects who are thinking of investigating their own or another’s practice. In seeking answers to my questions, the methodology I chose and then shaped according to the questions and data produced results that in their revelations and implications for education and human life and living went far beyond what I had anticipated.

Notes 1 Plastique Animée in its basic form is a realisation of a piece of music in movement that is informed by all that is learnt in rhythmics, solfège and improvisation. It is a kind of living analysis in real time that shows how the music moves. 2 See Sheets-Johnstone (2011, pp. 199–200) for a discussion of “I move”, “I do” and “I can” rooted in and elucidated from Husserl’s phenomenology. 3 Buber’s classic “I and Thou” opens: “THE WORLD IS TWOFOLD (emphasis in original) for man in accordance with his twofold attitude. The attitude of man is twofold in accordance with the two basic words he can speak. The basic words are not single words but pairs. One basic word is the word pair I-You. The other basic word is the pair I-It; but this basic word is not changed when He or She takes the place of It. Thus the I of man is also two-fold. For the I of the basic word I-Thou is different from that in the basic word I-It” (Buber, 1970/1996).

References Bachmann, M.-L. (1991). Dalcroze today: An education through and into music (trans. D. Parlett, Trans.). Oxford University Press (Original work published 1984). Barrett, E., & Bolt, B. (Eds.). (2007/2010) Practice as research: Approaches to creative arts enquiry. I. B. Tauris. Bowman, W. (2004). Cognition and the body: Perspectives from music education. In L. Bresler (Ed.), Knowing bodies, moving minds: Towards embodied teaching and learning (pp. 29–50). Kluwer Academic Publishers. Buber, M. (1970). I and thou (a new translation with prologue and notes by W. Kaufmann). Simon & Schuster. CIJD. (2019). See Le Collège de L’Institut Jaques-Dalcroze. Del Bianco, S., Morgenegg, S., & Nicolet, H. (2017). Pédagogie, art et science: L’apprentissage par et pour la musique selon la méthode Jaques-Dalcroze. Actes du congrés de l’Institut JaquesDalcroze, 2015. Haute École de Musique de Genève. Dissanayake, E. (1995). Homo aestheticus: Where art comes from and why [pbk]. University of Washington Press (original publication 1992).

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Dissanayake, E. (2000/2012). Art and intimacy: How the arts began (First paperback ed.). University of Washington Press. Freeman, J. (2010). Blood, sweat and theory: Research through practice in performance. Libri Publishing. Friedman, M. S. (1955/2002). Martin Buber: The life of dialogue (4th ed.). Routledge. Gabrielsson, A. (2011). Strong experiences with music: Music is much more than just music (R. Bradbury, Trans.). Oxford University Press. Gadamer, H.-G. (1989/2004). Truth and method (2nd revised ed.) ( J. Weinsheimer, & D. G. Marshall, Trans.). Continuum International Publishing Group. Gaunt, H. (2010). One-to-one tuition in a conservatoire: The perceptions of instrumental and vocal students. Psychology of Music, 38(2), 178–208. Gendlin, E. T. (2018). A process model. Northwestern University Press. Greenhead, K. (2016). Becoming music: Reflections on transformative experience and the development of agency through Dynamic Rehearsal. In H. Gaunt (Ed.) The Reflective Conservatoire [Peer reviewed Digital Special Issue]. Arts and Humanities as Higher Education (A&HHE) (n.p.), August 2016. Retrieved from http://www. artsandhumanities.org/journal/ahhe-special-issue-june-2016/. Greenhead, K. (2017). Applying Dalcroze principles to the rehearsal and performance of musical repertoire: A brief account of dynamic rehearsal and its origins [Invited presentation]. In S. del Bianco, S. Morgenegg, & H. Nicolet (Eds.), Pédagogie, art et science: l’apprentissage par et pour la musique selon la méthode Jaques-Dalcroze. Actes du congrès de l’Institut Jaques-Dalcroze, 2015 (pp. 153–164). Haute école de musique de Genève. Greenhead, K. (2019). Dynamic rehearsal and Dalcroze eurhythmics: A phenomenological investigation into participants’ experiences and their implications for the practice, teaching and learning of music and musical performance (Unpublished doctoral dissertation). Manchester Metropolitan University, Manchester. Greenhead, K., Habron, J., & Mathieu, L. (2016). Dalcroze eurhythmics: Bridging the gap between the academic and practical through creative teaching and learning. In E. Haddon, & P. Burnard (Eds.), Creative teaching for creative learning in higher music education (pp. 211–226). Routledge. Heidegger, M. (1962). Being and time ( J. Macquarrie, & E. Robinson, Trans.). Harper and Row. Henriksson, C. (2012). Hermeneutic phenomenology and pedagogical practice. In N. Friessen, C. Henriksson, & T. Saevi (Eds.) Hermeneutic phenomenology in education: Method and practice (pp. 119–137). Sense Publishers. Holmes, P. A. (2011). An exploration of musical communication through expressive use of timbre: The performer’s perspective. Psychology of music, 40(3), 301–323. doi: 10.1177/03057356110388898. Jaques-Dalcroze, É (1921/1967). Rhythm, music and education (H. F. Rubenstein, Trans). The Dalcroze Society. Juntunen, M. L. (2004). Embodiment in Dalcroze eurhythmics (Doctoral thesis). University of Oulu, Oulu. Kansanen, P., & Meri, M. (1999). The didactic relation in the teaching-studying-learning process. In B. Hudson, F. Buchberger, P. Kansanen, & H. Seel (Eds.), Didktik/ Fachdidaktik as science(-s) of the teaching profession? (Vol. 2(1), pp. 107–113). Thematic Network of Teacher Education in Europe (TNTEE) Publications. ISSN 1403-5782. http://tntee.umu.se/publications. Kenny, D. T. (2011). The psychology of music performance anxiety. Oxford University Press. Kingsbury, H. (1988/2001). Music, talent and performance: A conservatory cultural system. Temple University Press.

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Langdridge, D. (2007). Phenomenological psychology: Theory, research and method. Pearson Education. Le Collège de L’Institut Jaques-Dalcroze (CIJD) (2019). The Dalcroze identity professional training in Dalcroze Eurhythmics: Theory and practice/l’identité dalcrozienne – formation professionnelle en rythmique Jaques-Dalcroze: Theorie et pratique. Institut Jaques-Dalcroze, GE, Suisse. Retrieved from https://www.dalcroze. ch/lijd-et-la-rythmique/institut-dalcroze-college. Mathieu, L. (2017). La rythmique Jaques-Dalcroze au XXIe siècle. In S. Del Bianco, S. Morgenegg, & H. Nicolet (Eds.), Pédagogie, art et science: l’apprentissage par et pour la musique selon la méthode Jaques-Dalcroze: Actes du congrès de l’institut Jaques-Dalcroze, Genève, 2015 (pp. 197–212). Droz/HEM Haute école de musique de Genève. Merleau-Ponty, M. (1962), Phenomenology of perception (C. Smith, Trans). Routledge & Keegan Paul. Moustakas, C. (1990). Heuristic research. Sage. Nelson, R. (2013). Practice as research in the arts: Principles, protocols, pedagogies, resistances. Palgrave Macmillan. Polanyi, M. (1958/1962). Personal knowledge: Towards a post-critical philosophy (1962 corrected ed.). Routledge & Kegan Paul. Polanyi, M. (1966/2009). The tacit dimension. The University of Chicago Press. Polanyi, M., & Prosch, H. (1975/1977). Meaning. University of Chicago Press. Radman, Z. (Ed.). (2012). Knowing without thinking: Mind, action, cognition, and the phenomenon of the background. Palgrave Macmillan. Romano, C. (2009). Event and world (S. Mackinlay, Trans). Fordham University Press. Sheets-Johnstone, M. (2011). The primacy of movement (expanded 2nd ed.). John Benjamins Publishing. Sheets-Johnstone, M. (2016). Insides and outsides: Interdisciplinary perspectives on animate nature. Imprint Academic. Smith, H., & Dean, R. T. (Eds.) (2009). Practice-led research, research-led practice in the creative arts. Edinburgh University Press. Thelen, E., & Smith, L. B. (1994). A dynamic systems approach to the development of cognition and action. Bradford Books/MIT Press. van Manen, M. (1990). Researching lived experience: Human science for an action sensitive pedagogy. The State University of New York. van Manen, M. (2014). Phenomenology of practice: Meaning-giving methods in phenomenological research and writing. Left Coast Press. van Manen, M. (2015). Pedagogical tact: Knowing what to do when you don’t know what to do. Left Coast Press. Žižek, S. (2014). Event: Philosophy in transit. Penguin Books.

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7 UNEXPLORED TERRAIN The valley between creativity and creative practice Megan Workmon Larsen and Danah Henriksen ARIZONA STATE UNIVERSITY, USA

Rohit Mehta CALIFORNIA STATE UNIVERSITY, USA

The Valley I do lots of art, really weird stuff. Vagina art, mostly. I saw my worth in mine. An artist, sometimes that’s a little pretentious. But, yeah, it’s art. One of the most important things to me is my culture, being native, If there’s any problem in the world, there is a spiritual solution. But I struggle with anxiety, Thoughts like, ‘I don’t have enough time. I’m missing things…’ Positive affirmations and rising to the challenge, I tell myself ‘I can do everything.’ And, then I go down into a valley and I come back out. I do get a little sassy. “This is going to be hard work, but I have to do it.’ That’s when I’m finally not as combative to it. Immerse myself in it. A perfectionist background, things have to be this way. And, if I don’t achieve it in that way, I have failed somehow. I didn’t live up to my own expectations. Which are actually other peoples’ expectations.

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Pulling away from that and saying, ‘It doesn’t have to be perfect every time. I don’t have to achieve every time.’ And, then I go down into a valley and I come back out. If you’re successful, there’s something you reaped That you share with others. It’s your ability to give back success. That reassurance, that failure happens. Even if they make what they perceive as a misstep, It’s still going to be okay. They still are going to have the skills To turn into something new. And, then I go down into a valley and I come back out. Found poem from Ollie, artist (Workmon Larsen, 2018)

Preparing for the journey Creativity is a central aspect driving the birth of new knowledge and the construction, crafting and creation of new artifacts and ideas. In recent several decades, creativity has become an area of fascination in research and culture (Plucker et al., 2004). Yet, it has always been the foundation of work in the arts and design, where it is a more open phenomenon understood through acts of emotion and expression. Creativity is often considered to be one of the most highly coveted qualities of thinking (Lewis, 2008). Yet, the hierarchy of thinking is not necessarily being—creative people can be creative in practice, work, and body without self-reflection or active consideration of their own creative process. In the arts and design, creativity does not solely exist in a classroom, a design studio, or a formalized structure; it is embodied, reflected, fought over, denied, enhanced, squashed, or illuminated in the practice and perceptions of each individual. Creativity is lived by a vast array of people in context and in time. Creativity, in practice, is a journey and a process of meaning-making. In the systematic study of creativity, it has often been studied and deconstructed from a psychological perspective without emphasis on the rich, experiential meaning of what creative people experience. Nelson and Rawlings (2007) suggest that the phenomenology of “creatives” (a term used to denote visual artists, performing artists, and designers as a collective) has been a neglected field. Dominant research paradigms have missed an important lens for understanding creativity from the phenomenological perspective of those who engage in it for their practice, work, or studies. While phenomenology has recently emerged around artistic creativity, it remains a relatively unexplored terrain ( Julmi & Scherm, 2015). Even in research on artistic creativity, there is little work examining the experience of emerging creatives (e.g. structured and unstructured learners in the areas of art or design).

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Creativity is a complex phenomenon that is allowed and encouraged to emerge in most artistic practice. Thus, it is imperative to phenomenologically explore the perceptions and experiences of creativity for arts learners and self-defined arts practitioners. We seek to do this by employing a phenomenological lens to consider how people actively engaging in arts and design pursuits make sense of their own experience and conscious conceptualization of creativity. We draw upon a larger-scale research inquiry into the experience of creatives (conducted via a mixed-method action research study on how creatives make meaning of perceived creative failures and develop resiliency through active reflection in self-agency and self-authorship) (Workmon Larsen, 2018). By examining this inquiry from a phenomenological perspective, we present a series of essences or ideas developed from a set of semi-structured interviews conducted with undergraduate students and alumni from a college of arts and design within a large U.S. university (Research 1 designation).

We are here (positionality and approach) Taking a phenomenological approach to understand the lived experiences of creatives required us to first bracket our theoretical assumptions and prejudgments, as creativity scholars trained in hegemonic schools of thought rooted in psychology (Sternberg, 1985; Vagle, 2018; van Manen, 2014). Most of our assumptions on creativity came from existing literature and research, which emerged from a more cognitive and positivist stance, often dictated not only by western and white psychologists but also by methodologies limited to regimented procedures in the name of rigor (Runco, 2008). Despite the contribution of these approaches to the field, there are significant missing or overlooked pieces in how we realize and experience creativity and creative processes. Specifically, the role of the individual perception (in particular, time and space), aesthetic gaze, emotionality, embodiment of processes, and performed practices of novice and expert creatives across artistic and design-based disciplines can offer insights into the conscious individual and shared meanings of their lived experiences of and with creativity, thus generating new knowledge on the topic (Schutz, 1967; van Manen, 2014). When taking a phenomenological approach, researcher bias—especially pertaining to epistemology and ontology—is always tied with our interpretation of participants’ lived experiences (Vis, 2008). However, as creativity scholars ourselves, we could not expect a transcendental understanding through epoché. The participants and us were intertwined in the double hermeneutics of us interpreting their experiences as they consciously realized and understood their own. In this, it is important to not let our philosophy taint participants’ lived experience. Understanding the limitations of our gaze, along with the awareness and bracketing of bias, we focused on the implications of bias on our inquiry, specifically during analysis and interpretations. To avoid limiting our interpretations to existing psychological constructs or miss the essences of participants’ lived

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experiences that were beyond our own, we sought to appreciate our fundamental ontological and epistemological assumptions that could influence our inferences from interview and artifact data. For instance, if creativity is experienced by an artist as a divine intervention from God, our goal is not to question the existence of such a being or experience, but rather understand its implications on the artist’s cognizance of the process and the phenomenon of creativity (Rawat, 2011). Combining existential and hermeneutic phenomenology, completely removing our existing ontological assumptions, experiences, and philosophical stances and biases was unrealistic. Instead, we sought to gather our assumptions about the positioning of creativity in space and time and “pocket” them to be later checked against for bias in our interpretations and inferences. Hence, we started our phenomenological inquiry with an understanding of the social experiences of the creative participants in a study focused on how creatives make meaning from their lived experiences with failure and resilience, focusing on their educational experience, their social relationships, and experiences with other creatives. We used their descriptions and meanings of social contexts to identify the different aspects of their lived experiences that could possibly be influencing their consciousness of the phenomenon. Further, we used the social contexts as an entry point into dialogue on their realization and justifications of creativity as a phenomenon. In terms of data collection, the first author conducted a series of self-structured dialogic interviews with emerging creatives and creative professionals in arts and design to better understand what their participation in a creative work meant to them. Table 7.1 provides an overview of each participant in these interviews. The first author interviewed college students within creative degree programs to better understand their lived experiences and meaning-making processes. This was followed by interviews with alumni from creative degree programs working within creative disciplines or in educational structures that train emerging creatives, asking them to reflect on the evolution of their own personal creative processes and their changing definitions of personal fulfillment. Following this cycle, she revisited the creative learner experience, interviewing additional emerging creatives after their experiences within a college course designed to allow them to engage in active self-reflection. Throughout this process, creatives shared their individual perceptions, creative gaze, and understandings of experiences, which led us to create a better picture of their shared awareness of creativity as a phenomenon. In addition to in-depth dialogic interviews, she also discussed their creative artifacts and processes, using them to find connections to their conceptualization and embodiment of own lived experiences through esthetic expression. Through this phenomenological data on the experiences of creatives, and collected discussions on products, processes, and contexts, the research/author team identified uniquely individual essences and inferences to reach a common understanding. Across the participants, we interpreted patterns among essences as shared lived experiences for these creatives. This collection of shared lived

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108  Megan Workmon Larsen et al. TABLE 7.1  Interview participant overview

Name

Category Area

Degree

CJ

Alumni Art

Ceramics

Courtney Alumni Art Molly Dolores Beatrice Juniper

Alumni Alumni Alumni Alumni

Performance Art Design Design

Ollie

Alumni Art

Winnie Student Art Brittany Student Performance Anna Student Art Marie Josephine Student Art Cassie Student Design Claire Christina Dani Jordan Taylor Shaynea Lauren

Student Student Student Student Student Student Student

Design Design Design Art Performance Performance Performance

Current Profession

Museum curator Technological Educator arts Film and music Performer Painting Painter Graphic design Designer Graphic design Designer/ Artist Technological Educator arts Photography Curator Music Performance performance admin Technological Videogame arts designer Animation Student Architecture Graduate student Architecture Designer Architecture Designer General design Unknown Art studies Student Theatre Student Film Student Music Performer

Gender

Ethnicity Age

Male

White

30s

Female

White

20s

Female Female Female Female

Latina Latina White White

20s 40s 30s 40s

Female

Native 30s

Female Female

White White

20s 20s

Female

White

20s

Female Female

Latina White

20s 20s

Female Female Female Non-binary Non-binary Female Female

White White White White White Black White

20s 20s 20s 20s 20s 20s 20s

experiences offers an understanding of creativity as a phenomenon that is more than the sum of its parts.

The road already traveled A historical overview of creativity research Despite the historical basis for creativity and increased research interest, theorists and researchers alike have found it difficult to concretely define it (Friedel & Rudd, 2005). Runco and Jaeger (2012) describe the “standard definition” of creativity, as being the process of creating something that is original and effective. Although creativity spans disciplines, the products of creative labor are often perceived as subjective, since they emerge and are judged based on elements of context. The most highly-touted academic research on creativity has often been from psychology. This “dominant” research discourse reflects a cognitive perspective, focused on the self and studied via psychometric examination (Runco, 2014). Dominant (psychological) paradigms in creativity research have advanced

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understanding of individual creativity from one perspective (Runco, 2014)—but from just that, one limited perspective. These dominant perspectives are also problematic in their silences—in the creative voices they do not engage with or in the lack of lived experiences. The dominant emphasis on internal mental states can be disparate from the highly social, practical, real-life, hands-on experiences of creative learners and practitioners (Henriksen, 2019). A solely psychological understanding of creativity is inherently impoverished and lacks a richness found in physical, embodied, experiential, emotional, and pragmatic—that is, lived—notions of creativity. Developing a richer perspective requires consideration of the perceptual realities of people living out creativity through their work, hopes, dreams, and experience. There is great value in engaging the voices of artists and other practicing creatives in research, through a phenomenological lens that enfolds these creative voices. Glück et al., (2002) conducted a study about beliefs on creativity, comparing artists to other people. They reported that artists in their study provided a uniquely different take on creativity than control groups of non-artists. Artists invariably foregrounded the reality of “hard work” in their creativity definitions. This notion did not emerge among non-artists/non-creatives, and indeed this important perceived reality of creativity rarely emerges in dominant discourses. Therefore, it is important to allow for creativity research that steps outside of the dominant discourse, to enfold practitioner perspectives—providing a most realistic look into creativity from a lens that informs the actuality of creative learning and practice. Phenomenological perspectives on artistic creativity have only recently emerged—since these traditionally received little attention in creativity research. Nelson and Rawlings (2017) suggest that much dominant creativity research “has been preoccupied with questions of correspondence, prediction, and explanation and has neglected the ‘shape’ of the phenomenon” (pp. 218–219), and that phenomenological understandings allow for a new paradigm, “marked by an emphasis on description, understanding, and meaning… concerned with the ‘what-ness’ rather than the ‘why’ of psychological phenomena” (p. 218). In order to explore this “what-ness”, we share our findings as essences of creativity related to creatives experience.

Exploring the valley between creativity and creativity in practice The following essences of shared experiences developed out of the dialogue, esthetic expressions, and discursive analysis of text collected with the group of novice and expert creatives from the larger inquiry (Workmon Larsen, 2018). These essences—identified across our discussions and analysis—as expressed by the creatives, concern talent, failure, and success.

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Talent: the coveted gift In creative disciplines, natural talent and hard work are considered to play a balancing act in terms of perceived value and importance. These were also part of an essence that emerged, reflected in how emerging creatives perceived their own natural talent juxtaposed against the hard work as part of their creative process, navigating their own discipline’s perceived emphasis on talent/hard work. Several participants remembered a time in their lives when they had realized that part of the process of becoming a professional creative required them to learn new concepts and skills while also reframing their creative process to include the process of hard work. Other creatives, particularly in the performing arts, viewed their own particular creative fields as valuing natural talent on the surface level yet expecting them to navigate the work required to enhance their talents individually. Lauren, a music performance student, noted that the process of work and learning new things, especially when they are challenging, “expands my talents if I let it…Branching out deepens what we do. It feels like I’m going backwards when stretching yourself, but eventually capacity increases.” Creatives/ artists frequently mentioned this transition between talent and dedication. Based on their reflections, this shift occurs often with a perceived involvement of an external experience. Several creatives referred to a distinct time in which they realized that they could not rely solely on their natural talent and needed to embrace a more malleable view of their talent that needed work to grow, like a living being who needed to be nurtured to flourish. Beatrice, a design professional, talked about her first experience in college when a faculty member she deeply respected drove home the idea that part of being a designer was about work and learning rather than natural aptitude. She recalled her faculty member saying that one cannot rely on talent, noting, “That’s the first time I really realized that there is that natural talent that can be cultivated and that sometimes you have to apply assistance (or continue to grow or continue to learn) around those talents.” Winnie, an upper-division arts student, echoed this when talking about the first time she encountered a faculty member who did not “like” her work and offered a critique. She was, at first, incensed from what she perceived as a harsh and negative critique. But, eventually, she added that this experience, “made me realize that just because I did have a natural talent, people around me who are working really hard, they can still surpass me…It kicked me into gear and made me realize I needed to work really hard, being in that zone of creativity.” This moment of realization led creatives to think about their own creativity and talent as something that needed careful nurturing, shifting stances—even though this understanding came from an external point of experience in space and time, mostly fueled by a social urge to survive in their desired future profession. Learning new things, especially when challenging, is an important process in embracing the work that goes into a creative practice. The difficulty of the task impacted individual conceptualization of their own talent level, often leading to

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doubt. Cassie, a design student, noted succinctly that when skill acquisition was especially challenging, “Learning new things, it makes me question my talent.” Some mentioned being resistant at first to the challenge of expanding their abilities and skill-sets. Ollie, an alumni and faculty member in a technology-heavy arts discipline, commented, “I do get a little sassy, like ‘Ugh, this is going to be hard work, but I have to do it.’ That’s when I’m finally not as combative to it, immerse myself ” in the work. Claire, a designer, and Lauren, a musician, echo each other in that learning new concepts, ideas, and skills enhance their natural talents as creatives, in one case using the metaphor of learning as if it was a toolkit or a painter’s palette. Juniper, a design instructor with a background in both fine arts and design, added that when learning new concepts “talent and desire are really related…But, it’s also about practice, about enjoyment” and that learning new things requires enjoyment, intellectual stimulation, and growth. When reflecting on what she would tell herself or her students in terms of their creative work, Juniper offered the advice to “remain joyful in the work…define your discipline. That process of not knowing and being driven to figure it out— it’s success. You cannot do that unless you’ve fallen down.” Across their lived experiences, there is an understanding that the process of creativity needs more than raw talent—it needs a toolkit that one can gain from experience, education, or skill acquisition that allows the creative to not only create the products but create themselves throughout the process. Importantly, the reflexive nature of being creative makes it a journey—the awareness of which can also produce joy in the act of being. It is empowering because it allows one to set terms for existence, knowledge, discipline, success, and perhaps, where it started for them, talent. However, talent was not as easy to be embodied because it was intertwined with how their field projected its own meaning at them, thereby often complicating how talent affected their ontological and epistemological understanding of their creativity. The most challenging projection of the meaning of talent from the field was it being often categorized as “natural.” Performing artists, in particular brought up the representation of talent in their field as a rare gifted proclivity—something coveted and highly revered. Brittany, a music performance student, particularly mentioned how she experienced the larger field of music’s value placement on natural talent. ‘Talent’ gets thrown around a lot in music. But, they don’t actually mean talented…they mean naturally apt at something, the way your brain works is maybe a little bit better suited for something. It’s an annoying word for me because I think people say it, but they don’t think about how they’ve actually worked really hard. Talent is seen as glamorous, special. Brittany added, through experience and reflection, she began to see the importance of the unseen work in music—all the hard work that transforms talent into creative output and practice—noting that “hard work is important to me…Hard

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work, it’s going to get you more to where you want to go.” Molly, an alumnus working in the fields of music and theatre, also noted her perceptions of talent and work in the performing arts connected to her future career goals: We all have this ideal for our career paths, what we would like to achieve. It’s a narrow window. Of course, every audition you go on, every callback you get, is a success. But, it felt like a failure when you go through all the hard work and you don’t actually reach that goal. Perceived failure, for many of the participants, was directly tied to their own ideas around their individual talent, the amount of work they put into a pursuit, and whether the outcome was expected. Jordan, a designer, noted that for their future career they “want to be able to go to my boss and be like, ‘I don’t know how to do this,’ or ‘can you help me?’ And, to not feel like that’s defining my talent.” Even though most creatives espoused their own value of hard work, failure made them second guess their talent, not their work ethic. Even as creatives endeavor to embrace the resiliency of hard work and skill acquisition as a way to bolster their talent, how they think about, work though, and reflect on their own talent becomes a core component to how they navigate their own creative process. Some of the creatives in this study made meaning first through their individual talent but then engaged in hard work to achieve their outcome goals and personal definitions of success; but, when they hit a bump or experienced a barrier, they could revert back to questioning their inherent talent. The conceptualization of creativity as a process fueled by talent and driven by hard work could be embodied as an unexpected journey full of oscillating emotional experiences such as joy, doubt, success, or failure.

Failure: the fear that lurks within Failure, intertwined with talent and success, was a common encounter all creatives feared at first. However, through their professional experiences, both students and working creatives had become or were becoming more accepting of a failure as a recurring phenomenon. Gradually recognizing the value of failure as an essential contributor to their creative process, despite struggling through critical and creative challenges in arts—or rather because of them—learners moved from discomfort with to acceptance of failure as a part of creative work. Another aspect in understanding failure was also redefining personal meanings of it—what it manifested as in their lived experience as a stance that became a barrier in their creative process. The shift from discomfort to acceptance marks a unique facet of learning in the arts, as many disciplines experience failure as a negative and final aspect of learning. However, for creatives—criticism, critique, struggle, and failure are essentials parts of the experience. They cannot be avoided. In order to explore their own possibilities of creative existence, learning to embrace failures that

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inevitably occur in creative work allowed creatives to tie it with their identity as artists. Again and again, the creatives in this study described a kind of shift that occurred within themselves in terms of their own perceptions of failure—from often initially viewing it as a wholly negative “letdown,” to ultimately seeing it as a productive (if not always pleasant) necessity of creative learning. In some cases, instead of or in addition to shifting from negative to positive connotations of failing, creatives even defined their own meaning for the term based on their lived experiences. For instance, Christina noted that: I used to define failure as, “Oh, you didn’t get the best grade, or you didn’t do the best you’re capable of.” Now it’s much more gray than that, not so black and white. I think failure is missing out…failure isn’t about not succeeding in what you attempt, it’s about whether or not you choose to attempt something in the first place. Failure is being too afraid of things not working out, being too stubborn to take risks. This sense of coming to redefine the meaning of failure was common to creative learning and experience. In particular, creative students and working creatives described how they came to see failure not so much as failing to meet a goal, but instead about not trying, not expressing themselves, or not taking a risk or creatively exploring. As Beatrice put it, “It’s more of a failure to not try to explore and to be frozen. The freedom of not caring what other people think allows you to be more creative and more confident in sharing that creativity.” In other words, failure, to them, became more of an inaction in creative processes than acting to find something unexpected, thus defining it again as a discomfort, but rather to begin on their creative journey. One of the alumni, Juniper, noted that this fear or discomfort with failure is often the biggest initial barrier for arts learners. Her own students are often “conditioned to see education as black and white, and creative disciplines are not black and white.” Thus, when arts learners are finally able to trust themselves and their own ideas, it is “where the most learning happens for students, when they are able to make that leap.” Both in her work as a teacher and her experiences as an arts student, she has been able to see the creative value in learning to fail, saying, “I tell students about my folder of rejections. People see failure as this end point…but to me, failure is an indication of a pivot point. Failure is a moment, but it isn’t the end of the story.” This shift in perception of failure is critical along several lines. Namely, creatives move from seeing failure as something unwanted and negative, to something essential in creative processes and as a point for learning. Also, they begin to see it not as an end, but as an opportunity to learn and move forward to the next iteration of the journey. The criticality for failure for learning in arts disciplines was described by working creative, CJ, who echoed this theme noting, “The mistakes become successes. For many disciplines in the arts, your mistakes inform the next trial, it’s about learning from mistakes.” This move toward allowing for failure can be

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a “freeing” aspect of the experience of artistic creativity, because a person can often take risks as an artist that one might not be able to take in other areas of life. That said, while this kind of shift was seen as being critical in students’ development as creatives and artists—learning acceptance of failure was still a challenge to students’ initial notions of success and failure. Hence, the experience is often perceived as a shift in beliefs: One of my professors, the first day of class, he said, “Look to your left, look to your right. If you’re one of the few that make it as a living artist, those people will not be with you at the top…” I remember being livid at that, but looking back the best advice a professor can give you is, “Be prepared to fail, and at the same time, be prepared to be successful and not have a support group around you.” This shift in perception of failure also necessitates a change in perspective, moving toward the kind of resilience and recognition of failure that are necessary to creative processes. Thus, the experience of studying the arts or design is marked by a point in which learners often confront their own beliefs about failure and success and redefine them to engage in creative making. While creatives do not necessarily find failure to be any more pleasant than others might, they come to understand it as necessary, fruitful, and a sometimes painful learning opportunity. They emphasized that in engaging in the arts and through the struggle of learning to become an artist/designer, they had often confronted the root cause of an initial discomfort with failure—fear. This fear is also a common block to creativity. As Jordan noted “The biggest barrier is just overcoming my own issues and my own fear.” Like many of the others, via the process of learning their perception of failure “has definitely changed over time.” And, as they put it, “My perception of failure now, I only see it as a challenge.”

Success: the balance of expectation and fulfilment Another key essence in the perceptual understanding of the phenomenon of creativity was the self-set expectations and ideas of success. Creatives develop and define their individual perceptions of expectations from what others (their colleagues, peers, family) may expect of them, and also created versions of they perceived as personal success in their field. External factors—such as the manifestation of success in the socially accessible lived experiences of other professionals—played a role in shaping their own meanings and beliefs about how they define success for themselves. Taylor, situated in the field of theater, set the expectations for achievement in their work, stating that, “sometimes not meeting expectations can be helpful because you take a step back and look at yourself, what’s going on around you. So, in that case, it becomes an opportunity.” The shift in perception from a negative view of failure as a debilitating feeling to an opportunity to reconsider

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your approach makes it a positive phenomenon essential for creativity. Instead of using social networks and peers as a yardstick to measure their own success, they humanized themselves by projecting their expectations on to others, thereby testing their fairness. Taylor reflected on how they now choose to “Keep learning, keep growing, hold the people around you close. And, remember how you would feel if you looked at them with the same kind of standards and expectations you sometimes hold yourself.” The challenge of comparison put forth by being in a competitive and comparative creative setting can be daunting. Brittany explained how although her goal is to set her own expectations and curiosity govern her music performance, she was aware of the socially set external expectations. She called her expectations “existential,” given how she wanted them to be set by herself, defining her own identity in music performance on her own terms. Ollie, too, experienced the pressure of external expectations and how they can overpower or usurp her own expectations and goals. Speaking of her artistic practice, Ollie reflected: “In a perfectionist background, things have to be this way. And, if I don’t achieve it in that way, I have failed somehow. I didn’t live up to my own expectations.” Ollie’s reflection showed how perception of self-set expectations can be replaced by the culture a person is immersed in, thereby influencing their meaning of failure and its role in their work. Winnie, on the other hand, tried to define failure only by her own standards, “Failure is not usually ever about what other people want of you. I always set myself up higher. For some people, my failure might be success. But, to me, it’s just when you don’t meet your own expectations.” Across their experiences, self-set expectations for achievement existed in a conscious interplay with failure. Because external factors played a critical role in shaping individual and shared perceptions of achievement and failure, creatives considered them to be a heavy influence on their perceptions of success as well. Specifically, the representations set by their disciplines and other stakeholders or experts in their fields affected their individual definitions and understandings, despite trying to keep the external separate from the personal. Cassie, a design student, disliked the version of success she saw in her field. She called it “super limiting of what you can do and what you are expected to do.” In her case, the external manifestations of success had the power to suppress individual creative effort and negate personal experience. CJ, too, found himself entangled in the web of external definitions of creative success, to an extent that tainted his perception of self and success despite knowing it was coming from external factors: Success is probably defined as this push to continue as an artist, and call yourself an artist, create work consistently. Success is this perseverance… In the art world, I’m not successful. I haven’t persevered. I switched fields. People don’t consider me an artist anymore. When I introduce myself as an artist, usually they do not know me so they don’t believe me. I don’t see myself as a failure; I feel my own reward as success. But, I don’t necessarily see myself as successful right now.

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Financial reasons were respectively consistent external factors that influenced individual perceptions of success. However, different creatives chose to perceive it differently. For instance, Courtney, too, found that she and her family valued different parameters to define success, where she perceived success to be intertwined with feelings of fulfillment: I decided I was a success when I got dental insurance because I officially was more adult than my parents…To my parents, I am a shocking success. But, my partner, his family is wealthy. So, every time that I sort of show up with new weird ideas, or when I’m showing them my art…there’s always this like, ‘Well, how are you going to make money off that?’ Money doesn’t actually equal happiness. Dolores, a working artist, echoed Courtney on a more positive note, stating, “When you are living your dream, when you have all the elements to feel absolutely happy and content with your accomplishments…my life is perfect the way it is. All I can do is explore more, play more, have more fun. That is the great success.” Creatives in this study experienced comparison with others in their profession but processed its impact differently. Molly, in film and music, explained that, for her: Success goes back to that sense of self. We’re all on different creative paths, so it’s hard to compare to others…It’s more about meeting goals for myself. Other creatives on the forefront of my field agree that success is very narrowly defined. But, some people have a hard time changing the definition of what it should be and will use success as a marker for social status. Because of this constant comparison between self-set expectations and external factors, Molly found herself experiencing a sense of guilt that she was not doing enough. Either her work was not enough, or was not of good enough quality, or she perceived it as not being where she needed it to be. Indeed, for many novice and expert creatives, a tension between the individual l and external characterized their perception of creative success.

Out of the valley and back again In this chapter, we have phenomenologically explored the experience of being creative among learners and professionals from formal educational structures in the arts and design. While much creativity research has explored more traditional psychological paradigms, this lens is limited, and there is great need to develop a phenomenological sense of the conceptualization of creative learning and growth among creatives. In discussing their experiences of creativity from a lived and embodied perspective, these creatives reflected an emphasis

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on creativity that deals with tensions between understanding and valuing both talent and hard work along with viewing creative success as a being grounded in reiterative process of creative work. This essence is consistent with other research (Glück et al., 2002) that has sought to develop an understanding of creativity in the beliefs of artists—demonstrating a unique pragmatic take on creativity as work, which is not always foregrounded in research. Further, the creatives in this study inevitably returned to the perception of failure, and the way that creative growth and learning often necessitates a shift away from viewing failure as a negative end-point, toward viewing it as an essential, productive iterative point of creativity. Since students and artists are often positioned such that their creativity is also the site in which they make a living, they also reflected on the meanings of success and expectations around creativity, in navigating a tension between their internalized beliefs and the externalized world. This chapter shares a slice of phenomenological findings from creatives, and more work around such dimensions of creativity is important to explore the bridge between the practical and the theoretical, using phenomenological experience as a way to understand creativity—going beyond a lab, a psychological test, or a theory, and into lived experiences. We have aimed to explore this type of descriptive perspective on the “what-ness” of creativity, by starting from its social positioning in the shared existence of creatives through their lived experiences and meanings. In highlighting what artists and emerging artists-as-learners experience, there is a much-needed opening for voices with real-world experience of the phenomenon.

References Friedel, C., & Rudd, R. (2005). Creative thinking and learning styles in undergraduate agriculture students. National AAAE Research Conference, pp. 199–211. Glück, J., Ernst, R., & Unger, F. (2002). How creatives define creativity: Definitions reflect different types of creativity. Communication Research Journal, 14(1), 55–67. Henriksen, D. (2019). Expanding the paradigm: Bringing designerly perspectives into creativity scholarship. Creativity Studies, 12(1), 15–33. Julmi, C., & Scherm, E. (2015). The domain-specificity of creativity: Insights from new phenomenology. Creativity Research Journal, 27(2), 151–159. Lewis, T. (2008). Creativity in technology education: Providing children with glimpses of their creative potential. International Journal of Technology and Design Education (Online). doi: 10.1077/S10798-008-9051-y. Nelson, B., & Rawlings, D. (2007). Its own reward: A phenomenological study of artistic creativity. Journal of Phenomenological Psychology, 38(2), 217. Plucker, J. A., Beghetto, R. A., & Dow, G. T. (2004). Why isn’t creativity more important to educational psychologists? Potentials, pitfalls, and future directions in creativity research. Educational Psychologist, 39(2), 83–96. Rawat, K. J. (2011, January 14). Phenomenological research method. Retrieved from Method Space website: https://www.methodspace.com/phenomenological-researchmethod/. Runco, M. A. (2008). Creativity and education. New Horizons in Education, 56(1), n1.

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Runco, M. A. (2014). Creativity: Theories and themes: Research, development, and practice. Elsevier. Runco, M. A., & Jaeger, G. J. (2012). The standard definition of creativity. Creativity Research Journal, 24(1), 92–96. Schutz, A. (1967). The phenomenology of the social world. Northwestern University Press. Sternberg, R. J. (1985). Implicit theories of intelligence, creativity, and wisdom. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 49(3), 607. Vagle, M. D. (2018). Crafting phenomenological research. Routledge. Van Manen, M. (2014). Phenomenology of practice: Meaning-giving methods in phenomenological research and writing. Left Coast Press.. Workmon Larsen, M. (2018). The failure project: Self-efficacy, mindset, grit and navigating perceived failures in design and the arts. Arizona State University. Retrieved from ProQuest Dissertations and Theses.

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8 AUSTRALIAN EDUCATIONAL LEADER’S LIVED EXPERIENCES OF POWER WITHIN LITERACY EDUCATION Damien Lyons and Kelly Carabott MONASH UNIVERSITY, AUSTRALIA

Literacy discourse in the 21st century is evolving to reflect the “new” ways we live, work and communicate (Anderson, 2007; New London Group, 1996). Contemporary literacy practices demand skills in multimodality, multiliteracies, digital citizenship and information management across varied contexts (Cope & Kalantzis, 2000). Yet, some of the literacy practices we engage our young people in within school contexts seems to be at odds with this notion. Educational leaders have responsibilities to facilitate learning environments that enable young people to live and learn in a world that reflects their reality. Power, in various forms, is exerted upon educational leaders which influences their pedagogical views and ultimately leadership of literacy. Leading literacy in Australian primary schools is complex work. While there is considerable research around literacy, there is less focusing on the leadership of literacy. This chapter reports data from a research project (Lyons, 2014) that focused on the leadership of literacy in Australian primary schools. Specifically, the project drew on five educational leaders within Australian primary schools, and using a hermeneutic phenomenological approach sought to better understand the experiences of educational leaders’ as they facilitate and enable literacy learning for students in Australian primary schools. This chapter has two aims. Firstly, to explore from a theoretical perspective the affordances of hermeneutic phenomenology for educational research, and secondly, drawing on the data from the project mentioned above, to present a hermeneutic analysis of how educational leaders in Australian primary schools and to experience power and power-relations within the literacy landscape of Australian primary schools.

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Considering notions of power The early part of the 21st century has seen notions of power relations, situated in sociocultural contexts, being challenged by young people (Buckingham, 2008), which has implications for educational leaders (Buckingham, 2000). People traditionally disempowered in hierarchical structures, such as young people, have found voice and opportunities to make and communicate meaning in ways that were unimaginable even a generation ago, creating discourses that redefine how power is expressed and experienced. Social media is an obvious example. Young people can significantly influence a broad audience simply with an iPad in their bedroom! As the broader community becomes more vocal and opinionated about literacy education (Clary & Daintith, 2017), bureaucrats and politicians have responded in ways that on occasion contradict current research but are politically popular (Zimpher & Howey, 2013). An example of this would be the current ban on mobile phones in classrooms in Australia (Victorian State Government Education and Training, 2019). An outcome of this discoursal change requires educational leaders to navigate power exerted upon them in ways that are contradictory to the traditional notional of power (Swaffield & Macbeath, 2009). Building on the premise that education is a highly contested activity, the study presented here aims to consider the issue of power relations at the microlevel of classroom discourse. Power traditionally was associated with rank and status; accordingly, we often talk about power as measurable in terms of the amount of physical power, political power, and so on that people or organisations might possess (Duignan, 2006). Yet, research suggests power within schools has changed (Swaffield & Macbeath, 2009), and a more nuanced exploration of power, and its impact on leadership, is warranted (Firestone & Martinez, 2009). This chapter attempts to make a contribution to this field and adopts a Foucauldian view of power that directs our attention to the material operations of power and its specific aspects as they operate in localised systems (Foucault, 1979). For Foucault, power is not a commodity that has some ultimate location or origin, or that can be owned or possessed, or that can be given or taken (Pennycook, 2001). Rather, power circulates; it exists in action and functions at the level of the body, reaches into the very grain of individuals, touches their bodies and inserts itself into their action and attitudes, their discourses, learning processes and everyday lives (Foucault, 1979). “Power relations are rooted in the whole network of the social” as Foucault (1994, p. 87) puts it. This chapter adopts Foucauldian lines that (a) power is everywhere and circulates, (b) power is not possessed but exercised and (c) there are no relations of power without resistances. This study aligns with the view that power is an inescapable constant in pedagogy, and power is not exclusively exercised by leaders upon students, staff and stakeholders; rather, it is an ongoing negotiation by all concerned (Gore, 1998). People in leadership positions are reporting high levels of stress caused by a growing accountability framework from various stakeholder groups (Lyons, 2014). Put simply, stakeholder groups (including students, parents, government

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and lobby groups) have the power to “demand” and to “lobby” in powerful ways (Lyons, 2015). Whilst this is not new to the educational leadership landscape, what is new is the power that can be exerted over a leader, and the disempowerment leaders report feeling within the landscape of literacy education in primary schools (Lyons, 2014).

