What is the meaning within peopleâs experiences of being a university educator? This question lies at the heart of this book. Drawing on my doctoral study of lecturersâ experiences, I aim to offer a fresh analysis of being an educator in higher education. My approach follows in the tradition of hermeneutic phenomenology, sometimes called interpretive phenomenology (see Dreyfus, 1991, pp. 30â35; Heidegger, 1962, pp. 58â63). This means my central task is to âuncoverâ what we already know but perhaps easily forget and struggle to put into words (Smythe, 2011). I seek to go beyond a rich description of what the everyday experience is âreally likeâ, towards understanding hidden meanings that lie in peopleâs experience of being (Palmer, 1969; Smythe, 2011; van Manen, 1990; Wright-St Clair, 2015). What drew me to this kind of philosophical quest were my early experiences of lecturing in a Bachelor of Applied Social Science program at an Australian higher education institution. My interests in âexperienceâ, âbeingâ and âmeaningâ, however, did not form straight away.
I began my full-time PhD in early 2012 with an assumption that there is a problem with the conventional teaching-learning styles in higher education. These styles, which I felt obliged to mimic, were plainly dull for both educator and student . And these banal styles seemed to neglect more âcontemplativeâ ways of knowing. So, I planned my PhD around searching the globe for âbetterâ teaching solutions, which educators like me could use in our respective disciplines. But during my first year of candidature, I gradually realised that by looking at theories of what educators âshouldâ be doing, or what âshouldâ be happening in higher education, I had overlooked the lived experience of what âdoesâ happen to educators. This oversight included my own experiences that I had already lived as a lecturer (at the time, I was teaching community development, sociology and youth studies for undergraduate counselling and youth work students). Gadamerâs concern, voiced in his foreword to the second edition of Truth and Method , became my own:
My real concern was and is philosophic: not what we do or what we ought to do, but what happens to us over and above our wanting and doing. (2013, pp. xxvâxxvi)
While discovering a growing body of research giving voice to the student experience in higher education, few studies seemed to have examined the educator experience. Even fewer had explored the phenomenon of being a university educator. The rare studies I found that directly addressed this phenomenon had done so by asking academics to conceptualise what being a university educator meant to them, how they go about educating, what they are trying to accomplish as educators, and so forth (for example, see Ă
kerlind, 2004, p. 365), rather than asking them to describe their experiences. Yes, there was a wealth of literature about teaching in higher education waiting to be pored over, brimming with ideas about what to teach, how to teach it, and why it is taught. Yet it was difficult to find studies that gave serious attention to the more experiential and existential meanings of being a university educator. I wondered if the compelling conversations about the âwhatâ, âhowâ and âwhyâ might stifle dialogue and reflection on âbeingâ. It became clear that the meaning of being ordinarily goes without saying (Heidegger, 1962). In light of this revelation, and not without some resisting, my interest yielded to what I had missed, in relation to something I already saw myself as being. As T.S. Eliot wrote, âWe had the experience but missed the meaningâ (1963, p. 194). Contrary to my initial intentions, I decided to take an unexpected path towards understanding a familiar experience in a fresh way, rather than a path towards solving a familiar problem.
Understanding Being Through Stories
Iâve only been teaching here in the last six months. Yeah, I would say I feel at home here. Partly to do with the course content but also the staff, making me feel like a contributing member. I think that came from the impetus of how I actually came to be employed here. It was sparked from just a conversation that happened with the supervisor. I said Iâm interested in being here, and there was a positive response to that, and that positive feeling is stemmed from that first interaction ⌠(Interview 6: Story 1)
This book is built around stories like the one above, which was recounted by an educator in this study. While educators expressed many interesting views and beliefs during my conversations with them, it was their recollections of how specific events and encounters had happened to them that became the valued data for analysis (Friesen, 2012; Henriksson & Saevi, 2012; van Manen, 1990). Stories about particular occasions were valued over theoretical data because I learnt they were more capable of invoking a sense of experiential understanding. I came to appreciate that the kind of story that moves us is the one that tells of a recognisable experience in terms of a specific event that has happened to a person. And yet, it was not always easy to elicit this kind of story during the interviews with lecturers.
Through the interview process I discovered that, as van Manen , McClelland and Plihal (2007) identify, a phenomenological researcher may think she or he has obtained experiential stories, but instead what they have really gathered are opinions, perceptions, views and explanations â not accounts of the experiences themselves (p. 88). I also noticed a common tendency to generalise our life experiences, rather than recount concrete examples (van Manen, 1990). So, I had to clarify the kind of story that I was seeking â stories that can let everyday life show itself as it is lived. I discovered that different terminology has been used to describe the kind of story I was seeking to elicit during my interviews with lecturers. I heard van Manen (1990, pp. 115â121) speak about âanecdotesâ, Caelli (2001, p. 278) speak about ânarratives of experienceâ, and Benner (1994, pp. 108â110) speak about ânarrative accountsâ. Regardless of terminology, these researchers commonly refer to a personâs detailed description of a particular experience or happening (van Manen, 1990, p. 67). I found my bearings in van Manenâs suggestion that a story of lived experience:
- 1.is a personâs detailed description of a past experience
- 2.usually conveys one particular event or incident
- 3.is a personâs description of the experience from the inside, the feelings, the mood, the lingering effects of the event, etc.
- 4.includes important concrete detail
- 5.often contains several quotes (what was said, done, etc.)
- 6.avoids causal explanations, generalisations or abstract interpretations
- 7.is told in conversational and accessible language rather than fancy phrases or academic terminology (adapted from van Manen, 1990, pp. 64â65; van Manen et al., 2007, p. 93).
Methodologically, stories like the one above will take the lead in this book, b...