Session Information
03 SES 09, Writing Our Way to Understanding Learning: The Phenomenon of Learning in Austria’s National Middle School Reform Pilot
Research Workshop
Contribution
In this workshop, participants will explore the phenomenon of learning by capturing the human experience of learning in the form of anecdotes (van Manen 1990) and conducting three forms of thematic analysis to reveal the essence of those experiences. We will work with participants’ own lived experience as well as data from a national study on learning in diverse classroom communities at the University of Innsbruck in Austria, the goal of which is to investigate phenomena of personal learning and development of 10-year-olds at pilot schools in Austria’s highly political reform project “Neue Mittelschule” (NMS). The research design firmly places research in the reality of everyday school life with the aim of understanding the human experience of learning, its beginning and dramaturgy which only discloses itself upon closure (Meyer-Drawe 2008). By taking a hermeneutic phenomenological approach, researchers capture the prereflexive, pretheoretical “lived experiences” of learners in the diverse classroom communities of the research sites in anecdotes gained through participant observation and conversations with learners and teachers. Writing – and writing as thinking – plays a crucial role and the approach places a high demand on the craft of writing to capture and point to the human experience of learning and further reveal the essence of learning experience through eidetic reduction. Maintaining strong orientation to the data, or that which is “given”, while bracketing theories and concepts (Husserl) we might normally bring to topics of research poses a particular challenge for researchers in the field of phenomenology.
Method
Expected Outcomes
References
Husserl, E. (1970). The Idea of Phenomenology. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff. Langeveld, M. (1983). Reflections on Phenomenology and Pedagogy. In: Phenomenology and Pedagogy, Vol 1, 1, 5-10. http://www.phenomenologyonline.com/articles/langeveld5.html <7.7.2009> Lippitz, W. (1980). „Lebenswelt“ oder die Rehabilitierung vorwissenschaftlicher Erfahrung. Weinheim: Beltz. Lippitz, W. (2003). Differenz und Fremdheit. Frankfurt am Main: Lang. Meyer-Drawe, K. (2004). „Phänomenologische Erziehungswissenschaft“. In: Krüger, H.-H./ Grunert, C. (Hg.): Wörterbuch Erziehungswissenschaft. Wiesbaden, 376–381. Meyer-Drawe, K. (2008). Diskurse des Lernens. München: Fink. Schratz, M. (2009). „Lernseits von Unterricht“. Lernende Schule, 12(46-47), 16-21. Van Manen, M. (1990) Researching Lived Experience: human science for an action-sensitive pedagogy. New York: SUNY. Van Manen, M. (1991) The Tact of Teaching. The Meaning of Pedagogical Thoughtfulness. Ontario: Althouse. Van Manen, M. (2002) Writing in the Dark: Phenomenological Studies in Interpretive Inquiry. Ontario: Althouse.
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