Methodological insights which guided this study Swaffield and Macbeath (2009) challenge us to consider how power exists within the context we occupy – in our relationships with others and in the activities we are a part of. Drawing on phenomenology affords us one way to better understand how leaders experience power within the literacy landscape. Phenomenological research characteristically starts with concrete descriptions of lived situations, often first-person accounts set down in everyday language. Hermeneutic phenomenology has emerged from hermeneutic philosophers, including Heidegger, Gadamer, Ricouer and van Manen and can be described as “the study of experience together with its meanings” (Henriksson & Friesen, 2012, p. 1). Put another way, according to Heidegger (2008), “phenomenology is not only descriptive but also hermeneutical because there are many hidden aspects in phenomena which need to be uncovered and interpreted” (p. xviii). The purpose of hermeneutic phenomenology is not only to descriptively present what is within the data but also to “elicit, evoke and uncover what lies hidden or buried in and around whatever manifests itself openly in the world” (Heidegger, 2008, p. xviii). This chapter presents stories from a number of educational leaders working in Australian primary schools. Through the entanglement of hermeneutic phenomenology, we seek to value and understand the many structures of reality through the consideration and interpretation of possible meanings that emerge from a range of experiences associated with factors associated with literacy teaching and learning and the power relations that are intertwined within and among varying factors. Capturing the lived experiences occurred through the collection of individual narratives, together with a hermeneutic analysis that presents thematic insights into the impact of power. To support this methodological approach, we have drawn on Fuller’s (2012) insights: although experiences are the palate into which the phenomenologist dips a brush, the picture we see is not of any one particular person temporally and spatially embedded in a social landscape with a narrative history. In phenomenology, the data are written texts based on people’s stories, the literature and researcher interpretation. The resultant themes and patterns of common practices are the next layer of data. Fuller, 2012, p. 12 We seek to practice Fuller’s ideas by presenting educational leaders’ stories, intertwined with literature and interpretation, to present themes of common practices

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and experiences. We hope this might shed light on often a hidden aspect of educational leadership within literacy spaces in Australian classrooms.

Interpreting the individual narratives to produce hermeneutic phenomenological texts The process of collecting individual stories and interpreting them into a collective narrative is part of the phenomenological process (van Manen, 2014, p. 20). This creates a text that transforms lived experiences into textual expression of its essence in such a way that the effect of the text is a reflexive re-living and a reflective appropriation of something meaningful from the individual narratives (van Manen, 2002). Whilst van Manen uses the term “essence”, he notes that “essence is not a single, fixed property by which we know something; rather, it is meaning constituted by a complex array of aspects, properties and qualities” (van Manen, 2015, p. xv). We sought what van Manen (2015) calls phenomenological themes that constitute the “structures of experience” (p. 79). These essential structures form the foundational elements of the experience and are “critical to the being of things” (van Manen 2015, p. xv). Structures or themes are more than just identifying the frequency of key ideas, rather, they are an “insightful invention, discovery or disclosure…. a free act of ‘seeing’ meaning” (van Manen, 2015, p. 79). This hermeneutical excavation involves “the act of drawing out, eliciting, evoking, and uncovering” meaning (Carmen, 2008, p. 14). This act of “seeing” comes from approaching the stories with a sense of wonder, spending time dwelling within the narratives and always moving from the minute details to the experience holistically. Seeking meaning through this whole-part-whole approach (Dahlberg et al., 2008; Vagle, 2018; van Manen, 2015), based on the hermeneutic circle (Gadamer, 2004; Heidegger, 2008), acknowledges that interpretation and meaning are found in experiences through the recursive cyclic approach of moving from the whole to the parts and back again. Researchers adopting this approach understand that “each part is understood in terms of the whole and that the whole is understood in terms of its parts” (Dahlberg et al., 2008, p. 236). In other words, the parts and whole of the experience are minutely connected and one cannot be considered without the other. Thus, the interpretation of experiences involved several approaches drawn from the work of Vagle (2018) and van Manen (2015). The following broad-brush strokes guided the analysis, as there is “no step by step model that will guarantee phenomenological insights and understandings” (van Manen, 2017, p. 777): 1. Identifying initial structures of experience; what statements or phrases seem revealing about each individual phenomenon or the experience? 2. Holistic reading approach; what phrases commonly exist across all of the narratives? This involves mapping how the researcher thinks the phenomenological themes fit together and why the themes fit together.

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3. Detailed reading approach; what phrases support the structures of experience that have been identified as part of the phenomena? 4. Subsequent readings moving from holistic to detailed until the textual interpretations (structures of experience) of the experience were gathered. Hermeneutical phenomenological research postulates that the researcher’s assumptions are an embedded and essential part of the interpretative process. It allows for the researcher’s observations and interpretations to form part of the data analysis in a way that is credible and maintains the truthfulness of the participants. We acknowledge that any insights are “only one interpretation and no single interpretation of human experience will ever exhaust the possibility of yet another complementary, or even potentially richer or deeper description” (van Manen, 2015, p. 31). These structures of experience “only serve to point at, to allude to, or to hint at, an aspect of the phenomenon” (van Manen 2015, p. 92).

Presenting the narratives We now reach the point where we would like to present three narratives of experience. The narratives of experience were captured by Damien as the lead researcher. The subsequent interpretation was completed by Damien and Kelly. Therefore, in the narrative recounts, “I” or “me” refers to Damien. Each of the narratives has been analysed and presented drawing on the principles presented in methodology section. As you read the narratives, we would encourage you to not only wonder about the experiences of literacy practice and how power influences these experiences but also the kinds of insights a hermeneutic analysis allows.

Sally’s story It was a cold Monday morning when I sat down in Sally’s small office. Sally is the principal of a small Regional Government primary school in Victoria, Australia. The school has 220 students, and Sally has been principal at this school for 3 years. This is her first principalship. Prior to entering the principalship, Sally worked as a primary school teacher, with teaching experience at all primary year levels. Sally walked in and shook my hand. She told me she was looking forward to discussing something other than blocked toilets and budgets. Sally told me that her views of literacy, from the perspective of a principal, had been influenced by her work as a primary school teacher, curriculum coordinator and parent. Sally offered the following insight from her experience: Year six children need skills for the future. The world is changing, and we are struggling to keep up with it. The pace of the world is furious, but the pace of education is slow. We seem almost stuck in an old world. We have technology, money and space, but we don’t have the mindset. I observe that teachers want to teach the way they learnt and seem afraid to let go.

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I asked Sally during our interview why she felt teachers were “afraid to let go”. Sally rolled her eyes and shared this experience: We are part of a system that tests old literacies, and therefore that is what we value and therefore teach. When I look at our mandated testing data, I see that our literacy results are good. But what I feel confident knowing is these literacy skills are based on a 20th century model, not 21st century model. It was clear that Sally is a professional who has embraced literacy practices that reflect time and place. She arrived to the interview with an iPhone, iPad and laptop. Throughout the interview, she demonstrated her points using a range of multimodal tools, such as videos, sound clips, presentations, websites, Facebook posts and Twitter posts. She claimed that this was the way she worked, and she felt that it was important to demonstrate meaningful use of technology to her school community. This led her to a second point: lobby groups who try to influence her. Sally shared this experience: Recently I was at a meeting of the local chamber of commerce. I was sitting next to the General Manager of a local business that employs over 300 people. He said to me that employees who can read and write are easy and cheap to find. We want people who can think, respond, and take ownership. When he made this comment, I immediately thought of our literacy environment. Our children are told what to read, how to read it and when to read it. We don’t encourage these skills. We are in fact inhibiting their future success in the workforce. Sally was sympathetic to the General Manager’s view. She went on to give an example from her experience: I was in a Year 6 classroom recently. I like to visit the classrooms as often as I can. The teacher was introducing biographies. A student asked if he could investigate a person the teacher didn’t know. The teacher responded that he had to choose from the set list. Another child asked if she could use YouTube to find content. Rather than discussing quality content, the teacher told the student she must use the book in the library. Then another child asked if he could create a movie of his biography, to which the teacher responded that it had to be handwritten. I know this is an extreme example, but this is what is going on! Sally was of the view that the literacy skills students are being taught in Year 6 need to reflect the skills that are valuable beyond the classroom and in their future world of work. Sally was very concerned about teachers not having pedagogical knowledge. Teachers were relying on resources that did the thinking for them, and in the

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absence of that, they were relying on their past experience. The problem, as Sally identified from her experiences, was that: … the world is changing. Children are learning in new and different ways, but we are still offering a very bland learning experience. Further, Sally commented that: Children in Year 6 have smart phones, tablets and computers. They are using social media, creating knowledge—some even have their own blogs! But we don’t acknowledge any of that. We fail to understand their prior knowledge and experiences. Experiential learning, or authentic learning, is something we don’t even consider. It’s no wonder we have disengagement. Sally moved on to consider what her role was in literacy learning, for Year  6 students in particular. She acknowledged that 21st century literacy was about combining old and new literacy practices, and to do this required a different pedagogical mind set and skill set. Through Sally’s experiences, she questioned her own commitment to 21st century literacy practices for her staff, commenting that: …Possibly I have not given enough thought to this. I have been so wrapped up in other things that I haven’t really thought enough about it. If I don’t start to create the space for change, then it won’t happen. If I don’t start making it explicit, then it won’t happen. I think I have to be much more proactive. When questioned about what being “more proactive” might involve, Sally suggested: It means that I need to make it a policy priority, a professional development priority and make the community more aware of it. I need to find people who share this view or have an interest in this area. This all sounds very easy, but it means challenging school culture and this is delicate as I’m asking teachers to ignore the benchmarks that are imposed and instead, look to their professional identities to ask what is right… The interview concluded with some light banter about how leaders don’t need sleep because they don’t have time for that.

Alister’s story I met with Alister early one July morning. Alister introduced himself with an energy and enthusiasm that was exciting. Before we sat down for the interview,

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Alister offered me a tour of the school along with coffee. Alister had a very relaxed manner with other staff members and joked with a number of them as we walked around the school. It appeared that Alister was very well liked by other staff members. Alister was the principal of a Victorian Government school located in the capital city of Melbourne, Australia. The school was a mid-sized multicultural school, comprising 212 students and 16 full-time staff. Alister was keen to make the point, that at 27 years of age, he was considered a very young principal. Alister told me that he had done some reading in preparation for the interview, and all of his reflections were thoughtful and informed by his reading and practice. Alister claimed that everything he did as a principal was informed by research. He had just completed a master’s degree in the area of educational management and was passionate about action research. Alister was of the view that schooling is about developing the whole child. Drawing on his experiences, he suggested that: Education for me is a life-long journey that begins well before they arrive at prep. For me, school needs to be a happy, fun, yet challenging place. It’s our responsibility to not only the child, but our communities. Literacy in and for the 21st century was an issue that Alister felt was central to meaningful education. Alister was of the view that: …literacy isn’t just about reading and writing. Literacy is about being. Interacting in a world that is full of choices, information, peer pressure, marketing… the list goes on. Literacy in the 21st century is about equipping young people to manage and participate in a world that is complex, powerful, but incredibly exciting. Who would have thought even fifteen years ago that we could, in real time, talk with people on the other side of the world? It’s just amazing. I invited Alister to consider what his definition of 21st century literacy may be, and he offered the following insight from his experience: … I think it is best to give an example. Our Year 6 students are currently learning about European history. The National Curriculum mandates it. We have an amazing Year 6 staff who managed to build links with schools in three European countries. As a result, children from four different schools, in four different countries are communicating in real time about their country. Photos, videos, and text are being shared. Questions are being asked, clarification being sought, and understanding being developed. Relationships are being developed and at times tested. It’s just amazing. That is 21st century literacy in action. Unpack that and link skills to that and we get to see what literacy learning could and should be!

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Alister was of the view that the National Curriculum just needed to be made more exciting. …nobody is telling us how to teach the content… that is up to us. At our school there has been a long-held view that pedagogy is central to our learning, and we wanted to be expert in understanding pedagogy. That way when content standards are imposed on us, we don’t have to drown in them… we just embrace them with our pedagogical understandings to allow for real and meaningful student learning. Alister was clear that teachers needed time and space to develop good pedagogical knowledge. Alister shared the following experience: Staff meetings are a waste of time! I decided to create a weekly video, which outlines all the mundane things that need to be communicated. Teachers can watch this in their classrooms, or on the train, or whatever. It saves so much time! The precious time we do have away from face to face teaching needs to be value-adding to pedagogy. The stuff that inspires teachers… the stuff that makes them want to walk into their classrooms and make a real difference. This empowers teachers! Alister was very enthusiastic, but also very knowledgeable. It was clear he had a strong sense of what 21st century literacy practices were and ways to enable teacher ownership of such practices. Alister had a strong view about leadership for learning. He shared this reflective experience: …my role is to lead learning… the only way I can lead learning is to work with teachers and to clear the way for them to be the best they can be. I’m only as good as the sum of all my teachers… they are the stars and I need to let them shine. That’s my job. If I choose to bog them down with administration, or work that doesn’t value add to student learning, then the outcomes are going to be disappointing. Schools are about learning, and I need to champion that. The interview concluded with me observing a literacy lesson, which was a presentation of a learning reflection session.

Kate’s story Kate is an assistant principal of a regional primary school in east Victoria, Australia. The school is a large Victorian government school, with a significant number of students coming from socially disadvantaged backgrounds. Kate has been assistant principal for seven years at the school. Kate is responsible for student welfare and

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curriculum. Kate has a teaching load as well and spends each morning in a Year 5/6 classroom. The interview was conducted via the telephone. Kate wanted to talk about her views on 21st century literacy learning from the perspective of a teacher/leader. She identified conflicting emotions between what she thought as a leader compared to what she thought as a classroom teacher. For example, Kate shared the following experience: It is a difficult one for me. I go to our leadership meetings and I look at the literacy data and I see where we are underperforming, and I think to myself, why don’t we just drill and skill. That will improve the data. But then I go into the classroom and I see the wonderful authentic learning that is going on, where children are learning real skills that will benefit them for years to come and I think to myself, I need to fight the data. Kate identified a dilemma from her experiences; often the data being measured by the Government was associated with standardised testing, and much of the standardised testing did not embrace skills that she associated with 21st century literacy. …when I look at the standardised testing that we have to use, I see that students need to be able to read a basic paragraph and pull out literal definitions. They need to be able to identify factual events within the text and then offer some inferential interpretation. They need to be able to spell words correctly… but that’s it! Surely that isn’t all that our literacy teaching and learning should be based on! Kate suggested that if a teacher walked into a job interview and could only demonstrate the skills that were being asked for in the literacy standardised test, they would not even make it past the first round. …it’s just not life… it’s just not realistic. Children have the skills to be literate in the 21st century. Our job is to polish them and to ensure students know when and how to use them. That’s our job! But it takes time and isn’t easy to assess. That’s the problem. Kate defined 21st century literacy as: … involving students taking greater ownership for their learning. Using tools to communicate and interact that are both sophisticated and powerful. 21st century literacy is about making students more aware of the information they are working with and more critical of it. Not in terms of being negative, but in terms of asking questions about how it is presented, why it has been presented this way… that sort of thing. 21st century literacy of course still has the basics of reading, writing, speaking and listening, but it is contextually different. It is contextual to the 21st century and therefore that is why it is 21st century literacy!

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As an assistant principal, Kate felt that her role was to share this view, to work with teachers to understand the context of primary schools in the 21st century and to continue to present to key stakeholders at every opportunity what good learning looks like in the 21st century. I have to be an advocate of learning. Learning in the 21st century. Too much of what our bureaucrats develop is not contextual for the 21st century. Leaders, teachers, whoever, need to present and discuss at every opportunity what learning in the 21st century looks like. Literacy is just one part of this…but an essential part. Leaders need to be informed advocates. Kate thanked me for my time and for the opportunity to reflect on literacy. The interview was quite short, lasting 25 minutes.

A hermeneutic exploration of power and how it is experienced by educational leaders within literacy education As described in the methodology discussion, this chapter seeks to capture not only individual experiences of power within the literacy landscape but to also hermeneutically excavate the individual experiences to offer a collective hermeneutic phenomenological analysis. This analysis highlighted two areas: firstly, that power is rarely solely located with the leader, and secondly (and consequently), that educational leaders are negotiators of power relations within a literacy context. Below, we expand on these ideas.

Power is rarely located solely within the leader The understandings gleaned from this hermeneutic excavation suggest the way the participant’s experienced power was not traditional in terms of structure or hierarchy. This analysis of experience suggests power is often located beyond educational leaders – and educational leaders are required to mediate exertions of power upon them. Bureaucrats and politicians have imposed high-stakes literacy testing regimes (Morsy, 2013) under which schools have their literacy data publicly reported (Australian Curriculum Assessment and Reporting Authority, 2016). Schools are ranked, principals’ performance is assessed against this data and funding is directly linked to outcomes from these standardised tests. Sally stated that: We are required to teach ‘old literacies’. My performance review assesses part of my performance against ‘old literacies’. Parents demand it, School Council demands it. This is where the power sits. I simply have to negotiate the people and groups who hold the power. If I want to stay in my job, that is my job.

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Kate offered us this example: I’m passionate about ‘new literacies’. I know the New London group’s work. But this isn’t what exists in schools. We have bureaucrats who write curriculum and have no idea about learning – only about creating charts to show how students are supposedly learning. But they have the power. They convince parents this is what good literacy learning looks like. And this becomes my work. Satisfying parents and bureaucrats at the expense of my own professional knowledge. We then have standardised testing enforced upon us – which is a way to control what we teach… actually it’s designed to control us. This is an example of how power can be enacted upon educational leaders, who are often assumed by the broader community to have the power. What both Kate and Sally make clear for us is how stakeholder groups exert power. Literacy pedagogy in these examples is politicised. The educational leader becomes a manager of expectations, rather than a leader of innovative pedagogies. Equally significant, is the pressure that business and industry place on educational leaders to ensure that young people leave school with the literacy skills and dispositions they require. Kate’s experience of her meeting with the local chamber of commerce, mentioned earlier is noteworthy. This experience is matched by Alister who offered the following reflection; I took my niece to a university open day recently. She wants to work in science. I listened to lecturers and people from the science industry talk about the work scientists do – and I found myself thinking about how we actually reflect the world my niece will be living and learning in after she leaves school. I think Ken Robinson is right – we are preparing our children for a world long past. Alister When I asked Alister why we do this, he offered the following; Because the education department doesn’t know what to do. If I am seeing the disconnect between the literacies we teach in schools and the literacies needed for university and work, then I’m sure they are too. But they don’t know what to do. So, they play it safe. But soon enough kids won’t be getting jobs, and then it will change… Alister What the data from this analysis suggests, is that power is rarely located solely within the leader or the institution, thus fitting with Foucault’s notion of biopower, which is about controlling populations (Foucault, 1979). Power is being exerted by bureaucrats in many forms. An example of this is the National

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Curriculum (Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority, n.d.), that all schools are required to adhere to. Stakeholders such as businesses and industries who employ young people are consulted around such documents. This is an example of subversive influence, which has aspects of control over educational literacy leaders. Each is exerting power upon educational leaders in both overt and covert ways, but the overall objective is to control systems and outcomes. Educational leaders are expected to manage the power being exerted upon them and mediate between the various sources of power, but this is often at the expense of their pedagogical innovations. The examples presented in this study appear to suggest the work of an educational leader in the literacy context is to respond to stakeholders who impose. This is an example of how power influences literacy leadership and learning in ways that have potential to dull a literacy curriculum rather than inspire.

Educational leaders are negotiators of power-relations within a literacy context The hermeneutic excavation revealed all three research participants agreed that pedagogy mattered. It mattered not only in the way a teacher taught literacy but also in how it influenced the way a teacher and the school community approached literacy discussions. Our analysis suggested the importance educational leaders place on pedagogical knowledge reflecting time and place. For example; Our job as leaders of literacy is to create opportunities for students to learn the skills needed for 21st century life – both in school, work and society more generally. We do a bit of this, but it’s not enough. We need to re-think how we do learning – but we need a lot more direction. Alister

At my school we are thinking about literacy pedagogy. I know we are doing a lot of what we did 20 years ago, but we just don’t really know how to do 21st century pedagogies. The textbooks don’t really match reality. This creates confusion and stress, so we revert to what we know. Sally This links to power and power relations. If educational leaders and the educational community wish to engage with the contemporary literacy discourses, from a pedagogical, political, and sociocultural perspective, then knowledge and confidence about “best practice” pedagogy seems necessary. A sustained and rigorous commitment to innovative 21st century literacy pedagogies equips teachers with knowledge, skills and confidence to engage in both the design of curriculum and the enactment of pedagogy, along with an opportunity to be public thought leaders on literacy education. This positions teachers and

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educational leaders less as the victims of decisions and more as valuable experts in educational literacy debates. This helps challenge the power relations that exist within communities and schools (Foucault, 1979). Power relations always and ever exist from Foucault’s point of view. They can be construed as negative or positioned as positive. It really is about who has the agential power. The topdown model denudes leaders of effective agency and so they may feel powerful and unsupported by hierarchies. The analysis suggests that how power is perceived by people outside of education is often different to how it is experienced. The experiences presented in this study show the potential disempowerment over literacy teaching and learning. Enacted leadership from the experiences shared here seems to suggest that leaders need to enact what is being mandated or suggested by wider influences outside of the educational context. Whilst educational leaders in this study identified pedagogy as critical to their work, they equally identified the challenges to enacting innovative literacy pedagogies that are reflective of 21st century literacy discourses. There is evidence to suggest a disconnect between the pedagogical beliefs educational leaders have towards literacy education and the imposed testing regimes demanded by the State and Federal Governments in Australia. This is an example of perceived power being different to the experience of power. That is, it is reasonable to expect that an educational leader could influence pedagogy, creating best practice learning environments. Yet, analysis from the data presented in this study suggests that is not the case. Often educational leaders are responding to imposed social discourses that actually require them to respond to the power being exerted upon them. This was strongly suggested throughout the lived experiences of the participants in this study. Educational leaders are people who experience the world (in diverse ways) and lead in situated ways but there is a tension between this leading (with all its complexities) and the framework imposed on them about how to lead. The synchronicity of the power relations shapes the experiences of the educators.

Concluding thoughts Educational leaders within this study had views and experiences on the leadership of literacy that were often in contradiction to those reported in the research literature as “best practice”. What the hermeneutic excavation revealed is that often “best practice” in literacy discourses is undermined by political and stakeholder expectations. Such groups exert power over educational leaders to achieve outcomes that are often serving desired purposes beyond the school context. An analysis of the lived experiences from this study suggests that educational leaders in various school leadership roles experience tensions in responding to power exertions from stakeholder groups who work against both what educational leaders know to be best practice and what is in the best interests of their students.

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References Australian Curriculum Assessment and Reporting Authority. (2016). My school. https:// myschool.edu.au/. Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority. (n.d.). Australian curriculum. https://www.australiancurriculum.edu.au/. Buckingham, D. (2000). After the death of childhood. Polity Press. Buckingham, D. (2008). Defining digital literacies. Nordic Journal of Digital Literacy, 4, 21–34. Clary, D., & Daintith, S. (2017). Raising the bar: Setting an agenda for writing improvement in the middle years. Literacy Learning: The Middle Years, 25(2), 45–57. Dahlberg, K., Dahlberg, H., & Nystróm, M. (2008). Reflective lifeworld research. Studentlitteratur AB. Duignan, P. (2006). Educational leadership: Key challenges and ethical tensions. Cambridge University Press. Firestone, W., & Martinez, C. (2009). How distributed leadership works in schools and districts. In K. Leithwood, B. Mascall, & T. Strauss (Eds.), Distributed leadership according to the evidence (pp. 3–35). Routledge. Foucault, M. (1979). Power, truth, strategy. Prometheus Books. Foucault, M. (1994). Psychiatric power. In P. Rabinow (Ed.), Ethics: Subjectivity and truth (pp. 39–50). The New Press. Fuller, S. (2012). Social epistemology: A quarter-century itinerary. Social Epistemology: A Journal of Knowledge, Culture and Policy, 1(1), 1–17. Gadamer, H. G. (2004). Truth and method (2nd ed). In J. Weinsheimer & D. G. Marshall (Eds.), Gadamer; truth and method. Continuum. Gore, J. M. (1998). Disciplining bodies: On the continuity of power relations in pedagogy. In T. S. Popkewitz & M. Brennan (Eds.), Foucault’s challenge: Discourse, knowledge and power in education (pp. 231–251). Teachers College Press. Heidegger, M. (2008). Being and time. Harper & Row. Henriksson, C., & Friesen, N. (2012). Introduction to hermeneutic phenomenology. In N. Friesen, C. Henriksson, & T. Saevi (Eds.), Hermeneutic phenomenology in education (pp. 1–16). Sense Publishers. Lyons, D. (2014). Australian educational leaders’ perceptions of literacy learning for year 6 students in and for the 21st century (Master of arts - educational leadership). University of London. Lyons, D. (2015). Literacy in and for the 21st century (Doctor of philosophy). Deakin University. Morsy, L. (2013, April 7). Time to evaluate high-stakes tests. The Sydney Morning Herald. New London Group (1996). A pedagogy of multiliteracies: Designing social futures. Harvard Educational Review, 66(1), 60–93. 10.17763/haer.66.1.17370n67v22j160u Pennycook, A. (2001). Critically applied linguistics. Routledge. Swaffield, S., & Macbeath, J. (2009). Leadership for learning. In J. Macbeath & N. Dempster (Eds.), Connecting leadership and learning (pp. 32–52). Routledge. Vagle, M. (2018). Crafting phenomenological research (2nd ed.). Routledge. van Manen, M. (2002). The heuristic reduction. State University of New York Press. van Manen, M. (2014). Phenomenology of practice: Meaning-giving methods in phenomenological research and writing. Routledge. van Manen, M. (2015). Researching lived experience: Human science for an action sensitive pedagogy (2nd ed.). Left Coast Press.

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Victorian State Government Education and Training. (2019). Students using mobile phones. https://www.education.vic.gov.au/school/principals/spag/safety/Pages/ mobilephones.aspx Zimpher, N. L., & Howey, K. R. (2013). Creating 21st century centres of pedagoy: Explicating key laboratory and clinical elements of teacher preparation. Education, 133(4), 409–421.

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9 TOWARDS A PHENOMENOLOGY OF TEACHER RESPONSIBILITY Alex Kostogriz MONASH UNIVERSITY, AUSTRALIA

In the context of permanent education reforms, it has become commonsensical to expect individual teacher accountability for the quality of work and students’ learning outcomes (Kostogriz, 2018). Teacher accountability has been legitimated discursively by education policies and the media as well as empirically by research that acknowledges teachers as the most significant factor in influencing the quality of students’ learning (Darling-Hammond, 2006). This construct is now firmly grounded in the institutional practices of schooling and performance management. It is almost untenable in today’s ‘audit society’ to question the economic rationalism that underlies teacher accountability or to argue against it in some way. Partly, this is because accountability has become a corollary of a regime of truth – the dominant rhetoric and practice of competition that drive performance standards and outcomes valuation in education (Davies, 2014). And, partly, this is because teacher accountability has been appropriated as the moral foundation of this regime. The resurgence of teacher accountability under the neoliberal regime of truth can be linked to the fiscal policy of austerity and funding cuts in order to make education quasi-markets work more effectively (Connell, 2013). Raising teacher accountability has become a part of the new education assemblage (Rizvi & Lingard, 2010) that is composed of complex arrangements of policies and educational sites, bureaucrats and the profession, standardised practices and data. The neoliberal arrangements of the educational assemblage produce a particular modality of accountability which denies the social basis of professional life. Teachers are first alienated from their practice and then retroactively reattached to it through data or evidence (Kostogriz & Doecke, 2011). That is, accountability attaches teachers (the doers) to practice (the deeds) belatedly and, in so doing, positions them to comply with a performative culture stipulated by neoliberal policies. As a result, numbers are now inscribed in accountability processes to

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make judgements about who should be praised and who should be blamed for students’ learning outcomes (Taubman, 2009). Teachers are increasingly forced to work harder and to use data as a way of understanding and representing their effectiveness. Equally, teacher accountability entails a view of the teacher as the moral subject who lives up to certain demands and acts on good reasons to meet professional standards. As a result, ‘accountability’ has acquired a set of meanings that are associated with the enforcement of teacher compliance and self-regulation. Indeed, one’s compliance, and self-regulation that underlies it, can be evaluated as rightful or wrongful actions in terms of moral criticism. But this kind of judgment in neo-liberal conditions is data mediated. That is, the moral dispositions of teachers to comply and be affective are evaluated by measurable evidence. One can count the number of completed professional development days or interpret the results of student and parent satisfaction surveys to ensure a continuous reproduction of self-regulated teachers. However, increasingly, there has been a shift in understanding accountability from a technology of ‘disciplining’ teachers to a technology of controlling their lives. It is no longer just a matter of disciplining and expurgating the disobedient, ill-equipped or unscrupulous teachers. The accountable profession is more a product of ‘biopower’ – a way in which accountability is put to govern teachers by subjection their work ‘to precise controls and comprehensive regulations’ (Foucault, 1998, p. 137). It is an indispensable element in adjusting teachers to neoliberal reforms and processes in educational institutions. It affects both the body and the mind of teachers who are constantly exposed to performance targets and standards-based reforms (Ball, 2003). The production of the accountable profession relies, therefore, on the internalisation of a particular subjectivity – one that is accountable for quality teaching, self-reflective and resourceful, but is also self-exploitative and self-tormenting in its pursuit to attain and sustain the standards of effectiveness. This subjectivity requires teachers to constantly reflect on the core aspects of their professional selves by focusing on thoughts, values and actions, in order to reveal its own vulnerabilities and flaws. In this sense, to paraphrase Margaret Thatcher, neoliberal economics and accountability have definitely become the methods of changing teachers’ souls (The Sunday Times, 1988). In their fear of failing to reach or sustain the standards of quality, teachers become both ‘victims and culprits of their failure and of depression that, at the same time, causes and follows it’ (Bauman, 2016, p. 40). The subject, therefore, becomes a cause-and-effect of neoliberal biopower, which makes one’s capacity to question the performative system and the progressive erosion of social and professional bonds problematic. That is, we need a method that would allow us to question the very construct of an ‘accountable subject’ and ascertain, instead, teacher responsibility as matter of being in the world and with others. Phenomenological ontology is such a method that can help us ascertain these essential characteristics of teacher’s being and thereby recover teaching as a relational and ethical activity.

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By focusing on the work of beginning teachers, the chapter therefore argues that the volatility of teaching profession in neoliberal conditions can be counteracted through questioning accountability and, in doing so, remembering the origin of ethicality in the teaching profession as essentially being with and for others – that is, remembering the origin of teacher responsibility. In this chapter I draw on hermeneutic phenomenology (Heidegger, 1962), first, to deconstruct ‘accountability’ as a concept that is largely informed by Kantian perspectives on the subject as a self-conscious, rational and moral person or as an autonomous being who is accountable for itself and, second, to provide the horizons for an ontological study of teacher responsibility by drawing on Bakhtin’s (1990, p.  1993) relational architectonics of self. The phenomenon of teacher responsibility discloses itself in stories of beginning teachers who participated in the Studying the Effectiveness of Teacher Education project (Mayer et al., 2017). Although the study has collected exceptionally rich data about graduate teachers’ perceptions of their preparedness and effectiveness, it is case studies of 30 selected schools in Australia that have provided a window into the lifeworld of beginning teachers. Their stories, among other things, have offered a possibility of ontological investigation of teacher responsibility that presents itself in the form of tacit understandings shaped by the relational nature of their work. In this sense, teacher responsibility for their students shapes and is shaped by their sayings and doings that are deeply relational. Responsibility is a fundamental ontological phenomenon of teachers’ being that presents itself as an understanding and that is in need of interpretation – a hermeneutic – in order to be rendered distinct from accountability.

Questioning accountability Accountability is based on a deep-seated assumption that the individual is a rational and autonomous subject who is the cause of its actions. This traditional metaphysical view of the subject entails an actor or an agent who is self-grounded and who acts on the world (objects) through the freedom of the will. This view of the subject presents the agent’s capacity to act as the problem that arises from ‘transcendental freedom’ to act (Kant, 1999). In the context of Kantian scholarship, in particular, freedom is conceived as a primary condition for assuming accountability in so far as, in the moment of decision-making, the subject sees itself as the author of its actions (Korsgaard, 1996). Furthermore, this view implies that reciprocal relations can take place only in conditions when all the agents accept accountability for their actions. They should hold themselves accountable for their actions only because they are rational agents who engage in deliberation and choice. In this way, the accountable subject is both the cause and the ground of its actions or, as Raffoul (2010, p. 6) puts it, is a ‘subject-cause’. Calls for teacher accountability are mediated by such a view of teacher agency, which is alien to their ontological becoming as well as detrimental to the relational and educative practices in schools.

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Experiences of beginning teachers in our longitudinal research (Mayer et al., 2017) are illustrative of ontological alienation that school accountability and the view of teachers as ‘subject-cause’ present. ‘Holy moly!’, one of the teachers exclaimed during an interview, reflecting on her experiences of professional becoming in the context of implementing the National Assessment Program – Literacy and Numeracy (NAPLAN) in an Australian school: Everyone is like NAPLAN, NAPLAN, NAPLAN and I am just like holy moly … Well, I think, it’s like if you have any sort of year 8 or year 9 class any activity sheet it has to be in NAPLAN format so the kids are used to seeing it; they are used to answering that style of questions. You have to have your NAPLAN based key words in that, which do relate to the curriculum, but it’s still a whole lot extra work that you need. You can’t just whip up an activity sheet. You have to spend an hour and a half formatting this thing and getting all your coloured dots in; making sure you’ve got a spelling activity; make sure you’ve got a grammar activity; make sure you’ve got a visual text activity; make sure you’ve got a text activity in this activity sheet because it has to be in NAPLAN format. (Claire, beginning teacher) The culture of accountability, its outcomes-driven logic, conflates the is and the ought of education and dramatically changes the lifeworld of teaching. The fetish of assessment and datafication force teachers to focus their work on the production of numbers (e.g., test scores) rather than on the educational formation of students (e.g., knowledge, values, capabilities). In this way, the teachers’ power to educate students is reduced to their capacity to produce numbers for which they are held to account and which confront them as a commodity hostile to them. This is because numbers force teachers to conform to the logic of data production, leading to the ‘unnatural separation’ of teachers and students and often to the perception of their professional life as empty or meaningless (Kostogriz & Doecke, 2011). Although the alienation of teachers has intensified in conditions of educational accountability and standards-based reforms, it is essentially the product of modernity in which the subject is conceived metaphysically. The accountable teacher – the subject-cause – is Kantian in its nature in so far as accountability is located within the horizon of the subjectum understood as an I that has transcendental freedom to act with imputability. This is a rational, self-reflexive and autonomous subject who is the author of its deeds and effects (Kant, 1993). This view of accountable subject privileges abstract universal laws as guidelines for judging moral actions. It is precisely this construct of an accountable subject that envisages teachers to be self-determined and committed to improving academic attainment, as well as being data-driven and freely taking up the modes of regulations and measurement expected of them (Keddie, 2016). Numbers play a particular role

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in sustaining this view of the subject in times of uncertainty. This is because they are a socially constructed technology of producing certainty in and about schooling. But numbers in themselves will not perform this function unless they are read, interpreted and translated into discourses of truth-telling. Language, in particular, has a capacity to represent any phenomenon as truth (Danziger, 2008). Indeed, the semiotic assemblage of language and numbers in discourses of accountability has been instrumental in constructing a particular kind of accountable teacher as truth. However, it is also due to the language-mediated construction of the subject as an absolute beginning that the concept of accountability as self-caused is problematic. One of the most powerful critiques of both the autonomous subject and its moral grounding comes from Nietzsche, who posited both the doer and the doing as fictions. This critique rests on the linguistic basis of thought and, in this case, on the metaphysics of grammar that is implicated in the construction of the doer and the deed as two different things where the former is the cause of the latter: …just as the common people separates the lightning from its flash and takes the latter to be a deed, something performed by a subject, which is called lightning, popular morality [also] separates strength from the manifestation of strength, as though there were an indifferent substratum behind the person which had the freedom to manifest strength or not. But there is no such substratum; there is no “being” behind the deed, its affect and what becomes of it; “the doer” is invented as an afterthought – the doing is everything. (Nietzsche, 1967, I, p. 13) Nietzsche’s claim that the deed appears to leave no room for an agent seems to be illogical. However, if we think about the doer as situated in life, its actions should be perceived as events within the particularity of its specific life and, therefore, the subject itself is not a subject-cause but is, instead, a multi-relational entity rooted in the eventness of life. This means that a key to understanding the doings of teachers can be found only in their immediate experience as it is felt from within the particularity of their professional lives or, more specifically, from the pedagogical events of their being as they occur in classroom practice. From this perspective, to think of numbers as a product of an accountable teacher is to reduce the diversity of pedagogical experiences to the singularity of abstract representation. The attempt to find the accountable teacher in the reified product of her deed is an attempt to cast the teacher into non-being or an attempt to alienate teachers from their unique location in concrete schools and classrooms. It may be argued, of course, that numbers register and represent the experiences of teachers in so far as the data can provide an evidence of accountable teaching. However, representations of teachers by numbers in the discourses

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of accountability are fundamentally different from teacher lived experiences. As a teacher in our project argues: Obviously now that [the test data] are public, it’s a reflection on your teaching as opposed to being used as a learning tool like it should be, I think. It’s become more of a reflection on our teaching, which isn’t necessarily true. I think the Year 9’s that came through this year were so bloody sick of NAPLAN that they all sort of went, “Who gives…?” … They just had NAPLAN rammed down their throats for the first two terms… I honestly think that probably killed a lot of the kids. The datafication of teachers’ work only reinforces the gap between the order of representations and the order of experience. Current attempts to enter the lifeworld of teachers from inside performance data inevitably end up with a conception of the accountable teacher as an alienated subject who is destined to understand its being only in the form of metaphysics – as the subject accountable for the production of education data rather than educated students. According to Heidegger (1993), it is precisely this form of metaphysical subject-object split that manifests the subject as estranged from its Being and therefore as an object to itself. This constitutes a ‘forgetting of Being’ in conditions of ever-deepening estrangement of ways of existing from Being as an event that calls for a responsible engagement with the world and others. Such a ‘forgetting’ is definitive of a consciousness that is only concerned with objects/ things and not with the essence of Being as such. In doing so, the human being, signified ontologically by Heidegger as Dasein, ‘drifts along towards an alienation [Entfremdung] in which its ownmost potentiality-for-Being is concealed. Falling Being-in-the-world is not only tempting and tranquillizing; it is at the same time alienating’ (Heidegger, 1962, p. 223). Therefore, when Dasein is estranged from its potential for being, it comports itself to inauthentic existence. However, the alienation of Dasein does not entail its surrender to an entity that Dasein itself is not; its way of existing also harbours a possibility of modifying its inauthenticity and dis-humanisation (Heidegger, 2006). This possibility lies on the plane of concrete, factical existence itself rather than somewhere that is external to everyday existence. To be authentic, therefore, is to fulfil the Dasein’s potential to accept its responsibility in the midst of concrete existence itself, rather than just taking accountability imposed from above as an ideal norm. Applying this line of argument to the factical existence of teachers (as always already entangled in institutional practices, cultures and relations with others), then we can distinguish between accountability and responsibility in terms of inauthenticity and authenticity of teachers’ being. Standards-based accountability places a demand – a form of duty – that teachers must answer. In doing so, they fall under the dictatorship of managers and bureaucrats – that is, the They. Teachers become determined, as it were, to act in the name of educational effectiveness, thereby abdicating their responsibility as an authentic response to the

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call of concrete students. The accountable teacher in this sense cannot disclose herself as a responsible teacher because of her absorption in the They and her estrangement from the concrete students. However, the authentic modality of being a teacher can be arrived at through one’s oscillation between what is and what should be. Responsibility is about the recovering (remembering) the most primordial truth about education as a relational practice. It is this being towards others that summons the teacher to disclose herself in her authentic capability to respond to others. As one of the beginning teachers, Mary, puts it: As much as everything is data driven … that lovely data phrase. I’m finding everything outside of that makes an impact. I mean, just having those relationships with the kids just makes it… the class just runs so much more efficiently as well. Like, even though they might not be the best-behaved kids they still feel happy enough to come up and have a chat to you if something’s going wrong or they’re open enough to tell you things that they won’t talk to their parents about. And it’s those kinds of things I’ve found is the big driving force in establishing those relationships. Mary From a Heideggerian perspective, this reflection on teaching experience is illustrative of two forms of the teacher’s attunement in professional practice – an attunement to the experience of alienated labour (inauthenticity) and an attunement to the lived experience of being towards others (authenticity). While the new ‘data-driven’ and ‘evidence-based’ truth about teaching disconnects teachers from students, the relational truth of teaching guards them against their inauthentic being with others. Paradoxically, it is teachers’ anxiety about the changing nature of their everyday work that plays an important role in dealing with uncertainty. On the one hand, anxiety is an expression of professional ‘homelessness’ produced by alienation. It brings their being back from its absorption in the world of data-driven accountability. Anxiety helps teachers recognise that the broader world of education is alienated from them. On the other hand, anxiety marks the collapse of the particular teaching environment, which is experienced individually. The individualisation of anxiety is, therefore, a phenomenological opportunity to see the structure of teacher professional being on its own. Consequently, the anxiety experienced by teachers awakens their consciousness from the inertia of merely confirming to accountability measures. It helps them to recover teaching as a relational practice. Relationality, in the authentic sense, is not a means to professional being, but rather is itself already a way of professional being. However, it should be recognised that the recovery of the originary meaning of one’s professional being involves a struggle between being in the word of data and being in the relational world. This means both ways of professional being – inauthentic and authentic –can be possible as teachers choose to appropriate or to deconstruct the current myths of educational effectiveness. For instance, teachers

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can articulate the relational truth of being a teacher, while seeking to overcome the ‘metricophilia’ of evidence-based accountability (Smith, 2010). Yet, this annunciation of truth takes place in-between the call for accountability and the call for responsibility and, hence, is experienced as an aporetic moment in the stories of beginning teachers. Experiencing this aporia is important as it provides an opening through which the truth is disclosed factually as the authentic professional being attuned to others, rather than from a metaphysical ground. This guiding attunement is brought to thought and language in the moment of its ontological confirmation: For me, I think, to be an effective teacher is to be able to relate to students… The main thing to be effective is to connect with them and to actually help them understand where they are hoping to go either in school or after school. I think the curriculum is important but not necessarily equally so for all students. I think it’s identifying what students need… in that particular subject or that particular point in time. So, I think, that’s for me what defines an effective teacher. Brendan Attunement to the relational being is the point of turning to teachers’ authentic being as care for itself and others. For beginning teachers, caring for themselves is the recognition of their professional being as an issue. Being a teacher means taking care of the teaching activities that one should do as a teacher. But these activities are always future oriented and intersubjective. Hence, teachers’ professional being is also always ahead and beyond itself. It finds itself in the world of facticity – the material and semiotic arrangements of educational environments – in which teachers project themselves onto the possibilities that these environments provide for them. Teachers find facts about themselves, form opinions and make choices within the social ontology of practice. The semiotic and material arrangements of practice provide options for teachers to project themselves onto. Yet, this projection is grounded relationally as care for others. In this originary sense, one’s professional self can only be existentially read off the authenticity of teachers’ being as care for others. This is the reason why teachers choose this profession; indifferent teachers could not settle their professional being in the world of education because they would not take up responsibility for others in the world they were thrown into. If care for others is the meaning of teachers’ being, then it is also a necessary point of departure in understanding teacher responsibility.

