Doctoral Education and Causation in reflexive Self-formation

Author(s):

Aidan SeeryAndrew Loxley

Conference:

ECER 2009

Network:

22. Research in Higher Education

Format:

Paper

Session Information

22 SES 02 C, Doctoral Education in Universities

Paper Session

Time:

2009-09-28

11:15-12:45

Room:

HG; HS 29

Chair:

Barbara Zamorski

Contribution

The demand to place educative processes in the arena of “outcome-based” applied social science, yielding reliable “known-to-work” models, is a feature of education debate both in Europe and beyond. The positivist ontological and epistemological assumptions of this approach are, for the most part, well rehearsed. In contrast, the traditional European discourse of Bildung or self-formation even in the light of Adorno and Lyotard's critique of the original Humboldtian idea, implies a different dispotif with assumptions historically in opposition to a dominant positivism. Research on educational processes in either tradition concerned with change and transformation must engage significantly with some notion of causality. This paper attempts to explore a number of cognate issues around, firstly, the role of the university as a site for self-formation; secondly, the intersection of pedagogical and research processes with university's structural and cultural self-understandings and as the social and intellectual context of individual change; thirdly, the impact of the above upon the narratives of formation and transformation of a cohort of doctoral students. More specifically, we wish to discuss the problematic of causality within reflexive, formative processes in the linkages between macro-structural features of institutional life with the doctoral programme and the students’ biographies.

Method

The theoretical framework is provided in part by approaches in narrative research and discourse analysis that, on the assumption that the narrative unit is the primary form of meaning construction on experience, provide means of understanding not only initial, individual reactions but also those narratives that are constructed and assumed as a result of dialogue and transaction. The concepts of causality developed are contingent on the acknowledgment that formative change processes are not first-order observables and importantly take place over a long period of time that extends both into the past and towards the future (Koller, 1999)

Expected Outcomes

The findings suggests that doctoral student narratives of self-formation and transformation are not significantly aligned with many of the features of the published educational policies of the university or of the "outcomes" discourse prevalent in European Union pronouncements. Local, cultural and personal life-commitments, not readily amenable to "scientific" research and notions of increased purposive agency and moral and professional responsibility, are more likely to feature in these narratives. The causal connections or mechanisms bringing about these changes demand a notion of causality that allows for mutivariate, reciprocal and other possible types.

References

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Author Information

Aidan Seery

Trinity College Dublin, University of Dublin

School of Education

Dublin

Andrew Loxley

Trinity College Dublin, University of Dublin, Ireland (Republic of)

Education