Phenomenology & Practice (Journal)
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Epistemological Responsibility and A Candle in the Darkness: A Review of Robert D. Stolorow\u27s Trauma and Human Existence
No full textOz Never Did Give Nothing to the Scarecrow: Neurophenomenology and Critical Pedagogy
No full textUsing the film the Wizard of Oz, an illustrative comparison is made between the Scarecrow\u27s learning experiences and our own. Like we often do, the Scarecrow reduces his potential learning and thinking abilities to nothing more than the formal operations presumably at work in the brain. Ostensibly lacking this brain, the Scarecrow solves nearly all the problems encountered in the journey to Oz. A neurophenomenological description of the Scarecrow\u27s experiences reveals his prereflective, situated learning, and embodied cognition. These ways of learning are often ignored and devalued in our educational system. Can this same method reveal our own subjugated knowledges? Herein, neurophenomenology is demonstrated as a critical pedagogy that critiques and liberates subjugated knowledge and supports a richer assessment of human learning and thinking
Debating Phenomenological Research Methods
No full textPhenomenological researchers generally agree that our central concern is to return to embodied, experiential meanings aiming for a fresh, complex, rich description of a phenomenon as it is concretely lived. Yet debates abound when it comes to deciding how best to carry out this phenomenological research in practice. Confusion about how to conduct appropriate phenomenological research makes our field difficult for novices to access. Six particular questions are contested: (1) How tightly or loosely should we define what counts as "phenomenology" (2) Should we always aim to produce a general (normative) description of the phenomenon, or is idiographic analysis a legitimate aim? (3) To what extent should interpretation be involved in our descriptions? (4) Should we set aside or bring to the foreground researcher subjectivity? (5) Should phenomenology be more science than art? (6) Is phenomenology a modernist or postmodernist project, or neither? In this paper, I examine each of these areas of contention in the spirit of fostering dialogue, and promoting openness and clarity in phenomenological inquiry
"In Search of a Lost Eye: The Mythopoetic Dimension in Pedagogy" A Review of Timothy Leonard & Peter Willis\u27 (Eds.) Pedagogies of the Imagination. Mythopoetic Curriculum in Educational Practice
No full textThe Metabletic Method: An Interdisciplinary Look at Human Experience
No full textMetabletics was first introduced by J.H. Van den Berg as a systematic study of the changing nature of human existence. It gives special focus to phenomena within their specific historical and social-cultural contexts, and inside a complex matrix of relationships. Metabletics provide a uniquely interdisciplinary approach through the analysis of simultaneous events to identify patterns in human experience. Most central to the metabletic method is that, while the world of science is constant, the landscape of human existence is continually changing and causing humans to change. This article outlines the central principles and applications of the metabletic method and addresses tensions and possible challenges within the approach
Children\u27s Embodied Voices: Approaching Children\u27s Experiences Through Multi-Modal Interviewing
No full textThis article focuses on a multi-modal interview approach that has been developed as part of a research project. The goal of the research was to explore and better understand children\u27s embodied experiences and expressions in movement. The multi-modal interview approach emphasizes the non-verbal, giving children an opportunity to focus on "the felt sense" (Gendlin, 1983), and to express their experiences in a variety of forms and through the use of metaphors (Egan, 1997; Gendlin, 1983, 1997). Inspired by Arnold Mindell\u27s (1985) work on shifting channels in our ways of experiencing the world, this paper works with an adaptation of Eugene T. Gendlin\u27s "focusing technique" one that significantly expands Gendlin\u27s repertoire of modalities by using drawing, colours, words, sound, music and movement. Narratives have been created using children\u27s voices and expressions. The article includes an example of a narrative that illustrates how the approach has helped children express their movement experiences. The narrative is analysed by means of a hermeneutic phenomenological approach (van Manen, 1990), through which themes/lived meanings of the child\u27s experiences are elucidated. The article closes with a discussion of how the multi-modal interview approach can help to cast light on the relationships between body, movement, and language, and how the approach could also inspire a somatic perspective when teaching movement and dance in schools
Immigrant Children\u27s Bodily Engagement in Accessing Their Lived Experiences of Immigration: Creating Poly-Media Descriptive Texts
No full textIn this paper, we explore the role of the lived body in meaningful understanding beyond linguistic conceptualization in phenomenologically oriented inquiries. In this exploration we consider the role of visuality (i.e., still photography) and enactment (i.e., tableau) as possibilities for accessing meaning beyond language-bound descriptions of the phenomenon of moving childhoods--that is, children\u27s lived experiences of immigration. We suggest that immigration is an experience that interrupts the familiarity of the lifeworld, and thus brings immigrant children\u27s awareness of their bodies to a conscious level. We ask: What methods of inquiry can be used to access more directly the "embodied understanding" and, in particular, the lifeworlds of immigrant children as they leave the familiar "home world" and enter the "alien world" of a new school? In addressing this question, we focus on one aspect of phenomenological inquiry--gathering experiential accounts, or lived experience descriptions, in investigating childhood phenomena--which presents a particular challenge to researchers working with young children. We present an example of a method that bridges hermeneutic phenomenology and arts-based research methodology (i.e., fotonovela) developed specifically to engage immigrant children bodily in accessing their lived experiences of their first day of school in the host country, and in the development of a polymedia text showing these experiences. We believe that the example demonstrates how fotonovela facilitates immigrant children’s recollection of and reflection on their experience of being at the door of a new classroom. Moreover, the production of visual texts, when shared with or read by others, has an evocative power similar to that of a phenomenological text. Thus, we argue, fotonovela is a particularly suitable method for engaging children in developing polymedia descriptive texts about their lived experiences
"An Event in Sound" Considerations on the Ethical-Aesthetic Traits of the Hermeneutic Phenomenological Text
No full textIn this article, we discuss some of the linguistic features of hermeneutic-phenomenological writing and, in so doing, we point to the close connection between lived experience and the ethical-aesthetic traits of writing the experience. Our exploration starts by contemplating texts written by the so-called Utrecht School. We reflect on their orientation as it has been understood, developed, and advocated by Max van Manen. The literary style of the Utrecht orientation is sometimes misunderstood and questioned. This article aims to explicate why and how hermeneutic phenomenology needs an expressive language to "write the lived experience" rather than to simply write "about" the lived experience. Lived experiences are always past experiences that we try to bring into the present, and so the difference between recollections and memories are discussed in connection to writing the experience. We argue that what is being told and not seen is, metaphorically speaking, an event in sound, which can have ethical and aesthetic virtues of truth and beauty. Lived experiences, whether written as anecdotes or as other kinds of experiential accounts, can shine forth through the use of expressive language. But is this kind of language poetry? Can such an account be regarded as poetic writing? If it is poetic writing, exactly how does it differ from academic writing? Our exploration of questions like these leads us to the tentative conclusion that, as hermeneutic phenomenological researchers, we dwell in the borderland between a "poetic attitude" and a utilitarian writing style