The architectonics of teacher responsibility Care for others, as a basic feature of teachers’ professional being, shows itself in a unified pedagogical event that consists of occurring and open-ended acts such as sayings, doings and relatings. As Bakhtin (1993, p. 43), a contemporary of Heidegger, puts it, ‘to be in life, to be actually, is to act, is to be unindifferent

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toward the once-occurrent whole’. The act, as a unified event, binds the self and the other, as well as the meaningful and the ethical, temporally and spatially. Similar to Heidegger (1962), who argued that the sense of care lies in temporality, Bakhtin understands responsibility (answerability) as an axiological orientation of the act performed from within one’s unique ‘place’ constituted by the whole life (e.g., a particular and once-occurrent life of a teacher). As he argues further, ‘… my entire life as a whole can be considered as a single complex act or deed that I perform: I act, i.e., perform acts, with my whole life, and every particular act and lived-experience is a constituent moment of my life – of the continuous performing of acts [postuplenie]’ (Bakhtin, 1993, p. 3). The history of teacher’s life, therefore, situates a pedagogical act as an answerable act which the teacher cannot escape. Bakhtin’s emphasis on the situated nature of an answerable act, on its uniqueness and singularity, means that one cannot escape responsibility for one’s deeds by hiding behind a law, an ideology, or principle. In the singularity of being-as-event, one cannot justify the deed by deploying some foundational and abstract principles of ethical behaviour. Rather, as Bakhtin (1993, p. 40) argues, I am always already responsible due to the fact of ‘my non-alibi in Being, which underlies the concrete and once-occurrent ought of the answerably performed act’ (original emphasis). Non-alibi in Being is not something that one can know of or cognise; it is ‘participatively’ experienced as an obligation towards the other. The structure of relational being and responsibility is presented in Bakhtian scholarship as a unity of the ‘I-for-myself,’ ‘I-for-the other’ and ‘the other-for-me.’ Each transgredient relation in this architectonic provides a unique representational place to understand the effect of the other on one’s self. For instance, I-for-myself is a unique palace from which a teacher is constituted responsibly, rather than subjectively: I just tend to try and be myself and let the kids know I am just a human; my background is not that different to them, I went to a school that is not that far from here, my background is not really that different to where they are coming from. I am not that much older than them; I am only twenty-one. So, when I teach I say ‘this is where I’m from, this is me and I talk from my experiences, and I just acknowledge that we are all a bit different but we’re really not that different from each other at the end of it all. Alistair This interview quote is illustrative of how teachers can animate their I-formyself in relation to the act of teaching the other. The I-for-myself comes to be through the act of saying and is a result of reflection. The I’s self-reflection on its life and acts is achieved through the transgredient relation with others. As another beginning teacher puts it, ‘sharing experiences has been probably the best way to break down any barriers that you have with [students]… because they start to realize that you are a human and I think it builds a better relationship with them’ (Emma).

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The relational self is not a product of establishing a common understanding between teachers and students in order to humanise the de-humanised world of contemporary schooling. Before intersubjective solidarity can be stabilised through a common understanding, it must first be experienced in lived communicative events. Only then can a teacher project herself ethically as ‘I-forthe other’ (Bakhtin, 1990). Prior to any planned and purposeful teaching, there should be an intersubjective moment pointing to the ethics of acting towards the other. For teachers, this is not simply how they want to be seen by their students. Rather, in that moment they come to relate to students as others. From a Bakhtinian perspective, the ethical in I-for- the other is not about loving others as ourselves. Rather, according to Morson and Emerson (1989, p. 21), ‘we must love others as others, without ceasing to be ourselves’. Teachers’ projection of their selves into students must be followed by a return to their own selves; ‘only from this place can the material derived from my projecting my self into the other be rendered meaningful ethically, cognitively or aesthetically’ (Bakhtin, 1990, p. 26). This is not to say that the other is secondary in understanding teacher responsibility. On the contrary, the transgredient responsibility presupposes the other as an originary component in the unitary structure of being a teacher. The other-for-me is a source of teacher responsibility because the I can never see oneself except through the mediation of the other with whom the teacher participates in the pedagogical event. The transgredient relation with the other provides the excess of seeing that is not available to the teacher. To paraphrase Bakhtin, the teacher can only see herself through the eyes of her students. Therefore, a pedagogical act requires a ‘phenomenological sensitivity to lived experience (children’s realities and lifeworlds)’ (van Manen, 1990, p. 1) so that teachers can combine their unique position in the pedagogical event and the surplus of seeing provided by students. The sharing of each other’s excess is needed in order to overcome, together, the mutual lack of seeing (Holquist, 1990). The pedagogical event not only embodies togetherness in its structure but it also demands intersubjective, dialogical communication. Apart from being-with as a form of togetherness, the gift bestowed on us by the surplus of seeing – the gift of language – demands an ethical orientation towards the words of others. Responsibility, in this sense, is an ability to respond to the other who addresses us: The word wants to be heard, understood, responded to and again to respond to the response ad infinitum. It enters into a dialogue that does not have a semantic end. Bakhtin, 1986, p. 127 Although this kind of responsibility is infinitely demanding due to the unfinalisability of meaning, it presupposes a stable relational modality between self and the other – that is, being-for-the other. This modality depends fully on the preservation of the alterity of the other. The different is not consummated in the

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name of sameness but rather remains a truly unique other. Given the diversity of contemporary classrooms, teacher responsibility arises as her commitment in the context of encounter with difference. It erupts though the space of conventional teaching as co-experiencing of a dialogical encounter of at least two consciousnesses in open and direct communication. This, according to Bakhtin (1981), results in mutual change and enrichment. Thus, Bakhtin’s emphasis on the unity of being, as a dialogical relation with the other, creates a unique point from which a responsible act can be performed. This act is a once-occurrent and unique event anchored in the situated nature of a dialogical encounter between self and the other, where one answers to the call of the concrete other in the here and now, from a particular point in their co-being and in full acknowledgement of the world they co-experience with one another. Bakhtin thus offers a post-metaphysical perspective on ethics as responsibility. Because one’s self cannot remain the same in a dialogical encounter with other, it loses any grounding to negate the other through assimilation or domination. Even though the self-other encounter may involve a clash of different meanings or understandings, the self cannot negate the other completely because alterity is the main source of self-understanding. From the ethical point of view, one cannot negate the worldview of the other, because negating the other’s way of being would effectively mean negating the foundation of one’s own existence. To engage in dialogue productively and to see it as a mutually enriching event, is to listen and be open to the other, recognising oneself as answerable for the existence of difference. According to Bakhtin (1984), the other is the origin of our own existence, for we become conscious of ourselves only while revealing ourselves to another, through another, and with the help of another.

Concluding remarks Teaching is increasingly perceived as an ‘anxious’ profession that finds itself in the precarious space between the policy settings that demand quality and the performance indicators that demand evidence of constant improvement. These policy settings, and most notably curriculum policies and documents, materialise ‘cosmic fears’, to use Bakhtin’s words, in the face of the immeasurably great and the immeasurably powerful challenges that our societies face. As a result, teachers are positioned as key agents in helping to tackle environmental changes and social challenges in the world through quality education. Teachers are represented both as leaders in managing global risks and as performers who can address these better through the improved education of next generations. Charging teachers with this kind of individualised accountability for the world and for the students’ future is all but unfulfillable. As Bauman (2016, p. 39) puts it, devoured by that diffuse, dissipated and scattered fear that infiltrates and penetrates the whole of the life setting and the totality of life pursuits, as capillary vessels do the totality of the living body, humans are abandoned

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to their own resources – puny and miserably flimsy assets by comparison with the grandiosity of existential liabilities. This example of teacher accountability speaks to yet another issue that has been produced in neoliberal conditions of education. As a powerful ideology of individualisation and competition, neoliberal performance management practices shape the performances of teachers and schools so that they are in constant rivalry with each other. Many critical commentators have recognised the alienating effects of such practices, leading to the erosion of relational bonds and solidarity in teacher workplaces, as well as to anxieties about one’s self-worth and/or to total self-care. In this regard, neoliberal ideology ‘interpellates’ teachers in their capacity as autonomous, performance-driven and entrepreneurial subjects. The internalisation of such constructs as ‘teaching quality’ mediates precisely such an understanding of accountability that designates the capacity of the subject to be both cause and ground of its acts – that is, quality teachers are the subject-cause of quality teaching. In this chapter, I question the representation of teachers as a self-directed and rational collective subject who is motivated to act professionally by externally mandated performance indicators and moral principles. It offers an alternative view of professional ethics as an ability to respond to others – that is, ethics as responsibility. This appears to be a key theme in the interviews of beginning teachers. In the process of professional becoming, their sense of responsibility emerges from an other-orientated pedagogical act. Teachers narrate about their lived experiences as a mode of becoming an ‘I-for-myself ’ and, at the same, time as a mode of becoming an ‘I-for-the-other’. They cannot produce an autonomous representation of their self (and their ‘effectiveness’) because they have a perspectival limitation to do so. Teaching, by its very nature, requires the other, and it is through the relations with students that teachers can remember and unify their self-activity. The relational experience of being a teacher, therefore, is a unity of the ‘I-for-myself ’, ‘I-for-the other’ and ‘the other-for-me’. This is not a mechanical connection but, rather, is a dialogical authoring of teacher responsibility, which is a way of counteracting the negative impact of accountability measures on teachers’ work. In this regard, the hermeneutic method of undoing ‘accountability’ and recovering ‘responsibility’ as a foundational ontology of teacher being brings to the fore the notion of ‘ethics’ in professional practice as the very condition of pedagogical possibilities and justice in the neoliberal world of schooling.

References Bakhtin, M. (1990). Art and answerability: Early philosophical essays (M. Holquist Ed., V. Liapunov). University of Texas Press. Bakhtin, M. (1993). Towards a philosophy of the act (V. Lapunov, & M. Holquist, Eds., V. Lapunov, Trans.). University of Texas Press.

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Bakhtin, M. (1986). Speech genres and other late essays (C. Emerson, & M. Holquist, Eds.). University of Texas Press. Bakhtin, M. (1984). Problems of Dostoevsky’s poetics (C. Emerson, Ed.). University of Minnesota Press. Bakhtin, M. (1981). The dialogic imagination: Four essays (M. Holquist, Ed., C. Emerson, & M. Holquist, Trans.). University of Texas Press. Ball, S. (2003). The teacher’s soul and the terrors of performativity. Journal of Educational Policy, 28(2), 215–228. Bauman, Z. (2016). Strangers at our door. Polity Press. Connell, R. (2013). The neoliberal cascade and education: An essay on the market agenda and its consequences. Critical Studies in Education, 54(2), 99–112. Darling-Hammond, L. (2006). Powerful teacher education: Lessons from exemplary programs. Jossey-Bass. Davies, W. (2014). The limits of neoliberalism: Authority, sovereignty & the logic of competition. Sage. Foucault, M. (1998). The will to knowledge: The history of sexuality (Vol. 1 (1976), R. Hurley, Trans.). Vintage Books. Heidegger, M. (2006). Mindfulness (P. Emad, & T. Kalary). Continuum. Heidegger, M. (1993). Letter on humanism (F. Capuzzi, Trans.). In D. F. Krell (Ed.), Basic writings: Martin Heidegger. Routledge. Heidegger, M. (1962). Being and time ( J. Macquarrie, & E. Robinson, Trans.). Blackwell. Holquist, M. (1990). Dialogism: Bakhtin and his world. Routledge. Kant, I. (1999). The metaphysics of morals. In M. J. Grego (Ed.), Practical philosophy. Cambridge University Press. Kant, I. (1993). The critiques of practical reason (3rd ed., L. White Beck, Trans.). MacMillan. Keddie, A. (2016). Children of the market: Performativity, neoliberal responsibilisation and the construction of student identities. Oxford Review of Education, 42(1), 108–112. Korsgaard, C. (1996). Creating the kingdom of ends. Cambridge University Press. Kostogriz A. (2018). The question of professional ethics in TESOL: Hospitality as an (im) possible demand? TESOL in Context, 27(2), pp. 23–41. Kostogriz, A., & Doecke, B. (2011). Standards-based accountability: Reification, responsibility and the ethical subject. Teaching Education, 22(4), 397–412. Mayer, D., Dixon, M., Kline, J., Kostogriz, A., Moss, J., Rowan, L., et al. (2017). Studying the effectiveness of teacher education: Early career teachers in diverse settings. Springer. Nietzsche, F. (1967). On the genealogy of morals (W. Kaufmann, Trans.). Vintage Books. Raffoul, F. (2010). The origins of responsibility. Indiana University Press. Rizvi, F., & Lingard, B. (2010). Globalizing education policy. Routledge. Smith, R. (2010). A bubble for the spirit level: Metricophilia, rhetoric and philosophy. In P. Smeyers, & M. Depaepe (Eds.), Educational research: The ethics and aesthetics of statistics (Vol. 5). Springer. Taubman, P. (2009). Teaching by numbers: Deconstructing the discourse of standards and accountability in education. Routledge. van Manen, M. (1990). Researching lived experience: Human science for an action sensitive pedagogy. SUNY Press.

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10 MAKING MEANING THROUGH LIVED TECHNOLOGICAL EXPERIENCES Sebnem Cilesiz UNIVERSITY OF LOUISIANA AT LAFAYETTE, USA

The far-reaching influence of technology on individuals, societies, and education is undeniable. Goals of phenomenological research are to uncover and describe the essence of human experiences, as such it can enable valuable insights about uses of technology in educational contexts. However, phenomenological thinking and method are still diffusing within the educational technology research community. The purposes of this chapter are to review the main ideas of phenomenology and what it can offer as a lens for understanding the techno-human-learning relationship, to explore recent trends of phenomenological educational technology research, and to highlight some potential directions for future research. Technology in education is usually associated with technical and design terms or with teaching and learning in the classroom (Mikropoulos & Natsis, 2011; Penuel et al., 2011). Investigations of lived experiences with technology use more broadly—be it for teaching, learning, or daily life—that seek a deeper understanding of the nature or meaning of everyday mundane experience of phenomena are less common. It is paradoxical, as our connections with technology are deeper and more complex, rather than instrumental. Individuals’ interactions with technology are not necessarily straightforward; for example, technology can trigger strong emotions and fundamentally alter our ways of life. Phenomenology can enable us to explore deeper ways of engagement with technology, including the embodied nature of learning (Merleau-Ponty, 1962) as well as “re-configurations of bodies, spaces and technologies in a mobile society that is increasingly characterized by media convergence and ubiquitous connections and communication” (Enriquez, 2011, p. 39). For example, a review of the literature on using computers for writing concluded that the medium has altered the writing process (Bangert-Drowns, 1993) and PowerPoint has changed teachers’ experiences deeply. In fact a phenomenology of teachers’ use of PowerPoint for teaching suggests “we should not underestimate how new media and educational

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technologies affect the concrete, subjective, and pre-reflective dimensions of teachers’ and students’ lifeworlds” (Adams, 2007, p. 229) while it demonstrates by example the value of phenomenological approaches to looking at our relationship with technology. On the other hand, the predominantly positivist body of research in educational technology relinquishes the opportunity offered by phenomenological approaches to understand and describe the meaning of lived experiences of technology. Phenomenology grants us the foundations and the means to comprehend individuals’ lifeworlds (Lebenswelt), defined as “what we know best, what is always taken for granted in all human life, always familiar to us in its typology through experience” (Husserl, 1970a, pp. 123–124). More specifically focusing on educational settings, technology can influence students’ and instructors’ interactions, classroom dynamics, and teachers’ pedagogical practices (Penuel et al., 2007; Windschitl & Sahl, 2002) as well as student learning and outcomes. An understanding of these influences within individuals’ lived experiences with technology is important not only in itself but also because it can inform sound design and pedagogy. Given its focus on understanding the subjective nature of experience, phenomenology is a particularly suitable approach for bolstering existing areas of research as well as leading to new lines of research in educational technology, including teaching and learning processes, use of technology in informal learning environments (Cilesiz, 2009), and our everyday experiences. Phenomenology consists of several traditions; the diversity and differences of perspective allow researchers to draw on these rich traditions to conduct empirical analyses. Husserl, representing the transcendental tradition, considered phenomenology a way of pure seeing—meaning a fresh look at experience with an unadulterated mind—and claimed it could be accomplished by systematically and deliberately sustaining one’s natural standpoint and prejudice, i.e., by engaging in epoche (Husserl, 1969, 1970b). However, later versions of phenomenology would reject this notion of an objective science. Other traditions of phenomenology include existential phenomenology, which highlights individuality, social embeddedness, and culture (Heidegger, 1962), and hermeneutic phenomenology, which underscores interpretation rather than description (e.g., Gadamer, 1997). Furthermore, extending Heidegger’s work on technology, Ihde’s (1993) postphenomenological approach brings a postmodern perspective to phenomenology and highlights technoscience as a world that cannot be experienced without the mediation of technology (Ihde, 1993), distinguishing four patterns of humans’ relationships with technology (i.e., embodiment, hermeneutic, alterity, and background) (Ihde, 2002). Recent applications of phenomenology in the social sciences have developed frameworks for analysis that amount to phenomenology as a research methodology (Giorgi, 1985, 1997; van Manen, 1990), as well as informing other qualitative research approaches (see Kvale, 1996 for a review). Examples of phenomenological research in education include studies in higher education and teacher education (Greenwalt, 2008; Landreman et al., 2007) while it is only more recently diffusing in educational technology.

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In my earlier work (Cilesiz, 2011), I had observed that phenomenology was underutilized in educational technology research, and thus advanced the concept of “experience with technology” as a research construct to cultivate a research agenda on experiences with technology, and proposed phenomenology as a theoretical and methodological framework for doing so. More recent research trends in the field are encouraging. Indeed, the past decade has seen a surge in phenomenological research in educational technology as the number of published studies has increased by a factor of ten since 2010. A basic search in the Web of Science database for phenomenology, education, and technology returned 227 results, 204 of which were from the period 2010 to 2019, whereas the remaining 23 articles were from the period 1996 to 2009. Therefore, in this chapter, I primarily focus on these recent trends in the field, reviewing established as well as novel research areas using phenomenology, and develop recommendations for how future research can build on this earlier work.

Foundations and application of phenomenology While the application of phenomenology has broad potential in education, there is a number of existing research areas in educational technology that are especially suitable for and would particularly benefit from a phenomenological approach. For example, students’ and instructors’ experiences with online education, and teachers’ experiences of integrating new technologies in their teaching are two key areas that have resulted in a wealth of research. Historically, research in these areas tended to emphasize design or outcomes, whereas a phenomenological perspective emphasizes deeper (e.g., emotional, social, cultural, or esthetic) aspects of experiences. Consistent with the purposes of those studies, a variety of other methodologies have been used to study experiences; these include quantitative methods to discover causal relationships between selected aspects of experience and outcomes as well as constant comparative analyses or other qualitative methods to investigate various aspects of experiences. Even if they study some aspect of experience, qualitative studies that are not phenomenologically-orientated but driven by an interest in other kinds of qualitative meanings, outcomes, or knowledge will aim for different qualitative ends (van Manen, 2017). Despite the wide range of insights the educational technology research has produced, the dearth of truly phenomenological studies misses out on phenomenology’s offer of a much more human enterprise, which should be a central concern for understanding the relationship between humans, technology, and learning. While phenomenological research is not concerned with causal relationships, generalizations, or theory development, it permits us to develop plausible insights about, understand, and describe the depth of humans’ experiences with phenomena of human experience (van Manen, 1990). The proper domain of phenomenological research consists of studies seeking a deeper understanding of individuals’ shared experiences of a phenomenon from the perspective of those who experience the phenomenon (Giorgi, 1997; van Manen, 2017). These would include investigations of the meaning of

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experiences with technology, such as recently developed technologies that have become pervasive aspects of education and life, as well as research interested in the intermediate or long-term aspects of experiences with technology. In-depth studies of experiences with technology utilizing phenomenology must rely on its philosophical foundations in order to capitalize on its strengths and describe its philosophical presuppositions for a rigorous study. Not every qualitative study that focuses on lived experiences or uses phenomenological data collection and/or analysis methods is a phenomenological study. First of all, it is important to note that phenomenology cannot be reduced to a set of prescribed steps to be applied mechanistically as maintaining a strong connection to the philosophical foundations of phenomenology is essential (Giorgi, 1997; van Manen, 2017). Second, for a study to qualify as phenomenological, it must begin with a question that aims for phenomenological understanding and insights, demonstrate phenomenological reflectiveness on the structures of lived experience, articulate and engage in phenomenological reduction, and result in full-fledged descriptions reflecting the meaningfulness of human experience (Giorgi, 1997; van Manen, 2017). Consequently, phenomenological researchers are strongly advised to include some discussion of the philosophical assumptions of the study along with the methods in this form of inquiry.

Philosophical foundations Phenomenology originated from the work of German philosopher Edmund Husserl (Husserl, 1969, 1970a), and was further developed and extended by other philosophers such as Heidegger and Gadamer. For phenomenology, phenomena— objects of conscious subjects’ experiences as they present themselves—are the building blocks of knowledge. Empirical phenomenological research in the transcendental tradition aims to understand and describe the essence of humans’ lived experiences of a phenomenon. Essence is the condition or quality of an experience that is common or universal; it is what makes an experience what it is and without which an experience would not be what it is (Husserl, 1969; Moustakas, 1994). Essences manifest themselves in various experiences and can only be understood through a study of their manifestations. Thus, descriptions of essences are incomplete and contextual; rather than representing universal, generalizable truths, phenomenology “offers us the possibility of plausible insights that bring us in more direct contact with the world” (van Manen, 1990, p. 9). Furthermore, phenomenology concerns itself with subjective meanings of experience of phenomena, based on intuitive knowledge of conscious participants, rather than objective facts or independent reality (Giorgi, 1997; Husserl, 1969). According to Husserl, experiences consist of textures and structures, meaning outside appearances and underlying structures, respectively. Through an investigation of underlying structures of experiences over multiple manifestations, we can identify shared structures, and consequently describe the essence of the experience of the phenomenon.

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Empirical application Here, I explain briefly what an empirical application of phenomenological research in educational technology could look like and for illustration, I draw upon my earlier study using a transcendental phenomenological approach (Cilesiz, 2009), which aimed to understand and describe in depth the phenomenon of educational uses of computers at Internet cafés and to arrive at the essence of these experiences. Understanding the philosophical foundations of phenomenology and ensuring that each stage of a study is informed by them are key to a rigorous empirical study. Phenomenology is not merely a study of experiences, it is “the study of the primal, lived, prereflective, prepredicative meaning of an experience” (van Manen, 2017, p. 776). Consistent and coherent application of all suitable methods is also necessary (though not sufficient) for a well-designed phenomenological study. That begins with participant selection through criterion sampling. Once a phenomenon is clearly defined, research participants who have significant, substantial, and meaningful experiences of the phenomenon being investigated; and who have the reflective capacity to describe their lived experiences should be selected (Polkinghorne, 1989). Criteria for identifying eligible participants and the process for determining eligibility should be carefully determined in advance. In my study on adolescents’ educational computer use in informal learning environments, besides limiting participants’ age and frequency of computer use, I made contact visits with volunteers in which I assessed their descriptions according to published educational technology standards. In these visits, “I asked volunteers to briefly describe if and how they used computers educationally at Internet cafés (without providing any information of what constituted educational uses). Those who referred to two or more items on the list of educational uses in their descriptions were considered qualified to participate in the study” (p. 242). Since generalizability is not a goal of phenomenological research, representativeness or randomness of the sample is not a concern; in fact, relatively homogenous samples would be more appropriate for an in-depth description of the essence of an experience. Likewise, obtaining substantial experiences with the phenomenon are more important than a large sample size (Creswell, 2007; Polkinghorne, 1989). Accordingly, I settled on a sample of six adolescents who had in-depth, meaningful, and substantial experiences of the phenomenon as participants. While in-depth descriptions of lived experience in any form would be suitable, in-depth interviewing is a common data collection method; especially Seidman’s (2006) series of three individual interviews is consistent with the underpinnings of phenomenological research. Again, in my study on computer use in informal learning environments, I used this approach for data collection: “the first interview covered the participant’s overall experiences of the phenomenon as well as its history up to the present time. The second interview covered the details of participant’s lived experiences by focusing on experiences that stood out, feelings

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associated with them, and their meaning. The third interview consisted of open reflection on the meaning of experiences as well as revisiting the previous two interviews” (Cilesiz, 2009, p. 243). As for data analysis, while different approaches are appropriate for different kinds of phenomenology, Phenomenal Analysis (Moustakas, 1994) would be primarily suitable for a study informed by Husserl’s philosophy. It contains three key elements: (1) phenomenological reduction, where the textures of an experience are drawn out and narrated in textural descriptions, (2) imaginative variation, where varying points of view on the manifestation of a phenomenon in order to search for underlying invariant structures of the experience, researchers craft their descriptions of participants’ meanings, called structural descriptions, and (3) synthesis, where textural and structural descriptions are juxtaposed to provide an in-depth description of the essence of an experience, describing essential structural elements (invariant meanings across various manifestations of the essence) of the experience are bolstered with individual manifestations. In my study, I followed the steps offered by Moustakas (1994) to analyze my data, while remaining closely attached to the philosophical orientation that informed the study throughout. I produced 15 narratives representing textural and/or structural descriptions, and consequently, I summarized the essence of the experience of educational uses of computers at Internet cafés as “building identities as educational computer users, which distinguish them from those who do not use computers educationally, through engaging in activities they perceive to have current utility or anticipate to have future utility, in an environment that gives them control over their experiences through its structure that is essentially unlike school.” A more in-depth and comprehensive description of the essence, along with three key structural elements, is provided in the article (Cilesiz, 2009). Finally, a rigorous phenomenological study should take into account ethical and validity considerations for phenomenological research specifically, and qualitative research more generally, including peer review, member checks, transparency, and reciprocity. Processes included in my study to increase its validity were articulating and presenting my subjectivity statement, using peer review and member checks, transparently documenting methods, and offering reciprocity to participants.

Phenomenological research in educational technology As I explained above, while earlier applications of phenomenology in educational technology research were limited, they included valuable studies such as the firsttime computer experience of adults (Howard, 1994), the experience of online writing (van Manen & Adams, 2009), experiences with conversing with digital pedagogical agents in education (Veletsianos & Miller, 2008), and instructors’ experiences with adventure learning via hybrid distance education (Miller et al., 2008). Also, Greenwalt (2008) investigated preservice teachers’ experiences of analyzing their own videotaped instruction and how to develop teacher subjectivity.

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Bailey and Card (2009) developed a definition of effective online teaching practice through the experiences of award-winning online instructors. These studies led the way for phenomenological studies of instructor experiences with technology. Now I turn to more recent research on lived experiences with technology in education, which was proliferated in the past decade.

Recent research trends and future directions Based upon my review of key areas of research in the past decade that applied a phenomenological approach, I highlight several potential research areas in educational technology that could be expanded or developed utilizing phenomenology as the theoretical and methodological approach. First, there is an emerging area of research on scholars’ experiences in academia. Veletsianos and Kimmons (2013) investigated faculty members’ lived experiences with social networking sites and pointed to tensions of establishing boundaries and faculty identity. Another study more specifically examined women scholars’ experiences of harassment and abuse online as well as their coping strategies (Veletsianos et al., 2018). These studies demonstrate the promise of phenomenological research for understanding the role of technology in academic life, and together with Gibbs’s (2010) description of the functioning of higher education as a workplace for academics, they illustrate a possible agenda for research in higher education. Furthermore, Pellegrino et al.’s (2014) study, which examined women music teacher educator scholars’ experiences in an online professional development community, shows phenomenology’s promise for studying faculty’s professional development. Likewise, Rambe and Nel’s (2015) examination of how computer science educators’ experiences of using social media shape their uses of social media for instructional purposes highlights phenomenology’s potential to connect pedagogy to everyday experiences. More broadly, phenomenological studies can investigate higher education faculty’s experiences with teaching using technology, including online education (Mbati & Minnaar, 2015; Tuapawa, 2017). For example, Bennett (2014) documented the emotional dimension of lecturers’ altering their practices to incorporate technological tools in their teaching, learning, and assessment. While the emphasis has been more on teachers’ than on students’ experiences, a growing body of research also exists in K-12 educational technology. In K-12 education, teachers’ experiences of technology integration in specific content areas (Gonzalez-Carriedo & Harrell, 2018; Reese et al., 2016; YukselArslan et al., 2016), their experiences of staff development related to technology integration (Clark & Boyer, 2016), and of participating in online professional communities (Lee et al., 2018) have been investigated using phenomenological approaches. Relatedly, administrators’ experiences leading changes associated with a technology integration initiative (Pautz & Sadera, 2017) is a different facet of the same phenomenon. However, it is worthy of noting that the potential of

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phenomenology in K-12 education is not limited to teachers’ experiences. For example, Velasquez and colleagues pointed to issues in online education beyond pedagogy in their studies of the experience of caring in the context of an online charter school (Velasquez, Graham, & Osguthorpe, 2013; Velasquez, Graham, & West, 2013). These studies use the full power of a phenomenological approach as they focus on broader and longer-term role of technology in experiences. More research on students’ experiences with technology, especially on more abstract effects of technology as well as emotions in the learning and teaching processes (e.g., caring), is needed. In fact, phenomenology is a particularly useful approach to study the pervasive nature of technology in young people’s lives and some researchers are recognizing that in their phenomenological studies. For example, Gurung and Rutledge (2014) investigated the overlap between high school students’ engagement with technology at home and their learning in the classroom. Likewise, Chan et al. (2015) study described the meaning of possessing a personal mobile device from the perspective that formal and informal learning are interrelated. This is in contrast to concerns by some parents and administrators in several school systems regarding youth’s use of mobile phones in school. Recent phenomenological research in higher education teaching and learning includes students’ experiences with specific instructional technologies (Edelbring et al., 2011; Grundmeyer & Peters, 2016), college freshmen’s experiences of blended learning (Olt, 2018), self-perception of two-year college students who participate in STEM classes (Wang et al., 2019), and changes in undergraduate students’ perspectives of knowledge generation and social change processes (Weinberg et al., 2018). In addition to a variety of research with undergraduate students, doctoral students’ connectedness in personal learning networks in distance education has been investigated (Kennedy, 2018); this is a particularly promising area of research as distance programs at the doctoral level are increasingly becoming more common although students’ experiences participating in them are unknown. These examples spanning two-year colleges, four-year colleges, and doctoral programs demonstrate that the potential of phenomenology is well used in higher education research on technology-related topics. Finally, recent research has employed the power of phenomenology to research focusing on equity issues as they relate to technology in education. For example, Alexander and Hermann (2016) examined experiences of African American women in STEM graduate programs at a Predominantly White Institution, pointing to experiences of racial microaggressions, low self-efficacy, and a lack of institutional support. Similarly, McGee et al. (2017) investigated the experience of being a scientist or an engineer for Asian or Asian American students, who are considered “model minorities” in American education due to their high levels of academic success. Additionally, experiences of deaf mentees and their deaf mentors in research laboratories have been investigated by Listman and Dingus-Eason (2018). Studying issues of equity, including racial and/or gender minorities, as well as those with disabilities can benefit from a phenomenological approach, and more research is needed in these areas.

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Conclusion The brief review of recent research above suggests that phenomenology is being used for expanding existing lines of research in educational technology as well as enabling new lines of inquiry for which phenomenology would be particularly suitable. These include everyday experiences of students and faculty with technology both as a topic in itself and as key contexts in which teaching and learning are embedded. Study of lived experiences with deeper and broader phenomena such as caring in schools and academics’ experiences with social media are excellent examples of research that capitalizes on the strengths of phenomenology. Similarly, new research that examines issues of (in)equality around educational technology is a positive development for the field of educational technology. There is more potential for research in this area as equity research can go beyond representations and quantification to use the power of a phenomenological lens to delve into the affective dimensions of (in)equality and a concern for individuals’ lifeworlds. For example, new inequalities created or perpetuated by technology may be investigated. Also, new questions emerge, such as whether certain technologies create new marginalized groups, or whether any new technologies create opportunities for empowerment for traditionally marginalized students or instructors. There are other promising areas of research to which future research could be directed. First, given phenomenology’s historically substantial contributions to psychology research, psychological processes involving technology in education— including experiences of multitasking, attention, and motivation—would be important research directions. Also, in light of shifting generational differences between teachers and their students due to rapid developments in technology, studies of the match (or mismatch) between students’ everyday experiences with technology and their experiences with how technology is used by their teachers in the classroom would be very useful, as would the reflection of these differences on students’ motivation and learning processes. Second, it is encouraging that recent years have seen an increase in phenomenological research focusing on teachers’ experiences of technology adoption and integration. However, as I have recommended earlier, studying teachers’ experiences at each stage of technology adoption (Cilesiz, 2011) would be useful in understanding teachers’ challenges and supports, thereby informing the development of appropriate professional development opportunities for teachers. Third, recent contributions examined youth’s everyday experiences with technology, which is squarely in the domain for phenomenological research. However, more studies that address parents’ and educators’ concerns with youth’s technology use such as addiction, cyberbullying, social and developmental consequences are needed, and doing so from a phenomenological perspective would enable a unique perspective. Fourth, in tandem with philosophical, epistemological, and theoretical developments in and outside of academia regarding views of technology, time is ripe for integration of postmodern perspectives to phenomenological studies of

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educational technology. Don Ihde’s existing body of work provides a solid foundation for engaging in research from a postphenomenological orientation. A postphenomenological framework emphasizes technological mediation of experience and is therefore readily consistent with various topics of educational technology research (Aagaard, 2017). More specifically, postphenomenology emphasizes mind-body connection; the integration of culture, artefacts, and instruments in human experience; and transcends technological determinist views that emphasize either how humans shape technologies or how technologies alter human behavior, rather emphasizing how technologies and humans are co-constituted in their interrelation (Ihde, 1990, 1993, 2002). For example, the increasing prevalence of artificial intelligence and wearable devices (e.g., smart watches) raise questions of boundaries between the body, the mind, and the devise; therefore pointing to a fruitful area of research in educational technology with a postphenomenological orientation. Furthermore, postphenomenology provides a more nuanced view rather than a monolithic view of technology; this in turn allows distinctions between tools, applications, pedagogies, and digital spaces. Finally, from a methodological point of view, educational technology researchers should stay abreast of methodological developments in order to choose the most appropriate philosophical approach and methods for their studies. While the number of studies in educational technology labeled as “phenomenological” has certainly increased, whether they truly represent phenomenologies informed by the rich history of philosophical approaches within the umbrella of phenomenology (Giorgi, 1997; van Manen, 2017) is unclear. Studies investigating experiences in the sense of “erlebnis” (meaning events one participates in) rather than “erfahrung” (defined as “the full-fledged experience or act of consciousness in which something real is given to consciousness as what it genuinely is” (Kockelmans, 1994, p. 82)) or studies that apply methodological steps associated with phenomenological research without regard to the philosophical underpinnings of phenomenology do not do justice to the richness and potential of phenomenological approaches. Therefore, investment in foundational understanding of phenomenology is strongly advocated for producing worthy studies that can advance the field. In summary, it is worthy of noting that phenomenology is only one approach to studying experiences with (educational) technology, and as discussed above, holds great promise for investigating a variety of questions in the field. Guided by a study’s purposes, researchers should consider using phenomenology solely or in combination with other compatible methodologies, however, they should also critically appraise if their study’s goals are consistent with a phenomenological approach.

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Penuel, W. R., Fishman, B. J., Cheng, B. H., & Sabelli, N. (2011). Organizing research and development at the intersection of learning, implementation, and design. Educational Researcher, 40(7), 331–337. Polkinghorne, D. (1989). Phenomenological research methods. In R. Valle, & S. Halling (Eds.), Existential-phenomenological perspectives in psychology (pp. 41–60). Plenum Press. Rambe, P., & Nel, L. (2015). Technological utopia, dystopia and ambivalence: Teaching with social media at a South African university. British Journal of Educational Technology, 46(3), 629–648. Reese, J. A., Bicheler, R., & Robinson, C. (2016). Field experiences using ipads: Impact of experience on preservice teachers’ beliefs. Journal of Music Teacher Education, 26(1), 96–111. Seidman, I. (2006). Interviewing as qualitative research (3rd ed.). Teachers College Press. Tuapawa, K. (2017). Interpreting experiences of students using educational online technologies to interact with teachers in blended tertiary environments: A phenomenological study. Australasian Journal of Educational Technology, 33(1), 163–175. van Manen, M. (1990). Researching lived experience. SUNY Press. van Manen, M. (2017). But is it phenomenology? Qualitative Health Research, 27(6), 775–779. van Manen, M., & Adams, C. (2009). The phenomenology of space in writing online. Educational Philosophy and Theory, 41(1), 10–21. Velasquez, A., Graham, C. R., & Osguthorpe, R. (2013). Caring in a technology-­ mediated online high school context. Distance Education, 34(1), 97–118. Velasquez, A., Graham, C. R., & West, R. E. (2013). An investigation of practices and tools that enabled technology-mediated caring in an online high school. International Review of Research in Open and Distributed Learning, 14(5), 277–299. Veletsianos, G., Houlden, S., Hodson, J., & Gosse, C. (2018). Women scholars’ experiences with online harassment and abuse: Self-protection, resistance, acceptance, and self-blame. New Media & Society, 20(12), 4689–4708. Veletsianos, G., & Kimmons, R. (2013). Scholars and faculty members’ lived experiences in online social networks. Internet and Higher Education, 16, 43–50. Veletsianos, G., & Miller, C. (2008). Conversing with pedagogical agents: A phenomenological exploration of interacting with digital entities. British Journal of Educational Technology, 39(6), 969–986. Wang, X., Sun, N., Wagner, B., & Nachman, B. R. (2019). How do 2-year college students beginning in STEM view themselves as learners? Teachers College Record, 121(4). Weinberg, A. E., Trott, C. D., & McMeeking, L. B. (2018). Who produces knowledge? Transforming undergraduate students’ views of science through participatory action research. Science Education, 102(6), 1155–1175. Windschitl, M., & Sahl, K. (2002). Tracing teachers’ use of technology in a laptop computer school: The interplay of teacher beliefs, social synamics, and institutional culture. American Educational Research Journal, 39(1), 165–205. Yuksel-Arslan, P., Yildirim, S., & Robin, B. R. (2016). A phenomenological study: Teachers’ experiences of using digital storytelling in early childhood education. Educational Studies, 42(5), 427–445.

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11 USING PHENOMENOLOGY TO UNDERSTAND AND RESPOND TO GENDER INEQUALITY IN HIGHER EDUCATION Lori Jarmon IOWA STATE UNIVERSITY, USA

Introduction Gender inequality and stereotypes are well documented in the educational system. Even today women are often passed over for opportunities, and they must work twice as hard as men for access to high paying positions in areas such as engineering and medicine – why are we still having this conversation? Phenomenology focuses on the study of an individual’s lived experience within the world. A phenomenology inquiry seeks to describe the phenomenon in question with as much richness of detail as possible, with the unique goal of describing the “essences” of the phenomenon that contribute to an understanding of meaning (van Manen, 1990). Thus, gender inequality viewed from the lens of women allows the researcher to explore the self-awareness and perceptions about gender that have been holding women back for centuries.

Gender in the context of education “Gender” refers to the characteristics pertaining to, and differentiating between, masculinity and femininity. Depending on the context, these characteristics may include biological sex, sex-based social structures, or gender identity. Gender can also refer to the social roles and responsibilities that belong to men and women, respectively, within a specific social group. World Development Report (World Bank, 2005) defines equity in terms of two basic principles. First, equity is surmized as equal opportunity that a person’s chances in life should be determined by his or her talents and efforts, rather than by predetermined circumstances such as race, gender, and social or family background. The second principle is the avoidance of extreme deprivation in outcomes, particularly in health and education consumption levels.

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162  Lori Jarmon

This issue of gender inequality in educational contexts has been well documented in literature. Beginning in elementary school and persisting through college, even into professional education, women have endeavored in a system that places them at a disadvantage. However, the numbers of women who have persisted through this education system are increasing, “how” did they do it? and “what” can we learn from their experience? These types of questions lend themselves to Phenomenological research as individual perceptions constitute the primary source of knowledge in phenomenological studies, affixing textural descriptions explaining “what” was experienced and structural descriptions explaining “how” it was experienced (Creswell, 2007). Phenomenological studies illuminate the individual’s lived experience and, in this case, an exploration of the lived experiences of overcoming an education system that has historically disadvantaged women. The goal of phenomenological inquiry is to discover the pre-interpretive sense of a lived experience, the sense or logic of its meaningfulness that is inherent to the experience itself (Dukes, 1984). Thus, phenomenology is the science of phenomena or more simply stated, phenomenology is the study of an individual’s lived experience of the world (van Manen, 1990). According to Merriam (2002), phenomenologists emphasize the subjective aspects of people’s behavior. “They attempt to gain entry into the conceptual world of their subjects” (Greertz, 1973, p. 24) …“in order to understand how and what meanings they construct around events in their daily lives” (Bogdan & Biklen, 1982, p. 34). Phenomenology believes that people interpret everyday experiences from the perspective of the meaning it has for them. According to Patton (2002), “phenomenology serves to describe one or more individuals’ experiences of a phenomenon” (p. 40). A “phenomenological approach seeks to make explicit the implicit structure and meaning of human experience” (Sanders, 1982, p. 353), and “focuses on people living experiences” (Davis, 1991, p. 9) … “through rich and descriptive data, it draws out how people construct the world through descriptions of perceptions” (Davis, 1991, p. 11). Legislation related to gender equality has lessened the gender gap, such as the enactment of Title IX in 1972, which guaranteed the right to education free from sex discrimination in educational institutes that received federal aid. The Women’s Educational Equity Act of 1974 was the first piece of legislation enacted by US Congress that had the exclusive aim of funding projects to improve the quality and scope of education of girls and women. The Women’s Educational Equity Act of 2001 provided funding for more curricula, training, and other educational materials concerning educational equity for women and girls are available for national dissemination. These programs and others have provided some improvements but works remains to be done. The gender inequality women faced two centuries ago has improved; however, full equality has not yet been reached. While polices and laws have long been in place to prevent gender inequality in education, evidence of this still exists across the education system.

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Using phenomenology to gender inequality 163

Higher education In 1982, Austin and Snyder looked at changes in higher education related to affirmative action and noted both areas of progress and areas of frustration. The numbers of women in higher education did increase, and the salary discrepancies were somewhat lessened. In the end, Austin and Snyder (1982) declared that there were no improvements and perhaps a loss in rank advancement for women. The American Association of Colleges & Universities report on the Project on the Status and Education of Women made four statements about the status of women in higher education (AACU, 1982): 1. Women are underrepresented in major policy-making positions in colleges and universities. 2. Women administrators are clustered in low- and middle-level positions and/or those which reinforce stereotypes about women’s skills in counseling and service-related areas. 3. Few minority women are administrators. 4. Women administrators are paid less than men administrators Even today, these same statements are true for women in higher education with few exceptions. Currently, women complete more bachelor’s (57%), master’s, (60%), and doctoral degrees (51.7%) (Sawyer & Valerio, 2018) than men – so why do men hold so many more full professorships and college presidencies? Men hold more tenured or tenure-track positions than women across all sectors and institution types (57%–43%). Women make up a higher percentage of non-tenure-track faculty positions such as lecturers (55%) and instructors (57%). Women also earn less than men at every faculty rank; at public institutions, men earn an average of 20% more than women, and at private institutions, men earn 23% more than women (American Council on Higher Education, 2016). It is interesting to note that scholars from around the world have emphasized the importance of having greater diversity in leadership, and specifically for greater representation by women in leadership. For example, the Millennium Development Goals included eight specific areas that were established by the United Nations for the period from 2000 to 2015 for improving gender equality and the empowerment of women, including improvement access to education (United Nations New Millennial Goals, 2017). The United Nations subsequently established 17 Sustainable Development Goals for the period of 2016–2030, one of which focuses on providing “women and girls with equal access to education” (United Nations, 2015). Gender inequality in higher educational may be driving women away from science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) as well as professional degree programs. The phenomenology lens offers an opportunity for higher education to investigate these phenomena, to better understand gender inequality so we can begin to change it.

