James C. Field

What constitutes becoming experienced in teaching and learning

In this paper, we attempt to address one of the central questions for teachers and teaching: how is it that teachers are able to see and act appropriately in concrete circumstances?To do so, we examine the ontological meaning of experience in teacher education. The discussion is anchored in the concrete particulars of a grade 5 art lesson. Our intent is to show the dynamic processes involved in becoming experienced as a teacher and to draw connections between experience and practical wisdom (phronesis). Thus, we argue that phronesis is not so much a form of knowledge as it is dynamic experience. We argue for the development of what John Dewey called educational experience in teacher education, and in particular its dynamic edge: the making of wise and practical judgments. We assert that such action is made possible, not so much by translating (unsituated) theory into practice through the deployment of specialized technique, or by inducing general, abstract propositions from concrete particulars, but primarily from being mindfully embodied. The primary task for teacher education then becomes to help prospective teachers be in touch, intimately related with the processes of actual experience, such that they learn to be open to their experience, to be radically undogmaticFin touch with self, others, and the character of the circumstances in which they find themselves. r 2001 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.

“Disproportion, monstrousness, and mystery”: Ecological and ethical reflections on the initiation of student-teachers into the community of education

Abstract This paper begins with a brief description of some features of initiation rites as described by Victor Turner. This is used to suggest ways of understanding some of the experiences of student teachers facing their first practicum experience. Students often come to view their lived-experience of the world and their loving relationships with children as unreliable and turn towards an increasing literalism, demanding that teaching be recast into explicit, univocal rules and that our relations with children be rendered into controllable and manageable “object-relations.” With such a turn, the ethos of the community of teaching (along with its ecological character) is disrupted. It is suggested that student-teacher education has some of the character of “initiation into a community” — an initiation, so to speak, back into our living relations with children and with what we teach — and therefore our task as teacher educators can be considered deeply ethical and ecological at its heart.

“A Tribe Apart”: Sexuality and Cancer in Adolescence:

This qualitative study employed hermeneutic phenomenology and narrative inquiry to examine the topic of sexuality and adolescents with cancer from the perspectives of survivors who had experienced cancer as adolescents. This investigation examined the potentially sensitive, disquieting, and often taboo issue of sexuality in the interest of optimizing wellness in young people, and, ultimately, in the health of adults. Understanding the adolescent body as a sensitive, sexual, and developing self can enrich our understanding of adolescent cancer and promote best health care and practices, examining ways that we might mitigate the long-term effects of arrested or delayed development of sexual identity. In this article, we discuss phase 1 of the study, which used hermeneutics as the method of inquiry. Findings included a general experience of adolescents having a sense of “losing themselves” while at the same time finding themselves in a new light. Other findings include the connection between sexuality, self, and identity; the unique “tribe” of adolescents with cancer; the necessity for sexuality to take a backseat to cancer; the changing mirror images from self and others; sexuality and fertility; and, ultimately, that sexuality is a relational experience.