Bas Levering

Phenomenological Anthropology in the Netherlands and Flanders

One of the first to apply phenomenological method in the Netherlands was the Philosopher and linguist Hendrick J. Pos (1898–1955). He invited Husserl in 1928 to give the so-called Amsterdamer Vortrage (Amsterdam Lectures) on phenomenological psychology. But it was not until after World War II that phenomenology became more deeply established in Dutch philosophy. The primary sway of influence now came from the south, from France. Heidegger’s influence was important, but it was especially the French existentialists such as Jean-Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir, Albert Camus, Gabriel Marcel, Emmanuel Levinas, and in particular Maurice Merleau-Ponty who dominated the philosophical scene in the Netherlands and Flanders.

And now you are getting a teacher with such a long name

Abstract The first school day is marked by strangeness: strange children and strange parents in a relatively strange institution and meet up with strange adults in the guise of teachers. What happens in this encounter between strangers? Is it reasonable to expect that strong and lasting relations are about to develop? Does the feeling of strangeness gradually disappear, or does this initial sense of strangeness frustrate the teachers pedagogical understanding of the students? A critical pedagogical analysis and a phenomenological interpretation of a teachers welcoming talk to children and parents on the first day of school are presented and compared.

Concept Analysis as Empirical Method

Although there is not much support anymore for a clear cut distinction between object-language and meta-language, the view is generally accepted that the outcomes of concept analysis concern knowledge of the structures of language and not knowledge of reality. So it is rather risky to present concept analysis as an empirical method. Rules about language use, however, play an important part in what people do and how they behave and thus inform about specific parts of social reality. The so-called ‘thick concepts’ provide a special access to the way people interact. In this article, several examples of the analysis of ‘thick concepts’ are presented. In some cases, outcomes of concept analysis turn out to be strictly language and cultural bound; in other cases, conceptual knowledge appears to transcend those boundaries. The fact that empirical research is often nothing else than a form of language analysis calls for a tuning of conceptual-analytic and empirical research.

Educational Research: Language and Content. Lessons in Publication Policies from the Low Countries

Owing to the growing internationalisation of research, educational researchers in the Netherlands are increasingly expected to publish through the medium of the English language. Though this undoubtedly benefits the communication between scholars, there are also side-effects. This paper discusses problematic issues from three perspectives: (i) the use of a non-native language for communication between scholars in the area of education; (ii) the use either exclusively, or not, of a publication record of such publications for purposes of recruitment and promotion of staff; (iii) the relationships between research groups of different disciplines and/or universities. It will be argued that the demand to publish exclusively in a non-native language has damaging effects as far as the context of education is concerned. Not only will it lead to a denial of one’s own background and culture, but the uniformisation, (which is the result of it), will also stifle the rich educational landscape by allowing the publication only of items of international interest. The model of the natural sciences is not adequate for the context of education because of the necessarily more local character of the content of educational problems and production of strategies to deal with these. Thus it will become clear that the integrity of the educational researcher is at stake as the research area is selected.

Martinus Jan Langeveld: Modern Educationalist of Everyday Upbringing

It was Kyoto School scholar Shuji Wada who went to study with the Dutch educationalist Martinus Jan Langeveld (1905–1989) in The Netherlands in the 1960s. He invited him to visit Kyoto after his retirement a number of times and saw that Langeveld’s main work was translated into Japanese. That’s the way Langeveld’s thought became of great impact of the Kyoto School as a whole. This chapter focuses on Langeveld’s theoretical work. After a brief introduction to his life and work, Langeveld’s outlook on his subject is explained: pedagogy as practical science. Then his pedagogic theory and how it links in with anthropology and developmental psychology are explained. His particular use of the phenomenological method is examined next, showing how this connects with situation analysis: the analysis of what those who are responsible for bringing up children are to do. Finally Langeveld’s relevance today is considered.