Summer 2024 - EDUC 811 G011
Fieldwork I (5)
Class Number: 3663
Delivery Method: Online
Overview
Description
CALENDAR DESCRIPTION:
Graded on a satisfactory/unsatisfactory basis.
COURSE DETAILS:
EDUC 811 classes will take place on-line (Zoom) on Tuesdays from May 7th running up to July 9th from 4:30–9:20 pm.
We will leave the week of July 15th to 19th open as a time for finalizing your capstones and preparing for the two days the following week when there will be the oral presentations.
EDUC 888 and the oral presentations will take place between 9:00 a.m. and 3:00 p.m. on the 23rd and 24th of July.The due date for submission of the capstone documents is Sunday evening July 28h. These need to be sent both to Sean sblenkin@sfu.ca and to me stephen_smith@sfu.ca
We respectfully acknowledge the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Sḵwx̱wú7mesh Úxwumixw (Squamish), səl̓ilw̓ətaʔɬ (Tsleil-Waututh), q̓íc̓əy̓ (Katzie), kʷikʷəƛ̓əm (Kwikwetlem), Qayqayt, Kwantlen, Semiahmoo and Tsawwassen peoples on whose traditional territories our three campuses reside.
Course Description
The purpose of this third course, EDUC 811, is to help you articulate the personal value and professional significance of the topic of inquiry you have chosen to pursue in this Master of Education in Educational Practice. We shall continue to emphasize being life-long practice-based and life-wide practice-informed. In so doing, practitioner inquiry continues to be on the lived meanings that, for all practical purposes, can be gleaned from your lived experiences. In other words, it is the very proclivity to be hands-on and develop DIY proficiency which we want to emphasize in this kind of inquiry, not in any mundane sense of simply getting on with business, but as a self-aware sensibility and mindful-of-others sensitivity guiding one’s pedagogical practice and influencing the practices of others.
We will continue to refer to practices-of-the-self and practices of the self-with-others as two necessary moments of teaching identity. The Ministry of Education adoption of "personalized learning" is in keeping with this identity formation provided we take "personalized learning" to heart as being about more than individual teaching competency.
Likewise, let us not restrict practitioner inquiry to some unidimensional aspect of "life-long (professional) learning" that is only about refining teacher competencies. A broad practical vision and deeply practiced touch requires tapping into what we do when not engaged specifically in professional practices. These practices-of-the-self, which will invariably involve others as practices of the self-with-others, may be precisely the ones that best inform our professional practices and cultivate the art and wisdom of teaching.
The pedagogical applicability of practices-of-the-self and of the self-with-others can be best explored within a thoughtful, mindful, vibrant community of practice.” We will, amongst ourselves, continue to foster not just a rational community of educational thinkers but also a pathic community of educational practitioners who feel for one another and canfollow one another in making tangible, palpable sense of our own and others’ practice-based inquiries.
COURSE-LEVEL EDUCATIONAL GOALS:
Learning Goals
- develop a narratively and phenomenologically informed writing practice;
- cultivate somatic, contemplative and critical reflexivity in exploring and writing up one’s topic of practice-based inquiry;
- appreciate how life-wide practices-of-the-self and of the self-with-others inform life-long practices of teaching;
- deepen pedagogical ways of doing, being and knowing as teachers and practice-based inquirers;
- envision next steps as practitioner-scholars, teacher-leaders and change makers.
Programmatic Capacities
- Deepen and extend a disposition of inquiry, ethical practice, critical and creative reflection, and responsiveness to one another as practitioner-learners within a pathic community of fellow teachers;
- Develop your own inquiry practice through the investigation of multiple educational theories, philosophies, paradigms, and self-study methodologies;
- Articulate your scholarly understanding of various worldviews and orientations in relation to how you are addressing your inquiry topic;
- Exemplify a relational disposition of humility, hospitality, and ability to listen deeply to others;
- Critically and creatively engage in affinity groups to situate, further develop, and align your inquiry practice with the practices of others.
Grading
NOTES:
- Capstone Abstract (20%)
This abstract should address the what? why? who? how? when? where? and so what? Questions pertaining to your practitioner inquiry topic.
What is the focus of your practice-based inquiry?
