"Holding on while letting go" A Gadamerian hermeneutic study of postgraduate professional healthcare teaching students experiences as enquiry based learners

Stevenson, Elizabeth Ann (2021). "Holding on while letting go" A Gadamerian hermeneutic study of postgraduate professional healthcare teaching students experiences as enquiry based learners. University of Birmingham. Ed.D.

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Abstract

This small-scale Gadamerian-informed hermeneutic study explores the experiences of eleven United Kingdom (UK) postgraduate professional healthcare teaching students’ who engaged with enquiry based learning (EBL) as learners in the final module of their professional teacher
preparation course.

EBL also known as IBL (inquiry based learning) has gained increasing popularity in contemporary higher education within the UK and further afield for its capacity to give learners’ agency. It does this through individual and collective empowerment enabling learners to become independent self-directed critical thinkers. EBL is predicated on shifting the ontology of learning to one of discovery which opens up unexpected detours and unpredictable paths of exploration. Significantly this shift unties the familiar relationship between learner and teacher which for the learner can involve a dramatic and potentially transformative existential incline accompanied by attendant losses and gains.

While others have explored the transformative powers of learning none has explored the transformative powers of EBL using the bricolage of conceptual frameworks employed within this study. The unique assemblage of eminent educationalists and continental philosophers has enabled a more sophisticated level of interpretation to emerge through the synthesis of a diverse range of knowledge culminating in a fusion of horizons.

At the heart of the study is the philosophy of Hans Georg Gadamer whose thinking has revealed EBL to be inseparable from its context. However, it is the thinking of French philosopher Catherine Malabou that brings originality to the study. Drawing on Malabou’s ontological concepts of plasticity and metamorphosis has revealed how EBL has potentially transformative powers; powers that are capable of moulding and sculpting individual behaviour. These powers are not visible but are held in some sort of ontological reserve without the status of being there
but they have the potential to be unleashed by EBL’s ontology.

Type of Work:

Thesis (Doctorates > Ed.D.)

Award Type:

Doctorates > Ed.D.

Supervisor(s):