Embodying skilful performance: Co-constituting body and world in biotechnology

This article offers a philosophical-empirical account of embodied skilful performance in the practice of plant biotechnology. Drawing on the work of Merleau-Ponty and others, we elaborate how skilful performance emerges from and through reciprocal relations encompassing the body-in-the-world and the world-in-the-body. The contribution of this article lies in offering an account of skilful performance that is attentive to a perceiving, motile, feeling body entwined with world. In genetically modifying plants, scientists direct their senses of touch and vision to manipulating plant materials and matter, ‘reading’ subtle changes in tissue cultures, plantlets and so on. In rhythmic movements, they extend their bodies through skilful use of complex equipment, while calling on ‘intuition’ to guide their work. Skilful performance, then, relies on our lived body that is not merely a physical object among other objects, nor a passive instrument for the mind, but dynamic and inescapably entwined with people and things in a world in flux. Bringing to the fore how perceiving, motile, feeling bodies are implicated in skilful performance has significant implications for education and workplace training.     

MODES OF PHILOSOPHIC INQUIRY AND SPORT

The Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) broadcasts Mixed Martial Arts (MMA) fights in over 149 countries to nearly a billion households worldwide. In 2013, the UFC signed the first ever female fighter Ronda ‘Rowdy’ Rousey. In this essay, I argue that women’s participation in the UFC challenges traditional stereotypes of female physical passivity and Iris Marion Young’s claims about feminine spatiality. However, at the same time, UFC culture emphasizes traditional sexist views of femininity and submissiveness. In order to analyze how gender is constructed in the UFC, theories on women’s lived body experiences through participation in MMA are explored. Brian Pronger’s homosocial and homophobia framework is also applied to the phallocentric discourse that is part of the UFC.     

Understanding the Lived Experience of a Sioux Indian Male Adolescent: Toward the pedagogy of hermeneutical phenomenology in education

Currently, there is a resurgence of interests in phenomenology in education. This article sheds light on the importance of hermeneutical phenomenology in teaching and learning based on the lived experience of a Sioux Indian adolescent boy, elicited from an ethnographic case study conducted at an alternative high school in the US. Employing narrative inquiry, this article seeks phenomenological ways of understanding students' lived experiences and explores the meaning of the pedagogical practice of hermeneutical phenomenology in education. I delve into how hermeneutical understanding of the phenomena of students' lived experience can catapult both students and teachers into the personal growth and development in a reciprocal way. It is my hope that such an understanding will facilitate an educational aim that focuses on the ontology of being and becoming while students' existence is brought to the center of teaching and learning.     

Philosophy,Kairosophy and the Lesson of Time

The conception of time that dominates in the educational world of today is that of measurable, invested and managed chronological time. It is the conception of time that corresponds to current priorities such as performativity, global synchronization of educational systems, raising standards and meeting the challenges of the market. The educational transformation of the self and the world, however, requires another conception of time, one that frames another kind of thought and another meaning of education. This article discusses these two conceptions of time by employing the distinction between chronos and kairos. The aim is not to turn this distinction into a dichotomy; instead, the aim is to recuperate the conception of time as kairos and connect it with a desire of philosophy and with education as a lifelong effort towards transformation rather than success. In a complex relation with chronosophy as time management, kairosophy is thus introduced as a critical reflection on lived time.     

The Tutor’s Approach in Base Groups (PBL)

In this article, the concept of approach related to tutor functioning in problem-based learning (PBL) is explored and the significance of a phenomenological perspective of the body in relation to learning and tutoring is investigated. The aim has been to understand the concept of approach in a context where the individual, thoughts, emotions and body are regarded as a whole in a learning process – a non-dualistic entity. The analysis is primarily based on Merleau-Ponty (Phenomenologie de la Perception. Editions Gallimard, Kroppens fenomenologi. Oslo: Pax) and Leder (1990). The outcome of the analysis is related to the pedagogical view that characterises PBL and tutoring in base groups. An earlier study (Silén Licentiate thesis n 3/1996. Linköping University) about tutor functioning in PBL was the starting-point for the exploration. On the basis of the phenomenological analysis, I assign approach the following meaning: - the total message expressed by ‘the lived body’ in interaction with its life world. The analysis indicates that the tutor’s approach influences group work in different ways. One of phenomenology’s most important messages implies that the tutor’s approach should be characterised by ‘presence’, attention on the students and what is happening in the group, and not on the tutor’s own actions and thoughts. The ability to be ‘present’ is possible when the knowing is rooted in the lived body. This conclusion brings to the fore the necessity of the tutor’s own understanding of the ideas of PBL and the underlying theories, and also highlights the importance of regarding tutor training as an ongoing learning process. The focus of the exploration has been on the tutor in PBL. In principle, I would argue that a corresponding line of reasoning is applicable to tutoring and learning in general.     