Why is this topic of practitioner inquiry important to you?
Who is the teacher for whom this inquiry makes personal and pedagogical sense, and of whom it might be said that this inquiry is personally informing, pedagogically transforming, and such that it may reverberate through a community of practice and be collectively reforming?
How are you sustaining this inquiry and being sustained by it?
When and where are you finding inspirational, illuminating and otherwise thought-provoking matters pertinent to your inquiry topic?
So what are the insights, intuitions, and conclusions you are drawing from this inquiry?
Ideally you can address these questions as your inquiry comes to some sort of closure. But it will likely be too soon, as yet, to address them to any great degree of satisfaction, although I know some of you are well on the way with your capstone compositions. Drafting a Capstone Abstract (maybe just think of it as an overview) can be a useful exercise in getting one's thoughts organized. I ask that you bring a rough draft to our first class where we can, as we did in the first course, share them with one another in small break-out groups and receive helpful peer feedback.
Rough draft due initially May 7th.
- Relational Writings (30%)
We will do a set of short Motion-Sensing Phenomenology (MSP) exercises which can serve as writing inspirations for fleshing out and writing up the practitioner inquiry capstones.
These writing exercises will involve everyday actions and interactions which, through a set of reflective and reflexive prompts, and in-class discussions, will be written up as one-page vignettes.
Return to the vignette written in the first MEd EP course and consider if you want to incorporate motion-sensing nuances in this narrative and any further narratives to be included in your capstone.
Due 5 days after doing each of the class exercises (or two days before the subsequent Tuesday class).
- Draft/s of the capstone paper (50%)
Your vignettes can be incorporated in your paper draft wherein you articulate your practitioner inquiry on a chosen pedagogical topic, question or concern arising from your lived experiences.
Due draft dates: June 4th and July 2nd.
Ongoing engagement in the course curriculum and in the learning design of our class sessions is expected, with contributions made in small and large group discussions of the course readings, listenings and watchables. Support of one another’s practitioner inquiries will be required most evidently in the affinity group preparations for the oral presentations in late July.
EDUC 888: Comprehensive Examination
Final Paper and Presentation (100%)
This culminating project, which serves as the final assessment in this MEd EP, provides opportunity to express your present understandings of educational practice. The practitioner inquiry that started with the GDE, and has continued through the MEd EP, can be brought to closure in the capstone product. In doing so, there will sharing of relevant experiences, insights and transformations with teacher peers who bear witness to these personalized, pedagogical journeys.
The comprehensive examination will involve two parts: one written and one oral. The two parts are intended to complement each other. The written paper provides a comprehensive account of what you focused upon in your practitioner inquiry, how you approached your topic, what resources you drew upon, and the insights you derived and how they are applicable to your professional practice. The oral component is not intended to summarize your paper but, rather, to give others in the cohort a feel for what you investigated. You are encouraged to consider different media, along with different genres of text, to convey the practical and pedagogical sense of your inquiry.
We will all be present for the oral component and have opportunity to provide formal and informal feedback to one another.
Materials
MATERIALS + SUPPLIES:
Readings, Watchables and Listenables
We will discuss the syllabus for the semester during our first class. For now, readings will include, but will not be limited to, the following topics and texts. In other words, the readings will be tailored to the topics of interest as they emerge in our class meetings and in response to your on-going practitioner inquiries. Generally speaking, the course content will pertain to: pedagogical relations as the tangible, practice-based focal points for each of your particular practitioner inquiries; and writing processes and other representational practices of making meaning of these practitioner inquiries.
References will be made to narrative, somatic, critical, phenomenological, ethnographic, hermeneutic and contemplative traditions of scholarship. We will continue to pay particular attention to Wisdom and Indigenous traditions. We will not delve too much into methodological details but use such references as will guide and support what is essentially, in this MEd EP, teacher self-study.
Right Stories, Wrong Stories
Reading:
Yunkaporta, T. (2023). Right Story, Wrong Story: Adventures in Indigenous Thinking, pp 7-16.
Watchable:
Right Story, Wrong Story / Purpose Conference 2023
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J-0qifR9e8Q
Writing Up One’s Life with Children and Youth
Readings:
Smith, S. J. (2000). Remembering to Teach. Unpublished manuscript.
