Phenomenology

In class on Wednesday we brought up the idea of social constructivism. I became interested in seeking out another type of philosophy of reality and came across the idea of Phenomenology. It was founded by Edward Husserl (yet he adopted terms and ideas from Kant and Hegel's philosophies.) Phenomenology looks into the conscious experiences of individuals. These experiences include: emotion, imagination, desire, memory, thoughts and most importantly perception.

Phenomenological philosophy terms

1. Lifeworld: the world of lived experience from a person.

2. Intentionality: Consciousness is always conscious of something, that something being whatever a person is focusing on. This can be mental or physical stimuli. Intentionality looks at the aim of consciousness.

3. Evidence: The subjective gathering of truth

4. Noesis and Noema: Noesis is the actual thought and noema is the ideal thought in any act of intentional consciousness.

5. Empathy and intersubjectivity: the phenomenological concept of empathy refers to concentrating on the “subjectivity” of oneself and then applying that to experiencing another’s human body as yours. Intersubjectivity represents objectivity. One must view themselves as a subject among other subjects. At the same time, they must see themselves as existing for the other person.

Phenomenology as an applied pedogological practice allows teachers to discover new meaning in the aspects they teach and allows them to make choices that change personal teaching practices.

In a school reform study sixteen teachers participated in the process of coming up with a shared school pedagogy. This involves teachers sharing their successful experiences with teaching methods so that they may collectively come up with joint pedagogical beliefs. Teachers also shared their personal stories with teaching and this gave other teachers insight to how others perceive things. After these joint beliefs were established they attempted to incorporate them into their everyday teaching.

They used phenomenology as a methodology in addition to these new practices. This implied exploring the knowledge of children: how they perceive, what they think about, and how they view the world. After this incorporation, some, but not all of the teachers felt like they had more insight to the students which helped them teach better. (http://www.aare.edu.au/02pap/mos02453.htm)

Question: How would teachers benefit from understanding how their students perceive, imagine, think, and structure their conscious?