COMPS 2
THE NEED TO BRING TOGETHER SOCIAL SCIENCES (AND PHILOSOPHICAL APPROACHES?)
POLITICAL
Account for the systemic limitations within which ECE educators and Families live.
Dignification/ of the Profession
The phenomenological attitude as a tool to zoom in/out
The plant has this spiral which sheds and grows new leaves
these leaves
In the end She is where we all are
In a broader space
In an inmense world
which we received and need to pass on
with as much life on it as possible
Without discarting pain
Or emotion
or Rain.
Enriching the discussion and the professional development "revenue" /our revenu de revenir experience
How does the experience comes back to the educator the current and the past and personal one.
One of the concepts that struck me the most of María Montessori's philosophy is her positionality in regards to praise. As Montessori guides, it was forbidden to us to praise the child. You were told to take the question back to the child
"Do you like it?" Arlene asked with a soft smile
"Do YOU like it!?" I replied
"Why did you draw here? What is this line?
This, of course, doesn't mean that you behave in this way all the time. We simply would not have the time and we shouldn't have it because life is happening now and (sometimes) we don't need to see the whole thing to have an intuition of it (in the Husserelian way: "the presence of any object, understood as broadly as possible so that the sky or a hallucination could also be included (Giorgi (1994), p.216).
What instead should be sustained are more ethical ways, more into our current approaches and modes of understanding.
It's not about having to do more but to try to see more, of the whole. In short, to acknowledge that "the Scholarly field of education includes more than social sciences approaches (Ruitenberg, 2018) Even more important, OUR intuition of it. That's why we are just given -and focusing- of one moment or interaction at the time
in the lips of a child who is showing you her drawing
AR & HP
Link RESEARCH & PRACTICE
"there is a pedagogical assumption that plays a key role in my teaching, and that is that theory and practice are two inextricably linked facets of human life."(Halling, 2012, p. 2)
Value EXPERIENCE
"If students are going to come to see experience as an authority, they must first meet up with it, so to speak." (Halling, 2012, p. 3)
Phenomenology encourages us to "Setting aside one’s own preconceptions and seeing something in a new way is no longer a mere slogan." (Halling, 2012, p. 4)
TRANSFORMATIVE AMBITION/CHARACTER
"Perhaps it will even become manifest that the total phenomenological attitude and the epoche belonging to it are destined in essence to effect ... a complete personal transformation." (Husserl, 1936/1970, p. 137 as cited by Finlay, 2008, p. 3)
The phenomenological attitude and specifically the idea of the epoche is a place where we would definetively want to bring educators to. Epoche and its relationship with ataraxia (calmness untroubled by mental or emotional disquiet) is where we could begin to connect with children
CONTEXTUAL MEANINGS
"For Gadamer meanings can never be fixed and are always emergent, contextual and historical. There is always a vantage point which involves particular horizons of meaning. Performing the reduction, therefore, involves becoming aware of one's current horizons.(FINLAY, 2008, p. 3) This stresses both the importance of historicity and also a necessary detachment from it. It also implies and frees ourselves from the anguish of pretending to "get somewhere". That being a particular classroom climate, the disappearance of particular behaviours or the seclusion of others. There's no apprehensible goal other than persevering in the phenomenological attitude which will support us to meet the child -and ourselves- as an Other.
INFINITUDE/SPIRALITY
"In an often quoted statement, Merleau-Ponty is clear that the "most important lesson which the reduction teaches us is the impossibility of a complete reduction" (1945/1962, p. xiv)." (FINLAY, 2008, p. 4)
INTERRUPTION
"The presupposed bases of thought, Merleau-Ponty argues, "are taken for granted, and go unnoticed, and because in order to arouse them and bring them to view, we have to suspend for a moment our recognition of them." (1945/1962, p. xiii).
The ultimate goal of both approaches is to affect the encounter between subjects, between adults and children; to change the world we live in by transforming how we experience it
"Philosophical understandings of the nature of the phenomenological attitude have varied in their emphasis, with the transcendental dimensions developed by Husserl attracting controversy. However, all phenomenological philosophers concur on the need to restrain pre-understandings, to achieve openness, and to access a sphere of lived experience that has eluded traditional scientific research. At the very least, all would probably affirm the value of practicing a partial reduction while being prepared to be transformed by "wonder in the face of the world".(Finlay, 2008, p. 4)
"No work can be consider[ed] to be phenomenological if some sense of the reduction is not articulated and utilized" (Giorgi, 1997, p. 240 as cited in Finlay, 2008, p. 5).
