A Phenomenological Inquiry Into Science Teachers Case Method Learning

This book illustrates a practical application of the Case Method as a teaching technique in teacher education, and examines how learning takes place in a teacher professional development activity. It also describes teachers’ lived experience of the activity based on Clark Moustakas' 1994 guidelines for organizing and presenting a phenomenological study.

In higher education, case studies can be utilized to have students put themselves into problems faced by a protagonist and, by doing so, address academic or career-related issues. Working through these issues provides students with an opportunity to gain applied perspective and experiences. Professors in higher education who choose this method of teaching require navigational tools to ensure that students achieve stated learning objectives. Case Study Methodology in Higher Education is an essential research publication that focuses on the history and theories relating to case study methodology including techniques for writing case studies and utilizing them in university settings to prepare students for real-life career-related scenarios. This publication features a wide range of topics such as educational leadership, case writing, and teacher education. It is essential for educators, career professionals, higher education faculty, researchers, and students.

This book invites readers to embark on a journey into the world of agency encompassing humans, other organisms, cells, intracellular molecular agents, colonies, populations, ecological systems, and artificial autonomous systems. We combine mechanistic and non-mechanistic approaches in the analysis of the function and evolution of organisms, their subagents, and multi-organism systems, and in this way offer a theoretical platform for integrating biosemiotics with both natural science and the humanities/social sciences. Agents are autonomous systems that incorporate knowledge on how to make sense of their environment and use it to achieve their goals. The functions of all agents are supported by mechanisms at the lowest level; however, the explanatory power of mechanistic analysis is not sufficient for complex agents. Non-mechanistic methods rely on the goal-directedness of agents whose dynamics follow self-stabilized dynamic attractors. The properties of attractors depend on stable or slowly changing factors, and such dependencies can be interpreted as sign relations if they are adaptive in nature. Agents can replace or redirect mechanisms on demand in order to preserve their functions; for performing higher-level semiotic functions, mechanisms are thus only means. We assume that mechanism and semiosis are not mutually exclusive, and that simple agents can interpret signs mechanistically. This assumption allows us to extend semiotic analysis to all agents, including ribosomes in cells, computers, and robots. This book challenges established traditions in natural science and the humanities/social sciences: semiotics no longer appears as restricted to humans and rational thinking, and biology is no longer limited to rely exclusively on mechanistic reasoning.

Phenomenological Inquiry in Education is an edited collection of 16 chapters that offers a fascinating and diverse range of approaches and views about phenomenological inquiry as applied in educational research. Written by a group of international scholars concerned about understanding lived experience, the editors assemble theoretical ideas, methodological approaches and empirical research to create a distinctive transdisciplinary outlook. Embodying many unique and useful insights the book provokes thought about the possibilities for phenomenology in contemporary educational research. The international contributors highlight what an exploration of lived experience can offer qualitative research and extend on methodologies commonly used in educational research. By grounding phenomenological inquiry in the complexities of doing research across discipline areas in education, the writers of the book forge links between theory and empirical research, and give their unique perspectives about how phenomenological ideas are being and might be employed in educational research. The book is thus carefully crafted to address both phenomenology as a philosophical tradition and its possibilities for educational research. This scholarly work will appeal to educational researchers, as well as those in broader social research. It taps into the growing international interest in phenomenological research in education which brings attention to lived experience and the highly important affective dimension of learning.

Nutrition Research: Concepts and Applications, Second Edition assists students in developing the skills necessary to become knowledgeable consumers of research, conduct and document research projects, and using research findings in the classroom and in supervised practice. The Second Edition makes research articles approachable and understandable so students can feel confident reading and interpreting not just primary research, but also narrative and systematic reviews. In turn, this text also helps students understand and access practice guidelines to enable their participation in evidence-based nutrition and dietetics practice. Nutrition Research, Second Edition provides numerous examples of concepts, ample practice opportunities using questions tied to actual studies, and occasions for step-by-step mastery of concepts. This valuable text starts with the basics and is comprehensive in its approach, making it ideal for undergraduate students as well as graduate students.

Accessing narrative oral history and phenomenological lifeworld experiences was significant for my doctoral research of teacher learning because I was able to explore individual post-reflection as story and the pre-reflective meaning on lifeworld in order to understand interconnections across experience. Education research predominately reports on teacher learning outcomes aligned to professional standards, while case studies using combined qualitative methods for understanding teacher learning are dearth in the literature. This case study focuses on a combined narrative and phenomenological inquiry approach to garner views of expert teachers. I outline the three-interview process to access the learning experiences of five teachers, from my PhD study completed in 2014. The research practicalities for encouraging participants who may not be open to volunteer for a study are addressed in relation to clearly communicated research intention, combined purposive sampling and criteria sampling, snowball or chain sampling, and ethical implications for participants and researcher. The research design accessed the context of unique human experience by capturing participant story and searching for meaning often embedded at an implied level. I offer technology tips for researchers working with interview meaning representations (data).The case study offers an approach that requires relying on qualitative principles of rigor, determining saturation and identifying limitation of findings, and designing an interview protocol as pertinent to accessing the phenomena being researched. I conclude by suggesting that the significance of the personal for teacher learning is evident from my research because narrative oral history and phenomenological lifeworld interviews accessed the uniquely insightful development of expertise.

This book presents a carefully constructed framework for teaching and learning informed by philosophical and empirical foundations of phenomenology. Based on an extensive, multi-dimensional case study focused around the ‘lived experience’ of college-level teaching preparation, classroom interaction, and students’ reflections, this book presents evidence for the claim that the worldviews of both teachers and learners affect the way that they present and receive knowledge. By taking a unique phenomenological approach to pedagogical issues in higher education, this volume demonstrates that a truly transformative learning process relies on an engagement between consciousness and the world it ‘intends’.

This book explores the resurgence of interest in phenomenology as aphilosophy and research movement among scholars in education, thehumanities and social sciences. Brings together a series of essays by an international team ofphilosophers and educationalists Juxtaposes diverse approaches to phenomenological inquiry andaddresses questions of significance for education today Demonstrates why phenomenology is a contemporary movement thatis both dynamic and varied Highlights ways in which phenomenology can inform a broad rangeof aspects of educational theorising and practice, includinglearning through the body, writing online, being an authenticteacher, ambiguities in becoming professionals, and schooltransition