Can Teaching Be Taught? or Are Real Teachers Found or Made?

Abstract

During my Dutch high school years, and at the Pedagogy College in the Netherlands in the 1960s 1 became familiar with the phenomenological and hermeneutic writings of Dutch, German, and French educators, philosophers, and novelists. Especially the phenomenological writings of the pedagogues M.J. Langeveld, N. Beets, the psychiatrist J.H. Van den Berg, the psychologists F.J.J. Buytendzjk and H. Linschoten, as well as, of course, French authors like J.P. Sartre, S. de Beauvoir, A. Camus, M. Merleau-Ponty and the German scholar O.F. Bollnow made a great impression on me. After emigrating to Canada 1 further developed this interest in my graduate studies at the University ofAlberta encouraged by the thoughtful support of my gifted supervisor Ted Aoki. As an assistantprofesso r at the Ontario Institute for Graduate Studies in Education from 1973 to 1976 I launched the beginnings of a phenorne nological research writing course. The European literature on human science in education had paid little attention to its own methodological practice. Therefore, in order to develop a teaching and research program, I have aimed to explore the unexplicated methodological themes and practical approaches of human science work by the above named European educators and psychologists, and by studying philosophers such as M. Heidegger, H.-G. Gadamer, M. Foucault, and E. Levinas, while relating this work pedagogically to contemporary philosophic sour ces and to new North American developments in education and the social sciences. Since rejoining the Faculty of Education at the University of Alberta in 1976 my research involvements have continued to focus on the articula tion and application of a reflective writing approach for understanding the life worlds ofadults and children in a hermeneuticphenomenolo gical fashion. Especially my continuing contacts with the younger generation of Dutch and German scholars such as Ton Beekman, Dirk Imelmann, Bas Levering, Wilfried Lippitz and the collaborations with colleagues and students at the University of Alberta have been inspiring to my