"For researchers to be fully present to the other person, their past knowledge regarding the phenomenon being experienced by the other needs to be held in abeyance, and existential claims concerning what the other person experiences must be resisted." (Finlay, 2008, p. 5) Taking this approach is contradictory to the idea of taking advantage and applying techniques and knowledge related to trauma. It represents tapping into the educator's lived-experience and in the emotional and ethical resources that she has to respond to the child. taking this particular stance is, I would argue, (that which) constitutes a profound healing experience. Being witnessed and being free to be authentic.
"What is under discussion is not whether researchers should engage a stance of active self-reflection but when and how." (Finlay, 2008, p. 5) However, "Rather than getting caught up in questions about the exact degree and stage of reduction being practiced, it is perhaps more helpful to concentrate on the nature of the phenomenological attitude as a whole." (Finlay, 2008, p. 6)
Recognizing that "THE SCHOLARLY FIELD of education -and the practice of education, I would add- includes more than social sciences approaches" (Ruitenberg, March, 1st,2018 [Tweet] is key, however, the next step to this is how can we enact, for instances, philosophical approaches to education and what might be impeding it.
It is clearly insuffcient, and this might be the very reason why "phenomenology is dying everywhere" to pretend that, as van Manen suggested when descring his version of the "hermenutic reduction" and how it is operationalized as "openess": "In the reduction, one needs to overcome one's subjective or private feelings, preferences, inclinations, or expectations that may seduce or tempt one to come to premature, wishful, or one-sided understandings of an experience and that would prevent one from coming to terms with a phenomenon as it is lived through. (van Manen 2002c) The transformative power of phenomenology, I would argue, lays not in severing experiences which are deemed to be intrusive or interruptive, it is, instead, to bracket them not to pretend that we can file them or dismiss them. It's not even about suspending them but instead, they need to be seen as well, as the most accurate example of a phenomenological exploration that we can make -that of our own experience- to ultimately incorporate them into the experience, into the analysis, and into the relationship.
Conceiving of bracketing as the exile of the personal, I would argue, that which is actively killing phenomenology and depriving educators and children to be enriched by its (perspective).
"In my own phenomenological approach I, too, emphasise empathy and openness (Finlay, 2006a, 2006b). At the same time I value researchers' critical self-awareness of their own subjectivity, vested interests, predilections and assumptions and to be conscious of how these might impact on the research process and findings specifically in terms of how they may close down avenues of understanding. In other words, it is not enough simply to acknowledge and be aware of one's own pre-understandings and to somehow bracket these. The process is more complicated, paradoxical and layered. It is a state of constant striving: as the researcher." (Finlay, 2008, p. 6) Excellent way to put it!! Mainly the part about closing down avenues of understanding!!! YES!!!
"Engaging in reflexive analysis after the interview, I realised there was much that I was not bracketing in the process of exploring Ann's lifeworld. My professional knowledge and background might have been the source of some prejudice, but it also gave me a platform from which to view Ann's struggle and empathise. I understood more than a lay person might have done of her condition and experience. Further, I would not have been able to appreciate Ann's therapist understandings had I not shared her professional background. I had the possibility of communicating with, empathising with and understanding Ann by virtue of our belonging to the same world (the world of therapy; the world of women). I was able to reflect Ann's experience on the basis of a sharing common experience. As Husserl says: "A first step is explicitly to be vitally at one with the other person in the intuitive understanding of his [sic] experiencing" (1936/1970, p. 328)." (Finlay, 2008, p. 7)
This passage reflects that the pre-understandings we have not only exist but are active, we are, indeed, meaning-making creatures. So, being aware of that which brings us closer to understand the other, either because we share a common background or an identity, is a powerful and double-edged tool. It can help us make sense of the other's experience but there's also the risk of assimilating it to ours. A shared experience might give us the illusion of understanding and discourage further explorations. A lack of shared experience might either disconnects us or challenge our attention and engagment.
An example of the transformational power of shared attunement: "Then she turned the tables on me. "What's that?," she'd ask. Sometimes I'd be able to answer. At other times, I had no idea.I was hearing new sounds myself! Slowly, I discovered my own perception changing just as Pat's was changing.(...) For me, as for her, the learning was irreversible. This seems a good example of achieving a stance of wonder ... I went beyond my usual being. Yet did I leave myself behind? I don't think so. I was there with Pat. [I was still experiencing myself as existing in the forest with Pat, I was just experiencing myself in a new way.] I wanted to connect with her; I wanted to empathize; I wanted to show her I was trying. I felt for her and I was fundamentally involved in our shared interaction." (Finlay, 2008, p. 8) The last fragment of this quote seems problematic to me. In a way, it seems that Finlay is focusing here on the relationship rather than on the phenomenon. An issue highlighted by Giorgi: "It is important to specify TO WHAT GOAL THE RESEARCH IS DIRECTED. IS IT THE PERSON OR THE PHENOMENON?
