EXISTENTIAL INVITATIONAL PEDAGOGY IN QUALITATIVE EDUCATIONAL RESEARCH SUPERVISION

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EXISTENTIAL INVITATIONAL PEDAGOGY IN QUALITATIVE
EDUCATIONAL RESEARCH SUPERVISION

• Exploring ways to foster broad range learning in
  adult, vocational and workplace education research

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SETTING THE AGENDA

• This paper wants to explore an existential
  invitational pedagogy in research supervision
  which would invite an engaged and ethical
  response from post graduate educational
  researchers to complement the critical and
  technical competence also required.

3
The dilemna of fostering broad range learning in
HRD supervision

• Existential pedagogy in HDR supervision seeks to
  foster broad range learning that links learning
  to do with learning to be.
• Existentialist choice and resistance may help
  understanding the epistemology and ontology of
  broad range learning in HDR research
• The existential pedagogy in HDR supervision seeks
  to create invitational scenarios in four modes of
  knowing

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EXISTENTIAL PEDAGOGY

• Such a pedagogy with its implicit challenges for
  personal choice and social engagement and
  resistance against forms of entropy, is referred
  to here as an existential pedagogy. (Estrela,
  2008 Greene,1974 Rasheed, 2006).
• It seeks to engage the whole person of the
  learner in a guided experience, reflective
  contemplation and critical consideration of
  educational research practice and to precipitate
  a committed choice for authentic acceptance and
  tactful implementation.

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FOUR PARTS OF EXISTENTIAL INVITATIONAL PEDAGOGY
IN SUPERVISION

• Supervision in HDR education
• Existential approaches
• Herons four elements in learning
• Applying existential approached to learning in
  HDR research

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A. SUPERVISION IN HDR EDUCATION
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BEING SUPERVISED

• MA The sink or swim distant model
• Jolly good jolly bad
• PhD The collegial distant
• inquiry, discovery, validation

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HDR SUPERVISION

• ONE TO ONE INFORMAL PRACTICE
• Mapping the territory The ten point plan
• Different challenges at different times
• COMMUNAL PROCESSES
• Meeting in the supervisors house for a meal with
  shared food
• Show and tell
• Invited challenges
• Collaboration
• Support in hard times, rejoicing in achievement

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DISCOURSES OF HDR SUPERVISION

• A. CONCERN WITH PROCESS MANAGEMENT
• RETENTION AND COMPLETION
• CONCERN WITH OUTCOMES AND PRODUCTS
• THE THESIS
• B. CONCERN WITH STUDENTS DEVELOPMENT
• SKILLS AND CAPACITIES
• CONCERN WITH STUDENTS BEING
• PERSONAL, SOCIAL CRITICAL TRANSFORMATION

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NEGOTIATION OF IDENTITY IN DOCTORAL EDUCATION

• doctoral education is as much about identity
  formation as it is about knowledge production
  (Green, 2005 p. 153).
• Postgrad study is not simply coming to know it
  is also a matter of coming to be (Green Lee,
  1995). It is the production of subjectivity.
  Petersen (2007 p.476)
• This is a major concern of the existential
  approach

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B. EXISTENTIAL APPROACHES
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Essentialist and Existentialist

• An essentialist approach imagines research taking
  place between the researcher and an objectified
  entity being explored. Supervision supports the
  HDR students technical capacity
• The existential approach to HDR supervision sees
  research as chosen purposive acts performed by
  socially located people with their imagination
  and desires. Supervision needs to be attuned to
  the personal journey implicit in HDR research.
  (Rasheed, 2007,).

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Existentialisms three dialectical tensions

• Existence and transcendence
• Choice boundary situations
• Self and other

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Existence and transcendence narratives and meta
narrative

• My capacity for transcendent thought tells me
  that everything I do or say takes its relevance
  and point from my own existence, in ever widening
  circles - how I live with 1) myself 2) others,
  3) society and 4) the universe. Yet I know with
  great certainty that comparatively soon I will
  cease to exist at least in the present form
  that is me. Cross (2005p3)

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Choice and boundary situations The resistance
challenge

• Karl Jaspers an existential psychiatrist, pointed
  out that at different times during life, humans,
  in their life choices are called upon to confront
  difficult and precarious states such as illness,
  loss of employment, natural disasters and the
  like. The person needs to develop authenticity in
  order to perform honourably and to avoid
  colluding in a downward spiral of unauthenticity.
  

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Self and Other the relational challenge

• For Heidegger (1962/1927), being-in-the world,
  more generally, necessarily incorporates being
  with othersthat through being with others, we
  learn to think and act as the generalised they
  do. In learning to think and act as they do, we
  also take a stand on those thoughts and actions,
  as well as on who we are becoming Gloria
  DallAlba (2009p.42)

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An existential pedagogy in HDR in education

• The following explores an existential pedagogy
  which seeks to respects the autonomy and life
  struggles of HDR students while inviting them
  into four related forms of learning that fosters
  Being, Connection and Action,
• Invitation is a key element in existential
  pedagogy since it is non prescriptive, risky,
  powerful and interpersonally intense.

