Papers by Andrew Madjar
ACCESS: Contemporary Issues in Education, 2020
In education, it is common to hear that we need to close the gap between research and practice. L... more In education, it is common to hear that we need to close the gap between research and practice. Less common is a consideration of what it means to close this gap. A lot of policy, research and professional learning assumes that research should inform teacher practice by providing evidence about ‘what works’ for students’ learning. However, there are other important ways that we can understand the relationship between research and practice. In this paper, I discuss one possibility for understanding this relationship by looking at the research of Max van Manen and his work in phenomenological pedagogy. Phenomenology provides a way for teachers to reflect on their practice by prioritising the meaning and significance of lived experience. As I describe, phenomenology is a valuable way for research to inform practice; but its value lies not in being able to tell us ‘what works’, but in its power to do something with us.
Educational Philosophy and Theory, 2020
In a time of world-wide insecurity on many issues, an inner security may be both desirable and ne... more In a time of world-wide insecurity on many issues, an inner security may be both desirable and necessary, for educational, philosophical and personal flourishing. This editorial arises from the authors’ participation in a collective writing project published in May, 2020 (Peters et al., 2020). The perspectives below respond to a provocation for a philosophical introspection as an ontological and epistemological practice. That is, the authors attempt to rehabilitate 'philosophical introspection' as a means for investigating subjective reports of individual experience as an index of consciousness and reflexive knowledge such as self-ascriptions. They indicate the potential for a philosophical introspection to point to potential expressivist views or self-transparency, possibly even self-knowledge. If ‘introspective knowledge can serve as a ground or foundation for other sorts of knowledge’, as Schwitzgebel (2019) suggests in the opening quote, the sections below offer potential insights, into conceptual connections accessed or emerging, between co-authors, within the self, writing as a conscious process, and as a process of working, crafting the possibilities emerging from such a collaborative energy. Introspective knowledge is contested by various claims involving access to consciousness, the nature of mood and emotion, the relationship of personal identity to systems of thought and belief, and also the all-important question of what counts as introspective verification. In this group exercise we asked a group of scholars who have been involved in collective writing over a period of several years to utilise an introspective process characterised by what Schwitzgebel (2019) regards as the necessary features of the process: 1. The mentality condition – beliefs and judgments about mental states or processes; 2. The first-person condition – beliefs and judgments about one’s own mind or subjectivity; 3. The temporal proximity condition – ‘beliefs, or judgments about one’s currently ongoing mental life’ (Abridged). What we were trying to ascertain is a condition of self-observation, asking our contributors to provide self-observation accounts of the belief and affective dimensions of being engaged in a collective writing process. The idea here being that without being too technical it is useful and helpful to others to hear what contributors experienced in the collective writing process.
Educational Philosophy and Theory, 2020
This is a collective writing experiment of PESA members, including its Executive Committee, askin... more This is a collective writing experiment of PESA members, including its Executive Committee, asking questions of the Philosophy of Education in a New Key. Collective intentionality, as an example of concept development, involves two or more individuals who attempt to follow an agreed upon course of action together. It is a simple notion yet also contains within it several philosophical questions and assumptions: is the act of agreement a form of goal setting? Do group goals need to be explicit? Does collective intentionality imply the concept of obligation? (For instance, can participants pull out, even if they gave initial consent?) To what extent can members disagree with one another over a course of action when it is underway and still remain faithful to the original objective (Gilbert,1990)? Can group consent be broken and if so in what ways? Does collective intentionality discourage criticism in the interests of coherence and group- think? To what extent must participants be committed to the joint project and mutually responsive to the intentions and actions of the others (Bratman,2009)?
Thesis Chapters by Andrew Madjar
This study asks, how do fathers experience involvement in their child’s school life? The research... more This study asks, how do fathers experience involvement in their child’s school life? The research has two aims. First, to collect descriptions of fathers’ experiences so schools might be more aware of possible ways that fathers experience being involved in their child’s school life. Second, to contribute to the existing home-school partnership literature different, phenomenological ways that parental involvement can be understood. In order to answer this research question, a phenomenological methodology was employed to understand fathers’ lived experience of their child’s school life. The study involved two interviews with each of ten fathers of primary school children from a predominantly low-income, urban community in New Zealand. Based on the analysis of these interviews, the thesis argues these fathers’ experience of their child’s schooling is shaped by the pedagogical responsibility to be there for their child. To make this argument the thesis progresses two ideas. First, that fathers experience schools as fathers, and therefore their school involvement needs to be understood in the context of the broader father-child relationship. Second, being a father is the lived ethical relationality of being-there as care, a relationship, and having hope. In order to understand fathers’ pedagogical responsibility, the analysis of this study has been developed in dialogue with the tradition of Continental phenomenological pedagogy and the writings of Emmanuel Levinas.
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Papers by Andrew Madjar
Thesis Chapters by Andrew Madjar