"The consequences of the process of research (e.g. developing personal growth, insight, and change) and the GOAL of the research would have to be distinguished" (1994, p. 217)
Is it maybe that when we suspend or interrupt our pre-understandings we might be able to enter the spiritual dimension in the encounter if we let the other interpellate us? In other words, is that space of intertwined experience only possible when we make ourselves available for the other?
"Reflecting on the encounter, it seems I stumbled upon the very moment of wonder the reduction seeks to achieve. There was a spiritual dimension to this moment with Pat, enabling me to grasp what Husserl might have had in mind when he likened the personal transformation needed in the reduction to a religious conversion. It is worth asking if in this special moment of experience, I approach Husserl's transcendental phenomenological reduction--his more radical version of the epoche where we stand "above the world ... at the gate of entrance to the realm, never before entered" (1936/1970, pp. 152-153). On reflection, I believe that I had not left myself nor had I bracketed my whole being-in-the world. I was still experiencing myself as existing in the forest with Pat. I was just experiencing myself in a new way, expanding my being-in-the-world. I was thus still in the phenomenological psychological reduction dancing between my experiencing and my empathy for Pat's experience, between my habitualities and fresh modes of being." (Finlay, 2008, p. 8)
(T)he perspectives combine in an advancing enrichment of meaning and a continuing development of meaning ... To inquire into the ... subjective manners of givenness, i.e., into how an object ... exhibits itself as being and being such, we enter a realm of more and more involved and very remarkable expositions. (Husserl,1936/1970, p. 158-159 as cited by Finlay, 2008, p. 8-9).
Conceiving the phenomenological attitude as a spiraling experience seems/feels liberating. This implies that there's no point of arrival, that there's no attainable end. The very nature of the exploration highlights the organic aspect of the exploration which ensues/distills from the living human nature of those enacting it/of the participants.
"My research encounter with Kenny raised several issues relating to the use of the phenomenological attitude in research practice. Firstly, it highlights how the process of engaging the epoche is intertwined with reflection which can occur both during and after the research encounter. It is a moot point whether this reflection is a necessary part of the epoche or a separate process.(...) For one thing, researchers need to be reflexive to ensure their reflections are also subject to the reduction. In this sense, the reduction is more a stance or tone which permeates the phenomenological reflection and research process as a whole."(2008, p. 10) This quote reminds me of another where Finlay mentions that she is more inclined to consider both processes reflection and reduction as happening simultaneously (Pending to find that quote...) The other aspect in relation to spirality has to do with the idea of movement and with acknowledging that between reduction and reflection there's also a back and forth movement which is constant, inevitable, embodied and organic.
REFLEXIVITY
click to edit
Is it possible not to "co-constitute meanings"? (2008, p. 10)
It would seem to me from what she described that the first thing she drew from in her interpretation was her own bodily sensation and not "the accepted psychological knowledge positions (2008, p. 10)". Indeed, she says: "I suddenly realised that I was reacting quite strongly to him and became aware my own bodily responses. I remember noticing how my arms were folded tightly across my stomach. I was protecting myself, but also 'holding my self in' and somehow 'holding myself together' (2008, p. 9)
There was a bodily/embodied mirroring of the emotion that happened here (or happens in every case??) which is what might make the phenomenological exercise so challenging...?
"The phenomenological attitude has been explicated as the process of retaining an empathic openness to the world while reflexively identifying and restraining pre-understandings so as to engage phenomena in themselves." (2008, p. 10)
It's important to explore how the idea of empathy is conceived by Husserl in the first place. Empathy is the translation of the german word Einfühlung...(Maybe to be developed or not later)
On the limits of language and findings resulting from it use
"Ultimately, whatever meanings are articulated in research, much more remains
unsaid and our findings always remain provisional, partial and emergent. The relationship between the “said” (explicit) and the “unsaid” (implicit) remains obscure. Bodily, relational understanding exceeds any language description we can come up with. “All human speaking is finite in such a way that there is within it an infinity of meanings to be elaborated” (Levin, 1997, p. 63).(Finlay, 2016, p. 189)