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164  Lori Jarmon

Phenomenology and gender studies Phenomenological studies can help us develop nuanced understandings of why after all these years, gender disparity still exists in the educational system. How can we remove gender disparity from the educational system? What precipitates gender disparity in the educational system? How have women managed to persevere through an educational system that was biased against them? What can we learn from their experience? These questions can be explored through phenomenology by teachers and researchers who are interested in a deeper understanding of the phenomena of gender disparity. The main goals for gender equality in education are aimed to eliminate gender disparity not only in elementary and high school, but also at all levels of education. This will help to increase the number of women in leadership and decision-making positions resulting in growth of female professionals. Phenomenology can reveal new ways of thinking about gender in education. Phenomenology can account for gender by helping to understand how gendered experiences are established and how their constitution is tied not only to embodiment, but also to the normative cultural practices and structures of meaning (Oksala, 2006). The emphasis on an individual’s first-hand experiences rather than the abstract experience of others emphasizes exploring the meaning of things through an individual’s perspectives and self-experiences. This phenomenological lens requires a researcher to focus on people’s experiences of a phenomenon to obtain comprehensive details that provide a basis for reflective structural analysis that ultimately reveals the essence of the experience (Bliss, 2016). Phenomenology inspires self-searching, self-experiences, and new learning. It also requires a motivated inquiry into knowledge and a desire to learn about self and others. Phenomenology of practice refers to the meaning and practice of phenomenology in professional contexts such as psychology, education, and health care, as well as to the practice of phenomenological methods in contexts of everyday living (van Manen, 2014). Phenomenology of practice is a reflective methodology that studies pre-reflective experiences that can cultivate ethically sensitive understandings and morally appropriate action in the teachers. This methodology is well suited to address gender disparity in education as teachers and educators may be unaware of or insensitive to their day-to-day practices and the effect they have on students. As a research methodology, phenomenology is uniquely positioned to help change the culture of education by learning from the experiences of others. The potential impacts for a deeper understanding of the phenomena of gender inequality are numerous. Phenomenological research at its core concerns the investigation of everyday human experiences in order to learn people’s common sense understanding and the meaning that they make of their experiences and the experiences of others. This data could result in a culture where opportunities are plentiful, and success is created for all. The questions that phenomenology can answer and the insights it can provide are of significant importance to educators. What does gender inequality mean?

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What is the experience of girls/women within the education system? How did you navigate the pay disparity in your professional career? To answer these questions, researchers can use phenomenology to learn from the experience of others. By examining an experience as it is subjectively lived, new meanings and appreciations can be developed to inform, or even re-orient, how we understand the experience (Laverty, 2003). Phenomenological research opportunities for gender equality could result in the following outcomes: •

Higher education: • Provide career training opportunities for women to teach them how to negotiate to improve their salaries. • Hire female faculty to teach STEM, so that female students can have female mentors. • Hire female faculty researchers in research-dominated and industry-­ funded research and development fields. • Pay female faculty and professional staff equally as men. • Leadership opportunities for female students in campus organizations, including student government. • Teach gender-neutral management practices.

Phenomenology and the higher education experience A recent phenomenological study explored the experiences of the metaphorical glass ceiling, as perceived by women senior-level administrators in higher education in the midwest (Jarmon, 2014). This study also sought to understand the characteristics of women in senior-level administrative positions in higher education, as well as the tools and resources necessary for women to obtain a senior-level administrative position in higher education. The study was guided by the following question: how do women leaders in higher education who have broken through the glass ceiling make meaning of this phenomenon? In-depth interviews with seven women in senior-level administrative positions were used to capture the essence of their lived experience in their current senior-level administrative position. The method for data collection was semi-structured interviews (Sanders, 1982) designed using a general interview guide approach where the researcher has formulated questions about the issues to be discussed; however, the questions were flexible and could be adapted to each individual interview (Patton, 1990). The interviews were tape recorded and the tapes were transcribed, providing the data for the analysis. A phenomenology analytical approach was followed for the analysis of the data, as shown in Table 11.1. The data was coded with four levels of phenomenological analysis: (1) description of the phenomena as revealed in the taped interviews; (2) identification of themes that emerge from the descriptions; (3) subjective reflections of the emergent themes; and (4) explication of essences present in these themes and

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166  Lori Jarmon TABLE 11.1  Phenomenology data analytical approach

Phenomenology

Analytical approach

Transcripts mainly from Reading, notes, and memos

Face-to-face in-depth interviews Reading through transcripts, adding marginal notes, defining first codes Personal experiences Major and subordinate statements. Units of meaning Development of the essence Narrative showing the essence of the lived experience

Describing Ordering Interpreting Findings

subjective reflections (Sanders, 1982). The themes were shared with participants for member checking, debriefing, and feedback in order to ensure the goodness of the research (Creswell, 2009).

Findings The findings of the study were presented as four themes that captured the essential meaning of the “lived” experience of overcoming the glass ceiling in higher education. A description of “what” the participants in the study experienced with the phenomenon was developed for each theme. The four major themes were as follows: 1. Perception of the glass ceiling – explores the participants’ experience with the glass ceiling in higher education, 2. Characteristics and challenges – explore what characteristics the participants believe helped them break through the glass ceiling to their senior-level administrative position in higher education, 3. Tools and resources – provide information related to the tools and resources participants identified as helping them break through the glass ceiling in higher education, and 4. Overcoming obstacles and advice – explored the participants’ experiences with obstacles or challenges that they had to overcome in order to advance to their senior-level administrative position in higher education. The four themes were further categorized into subthemes. For example, theme number one “perception of the glass ceiling” had three subthemes: influences of institutional leadership, evidence of the glass ceiling in higher education, and traditional norms. Each of the subthemes is defined and outlined in Table 11.2.

Influences of institutional leadership The participants shared examples of ways that institutional leaders in higher education affected women in higher education and perhaps aid in the glass ceiling phenomena that make it difficult for women to advance to senior-level

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Using phenomenology to gender inequality 167 TABLE 11.2  Perceptions of the glass ceiling for women in higher education

Theme

Basic description

Subthemes

Influences of institutional leadership

The organizations practice for guiding, directing, or influencing people

Evidence of glass ceiling in higher education

Sign or proof of the existence or truth that leads somebody to come to a particular conclusion

Traditional norms

A way of thinking, behaving, or doing something that has been used by the people in a particular group for a long time

• Depends who’s in charge • Some men threatened by women • Diversity should be visible • Not intentional/old school • Pay disparity • Diversity should be visible • Low number of women in senior-level administrative positions • Senior-level positions are not flexible • Roles for women are different outside of work • Society says it is a glass ceiling • Good ol’ boys • Not intentional/old school

administrative positions in higher education. Some descriptions of influences of institutional leaders that the participants shared were depends who’s in charge, some men are threatened by women, diversity should be visible, and the ideas that even though the glass ceiling is present in higher education institutions it’s not intentional, but rather it’s an “old school” way of thinking. One participant shared the following description that illustrates how the glass ceiling phenomena is dependent on who’s in charge at the institution: But I think if you look at who’s running the universities, they’re all older. And as far as, they were brought up as, the ones that are currently in charge, are probably 50’s, 60’s, maybe 70’s, that that was the world they grew up in and that’s the world they know. And I think the ones that are younger or have broken out of the mold so to speak, I think are the ones that are more, they just want to do the best job. It doesn’t matter if you’re male or female. If you can do the job, you can be the person that they go to for the information, and then you’ll have success. But it’s still hard to break down the barriers that this is the world they grew up in. and I’m thinking as we move another generation into leadership, I think those things will change.

Evidence of glass ceiling in higher education The participants revealed many issues that are common barriers for women that prevent them from climbing the ladder, regardless of their qualifications or achievements. They revealed stories of pay disparity, lack of diversity in senior-level leadership, as well as the small number of women in senior-level

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administrative position in higher education as evidence of the glass ceiling in higher education. One participant discussed the current focus on diversity in higher education; however, she acknowledged that if the institution is truly diverse, then it should be visible throughout the organization including the student body staff and faculty, she stated: I think it’s interesting for universities to say we value diversity and all the redirect right, but what you value is what I should see. So, when I look at the leadership if they’re all white men or all black men or all whatever you’re not, what you’re saying and what you’re doing are two different things.

Traditional norms The participants provided numerous stories of traditional norms or common ways of thinking, behaving, or doing something for a long time that they identified as reasons that the glass ceiling exists in higher education. One participant recalled when she was a mother of two young children and the only female senior-level administrator at the time, the challenge of being a working mother with all male colleagues, she shared: I sit around these conference room tables, I was the only one who was a parent, a parent of young children, first of all, because there’s this age difference, I’m kind of an old mother, of 15 and 16 years old, because I didn’t have my kids until I was in my forties, but I would be the only one that was actively parenting. And I would be the only woman. And you know, when somebody’s going to start setting, scheduling meetings at seven am or seven thirty am, and I would speak up. Just so you know it’s hard for me to make that work. And sometimes I didn’t speak up, but I knew that there were times I could. So, I think those sorts of things contribute to, to there being the perception of there being a glass ceiling. Jumping ahead to the third theme “tools and resources,” the participants provided several tools and resources they felt were needed or helpful to them as they were climbing the career ladder in higher education. The tools and resources provided were categorized into four subthemes: visibility, personal development, skills, and external influences. The subthemes of tools and resources shared by the participants are defined and outlined in Table 11.3.

Visibility Many of the participants felt that being involved in both national and local associations provided opportunities for them to network with other professionals in their field. They also felt strongly that being actively involved on

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Using phenomenology to gender inequality 169 TABLE 11.3  Tools and resources needed

Theme

Basic description

Subthemes

Visibility

Quality or state of being known to the public

• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •

Personal The act or process of development growing

Skills

Ability to do something that comes from training, experience, or practice

External influences

Outside power that affect other people’s thinking or actions

Visibility in the community Serving on boards Involvement in national associations Street credibility/professional reputation Serving on university committees Professional development Good credentials/education Setting goals Diversity of experience Have broad perspective Need to know yourself Knowing strengths & weaknesses Adaptability to change Being a negotiator Technology proficient Create win-win situation Observation skills Be indispensable Mentors Professional networks

their campuses provided valuable opportunities for them to be noticed by senior-level leaders on the campus. One participant shared how her involvement with staff counsel at her university gave her exposure that was critical to her career advancement: So that was good, sort of in a sense political training. But meanwhile, besides all these various committees, I started to get involved in governance at the university. At first, I got elected to staff council which represents professional staff here. And then, I became the president of it. And that was probably the most singular important thing in terms, I think, of a catalyst or you know something that really facilitated my involvement in the university, as a complex organization. Because it almost immediately, you know, you’re involved in meetings with deans and vice presidents and the president and you’re speaking in front of the board. I mean issues get brought to you for okay, what’s your opinion? What do you think?

External influences There was unanimous consensus from the participants that having mentors is important for women who are seeking senior-level administrative positions in higher education. However, many of the participants shared that they didn’t have

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formal mentors but rather people that they looked up to and saw as good role models. One participant shared: The first one I would say is mentorship. Yeah, you need to have folks, and they don’t have to be women of course, but you must have people who can help guide you along the way. Absolutely yes so that’s the first one (tool/resource needed). One participant shared that mentors can also serve as examples of behaviors that are not desirable which can be helpful as well. She shared, “I’ve had some bosses or different mentors that I’ve worked with, some teach you good things some teach you things you never want to do.”

Overcoming obstacles and advice The final theme, “overcoming obstacles and advise,” was important because the numbers of women in senior-level administrative positions in higher education are few. However, the seven senior-level higher education administrators in this study were able to break through the glass ceiling to achieve what so many other women have not been able to accomplish. The subthemes of the obstacles and advice shared by the participants are defined and outlined in Table 11.4.

Physiological aspects One participant works in student services and she shared that working in student services is challenging. Because the work is very physical, it involves long hours that are often outside of the normal 8–5 workday, and the emotional aspects of dealing with students can be draining at times. She shared: I mean I think it’s just the challenges of this kind of work. This work is draining, I mean, physically but also emotionally. Um, and as I’ve gotten

TABLE 11.4  Overcoming obstacles and advice in higher education

Theme

Basic description

Subthemes

Physiological aspects

Characteristic of appropriate, healthy, or normal functioning

• • • • • • •

Lack of Lack of favorable notice of an acknowledgment act or achievement Roles

Character assigned or assumed

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Long hours Physical and emotional work Balanced life Recognition/reward Ideas being overlooked Pay disparity Working in predominately male field • Balanced life

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older and have had more responsibility, you know I’m dealing with, matter of fact, I’ve got a meeting right after this with a student who’s being beaten by her boyfriend. This participant went on to share that working in student services as a senior-­ level administrator is hard work: You don’t get to this level just because you’re chilling or because you’re cute, no this is a grind kind of thing. You know I think about all the programs I have set-up for students, the chairs I have lifted, the floors… I mean you know what I mean like this is not glamorous. Maybe once you get to the presidential level and all of that, but not at my level- let me tell you.

Lack of acknowledgment The participants spoke about the lack of recognition and reward they received in the workforce as a challenge. One participant shared that although her supervisor recognized that she was doing great work she didn’t want to encourage or support her to pursue other opportunities because she didn’t want to lose her. She shared that this type of obstacle is hard to overcome. Well, again, I had said once earlier, which was when my boss, the associate vice president, was basically saying “I want you to stay in that position” which by definition is in a sense, narrow and going nowhere but it’s useful. This example of a phenomenology research study was included to provide a brief example of the richness of the qualitative data provided an opportunity to understand the “lived experience” of the participants in the study.

Conclusion While our society and educational systems in general have come a long way, it is important to recognize that there is inequity in the education system. The obstacles that women face are largely societal and cultural. They begin from the time women enter kindergarten and persist into their work lives. Specifically, equality for women and girls is closely tied to several factors including education, safety, economic status, and influence. Phenomenology inquiry provides a method for understanding the lived experience of gender in the context of the educational system. These first-hand experiences can provide opportunities to improve the educational system beginning in the early years of elementary school through college and professional education. Phenomenology can help identify factors that contribute to inequity and consider ways to remedy them. When girls and women experience equality within the educational system, they will learn their possibilities are endless and society will reap the benefits. Note: The data and analysis have come directly from my doctoral work, and therefore have been published elsewhere.

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172  Lori Jarmon

References AACU (1982). Project on the status education of women. On Campus with Women. American Council on Higher Education (2016, March). No longer a pipeline problem: An update on the status of women in higher education. AAC&U News. Austin, H., & Snyder, M. B. (1982). Affirmative action 1972–1982: A decade of response. Change: The Magazine of Higher Learning, 14(5), 26–59. doi: 10.1080/00091383.1982. 10569894. Bliss, L. A. (2016). Phenomenological research: Inquiry to understand the meanings of People’s experiences. International Journal of Adult Vocational Education and Technology, 7(3), 14–26. Bogdan, R. C., & Biklen, S. K. (1982). Qualitative research for education: An introduction to theory and methods (2nd ed.). Allyn and Bacon. Creswell, J. W. (2007). Qualitative inquiry and research design: Choosing among five approaches (2nd ed.). Sage. Creswell, J. W. (2009). Research design: Qualitative, quantitative, and mixed methods approaches. Sage. Davis, K. (1991). The phenomenology of research: The construction of meaning in data analysis. Paper presented at the annual meeting of the Conference on College composition and communication, Boston, MA. Dukes, S. (1984). Phenomenological methodology in the human sciences. Journal of Religion and Health, 23(3), 197–203. doi: 10.1007/BF00990785. Greertz, C. (1973). The interpretation of cultures. Basic Books. Jarmon, L. J. (2014). Cracking the glass ceiling: A phenomenological study of women administrators in higher education (Doctoral dissertation). Iowa State University, Ames, Iowa. Laverty, S. M. (2003). Hermeneutic phenomenology and phenomenology: A comparison of historical and methodological considerations. International Journal of Qualitative Methods, 2, 1–29. Merriam, S. B. (2002). Qualitative research in practice. Jossey-Bass. Oksala, J. (2006). A phenomenology of gender. Continental Philosophy Review, 39, 229–244. Patton, M. Q. (1990). Qualitative evaluation and research methods (2nd ed.). Sage. Patton, M. Q. (2002). Qualitative research and evaluation methods (3rd ed.). Sage. Sanders, P. (1982). Phenomenology: A new way of viewing organizational research. Academy of Management Review, 7(3), 353–360. Sawyer, K., & Valerio, A. M. (2018). Making the case for male champions for gender inclusiveness at work. Organizational Dynamics, 47(1), 1–7. doi: 10.1016/j.orgdyn. 2017.06.002. United Nations (2015). Transforming our world: The 2030 agenda for sustainable development. UN Publishing. United Nations New Millennial Goals (2017). http://www.un.org/millenniumgoals. van Manen, M. (2014). Phenomenology of Practice: Meaning-Giving Methods in Phenomenological Research and Writing. Left Coast Press. van Manen, M. (1990). Researching lived experience: Human science for an action sensitive pedagogy. State University of New York Press. World Bank Corporate Author (2005). World development report 2006 equity and development. World Bank; Oxford University Press.

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SECTION 3

Introduction to section 3: Research applications Jane Southcott MONASH UNIVERSITY, AUSTRALIA

The authors who contributed to the third section of this book move into different territories wherein Levinas’s other is encountered at the border or well into the hinterlands. Encountering alterity demands semantic accommodations, adaptations and reconceptualising the sense of self. In this section, there are geographic movements of people but also movements of field and of perspective. Each movement reveals a new country – sometimes embraced, sometimes resisted, sometimes both simultaneously, as it is possible to maintain even contradictory meanings. The authors position themselves as both external and internal to the phenomena they describe and interrogate. By taking the external view, researchers can engage in a disquisition of shifting angles and unexpected perspectives, rather like exploring a two-dimensional map folded into a complex origami construct. Things and ideas connect in ways unconsidered, potentially random, but somehow fitting together in ways that can be caught by the reader. Four of these chapters address the complexities of professional practice, using phenomenological understandings to interrogate what was both observed and understood, trying to get at the fundamental relations between phenomena and embodiments, linking practice, life and philosophy. We accept the glance of the other and in turn, the other is changed by our glance. Each of the authors of these five chapters offers a provocation to the reader; each demands that we (the other) be changed by what is offered. Once insights are appreciated, it should be impossible to remain unaffected, our gaze must change in response to what we read. We cannot know how our gaze changes the authors. It is possible that the intentional act of writing has already wrought change. In ‘Understanding the experiences of international doctoral students: charting a troubled geography of doctoral supervision’ Janinka Greenwood uses the notion of relational mapping to explore her experience as the supervisor of international

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174  Jane Southcott

doctoral students. In seeking a sense of the lived phenomena, we aim to navigate new terrain and in doing so, form maps of insight that allow the explorations of understandings. With border crossings (both real and intangible), we change and encounter alterity. Humans move, and geographic movements may be the catalyst for semantic movements as we negotiate and renegotiate experience. Janinka begins with Tuki’s evocative relational map, then proceeds to explore the world she shares with her international students. Janinka is both explorer and tour guide, in a world of rules and assumptions, racisms and legacies of colonization. Janinka’s chapter challenges the reader to think about those who traverse borders and systems, and to dive into the layers of meaning and understanding. Ed Creely and Jane Southcott seek to explore a different topography in their chapter ‘”I can’t do without my poetry”: a post-qualitative, phenomenological investigation of a poetry class of older Australians’, seeking lines of flight. In their assemblage, the other encountered is the self as poet—the empowered self as wordsmith. This became a revelation for a group of older people who had rarely explored writing as agency but now enter this space with openness also to alterity. For the older poets, there was no geographic repositioning, but rather a new country of ideas, words and identities to explore and share. Ed and Jane play in this chapter with entanglements, blending voice, theory and co-constructed narratives, acknowledging that knowledge making is at best partial and ever changing. They put ideas together to see what might unfold in a way that is messy but intentionally so. Their microcosmic territory feels like a compost bin – layers of dirt, leaf, grass and scrapings being turned repeatedly by worms to reveal the rich soil of experience. The researcher digs and delves into such a complex world, ultimately with the intention of growing Virginia Woolf ’s dishevelled rambling plant – long twining stalks with occasional flowers and fruit. In her autoethnographically framed chapter ‘Truth-telling through phenomenological inquiry’, Davina Woods engages in phenomenological truth-telling in her ancient space where the other is the interloper, the invader who devalues and dismisses long held semantic meanings located in Country. Encountering alterity becomes a place of rage, frustration and resistances that must be offered to the intentional glance of the reader. For Davina, this is a familiar place of long-felt awareness and emotion. For the reader, this is not an easy place to be, but one which requires a reappraisal of self as invading colonialist or at least latter-day interloper, with shared regret, and hopefully the intention to move in a different direction, even reconciliation. This is what research should do – change us as we encounter the other, giving us no option but to change. Roland Gesthuizen, Gillian Kidman, Hazel Tan, Dominador Mangao and Simone Macdonald write in ‘STEM inspiration: a phenomenological investigation exploring beyond the solution’, of their shared experiences and those of their participants in a journey to a new country—STEM with a phenomenological turn. This journey moved comfort zones, whether it was the physicality of a different geography, new arrangements of space, or a different way of teaching and learning. Describing targeted makerspace interventions in STEM fields

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(science, technology, engineering and mathematics), the active construction of a shared experience is explored at two levels: both the authors’ and that of the participants in the makerspace activities. Ultimately, held assumptions about STEM education were challenged and new meanings were created. In this chapter, encountering alterity involved plural others – place, space, culture and disciplines. These drove diverse cognitive and affective responses and re-adjustments. In the last chapter of this section entitled ‘Phenomenology: the missing pieces of the puzzle in educational psychology’, Stella Laletas and Christine Grove explore the border crossings between philosophy and psychology, noting both dissonances and potentialities in a complex and shifting field with multiple stakeholders. Stella and Christine offer an example of how one case can be understood in two ways, affording a richness of insight availed by a phenomenological approach. They unpack positions of the ‘land owners’ on both sides of the border, suggesting that with détente there is much to be gained. The territorial and geographic metaphor used to corral these chapters, may be strained at times, but it is our position that we too can play. The images we conjure may spark new ways, new glances. We see the map, we see the geography laid out for our inspection, we see the blurred boundaries, we then focus in on the microcosm; and then we step back and rudely crumple the map into an asteroid and launch it into flight.

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12 UNDERSTANDING THE EXPERIENCES OF INTERNATIONAL DOCTORAL STUDENTS Charting a troubled geography of doctoral supervision Janinka Greenwood UNIVERSITY OF CANTERBURY, NEW ZEALAND

Purpose, my background, phenomenology and maps This chapter reports aspects of my on-going critical reflection into my learning as a doctoral supervisor, particularly in understanding the experiences of my international doctoral students. In the education faculty of my New Zealand University, we have international students from a wide range of countries, including Canada, US, Australia and Europe. However, the majority come from countries that are often described as developing. My focus is on those students and what I learn by working with them. I draw on my students’ narratives, shared experiences, our dialogues, my own observations and experiences. I report comments my students made in live conversations by using pseudonyms. In addition, I directly reference statements made in graduates’ theses that are published on my university’s library website. I take an interpretative and descriptive phenomenological approach, drawing particularly on van Manen’s (2019, p. 912) emphasis that “phenomenology has become a complex tradition of movements”, not only leaning on its successive early explicators such as Husserl (1983), Heidegger (1962) and Merleau-Ponty (1962), but also developing a wide, sometimes contested, range of pragmatic and often evocative approaches that address “topics and concerns that are relevant to professional practice and to everyday life”. The disciple embraces philosophers such as Zahavi (2019) and researchers in social sciences who seek to improve practice through better understanding participants’ experiences, such as Nazir (2016) who explores possibilities in environmental education and Svenaeus (2019) who examines the experience of suffering in palliative care.

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At the core of phenomenological research is concern with the lived experience of people and focus on how people themselves make sense of their experience. The reflections of doctoral students, therefore, are presented and reflected upon without a predetermined theoretical analysis. However, I am not only a researcher; I am also engaged in the experience of doctoral study and seeking to understand and interpret students’ concerns I reflect on my own experience as a supervisor in order to make sense of it. In various ways, Heidegger (1962), Smith et al (2009) and van Manen (2014) acknowledge intersubjectivity and the overlapping nature of experience, reflection and contextual engagement. A phenomenological approach that examines both students’ experiences and understandings over time and the experiences and reflections of their supervisor can give rise to enormous quantities of data. There is simply too much to record and report. So this account attempts some kind of mapping. Maps are always selective in the information they report. We have become particularly accustomed to the kind of maps we find in atlases and on google: maps based on a geographic coordinate system. But it can be interesting to consider other maps that have been made. Particularly relevant to phenomenology of experience is the human tendency to map our world. Husserl (1983) discusses ways we structure and categorise experiences. Mapping is one means of identifying and representing experiential categories and referencing them against our understanding of our contextual world. Maps thus can become visualisations of internal states, embodying a sense of time and place. Von Eckartsberg (1981) examines the legacy of cognitive mapping to illustrate psychological structures and processes. He poses man “as an implicit mapmaker who represents the external world within his consciousness” (p. 21), and reports the work of Keen (1975) in representing “phenomenological insights and concepts in the form of cognitive maps” (p. 47). van Manen (2019, p. 915) argues that “life meanings cannot be caught in systemic arguments and theoretical systems alone” and highlights the place of metaphor in phenomenological studies. Romanyshyn (1981) argues that experience is always mediated by: “the elusive character of metaphor … A metaphor… is the way in which the material world initially comes into being” (p. 10). One of my favourite examples is a map drawn in chalk in 1793 on a floor on Norfolk Island. Two Maori chiefs had been kidnapped from the coastal waters by the settlement of Whangaroa in the north of New Zealand and shipped to Norfolk Island, then a British prison colony, to teach the prisoners about the manufacture of flax. The mapmaker drew the map in Figure 12.1 to explain where he lived. His home region is represented with detailed attention to the position of his own carved meeting house, location of rivers and outlying islands and curves of the coastline. Distant, but still within his immediate knowledge, he positions the Hokianga harbour and Ahipara on the west coast and Cape Maria van Damien in the far north. Beyond his personal experience is a dotted line and an uncharted space with an indeterminate coastline: this, he knows, begins with the territory of Hauraki (now known as greater Auckland) and stretches to other north island

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[Tuki’s map], HM830/1793a, S13–151b, Hocken collections, Uare Taoka o Ha¯ kena, University of Otago

FIGURE 12.1 

tribal territories. Then he draws another island across the water. Its shape is indefinite but it is important because that is where the greenstone comes from, and he names source locations and the trade routes he knows. In addition, he identifies the tribal powers within his own home region and the number of warriors each can muster. He also indicates the pathway that spirits take along the length of the island after death and the place where the British ship took him on board. It is a map that is selective and that faithfully reports his experience and understanding. The mapping I undertake has a similar quality. It is acknowledgedly selective and based on my experience of hearing and observing my students and my current interpretive understandings. One of the qualities of maps as metaphor is that they engage with both places and journeys between places. In the following section, I examine the university as a place and consider the journey students make in coming there and in returning to their homes.

Journeys to and in the university Each particular university has its own specific geographical and cultural location, but the university, in its western manifestation, also constitutes an ultra-­geographic place. It is a place that contains libraries, classrooms, offices and

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informal meeting places. It contains discourses and scholarly protocols that are replicated across the world. It is vitalised by a culture of academic publication and research etiquettes that are pan-national.

Imagined ultra-geographic place When international students come to my university, they come to a place they have chosen mainly because it has a good world ranking and is considered to be in the inner circle of English language countries. For example, students commented: I looked at the webpages of universities, I wanted one in the inner circle of English speaking countries. I also wanted one with a high world ranking so that my degree would have credibility. In searching the website I found a high number of professors with extensive publications in good journals. Masud I wanted an international degree from a reputable university… Students like to come to a developed country, and studying is a chance to get a visa. And study in an English-speaking country is a kind of investment. Pono They come to a place they have abstracted as a reputable university, interchangeable with any other university of similar global standing; one that will give them a globally respected degree.

Travel, physical and emotional In coming to the university, international students are forced to travel in many ways. There is a physical, and often expensive, journey by plane. There is separation from family and friends. The new place is one where status changes and where new protocols and values hold sway. There is perhaps a sense of adventure that often quickly becomes aloneness. It was a stressful and lonely feeling, the first time away from my family. I knew I didn’t want to be a burden to my Dad and I kind of knew the Iranian economy would go down… It was scary. There was no foundation to build on. Arash We were already senior educators before we came here. Ari I really missed my wife and daughter. Sometimes I felt guilty for them having to deal with life problems without me. Nazrul

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Loneliness is intensified by a range of stresses: financial insecurity, unfamiliar surroundings and processes, loss of recognised role, guilt about creating unfair obligations for family and about abandoning them to cope with adversity.

Unexpected and uncharted spaces A navigation that many students do not expect is that between different ways of approaching knowledge. My own experience of international students who come from developing countries is that they have been trained to look for the right answer and to accept feedback from their supervisor as authoritative. Many would send initial proposals that seemed to follow a set format they called a mixed method with a series of survey questions followed by focus group interviews. I often accepted students on the condition they were willing to rethink their research plan. When they started study, I would be repeatedly asked “What methodology should I use? What is the right theoretical framework?” I would notice surprise or even fleeting terror when I answered “I don’t know. It depends on what you really want to find out”. The supervisor, I gathered, was meant to know: a good student was meant to assiduously follow direction. Students I worked with were curious and so willing to consider less conventional research approaches but were fearful about stepping outside their comfort zone. With qualitative research it was not just figuring it out, it was accepting it in my life. In my mind everything made sense doing numbers. Arash Others missed the security of a textbook-validated methodological design: In our minds we hear someone saying, why did you do this? It’s not in the textbook. Doing something different we don’t know if it will be acceptable or not. Pono Nevertheless, confidence would gradually build: I panicked when I got my first feedback. There were so many questions and they seemed critical. I felt stupid when I couldn’t answer them. But I got more confident step by step. Arash It takes time to find new ways of saying things. Pono Many students needed to navigate between epistemologies. Much of the published literature they encountered came from western contexts. Initially, they may have

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been inclined to accept analyses and recommendations as having some kind of universal validity (although authors may not have claimed it) and to apply wholesale what they read to field work in their home country. They needed to develop the awareness and courage to carefully consider differences in context, in values and in practical possibilities. In his thesis, Salahuddin (2015, p. 4) writes about learning to discriminate in his reading. Part of my task has been to navigate between the particulars of the context of the school I have studied and the large body of potentially useful international literature. I have needed to be aware that this literature is itself written within contexts… and… that not all, or any, of the concepts in international work may be directly applicable to Bangladesh or indicate ideal directions for change in our country. Alam (2016, p. 249) writes: What I consider is important is to express our research and our theoretical concepts in terms that pay their respect to the communities that are at the heart of the work and that will not only make sense to the people themselves but will also indicate some aspects of their culture to other readers… Al-Amin (2017, p. 11) explains how he looked for structural metaphors that were consistent with the culture of his field work: Bangladesh is a land of rivers. Its rivers offer a ready means of transport and they also isolate some communities… As my research unfolded I came to see my role in this study in terms of the boatman learning to know the complex and seasonal currents of the river. These experiences illustrate how many come to doctoral research with maps they find no longer useful. What seemed to be safe places and fixed routes are so no longer: students need to not only reassess the methodological and epistemological choices they could make but also re-explore the purpose of their choices. They often are shocked to find that responsibility for their choice rests with them and with their understanding of the context of their study and not with a textbook or a supervisor. However, as the excerpts above illustrate, as students gain confidence in adventurously reconnoitering their research and its context they find landmarks and come to develop maps that record their considered understanding of what their research is about and what it has achieved.

Orienteering with language Language can represent yet another journey. Students are not only in a new strange land but also in a space where language has lost its secure currency. There is not only the shift from home language to English (a shift from something

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spontaneous and flexible to something deliberate and stiff ), but also a shift from English as learned at home and English at a university. Common words are used differently, metaphors do not translate and concepts initially clear in the mind slide through cracks between inadequate words. I know what I want to say when I’m thinking about it but when I start writing I fall back on clichés and I know they don’t say enough but I’m stuck. Karim Short instances of apparent plagiarism and over-lengthy quotations sometimes occur because a student is afraid that a choice of different words may betray the original meaning. I can’t think of different words to say it. The words used seem just right. I’m scared the meaning will be wrong if I try to paraphrase it. Arash The challenge in using a second language impacts on daily life as well as on writing the thesis. Students variously report feeling shut out by the flow of colloquialisms and local accents. For instance: We don’t get the jokes. I was taking someone in a wheelchair and one of the staff said, so now you’re a pusher and everyone laughed, but I didn’t know that ‘pusher’ was slang for drug dealer. Pono Sometimes an academic’s spontaneous use of language creates real tension for international students: I remember in [another student]’s oral defence the examiner asked if his work was atheoretical. None of us had ever heard that word before and [he] just froze. Pono International students are often aware that they are seen as a problem: They think, if I take an international student I will have to work very hard with them. Some supervisors are reluctant to take international students. Pono Sometimes students read racism into comments that may have been infelicitous but not ill-intentioned. She said that would be a good grade even for a local student. It means she thinks I could not expect to get a better grade because I’m an international student. But we can think too. It’s racism. Ari

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Whether or not the academic thought in racist terms is perhaps less important than that being away from home and at a linguistic disadvantage made the student feel undervalued and discriminated against. Jokes, comments and even actions that may have seemed humorous or innocuous at home become threatening in a foreign context: I saw one of the lecturers follow [another international student] down the corridor and sway side to side just like he does. That’s racism. Arish Perhaps the parody came from spontaneous, although misplaced, humour. Nevertheless, in the immediate present, the experience of being made outsiders and being rejected is very real to some students and is yet another difficulty to be navigated in what they initially saw as the ideal university.

Routes for trade and for development During their doctoral candidature, students have encounters, face challenges and learn in many ways, personal and academic. Tuki’s map marked alliances, trade routes and the pathway of departed spirits. This mapping marks what I perceive as key areas of challenge and learning for the students I have worked with.

Roadblocks Students talked about major challenges: My son was a year old when I started. I had to manage caring for him as well as my study Miriam I have tension managing money. I am self-supporting. I can’t take a parttime job now because my current visa is for only five months and I need to have money in the bank to apply for a visa for another year. Masud The shootings were terrible. Even though everyone in Christchurch and in the whole country came out in support, it is impossible to forget that it was us that were being shot at. Arash My second supervisor dropped me without telling me. He still hasn’t talked to me about it. Miriam I could not go home to my family when the earthquake destroyed Kathmandu. Even though my family was living in a tent in the street. Ganesh

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Some of the challenges, especially those involving money, visas and change of supervisor are ones that students may be warned about before coming: that does not necessarily lessen the shock, pain and anxiety of the experience. Other challenges, like the shootings at the mosques in Christchurch and the horrific earthquakes that devastated Nepal and Christchurch, were not predictable. Anxiety intensified to terror: students were afraid for family and community as well as for themselves; they experienced immediate risk and anticipated escalating future risk.

Opened pathways Students identified many different kinds of learning, including academic skills and personal habits. Organisational skills were reported: I learned to manage time, energy and my efforts in reaching the goal. Duben As were academic understandings: I learned how to contextualise the theories I met in the literature. Duben Widened social understandings were identified: I met people from many different cultures. And became good friends with many of them. That does not happen at home. Miriam Budding opportunities were recognised: I got a chance to attend conferences and publish in academic journals. Ganesh Perhaps I’m learning to lead a project Arash Students repeatedly reported an increase of self-understanding and of critical awareness: I am learning how to examine my own thinking and assumptions. Karim Increase in confidence and resilience was also reported: I became confident to stand in front of an audience to share ideas, take challenges and respond critically. Kar I learned to live through hundreds of earthquakes. Ginni

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When Ginni talks about earthquakes she is being literal. Large parts of the city and a good half of the university’s buildings were destroyed by major earthquakes and seemingly unending aftershocks. However, her words could also be taken metaphorically to sum up what students reported: they experienced shifting terrains in many forms. On arrival, there were unsettling differences to many of their expectations. There were academic, financial and sometimes life endangering challenges during the doctoral journey. Students reported they learned to live through them and in many cases gain because of them.

After the doctorate When students graduate, they leave with their degree. Their dissertation contains the knowledge they contribute to society and the strategically selected record of their academic insights. It often also provides a foundation for their future research and practice. But most students learn a lot more about their wider field than what they record in their thesis. Perhaps they also learn a little about their colleagues’ fields. They learn about processes of researching, critiquing and learning. In addition, they learn about themselves and develop a rich range of personal skills and resources, including resilience, collaboration, strategic planning and problem solving. Figure 12.2 represents potential gains from doctoral study in terms of three interconnected key areas: personal growth, growing knowledge of the field and the material output of the examined thesis. I too learned a lot. I learned about the various communities my students worked with. I was able to go to rural villages and classrooms, to universities and ministries and meet important officials, sometimes vicariously through my students’ writing and sometimes in reality. I relearned what it is like to be an outsider. I found unexpected connections in the joint venture of being human.

• Awareness of more possibilities • Critique of options • Evidence for argument

Greater knowledge of the field

Personal resources & skills

• Knowledge and resilience • Problem solving • Critical thinking • Strategic planning • Re-vision • Collaboration

Dissertation material output • Achieved the degree • Pilot project for ‘real life’ FIGURE 12.2 

Gains from the doctorate

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I  learned sometimes to think with a mind that was not entirely western. I explored ways to make research accessible at the grassroots. I developed a more cautious approach to theorisation. I found many more things I wanted to learn.

Encounters in the shared space of a learning community Throughout my work, I’ve encouraged my doctoral students to participate in a learning community. On my map, the learning community might take a similar significance to Tuki’s meeting house. For many of the international students, particularly those from developing countries, sharing their ideas, and especially their readings, was a new experience. Some were initially resistant: they had previously seen academic credit as a personal investment, and were hesitant lest they squander their savings. Students in later stages of their study felt protective of their time and wondered if they had anything to learn from those who were only beginning. It took time for trust, of oneself as well as of others, to develop. Students noted various aspects of their experiences: I understand it better when you explain it to Arash then when you explain it directly to me. Perhaps I’m not blocking so much. Karim I could try things out. I could take risks. I could tell if the others got what I was trying to say or not. Ginni I had expectations of what we’d learn from each other. It didn’t often turn out like that. It was more like we’d bounce off each other, and sort out our own thinking. Arash It took me a long time to feel able to argue with my supervisor. Kar I also learned through the community. I learned to strategically take and avoid leadership. I developed awareness of the gap between international students’ aspirations for creating change at home and the potentially homogenising effect of dominant academic discourses. I relearned that learning is social as well as individual and that knowledge is mobile and shifts shape as it flows through a community. I found that the learning within the group was both convergent, though sharing and challenging, and centrifugal, as participants found their own interpretative spaces, meanings and communicative forms. Reflecting on the working of the shape-shifting learning community over the years, I note the ways power was probed within the group. Through discussion

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of their own work and various symposiums and seminars, students examined power theoretically, deconstructing hegemonies they identified, examining dominant discourses, questioning epistemological foundations and interpretations and developing their own processes of what Freire (1972) calls conscientization. In addition, power was explored practically, by supervisors as well as students. Pooling of expertise, and sometimes of resources, entailed some initial letting go of personal power, and often brought understandings of a different kind of power: potency to contribute to new ideas or new questions. Students’ initial tendencies to place the teacher as an expert were disrupted: the supervisor often did not know and others sometimes did. Participants experimented with when to claim independence and when to take direction. And incrementally participants developed the evolving power of their own sense of purpose, their ability to recognise quality and their emerging confidence in scholarship. A student once asked me: “Isn’t every community a learning community? Don’t people always learn from each other?” His challenge led me to develop the model in Figure 12.3. It can be claimed that a group of doctoral students is axiomatically a community of practice as it is discussed by Wenger (1998): as well as a common goal of gaining a doctorate the students share broadly common academic practices and turn to a common academy for their knowledge base and fellow students as well as supervisors induct and acculturate new members into how the system works. I argue that the process of transforming a community of practice into a learning community involves deliberate intention to learn, continuing, though not necessarily constant, engagement, development of trust, processes that foster dialogue and that serve to both critique and encourage, and risk-taking. Because knowledge evolves within a learning community, there is a need for flexible rather than set frameworks and for participants to take ownership of what they learn. I argue that a learning community differs from a simple community of practice in Value of a supportive learning community

Community of practice • Shares practice & knowledge base • Inducts & acculturates new members

• Deliberate intention • Planned & continuing engagement • Trust • Dialogue, critique & encouragement • Risk-taking • Flexibility • Ownership

Theoretical Deconstructing hegemonies Examining dominant discourses Questioning epistemologies Exploring conscientization FIGURE 12.3 

Learning community • Collaboratively critiques existing knowledge & practices • Creates new possibilities

And practical Pooling expertise Troubling notions of teacher/expert Navigating independence and direction Scholarship, quality, power & purpose

Development and value of a learning community

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that the participants commit to collaboratively critique existing knowledges and practices and to create new possibilities.

A journey back home again, and what happens after returning For international students, there is usually a journey back home. Not all students return home. A few of my students gained residency during their candidature and won jobs in New Zealand. Others hoped they might win positions: Most students have an ambition [that] they will find a job in the country. It doesn’t happen in Education. Pono I’ve applied for post-docs everywhere: Australia, Canada. Some said they would take me if I could find my own funding. Kar Most returned home. Some had previous positions to return to: I had paid leave of absence from my institution. I have to go back to work there. Ari I am employed in the government service, but I did not know where I would be posted. Nazrul Some returned home to rejoin their families but without a job to go to: I am doing volunteer work and short projects. There are too many graduates from international universities in Nepal now and not enough positions. Ganesh I was scared of facing family and friends to avoid repeated questions of what I was doing. I wrote to every NGO and applied for every position. Kar I talked with some of my graduates after they returned home. Their aspirations included I hoped to be posted to a role where I could share my findings locally as well as in international publications. Where I could develop professional development programmes for teachers. Nazrul

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I went back to my university and expected to engage myself in research rather than just administration. Duben I wanted to work with an NGO to develop wifi bases in rural villages. Ganesh I just wanted a job, to be honest. Then I can share my learning from my PhD journey. Kar They also talked about what they are in fact doing: I am lecturing thirteen hours a week and on six committees with daily meetings. I find it hard to read books and journals. Duben I am still networking to get a job in a university. I am writing articles for publication. I need at least four. Two are published and I’m doing revisions for two more. Ganesh I am working with tenders and accounting for national projects. And I am on a lot of committees. I am struggling to find time to write. Nazrul I am carrying the doctorate title without using it. I am writing co-­authored articles based on my research. Kar They shared their dilemmas and tensions: I could not get a visa to an international conference even though I have a respectable job in a good university. Pono Sometimes I lose the life-work balance. Nazrul I am struggling to keep the hope. Kar I sometimes feel like an alien. Duben

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Sometimes I get new sets of reviewers every time I make a revision. I feel like I am writing for them and losing focus on what I was really writing about. Ganesh As I mark these graduates’ reflections on my evolving and occasionally shifting map, I reflect about what we in the pan-university can hope to give our graduates to return home with. A quality degree, certainly. Is it our concern whether they get a job or not? Is it our concern if they are equipped with skills to make a difference in their own country?

