Peter Willis

Looking for What it's Really Like: phenomenology in reflective practice

ABSTRACT Reflective processes in a reflective practice cycle tend to begin with accounts of significant incidents in a practitioners activities which are then appraised, interrogated and assessed in a variety of ways depending on the agenda of the inquirer. This paper suggests that instrumental and critical accounts of practice may be enriched by an expressive approach which seeks to portray rather than analyse the activities that make up professional practice. Using an expressive approach, significant events can be explored as experiences of the practitioner and their “livedness” and texture made apparent. The foundations of the expressive approach are shown to be two linked forms of phenomenological inquiry, the empathetic and the intuiting. When the expressive approach is applied to reflective practice, it is seen to make an enriching contribution particularly, but not exclusively, to its initial describing phase and through it to the whole reflective cycle.

The Relative Contributions of Institutional and Workplace Learning Environments: An Analysis of Apprenticeship Training.

Abstract This article reports an exploration of the experiences and perceptions of apprentices, workplace host employers and off-the-job teachers engaged in an apprenticeship programme regarding the nature and contributions of on and off-the-job environments to apprentices’ learning. An interpretive (expressive) approach was taken, using individual interviews and focus groups. Learning on-the-job was perceived to be more real life and focused on the ‘how’. Learning off-the-job was less pressured, broader in scope, more theoretical and concerned with ‘why’. The findings indicate that these two environments make valuable, but different contributions to apprentices’ learning and supports the need for both.

Getting a Feel for the Work: Mythopoetic Pedagogy for Adult Educators Through Phenomenological Evocation

Education for vocational development has to combine a focus on career opportunities on the one hand with realistic attention to the learners’ capacities and inclinations on the other. Such a curriculum needs to have something for the head and the heart. It is contended in this chapter that evocative representative pedagogy has such a holistic agenda. Evocative representation in vocational and career development draws on two complementary sources. The first is mythopoetic reflection, in which learners imagine being in various work situations of a particular career and dwell on their “gut” reactions to them, looking to see to what extent such experiences feel appropriate to their sense of self—their private myths or generative self-stories—with its aspirations and capabilities. The second is expressive phenomenology in pedagogy, through which attempts are made to present to potential participants in some life pursuit in an animated and lifelike way the lived experience of predictable events and practices in such a pursuit as a contribution to the person’s mythopoetic reflection. A case study of predictable events presented for contemplation in adult education practice is provided to ground the processes.

Lifelong Learning, Adult Education, and Democratic Values: Evoking and Shaping an Inclusive Imagination

This chapter explores the lifelong learning implicit in the promotion and defence of inclusive democratic values particularly in relation to formal and informal forms of Adult and Community Education practice. It suggests that behind the values of an inclusive and courteous social democracy is an ideal that lives in a reflective, pragmatic, and critical imagination ‐ i.e., an imagination that envisages inclusive democratic values as possible and desirable in human life which need to be visioned and revisioned constantly to meet changing circumstances. The specific learnings involved in renewing the inclusive imagination underpinning democratic values ‐ how it can be fostered and what barriers exist to impede it ‐ pose considerable challenges to educators and trainers of adults particularly where their educational work has been concerned largely with imparting information and skills. Although this chapter has an eye to adult education practice, it is largely concerned with contextual and curriculum themes so that many of the ideas and explorations may be of use in the world of schooling as well. Following Ralston Saul (2002) it is not argued that the values of inclusive democracy depend on a reborn and reinvigorated imagination alone. People have always used other faculties, particularly logic and reason and emotionality, in their lives. To some extent the work of this chapter, which is particularly interested in the power of the imagination, follows John Heron’s project (1992) which separates out four modalities in human thinking which in real life are intertwined: emotionality, imagination, logical rationality, and action feedback. Even when intertwined in the apprehensions, value judgements and action choices that accompany ordinary life, these four modalities refer to different but coexisting processes. The specific agenda of this chapter concerns the way imagination works to create and shape desire, how people can be moved by this in learning and embracing inclusive democratic values and in what ways an appropriate and respectful pedagogy can be developed through which such an inclusive imagination can be evoked and shaped. In exploring ways in which the imagination is engaged, Hillman (1975, 1981) building on the work of Henry Corbin (1969) who in turn drew on the work of Ibn Arabi develops a particular notion of certain kinds of deep imagining in which people’s imagination becomes concerned not so much with fantasy and of possibilities hitherto unrealised, but with what he called, following and modifying Jung (1963),

Education for life transition: recollections of practice

Reflection on three forms of education for personal and social change in community development with Aboriginal people in Kununurra, cultural awareness and anti‐racism in Alice Springs and professional preparation of adult and community educators at the University of South Australia provides insights in some of the structural cultural and personal constraints influencing the use of education for change.

An Ecology for the Fourth Pillar: Imaginal Learning for Social Sustainability in AVE

This chapter explores an “imaginal” curriculum for social sustainability in adult and vocational education. This imaginal curriculum seeks to find appropriate pedagogic ways to evoke and nourish what Jon Hawkes calls social sustainability’s “fourth pillar,” namely “cultural vitality and life enthusiasm” (2004, p. 263). This life enthusiasm is a key factor in the health of any society as it interacts with the biological and social world. Drawing on the concept of “social ecology,” I discuss the importance of humans being aware and respectful of their location in their social eco-system as embodied, aesthetic, rational, and finally technological beings, where each of these dimensions is interdependent. I then focus on pedagogic ways in which adult and vocational education can evoke and foster social ecological learning imaginally. This involves aesthetic processes that call learners to explore their “life myths” and link them to the myths implicit in social sustainability. Two approaches are described: reciprocal storytelling, through which learners are invited to develop responsive dispositions toward aesthetic experiences, and evocative portrayal, in which artistic creations and performances linked to elements of social sustainability are presented and a range of responses invited and explored.

The mythopoetic body : learning through creativity

The learning experience can be identified and studied through considerations upon processes of participation. The interlocking notions of autopoiesis and mythopoesis can be used to help understand and articulate that participation. These notions illuminate embodied experience, reflective consciousness, and the construction of cultural knowledge forms or stories. This chapter reflects upon the use of creative arts practices to assist educators to gain insight into the practical application of creativity. It presents research done with a group of beginning and pre-service teachers in a series of workshops focused on creative practice. Through workshop evidence and associated theory it discusses ways in which creativity facilitates the emergence of learning and ways in which that learning permeates life and constructs further opportunities and experiences. It looks to embodiment as a major determinant in the process and discusses such things as improvisation, reflection, collaboration, and emergence and their role in the dynamics of learning.