Smith, S. J., Sinclaire, C., & Zola, M. (1993). Writing up one’s life with children; The phenomenology of pedagogical reflection. Unpublished manuscript.
Smith, S. J., Montabello, S., and Zola, M. (1993). A pedagogical sense of change, Dilemmas in Educational Change (T. Riecken &D. Court, Eds.), Detselig, pp. 31-47; 101-106.
Montabello, S. (2008). Narratives and Field Notes & Thinking with Stories, from Journeying into the heart of schools; Dwelling in time, place and intimacy, unpublished PhD dissertation, SFU.
Glustein, A. (2022). Being different: From Friday night candles to compassionate classroom.
Topics, Topicality and the Topology of Lived Experience
Readable:
Smith, S. J. (2016). Phenomenology of movement and place. In M. Peters (Ed.), Encyclopedia of Educational Theory and Philosophy. Springer.
Appiah, K. A. (2020), Why are politicians suddenly talking about their ‘lived experience’? The Guardian.
Listenable:
Ellie Anderson Overthink podcast, Episode 74: Lived Experience
https://overthinkpodcast.com/episodes/episode-74
Phenomenological Inquiry
Readables:
Eilifsen, M. (2011). Capture the unexpressed: Anecdote as a device in hermeneutic phenomenological research, Indo-Pacific Journal of Phenomenology, 11(1), 1-9.
Smith, S. J. and Lloyd, R. J. (2019). Life phenomenology and relational flow, Qualitative Inquiry, 1-6. DOI: 10.1177/1077800419829792
Lloyd, R. J. & Smith, S. J. (2015). Doing motion-sensing phenomenology. In K. Tobin, & S.R. Steinberg (Eds.), Doing educational research: A handbook (Second ed.) (pp. 255-277). Rotterdam, NL, United States: Sense Publishing.
Lloyd, R. & Smith, S. (2021). A Practical Introduction to Motion-Sensing Phenomenology. PHEnex journal/revue phénEPS, 11(2), 1-18.
van Manen, M. (1984). Practicing phenomenological writing, Phenomenology + Pedagogy, 2 (1), 36-69.
Van Manen, M. (1989). By the light of anecdote, Phenomenology + Pedagogy, 7, 232-253.
Watchables:
David Abram speaking at the IHSRC 2016 on "the ecology of language"
http://function2flow.ca/ihsrc35-videos/
The Muppets explain phenomenology
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cVGAxMo-kiw&feature=youtu.be
Max van Manen – Phenomenology of Practice
https://vimeo.com/438982668/1040f13685
Ellie Anderson Interview; phenomenology and philosophy today
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gp0ltmKthuA
“What is phenomenology?” by Jean-Luc Marion and Donald Wallenfang
[phenomenon of the mug]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jQdyjsgzObI
The Practice of Teaching: Postures, positions gestures, expressions and complexions
Readables:
Rosehart, P. (2013). Learning to move – moving to learn: Metaphorical expressions in teacher education, unpublished doctoral dissertation, Simon Fraser University.
Smith, S. J. (2004). The bearing of inquiry in teacher education: The SFU experience. Burnaby: Faculty of Education, Simon Fraser University
Smith, S. J. (2010). Jumping through hoops: The uses of somatic idioms in pre-service teacher education, unpublished article.
Smith, S. J. (2014). The bodywork of learning to teach: A somatic framework for teacher education, unpublished article.
Smith, S.J. (2009). Pedagogical complexions: Learning to teach between cultures. Paper presented at the Australian Association for Research in Education (AARE) International Conference, University of Canberra, November 29th – December 3rd.
Pedagogically-Relational Practices
Smith, S. J. (1989). Operating on a child’s heart: A pedagogical view of hospitalization, Phenomenology + Pedagogy, 7, 145-162.
Todd, S. (2014). Between body and spirit: The liminality of pedagogical relationships, Journal of Philosophy of Education, 48 (2), 231-245.
van Manen, M. (2008). Pedagogical sensitivity and teachers’ practical knowing-in-action, Peking University Education Review, 1-23.