Dotting a jagged line to mark the ethical pathway Tuki was decisive in marking the pathway taken by spirits. I am more hesitant in charting the ethical responsibilities of supervision. I reflect on the complexities as I waver. For a start so many things are well outside our sphere of influence. Global politics of closing borders makes building the capacity of developing countries harder. I cannot change that. Internal politics and corruption in some countries make it hard to get a job without influential contacts. I cannot change that. Ideas of research remain very restricted in many developing countries. I cannot change that. In addition, I am very aware that most universities, like my own, allocate very limited time to doctoral supervision. As a unionist, I consider it unethical to expect workers to give disproportionately more of their own time to a task that is the primary responsibility of their employer. It is the university that advertises for international students and that relies increasingly on their numbers to balance its budgets. So whether a fair trade (Greenwood et al, 2014) is achieved between taking students’ fees and supplying their needs is surely the university’s problem. And it is up to the university to resource the deal. However, as a human being, I find I cannot stand outside the globally created divisions of privilege and opportunity. I did not cause colonisation or the power games that profit from cheap labour and cheap resources. But if there is a chance to make a difference, even a constrained one, I have to use it. So I mark a pathway on my map – albeit a fractured one. And in making it, I reflect on what has since happened to the graduates I interviewed and on what lies ahead. Zar has a respectable job. It does not allow him to engage in research, but it allows him to support his family. He is still applying for jobs with NGOs. He is still writing for publication. Duden and Pono build their careers in their respective universities. They navigate cautiously, but strategically, between observing existing academic conventions and stretching their boundaries a little. Ganesh is still looking for an academic position. He writes diligently and keeps up his cross-national network. Nazrul consents to remain trapped in the finance sector of education because he believes he has some agency in shaping informed and responsible resource allocation.

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Despite obstacles and frustrations, they are each continuing to apply the complex raft of skills and understandings they gained during their doctorate: they examine the needs and possibilities of the local context and they engage cross-nationally and test their scholarship through publication; they reflect and critique. At the sunrise edges of my map, I see them continuously striving to utilise the discoveries they made through their research projects and translate their acquired skills to new situations.

Tuki’s map and other cartographies: a brief review of literature My map, like Tuki’s, is overtly subjective, drawing on my interpretation of my students’ words and actions and my own reflections after observing their experience. So this account is offered as one that is bounded by place and time and by the relationships that developed in the doctoral community where I work. It is partial: other aspects of the overall experience could have been selected and described. It may be interesting, nevertheless, to place some other mapping alongside mine, and to consider what other research reports say about the experience of international students. In placing a very brief review of literature at the end of my account, I find I am following the example of my Pasifika graduate, who wrote in her Masters’ thesis: One response [to respecting participants’ voices] has been in my choice to deliberately treat the literature as another set of stories in relationship to students’ stories. O’Halloran, 2015, p. 83 My intention, like O’Halloran’s, is not to validate or critique my students’ experiences but simply to acknowledge that there are other accounts that might be read alongside this one and add further perspectives to those I report. There are recurring critiques of the ways universities cater for international students. Doyle et al, (2108) investigated experiences of African doctoral students in New Zealand, and critiqued universities through the lens of southern theory. They argue that the academic world is anglophone and its conventions support a “colonial project”. They contend that the western academy needs to critique the dominance of northern/western attitudes in the production of knowledge and that supervisors need to facilitate recovery of African voices, rather than allowing the south to be a testing ground for western theories. Also using a framework of southern theory, Odena and Burgess (2017) explored what they saw as a hidden curriculum in doctoral supervision. They assert that the positioning of whiteness reproduces neo-colonial knowledge relations and displaces students’ own cultural knowledge and experience. Laufer and Gorup (2019) examined discontinuation stories of international doctoral students.

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They found that students “lacked familiarity with the academic system, culture, and language which made them more vulnerable to acute academic challenges, financial hardship, and social exclusion” (p. 165). In contrast, Greenwood et al. (2016) report ways that neo-colonial tendencies within academic culture can be counteracted through engagement in active learning communities and attention to relationships between place and meaning. Sato and Hodge (2009) investigated the experiences of Asian doctoral students. They report that the Asian students experienced more adjustment difficulties than their white peers due to language and academic difficulties and felt marginalised. However, the students developed more self-awareness through the period of their study, gaining greater respect for their cultural identity and values. Bista (2018) argued that “programs and resources are structured from the perspectives of colleges and universities… rather than what international students would actually need or benefit from… What they bring to the table is minimized” (p. 6). Strategies for supporting international doctoral students are variously reported. For example, Chatterjee-Padmanabhan and Nielsen (2018) carried out a smallscale study of how a thesis writing group provided collegial support to help students develop their proposals. Ku et al. (2008) developed a support group for preparing and mentoring international doctoral students for careers in academia. They found that many students joined for social reasons to develop meaningful relationships. Mason and Hickman (2019) reported an exploratory study of a mentoring scheme and found that the mentors gained professional development and confidence and the mentees reported they benefitted academically, socially and emotionally. Each of these studies shares some features with the account I have given of my students’ experiences. Language and academic conventions presented at least initial challenges to the students reported in this article. Similarly, my students also experienced social isolation. They also had to grapple with the imprint of western and neo-colonial ideologies. However, I found that while such ideologies are to some extent embedded in my university’s culture, they also seemed to be part of the baggage that international students brought with them from their own, formally colonised and neo-colonised, universities.

A veering compass needle This account has shown that international doctoral students face a wide spectrum of challenges, personal, social, academic and, later, professional. They also have, and variously use, a raft of opportunities in terms of scholarly, personal and cross-cultural development. I argue that, irrespective of the monetarist orientation of universities’ business with international doctoral students, a doctoral candidature is an opportunity for learning that goes beyond what is finally written in the thesis and has benefits that extend beyond the qualification. I also argue that supervisors, and faculties, can create spaces that encourage interpersonal

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learning and deconstruction of dominant assumptions as well as supporting students to navigate the multiple stresses, fears and practical obstacles that they experience in coming to the university, developing their research and preparing to return home. Maps are drawn for different reasons and from different perspectives. Some of the literature cited above comes from research framed by a predetermined theoretical perspective, such as neo-colonial critique or southern theory. Some comes from research based on surveys or small case studies. Each charts significant aspects of territory in which international doctoral students are located. This account offers a map that is drawn from students’ reports of and reflections on their lived experiences over time in a particular context. The purpose of such a phenomenological study is not only to inform understanding of the nature of doctoral experiences but also to signpost potential directions for professional action. As van Manen (2014) and Smith et al (2009) variously argue, phenomenology can be a tool for professional development as well as for exploring the nature of phenomena. Maps describe territory; a compass assists orientation within the territory. This account offers provocations to practice and provocations for further research of the complexity of doctoral journeys and the possibilities of enabling supervision. It seeks to stimulate the compass needle.

References Alam, S. (2016). Teachers, collaboration, praxis: A case study of a participatory action research project in a rural school of Bangladesh. Doctoral thesis. University of Canterbury. https:// ir.canterbury.ac.nz/handle/10092/11856. Al-Amin, M. (2017). Charting the River: A case study of English language teaching in Bangladesh. Doctoral thesis. University of Canterbury. https://ir.canterbury.ac.nz/ handle/10092/14381. Bista, K. (2018). Global perspectives on international student experiences in higher education: Tensions and issues. Routledge. Chatterjee-Padmanabhan, M., & Nielsen, W. (2018). Preparing to cross the research proposal threshold: A case study of two international doctoral students. Innovations in Education and Teaching International, 55(4), 417–424. Doyle, S., Manathunga, C., & Prinsen, G. (2108). African international doctoral students in New Zealand: Englishes, doctoral writing and intercultural supervision. Higher Education, 37(1), 1–14. Freire, P. (1972). Pedagogy of the oppressed. Penguin. Greenwood, J., Alam, S., & Kabir, A. (2014). Educational change and international trade in teacher development: Achieving local goals within/despite a transnational context. Journal of Studies in International Education, 18(4), 345–361. Greenwood, J., Alam, S., Salahuddin, A., & Rasheed, H. (2016). Learning communities, doctorates, and partnerships for development: A case study. Globalisation, Societies and Education, 14(1), 49–67. Heidegger, M. (1962). Being and time ( J. Macquarrie, & E. Robinson, Trans.). Harper and Row. Husserl, E. (1983). Ideas pertaining to a pure phenomenology and to a phenomenological philosophy (F. Kersten, Trans.). Kluwer.

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Keen., E. (1975). A primer in phenomenological psychology. Rinehart & Winston. Ku, H.-Y., Lahman, M., Yeh, H.-T., & Cheng, Y.-C. (2008). Into the academy: Preparing and mentoring international doctoral students. Educational Technology Research and Development, 56(3), 365–377. Laufer, M., & Gorup, M. (2019). The invisible others: Stories of international doctoral student dropout. Higher Education, 78(1), 165–181. Mason, A., & Hickman, J. (2019). Students supporting students on the PhD journey: An evaluation of a mentoring scheme for international doctoral students. Innovations in Education and Teaching International, 56(1), 88–98. Merleau-Ponty, M. (1962). Phenomenology of perception (C. Smith, Trans.). Routledge & Kegan Paul. Nazir, J. (2016). Using phenomenology to conduct environmental education research: Experience and issues. The Journal of Environmental Education, 47(3), 179–190. Odena, O., & Burgess, H. (2017). Intercultural PhD supervision: Exploring the hidden curriculum in a social science faculty doctoral programme. Higher Education Research & Development, 36(6), 1208–1221. O’Halloran, D. (2015). Raising our voices: Restorying Pasifika inclusion, success and effective learning supports at the University of Canterbury. Master thesis, University of Canterbury. https://ir.canterbury.ac.nz/handle/10092/11502. Romanyshyn., R. (1981). Science and reality: Metaphors of experience and experience as metaphorical. In R. Valle, & R. von Eckartsberg (Eds.), Metaphors of consciousness. Plenum Press. Salahuddin, A. (2015). Making a door: A case study of the leadership and change practices of a principal in Bangladesh. Doctoral thesis. University of Canterbury. https://ir.canterbury. ac.nz/handle/10092/11961. Sato, T., & Hodge, S. (2009). Asian international doctoral students’ experiences at two American universities: Assimilation, accommodation, and resistance. Journal of Diversity in Higher Education, 2(3), 136–148. Smith, J. A., Flowers, P., & Larkin, M. (2009). Interpretative phenomenological analysis: Theory, method and research. Sage. Svenaeus, F. (2019). A defense of the phenomenological account of health and illness. The Journal of Medicine and Philosophy: A Forum for Bioethics and Philosophy of Medicine, 44(4), August 2019, 459–478, 10.1093/jmp/jhz013. van Manen, M. (2014). Phenomenology of practice: Meaning-giving methods in phenomenological research and writing. Left Coast Press. van Manen, M. (2019). Rebuttal: Doing phenomenology on the things. Qualitative Health Research, 29(6), 908–925. von Eckartsberg, R. (1981). Maps of the mind: The cartography of consciousness. In R. Valle, & R. von Eckartsberg (Eds.), Metaphors of consciousness. Plenum Press. Wenger, E. (1998). Communities of practice: Learning, meaning, and identity. Cambridge University Press. Zahavi, D. (2019). Phenomenology, the basics. Routledge.

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13 “I CAN’T DO WITHOUT MY POETRY” A post-qualitative, phenomenological investigation of a poetry class of older Australians Edwin Creely and Jane Southcott MONASH UNIVERSITY, AUSTRALIA

This chapter explores and encounters the experiences of a group of older Australians who are part of a poetry class in the University of the Third Age (U3A), a well-known Australian and international program offering courses aimed at giving older and retired people continuing educational and recreational experiences. The chapter focuses on the voices of members of the poetry class and especially on their experiences of being together in their discussion about big ideas and poetry. Throughout our text, we interweave theory, narratives, and participant and researcher voices. The chapter considers the affective engagement that was engendered in the context of the poetry group, using experiences drawn from a focus group and a series of interviews with class participants. We found that the poetry writing was built on platforms of honesty, trust, and respect, so that the class allowed writers of all backgrounds and experience to participate and find success in what participants believe is the work of the heart. Such creative and substantive participation is important for the well-being and continuing learning of older Australians. The chapter uses the phenomenological ideas of Levinas and Scheler to understand the experiences of participants and their interactions with each other and with us as researchers, but frames these theorists loosely in a post-qualitative inquiry informed by Deleuze and reflecting a movement away from conventional research methodologies and epistemologies. In late 2016, I (Edwin) launched the poetry class, “The Joy of Poetry,” as part of the U3A program in a suburb of Melbourne designed to enhance the lives of older Australians (Formosa, 2010). It was motivated by my love for discussing and writing poetry and by my desire to foster this love in the community.

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I imagined that an older group of Australians would have the time for pursuing this love with me, and that this would add to their well-being and promote a positive experience of aging. By 2018, a group of nine older Australians (the oldest being 88 years of age) had settled, become ensconced in this love, and joined me in this evolving small writing community. The first poem I shared with the group, “Poems of the soul,” written by me in late September 2016, and dedicated to Walt Whitman, the great American poet, reflects something of his poetic style: This striving open soul shall ever and till time ends write words that come from the divine passion that lays its beating heart inside my rising chest. I will write poems of the soul that speak about all that is fathomable and unfathomable inside the inquiring minds and the tender beating hearts of the whole human family. Nothing shall sway me other or take away my quest to seek out the sinews of what makes this awful human flesh so filled with good and bad and horror and paradise. Indeed, I will live and breathe and find words, within this enterprise of seeking out the human soul, that penetrate deeper than a dagger and find in their concourse of meaning the very stuff of blood and paradox. These will be my poems of the soul that seek, within my striving open heart, truths that may be more than just these words can reveal or tell and greater than any human soul can feel. This poem was composed to reflect my view of poetry as a passionate striving, as a love, that is life-long, infused with joyfulness that can be caught. I offered it to them as a beginning point for the group and as a way of positioning poetry as soul work, not as an elitist literary form.

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After starting as a poetry appreciation group in 2016, the class had transmogrified by 2018 into a writing community characterized, it seemed to me, by vibrant discussion, focused writing and supportive sharing of poetry. It had indeed become soul work as I saw it. I changed from the traditional teacher delivering content about poetry to a facilitator trying to bring some inspiration and process; or perhaps, more truly, a co-conspirator in this marvelous secret society that savored the joy to be found in bringing words and people together. I stopped calling it a “class” at this point and they stopped calling me their teacher. With me pointing the way with a trembling finger, the group found its writing and engagement process within the 90-minute session: 1. I would write a theme or big idea on the whiteboard, with a lexicon of words related to the theme to bring the focus to language and the possibilities in language. 2. This was followed by vigorous, playful and sometimes emotional discussion of the monthly theme, often with shared examples (including poems) and frequently with measured disagreement. 3. Then silent writing of poetry, with a significant number of fully complete poems done in about 20–30 minutes of writing. 4. Finally, the group savored the reading and sharing of poems produced in the session with supportive feedback and reflexivity about the ideas, language and emotion of the poems. It is in this context that the group, knowing that I work as a researcher in a university, asked me to research them (for they thought they were as good as anybody) and to investigate why they think their group, with me facilitating, works so well to foster the writing and love of poetry. I accepted their challenge, and so did Jane, my university colleague and fellow conspirator in the love of poetry. She came to one of the classes to understand the machinations of the group, to gather stories and to understand their ways of being with each other in this creative enterprise. Jane came ostensibly as the outsider and the distanced researcher (adopting an etic perspective at the outset) to look in on what was happening in the group (Beals et al. 2019). She begins her narrative below.

Jane’s perspective At first, I sat at the back of the room, present, acknowledged, included and intentionally ignored. Edwin spoke and the group responded, chatted, wrote, shared. Gradually, I was pulled into their sphere and then I wedged myself in with a word, a few more words, an interruption and then I shared a poem I had written while they also wrote. I riffed off the poem by Dorothea McKeller, “I love a sunburnt country,” and offered a counter vision. I told the story of the poem in

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my life, copied by a distant English relative visiting Australia who wrote in my 12-year-old self ’s autograph book. I hadn’t read the poem until she (a foreigner in my Australian eyes) presented it to me: Grey-blue distance Wide brown Stark white Green tangle Pitiless blue Grey clouds Grey-blued distance shimmering melting Remorseless heat, battering wide brown country To start white bones. Memory of fleeting greenness, envisage norm but not Pitiless, relentless cycle of hot, less hot, damp, hot No grey-white clouds bring hope Nothing, no hope, just walk away What McKellar saw was mirage, long-past gaze of empire’s hope Wide brown opportunities of a life that couldn’t last Borrowed time, borrowed understandings, nothing like The stark, pitiless, whit-brown-blue melting horizon As I spoke, the group half turned in their chairs to listen to me. I saw the shift and swivel to accommodate me and draw me in. I then receded and watched in silence from behind as they did this for all. As one person read their work, all others were silent. They listened with their ears and faces, and, as I watched, turned their whole body to listen to the speaker. In the dialogue that followed, attention shifted from one to another, always accompanied by a synchronized dance of listening eyes and moving bodies. Sometimes one poet would wander off in a reverie of self-construction and memory but always respectfully returned at cadential points. I write this as me, the observer in my present inspection of my past researching experience. Gadamer argues that history is a dialogue between the past and present (Gadamer, 1975). I revisit my past and challenge what I saw, heard, felt and this changes my present self. I recognize that as researcher I abandoned the role of “observer”—I had partially shifted to an emic view and was invited to become fellow participant. I chose to be other, and I elected to be in voice with the participants. I deliberately broke the “third wall” of researcher and researched by taking part in their discussion and contributing my own poem to theirs. I established myself as poet and fellow traveler intentionally as I wanted to acquire credence in the conversations I knew would follow—I was not a disinterested “fly on the wall”; I was both one with them and something apart, something other, something hybrid.

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Resisting the methodological silo We began this chapter with our two voices and stories in interplay; now our lived experiences, and those of the poetry group, continue to be on display as the chapter unfolds. Jane came and observed and participated in the poetry group on the designated day for the research. I had told them beforehand that she was coming, and they were most excited to meet her. Then, she conducted a focus group (Bloor et al., 2001) to ask them about their experiences of being in the group, about writing and creating poetry, and they chatted and reminisced and answered her questions with playful humor and serious intent. They wanted to know what made them who they are: a disparate group of individuals who come together for the love of poetry. She then interviewed members of the group in pairs and investigated further what created this small community that tacitly appeared to come alive to poetry and each other so emphatically on one day a month. Intuitively, in our physical, social, historical and cultural worlds, we understand that there are many perspectives and voices that construct our narratives and epistemologies; we recognize and celebrate that there are plural realities, diverse experiences and multiple ways of knowing. In attempting to understand the complex phenomenon of this poetry group, we have embraced this multiplicity and problematized the demarcations between researcher and participant that often characterize ethnographic and qualitative research (Råheim et al., 2016). According to Deleuze (1994), the history of western thought has been concerned with univocality and the implied singularity of experience and being, often privileging particular voices and ways of knowing and being. Nancy and Barrau (2015) resist this univocality and reification of unity by writing the following: “the very idea of ‘world’ (one, ensemble) no longer answers to the investigation of physics or to metaphysical questioning (p. 3)”. This suggests that there are manifold experiences of many worlds and diverse ways of expressing these experiences in textual and visual forms of communication, and in intersectionalities that proffer the unexpected and new. Such was our experience in working with the U3A poetry group and exploring the complexity and nuanced understandings that operated within the group. In devising this chapter, our discussions turned to the ground of knowing itself and to the multiple ways of knowing that were part of the poetry group (including their elaborate discussions, rich reflections to each other and playfulness with poetry writing). Research epistemologies have traditionally been built around this notion of “oneness”: one-voice speaking from the high ground of the researcher and employing familiar approaches to constructing texts that unify research writing into accepted formats and genres within a research tradition and recognized scholarly discourses (Carter & Little, 2007; Mahé, 2019). This high ground is also an abstracted ground of power that points to who controls knowledge and knowledge making and the accepted forms of presentation of this knowledge, a point that Foucault has long identified (Foucault, 1981). Qualitative research has also tended to adopt this positionality, not only in the forms in which writing is often

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structured and presented in books and journals but also in the way data is conceived as other or object, rather than imminent, subjective and rhizomic (Honan, 2007). In this chapter, we choose to adopt a post-qualitative way of looking at the U3A poetry group, recognizing that it remains an active and vibrant writing community. Our writing is post-qualitative in four ways. First, in shifting beyond the repetitive silo of methodology and methods typical of qualitative research to a position of reciprocal engagement with the voices and experiences of the research participants. This epistemological silo tends to separate data (as object) from the voices and experiences of the humans who sponsored the data. As object, the data becomes a unitary way of containing the experience, which leads to a positivist attitude to research that emphasizes the coding and categorizing of data, as opposed to the totality of a human and communal context (Lather & St. Pierre, 2013). By contrast, we position knowing and knowledge-making as emergent from relationships and growing in the multivocality of creating new knowledge that challenges cherished labels and categories (McCall, 2005). We want to explore and experiment with how the rhizomes of the lived experiences of the poetry group connect with the rhizomes of epistemology, or what they came to know in being in the group. We also want to engage with meaning through ontology of immanence, of being-there, of uncertainty, of fleshly existence together (St. Pierre, 2019a). Second, we take this opportunity to move our writing away from the structures and stylistic features of traditional qualitative research writing to an exploratory, imaginative and elliptical approach that is not linear and more of a kaleidoscope and with opalescent flashes (Hein, 2019), such as that of our opening poems and narratives. We deliberately intertwine our voices and thoughts with those of our participants and then complicate the braid with theory. Third, we return to the body and to the affective and bodily states of participants that are situated in the place and time in which the research was conducted but have continued existence in memory. Merleau-Ponty (2002) suggests that incarnation is the starting point of knowing, challenging the usual privileging of the cogito. Finally, we acknowledge the dominant voice of us, as researchers, and we open up this awareness overtly in the ways that we engage with the research materials and with the experiences and voices of the participants. In sum, our work in this chapter is emphatically phenomenological (with its groundedness in experience and embodiments), and has a post-qualitative and post-modern turn, resisting methodological labels (St. Pierre, 2019b). It is experimental, performative, and meant to challenge cherished ways of reporting qualitative research and positioning the researcher.

Levinas, Scheler, embodiment and an affective turn Jane and I looked at all the experiences, stories, poetry, and opinions that she had gathered in her one and only encounter with the poetry group on that Saturday morning between 10 AM and 2 PM. We considered what ideas might inform

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and help us to understand what had been shared so generously by the group and also what we had experienced as researchers and fellow poetry writers. It was a responsibility that we keenly felt. Our group of older Australians said that they loved the group, that they felt a responsibility for each other, and that the writing and discussion of poetry just worked. But why? What were the essences of this collective experience of success? To understand this success (along with the inevitable tensions that ride with success), we needed concepts about the ethics of being together, and we needed a way of interpreting the visceral shared joy that was experienced in the group. The first we took from Emmanuel Levinas and his idea of alterity or that intentional awareness of the other that is essential to human interactions and ethical exchanges. For the second, we went to Max Scheler whose phenomenology of community encompasses the affective dimensions of how humans engage and develop an affinity with each other. Both these perspectives have much in common, especially about the building of an ethical community through profound face-to-face connection and embodiment with each other, and through empathy and knowledge making that has an affective turn. Levinas is concerned with the ethics of that affective turn (especially obligation), whereas Scheler focuses on the ways the turn unfolds ontologically in community as the ground for building affinity. What follows now is an exposition of some of the ideas of these two philosophers that are relevant to our unfolding research narrative and post-qualitative approach. Emmanuel Levinas’ ethics is about deep human connection and the appreciation of the value of the other. In his book, Totality and Infinity, Levinas proposes that an authentic human ethics emerges from the “desire for the absolutely other” (Levinas, 1969, p. 34, hereafter TI). Levinas defines this desire as a movement “toward an alien outside-of-oneself…toward a yonder” (TI, p. 33). This otherness or alterity is always afar, never capable of full possession, always sought but not ever realized in completion. Levinas’ central idea is that there lies within us a “desire without satisfaction…[for] the remoteness, the alterity, and the exteriority of the other” (TI, p. 34). He suggests that there is a direct recognition of otherness in the face-to-face encounter of one person with another. It is in this pivotal encounter that the obligation to the other arises as the proper basis of human values and ethical responsibility. The ethical power of otherness is inseparably linked to and finds expression in human contexts and in individual encounters that embody respect and responsibility. It is in the face of the other that moral responsibility is tacit and embodied and becomes the decisive ethical event (Casey, 2006). Levinas’ ethics is not built only on this ethical encounter with the other that creates obligation. Rather, it is the ethical encounter with an accompanying positive emotional state, a “happiness of enjoyment [that] affirms the I at home with itself ” (TI, p. 143) and a “qualitative plenitude of enjoyment” (TI, p. 144). Levinas suggests that this is an experience of joy that comes in the encounter and results in a “love of life” and a “primordial positivity of enjoyment” (TI, p. 145).

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For Levinas, the encounter with another and the ensuing ethical responsibility are grounded in joy, in the affective dimension of human experience. In sum, Levinas considers ethical human interactions to be based in the clarity of recognition of the other (of alterity), from which joy and generosity of action emerge. Max Scheler was a philosopher and sociologist whose foundational writing concerns understanding emotions and values and how they operate in the social realm (Kelly, 1977). A core concept in his writing is “fellow feeling” or what he saw as a profound emotional unity and connection that emerges in a community of humans that is like empathy and love (Scheler, 1992). Scheler considers this “fellow feeling” to be about a felt kinship and like-mindedness that develops between one person and another through the mutual exchange of feeling. This feeling is not mimicry but genuinely felt as a response to the other. In this notion of reciprocal feeling, there is commonality with Levinas’ idea of alterity, in the sense of awareness of difference but growing development of shared understandings. Scheler establishes this “fellow feeling” on the fact of the presence of one body with another, and on the awareness of another “self ” with one’s self. From this foundation, a human develops growing familiarity with the other. This is more than knowing about (or just being an observer), it is a knowing with and within as an intuitive joining together. In developing the ontological foundation of this “fellow feeling,” Scheler offers three essential categories. The first is what he calls the “Fact” or what the senses take from the other. Scheler introduces the idea of bodies as a field of expression: this concerns the body as developing an awareness of the other and then responding through expression which amounts to a dynamic performative dimension. This field is about the interpretations of the body through what Scheler calls a universal grammar, which means a system of signs through which the body is read in space and time. It is also about the emotional texture of that field that accompanies this “grammar,” so that as the body is read it is also the basis for emoting. According to Scheler, bodies in a field of expression convey an “emotional infection” or convey with them an emotional force that is caught (much like an infection) from one person to another. A second category is what Scheler refers to as the “Nature” of the knowledge gained from the other; that is, the content of what is being felt that emerges from connection with the other. In the emergent connection of one with the other, the details of what is felt together become clearer. For example, fear might be part of the field of expression from the body of the other, but the force of and meanings from that fear develop lucidity as the “fellow feeling” emerges and grows between two or more people. Third, Scheler suggests that a core aspect of “fellow feeling” is the “Quality”. By this he means the passions and meanings that exist in the inner life of the other that are not easy to communicate, but which, through the deepening of the “fellow feeling,” become progressively understood through ongoing connection and solidarity. These three ontological categories of the “fellow feeling” are best understood as operating synergistically, with Fact, Nature, and Quality woven together in

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a fluid and evolving connexion. The “fellow feeling” is thus a composite idea that operates within the interstices of how humans interact ethically with each other in community (Ranly, 1966). Ultimately, the “fellow feeling” is the affective substrate of the profound relationship that emerges between human beings in community that is caught through awareness of the body and the emotional states of a person (Barber, 1993). In these moments of connection and contagion, there is significant learning about the other and from the other.

Voices, poems, and feelings This section might ordinarily be called “data analysis,” but we, as researchers and fellow poets, have chosen to move away from the silo of a static view of data (as object in time and place to be described, coded, and analyzed) to one in which meaning is situated, negotiated, and always shifting (Vagle, 2018). Our writing is influenced and shaped by what happened before and since that single day of formal research, including our deepening engagement with the ideas of Scheler and Levinas. This chapter is thus positioned as being dialogic and exploratory, not definitive. The texts (such as the transcripts and our notes) created out of that one event are not closed but open and shifting in meaning with our reflexivity and our growing understandings of the context and the people in that context. Of course, like all phenomenological inquiry, we have applied bracketing (this purposeful drilling down to the essences of consciousness and experience), derived from what we were interested in examining and the sorts of questions we wanted to ask (Moustakas, 1994). But, on many occasions in the group session, in the focus group and in the paired interviews, the voices of the people in the class overrode or played with what Jane was asking of them. We got what they wanted to offer us, and it appeared to be a rather negotiated process. Below is our understanding of the class on that day, built from the texts produced, with a generous sprinkling of Levinas and Scheler. From our perspective and especially from our participants, the poetry group is safe space where people can talk about anything and write about anything, though within the thematic framing that Ed provides for each session. They talk about a confronting personal honesty in which they gain “windows into other people’s consciousness.” Poems are “terribly personal” but still openly shared. Things are said and written that have not been aired anywhere else, and there is the assumption that what is said stays in the room. One person spoke of a “grounded security” and another added, “of course I would kill someone if I hear back” meaning that she carries an assumption of trust between all. People in the class revealed traumas, tragedies, and disasters in their lives, which to the members of the group is “marvellous because it means you can say anything.” The poetry group is an ethical community where individuals are valued, privacy respected, and confidences kept, and this is built on their monthly face-to-face connections with each other. The members recognize the extraordinary that

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verges on the revelatory in their discussions and then the poetry produced. They fear that this might be taken from them and are fierce in protecting it as the group is “too important, too vital to let anything interfere. If it wasn’t there, I’d be bereft.” Another added, “I can’t do without my poetry.” Being part of this group has become a necessity to the members. They try to sound me out to find out if I know whether Ed will keep going. They don’t want to ask him directly because he might say no and then, “where would we be?.” They are solicitous and want to protect what they have together. The essence here is that felt sense of belonging to each other and to poetry or what might be seen as their “fellow feeling” in this context. There is an intense honesty in the room, both in the conversations and in the poems. The teacher models this and the group members have adopted this as both normalized practice and as a badge of membership. Their voices repeatedly articulate this honesty and embody an unrelenting open sense of disclosure. Their voices are creative and emotional; they say that there can be no such thing as a dishonest poem. Some poems are “too close to the bone,” and these are taken home and relegated to a drawer to be considered later or purposefully not looked at again. Ed sets big topics for people to explore from their own perspective. These include death, getting older, memory, sustainability, the purpose of life and the future. The results can be surprising for the individuals, who often go “straight away to the heart of what [they] want today [to be] about” – not what they think might be anticipated or even welcomed because topics can be taken very personally. On this day Ed proposed ‘the environment’ as the big idea, and that led one person to write about suicide because she knew someone who had “committed suicide for the environment.” Ed showed intense interest and inquiry about why she shared this, to which she responded: “you know, I don’t care … I just go where I want.” In this group, that is accepted and acceptable. The writing of poetry has come to them as a revelation: the gift later in their lives which is sudden, exciting and unexpected. They laugh at the realization of what they are doing, “suddenly I found myself writing all this poetry … how lucky are we?” They are joyful and keen to talk about this shared endeavor that has become contagious for them. But they never criticize the work of another— it is always about the joy of the poem and its moments of inspiration. Poems or poem fragments shared in class are folded and taken home where they may be worked on, abandoned, or put in a drawer for later. There are no expectations the poems will come back to the class. The act of writing with each other is celebrated, but the final product is never set in stone. However far their poem grows in class, they are satisfied because “everything is accepted, and you never go home thinking ‘I didn’t do it properly.’” But beyond the assertions of acceptance, there is a frisson of trepidation. One person said, “I write under pressure here” and there is a general acknowledgement that some create what feels like fully formed works, whereas others only write a fragment or a few sentences, justifying that “sometimes you need more time to think” because some find “instant  … difficult.” All are welcomed in the sharing that follows the silent

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writing, but there is a small barely articulated thought of comparison between the members. This does not interrupt their sense of fellowship but does sound a quiet note of difference. The members of the group know that they are distinctive people with different lives. They tell me that they are “all different but all the same” and “we don’t know each other personally, but we know a lot about each other’s thoughts, thinking processes, likes and dislikes.” There is no cross-identification of identity or the empty gestures of “I understand what you’ve been through.” They know full well that their life trajectories are very different, but they have somehow all ended up in this room writing poetry together. They wonder why it works; some of this they ascribe to the generous teacher who gives of himself with unwavering honesty and who never assumes a position of superiority. Their teacher “makes it all happen … He’s got a gift.” Ed shares his own poems. He is (as one person explained) “very gung-ho about his own poetry” but he doesn’t treat it as “something terribly precious that we’ve got to spin our eyes at”. Ed begins the class with a topic, a provocation, a thought and the class goes where it goes in this field of expression. There are punctuation points of silence and sharing but never does the class end neatly with a cadence. It closes but the thinking and writing and conversations continue. Whatever the class is, it is “never boring” and the participants relish the journey. Some of why the group works the members ascribe to the “vibe” they have built together in creating a fellowship of poetic adventure in which they openly learn from each other. They all have different personal styles of poetry writing— one writes “pastoral,” another “simple straightforward,” others “unique” but their “vibe” is that no one person dominates as this is a shared space and time. They all talk at once telling me the story of the person who join the group who did try to dominate and how they made it clear “in social ways the domineering was not acceptable.” After one or two meetings, the interloper never returned. It is not sanctioned to “speak someone else’s speaking.” When someone speaks, everyone is respectful, attentive, and listening. No one is elevated, no one is downcast. There is no drifting off. All are in the mystery of this creative patch of time, intellectually, emotionally, and physically. All remain for each other in an infectious, joyful, shared, and generous embrace of individuality and the security of the group.

Turning the kaleidoscope At this point in the chapter, we turn the kaleidoscope and think about the significance of what we have woven together rhizomatically, though what we write here cannot possibly express all that this poetry group is for its participants. Clearly, in our engagement with and research about this small poetry writing group in a U3A context, the issue of positive and healthy aging was a concern and did come into our discussion (Cohen, 2006; Miller, 2019). Finding a creative outlet and participating in community are seen in the research literature as

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important for the well-being of older people, including dealing with cognitive decline (Anderson & Craik, 2017; Fisher & Specht, 1999). Moreover, creating communities that support aging people and acknowledge the reality of aging, as well as allowing them to experience agency, is vital for positive aging (Scharlach & Lehning, 2016). On these three measures (creative outlet, supportive community, and significant agency), the poetry group did embody well-established principles of positive and healthy aging. This being said it would be misleading to suggest that members of the poetry group were actually concerned with their age. In fact, it was hardly mentioned in any of the exchanges that we had with them, and there was a tendency to resist positioning them in terms of age and to defy ageist categories. What they cared about, it seemed to us, was meaningful engagement and connectedness or what Scheler conceives as this “fellow feeling,” which is, after all, not a just a matter of age but an essence of being human that transcends age. They received joy in creative engagement with each other and this amounted to a profound sense of the importance of the other that fashioned the ethics of the group (and in this we were informed by Levinas). And at the center of the “fellow feeling,” and this sense of interpersonal responsibility, embodied, face-to-face, was a love for poetry, not just as an activity to do or a pastime to make the lives of retirees more meaningful, but as an exploration of the ground of being itself through doing, being together and rhizomic interconnectedness of experiencing and knowing. Perhaps this is why the group worked on that day, and many others before and since. I leave the last words to a member of the “Joy of Poetry,” who wrote this poem following the day on which the research of the poetry group happened. Dis-ease Early dawn and I’m on my way to Poetry, A healing time, As I drive alone, sun rays peer through mist, beauty my reward for an early start. First stop Boneo market for lean Mick’s beans and greens, lovingly grown and harvested for us, his loyal flock. Then to a new doctor, a guru. Can this one heal me? Help me? Does he know something the others don’t? I rage at sickness, do you call this fair? My mother deserved it, Her bottle of gin and forty fags a day. My father nearly blew his brains out with his homemade brew. I’ve disciplined myself, through many long years, Choosing with care what I put inside,

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Limiting the gins, giving away the fags. And why this sickness, this dis-ease, this lack of ease? I recall Lawrence’s wonderful words: “I am not a mechanism….and it is not because the mechanism is working wrongly. I am ill because of wounds to the soul, to the deep emotional self, and wounds to the soul take a long time, long long time….” The new guru advises an unpalatable regime – cut out all the foods that give me pleasure – Mick’s beans and greens the first to go, the foods that nourish me, body and mind. Eat animals he says, from head to tail. Cut out everything else. Become a carnivore. Just for a trial. A trial indeed. But then to Poetry and in this healing time I am at ease. In this poem, she constructs the experiential ground of her being—in her immediate experiences of her lifeworld, in her anxieties, and in her troubled personal histories. But to poetry she goes as a way of understanding, as a path to reconciliation and as a creative modality for healing. She has caught the love of poetry, and that was the reason for the poetry group’s existence.

References Anderson, N., & Craik, F. (2017). 50 years of cognitive aging theory. The Journals of Gerontology: Series B, 72(1), 1–6. https://doi.org/10.1093/geronb/gbw108. Barber, M. (1993). Guardian of dialogue: Max Scheler’s phenomenology, sociology of knowledge, and philosophy of love. Bucknell University Press. Beals, F., Kidman, J., & Funaki, H. (2019). Insider and outsider research: Negotiating self at the Edge of the Emic/Etic divide. Qualitative Inquiry. https://doi.org/10.1177/ 1077800419843950. Bloor, M., Frankland, J., Thomas, M., & Robson, K. (2001). Focus groups in social research. Sage. Carter, S. M., & Little, M. (2007). Justifying knowledge, justifying method, taking action: Epistemologies, methodologies, and methods in qualitative research. Qualitative Health Research, 17(10), 1316–1328. Casey, E. (2006). The ethics of the face to face encounter: Schroeder, Levinas, and the glance. The Pluralist, 1(1), 74–97. http://www.jstor.org/stable/20708851. Cohen, G. D. (2006). Research on creativity and aging: The positive impact of the arts on health and illness. Generations, XXX(1), 7–15. Deleuze, G. (1994). Difference and repetition. Bloomsbury. Fisher, B. J., & Specht, D. K. (1999). Successful aging and creativity in later life. Journal of Aging Studies, 13(4), 457–472.

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Formosa, M. (2010). Lifelong learning in later life: The universities of the Third age. Lifelong Learning Institute Review, 5, 1–12. Foucault, M. (1981). The history of sexuality (Vol. 1). Penguin. Gadamer, H. G. (1975). Truth and method. The Seabury Press. Hein, S. F. (2019). Deleuze, immanence, and immanent writing in qualitative inquiry: Nonlinear texts and being a traitor to writing. Qualitative Inquiry, 25(1), 83–90. https://doi.org/10.1177/1077800418784328 Honan, E. (2007). Writing a rhizome: An (im)plausible methodology. International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education, 20(5), 531–546. doi: 10.1080/09518390600923735. Kelly, E. (1977). Max Scheler. Twayne Publishers. Lather, P., & St. Pierre, E. A. (2013). Post-qualitative research. International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education, 26(6), 629–633. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09518398. 2013.788752. Levinas, E. (1969). Totality and infinity. Duquesne University Press. Mahé, A-H. (2019). Aligning epistemology and writing: A literary analysis of qualitative research. International Studies Perspectives, 20(3), 226–245. https://doi.org/10.1093/isp/ ekz004. McCall, L. (2005). The complexity of intersectionality. Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society, 30(3), 1771–1800. Merleau-Ponty, M. (2002). Phenomenology of perception (C. Smith, Trans.). Routledge and Kegan Paul. Miller, K. (2019, July 4). What is positive ageing? 10 tips to promote the positive aspects of ageing. Positive Psychology. https://positivepsychology.com/positive-aging/. Moustakas, C. (1994). Phenomenological research methods. Sage. Nancy, J., & Barrau, A. (2015). What’s these worlds coming to? Fordham University Press. Råheim, M., Magnussen, L. H., Sekse, R. J., Lunde, Å., Jacobsen, T., & Blystad, A. (2016). Researcher-researched relationship in qualitative research: Shifts in positions and researcher vulnerability. International Journal of Qualitative Studies on Health and Well-being, 11, 30996. https://doi.org/10.3402/qhw.v11.30996. Ranly, E. (1966). Scheler’s phenomenology of community. Martinus Nijhoff. Scharlach, A., & Lehning, A. (2016). Creating aging-friendly communities. Oxford University Press. Scheler, M. (1992). On feeling, knowing, and valuing. Selected writings. University of Chicago Press. St. Pierre, E. A. (2019a). Post qualitative inquiry, the refusal of method, and the risk of the new. Qualitative Inquiry. https://doi.org/10.1177/1077800419863005. St. Pierre, E. A. (2019b). Post qualitative inquiry in an ontology of immanence. Qualitative Inquiry, 25(1), 3–16. https://doi.org/10.1177/1077800418772634. Vagle, M. (2018). Crafting phenomenological research. Routledge.

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14 TRUTH-TELLING THROUGH PHENOMENOLOGICAL INQUIRY Davina Woods

Introduction Only during the last decade of the 20th century did the discourses on the shared history of Australia’s First Nations peoples and Non-Indigenous people begin to present a balanced perspective. Before then, the shared history was either omitted or offered purely from the standpoint of Non-Indigenous people. Slowly since the 1990s, health professionals, educators, journalists, and historians have begun to comprehend the negative impact upon Australian society of the omission and enforced silencing of the shared history. Suppressing knowledge of the shared history has disadvantaged both Non-Indigenous people and First Nations peoples. The statistically upheld negative impact of the shared history upon the First Nations peoples of Australia reports high child mortality, low school attendance, a shorter than average life expectancy, and more unemployment compared to Non-Indigenous people (Australian Government Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet, 2020). I am often asked by Non-Indigenous Australians “why weren’t we taught that in school?.” Thus, an obvious and requested antidote to the stifled knowledge of the shared history is truth-telling. Truth-telling is the oral reporting of events that caused pain and suffering to First Nations peoples because of social practices, and government legislated policies. It is a process that enables First Nations peoples to present our standpoint on the mainly silenced, often omitted shared history of Australia. As an academic, I support truth-telling that is verifiable. One method of verification is through multiple individuals sharing parallel stories, considering comparable events, relating to the shared history’s influence upon First Nations peoples’ lives. Requesting a description of life is a phenomenological inquiry, especially when the request enables the obtaining of knowledge about the intellectual and emotional interior of an individual. Exposing a person’s interior is the purpose of phenomenology (van Manen, 1986, 2003).

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Adding truth-telling to the process of phenomenological inquiry concentrates the analysis. Empowering the person to use language free from filters, enabling an accurate reveal, and the collection of vigorous knowledge. Here I am therefore advocating for what I call phenomenological truth-telling or PT-T. The aim of PT-T is healing, for both Non-Indigenous people and First Nations peoples. Healing requires knowing both perceptions of the events of the shared history. Outside of select academic units commenced in the late-20th century, the only perspective of the shared history was that of Non-Indigenous people. Since the slight increase in the number of First Nations peoples with academic qualifications, more input about the First Nations’ perspective, of the shared history, occurs at various levels of education. However, this has often been ad hoc as an added value to the curriculum. PT-T relies upon the ability to recall both phenomenological memories (Woods, 2018) and genetic memories. Phenomenological memories recall feelings and reflexive thoughts that occurred when experiencing an event. Thus, reflection on emotions and uncensored thoughts is what forms phenomenological memory (Woods, 2018). Genetic memory (Andrews, 2017; Dias & Ressler, 2014; Gallagher, 2013; Ham et al., 2008; Treffert, 2015) is present at birth, incorporated into the genome over generations. It exists in the absence of sensory experience and an event.

