Session Information
10 SES 08 A, Research in Teacher Education: Cultures and Methodologies
Paper Session
Contribution
Purpose of the Study:
In the era of standardization all over the world, teachers increasingly feel that they are becoming deskilled laborers or technicians, experiencing the loss of their autonomy and agency (Apple, 2009). The current educational system, characterized as control, efficiency, and accountability, has created a “practitioner proof mode of practice” (Dunne, 2005, p. 375). Teachers’ praxis is, indeed, endangered as local context and local knowledge are deemphasized and the role of teachers as decision makers is diminished (Kemmis and Smith, 2008). More and more teachers lose their teaching identities and lack opportunities to critically think what it means to be a teacher and teacher researcher.
For the last two decades, however, teacher action research has thrived as an educational movement despite the current conservative, circumscribing political context (Cochran-Smith & Lytle, 2009). Teacher action research is acknowledged as a way to value and honor teachers’ practical knowledge and to reclaim their autonomy and agency. Many schools and colleges of education in different countries, e.g., United States, Europe, and Australia, have developed entire courses devoted to teacher action research.
The purpose of my research is to explore the meaning of teacher action research and its role as a phenomenological Bildungsroman, a story of personal growth of becoming. I hope that my research will inform administrators and policy makers of the importance of teacher research as professional development and find ways to support the teacher inquiry movement as a way to improve education, promoting teacher praxis.
Theoretical Framework:
Phenomenology is a disclosure of the world, a philosophy which puts essences back into existence (Merleau-Ponty, 1958/2007), and the science of phenomena (Heidegger, 1962/2008). According to Heidegger, “phenomenology is our way of access to what is to be the theme of ontology, and it is our way of giving it demonstrative precision. Only as phenomenology, is ontology possible” (Heidegger, 1962/2008, p. 60). Hence, the phenomenologist’s main task is to reveal human experiences with attention, wonder, awareness, and intention to seize the meaning of the world and to let the meaning come into being (Merleau-Ponty, 1958/2007).
Phenomenology had a significant impact in the history of modern Western philosophy (Peters, 2009), but it was neglected and remained vague in the educational field, partly due to the prevalent positivism in education (Pinar & Reynolds, 1992). Currently, however, there is a resurgence of interest in phenomenology as a philosophy and a research movement in education in response to the complex and complicated phenomena of the world we live in (Dall'Alba, 2009). Dall’Alba explicates how phenomenology can offer deeper insights into what it means to live and what it means to teach in such a complex society.
Hence, phenomenology allows me to bring out the meaning of the lived experience of teacher researchers to the core and reflect more deeply on the way how they make sense of their role as teacher-researchers, focusing on their feelings, perceptions, interpretations, and meanings that they hold toward their lived experiences.
Method
Expected Outcomes
References
References Apple, M. (2009). Controlling the work of teachers. In D. J. Flinders & S. J. Thornton (Eds.), The curriculum studies reader (3 ed., pp. 199-213). New York, NY: Routledge. Cochran-Smith, M., & Lytle, S. L. (2009). Inquiry as stance. New York, NY: Teachers College Press. Dall'Alba, G. (2009). Phenomenology and education: an introduction. Educational Philosophy and Theory, 41(1), 7-9. Davey, N. (2006). Unquiet understanding: Gadamer's philosophical hermeneutics. Albany: State University of New York Press. Dunne, J. (2005). An intricate fabric: understanding the rationality of practice. Pedagogy, Culture and Society, 13(3), 367-389. Kemmis, S., & Smith, T. (2008). Praxis and praxis development. In S. Kemmis & S. T. (Eds.), Enabling praxis: Challenges for education (pp. 3-14). Rotterdam, The Netherlands: Sense Publishers. Heidegger, M. (1962/2008). Being and time. New York, NY: Harper & Row. McNiff, J., & Whitehead, J. (2006). All you need to know about action research. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications. Merleau-Ponty, M. (1958/2007). Phenomenology of perception. New York: Routledge. Peters, M. A. (2009). Editorial: Heidegger, phenomenology, education. Educational Philosophy and Theory, 41(1), 1-6. Pinar, W. F., & Reynolds, W. M. (Eds.). (1992). Understanding curriculum as phenomenological and deconstructed text. New York: Teachers College Press. Swales, M. (1978). The German bildungsroman from Wieland to Hesse. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
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