Existential commitment with teaching

Abstract

The ‘existential commitment with teaching’ is one of the major findings stemming from a hermeneutic study at Mar del Plata State University, Argentina. With the intention of delving into the ethic dimension of university teaching, the narratives and practices of a Philosophy professor were analyzed. This teacher had been singled out by her students as an example of good teaching and had thus come to be regarded as a memorable professor in the context of academic production of the Research Team on Education and Cultural Studies (GIEEC). Existential commitment is indeed present in this professor’s practices and narratives and embedded in a ‘model of recognition’, whose ethic component manifests in the regard of the student as an anthropological pair, the exercise of hospitality and the presence of generosity and empathy in the pedagogical bond. This study discusses materials produced in the methodological articulation of biographic narrative research and ethnographic research in education.