Who is involved The First Nations peoples of Australia are the descendants of the approximately 300 First Nations language groups present at the time of the invasion. The ancestors of contemporary First Nations peoples were living on the continent and nearby islands now known as Australia for time immemorial. The dating of First Nations peoples’ occupation of Australia is a controversial political issue for a variety of reasons. Firstly, First Nations people’s beliefs inform us that our connection to our country comes from our first ancestors who were along with all other elements of the cosmos created in and upon the country during the journeys of the Ancestral Beings who laid down the songlines. Similarly, the Abrahamic religions speak of Adam having been made from the dust of the ground by God. Secondly, the further back scientists’ date First Nation peoples’ occupation of Australia, the more our existence confuses the out of Africa hypothesis. Thirdly, the more enraged become those of the ideological position that we, First Nations peoples are inferior, especially as their ideology grew out of Herbert Spencer’s social-Darwinism. Using the phrase “time immemorial” caters for First Nations peoples’ beliefs and covers the fact that science and archaeological studies continue to push the date of our time in Australia back further and further towards the beginning of time. Although for most of the shared history oppositional to First Nations peoples, our counterparts, within Australia, are the Non-Indigenous people of Australia. They are the descendants of the invading, colonisers, and people who came after federation. The use of the terms First Nations peoples and Non-Indigenous people

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is deliberate. Pluralising “peoples” after the words “First Nations” emphasises the collaboration and sense of community held by First Nations peoples. Community connection is a characteristic emphasised by the prerequisite that identification as a First Nations person requires the person involved to obtain ratification by the First Nations communities with which the person interacts. The use of the singular for Non-Indigenous people supports the individualism of the capitalist economic system that promoted the invasion by European nations during the era of imperialism.

Some shared history Imperialism aimed to rid the lands invaded, of any force that deterred the full accessing of the resources desired by the colonisers. On my ancestral country, in Far North Queensland, first invaded in 1861 (Loos, 1982), the commodity desired was gold. Genocidal massacres in the guise of “dispersals,” the preferred term used within newspapers of the time, were multiple. Where massacres did not prevail in eradicating First Nations peoples, silencing occurred. Beginning with closer contact when children and women were taken and enslaved, or whole nations of people became imprisoned on missions. My ancestors were told not to speak our languages and to forget our beliefs. Philosophy is a synonym for beliefs; a nation’s philosophy is its repository of cultural knowledge. First Nations peoples tell of how our ancestors ensured that crucial cultural understandings such as values, competencies, kinship systems, and the methods for sharing such knowledge survived in clandestine ways—halting attempts to destroy First Nations cultures through silence. Attempts to silence First Nations peoples from speaking about our significance continues. The refusal of the federal government to accept the Statement from the Heart (2017) written by the First Nations people who attended the National Constitutional Convention, held within sight of sacred Uluru, is another attempt at silencing. The convention is, however, an example of the many innovative strategies utilised by First Nations peoples since colonisation in our struggles to acquire equity and recognition of our pivotal role as kin and custodians of Australia. Although not at the convention, I attended an informal dinner with delegates, reconnecting to people both significant to me and First Nations communities more broadly. The dinner is only one lived experience which has over my 60 years formed phenomenological memories that inform my Aboriginality.

Country as First Nations identity PT-T will also need to make space not merely for the First Nations standpoint on the shared history, but it will need to allow us to share our understanding of the world. As it is only through understanding our conception of the cosmos that the shared history will make full sense. Every story must be set in context. For example, the First Nations concept of country, predominantly how it interacts with the notion of First Nations identity, maybe a challenge for some

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Non-Indigenous people. Nevertheless, these differences will inform the dialectics that are necessary before moving onto the negotiation of treaties. The First Nations understanding of our country is that it is more than a political or geographical construct. Bound to our country by the Dreaming, there is a familiarity and kinship that is spiritual. The name of the First Nations group is often also the name of that “nation’s country and specific language.” Thus, the identity of a First Nations person intrinsically relates to country. First Nations peoples of Australia have different but overlapping experiences of the shared history. Thus, some may state the specific First Nations group to whom they are biologically related. Other First Nations “peoples” dispossession has been so complete that some, such as myself, may need to acknowledge more than one possible First Nations group. My search for country enables me to identify a region rather than one specific country. Thus, I identify to the two traditional owner groups that cover the area from which my ancestors come. Another reason for First Nations peoples acknowledging more than one First Nations country when identifying themselves is because missionaries and reserve managers often forced wrong-way marriages. The children born of these marriages are therefore from multiple nations. I know this as I have joined in events which have enabled me to sit and listen to other First Nations peoples discuss the lives of themselves and their families. Thus, I have phenomenological memories of the data shared. The difficulties for some First Nations peoples in specifying their country are the first point of provocation that could arise during any PT-T.

Phenomenological memory Opportunities to physically visit my ancestral country have created phenomenological memories. In 2013, I walked the Bump Track that links the countries to which I relate. While walking, I saw a python sunning itself, an event, it has become a phenomenological memory. Reflexively I thought “don’t go too close.” Emotionally I thought, “how privileged am I to see such a beautiful creature in its natural habitat.” Such memories are my phenomenological memory which is the basis for truth-telling. However, the majority of my phenomenological memories of our shared history centre on racism. Experiences of racism either perpetrated against me directly or indirectly against someone whose company I shared. All must listen to even the unpleasant phenomenological memories as the best way to heal a wound is to get rid of the dirt and any built-up pus.

Genetic memory and transpersonal psychic trauma Over time phenomenological memories become genetic memories. Studies by neuroscientists demonstrate that genetic memory exists for no more than two or three generations. Considering that genetic memory lasts for only a few generations, I was interested to hear Professor Tracy L Bale speak on the topic in Melbourne on 12 February 2020 at the Florey Institute of Neuroscience and Mental Health.

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Although initially using mouse models, Bale and her team at the Center for Epigenetic Research in Child Health & Brain Development (CERCH), University of Maryland, also build translational programs allowing for confirmation of their findings in humans. In a study of birth mothers and babies, CERCH found that Adverse Childhood Events (ACEs) occurring before the onset of puberty, impact negatively on the health of baby and mother more than socio-economic matters. The study proved that ACEs adversely affect African American women and their babies, even where the mother has a post-graduate degree and is financially secure. The studies have found that the most harmful influence comes from ACEs of racism. Based upon Bale’s report of CERCH’s findings, I suggest that in the First Nations peoples of Australia, the genetic memory has grown beyond the proposed three-generation limit. Incorporating further generations due to the repetitions of racism that traumatise generations of a family of First Nations peoples, creating what Atkinson (2002) labels intergenerational trauma. Trauma describes emotionally painful and distressing circumstances which overwhelm a person’s ability to cope with everyday life, leaving people powerless. Studies confirm that humans remember negative things more strongly and, in more detail than positive events (Kensinger, 2007). Genetic memory is the nexus between an individual, their ancestors and trauma. The trauma of the shared history has come in many forms, including: • • •

• • • •

conflicts, massacres, dispossession of traditional lands and resources introduced diseases and starvation undermining of traditional identity, spirituality, language, and cultural practices through the establishment of missions and reserves and the government policy of assimilation forced removal of children from their kin, country, and culture to institutions which included experiences of physical, emotional, and sexual harm destruction of Indigenous forms of governance, leadership, and community organisation discrimination and racism breakdown of healthy patterns of individual, family, and community life (Australian Indigenous HealthInfoNet, n.d.)

A massacre is the indiscriminate killing of six or more undefended people (Ryan, 2008). Ryan had corroborated evidence to prove that at least 250 massacres occurred (Brennan, 2018), she is convinced that genocide was the motivation behind the actions of the attacking groups. Her study incorporates records from 1788 to 1930 and advocates that groups containing an average of nine men would attack. The attacking groups would typically be hunting parties of soldiers, armed settlers, mounted police, or Native Police using swords, pistols, muskets, bayonets, cannons, carbines, repeating rifles, and strychnine poison. First Nations peoples would either be defenceless or have weapons such as spears, waddies (clubs), and hatchets.

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The colonizers had superior technology and the Native Mounted Police. During the decades following the invasion, the “colonisers” response to First Nations peoples was to dispossess us through “dispersal”—another term for genocide as eradication. This task, when not carried out by the colonisers themselves, was dealt with by the Native Police. All the officers in the Native Police were colonisers. The troopers were First Nations men who came from First Nations groups who were strangers or traditional enemies of First Nations peoples they “dispersed.” Secrecy was the modus-operandi of the Native Police, a characteristic enhanced by the way that the British officers commonly situated their detachment of troopers out of town. Brutalised by the actions of their British officers (Richards, 2008), the “troopers” received praise for “dispersing” the “problem” (Evans, 2007; Haebich, 2000; Kidd, 2011; Reynolds, 2006; Richards, 2008; Robinson & Paten, 2008; Rowley, 1970; Tickner, 2003). Ryan’s (2008) research has the highest number of massacres occurring in Queensland, the state to which my “family’s story relates.” Proof comes from a newspaper The Queenslander in which a journalist uses the heading “Pacification of the Blacks” and the phrase “a war of extermination” (08 October 1881, p. 465). The journalist reports that the frontier wars were over territory and the resources contained within that region. As stated earlier, in my family’s story, gold was the resource for which Non-Indigenous people fought. From my ancestors’ standpoint, the fight was over the human needs listed on Maslow’s Hierarchy as basic, psychological and self-fulfilment (Conway, 2008; Lowry, 1973; Maslow, 1943, 1962, 1971; Michel, 2014). It is my firm belief that through genetic memory, as “transpersonal psychic trauma” (Atkinson, 2002)—reliving the massacre, of my great grandparents, which orphaned my then-toddler grandfather, I dreamt of the event. Others may suggest, that as I was in a hospital on a morphine drip, that it may have been the drug that induced what was, in reality, a nightmare. However, as the traumatising dream reoccurred several times over the following six months, I think it was more than the morphine that produced the repeated events. In 1994, both of my children and I attended the World Indigenous Peoples Conference: Education. After that experience, I finally wrote a poem that reflects both the disturbing nightmare and the positive experience of being with other First Nations peoples—published in its entirety for the first time. My poem is titled “Honour Her.” Close your eyes She will come Not quite a dream Not quite a vision More a distant memory Her skin the colour of polished wood Her midnight eyes sparkle in a thoughtful face Sitting on a rock Warming herself in the sun She rests her weary feet in a deep, still, pool

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Her baby stretches in her full womb An ant crawls across her hand A light breeze shakes the long grass Choosing carefully, she picks up a flat stone Skipping it across the water She watches the concentric ripples link one into another She disturbs the stillness and sighs Caressing her baby A silent sob wracks her body Slowly tears run down her face For yesterday the faces of clay* came Fearful for her baby She ran She hid She escaped the faces of clay All others died Now there are No women to help with her baby’s birth Now there is No man to smile with pride at his child For yesterday the faces of clay* came But for her baby—her people, she must survive Open your eyes She will not go She is more than a distant memory She is here She is the Indigenous women of the Americas, Aotearoa and Australia Honour her Care for the Land Honour her Care for the Elders Honour her Care for the children Honour her Care for the men Honour her Keep your identity strong Survive! [* ‘Faces of clay’ refers to the British (White) invading—colonisers] © Davina B Woods In writing the poem, I chose not to include the blood and horror of the experience. Instead, I write to my children about my great-grandmother. Despite invasion

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and colonisation, the first peoples of the world have survived. My children keep their Aboriginality strong.

Truth-telling and health disadvantage Many of the facts of the shared history have shaped the character and identity of contemporary First Nations peoples, including acts of racism. Acknowledged as a social determinant of ill-health for First Nations peoples’ racism which motivates physical assault is usually immediately identifiable. However, social and emotional well-being issues are less visible. Racism precipitates anxiety, depression, and risk of suicide. It also adversely affects the immune, endocrine, and cardiovascular systems. Racism may also reduce equitable access to the societal resources required for health which include education, employment, housing, and medical care (Macedo et al., 2019; Markwick et al., 2019; Paradies & Cunningham, 2008; Paradies et al., 2008, 2015; Priest et al., 2011; Shepherd et al., 2017). Currently, health-conscious people are turning to a nutrition regime similar to the diet of my ancestors before colonisation. The strictest adherence to such a diet ensures the consumer knows the lineage of food from farm to feast, which was not a problem for my ancestors who were the hunting-gathering-farmers of the world (Pascoe, 2014). Balanced diets include the meat of fish, and fowl with a little red meat, many vegetables, and adequate fruit and berries, with no dairy products. A naturally low carbohydrate diet, with sugar only in low sugar vegetables such as tubers, added sweetness came from natural honey. Vitamins and minerals usually occurred as elements of the simple, clean, balanced diet. Roasting and steaming cooked high protein foods. Many other foods were eaten raw. Replacing First Nations peoples’ pre-invasion diet with rations that usually included flour, tobacco, tea, and jam, continues to impact negatively upon our health. With many illnesses, such as diabetes, relating to the endocrine system. The organisation Diabetes Australia reports that First Nations peoples are almost four times more likely than Non-Indigenous Australians to have diabetes or pre-diabetes (Diabetes Australia, n.d).

First Nations’ perspective on shared history First Nations peoples of Australia often focus the shared history of Australia through the lenses offered by the terms “protectionism” and “assimilation.” These were the policies the British, colonial, and then after 1901, the State and Commonwealth Governments used to respond to the existence of Australia’s First Nations peoples. Although “protectionism” really meant “control” and “assimilation” equalled “cultural genocide.” For me, the shared history’s subcategories truly begin with “dispossession.” On 22 August 1770, James Cook, then a lieutenant, landed on one of the islands in the Torres Strait. Known as Bedanug or Bedhan Lag by the Kaurareg who share the island with another

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First Nation, the Ankamuti, Cook renamed it Possession Island. Ignoring First Nations law, and arrogantly imposing British rule, Cook in the name of mad King George III took possession of the whole eastern coast of Australia from the latitude 38° south. Cook’s act of possession began the dispossession of the First Nations peoples of Australia. Reinforcing Cook’s initial act of dispossession was the invasion that began when convicts and marines disembarked from the fleet of 11 British ships at the location today known as Sydney. The flotilla was led by Captain Arthur Phillip, who on 26 January 1788 planted a stick flying the Union Jack flag into the country of the Gadigal and Darug peoples of the Eora Nations, and named the stolen land, New South Wales. The conflict of Australia’s current unreconciled society began. Even though I studied both modern and ancient history during my secondary schooling plus Australian history at teachers’ college, classrooms, and lecture theaters of my school and college days completely ignored the shared history as if it did not exist. Instead, at college, there were discussions on the text The Triumph of the Nomads by Geoffery Blainey (1976). The book, however, did not deal with the shared history of Australia. After overcoming my teenage delight of finding a textbook that dealt with First Nations peoples at all, I criticise Blainey’s publication for several reasons. With possibly the least being that the title continues the misconception that before invasion First Nations peoples were nomadic, something else that the truth-telling process should rectify. Legislation, known as the Act, ran in Queensland from 1897 to 1984 (Frankland, 1994). The Act created the “special treatment” that explicitly controlled the lives of First Nations peoples. During the era of my school days, many First Nations families had experienced generations of being imprisoned on reserves or missions. Placed “out of sight out of mind” by legislation that adhered to the myth of social-Darwinism that stated First Nations peoples were a dying race. The Australian history course I undertook at college was silent on the legislation. The Act led to the contemporary disadvantage, attested to by the statistics that describe Australia’s First Nations peoples. When lecturing in the area of Indigenous Australian Studies, I would speak about my maternal grandfather needing to ask for a “dog-tag,” an exemption certificate, so he could have a pension to support his family. The document that exempted Grandfather from needing to live under the Act, granted quasi-citizenship. It also meant legally not being allowed to continue a connection with other First Nations peoples who were still non-citizens. Those individual First Nations peoples who chose not to ignore their kinship obligations implemented resistance to a racially motivated legislative system. Individual shows of strength when performed simultaneously with others become political activism. The rise of First Nations peoples as political activists might, therefore, be said to have been sparked by William Cooper, Bill Ferguson, Margaret Tucker, and Geraldine Briggs as some of the elder statesmen and woman of the First Nations pre-World War 2. Held in 1938, the first day of mourning

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appeared with photographs in newspapers in most Australian States. Though the newspaper reports were diverse, the majority focus neglected the perspective of the Aborigines Progressive Association, which organised the event. Solidifying my resolve that truth-telling, the listening to the circumstances and experiences of the phenomena, of First Nations people’s lives—is going to fill in many gaps of the shared history (Ungunmerr-Baumann, 1998). Thus, the truth-telling process is a phenomenological inquiry. Occurring almost 35 years later, journalistic reporting of other events of political activism by First Nations peoples again received pointless reporting that similarly played to the status quo. It concerned the establishment of the Aboriginal Tent Embassy in 1972. Although not favourable, it was the first time the international media noted the social and political struggle of Australia’s First Nations peoples. Police, ordered by the politicians to demolish the Embassy, caused violence by physically trying to evict First Nations peoples; unfortunately, journalists labelled First Nations peoples as “violent,” not the police. When journalists added the term “radical” to their descriptions of First Nations peoples present at the Embassy, rumours spread that the people at the Embassy belonged to the outlawed Communist Party. Reports by NonIndigenous journalists claimed that the Embassy people—our First Nations spokespeople—did not reflect the view of most First Nations peoples. The media discredited First Nations political activists, urging both Non-Indigenous people and politically conservative First Nations peoples to be afraid of the activists and their ideas of social reform and advancing attempts to continue the silencing of First Nations peoples. The journalists consciously or unconsciously practised racism that continues colonialism. In terms of the 60,000year occupation of Australia by First Nations peoples, the last quarter-century is only a moment in time. It is during this moment that members of influential professions, including journalism, have begun to comprehend the negative impact, both physical and psychological, upon 21st-century Australian society, of the shared history.

Truth-telling and White privilege Accordingly, a critical issue for educators to consider when bearing in mind their role as positive social change agents is how they portray Australian history. For example, the acknowledged privilege that accompanies “Whiteness” (McIntosh, 2001) has seen shared history ignored or represented only from a Non-Indigenous perspective. With First Nations peoples’ standpoint on  the events and consequences of the shared history flippantly discarded by the through away line, “history is written by the victors.” Labelled as radicals, a term that detracts from our academic qualifications and pedagogical credibility, First Nations lecturers elevate memories of the frontier wars, the hardships endured under protectionism, the inequities of assimilation, and the lack of political will for real conciliation, to positions of discourse. For First Nations

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peoples, how we and the rest of Australian society remember our shared history is inseparably and intimately connected psychological and physically (Birch,  2007) to who we are, in the 21st century. Intent on obliterating the memory of First Nations peoples; “White privilege” allows for unproblematic, colonial representations of the past, denying the realities of First Nations peoples’ experiences. The denial of any person’s actuality is a vicious act that leads the individual to psychological trauma. Denial of First Nations peoples’ realities of the shared history intensifies the trauma connected to the memories. It pulls people apart at a very fundamental level while at the same time trying to assimilate First Nations people (Atkinson, 2002). Memories of the shared history kept alive through the practice of oral history and genetic memory often reconstructs a First Nations person as powerless with aggression becoming a way in which we deal with our powerlessness and trauma (Atkinson, 2002; Birch, 2007).

Truth-telling and treaty The truth-telling process will be challenging for First Nations peoples who participate. It will, however, inform the long-promised makarrata, a word from the language of the Yolngu people in Arnhem Land. Makarrata has parties come together, to heal the wounds of the past, to live in peace. First promised by the then Prime Minister Bob Hawke at the 1988 Garma festival, an annual gathering, makarrata equates to the term treaty. A treaty or even better, a collective of agreements undertaken with individual First Nations makes the pain of the process of truth-telling worthwhile. Through the truth-telling process, First Nations peoples will be able to give voice to the wrongs of the past, turning statistics into real people. A treaty will seek to make things right by capturing the aspirations for an equitable relationship between First Nations peoples with the Non-Indigenous people of Australia. It requires, accepting that the shared history did occur, and looking at methods to restore equity, enabling all to move forward. According to the Dreaming, everything connects. The imperative, therefore, is the establishment of a better future for First Nations “peoples” children based on equity, justice, and self-determination, which in turn will benefit all the peoples of Australia.

Conclusion It has only been since the end of the 1990s that a significant number of non-­ academic Non-Indigenous peoples within Australian society have engaged with the shared history. Influenced by the revelations within the media of the events

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reported in the Bringing Them Home report (Commonwealth of Australia, 1997) some Non-Indigenous peoples partook of a taster concerning Australia’s First Nations peoples’ experiences of the shared history. However, to make available, sufficient knowledge for unreconciled differences to be understood, truth-telling is required. Understanding supports the call for truth-telling, which is naturally a phenomenological inquiry heightening the academic status of any written report of the truth-telling. Hopefully, phenomenologically based truth-telling will also enable an understanding by Non-Indigenous peoples of the negative impacts of the shared history upon First Nations peoples. Not because we are “poor fellas” but because the experiences, of the shared history, are still negatively influencing both Non-Indigenous Australians and First Nations peoples. The effect upon Non-Indigenous people is ignorance. A claim of innocence through ignorance is too often used to support Non-Indigenous people whose unconscious biases and subconscious racist acts of micro-aggression, add to the daily deterioration of First Nations “peoples” health. Often the person remarking is otherwise well-meant and unaware of the power of their words. Through public pedagogy, formal compulsory schooling and tertiary education for at least professions involved in education, the legal system and health care, elimination of the excuse of ignorance must occur. For First Nations peoples truth-telling based on phenomenological inquiry enables us to reveal our lived realities of the current impact of the practices and policies of the shared history, which causes our statistic disadvantage. A phenomenological inquiry about the shared history would also provide a rationale for grieving gatherings and healing forums to enable the First Nations peoples to build the resilience necessary for the vital step of truth-telling. Logically truth-telling will lead to local authorities making treaties with the Traditional Owners of the countries upon which the legislator’s power has a sphere of influence. First Nations peoples such as myself whose dispossession has left us needing to identify through naming the First Nations of a particular region and thus unable to claim specific Traditional Ownership will require a national treaty. Any national treaty will need to take into account the revelations of the shared history. Such as the truth that my maternal grandfather’s role, as a slave from toddler to approximately 30 years of age, enabled the building of personal, corporate, state, and national riches. Grandfather received no riches. Recompensation for the intergenerational trauma has never occurred. As a person who values the contribution knowing history makes to the future of society, I would like truth-telling to be witnessed and written down. Understanding PT-T as healing will allow full consideration of the most suitable and sustainable methods to restore equity. The witnessing and writing down as a Royal Commission into the First Nations Standpoint on Australia’s Shared History would be my recommendation to move Australia’s unconciliated society towards greater understanding and cohesion.

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References Andrews, R. (2017). Ancestors’ genetic “memories” could be passed on for 14 generations. IFLScience, viewed 21 September 2017. http://www.iflscience.com/healthand- medicine/ancestors-genetic-memories-passed-on-14-generations/all/. Atkinson, J. (2002). Trauma trails, recreating song lines: The transgenerational effects of trauma in indigenous Australia. Spinifex Press. Australian Government Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet (2020). Closing the gap report. https://ctgreport.niaa.gov.au/sites/default/files/pdf/closing-the-gap-­ report-2020.pdf. Australian Indigenous HealthInfoNet (n.d.). Trauma. https://healthinfonet.ecu.edu.au/ learn/health-topics/healing/trauma/. Birch, T. (2007). ‘The invisible ‘fire’: Indigenous sovereignty, history and ‘responsibility’. In A. Moreton-Robinson (Ed.), Sovereign subjects: Indigenous sovereignty matters (pp. 105–117). Allen & Unwin. Blainey, G. (1976). The triumph of the nomads: A history of aboriginal Australia. Macmillan. Brennan, B. (2018). Map of Indigenous massacres grows to include more sites of violence across Australia. https://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-07-27/map-of-indigenous-massacresgrows-to-include-more-sites/10040206. Commonwealth of Australia. (1997). Bringing them home: National inquiry into the separation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children from their families. https://www.humanrights. gov.au/sites/default/files/content/pdf/social_justice/bringing_them_home_report.pdf. Conway, T. (2008). Maslow on transpersonal psychology, rare-leadership, viewed 22 November 2015. http://www.rareleadership.org/Maslow_on_transpersonal_psychology.html. Diabetes Australia (n.d.). Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islanders. https://www.diabetesaustralia. com.au/aboriginal-and-torres-strait-islanders. Dias, B. G., & Ressler, K. J. (2014). Parental olfactory experience influences behavior and neural structure in subsequent generations. Nature Neuroscience, 17(1), 89–96. https:// doi.org/10.1038/nn.3594. Evans, R. (2007). A history of Queensland. Cambridge University Press. Frankland, K. (1994). A brief history of government administration of aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples in Queensland. Queensland Government. Gallagher, J. (2013). Memories’ pass between generations. BBC News, viewed December 2014. http://www.bbc.com/news/health-25156510. Haebich, A. (2000). Brocken circles: Fragmenting indigenous families 1800-2000. Fremantle Arts Centre Press. Ham, T. S., Lee, S. K., Keasling, J. D., & Arking, A. P. (2008). Design and construction of a double inversion recombination switch for heritable sequential genetic memory (double inversion memory switch). PLoS One, 3(7), e2815. https://doi.org/10.1371/ journal.pone.0002815. Kensinger, E. A. (2007, August). Negative emotion enhances memory accuracy: Behavioral and neuroimaging evidence. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 16(4), 213–218. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8721.2007.00506.x. Kidd, R. (2011). The way we civilise (3rd ed.). University of Queensland Press. Loos, N. (1982). Invasion and resistance: Aboriginal-European relations on the North Queensland frontier 1861-1897. Australian National University Press. Lowry, R. (1973). A. H. Maslow: An intellectual portrait. Brooks/Cole. Macedo, D., Smithers, L., Roberts, R., Paradies, Y., & Jamieson, L. (2019). Effects of racism on the socio-emotional well-being of aboriginal Australian children. International Journal for Equity in Health, 18. https://doi.org/10.1186/s12939-019-1036-9.

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Markwick, A., Ansari, Z., Clinch, D., & Mcneil, J. (2019). Experiences of racism among aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander adults living in the Australian state of Victoria: A cross-sectional population-based study. (Survey). BMC Public Health, 19(1). https:// doi.org/10.1186/s12889-019-6614-7. Maslow, A. H. (1943). A theory of human motivation. Psychological Review, 50(4), 370–396. https://doi.org/10.1037/h0054346. Maslow, A. H. (1962). Toward a psychology of being. D. Van Nostrand. Maslow, A. H. (1971). The farther reaches of human nature. Penguin. McIntosh, P. (2001). White privilege and male privilege: A personal account of coming to see correspondences through work in women’s studies (1988). In M. L. Anderson, & P. H. Collins (Eds.), Race, class, and gender: An anthology (pp. 95–105). Wadsworth. Michel, K. 2014, ‘Maslow’s hierarchy connected to blackfoot beliefs, viewed 28 March 2016. https://lincolnmichel.wordpress.com/2014/04/19/maslows-hierarchy-connected-toblackfoot-beliefs/. Pacification of the Blacks (1881, 08 October). The Queenslander, p. 465. Paradies, Y., Ben, J., Denson, N., Elias, A., Priest, N., Pieterse, A., Gupta, A., Kelaher, M., & Gee, G. (2015). Racism as a determinant of health: A systematic review and meta-­ analysis. PloS One, 10(9), e0138511. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0138511. Paradies, Y., & Cunningham, J. (2008). Development and validation of the measure of indigenous racism experiences (MIRE). International Journal for Equity in Health, 7(9), 19–29. Paradies, Y., Harris, R., & Anderson, I. (2008). The impact of racism on indigenous health in Australia and Aotearoa: Towards a research agenda. Cooperative Research Centre for Aboriginal Health. Pascoe, B. (2014). Dark emu: Black seeds: Agriculture or accident. Magabala books. Priest, N. C., Paradies, Y. C., Gunthorp, W., Cairney, S. J., & Sayers, S. M. (2011, May). Racism as a determinant of social and emotional well-being for aboriginal Australian youth. Medical Journal of Australia, 194(10), 546–550. https://doi.org/10.5694/j.13265377.2011.tb03099.x. Reynolds, H. (2006). The other side of the frontier: Aboriginal resistance to the European invasion of Australia. University of New South Wales Press. Richards, J. (2008). The secret war: A true history of Queensland’s native police. University of Queensland Press. Robinson, S., & Paten, J. (2008). The question of genocide and indigenous child removal: The colonial Australian context. Journal of Genocide Research, 10(4), 501–518. https:// doi.org/10.1080/14623520802447818 Rowley, C. D. (1970). The destruction of aboriginal society. Australian National University Press. Ryan, L. (2008). Massacre in the Black war in Tasmania 1823-34: A case study of the Meander River region, June 1827. Journal of Genocide Research, 10(4), 479–499. https:// doi.org/10.1080/14623520802447834. Shepherd, C. C. J., Li, J., Cooper, M. N., Hopkins, K. D., & Farrant, B. M. (2017, 03 July). The impact of racial discrimination on the health of Australian indigenous children aged 5-10 years: Analysis of national longitudinal data. (Report). International Journal for Equity in Health, 16(1). https://doi.org/10.1186/s12939-017-0612-0. Tickner, R. (2003). Taking a stand: Land rights to reconciliation. Allen & Unwin. Treffert, D. (2015). Scientific America – Guest blog genetic memory: How we know things we never learned, viewed 10 November 2016. https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/guest-blog/ genetic-memory-how-we-know-things-we-never-learned/. Ungunmerr-Baumann, M. R. (1998). Dadirri: Inner deep listening and quiet still awareness. https://www.miriamrosefoundation.org.au/images/Dadirri_Handout.pdf.

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van Manen, M. (1986). Practicing phenomenological ‘writing’. Phenomenology + Pedagogy, 2(1), 36–69. van Manen, M. (2003). Writing in the dark: Phenomenological studies in interpretive inquiry. Routledge. Woods, D. B. (2018). Indigenous Australians. In T. McKenna, M. Cacciattolo, & M. Vicars (Eds.), Engaging the disengaged: Inclusive approaches to teaching the least advantaged (pp. 195–206). Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9781107300910.

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15 STEM INSPIRATION A phenomenological investigation exploring beyond the solution Roland Gesthuizen1, Gillian Kidman1, Hazel Tan1, Dominador Mangao2 and Simone Macdonald1 MONASH UNIVERSITY, MELBOURNE, AUSTRALIA SEAMEO RECSAM, PENANG, MALAYSIA

1 2

Background Our study aspires to reveal the essence of a makerspace by studying the awareness and perceptions of the participants and the objects within. Makerspaces are often identified by schools as a context for teaching and learning in cross-curriculum settings. In these emerging spaces, science and technology resources are used to encourage collaboration and discovery. The writings by Papert and Solomon (1971) are often regarded as giving birth to the modern ‘maker movement’ building upon a constructionist pedagogy of idea power that the best way to ensure that knowledge is built within the learner is through the active construction of something shared, either a poem, program, model or idea (Papert, 1980; Stager, 2016). If the reason for a participant to engage in a makerspace is meaningful and the problem scenario or challenge is well written and authentic, this relatedness will maximise the participant’s sense of connection to the makerspace artefacts, their narrative and learning affordances. Their success often depends on imagination and curiosity (Wade-Leeuwen et al., 2018) and curriculum alignment towards science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) education (Blackley et al., 2017; Bower et al., 2018). An examination of the literature reveals that few researchers have considered examining these new learning spaces through a phenomenological lens. Davis and Mason (2017) explored broadening computer science participation through maker interventions to help better inform targeted interventions in STEM fields. These researchers used a behavioural phenomenological approach and discourse analysis to reveal important insights. Conway and Elphinstone (2017) linked phenomenology with Self-Determination Theory for computer game design.

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We carefully designed our makerspace as a heuristic instrument for observing and examining participant behaviours and experiences in situ to reveal the sense of feelings amongst participants, especially when a problem to solve became complex, tenacious and vexatious. Participants wanted to complete the task because it was meaningful and resonated with their sense of self and relationship with the world. The aim of phenomenology is to bring out the ‘essences’ of these experiences and describe their underlying ‘reason’. Our novel approach to ‘grasp the nature’ of a makerspace through the experiences of the participants is both revolutionary and revealing, enabling us to comprehend the phenomenon and its meaning by unpacking the influence of intuition and tacit knowledge from the gadgets and resources to reveal the totality of embodiment that occurs in STEM education and in makerspaces. Who are the players? What is the makerspace story? What senses are used? What are the hidden and silenced voices? Where and when does the learning happen?

Introduction This phenomenological inquiry (PI) gives us insight into how STEM educators interpret their lived experience in the planning and delivery of professional learning (PL) activities. Our PI provides you with an interpretive account of ‘knowing’ in STEM education. We acknowledge that there are variations in the way each of us, as individuals, describe the same lived experiences outlined in this chapter because of our personal situated contexts (our cultures and mother tongue languages). The notion that people can each share a variety of narratives coupled with different meanings for the same PL experience, resonates with the philosophy of phenomenology. Towards this approach, we followed Davis and Mason (2017) to suspend the influence of predetermination, presumptions or beliefs to describe experience as an ‘unfiltered phenomenon’. We explore three existential dimensions identified by Tembo (2016): the lived space [spatiality], the lived body [corporeality] and the lived time [temporality] in our attempt to understand our experiences of not only revealing these phenomenological principles, but also to consolidate the circumstances of the experiences. For example, the teachers who participated in our PL activities were initially strangers, yet they provided us with insight. Whilst we may perceive ourselves as competent STEM PL providers in Australia, Southeast Asian teachers may perceive us as strangers removed from our classrooms. They may question whether our ideas will work in their classrooms, then distrust our pedagogical approach. Readied with this knowledge, we then questioned ourselves: • •

What does it mean for me to be a STEM educator in a different cultural context? As a ‘stranger’, am I adding to local scepticism and pedagogical apathy?

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We need to consider and address relationality. We need to describe the ‘inter-connections and processes through which the world of organizing and knowing are experienced in a continual state of becoming’ (Küpers, 2005). Whilst there is value in theorising from our experimental data how our teachers work together to solve the tenacious problems we create for them in a makerspace environment, it is equally important that educational research consider the ‘lived experiences’ of this problem solving, as this draws us to essential understandings of the experience of inspiration, invention and exploration in these novel learning spaces.

Method Our analysis focuses on phenomenology as the methodological framework since we are interested in examining how we design PL experiences where teachers are encouraged to design, tinker and explore a culturally relevant conundrum. We want to elucidate the essence of inspiration and invention in a STEM makerspace. We collected video and audio recordings of discussions, observation notes and solution artefacts as our empirical data. As researchers, we repeated the movements and actions of the teachers at each table in an attempt to experience their perceptions. We engaged in ‘bracketing’ to filter out our own views and past experiences from the collected data. From this data, two distinct case studies were identified. Our original aim was to study the experiences of different groups of teachers challenged to solve our tenacious problems so that we could better understand our collective perspectives of the world, and the experience of ‘making’ to solve a problem. We extended this focus to include a study of the experience of ‘making beyond the answer’, revealing to us a different learning trajectory and the rich thinking behind the ‘doing’.

Participants and contexts The PI was conducted as PL workshops run at two different locations. Teachers were largely unknown to each other, working together in small interdisciplinary groups of approximately six per table. The challenge for each group was to design and build a metal detector that located hidden, metallic items. The context of the problem was slightly varied at each location to cater for the different cultural backgrounds. Table 15.1 summarises each case and location. Table 15.1 indicates that we need to consider the existential of the lived space (spatiality). We are a group of STEM educators located in both Melbourne, Australia and Penang, Malaysia. For Case A, the location ‘was home’ for Gesthuizen, Kidman, Tan and Macdonald. It is where we live our day-to-day existence. Collectively, we have a sense of safety in this space. We contrast this feeling with a sense of strangeness and fear in Case B. We found ourselves in a

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228  Roland Gesthuizen et al. TABLE 15.1  Participants and contexts

Case A Location Teacher cohort

Presented context

Case B

Monash University, SEAMEO RECSAM, Clayton, Australia Penang, Malaysia Predominantly pre-service teachers Predominantly experienced teachers (n ≈ 80) in their final year of study and Lead Teachers from ten from a variety of different Ministries of Education (n ≈ 200) educational and international across Southeast Asia backgrounds To find debilitating animal traps, To find mysterious bio-toxin hidden underground by hostile canisters that were hidden farmers to protect a crop from stray underground by hostile agents. This resonated with contemporary elephants. This resonated with contemporary news reports in news reports about foreign agents Thailand about elephants being poisoning members of the public injured by hostile farmers instead in the United Kingdom of scaring them away

new country, unable to take control of the weeklong PL workshop venue due to the necessity for politeness to Mangao and other RECSAM staff. We were visitors to ‘their home’. Kidman privately sensed fear. Although she had visited the location some 12 months prior for a conference, her role had changed. During the earlier visit, she was a consumer of knowledge – however, this time she was a creator of knowledge and facilitator of learning. We juxtapose our felt space of Case B with Mangao, who ‘was home’ in Penang and had control over the venue. He was in a position to make things happen. Yet, he confided he was nervous. From his past PL experiences, Mangao was familiar with the teaching space consisting of rows of chairs and didactic teaching and was unfamiliar with the proposed layout. The teachers in Case B were also challenged by the spatiality of the experience that required their participation, in groups as learners, not teachers. This was different to their own teaching experiences. Few, if any, were ‘at home’ reporting feelings of being nervous and excited at the same time with the prospect of new and ‘real’ learnings. ‘We feel so honoured that you have given us a new idea of STEM classrooms so our students can talk to learn’. We stress that in negotiating the spatiality of our lived space, we had to build the necessary relationships with and between the teachers. From the viewpoint of the participants, the teaching space was now their learning space.

Maker-Box kits Each table contained a Maker-Box (see Figure 15.1). In addition to common office, school stationery and craft stimulus material, the following specialist components were included in each:

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FIGURE 15.1 

Maker-box with manipulatives

• Maths geometry kit containing a drawing compass, protractor and set squares • Bar magnet pair with accompanying metallic washers • Little-bits electronics kit – components packed into a bag with additional spare wires • Micro:bit computer – an integrated circuit with a USB lead and external battery (https://microbit. org/) • Apple iPad tablet computer – preloaded with the MakeCode software, a blocky based programming language for coding the Micro:bit • Wooden articulated mannequin or lay figure as used by many artists as an aid when drawing figures

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A teacher from Thailand described our makerspace box as ‘full of answers to as-yet, unasked questions’. Kidman was curious about this disembodiment of knowledge instead of answers coming from within the person. This indicates that we need to consider the existential of the lived body, the axis of our existence. It is through this lived body that we, and the teachers, met and shared our learnings. Our bodily presence revealed something about us and concealed something at the same time. In both Case A and Case B, we revealed we were a STEM team, we wore polo shirts. We took for granted our ‘position’ of esteem to the Case B teachers. We were aware of the need to dress with modesty, according to local custom but had forgotten about the power of our corporate image. We concealed our fears, our physical discomforts from the constant heat and humidity of Penang. An important aspect of the lived body is what we can achieve with our bodies. In relation to our PI, we required our teachers to solve a challenge through a hands-on ‘design’ and ‘make’ activity. We like to refer to the commonly used equipment and instructions form of STEM education as ‘the gadget approach’ that provides an entertainment end rather than an educational outcome. With an orientation to the Maker-Box and equipment, the teachers were invited to collaborate together on a short MakeCode programming tutorial (Micro:bit Educational Foundation, 2019), creating a ‘flashing-heart’. For many, this would have been their first programming experience. The lived body experience was greater for some teachers than for others, impacting on their learning experience (see Figure 15.2).

FIGURE 15.2 

Some were thinking, some were tinkering

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Each location was then provided with a culturally relevant scenario task that required the teachers to undertake an iterative process of thinking: the think, to design, to think, to reflect, to think, to make and finally to communicate their solution. We called this and our planning ‘teach to inform’. We wanted teachers to learn what it was like to learn via STEM pedagogies – we wanted them to be informed of the difference between this form of thinking and one they were expecting – to be informed of what their STEM students could create. We created the scenario for Case B. The materials supplied in the Maker-Box could be used by the teachers to create a solution and our stimulus material which included images of people with a hand-held metal detector. We avoided giving hints, clues or suggestions about what a successful solution would envisage, or how the metal detector should be built. We hoped that this open-ended design approach would avoid any undue cognitive overload by participants who may try to work backwards from a specific solution. We also thought this would heighten the team motivation and performance (Overton & Johnson, 2016). Beyond the introductory worksheets and tutorials, the researchers avoided any further explanation about this phenomena, science or gadgets. This challenge deliberately included both coding and the magnetic field sensor to create a tenacious problem that would be difficult to guess or stumble upon by randomly clicking components, manipulating blocks or connecting parts together. We expected the teachers to initially select the familiar objects that appeared to have ‘real’ affordances. Our prediction was that only Science teachers would be familiar with magnetic fields and that Science and Mathematics teachers would struggle to code a program. We considered that our PL activity would provide a significant intellectual challenge for all specialist teachers.

Results After analysing the empirical data, we identified two cases that serve to clarify and illustrate the teachers’ experiences when solving a difficult problem in a makerspace.

Case A at Monash University The teachers at the Monash University location were challenged to build a rudimentary metal detector. This case focuses on one group who later self-declared that they had mathematics teaching backgrounds and had undertaken little science or technology study. They had no programming experience and only understood magnetism as something about using a magnet to pick up a metallic object. Case A teachers examined the magnets, metal washers and other items in their Maker-Box and then discussed what could be used to build their detector. Objects were returned to the Maker-Box when it could not be resolved how they interacted with the magnets or metal objects at a distance. As anticipated, a teacher noticed on the iPad that amongst the MakeCode app, there was a code

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block that included a sensor for magnetic field strength. The coding challenge was then to display this information in a way that would allow an operator to detect hidden objects – they simulated a metallic washer or magnet hidden under a sheet of paper. By modifying the looping instruction of the flashing heart tutorial, they displayed a repeated flashing value of the magnetic field strength and thus completed the challenge and ‘solved’ the scenario. Our aim of ‘teaching to inform’ had been achieved. Through the scenario, we had informed the teachers of the nature of a STEM ‘design’ and ‘make’ activity that was an open-ended inquiry. For this group of teachers, their expressions and gestures indicated that they wanted to know and learn more – to ‘raise the bar’ and push on. These teachers decided that reporting a flashing number on the Micro:bit LED panel was too cryptic for general use so they began exploring how to play a sound. They later opted for an image that would change to a bold alert icon when the hand-held unit was near the target. With some examination of the code, they discovered that introducing a loop that could repeat a Boolean logic test that could return either a True or False value after measuring the magnetic field strength. They were unable to stop the display of the alert icon and thought that their code was faulty or the Micro:bit was broken. We observed that some of the teachers were observers rather than participants in this STEM learning process. Their lived body experience was reduced by the limitations of the available equipment. However, the teachers solved this issue themselves. Whilst some members of the team were hunched over the iPad to examine code for a perceived fault, one ‘observing’ teacher experienced the existential of temporality of lived time. Time began to slow as he was bored. He picked out a wooden ruler, a tape and an articulated wooden mannequin to create a mock-up of a metal detector in use (see Figure 15.3). With some playful humour, his articulated wooden mannequin was pushed across the table in a sweeping motion, exclaiming in an animated gesture that he was looking for the hidden target. This teacher had anchored his lived body experience into the activity. With this teacher’s playfulness, it didn’t take long for the other teachers to observe that the alert icon on the panel disappeared when the articulated wooden mannequin was moved away from the magnet. They noted that their device was too sensitive and realised that they needed to turn down the sensitivity of their device. By changing a single number in their Micro:bit code, they were able to adjust the response to a practical level such that a flashing alert was only present when their metal detector was near the target. This correctly modelled how they thought that it should behave. The teacher holding the articulated wooden mannequin repeatedly demonstrated this behaviour to the researchers whilst explaining the coding change, indicating with some surprise that the influence and field of the magnet extended much further than he ever thought possible. This activity challenged his alternative conception that magnetism only exists near the end of a magnet (Magnetism, n.d.). Whilst this STEM ‘design’ and ‘make’ approach may seem quite playful and technical, during a follow-up discussion, these teachers indicated that their

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FIGURE 15.3 

Playing with a solution prototype

design and problem solution was grounded in the mental image of the people that would ultimately use the device – they were designing and making for the lived body experience. Initially, the teachers did not know how to code. Each felt that they had contributed some suggestions to create a working program. They had each experienced a lived body event. Trying to code the Micro:bit held in the hand near a magnet would not have revealed their solution. The inspiration for the teacher to construct a model from the supplied articulated wooden mannequin then playfully move this about the table was an act of empathy that enabled the discovery of the necessary sensitivity change to their code. The mundane object of an articulated wooden mannequin included a learning affordance that helped to reveal the path to the final solution. Through the lived body existential, learning was achieved from a predominantly observatory then to a participatory pathway. By taking the intended task further than planned, a different form of learning had occurred. The intended aim was to create a scenario that would challenge the teachers in such a way that we would be ‘teaching to inform’. In addition to this, these mathematics teachers were sufficiently inspired to further invent and explore, to expose an alternate conception and to transform their knowledge base. Kidman noticed that the initial aim of ‘teaching to inform’ was insufficient, she now needed to get her PL team to redirect efforts to create scenarios that aimed to ‘teach to transform’.