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INVITATION

• I risk inviting
• I want you here.
• And when you come
• I feel enriched, believe
• you feel the same.
•  
• If you refuse, that says
• I have no worth to you,
•  
• And if, when you agree to come,
• you dont show,
• your absence makes a wound
• and I fall lower
• than before I invited.
• No-one invites for fun
• if you say drop in if you like
• that is not a real inviting
• theres no risk, a bob each way

• Inviting is for keeps
• a friend, a lover in pursuit
• no half measures.
• Its black or white,
• not blurred or luke warm.
•  
• And guests know the rules
• to dress up, cradle
• the eggshell of friendship
• at your place
•  
• And trust that
• while you stand
• unarmed and welcoming
• your guests will not turn
• refuse to dance the partys tune
• humiliate and bring you down
• and turn your grapes of bounty
• into ash.

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C. HERONS FOUR WAYS OF KNOWING AND LEARNING
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A variation of Herons four ways of interlinked
knowing

• Experiential knowing is evident when we feel the
  presence of some entity.
• Presentational knowing is evident in our grasp
  of imaginal patterns as expressed particularly
  in narrative and artistic forms.
• Propositional knowing is expressed in
  theoretical and analytical statements,
• Practical knowing is drawn directly from action
  (1996a p. 33).

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Existential invitational approaches to the four
modes of learning

• Immersion through direct participation in
  activities related to research
• Mythopoetic contemplation through stories and
  images of educational research in action
• critical and practical appraisal through
  consideration of ethics, capacity design
• Reflective tactful practice through attending to
  the actual embodied and implemented activities of
  the research inquiry

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MAPPING EXISTENTIAL PEDAGOGY ON HERONS
DIMENSIONS OF LEARNING

• 1. Immersion in educational practice is a
  specific form of Herons experiential knowing
• 2. Imaginal myth making or mythopoesis is a
  specific development of presentational knowing
  developed by James Hillman (1981) and has strong
  links to the narrative nature of human vocational
  reflection.
• 3. Critical appraisal is a form of propositional
  knowing relating to ethics, capacity and design
• 4. Engagement in reflective and tactful choice is
  a specific form of Herons extension into
  practical purposive action.

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D. EXISTENTIAL PEDAGOGY IN HDR SUPERVISION
INVITATIONS AND PRELIMINARIES FOR FOUR KINDS
OF LEARNING
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I. INVITATION TO BE IMMERSED IN EDUCATIONAL
RESEARCH PRACTICE

• It is suggested here that existential
  experiential knowing in HDR education can be
  generated firstly by inviting the trainee
  educator to become immersed in educational
  research events in order to get the feel of
  what research practice is actually like. This
  seminar is such an activity

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Inviting the stance of openness to adventure and
experience

• The educator needs to invite a pre-disposition of
  openness to experience inviting the HDR students
  to allow the research experience to speak to
  them.

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II. INVITATION TO IMAGINAL MYTH MAKING IN
EDUCATINAL PRACTICE

• Aspiring educators are invited to dwell on
  dramatised stories and images of events and
  encounters in the educators role they are about
  to take on and allow them to become present
  imagistically to their consciousness.

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INVITING AN IMAGINAL STANCE

• The educator needs to invite a change of mood
  from being ready for and entering into raw
  experience to attending imaginally to research
  stories particularly stories with weight and
  strong appeal the mythopoetic stories.
• The new researchers can be introduced to heroic
  exponents of research whose books are celebrated
  who perform at conferences.
• Maxine Greene is such a person for me

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IMAGINAL KNOWING

• The foundational idea behind mythopoesis is the
  notion of imaginal knowing popularised by James
  Hillman, which he defined as the contemplative
  use of the imagination not to create fantasies of
  an unreal world but to assist people to dwell on
  the significance and depth of real experiences
  and allow their implications to impact on them
  directly without too much analysis and
  explanation

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III. INVITATION TO CRITICAL APPRAISAL AROUND
EDUCATIONAL PRACTICE
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INVITING A SCEPTICAL STANCE

• The educator invites a change of tack among the
  aspirant educators by introducing sceptical
  questions about the research project.

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THREE DIMENSIONS OF CRITICAL APPRAISAL

• Ethical/critical
• Is the project worthwhile? Is it useful
• Is it ethical is anyone diminished by this
• Whose interests are being served
• Technical/practical critical
• Can the inquiry be done with the resources and
  the design
• Is the design efficient and effective?
• Appropriate/critical
• Have I the will and the talents for this inquiry

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IV. INVITATION TO ENGAGE IN REFLECTIVE TACTFUL
EDUCATIONAL RESEARCH PRACTICE

• The aspiring educator is invited to engage in
  purpose educational action and allows the
  experience and effects and consequences to speak.
  
• There is the final move from the logos of
  critical appraisal to the actual challenge of
  tactful practice.

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INVITING A TACTFUL READINESS FOR ACTION

• The educator moves again to invite a desire for
  action with the self effacement of the mentor not
  wanting to come between the educator and her or
  his first acts of tactful and reflective practice
  

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Engaging in reflective and tactful educational
practice

• Knowledge sometimes rises in and through
  practice, through our corporeal, temporal,
  spatial and relational lived experiences. And
  these experiences, these kinds of tacit knowledge
  are hard sometimes impossible to put into words
  because they reside more deeply in our bodies
  than our minds. Henriksson 2007p.6
• But in response to the invitation to tactful and
  reflective awareness in educational practice, the
  educator can be sensitised to this dimension

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CAN IT BE POSSIBLE??

• Can the research supervision be enriched by an
  existential pedagogy that invitates HDR students
  to
• Taste educational research practice in action,
• Hear dramatised mythic stories of qualitative
  research practice in education,
• Appraise and critique plans for ethical, well
  designed and personally appropriate educational
  research projects
• Engage tactfully in educational research that is
  passionate, engaged and reflective.