The central theme of my presentation and ongoing PhD research is the intersubjective (moral) experience in teamwork-based learning communities in vocational higher education (university of applied sciences).

This theme can be formulated into a question: What are the experienced and perceived effects of team learning and coaching on the individual ethics of the students and the ethos of the learning teams and communities? This question arises from aristotelian (or neo-aristotelian) idea that the moral development of individuals and communities is grounded in the shared ethos and virtues promoted by those community (Hartman 2006). The chosen methodology for researching ethical development in learning communities will be based on phenomenological inquiry into lived experience of the participants (students and the members of the faculty (coaches) and the alumni (van Manen 2014, Giorgi 2008).

I will base my definitions of moral and ethical on the notion of philosopher Emanuel Levinas of ethics as a particular relation of responsibility to the Other that is fundamental to not only to the experiences of human relationship, but also to the very experience of the self. For Levinas, this ethical relationship of responsibility towards the Other is a nonreciprocal, one-directional relation between the I and the Other, and we enter the sphere of intersubjective morality when the third person enters the scene (Levinas & Nemo 1985, van Manen 2014).

The examples of practical implications of phenomenological attitude towards the inquiry into lived experience and methodological choices will be provided by my ongoing PhD research on team learning and team entrepreneurship in Tampere University of Applied Sciences, Finland. Central themes in the research project include the shared intersubjective experience of working together, trust and how it is engendered, learning together through projects and shared action and reflection, and the relations between different actors in the learning community. As its data, this research will observations and recordings made from team dialogue workshops and interviews of students and their coaches.

Cope, J. (2005). Researching Entrepreneurship through Phenomenological Inquiry: Philosophical and Methodological Issues. International Small Business Journal, 23(2), 163–189. Dall’Alba, G. (2009). Learning Professional Ways of Being: Ambiguities of becoming. Educational Philosophy and Theory, 41(1), 34–45. Englander, M. (2012). The Interview : Data Collection in Descriptive Phenomenological Human Scientific Research. Journal of Phenomenological Psychology, 43(1), 13–35. Gallagher, S., Zahavi, D. (2012). The Phenomenological Mind, 2nd ed., Routledge. Giorgi, A. (2012). The Descriptive Phenomenological Psychological Method. Journal of Phenomenological Psychology, 43(1), 3–12. Giorgi, A. (2009). The Descriptive Phenomenological Method in Psychology: A Modified Huessrlian Approach. Duquesne University Press. Hartman, E. M. (2006). Can we teach character? An aristotelian answer. Academy of Management Learning & Education, 5(1), 68-81. Lévinas, E., & Nemo, P. (1985). Ethics and Infinity. Duquesne University Press. Smith, JA et al. (2009). Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis: Theory, Method and Research. Sage Publications Ltd. Van Manen, M. (1990). Researching Lived Experience: Human Science for an Action Sensitive Pedagogy (Suny Series, Philosophy of Education), 2nd ed. State University of New York Press. Van Manen, M. (2014). Phenomenology of Practice: Meaning-Giving Methods in Phenomenological Research and Writing (Developing Qualitative Inquiry). Left Coast Press.