Case B at SEAMEO RECSAM The teachers at the SEAMEO RECSAM location were challenged to build a metal detector to locate buried elephant traps. Groups examined the items in

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FIGURE 15.4 

Graphing distance vs magnetic field strength

their Maker-Box and similarly discussed what could be used in their build. They too selected the ‘familiar’ items, or equipment they thought had self-explanatory affordances. Like Case A, the electronics kits, mannequin and geometry tools were returned to the Maker-Box. After coding the Micro:bit they designed and then built a prototype device to detect hidden metals, satisfied that they had achieved their goal. The teachers then took pause to reflect upon their work. One teacher was intently focussed on the number displayed on the Micro:bit and proceeded to reflect on this whilst moving the device further and further away from the magnet. He then picked up a pen and wrote the number displayed on the Micro:bit LED panel alongside the corresponding distance to create a rudimentary graph (see Figure 15.4). When Gesthuizen enquired, the teacher gestured at the graph, asking why it wasn’t a straight line, why the numbers varied and why it didn’t diminish to zero. The teacher added that they were perplexed that the field extended considerably further than the pole of the bar magnet. We remind you of the alternate conception held by the Case A teacher – that magnetism only extends to the end of the magnet. A science teacher from a neighbouring table could see his frustration and tried to intervene and explain what was happening via beginning a diagram. Our mathematics teacher politely dismissed her with a wave of his hand saying, ‘Later please, I want to work this out myself ’. The mathematics teacher did not want to allow the science teacher to flatten his human experience of building his own knowledge. Holding the Micro:bit in his hand, he continued to step backwards and further away from his table, seemingly to try and find a zero point where no magnetic field could be detected. When he was at 2 metres distance, he looked up at Gesthuizen and Kidman with some frustration and exclaimed ‘there must be another bar magnet nearby’. When reassured that the magnet on his team table was the only one in the area, he looked around the room in quiet reflection.

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FIGURE 15.5 

I can work this out myself

A smile broke out on his face and he excitedly exclaimed ‘I am measuring the magnetic field of our planet!’ We reflect that the corporeality lived body existential is present in this Case B. We learn that transformative understandings of magnetism result where alternative conceptions are challenged through the lived body existential (see Figure 15.5). The mathematics teacher gestured for the science teacher to return and explained the concept of a magnetic field. Picking up a marker, she sketched an illustration around the bar magnet of a classic science experiment found in many school textbooks where iron filings sprinkled will align along the direction of magnetic field lines. She then explained that magnetic field lines were like contour lines on a topographic map. The mathematics teacher laughed and gestured around the target bar magnet. He indicated that he didn’t need iron filings as his table had designed and made a device that could measure the magnetic field and report back a number. Kidman thought this amusing as the mathematics teacher wanted to share a number, yet the science teacher wanted to share a diagram (see Figure 15.6). To Kidman, this strengthens her belief that disciplinary thinking is different between disciplines, and that it is identifiable when different teachers work on the same interdisciplinary activity. A teacher from the Case B table explained to the crowd of teachers that gathered that the mathematics and science teachers were now working together on an extended activity to measure the field strength

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FIGURE 15.6 

The scientist and the mathematician

on each line of the illustration and map the magnetic contour lines. They were keen to determine where this was the same around the magnet and where it extended. We witnessed the aim of ‘teach to inform’ was extended to an aim of ‘teach to transform’. Upon reflection, we were flexible in terms of our livedtime, that the existential of temporality was critically important to the teachers.

Comparing Case A and Case B It interests us to compare the learning journeys of the mathematics teachers that were inspired to invent and explore beyond the scope of the original challenge. Case A teachers used the Micro:bit as a way to learn about coding and calibration, whereas Case B used the Micro:bit as a way to learn about magnetic fields. Both were inspired to move beyond their prototype and solution, and to learn more about coding and magnetic phenomena. This was achieved because of their playful exploration. Given the technical limitations of the challenge, the teachers become aware of their new perception of a magnetic field that permeated their lived world. Whilst this new knowledge did not contribute further to their solution, it became a springboard to new interdisciplinary understandings about sensors, coding and magnetism. For the Case A teachers, magnetism was perceived to extend well

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beyond the poles of the bar magnet, requiring sensors and the code to be recalibrated. For the Case B teachers, magnetism was perceived as something that could be carefully measured, traced along contour lines and was steeped by the Earth’s own magnetic field. Compared with tables comprising teachers with a science or technology background, why was the activity only extended at tables comprised of mathematics teachers?

Where is the learning? From an analysis of our data, three broad emergent learnings are revealed that relate to the teacher-initiated STEM inquiry of ‘going beyond the solution’ (see Table 15.2). From our teacher reviews of the PL, we had achieved our aim of ‘teaching to inform’ and could end our PI, but something is nagging away at Gesthuizen. He wants to learn how we can inspire more teachers to seek their own STEM inquiry from our scenarios, developing scenarios and identifying interventions that will ‘teach to transform’. When we explore Table 15.2, we observe isolated ideas organised into three rows and four columns. We are not aware of what we need for ‘transformative learning’, for ourselves or for the teachers. PI approaches are about describing rather than explaining subjective realities. From our review of Table 15.2, we are simply ‘informed’, but for us that is not good enough. So we interrogated the emergent learnings and looked for the lived meaning.

Emergent learning one: space to inform Faced with the stimulus material, the participants in both Case A and Case B engaged with the material in the Maker-Box and stimulus material in much the same way. They were observed to be reading, shuffling pages, pointing things

TABLE 15.2  Mapping domains and teaching to emergent learnings

Domain

PL developers and researchers

Teachers as participants

Emergent Learning

1. Cognitive Teaching to inform

2. Affective

3. Conative

Stimulated to create and Passive space to invent inform Read, inquire, study, build, learn Teaching to transform Curiosity at edge of Curiosity at the (transformative learning) something new edge of something Frustration, ennui, anxiety, new humour Drive to go beyond a Actively inspired to comfort zone play and ‘hard fun’ Passion, drive, will to push onward

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out or exploring gadgets and items whilst discussing with each other – working within the scope of the challenge. Gesthuizen felt that this direct learning from the stimulus material and each other could be housed in the cognitive domain. Most tables with science and technology educators picked some items to focus on, returning other items to the Maker-Box or even relocating the entire Maker-Box away from their table. When asked by Gesthuizen why they did this, they indicated that ‘we don’t need the distraction’ or ‘we don’t have any idea about how to solve this’, dismissing the challenge as too difficult and indicating that they would like to work on a different problem. As researchers, we later repeated the movements and actions of the teachers at these tables in an attempt to experience the perceptions of these teachers. We feel that they did not understand the notion of a magnetic field or that it was something that could be measured. We further considered the perspective of the science educators that had only played with magnets to pick up washers or another magnet. They had not given enough thought or time to play or explore. Kidman recalls her frustration when noticing a group was not functioning well as a team – one teacher was engaged and programming the Micro:bit using the stimulus material at their table and the remaining teachers were unaware of this. We found it interesting that the technology educators that had only explored the iPad coding interface and Micro:bit computer. One technology teacher commented that the magnets must be kept well away from the electronics and computer circuits, recalling that magnetic fields would disrupt electronic circuits or computer memory. Whilst coding has problem-solving at its heart, depending heavily on communication and basic logic, why was the problem solved by tables of predominantly mathematics teachers and not the technology teachers who could manipulate program code? The emergent learnings we have from this investigation is that as STEM educators, we need a sufficiently firm grasp of the teaching and learning discovery process to make an effective space to inform by designing, refining and adapting for different cultural settings and participant disciplinary backgrounds.

Emergent learning two: curiosity at the edge of something new Gesthuizen noticed that at the tables with mathematics educators in Cases A and B, the teachers were observed to be quietly talking, laughing, rubbing their faces and foreheads whilst listening to each other or looking wistfully away. Some particularly enjoyed manipulating the resources with their hands as they inspected the contents of the plastic geometry kits, clicked together different parts of the electronics kits or played with the office stationary. Using relatively mundane objects, teachers discovered interesting learning affordances. With Case A, the limbs of the wooden mannequin were manipulated to animate a person sweeping the ground with a metal detector. With Case B, the magnets were manipulated near the Micro:bit to study and measure the magnetic field at various distances.

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Many teachers spoke to us about their feelings of curiosity, frustration, ennui, anxiety and humour. We expected this from our teachers as we were working on creating a positive learning environment through developing relationships. We were confident we could achieve this despite language difficulties in Case B. Gesthuizen felt that this exploratory activity could be housed in the affective domain where the teachers were experiencing a mixture of emotions whilst designing a solution to the challenge. The emergent learnings we have identified is that as STEM educators, we must be cautious about defining the challenge boundary, limiting solution expectations or restricting access to stimulus material and equipment. We need to accommodate for different behaviours, interest pathways or tinker quests in order to create an effective space to explore.

Emergent learning three: inspired by ‘Hard Fun’ Gesthuizen noticed that most of the tables with mathematics educators had persisted with the challenge, becoming the first and only groups to complete the task. They had given each other some freedom to make mistakes (the freedom to fail – but that is a separate story) and to question each other. Whilst the teacher in Case A with the articulated wooden mannequin had provoked laughter with his prototype model, this experience helped him to make sense of an important conceptual understanding about magnetism and reveal how the Micro:bit could be coded. By contrast, the teacher in Case B who was creating a graph of his observations had a working solution, but he also had a desire to dive deeper into the experience of understanding this phenomenon but to do it his way. He was experiencing a lived body existential and did not want the science teacher to flatten his lived experience. He was dismissive but polite. The teachers desired more information about what was happening. Their agentic engagement contributed to their flow of learning and enriched the final learning outcome by going beyond the initial solution. They had repurposed tools to provoke laughter and explore new understandings. They were engaged in meaningful play that helped to reveal or make sense of the world or ‘the real game’. Achieving this level of interaction and learning was not intended by our team when we created the scenario of making a metal detector. We were not expecting what can be best described as meaning ful play: Meaningful play emerges from the interaction between players and a game. It refers to a mutual shaping process, in which the player actively makes sense of the game and this sense-making activity is structured by the game rules, the immediate context in which the game is played and the cultural backdrop. Stewart et al., 2013, p. 23

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We feel that the mathematics teacher in Case A and especially in Case B were being driven by an internal force or drive to take their learning further. Kidd and Hayden (2015) describe this as something that happens when curiosity gives way to a ‘higher, more intellectual form’ that drives towards a more complete knowledge about the phenomena (Kidd & Hayden, 2015, p. 450). Gesthuizen felt that this exploratory activity could be housed in the conative domain where the teachers were driven to make sense of their world and inspired by the ‘hard fun’ (Papert, 2002). The emergent learnings we have identified will help enable learning that transforms. Teachers must inspire and coach participants to go beyond their comfort zone, to experience new learning boundaries, encouraging meaningful play where imagination and invention are valued. This can be facilitated when they are in a trusted relationship with their peers, where inquiry is encouraged and feelings of ‘failure’, ‘futility’ or ‘frustration’ are accepted. To better understand participants in a makerspace, teachers must go beyond just examining the makerspace elements context and gadgets. They must also consider the lived experience of participants and allow them to anchor this into the activity.

A model for inspired learning We present this as a model to represent what we think is involved when teachers move from ‘teaching to inform’ towards ‘teaching to transform’ (see Figure 15.7). We must consider the transformative activities of our makerspace PL activities and the experiences of participants to recognise interventions that will guide their progression along a ‘learning conveyor’ to challenge their understandings and enable learning growth. The teachers in this study drew upon their backgrounds and experiences to solve a problem and then went beyond their solution to better understand aspects

FIGURE 15.7 

A learning conveyor model to enable learning growth

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of coding or magnetism. Their critical reflection and meaningful play challenged their perception and understanding of their world. We determine that a makerspace is a safe place to learn. Focusing more than just integrating disciplines or combinations of the STEM subject letters, it presents a perspective of a makerspace that embeds inquiry, encourages discovery and creates new learning. This is our revealed essence of a makerspace. Our findings suggest that the journey of moving out of a comfort zone isn’t just about finding the reasons to push on. Rather, it involves an inspired learning journey that starts from the intellectual safety of cognitive understanding. It crosses the creative edge of feelings in the affective domain where puzzlement, insight and curiosity jostle for position. Finally, the journey spans the conative domain where passion, drive and the will to tinker and explore enable participants to discover understandings. This journey must accommodate feelings, passion and drive so that creativity and inspiration can secure traction to drive change. Our approach to learning in this model looks beyond the curiosity that may drive the attraction of children towards sparkling objects or novel gadgets (Kidd & Hayden, 2015). It embraces the perceptions of participants, their emotions and feelings. Their sense of oneness. In addition, the design process towards a solution is one that includes a lived body experience. It is through the lived body existential that learning can be achieved from an observatory then to a participatory pathway. We propose that the essence of ‘making’ in a makerspace isn’t just the construction of physical objects in a physical space but a journey of invention. This discovery entails the reconstruction of understandings and the building of new knowledge, an act that deeply changes our viewpoint and feelings about the word. We propose, from a phenomenological perspective, that ‘making’ happens not just at the ends of our tools, but from within our minds in the ‘space between the ears’ to construct new understandings. Teachers can help students in these emerging spaces by anchoring their work in authentic contexts in a trusting and safe learning environment that gives sufficient time, space and encouragement for students to tinker, innovate and invent through active construction. They must imagine a creative and playful, lived space that is fuelled by ‘imagination’, ‘trust’ and ‘failure’. In the absence of coercion, they can help students explore the ‘hard fun’ and learn how to ‘fail well’ (Stager, 2016). Teachers must move beyond just ‘teaching to inform’ towards a role that inspires students by ‘teaching to transform’.

References Blackley, S., Sheffield, R., Maynard, N., Koul, R., & Walker, R. (2017). Makerspace and reflective practice: Advancing pre-service teachers in STEM education. Australian Journal of Teacher Education, 42(3), 22–37. https://doi.org/10.14221/ajte.2017v42n3.2.

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Bower, M., Stevenson, M., Falloon, G., Forbes, A., & Hatzigianni, M. (2018). Makerspaces in primary school settings: Advancing 21st century and STEM capabilities using 3D design and 3D printing. Macquarie University. http://doi.wiley. com/10.1111/bjet.12435. Conway, S., & Elphinstone, B. (2017). Da-Sein design: Linking phenomenology with self-determination theory for game design. Journal of Gaming & Virtual Worlds, 9(1), 55–69. https://doi.org/10.1386/jgvw.9.1.55_1. Davis, D., & Mason, L. L. (2017). A behavioral phenomenological inquiry of maker identity. Behavior Analysis: Research and Practice, 17(2), 174–196. doi: https://doi. org/10.1037/bar0000060. Kidd, C., & Hayden, B. Y. (2015). The psychology and neuroscience of curiosity. Neuron, 88(3), 449–460. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neuron.2015.09.010. Küpers, W. (2005). Phenomenology of embodied implicit and narrative knowing. Journal of Knowledge Management, 9(6), 114–133. Magnetism Blog (n.d.). Retrieved from Deakin University: For Teaching Science website: https://blogs.deakin.edu.au/sci-enviro-ed/early-years/magnetism/. Micro:bit Educational Foundation [Home page] (2019). Retrieved from https://microbit. org/. Overton, T., & Johnson, L. (2016). Evidence-based practice in learning and teaching for STEM disciplines. Retrieved from Australian Council of Deans of Science website: http:// www.acds-tlcc.edu.au/evidence-based-practice-for-stem-learning/. Papert, S. (1980). Mindstorms: Children, computers and powerful ideas. Harvester Press. Papert, S. (2002). Hard fun. Bangor Daily News, 2. http://www.papert.org/articles/ HardFun.html. Papert, S., & Solomon, C. (1971). Twenty things to do with a computer (National Science Foundation LOGO-3; p. 41). Massachusetts Inst. of Tech., Cambridge. Artificial Intelligence Lab. Stager, G. (2016). Seymour Papert – Father of educational computing. Nature, 537(7620), 308–. doi: https://doi.org/DOI:10.1038/537308a. Stewart, J., Bleumers, L., Van Looy, J., Misuraca, G., De Grove, F., Jacobs, A., Schurmans, D., Willaert, K., Mariën, I., & All, A. (2013). The potential of digital games for empowerment and social inclusion of groups at risk of social and economic exclusion: Evidence and opportunity for policy. Publications Office of European Union. doi: https:// doi.org/10.2791/88148. Tembo, A. C. (2016). Phenomenological inquiry as a methodology for investigating the lived experience of being critically ill in intensive care. Journal of Intensive and Critical Care, 2(1), 1–5. doi: https://doi.org/10.21767/2471-8505.100017. Wade-Leeuwen, B., Vovers, J., & Silk, M. (2018, June 11). Explainer: What’s the difference between STEM and STEAM? The Conversation. Retrieved from http://theconversation. com/explainer-whats-the-difference-between-stem-and-steam-95713.

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16 PHENOMENOLOGY The missing pieces of the puzzle in educational psychology Stella Laletas and Christine Grove MONASH UNIVERSITY, AUSTRALIA

Phenomenological thinking has been important in the development of qualitative psychological inquiry as it provides a philosophical rationale for exploring the human experience (van Manen, 2014). Mostly trained in quantitative methods in our undergraduate psychology courses, we were only exposed to the possibility of utilising qualitative methods in our doctorates. As educational psychologists and psychology researchers, we note that phenomenology is somewhat absent, or at least under represented, in the field of educational psychology. From a critical perspective, this seems somewhat surprising given the longstanding presence of phenomenological thinking in the pursuit of understanding human psychology (Giorgi, 2007; Langdridge, 2008). The chapter will examine how phenomenology can provide a framework of inquiry for practicing educational psychologists and psychology researchers focused on understanding experiences of vulnerable populations in our society. The first section of this chapter is written from our perspectives as we have both worked in schools as educational psychologists for many years. Through a case study, we provide a rationale of why understanding the life circumstances of a student experiencing difficulties at school can be better served by utilising a phenomenological framework for inquiry. In order to do this, we argue that traditional psychological testing is not enough in providing critical information for schools and teachers. While psychometrically sound, psychological testing can be seen as quite reductionist and over simplifies an explanation for why a student might be struggling in the classroom. While psychometric testing offers information about a student’s cognitive ability; the social and emotional dimensions of their persona at school are not measured. Holistically, we argue that in order to understand the full picture of the child, there is a large piece to the puzzle that remains ‘hidden’ (Brooks, 2015). It remains ‘hidden’ because the quantitative and qualitative methods utilised often seek to examine and understand

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experience ‘according to predefined category systems’ (Smith et al., 2009, p. 32) rather than making sense of their unique life experience. The work of educational psychologists and psychology researchers contributes to a segment of society focused on helping others (Slavin, 2019). Helping professionals rely on research-based knowledge that informs the decision-making of policy makers and professionals that provide support to some of the most vulnerable members of our community (Allan, 2019). As such, the field of educational psychology is focused on not only understanding the complex life experiences that impact individuals, but also to draw on a knowledge base that can inform and guide the development of practices of mental health practitioners and members of our school systems (Laletas & Reupert, 2016; Laletas et al., 2015). In light of the recent disagreements between philosophers and psychologists about the use of the term ‘phenomenology’ in psychology research (Giorgi, 2007; Smith, 2015; van Manen, 2017), we argue that this delineation between philosophy and psychology is not helpful and simply adds to the confusion about the nature of phenomenology (Zahavi, 2019). Section 1 demonstrates how educational psychologists might draw on phenomenological frameworks to better understand a student’s life experiences and inform how to support them. Section 2 provides a snapshot of some of the key developments and figures who contributed their philosophical thinking to understanding the complexities of the human condition. The chapter finishes with a discussion of the implications for psychologists and researchers in the field of educational psychology.

Case study: ‘Hannu’ Drawing on our experiences in school settings and our research, we present the case of Hannu. Hannu’s life experience and the difficulties he faces at school are inspired by real-life cases. There are many vulnerable students in our school systems (Grove & Laletas, 2020), like Hannu – how can we help them? We demonstrate how educational psychologists might draw on phenomenological principles to explore the life experiences of the vulnerable, ‘at-risk’ children in our school communities. Here is Hannu’s story.

Hannu is a 12-year-old boy who has been referred to the educational psychologists for counselling because of a history of repeated emotional outbursts; daily running and escaping from the classroom; poor performance and behaviour in school. His science and maths teachers describe his behaviour in class as challenging and at times unmanageable. His parents divorced when he was 8 years of age. After the divorce, his father, Stephan, visited Hannu, but the visits were infrequent and often led into screaming fights, with Stephan going into an alcoholic rage of physical and emotional abuse that terrified Hannu and his mother. Stephan died suddenly in a street fight

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two years ago. More recently, the principal was informed that Hannu’s mother has been hospitalised for severe depression and mostly not living at home. In the absence of a family support structure, Hannu is currently living in out of home care while his mother is transitioning between hospital and home; he sees her every fortnight for 2 hours usually in hospital; the visits with his mother are supervised. At school, his behaviours fluctuate from extreme anger to hopelessness towards his teachers and peers.

Section 1 Phenomenological thinking in educational psychology practice In school settings, educational psychologists play an important role in supporting students experiencing difficulties with life circumstances that are impacting on their ability to engage in education. Teachers, such as Hannu’s science and math teachers, would seek the support of the school’s educational psychologists for guidance in understanding and planning for change to improve Hannu’s behaviour and learning outcomes (Slavin, 2019). For instance, in the case of Hannu, first teachers would seek to understand why he is behaving and performing the way he is in their classrooms; and second, teachers would look to the educational psychologist for guidance on how a student with Hannu’s experiences might be best supported in their classrooms. However, from an empirical perspective, the complexity of understanding human behaviour is often seen as requiring a systematic analysis of psychological factors so that behaviour can be represented reliably through observable, objective and quantifiable data. As educational psychologists, this is a key element of the training for the profession. From a practical perspective, however, helping teachers better understand why a particular student might be exhibiting problematic behaviour and be underachieving is the cornerstone of the work of educational psychologists. As such, we argue that understanding how a child’s life circumstances might impact their educational experience cannot be generated through the type of knowledge provided by standard quantitative psychoeducational assessments.

Role of educational In cases such as Hannu, an educational psychologist would be engaged by the school principal, teachers and parents to better understand why Hannu is struggling with his academic progress; as well as try to make sense of his ‘explosive’ behaviour, especially in his maths and science class. As a standard of best practice, a central mode of data collection for psychologists in schools is using standardised questionnaires. In the educational psychology field, psychometrically valid testing is considered best practice because of the well-documented psychometric

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properties of assessments that measure cognitive abilities. For example, tests such as Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children; Stanford-Binet Intelligence Scales (Flanagan & Alfonso, 2017) and more recently Woodcock-Johnson Tests of Cognitive Abilities (Mather & Jaffe, 2016) are widely used, and have well-­ documented psychometric properties. While we acknowledge that psychometric assessments may be a technically practical way to come to terms with the inherent uncertainties and contradictions of every-day decision making around how to best support student learning outcomes, the information is limited in understanding the whole student. The main criticism of such approaches to assessment and planning is that while they claim to support all areas of student’s individual needs, they are in fact deploying pragmatic forms of knowledge types that are best suited for ‘bureaucratic categorisation’ (Quicke, 2000, p. 261) than understanding the uniqueness of individual experience and ‘lifeworld’ of a student. Using questionnaires to measure multifaceted constructs in psychology risks the subjective experience of each individual being reduced to the confines of a Likert Scale (O’Halloran et al., 2018). As such, these methods serve to construct a subject that is restricted by the normative developmental theories that underpin these methodologies. For phenomenologists such as Langdridge (2008), these methods are objectionable for the way that they invoke an external theoretical framework to try to ‘uncover’ hidden meaning. Phenomenology’s recognition of the concept of ‘lifeworld’, originally introduced by Edmund Husserl in 1936, offers a framework of inquiry that can supplement traditional quantitative standardised testing. Phenomenology offers scope for practicing educational psychologists to explore a child’s difficulties at school within the context of their life experiences. Phenomenology can therefore generate richness and depth to understanding the complexity of the child’s experiences; not offered through quantitative psychological testing. To investigate and better understand the lifeworld of Hannu, the educational psychologist would need to go beyond assessing the student using standardised measures. Hannu’s world is complex; in order to ‘uncover’ his experiences and hidden story the educational psychologist could draw upon a phenomenological framework to describe the essential features of Hannu’s lifeworld.

Core phenomenological principles and practices In educational psychology practice, the core phenomenological principles and practices that could be used to explore Hannu’s life story are as follows: I. Suspending assumptions about the nature of the student’s problems; that is, set aside presuppositions and/or previous theories (the epochè of sciences). II. Following observations that are grounded in the ongoing interaction with Hannu and as such are tentative, descriptive, non-dogmatic and non-prescriptive.

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III. Understanding Hannu’s sense of self that is to interpret a contextual understanding of his own meanings of his life and the subjective processes he experiences within the larger whole: school, family, community and society. I V. Analysing the complexities of these meanings by reflecting on the psychological processes that constitute them, that is, intentionality and intentional analysis. V. Gaining individual insight, both interpretative and relational, to an understanding of the social processes at play in Hannu’s personal experience. A phenomenological method that might be used in educational psychology to better understand the lifeworld of students is critical narrative analysis (CNA). Developed by Langdridge (2007), CNA is distinct from other forms of phenomenological analysis as it explicitly focuses on narrative. Narrative is seen as a means by which we make sense of what we know, what we feel and experience in the world in which we live (Hatch & Wisniewski, 2002). It draws on the hermeneutic phenomenological philosophy of Paul Ricoeur (1970, 1981), where meaning is appropriated through the critical interrogation of the stories we tell of our lives (Brooks, 2015). Stories (or narratives), therefore, are a critical means to understanding not only the nature of narrative more broadly, but also the relationship of language (everyday talk) to the social construction of cultural norms and institutional discourses (Langdridge, 2017). The approach is idiographic, by nature, as it emphasises the unique personal experience of an individual without generalising findings to others. Another approach that emphasises personal experience is person-centred counselling. Person-centred perspectives are central to the field of humanistic psychology and underpin the work of Carl Rogers (1961). In the context of counselling students who may be resistant to seeing an educational psychologist due to trust issues, stigma, or fear and anxiety, Rogers’ person-centred approach serves a way of developing therapeutic relationships with students based on building trust through empathic listening and understanding. The conceptual framework of Rogers is based on his own experiences as a psychologist. Central to his work was the notion of ‘becoming’ (Bazzano, 2013); that human beings would become more trusting in therapy once they feel their subjective experiences are heard, respected and understood by the therapist. Therefore, the person-centred approach of Rogers could be used to build and maintain a trusting relationship with Hannu characterised by listening and responding empathically when he begins to share his story. Building relationships that are underpinned by empathy and respect is fundamental to understanding experiences through his eyes. While many might argue that Rogers’ perspective was not consistently phenomenological, his approach to his clients was inspired by phenomenological thinking. Rogers’ observations are grounded in the ongoing interaction with the client and as such are tentative, descriptive, non-dogmatic and non-­ prescriptive. His approach is not consistently empirical, for it relies on building

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relationships and connections with individual clients through sharing a mutual understanding of their personal history. For Rogers (1961), knowing the self is a process, a ‘flowing river of change’ (p. 122), whereby the person is inextricably intertwined and influenced by the interactions with others in their world. Person-centered theory appreciated the multiplicity of the self since its early days through the therapeutic stance of unconditional positive regard (Rogers, 1961), the essential characteristic of which is the recognition of the underlying unity encompassing all aspects of the psyche. The importance of the therapeutic relationship and the concept of the actualising tendency prominent in Roger’s psychotherapy (known as client-centred therapy) serve to uncover the contents of consciousness that are subsumed by the allure of material assumed and buried in the hidden depths of the individual’s consciousness. For Roger’s, the gains made from the individual insight to an understanding of the social processes at play in their personal experience are seen as illuminating. From a psychological standpoint, such acts of illumination have enormous potential for affecting change in clients. We propose that Hannu’s life-word could be explored through using the phenomenological principles outlined by Langdridge’s CNA. Hannu’s sharing of his experiences through storytelling is facilitated by the therapeutic relationship established between Hannu and his educational psychologist. With this in mind, we propose an integrated approach whereby phenomenological and Rogerian person-centred principles are combined to explore Hannu’s lifeworld.

Exploring Hannu’s lifeworld The lifeworld of students living complex lives and the idiography of the experience might be explored using the following phenomenologically informed principles:

Selfhood. How does the situation implicate identity, Hannu’s sense of agency, feeling of their own presence and voice in the situation? Initially, Hannu was unwilling to talk about his experiences at school or home life and he would sit in the counselling room in silence, often with his arms crossed. Following the framework presented above, the educational psychologist needs to first consider Hannu’s self hood and identity. Following the principles of person-centred therapy, the educational psychologist can focus on building rapport and a trusting relationship with Hannu by finding ways to get to know him, his interests and strengths. Through the therapeutic stance of unconditional positive regard, the multiplicity of the self and the process of knowing the self is inextricably intertwined and influenced by Hannu’s interactions with others in their world. In this case, Hannu’s sense of self is influenced by his relationship with his father before and after he died. Once rapport is established, Hannu

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shares his sadness through his stories of life before his father died. He would tell stories that described the father figure going into an alcoholic rage of physical and emotional abuse that terrified the boy in the story and the boy’s mother. Hannu described his father as an angry man because he ‘yelled a lot’ and ‘hit his mother’. Hannu would describe himself as being afraid of his father. Using a CNA framework, Hannu’s stories (in various forms: verbal written and pictorial) were encouraged in counselling. Important to consider here is temporality and the events surrounding his relationship with his father before and after his death. In CNA, engaging with Hannu through narrative that serves understanding is based on Ricoeur’s notion of ‘hermeneutic of empathy’. Many insights into Hannu’s lifeworld related to his father could be gained through analysing his storytelling. Notably, Hannu’s stories prioritised descriptions of his mother. In a session where Hannu was asked the question, ‘if you were a superhero, what power would you like to have’? Hannu thoughtfully responded, ‘I would like to make my mum well so she never needs to go to the hospital again’. Storytelling about that included a mother figure often involved fantasies about her taking the boy to school, to the shops and cooking his favourite meal, spaghetti bolognese. Hannu’s imaginary world may either enable or hinder his ability to understand and narrate his lifeworld. As a method of interpretation, ‘hermeneutics of suspicion’, could be used as an approach that critically interrogates Hannu’s understanding of his social imaginary stories. Hannu had moved many times during his mother’s illness and was living in out of home care while his mother transitioned between hospital and home. In terms of embodiment, the EP needs to consider how this disruption and lack of stability can influence Hannu’s personal reality of attending school.

Sociality. How does the situation affect or depend on Hannu’s relationships with others, such as his teachers, peers and other adults in his lifeworld? At school, Hannu’s life circumstances related to his mother’s mental health issues, hospitalisation and his post-divorce relationship with his father have affected how Hannu interacts with his teachers and classmates. His behaviour has been described by teachers and classmates as aggressive and explosive. In order to explore the idiography of Hannu’s situation, sessions with an educational psychologist could be provided to Hannu to ‘voice’ his frustration and anger towards the circumstances of his lifeworld, and how this affects his relationships with classmates and teachers. In one session, he shouted over and over, ‘I hate my science teacher, I’d like to punch him in the face!’ Any discourse that involved his behaviour in class was fuelled by emotional and angry outbursts, profanity and impulsivity before storming out from uncomfortable situations. Hannu’s relationship and interactions with specific teachers affected his lifeworld and influenced his meanings of school and learning.

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Embodiment. How is our body implicated in the lifeworld? For instance, since our projects are pursued through bodily action, illness, gender, age, etc. can have an impact on personal reality by the thwarting of daily activities and events Hanna’s life circumstances and experiences, living in out of home care due to his mother’s hospitalisation and relationship with his father before he passed, are inextricably intertwined. The notion of ‘embodiment’ was originally inspired by Merleau-Ponty. Merleau-Ponty argued that as people are embodied beings, we cannot (when considering human experience) meaningfully detach mind from body. (The contributions of Merleau-Ponty will be discussed in the next section of the chapter.) Educational psychologists can overcome ways of understanding how Hannu embodies his life situation. In complex situations experienced by Hannu, an integration of phenomenological methods of inquiry can help provide a deeper and richer understanding of why Hannu is aggressive and explosive when he interacts with his maths and science teachers and classmates.

How help can educational psychologists help Hannu’s principal and teachers For educational psychologists working in school settings, the key purpose of understanding Hannu’s lifeworld is to provide support for his teachers so they can support Hannu at school. Better understanding for teachers can potentially help reduce feelings of stress and anxiety of teachers that might be related to Hannu’s ‘unmanageable behaviour’. Therefore, understanding more about Hannu’s life experiences that are impacting on his behaviour and learning in class could potentially increase his teachers’ willingness to try new ways of teaching and supporting Hannu. Building upon phenomenological and Rogerian principles, the following techniques could be used by teachers and principals to help Hannu: 1. Unconditional positive regard: working towards unconditional positive regard is crucial to accepting Hannu for who they are, and provide support and care no matter what he is going through. 2. Genuineness: feel comfortable sharing how you are feeling and reacting when Hannu is present. This will contribute to a healthy teacher-student relationship and provides Hannu with a model of good communication and positive adult-child interactions. Ideally to change the interactions, he has witnessed as home (abusive relationships). 3. Empathetic understanding: educators must extend empathy to Hannu, both to form a positive student-teacher relationship and to act as a sort of mirror, reflecting Hannu’s thoughts and feelings back to them; this will allow help him to better understand himself.

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4. Withhold judgement (as much as possible): Hannu has gone through a range of experiences that have impacted him to be able to concentrate in class and regulate his emotions and experiences at school through the emotional outburst. Try not take this personally, and try withhold judgement, for many students similar to Hannu school is the only safe and consistent place to be. 5. You do not need to have all the answers: everyone has their strengths, capabilities and limitations. If you don’t know something, say so and work on attaining additional resources that will help support both Hannu and the close nit group of educators that work around him. This section highlighted how phenomenological principles can be used by educational psychologists to gain a deeper and richer understanding of the complex lives children can be exposed to in our society. School communities play an important role in our society by providing opportunities for intervention and support for vulnerable children and youth in our society. However, in order for us to know how to help and identify what students’ need, we need to better understand lifeworld of our students.

Section 2 Phenomenological thinking in educational psychological research There are never-ending complexities when attempting to present a comprehensive picture of the different philosophical interpretations that shape the foundations of phenomenology. As such, we were mindful that a complete mapping of all key historical developments in phenomenology is a massive endeavour which is beyond the scope of this chapter. This section will begin with a snapshot of some of the key developments and figures who contributed their philosophical thinking to understanding the complexities of the human condition. The section ends with a discussion of the implications for researchers in the field of educational psychology. The term ‘phenomenology’ has various branches of meaning, each shaped and delineated by the work of key figures such as Edmund Husserl (1859–1938); his pupil Heidegger (1889–1976); Maurice Merleau-Ponty (1908–1961) and more recently Amedeo Giorgi (1931–). The core of phenomenology is about the dynamic of internal and embodied states with the materiality of the world, including other beings. It is also about the essences to that dynamic and how meaning and sense is conveyed from internality to externality through intentionality (the core structure in all experience). While each approach has its own emphasis on how to explore lived experience, all seem to be largely inspired by the writings of the founding father, Husserl. For Husserl, the state of someone’s consciousness is orientated to events,

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objects, emotions, in other words these phenomena as they appear to an individual in their own subjective experiences of their lifeworld (Williford, 2013). Husserl recognises that consciousness is consciousness of something and knowledge of human situations and their meaning. Referred to as intentionality and intentional analysis, the process is contextual and ecological by nature. Over the past century, analysis of intentionality has evolved where phenomenologists have viewed intentionality as something that is experienced in relation to an object, event or situation and has been described as transcendental phenomenology; interpreted (hermeneutic phenomenology) and post-intentional phenomenology (Vagle, 2018). Characteristic of Husserl’s phenomenological approach is the principle that scientific knowledge begins with a fresh description of the subject matter (Wertz, 2005). This procedure is known as the ‘epochè of natural sciences’ (Husserl, 1954, p. 135), also referred to as ‘bracketing’, highlights an important underlying principle in phenomenological inquiry. The researcher (and the practitioner (as will be demonstrated later in the chapter) sets aside presuppositions based on prior theories, explanations, hypotheses and conceptualisations of the phenomena studied (Siewert, 2002). Husserl’s phenomenological method is seen as descriptive rather than interpretative (Vagle, 2018). Husserl’s philosophical thinking has been endorsed in psychology research by Amedeo Giorgi. Widely credited as the pioneer in bringing descriptive phenomenology to psychology, Giorgi’s method is concerned with revealing the ‘essence’ of the phenomenon under investigation by ‘sifting’ away what is not critical to a description of the phenomenon (Giorgi, 2007). The work of this group of phenomenological thinkers recognise a methodological stance that is descriptive rather than explanatory. Descriptive phenomenologists focus on description and reasons and are theoretically resistant to explanation and the search for causes (Langdridge, 2017). Heidegger, on the other hand, was interested in exploring what it means to live in and among a world which is experienced by each individual in their own way (van Manen, 2014). Heiddeger saw our relation to the world as being always both interpretive and relational meaning that to understand reality, we need to understand both detailed experience and the bigger picture, and thus factors such as language, temporality, history and culture become important (Zahavi, 2018). Neither the whole nor the individual elements can be really understood without reference to the other, this is known as the hermeneutic circle. Phenomenological researchers influenced by Heidegger’s interpretative approach commit themselves to an ontological inquiry. Ontology is defined as the nature of being, existence or reality, where the researcher ‘participates in making the data’ through interpretation of phenomenon rather than focusing on description and clarification (Creswell, 2013). For phenomenological psychologists, Heidegger’s ideas and writings inspired many other theorists and writers in qualitative psychology. Maurice Merleau-Ponty (1908–1961) is another philospher who was particularly influenced by Heidegger and has been described as one of the most

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important French thinkers of the 20th century (Zahavi, 2018). Merleau-Ponty has contributed to current debates in philosophy, such as the nature of consciousness, the relation between biology and personality, the historical understanding of human thought and society. He radically challenged accepted dualist notions prevalent at that time, arguing that as people are embodied beings, we cannot (when considering human experience) meaningfully detach mind from body, nor subject from object: ‘There is no inner man, man is in the world, and only in the world does he know himself ’ – Merleau-Ponty, 1945/1962. In the 1990s, classical work that originated ‘embodied cognition’ – The Embodied Mind – authors Varela et al. (1991) pointed out that the early work of Merleau-Ponty acknowledged the links between phenomenology of direct experience and psychology. As researchers in psychology, our first exposure to a phenomenology framework for inquiry was the widely used interpretative phenomenological analysis (IPA), developed by Jonathan Smith (Smith, 2015; Smith & Osborn, 2008). In contrast to quantitative and deductive methods used in psychology, IPA recognises that capturing the personal lived experience in its own terms is key to understanding the multifaceted dimensions of the human experience rather than prescribing to existing scientific or personal presumptions. IPA recognises this process as interpretative and is influenced by Heidegger’s hermeneutic phenomenology. Described as ‘double hermeneutic’, IPA recognises both the researcher and participant as intrinsically linked in the process of making sense of their world (Smith, 2015). However, IPA is one of the most critically examined phenomenological frameworks in psychological research. One vocal critic of IPA and Smith’s approach is Max van Manen. In the journal Qualitative Health Research (2017), an exchange between van Manen and Smith illuminated the tensions in research concerning the nature of phenomenology. According to van Manen, Smith’s use of phenomenology (IPA) is far ‘too shallow and superficial to qualify as phenomenological in the original sense of the term’ (van Manen, 2017, p.778). van Manen argues that not all qualitative research inspired by phenomenology is phenomenology, accusing Smith of hijacking the term ‘phenomenology’ for his own type of psychological analysis (van Manen, 2017, p. 778). From his perspective, van Madden is critical of Smith’s IPA framework because the term ‘phenomenology’ has been used too broadly and is largely misrepresented by some qualitative researchers in psychology. van Manen argues that qualitative research methods that are inspired by phenomenology may be undeniably important and relevant; however, they are not to be confused with genuine phenomenological methods (van Manen, 2017, p. 777). In a recent critique of the Max van Manen and Jonathan Smith exchange, Zahavi (2019) argues that qualitative researchers in cognitive sciences such as cognitive psychology, developmental psychology and psychiatry who are interested in consciousness should be guided by the work of Husserl and Maurice Merleau-Ponty. As such one might say that phenomenological thinking gave birth to cognitive and developmental psychology, yet the intense debate

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and disagreement around whether phenomenology has a place in psychological research continues.

Where to from here? Confusion about how to pay attention to and examine experience phenomenologically continues to give rise to dissonance in the field (Smith et al., 2009). As educational psychologists, we are interested in helping vulnerable members of our society, especially ‘at risk’ children like Hannu. We look to our colleagues to provide support to psychology researchers intensely interested in adopting phenomenological principles to help uncover the hidden pieces of the puzzle in understanding experience. Moving forward, the challenge for educational psychology is how to manage the gap between philosophically related theory and research practice. For now, we continue to look at phenomenology as a methodology that promotes questioning and encourages expansive critical thinking so that we can make a difference in our practice and research in educational psychology.

