Using the phenomenology of artistic practice to explore and compare teaching

Abstract

The act of teaching is constituted by tensions between contradictory influences of national educational systems, teachers’ professional/personal identity, cultural and social values. Qualitative research methods can explore this complex situation. Indeed, narrative methods have explored teachers’ ‘life histories’. This article provides a review of the development, design and usefulness of a new qualitative method, Phenomenology of Artistic Practice (PAP). It focuses on the act of performative movement. It has been successful in the exploration of students’ experiences of dance. PAP uses performative movement, poetry and picture in a comparative process to create a ‘third space’ in which the dynamic quality of experience emerging from practice can be explored. Perspectives on the nature of experience discussed by Dewey, Vygotsky and Merleau-Ponty are included. It is argued that PAP can be useful in comparative international pedagogy because it can explore how teachers’ experience, and their practice, can help them the complex factors that influence the act of teaching.