Phenomenology in Teacher Education Contexts: Enhancing Pedagogical Insight and Critical Reflexive Capacity

Abstract

This paper draws on a phenomenological study of students' experience of the demands of a module, Reading and Writing Academic Texts (RWAT), designed with the specific aim of developing students' academic literacy. This module is a core, compulsory component of the mixed-mode Bachelor of Education Honours programme offered by the School of Education and Development at the University of Kwa-Zulu Natal in Pietermaritzburg, South Africa. The study thus foregrounds issues of language and literacy, and is contextualized within a " distance " model of teacher education. The paper proceeds with a brief focus on teacher education through " distance " and the role and nature of this form of pedagogical delivery. It then engages directly with phenomenology and the relevance of a phenomenological sensitivity to pedagogical contexts. In order to demonstrate the type of process that can nudge phenomenological sensitivity into being, two aspects of the phenomenological research process that shaped this study – namely, identifying the phenomenon under study, and the phenomenological interview – are presented. The paper concludes with an explanation of the type of data analysis used, and examples of its application in this study.