Van Manen, M. (2012). The call of pedagogy as the call of contact, Phenomenology & Practice, 6 (2), 8-34.
Life-wide (agogical) practices
Smith, S. J. (2018a). Bringing up life with horses, Indo-Pacific Journal of Phenomenology, 18 (2), 1-11.
Smith, S.J. (2021). Active and interactive bodies, Phenomenology and Educational Theory in Conversation: Back to Education Itself, edited by Patrick Howard, Tone Saevi, Andrew Foran and Gert Biesta. London: Taylor & Francis. PDF
Watchable: Function2Flow: Interactive for life Project videos. Learning from experts in partnered physical activities
https://function2flow.ca/phase-1-learning-from-experts/
Watchable: Horse Play
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2OPQ6Y3-C9E
Watchable: Valentino
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HfJYrbIMABw&feature=youtu.be
Watchable: Scott Churchill Interacting with a Bonobo
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=srZSOe04HAQ
Watchable: Still-face Experiment
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=apzXGEbZht0
Watchable: The heart of Tango
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UqC5ZqRAQuQ
Coming to our Senses
Readable:
Smith, S.J. (2006). Gestures, landscape and embrace: A phenomenological analysis of elemental motions, The Indo-Pacific Journal of Phenomenology, 6 (1), 1-10. http://www.ipjp.org
Tucker, M. & Smith, S. (2024). Critter encounters of a tactile kind; proximity through distance, paper presented at the Living with Animals conference, University of Eastern Kentucky.
Watchable:
Why touch matters in a digital, pandemic world with Dr. Richard Kearney (Chasing Leviathan)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1KCev1hp-3U
Listenable:
Overthink podcast, Episode 63: Touch
https://overthinkpodcast.com/episodes/episode-63
Making Sense of Pedagogical Practice
Readables:
Yunkaporta, T. (2020). Lines in the sand, Sand Talk: How Indigenous thinking can save the world, Harper One, pp. 73-89.
Bredmar, A-C. (2020). Developing sensitive sense and sensible sensitivity in pedagogical work: Professional development through reflection on emotional experiences, Phenomenology & Practice, 14 (1), 57-72.
Driussi, L. (2019). Wayfaring: A phenomenology of international teacher education, unpublished doctoral dissertation, Simon Fraser University.
Chang, D. (2021). The raven knows thy name: Contemplation and practice on an off-grid island. Unpublished PhD dissertation, SFU.
Maser M. (2023). Insight-out: A phenomenological exploration of the nature and appearance of learning, Unpublished PhD dissertation, SFU.
Pathic Community
Readables:
Lingis, A. (1994). The other community, in The community of those who have nothing in common. Bloomington: Indiana University Press (pp. 1-13).
Smith, S. J. (2017). The vitality of humanimality: From the perspective of life phenomenology, Phenomenology & Practice, 11 (1), 72-88.
Smith, S. J. (2018b). Vital powers: Cultivating a critter community, Phenomenology & Practice, 12 (2), 15-27.
Montabello, S. (2008). Journeying into the heart of schools: Dwelling in time, place and intimacy, unpublished doctoral dissertation, Simon Fraser University. Chapter 2: Dwelling in Schools.
Watchable:
The Magic Horse Garden
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8O6ks8nctVMGraduate Studies Notes:
Important dates and deadlines for graduate students are found here: http://www.sfu.ca/dean-gradstudies/current/important_dates/guidelines.html. The deadline to drop a course with a 100% refund is the end of week 2. The deadline to drop with no notation on your transcript is the end of week 3.
Registrar Notes:
ACADEMIC INTEGRITY: YOUR WORK, YOUR SUCCESS
SFU’s Academic Integrity website http://www.sfu.ca/students/academicintegrity.html is filled with information on what is meant by academic dishonesty, where you can find resources to help with your studies and the consequences of cheating. Check out the site for more information and videos that help explain the issues in plain English.
Each student is responsible for his or her conduct as it affects the university community. Academic dishonesty, in whatever form, is ultimately destructive of the values of the university. Furthermore, it is unfair and discouraging to the majority of students who pursue their studies honestly. Scholarly integrity is required of all members of the university. http://www.sfu.ca/policies/gazette/student/s10-01.html