As I gathered and analysed the data in Part One of the Data Sample I adopted an interpretive, phenomenological approach and, in my early analysis, I drew on
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Bourdieu’s (1992) concept of ‘habitus’ and ‘field’ to explore the phenomena of student teachers’ personal epistemologies and their experiences of the PGCE. Bourdieu’s theoretical concepts suggested a way into exploring how subject beliefs might be shaped and re-shaped and the dynamic tensions between subject and personal epistemologies that student teachers engage with as they begin their ‘reverse transition’ (Green, 2006) from university to school.
I was interested in Bourdieu’s (Bourdieu and Wacquant, 1992:17-18) idea of ‘field’ as a ‘social space’, consisting of an ‘ensemble of relatively autonomous spheres of ‘play’ that presents itself as a structure of probabilities – of rewards, gains, profits or sanctions – but always implies a measure of indeterminacy’.
This idea of the PGCE as a ‘field’ raised questions about inter-subjectivity as student teachers’ personal epistemologies interacted with ‘autonomous spheres of play’. The uncertainty and indeterminacy of this concept became a recurring theme within the theoretical framework of my research and one which came to disturb and problematize my original theoretical understandings.
My thinking about how personal epistemologies are constructed and their ongoing influence on subject learning, also resonated with Bourdieu’s (Bourdieu and Wacquant, 1992:18) concept of habitus:
The strategy-generating principle enabling agents to cope with unforeseen and ever-changing situations … a system of lasting and transposable dispositions which, integrating past experiences, functions at every moment as a matrix of perceptions, appreciations and actions.
Bourdieu (1992) describes the dynamic interplay between the internal belief systems and past histories of the habitus which constantly interact with the external constraints or enablers of the field, so that one cannot exist without the other. Bourdieu (1972, cited in Bourdieu and Wacquant, 1992:134) notes that:
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The habitus acquired in the family is at the basis of the structuring of school experiences … the habitus transformed by the action of the school, itself diversified, is in turn at the basis of all subsequent experiences … and so on, from re-structuring to restructuring.
This interplay of habitus and field and the notion of ‘re-structuring’ was a key point of inquiry for me. I initially wondered whether student teachers’ personal epistemologies might be subjugated or constrained by the working practices of schools and the curriculum they find themselves operating within. However, my reading of Bourdieu (1992) suggested that this might be too simplistic. Bourdieu (1992) proposes that the idea of domination and submission cannot be easily delineated and that submission is often not a conscious concession to force. Instead it could be described as ‘collusion’, residing in ‘the unconscious fit between their habitus and the field they operate within. It is lodged deep within the socialized body’ (Bourdieu and Wacquant, 1992:24).
My theoretical reading in the early stages of this thesis served to problematize my thinking and challenge simplistic assumptions I might be tempted to make. In recognising the theoretical complexity of the topic, I then needed to consider the research methods which would enable me to explore the range of data I was collecting and which would also allow me to consider my role as a PGCE tutor.
3.2 Phenomenology
The initial personal narrative writing I collected explored prior experiences of English which dealt with feelings and emotions and invited respondents to consider their relationship with English in the past as children, and within their current contexts as student English teachers. Personal subject beliefs were explored as well as perceptions of others: the pupils they taught and the departments in which they worked. In utilising an interpretive, phenomenological approach, I was hoping to gain insights into ‘lived experience, the richness and texture of experience which
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is understood through rich engagement with another’s ‘lifeworld’’ (Lawthom and Tindall, 2011:4).
Theoretically I was aligning myself with constructivist thinking and Denscombe’s (2007:78) definition of phenomenology seemed particularly apt:
Phenomenology is particularly interested in how social life is constructed by those who participate in it … it regards people as creative interpreters of events who, through their actions and interpretations, literally make sense of their worlds.
My focus on the PGCE provided me with a sense of a spatially bounded ‘field’ and the personal narrative writing assumed the temporality of a journey to becoming an English teacher. I was drawn, therefore, to the common features of ‘lifeworlds’ which Lawthom and Tindall (2011:9 drawing on Ashworth, 2003) suggest lie at the heart of phenomenology: ‘embodiment, spatiality, intersubjectivity, temporality’. However, it is interesting to note that these features which had initially for me identified key concepts in the process of becoming an English teacher, gradually came to problematize the research approach and the ontological perspective I had adopted.
The initial data I had collected also began to unsettle my understanding of the research method I had chosen. The personal narrative writing I had collected from my student teachers dealt with memories and perceptions, inviting the reader into rich, lived experiences. Denscombe (2007:77) notes that a phenomenological approach:
… concentrates its efforts on the kind of human experiences that are pure, basic and raw in the sense that they have not (yet) been subjected to the processes of analysing and theorizing them.
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However, this did not seem to describe these narratives. This writing was thoughtful and reflective and it could be argued that the participants had already undertaken some analysis as they explored their relationship with English from the perspective of beginning English teachers.
I was aware, nonetheless, that phenomenology is a wide and evolving research method and that I needed to locate myself in analytic, interpretive approaches to phenomenology. Titchen (2005:125) identifies the interpretive approach as ‘Indirect’ or ‘Existential Phenomenology’. She goes on to explain that in this approach:
Researchers adopt an involved, connected observer stance and immerse themselves, literally, in the concrete, everyday world they are studying.
My role as a personal tutor on the English PGCE did mean that I was working alongside my student teachers in the field and I was the ‘connected, involved observer’ (Titchen, 2005:126). This role also meant that my data collection became more holistic as I drew on the everyday materials of the PGCE programme, including course writing and evaluations. However, at times I also moved into a more empirical researcher role by using open questionnaires when I wished to follow up lines of inquiry emerging from the data. This desire to follow up lines of inquiry suggested a need to find answers and pin down meaning. I felt that the data I had collected did indeed suggest ‘the richness and texture of experience’ (Lawthom and Tindall, 2011:4) but I began to wonder if the phenomenological methods of interpretation were closing down this richness and texture instead of opening it up. I had already realised that the formation and continuing development of personal epistemologies was a complex topic but it seemed that my ethnographic, interpretive approach was seeking to clarify and streamline the messiness rather than acknowledge it and explore it.
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Furthermore, my reading into the post-structural/post-modern writing of Derrida, Deleuze and Guattari, and Foucault was taking me in new directions where issues of ‘embodiment, spatiality, intersubjectivity, temporality’ were beginning to be cast in a new light of indeterminacy. This new way of thinking sat uneasily with the interpretive approaches I had used and this tension between constructivist and post-structural thinking is a generative undercurrent which runs through the analysis of Part One of the Data Sample.