《离骚》前四句与屈原家世再考释

<离骚>中开门见山的前四句,是我们认识和了解屈原及其家族世系的现存唯一的第一手材料.这四句诗内涵极为广博,涉及很多方面的复杂内容,又因为是抒情性的诗歌语言而不是实录,所以对它的解读必然出现巨大障碍,存在诸多分歧.本文借鉴前人成就,进行多视角的深入考察,具体考释了"高阳"、"伯庸"、"摄提"、"庚寅"、"孟陬"之所指,从而在较为坚实的文献基础上对屈原家世及其生活时代作了基本描述.     

教育现象学：一门新型的教育学——访教育现象学国际大师马克斯·范梅南教授

马克斯·范梅南(Max van Manen),系加拿大阿尔伯塔大学教育学院教授、课程学和教育学研究院主任、国际质性方法学研究院首席科学家、世界著名教育学专家、教育哲学家、课程学专家和人文科学研究方法论专家。范梅南教授是教育现象学的开创者之一,《教育现象学》(PhenomenologyandPedagogy)杂志的主编,现同时担任着北美和欧洲六种教育和人文科学研究国际学术杂志的顾问编辑或国际编委。范梅南教授曾获得多项国际荣誉,主要有:北美教育研究学会“课程和教学研究终身成就奖”,美国人类理解国际学院“人类理解杰出贡献奖”,加拿大教育学研究杰出国际成就奖,加拿大移民杰出成就勋章。范梅南教授在教育学方面的论著和论文颇多,最有影响的包括《教育的机智》、《生活体验研究》、《儿童时代的秘密》、《教学的调子》等。他的许多论著和研究成果已被译成了德语、西班牙语、葡萄牙语、挪威语、日语、朝鲜语、荷兰语和汉语,在世界范围产生了深远的影响。     

Children’s lived experiences of ‘ability’ in the Key Stage One classroom: life on the ‘tricky table’

ABSTRACT

Within the wealth of research on ‘ability’ in education, there is a missing perspective: the perspective of the child. Whilst ‘ability’ informed practices such as ‘ability’ grouping are commonplace in the UK, how these are experienced by the young child has previously received only limited attention in research. Using case study evidence, this article demonstrates that children’s lived experiences of ‘ability’ are highly individual and shaped by a broader range of social, structural and pedagogic aspects of classroom life than previously thought. Implications are that a wide range of teaching choices can potentially affect a child’s experience of ‘ability’ and that the impact of these are particularly profound for some children, shaping their perceptions of themselves and others. Children’s perspectives therefore offer a challenge to the hegemonic discourse of ‘ability’ in education and the classroom practices upon which it is based.     

Regenerating Stuart Hall

ABSTRACT

In this personal essay I remember Stuart Hall and evaluate his contribution to the foundation of Cultural Studies. Some of his best-known written work comes out of the teacher–student interaction in the working environment of the seminar and classroom. Hall was a great teacher who inspired his students. This, I suggest, is the basis of his renown as a seminal figure in the emergence of Cultural Studies as the global field of inquiry that it is today.     

Psychophenomenology and the explicitation interview for accessing subjective lived experience in sport coaching

ABSTRACT

The purpose of this position paper is to promote the interest, usefulness and specificity of a coherent system that is based on psychophenomenology as a theoretical framework [Vermersch, P. (2012). Explicitation et phénoménologie. Paris: PUF], and the explicitation interview [Vermersch, P. (2009). Describing the practice of introspection. Journal of Consciousness Studies, 16(10–12), 20–57] as an appropriate and original method for studying the subjective lived experience of participants in sport situations. This original approach is associated with an epistemological posture which accords significant importance to the first-person point of view (i.e. what is appearing to a person about his own subjective lived experience in a past situation). After presenting some limitations in other phenomenological approaches and interview methods, we highlight the specificity of the theoretical background and the method of explicitation interview, for describing in detail the actions and understanding the lived experience of a person in a past and singular situation. To demonstrate the potential of this approach, we provide two specific examples of explicitation interview data from an in-match player decision-making situation and an in-game half-time speech of a coach. In concluding, we contend that psychophenomenology and the explicitation interview present new perspectives and opportunities for coach education, by developing the analysis of the subjective lived experience. This may have important implications for sport-related research and the development of coaching practice and formal coach education, through closer links to real life experiences.