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Langdridge, D. (2007). Phenomenological psychology: Theory, research and method. Pearson Education. Langdridge, D. (2008). Phenomenology and critical social psychology: Directions and debates in theory and research. Social and Personality Psychology Compass, 2(3), 1126–1142. Langdridge, D. (2017). Phenomenology. In B. Gough (Ed.), The Palgrave handbook of critical social psychology (pp. 165–183). Springer. Mather, N., & Jaffe, L. E. (2016). Woodcock-Johnson IV: Reports, recommendations, and strategies. John Wiley & Sons. O’Halloran, L., Littlewood, M., Richardson, D., Tod, D., & Nesti, M. (2018). Doing descriptive phenomenological data collection in sport psychology research. Sport in Society, 21(2), 302–313. Quicke, J. (2000). A phenomenology of educational psychological practice. Educational Psychology in Practice, 15(4), 256–262. Ricoeur, P. (1970). Freud and philosophy: An essay on interpretation (D. Savage, Trans.). Yale University Press. Ricoeur, P. (1981). Hermeneutics and the human sciences ( J. B. Thompson, Ed. & Trans.). Cambridge University Press. Rogers, C. R. (1961). On becoming a person. Houghton Mifflin. Siewert, C. (2002). Consciousness and intentionality. In E. N. Zalta (Ed.), The Stanford encyclopedia of psychology. Retrieved from https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/spr2017/ entries/consciousness-intentionality. Slavin, R. E. (2019). Educational psychology: Theory and practice. Pearson. Smith, J. A. (2015). Qualitative psychology: A practical guide to research methods. Sage. Smith, J., Flowers, P., & Larkin, M. (2009). Interpretative phenomenological analysis: Theory method and research. Sage. Smith, J., & Osborn, M. (2008). Qualitative psychology: A practical guide to research methods. Sage. Vagle, M. D. (2018). Crafting phenomenological research. Routledge. van Manen, M. (2014). Phenomenology of practice: Meaning-giving methods in phenomenological research and writing (Vol. 13). Left Coast Press. van Manen, M. (2017). But is it phenomenology? Qualitative Health Research, 27(6), 775–779. doi: 10.1177/1049732317699570. Varela, F. J., Thompson, E., & Rosch, E. (1991). The embodied mind: Cognitive science and human experience. MIT. Wertz, F. J. (2005). Phenomenological research methods for counseling psychology. Journal of Counseling Psychology, 52(2), 167–177. Williford, K. (2013). Husserl’s hyletic data and phenomenal consciousness. Phenomenology and Cognitive Sciences, 12(3), 501–519. Zahavi, D. (2018). The Oxford handbook of the history of phenomenology. Oxford University Press. Zahavi, D. (2019). Getting it quite wrong: van Manen and Smith on phenomenology. Qualitative Health Research, 29(6), 900–907.

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CONCLUSION Edwin Creely, Jane Southcott, Kelly Carabott and Damien Lyons MONASH UNIVERSITY, AUSTRALIA

In this book, we have offered a horizon of possibilities. Our authors have opened vistas into the ways of phenomenologists who are on different parts of their journeys. Some have long inhabited this terrain, diving deep and coming up for air. Others are moving from the shallows to deeper water. We (Ed, Jane, Damien and Kelly) hoped that this book would broaden horizons, advance different perspectives and offer others doors to open and new vistas to explore. We have encountered a range of perspectives and we hope that you (our readers) have been challenged, changed, inspired and possibly validated in your approaches to educational research that is underpinned by a phenomenological stance. This book was about opening out ideas associated with phenomenology. As an editorial team we appreciated that phenomenology is both philosophical tradition and research practice. We make no claim to be ‘doing philosophy’. Rather we are using philosophical ideas as a way of informing our understanding of educational issues through a range of phenomenological lenses. Phenomenology is not the sinecure of philosophers but can cohabit with other forms of qualitative inquiry. This book opens out phenomenology as a philosophical tradition and research practice, breaking down siloed walls to embrace the interdisciplinary and the transdisciplinary. We offer a ‘broad church’ that accommodates difference and diversity. Our horizon of possibilities contains uncertainties and wonders, but that is part of the richness and breadth we hoped to capture in this book. We hold that phenomenology is a plurality, not a singularity. We affirm the potential for syncretism between phenomenology and other epistemological traditions, examples of which occur within these pages. As a consequence of provocative thinking, this book does not fall into the usual and predictable but attempts to forge new ideas and research/thinking spaces. Forming links

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between phenomenological understandings, theory, research and practice is core to this book but these connections form different textures, forming cloth of many hues that can be shaped to meet the needs of the researcher. This book brings together a diverse range of scholars from around the world all of whom are interested in and using phenomenology in innovative and progressive ways. From the outset we challenged our authors to be provocative. We asked them to share ideas and practices associated with phenomenological inquiry in creative and innovative ways, around issues that are often sensitive and polarising. This required a good degree of scholastic courage. As an editorial team we are grateful that authors within this book offered clear and specific links between theory, research and practice, identifying and delineating their phenomenological approach. The authors offered clarity about how they were challenging the field and, identified methodological issues that are part of doing phenomenological inquiry. Pushing boundaries, taking risks and sharing methodological and method innovation around phenomenological inquiry in a public space is courageous, and we certainly acknowledge and thank our authors for sharing this journey with us. What became evident in the chapters of this book, was that phenomenologists nod to different ancestors, naming themselves as the following: ‘I am Husserlian’, ‘I am Heideggerian’, or ‘I am informed by Merleau-Ponty, Gadamer and Brentano’. Phenomenologists acknowledge both their debt to the past and their hybridity of approach in the present. No one is identical but we all hold the phenomenological stance and explore the meanings of lived experience. We began by addressing the question of ‘what is phenomenology?’ Rather than giving one answer, the writers of this book see phenomenology as a plurality of understandings, influences, indebtedness and explorations. The authors, in the first section of this book, lay bare the space, offering a contoured map for exploration by educational researchers who wish to bring phenomenological approaches to their inquiries. The subsequent authors address particular aspects of the terrain – building structures and excavating foundations that meet the demands of their domains. Our authors have explored many domains and populations – students of all levels engaging with a multitude of disciplines. To reiterate, we offer no definitive answer to the question we began with; moreover, we have no wish to be conclusive. No one person holds the high ground; rather, as phenomenologists, we encounter and unfold the rich meanings possible from lived experience. We explore joyfully and with delight, adopting a playfulness and a metaphorical dance that might seem, at first glance, to belie the seriousness of our intent. Our book began with a question, what does phenomenological inquiry look and feel like in educational research. We do not have a single answer – we have many answers but possibly, asking the question makes it a problem to be solved. As phenomenologists we understand that lived experience is complex, entangled and protean, resisting the simple. This book offers diversity and complexity, bringing together disparate threads of phenomenological inquiry into a coherency of ideas and practices.

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258  Edwin Creely et al.

Edited books such as this often begin with a small group of people interested in a topic or idea. In the introduction to this book, we described how this book evolved from conversations about phenomenology, ranging across its philosophical underpinnings through to its method and methodological orientations and applications. As conversations developed, playfulness occurred, understandings became deeper and the need to write became more overt; we began to think about others who might be in similar thinking spaces. As editors, we were proactive in crafting this book. We write with one voice, but we assumed different responsibilities, working in dyads with each author. As phenomenologists, we are on an alteric journey, there is no fixed point of being and when we encounter the other in people and writings, we are inexorably changed and we change others. We challenged each other, ordering and re-ordering the chapters, then wrote the section introductions where we allowed playfulness full rein. Creativity, play and performance are not separate from research but can and should be integral in phenomenological practices. We framed the book with introduction and conclusion, ensuring cohesion and a replete return to the where we began. The book is a product of our experiences and interactions with each other and with others. The book is an evolution, sometimes an unfolding, other times a juxtaposition. This describes us as much as our product – we have become the book. As an editorial team and a team of scholars, we are committed to the notion that knowledge is constantly changing and evolving, offering a space where we can play and chase the lines of flight. The contributions in our book afford a protean view of what it means to us to be phenomenologists who explore apparently disparate but entangled topics, approaches and philosophical positions. For this reason, we do not consider this to be the end to our journey, only a cadential pause. Resonating with this notion, we quote Frank Herbert who wrote the complex, transdisciplinary science fiction classic, Dune and who stated, during an interview with Willis McNelly in 1969, ‘There is no real ending. It’s just the place where you stop the story’.

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INDEX

Note: Page numbers in italics indicate figures, bold indicate tables and numbers with “n” indicates endnotes in the text. Aboriginal Tent Embassy 219 Aborigines Progressive Association 219 abyssal (abgrund) 12, 18 academic scepticism 22 accomplishment (vollbringen) 14, 116 accountability: culture 138; data-driven 141; discourses 139–140; educational 138; evidence-based 142; framework 120; modality of 135; neoliberal economics and 136; processes 135; questioning 137–142; responsibility and 140; school 138; teacher 83–84, 135–136, 146 ACEs see Adverse Childhood Events (ACEs) Act 218 Adams, C. 70, 73–74, 76–77 adults 31, 70–71, 74, 87–88, 153, 249 advanced capitalism 13 Adverse Childhood Events (ACEs) 214 aesthetics, challenges 74 affect 31, 139; ACEs 214; educational technologies 148–149; formative 30; situation 249 affective domain 237, 239, 241 affective turn, poetry class 201–204 African American women 155, 214 Alam, S. 182 Al-Amin, M. 182

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Alexander, Q. R. 155 Allen, V. 13 alterity 202; encountering 173–175; importance to human interactions 202; main source of self-understanding 145; openness 174; preservation 144 American Association of Colleges & Universities 163 Ankamuti 218 anxiety 141; experience 185; as expression of professional homelessness 141; fear and 247; humour and 239; individualisation 141; loss 100; racism 217; stress and 250; teachers 141, 250; terror 185 apodictic certainty 12 application of phenomenology 54, 84, 150–153 approach: assessment and planning 246; coherent 3; conventional research 181; conversational 77; creativity 106–108; Dalcroze Eurhythmics 87; descriptive 2, 21, 177; ‘design’ and ‘make’ 232; detailed reading 123; ecological and dynamical 30; education 6, 12, 30; fundamental 7; gadget 230; Heideggerian 12–13, 15; hermeneutic-phenomenological 29, 90, 93, 119; holistic reading 122; hybridity 257; idiographic 247; imaginative and elliptical 201; integrated 248; interpretative 92, 177, 252; interpretive 2; methodological 2; open-ended design 231; pedagogical 226; person-centred 247; phenomenological 1, 30, 32, 38,

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260  Index

53, 65, 68, 78–79, 92, 94, 106, 149–150, 154–155, 157, 162, 165, 166, 177–178, 225, 252, 257; phenomenological inquiry 2, 237; phenomenomethodological 3; philosophical 25, 157, 258; positionality and 106–108; post-qualitative 202; promoting 9; qualitative 74, 149; radical 17; recursive cyclic 122; research 3; rule-bound cognitive-oriented information processing 30; theoretical and methodological 154; thinking and 2; transcendental phenomenological 152 architectonics of teacher responsibility 142–145 Arendt, H. 70 Arnhem Land 220 artificial intelligence 157 artistic creativity 105, 109, 114 arts-based methodologies 36 assemblages 40–44, 47; education 135; knowledge 29; post-intentional phenomenology 42–43; semiotic 139; shape-shifting 42–43, 48 assessments 10; approach 246; datafication 138; general 72; instruction and 71; planning and 246; psychoeducational 245; psychometric 246; taken-forgranted 10 assimilation 145, 217, 219 Atkinson, J. 214 at-risk children 244, 254; see also children Austin, H. 163 Australia 177, 189, 210–211, 217–218, 226–227 Australian educational leader 119–132; hermeneutic exploration of power 129–132; hermeneutic phenomenology 122–123; literacy education 129–132; methodology 121–122; narratives 122–129; negotiators of power-­ relations 131–132; notions of power relations 120–121; power within leader 129–131 Australian primary schools 119

Bale, T. L. 213–214 Ballynahinch Castle, Connemara, Ireland 46, 47 Bangladesh 182 Barad, K. 39–40 Barad’s intra-action 43–44 Barrau, A. 200 becoming teacher 45; see also teacher Bedanug 217 Bedhan Lag 217 being-a-possibility 64–65 being educated 71–72, 76 being-for-the other 144 being-in-the-world 24, 27, 31, 56, 60, 62, 64–65, 70, 140 being-ness 39–42, 44–45, 48–49, 72 beliefs: assumptions and 43; common-­sensical 23; creativity 109, 117; disciplinary thinking 235; First Nations people 211; genetic memory 215; internalized 117; investigated phenomena 22; ontological perspective 29; participants 196; pedagogical 132; personal 22; philosophy 212; success 114; unfiltered phenomenon 226 Bennett, L. 154 bias: Dalcroze eurhythmics (DE) 94–95; implications 106; individual 22; interpretations and inferences 107; objectivity 30; philosophical stances 107; researcher 106; subjectivity and 94; unconscious 221 bildung 13, 24, 28 Binswanger, L. 11 Bista, K. 193 Blainey, G. 218 Boss, M. 11 Bowman, W. 94 Briggs, G. 218 Bringing Them Home report 220 Bruner, J. 94 Buber, M. 97, 101n3 Bump Track 213 bureaucratic categorisation 246 Burgess, H. 192

Babich, B. 13 background: constant 77; cultural 227; disciplinary 238; international doctoral students 177–179; perfectionist 115; practices 30; science or technology 237; situatedness 24; socially disadvantaged 127; social or family 161 Bailey, C. J. 154 Bakhtin, M. 142–145

Canada 74, 177, 189 capitalism: advanced 13; neoliberal 16 Card, K. A. 154 Cartesian meditations: An introduction to phenomenology (Husserl) 10 cartographies, international doctoral students 192–193 case study: phenomenology 244–245; STEM inspiration 231–237

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Index 261

Casey, E. 10 categorisation see bureaucratic categorisation Celtic Spirituality 47 Center for Epigenetic Research in Child Health & Brain Development (CERCH) 214 challenges: aesthetics 74; doing phenomenology 78–80; educated body 78; especially with children 77; ethics 74–75; international doctoral students 184–185, 193–194; on issue of relationality in education 73–74; language 76–77; latency of education 75–76; lived experience 3, 70–80; materiality of educational phenomena 77; scale and focus 71–72; space of education 78; students 184; time of education 75–76 Chan, N. N. 155 Chatterjee-Padmanabhan, M. 193 child mortality 210 children: adults and 88; at-risk 244, 254; attraction of 241; challenges 77; complex lives 251; First Nations people 220; forced removal of 214; learning 125, 128; nation’s educators serving 45; personal and social needs of 87; private education 7; skills 128; upbringing 75; youth and 71, 251 China 91 classes/classrooms 10; Australian 122; children 91; contemporary 145; content 93; discourses 120; dynamics 149; faceto-face 73; image 7; learning 94, 148, 155; mobile phones in 120; online 73; participants 196; poetry 196; rhythmic 98; STEM 155, 228; struggles 243; teaching 148; transmogrified 198; traumas 204 cogito 201 cognition 31, 94, 253 cognitive domain 237, 238 cognitive oscillation 31 cognitive psychology 253 cognitive sciences 253 Colebrook, C. 42 colonialism 219 Communist Party 219 complexity 25; capturing 79; of child’s experiences 246; clarifying 10; hermeneutical stratification 25; hybridity and 3; learning 18; participants 76; of understanding human behaviour 245 conative domain 237, 240 concrete objects 23

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conflation: difference-coherence 53, 65–66; phenomenomethodology 65–66; problematic 54 conscientization 188 consciousness: acknowledgement 22; conceptual 39; detached analysis 23; experience 1; historically-effected 26; human body 28; kinaesthetic 97–98; moral 31; in open and direct communication 145; participants 23; phenomenology 54; pure 23–24 contemporary phenomenology 8 contemporary schooling 144 conversational relation 90 Conway, S. 225 Cook, J. 217–218 Cooper, W. 218 core phenomenological principles and practices 246–248 creativity 104–117; approach 106–108; artistic 105, 109, 114; beliefs 109, 117; conceptualization 106; creativity in practice 109–116; defined 108; described 105–106; failure 112–114; inspiration 141; positionality 106–108; research 108–109, 258; success 114–116; talent 110–112 Creely, E. 197 critical discourse analysis 36 critical narrative analysis (CNA) 247, 249 critical race theory 36 critical whiteness studies 36 cross-case analysis, DE 96–99 Crossley, M. 32 cultural accountability 138; see also accountability cultural genocide 217 curricula/curriculum 6–8, 10, 12, 31, 162; alignment 225; coordinator 123; hidden 192; pedagogy 15, 31, 131; policies 145; schools policy 17; theories 7 d’Agnese, V. 13 Dahlberg, K. 32, 68 Dalcroze eurhythmics (DE) 84, 87–101; bias 94–95; cross-case analysis 96–99; data collection and analysis 95–99; dynamic rehearsal 88–90, 89; epoché 94–95; findings 99–101; good fit 93–94; implications 100–101; insider information 90–91; methodology 91–94; overview 87–88, 88; practice as research 92–94; prejudice 94–95; teacher to researcher 91

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262  Index

Dasein (being-in-the-world) 24, 58–59, 64, 140 data: accountability 141; analysis 123, 153, 204; collection 43, 77, 95–99, 151–152, 165, 245; experiential 75, 77; literacy 129; phenomenological 75, 107; ship 32; unusable 79 datafication 138 Davis, D. 225–226 decision-making 99, 137, 164, 244 dedication 8, 110 definitive interpretation 26 Deleuze, G. 40–44, 196, 200 Deleuze’s theory of desire 40–41, 48–49 Deleuzoguattarian 42, 45, 48 Derrida, J. 9–10, 29 descriptive approaches 2, 21; see also approach descriptive phenomenology 1 descriptive reduction 23; see also reduction deterritorialization 49 developmental psychology 253 Dewey, J. 94 Diabetes Australia 217 dialogic pedagogy 27 difference-coherence 53–62, 65–66 Dingus-Eason, J. 155 discourses: academic 187; accountability 139–140; classes 120; dominant 108–109, 188; institutional 247; literacy 131–132; neo-liberal 84; researchers 33; scholarly 180, 200; social 132; truth-telling 139 Dis-ease (poem) 207–208 disinterested scientist 30 doctorate 186–187, 190, 243 doing phenomenology 2–3, 53, 78–80, 257 dominant research discourse 108 double hermeneutic 253 Doyle, S. 192 Dreyfus, H. 30 Dreyfus, S. 30 Duarte, E. 17–18 ducere 15 Dufrenne, M. 10 dynamic kinaesthetic memories 100 dynamic rehearsal (DR) 87–90, 89, 93 Dynamic Systems Theory 97 educated body 78 education 5–19; accountability 138; approach 6, 12, 30; assemblages 135; crisis 7–8; danger 10; defined 5, 70–71; entwinement of 68–69; Heideggerian

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12–17; hermeneutics 13; impossibility in 8; interpretation 28; materiality 78; music 94; needs 11; ontological 16; phenomenologists 74; phenomenology 8–12, 22; psychologists 243–251, 254; psychology 244–246, 251–254; research 2–3, 8, 15, 29–31, 33, 83, 85, 94, 119, 227, 256–257; technology 148–150, 157; teleologically 7; thoughts on 6–8 Educational Philosophy and Theory 15 educere 8, 15 Ehrfahrung 25 Ehrmantraut, M. 16 eidetic reduction 10, 12, 23 elementary education 71 elementary school 162 Elphinstone, B. 225 embodied cognition 253 embodied knowledge 28–29, 78 Embodied Mind, The (Varela) 253 embodiments: essences and 1; phenomenology 250; poetry class 201–204 emergent learning 237–240; curiosity at edge of something new 238–239; inspired by ‘Hard Fun’ 239–240; mapping domains and teaching 237 Emerson, C. 144 emotion: abuse 244, 249; awareness and 174; burnout 44; dealing with students 170; energy 44; existential humanism 28; experience 112; expression and 105; feeling and 97; force 203; health 45; infection 203; intellectual and 210; learning and teaching 155; positive 202; responses 77; thought and 99; travel 180–181; unity 203; values and 203; well-being 217; work 75 empathetic understanding 250 empirical application 152–153 Empiricus, S. 22 Encyclopedia Britannica 10 engines of dialogue 97–98, 98 England 91 enlightening experience 72 entwinement of education 68–69 environmental experiencing 56–57, 59–60 Eora Nations 218 epiphanic experiences 97 epoché 21–33; applications of 30–32; Dalcroze eurhythmics (DE) 94–95; described 22–23; embodied knowing 28–29; hermeneutics 25, 29–30; ‘horizons’ 25–28; lived experience

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Index 263

24–25; meaning-making 25–28; ‘natural attitude’ 23–24; overview 21–22; perception 28–29; reduction 9, 69; researcher’s stance 23–24 equity 161 Ereignis 14–15, 17–18 essence/essencing 12, 151; of being human 207; “chairness” 12; creativity and 109; descriptive 31; education 19; embodiments and 1; experience 22, 152, 164; extricating and maintaining of 30; hermeneutic interpretation 22; human experiences 148; inferences and 107; of inspiration and invention 227; invariant 12; paideia 14; participants 106; phenomenological investigations 60; teacher Presence 49 ethics: of acting towards other 144; affective turn 202; challenges 74–75; human connection 202; morals 31; pathway 191–192; professional 146; responsibility 145; thinking 31 ethnographic research 200 Europe 177 evidence-based accountability 142; see also accountability excerpt of phenomenological material 46–50 existential phenomenology 107 exploratory research 26 external influences 169, 169–170 failure of creativity 112–114 fear: anxiety 247; cosmic 145; economic 18; failure 112–114; lucidity 203; of making mistakes 100 feeling: agitation 49; debilitating 114; emotion and 97; experiences 32, 48; fellow 203–204; of fulfillment 116; phenomenology 248–249; poetry class 204–206; self-hood 41; stress and anxiety 250; underlying harmony 42 “fellow feeling” 203–204 Ferguson, B. 218 findings: Dalcroze eurhythmics (DE) 99–101; gender inequality 166 Fink, E. 10 First Nations, truth-telling 212–213, 217–219 First Nations peoples of Australia 210–211, 213–215, 217–220 First Nations pre-World War 2 218 Florey Institute of Neuroscience and Mental Health 213 Fluent (O’Donohue) 46–47

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Foran, A. 70 formative affect 30; see also affect formative experiences 96 “forming people” 13 Foucault, M. 120, 130, 132, 200 foundations of phenomenology 150–153 Freeman, L. 61 Freire, P. 188 Fuller, S. 121 fundamental ontology 58, 63, 64 fundamental relations 1, 173 ‘fusion of horizons’ 26 Gabrielsson, A. 97 Gadamer, H.-G. 2, 25–27, 93–94, 121, 151, 199 gender: defined 161; inequality women 162; studies 164–165 gender inequality in higher education 161–171; external influences 169–170; findings 166; gender studies 164–165; glass ceiling in 167, 167–168; influences of institutional leadership 166–167, 167; overcoming obstacles and advise 170, 170; overview 161–162; phenomenology and 164–166; physiological aspects 170–171; traditional norms 167, 168; visibility 168–169 Gendlin, E. T. 94 genealogy 6 general assessments 72 genetic memory 213–217 genocidal massacres 212 genocide see cultural genocide genuineness 250 Gibbs, P. 154 Giorgi, A. 8–11, 68, 251–252 glass ceiling in higher education 167, 167–168; see also higher education global politics 191 Glück, J. 109 good fit, DE 93–94 Gorup, M. 192 grammatical interpretation 25 Greek scepticism 22 Greenwalt, K. A. 153 Greenwood, J. 173, 193 Guattari, F. 40–44 Guba, E. G. 29 Gurung, B. 155 Gurwitz, B. 11 Hawke, B. 220 Hayden, B. Y. 240 health disadvantage 217

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264  Index

Heidegger, M. 2, 9, 11, 12–19, 53–61, 65, 121, 142–143, 149, 177–178, 251–252; ‘being-in-the-world’ 27; Cartesian split between mind and body 24; fundamental ontology 64; hermeneutics 24; ‘horizon’ 26; ‘in-being’ 30; life-world 27; metaphysical subject-object split 140; personal formation 24; philosophical foundation of phenomenology 37; qualitative research 69 Henriksson, T. 94 Henry, M. 10 Hermann, M. A. 155 hermeneutic(s): defined 26; education 13; epoche‐ 25, 29–30; exploration of power 129–132; Heideggerian 9; interpretation 25, 29; phenomenology 2, 10, 21, 27–29, 93, 107, 121–123, 137; stratification 25; of suspicion 249 hermeneutic-phenomenological approach 29 hermeneutic-phenomenological research 24 Hickman, J. 193 hidden curriculum 192; see also curricula/ curriculum higher education 163, 165–168, 167 highly-touted academic research 108 historically-effected consciousness 26 Hodge, S. 193 Holmes, P. 90 Hong Kong 91 “Honour Her” (Woods) 215–216 horizons, epoche‐ 25–28 Howard, P. 70 human science research methodology 68–69 humour 184, 232, 239; see also anxiety Husserl, E. 1–2, 8, 10–11, 53–54, 57, 65, 149, 151, 177–178, 246, 251; Cartesian split between mind and body 24; consciousness 23; epoche‐ 9; goal in undertaking epoché 23; individual biases 22; law 12; phenomenological sense 7, 9; philosophical foundation of phenomenology 37; qualitative research 69; reduction 9–10, 27; reductions 23 identity 248; cross-identification 206; cultural 193; faculty 154; gender 161; in music performance 115; phenomenology 248–249; self hood and 248; sense of self and 97; teachers 45; truth-telling 212–213 I-for-myself 146

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I-for-the-other 146 Ihde, D. 78, 149, 157 I-It or I-Thou dialogical relationships 98, 101n3 imagined ultra-geographic place 180 implications: bias 106; Dalcroze eurhythmics (DE) 100–101; educational leaders 120; for practice 80; psychologists 244; for researchers 29, 251; social and personal 31 inclusiveness 11 Indigenous Australian Studies 218 ‘indirect ontology’ 28 individual bias 22; see also bias innovation 6, 19, 60, 131, 257 insider information 90–91 inspired learning 240–241 institutional leadership 166–167, 167 intentionality: assumptions 27; defined 37; intentional analysis 252; perception 29; phenomenological 11, 36; posting 38–40; post-phenemonological 37; reduction 27 internal politics 191 international doctoral students 177–194; after doctorate 186–187; background 177–179; cartographies 192–193; challenges 184–185, 193–194; emotional travel 180–181; ethical pathway 191–192; imagined ultra-geographic place 180; journey back home 189–191; maps 177–179, 192–193; opportunities 185–186; orienteering with language 182–184; phenomenology 177–179; physical travel 180–181; purpose 177–179; shared space of learning community 187–189; trade and development 184–187; uncharted spaces 181–182; unexpected spaces 181–182; university 179–184 interpretation: definitive 26; education 28; experiences 22; grammatical 25; hermeneutic 25, 29; psychological 25; reinterpretations of 6 interpretative phenomenological analysis (IPA) 8–9, 68, 253 interpretive approaches 2 investigation: education 53; heuristic phenomenological 91; lived experiences 148; ontological 58, 137; phenomenological 32, 52, 59–60, 174; phenomenomethodology 62–66 involvement, truth-telling 211–212 iPad 231–232, 238 Irigaray, L. 10

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Index 265

Jaeger, G. J. 108 Jaques-Dalcroze, É. 87 Jersey 91 journey back home 189–191 kairos moment 72 Kansanen, P. 98 Kantian scholarship 137 Keen, E. 178 Kidd, C. 240 Kimmons, R. 154 King George III 218 knowing in being-ness 39 knowledge: assemblages 29; embodied 28–29, 78; generation 155; implicit 94; insider 90; lived experiences and 39, 42; pre-reflective experience and 94; production 192; research-based 244; scientific 252; tacit 91; transmission 6 Ku, H.-Y. 193 Langdridge, D. 92, 246–247 language, challenges 76–77 Larsen, W. 104–105 latency of education 75–76 Lauer, Q. 10 Laufer, M. 192 leadership see institutional leadership learning 10; children 125, 128; classes 94, 148, 155; community 188, 188; complexity 18; conveyor 240, 241; inspired 240–241; outcomes 135–136, 149, 239, 246; STEM inspiration 237–241; transforms 240; see also emergent learning Levinas, E. 2, 9–10, 173, 196, 201–204 life-world 24; defined 149; language games and 29; phenomenology 248–254 Lifeworld Phenomenology (Dahlberg) 68 Likert Scale 246 Lincoln, Y. S. 29 lines of flight 42, 47 Listman, J. D. 155 literacy 128 literacy education 129–132; see also education lived experience 21, 24, 68–80, 71–72, 227; challenges 3, 70–80; entwinement of education 68–69; epoche‐ 24–25; examining 3; human science research methodology 68–69; phenomenology of practice 69–70; taken-for-granted 9 lived experience descriptions (LEDs) 41 lived technological experiences 148–157; application of phenomenology 150–153;

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empirical application 152–153; foundations of phenomenology 150–153; overview 148–150; phenomenological research in educational technology 153–155; philosophical foundations 151 Lloyd, R. 78 longitudinal research 138 Lorde, A. 45 Macbeath, J. 121 Makarrata 220 MakeCode app 231 Maker-Box kits 228–231, 229 Malaysia 227 maps 177–179, 192–193 Marcel, G. 2, 10–11 Marion, J.-L. 10–11, 27 Maslow’s Hierarchy 215 Mason, A. 193 Mason, L. L. 225–226 Massive Open Online Courses 73 materiality of education 77–78 McGee, E. 155 McKeller, D. 198 meaningful play 239 meaning-making 13; educational research 2; epoche‐ 25–28; process 24, 28, 31, 107 Meri, M. 98 Merleau-Ponty, M. 2, 10, 28–29, 38, 53–54, 70, 91, 177, 201, 250–253 Merriam, S. B. 162 metaphysics 13–14 methodology: Australian educational leader 121–122; Dalcroze eurhythmics (DE) 91–94; poetry class 200–201; STEM inspiration 227 metontology 61–64 Micro:bit 234, 236, 238–239 Mika, C. 15–16 Millennium Development Goals 163 mindfulness theories 36 Mollenhauer, M. 70 Monash University 231–233, 236–237 moral consciousness 31; see also consciousness morality 31, 139 Moustakas, C. 153 multiplicity 12, 23, 29, 39–44, 71, 200, 248 music education 94 Nancy, J. 200 narratives of Australian educational leader 122–129 Natanson, M. 10

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National Assessment Program – Literacy and Numeracy (NAPLAN) 138, 140 National Constitutional Convention 212 National Curriculum 126–127 Native Mounted Police 215 natural attitude, epoche‐ 23–24 Nazir, J. 177 negotiators of power-relations 131–132 Nel, L. 154 Nelson, B. 105, 109 Nelson, R. 92 neoliberal capitalism 16 neoliberal economics 136 neoliberalism 19 Nepal 189 Netherlands 91 neuroscience theories 36 New South Wales 218 New Zealand 178, 189, 192 Nielsen, W. 193 Nietzsche, F. 139 Non-alibi in Being 143 Non-Indigenous people 210, 212–213, 215 Non-Indigenous people of Australia 211, 220 Norfolk Island 178 notions of power relations 120–121 Odena, O. 192 O’Donohue, J. 40, 46–47, 49 O’Halloran, D. 192 “okay-ed-ness” 39 oneness 200 ontological alienation 138 ontological education 16; see also education ontological response-ability 16 opportunities: doctoral research 90; empowerment 156; international doctoral students 185–186; painful learning 114; phenomenological 141, 149, 165; to reflect on literacy 129; students 131; teachers 156 organisational skills 185 orienteering with language 182–184 Osborn, M. 31 oscillation see cognitive oscillation otherness 202 outcomes 165; achievement 112, 132; conceptual 62; deprivation 161; discoursal change 120; learning 135–136, 149, 239, 246; research 87; valuation 135 overcoming obstacles and advice 166, 170, 170

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paideia 13–14 palliative care 177 Papert, S. 225 participants: beliefs 196; classes 196; complexity 76; consciousness 23; contexts 227–228, 228; essence 106 Patton, M. Q. 162 pedagogy: constructionist 225; curriculum and 15, 31; dialogic 27; literacy 130–131; online education 155; philosophy 7, 75; questions 74; research and 92; value-adding to 127 Pellegrino, K. 154 perception: aural 100; epistemological realities 22; epoche‐ 23, 28–29; experiences of creativity 106; of failure 113; glass ceiling 166, 167; intentionality 29; participants 241; preparedness and effectiveness 137; self-awareness 161; of self-set expectations 115; shared 115; students 84; success 116 performative language 17 personal development 169 personal formation 24 personal reality 250 personal subjectivity 28 person-centred approach 247 person-centred therapy 248 perspective: cognitive 108; descriptive 117; Non-Indigenous 219; phenomenological 105–106, 109, 150; poetry class 198–199; post-metaphysical 145; psychological 105; sociocultural 131; truth-telling 217–219 Peters, M. 13 Phenomenal Analysis 153 phenomenological approach 1, 30, 32, 38, 53, 65, 68, 78–79, 92, 94, 106, 149–150, 154–155, 157, 162, 165, 166, 177–178, 225, 252, 257 phenomenological attitude 93 phenomenological concepts 59, 60 phenomenological data 107 phenomenological deconstruction 59–60 phenomenological development 27 phenomenological experience 37 phenomenological human science (PhHSc) 52–55, 58, 60–65 phenomenological inquiry (PI) 22, 24, 26, 161–162, 237, 257 phenomenological intentionality 11 phenomenological interpretation 64 phenomenological investigation 32, 52, 59; see also STEM inspiration phenomenological material 45

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phenomenological meaning-making 24 phenomenological memory 213 phenomenological method 55–56, 59 phenomenological methodology 32 phenomenological ontology 58 phenomenological orientation 21 phenomenological philosophy (PhPhy) 52–55, 60–65 phenomenological principles 251 phenomenological reduction 9–10, 22, 57–59, 95, 151 phenomenological research 40, 121, 149, 153–155, 164, 165, 178 phenomenological researcher 23 phenomenological restruction 60–64 phenomenological stance 22 phenomenological theory 9 phenomenological thinking 245, 251–254 phenomenologist researchers 22 phenomenology 243–254; case study 244–245; contemporary 8; core phenomenological principles and practices 246–248; defined 1, 5; descriptive 1–2, 21; education 8–12, 22; educational psychological 245, 251–254; educational psychologists 250–251; embodiment 250; feeling 248–249; gender inequality and 164–166; hermeneutical 2; identity 248–249; impact 8; international doctoral students 177–179; interpretive approaches 2; life-world 248–254; personal reality 250; philosophical aim 9; of practice 69–70, 164; role of educational 245–246; self hood 248–249; sense of agency 248–249; sociality 249; thinking 245, 251–254; thoughts 8–12; voice 248–249 Phenomenology of the Newborn (van Manen) 77 phenomenomethodology 52–66, 54; approach 3; conflation 65–66; deconstruction 59–60; difference-coherence 53–62, 65–66; investigation 62–66; overview 52–53; phenomenon 54–57, 55; questioning phenomenology 53–54; reduction 57–59; research 63; restruction 60–62 phenomenon 54–57, 55 Phillip, A. 218 philosophical foundations 151 physical travel 180–181 physiological aspects of gender inequality 170–171 Plastique Animée 101n1 poems, poetry class 204–206 “Poems of the soul” (Creely) 197

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poetry class 196–208; affective turn 201–204; embodiment 201–204; feelings 204–206; Levinas 201–204; methodology 200–201; perspective 198–199; poems 204–206; Scheler 201–204; voices 204–206 Polanyi, M. 94 positionality 106–108 Possession Island 218 posting, post-intentional phenomenology 38–40 post-intentional phenomenological research 36–50; assemblages 42–43; Barad’s intra-action 43–44; excerpt of phenomenological material 46–50; line of flight 42; multiplicity 42–43; overview 36–37; posting in 38–40; teacher presence through mindfulness 40–44; teaching as spiritual practice 40–44; theories 37–38; thinking with desire 40–42 Post-Intentional Phenomenology (Vagle) 68 post-secondary education 71 PowerPoint 76, 77, 148 power within leader 129–131 practice-as-research 92–94 practice-led research 92 pragmatism 25 prejudice 94–95 primordial reduction 10 producere 15 productive force 49 professional development 194 professional education 162; see also education Project on the Status and Education of Women 163 protectionism 217, 219 pseudodoxia 22 psychoeducational assessments 245; see also assessments psychological interpretation 25 psychological paradigms 108 psychological-phenomenological reduction 10 Psychology as a Human Science (Giorgi) 68 psychometric assessments 246; see also assessments pure consciousness 23; see also consciousness purpose, international doctoral students 177–179 qualitative research 30, 200 Quay, J. 63–64

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Queensland 215, 218 Queenslander, The 215 questioning accountability 137–142 questioning phenomenology 53–54 racism 183, 213, 217 Radman, Z. 94 Raffoul, F. 137 Rambe, P. 154 rationalist neoliberalism 19 Rawlings, D. 105, 109 reduction: eidetic 10, 12, 23; epoche‐ 9, 69; phenomenological 9–10; primordial 10; psychological-phenomenological 10; transcendental-phenomenological 10 reforms, standards-based 138 relationality in education 73–74; see also education research: approach 3; creativity 108–109, 258; dominant discourse 108; ethnographic 200; exploratory 26; highly-­ touted academic 108; knowledge 244; lived experience 69; longitudinal 138; pedagogy and 92; phenomenological 40, 153–155; phenomenomethodology 63; qualitative 30 researchers, epoche‐ 23–24 researcher’s stance 23–24 Researching Lived Experience (van Manen) 68 resilience 114 reterritorialization 49 retroactive kairos moment 72 rhythmics gymnastics (RG) 88 Ricoeur, P. 2, 121, 247, 249 Rocha, S. D. 8, 15, 19 Rogers, C. 247–248, 250 role of educational phenomenology 245–246 Romano, C. 94 Romanyshyn, R. 178 Runco, M. A. 108 Rutledge, D. 155 Ryan, L. 214–215 Saevi, T. 70 Salahuddin, A. 182 Sartre, J.-P. 28, 38 Sato, T. 193 scale and focus, challenges 71–72 scepticism 22 Scheler, M. 2, 10–11, 196, 201–204 Schleiermacher, F. 25 Schmitz, H. 11 schooling 10, 15, 78, 125, 135, 139, 144, 146, 218, 221

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Schutz, A. 10–11 science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) 163, 165, 225 “sciences of education” 7 Scotland 91 SEAMEO RECSAM 233–237 Seamon, D. 10 secondary education 71; see also education Seidman, I. 152 self-care 45, 146 self-critique 30 Self-Determination Theory 225 self hood 248–249 self-liberation 44 self-love 44–45 self-preservation 45 self-reflection 107 self-regulation 136 self-reverence 44 self-showing 55–56, 61, 65 semblance 55–56, 58, 65 semiotic assemblages 139 sense of agency 248–249 sensory-kinaesthetic ability 99 sensory-kinaesthetic experiences 97 shape-shifting assemblages 42–43, 48 shared history 212, 217–219 shared space of learning community 187–189 Sheets-Johnstone, M. 94 skills 169; acquired 192; acquisition 30; complex 33; dedication of teachers and 8; ensemble 99; interpretative 21; literacy 124, 130; organisational 185; personal 186; social 101; transmission 6 Smith, J. 8–9, 11, 31, 68, 178, 194, 253 Smith, S. 78 Snyder, M. B. 163 social control 6 social institution 70 socialisation 31 social isolation 193 sociality 249 social status 116 social well-being 217 Solomon, C. 225 space of education 78; see also education space to explore 239 space to inform 238 Spencer, H. 211 spiritual 50n1 standardization 6 standards-based reforms 138 Stanford-Binet Intelligence Scales 246 Statement from the Heart 212

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STEM inspiration 225–241; case study 231–237; emergent learning 237, 237–240; inspired learning 240–241; learning 237–241; Maker-Box kits 228–231, 229; methodology 227; Monash University 231–233, 236–237; overview 225–227; participants and contexts 227–228, 228; results 231–237; SEAMEO RECSAM 233–237 stress 120; accountability framework 120; anxiety and 250; loneliness 181; moment 41, 47; profession 45; reaction 49 strong experiences with music (SEM) 97 “structures of experience” 122 students 10; conservatoire 88, 90; doctoral 155; instructional process 100; reports of transformative or epiphanic experiences 90; success and failure 114; travel 180; see also international doctoral students Studying the Effectiveness of Teacher Education project 137 success, creativity 114–116 Sustainable Development Goals 163 Svenaeus, F. 177 Swaffield, S. 121 taken-for-granted 6, 8–12 talent 110–112 teacher 10; accountability 83–84, 135–136, 146; anxiety 141, 250; dedication of 8; to researcher 91 teacher Presence 39–45, 47–49 teacher responsibility 135–146; accountability 137–142; architectonics of 142–145; overview 135–137 teaching 10; to inform 231, 233, 237, 240; performing therapy original work 88; as spiritual practice 40–44; to transform 233, 236, 237, 240 technology: adoption 156; education 148, 149–150, 157; integration 154; mediation 157 Tembo, A. C. 26 Thailand 230 Thatcher, M. 136 “The Joy of Poetry” (poetry class) 196 theories 37–38 thing experiencing 56–57 thinking and gathering 14 thinking with desire 40–42 Thomas, C. 13 Thomson, I. 13, 17 time immemorial 211

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time of education 75–76 Title IX in 1972 162 tools and resources 166, 169 Torres Strait 217 Totality and Infinity (Levinas) 202 trade and development 184–187 traditional concepts 60 traditional norms, gender inequality 167, 168 transcendental ego 23 transcendental phenomenology 10, 23, 252 transcendental reduction 23 transformative experiences 96, 97 transpersonal psychic trauma 213–217 treaty and truth-telling 220 Triumph of the Nomads, The (Blainey) 218 true phenomenon 58 truth-telling 210–221; First Nations 212–213, 217–219; genetic memory 213–217; health disadvantage and 217; identity 212–213; involvement 211–212; perspective 217–219; phenomenological memory 213; shared history 212, 217–219; transpersonal psychic trauma 213–217; treaty and 220; White privilege and 219–220 Tucker, M. 218 Uluru 212 uncharted spaces 181–182 unconditional positive regard 250 unconscious bias 221; see also bias unexpected spaces 181–182 United Nations 163 United States 91, 177 university 179–184 University of the Third Age (U3A) 196, 200–201, 206 unmanageable behaviour 250 US Congress 162 utilitarian instrumentalism 6 Utrecht School 68, 70 Vagle, M. D. 38, 68, 70, 83, 122 Valley, The (Larsen) 104–105 van Manen, M. 8–10, 29, 31, 58, 62, 68, 70, 77, 79–80, 90, 92–94, 97, 121–122, 177–178, 194, 253 Varela, F. J. 253 Velasquez, A. 155 Veletsianos, G. 154 visibility 168–169, 169 voices 204–206, 248–249 von Eckartsberg, R. 178

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wearable devices 157 Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children 246 well-becoming 47 well-being-ness 47 Wenger, E. 188 Wesensschau 23 Western metaphysics 14 What is Called Thinking (Heidegger) 15 Whiteness 219 White privilege 219–220 Whitman, W. 197 Wickins, E. D. 32 Wissenschaften 8 withhold judgement 251

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women in higher education 167; see also higher education Women’s Educational Equity Act of 1974 162 Women’s Educational Equity Act of 2001 162 Woodcock-Johnson Tests of Cognitive Abilities 246 Woods, D. B. 215–216 “work integrated learning” 16 World Development Report 161 Yolngu people 220 Zahavi, D. 8–10, 177, 253 Žižek, S. 94

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