Student Teachers' Interpreted Awarenesses of Their Pedagogies: An Integrally-Informed Inquiry

• Main Author: Brueck, Stefan R
• Format: Dissertation
• Language: English
• Published: ProQuest LLC 2017; ProQuest Dissertations & Theses
• Subjects: Alignment (Education); Coding; Communication Research; Data Analysis; Educational Environment; Educational Practices; Educational Research; Hermeneutics; Holistic Approach; Instructional Design; Interpersonal Communication; Interviews; Pedagogy; Phenomenology; Preservice Teachers; Reflective Teaching; Science Teachers; Student Teacher Attitudes; Student Teachers; Students; Teacher education; Teacher Educators; Teaching Methods; Time
• ISBN: 9780355209570; 0355209578

This inquiry explores Integral Theory's prospective value to assist interpreting student teachers' communicated awarenesses for how they make sense of their own pedagogies, acknowledging student teachers' partial existence within post-secondary teacher education circumstances along with emerging twenty-first century conditions. Accordingly, this research project attended to three student teachers, each interviewed individually in tandem with a two-fold integrally-informed investigative strategy. First, the researcher documented and described self-identified holons, or whole/part phenomena (Koestler, 1967; Wilber, 1996a, 1997, 1998, 2000a, 2000b, 2001b, 2004b, 2007, 2011a, 2011b, 2011c), student teachers communicated about their pedagogical priorities. Then the researcher analyzed the findings via aspects within a particular version of an integrally-informed framework, exploring participants' interpreted awarenesses of their pedagogies more richly. Methodologically employing an integrally-informed hermeneutic phenomenology, Ricoeur (1976, 1981) and Esbjorn-Hargens (2007) were utilized as primary touchstones with their work being distinctively applied in relation to collected data and proposed investigative issues. The software program MaxQDA was additionally applied for coding and data analysis purposes. In this study, student teacher participants were found to have altogether communicated 694 different holons a combined total of 8,140 instances. The most prevalent holons that student teacher participants communicated about their pedagogies were found to be, amongst all three persons in descending order of instances: 1) Communication; 2) Children/Students; 3) Time; and 4) Academics. Moreover, it was determined that participants' communications were in minimal alignment with the "explicit" discourse of an integrally-informed approach to pedagogy. Participants' collective interview responses did jointly "signal", though not in great depth or breadth, at least some recognizable overlap with seventeen of Esbjorn-Hargens' twenty aspects of integral education, a.k.a. an integrally-informed approach to pedagogy. Participants' interpreted awarenesses did not appear to include causal-formless or witnessing states. Furthermore, participants did not seem to convey any significant indication of fifth order or stable integral (Turquoise) consciousness. Ultimately, by contributing to the cultivation of wisdom, this scholarly venture fosters that which is currently believed to be beneficial for demonstrating the impact of integrative metatheories (MetaIntegral Foundation, 2015), uniquely regarding educational research conducted on the interpreted awarenesses student teachers communicate pertaining to their pedagogical reality/realities. [The dissertation citations contained here are published with the permission of ProQuest LLC. Further reproduction is prohibited without permission. Copies of dissertations may be obtained by Telephone (800) 1-800-521-0600. Web page: http://www.proquest.com/en-US/products/dissertations/individuals.shtml.]