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• 1 2022-06-08T19:57:48+00:00 Phenomenology 11 defines and describes the literature for the conceptual framework of phenomenology plain 2023-06-24T16:16:41+00:00 ​​​​​Phenomenology was both philosophy and methodology for this research (Creely et al., 2020). As the primary locus and topic of this study, phenomenological research aimed to reveal and describe lived experiences in order to gain understanding of the meaning of phenomena (Cilesiz, 2011). Thus my research focused on “richly describing the experiential essence of human experiences” (Tracy, 2020, p. 65) as this related to MDL and OEPr in teacher education. 
  
            I created a remixed graphic rendering of the conceptual framework of phenomenology in order to gain understanding (see Figure 1 below).
  
            Two central concepts in phenomenology were the notions of lifeworlds and intentionality. Lifeworlds are described as the immediate experiences of what already exists, emerging from the world in its natural and emerging state (Tracy, 2020). The lifeworld is where the phenomena were experienced and lived (Vagle, 2018). In this research, this lifeworld included both the physical world of the participants' geographic localized ecologies but also their digital and electronic spaces described through I-Technology-World relationships (Idhe, 1990; Rosenberger & Verbeek, 2015). Intentionality was described as the meaning and “connections that emerge in relations, contexts, and across time” (Valentine et al., 2018, p. 463). This use of the word intentionality was not to be confused with the intent, purpose, aim, or plan to do something. For phenomenologists, intentionality described “the way humans are connected meaningfully with the world” (Vagle, 2018, p. 126). Phenomenological researchers were aware of how “words, language, concepts, and theories distort, mediate, and shape raw experience” (Tracy, 2020, p. 65). Criticality and self-reflection were imperative considerations in phenomenological research (Tracy, 2020).
  
            In order to fully understand the post-intentional phenomenological (P-IP) paradigm (Clifden & Vagle, 2020; Vagle & Hofsess, 2016) within which this research was framed, I first explored the differences between the transcendental phenomenology and the hermeneutic, existential phenomenological research paradigms, since these two paradigms were more often applied to phenomenological research. I then uncovered the third phenomenological paradigm and explained why post-intentional phenomenology (Vagle, 2018; Valentine et al., 2018) provided the best fit for this research.

  Transcendental Phenomenology

  Transcendental, or descriptive phenomenology, was inspired by Husserl’s philosophy of consciousness (Tracy, 2020; Valentine, 2018). How the research participant knows, or is consciously aware of some object, real or imagined, thus holding a ‘consciousness of something’, was foundational when describing the “essence of a phenomenon or experience” (Valentine et al., 2018, p. 464). The researcher must set aside their biases or habits of seeing while conducting the research and data analysis. This was done through a process of bracketing or transcending previously conceived theory, experiences, and understandings. This removed the researcher’s influence from the interpretation of the phenomenon (Valentine et al., 2018; Tracy, 2020). Since meaning was derived from the “intentional relation between subject and object” the research studied the “of-ness” of the phenomenon (Vagle, 2018, p. 39). The focus was on accurate and rich descriptions of the phenomenon as it was understood or known by the research participants.
  
            For this research, the phenomenon under scrutiny was the MDL within OEPr. This research shifted away from transcendental phenomenology since I did not ‘bracket’ or suspend my “habits of seeing” (Tracy, 2020, p. 65). It was not just the knowing or understanding of the phenomenon of MDL within an OEPr, as seen through a teacher educator’s experiences that interested me. It was the phenomenon of how participants' MDL shaped micro-practices in becoming open educational practitioners that is the aim of this research.
  
  Interpretive Phenomenology
  
  Interpretive or hermeneutic phenomenology focused on embodiment and being in the lifeworlds and intentions relating to a phenomenon and was grounded in the philosophies of Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty, and Gadamer (Valentine et al., 2018). This shift in phenomenology from knowing to being resulted from Heidegger’s ontological interest in how people gave subjective meaning to phenomena. Interpretive phenomenology was not just concerned with consciousness, but in how lifeworlds constituted intelligible structures (Vagle, 2018) and how these meanings were revealed through language and discourse, thus emphasizing the intentionalities within people’s stories as a form of sense-making (Tracy, 2020). Vagle (2018) applied the preposition ‘in’ to describe the ‘in-ness’ of intentionality whereby the human subject is ‘in’ “intersubjective, contextual relationships” (p. 42). Bracketing was replaced by reflective and reflexive practices that ‘bridle’ or restrain the researcher’s positionality and perspectives on the phenomenon (Valentine et al., 2018). In this way, the researcher was not removed from the research, but openly acknowledged their assumptions and positionality while they shared their reflexive understandings of the phenomenon (Valentine et al., 2018).
  
            While a fuller presentation of interpretive phenomenological analysis (IPA) as outlined by Smith (2004) was beyond the purposes of this  research, it was important to reveal three characteristic features of IPA – idiography, inductivity, and interrogation – that influence post-intentional phenomenological research. IPA followed an idiographic research sequence, meaning that the researcher collected one case or participant’s story at a time, bringing it to a degree of closure, before moving on to subsequent cases or conducting a cross-case analysis of themes for convergence or divergence (Smith, 2004). Since I conducted interviews and storying events simultaneously and interwoven in time and space, this excluded IPA as a research method.
  
            Researchers following an IPA strategy inductively analyzed data while being open to unanticipated and emergent themes or topics as well as continuing to interrogate extant literature (Smith, 2004). While these characteristics may be evident in the research, since my process included a fluidity to the coding and analysis that deductively generated themes and categories while I continued to explore patterns within the whole-part-whole descriptions of the phenomena in conjunction with the interview process and the reading of literature.
  
            While transcendental and interpretive forms of phenomenological theory were of interest, it was post-intentional phenomenology (P-IP) that provided the best fit for this research since I posit that the MDL of teacher educators fluent in OEPr will be gathered in a fluid, liminal, boundary crossing, and dynamic praxis that continually shifted toward an ideal of becoming open, becoming literate, and becoming teacher-educator. The next section explores P-IP as it related to this research.
   
• 1 2022-06-08T21:16:17+00:00 Post-Intentional Phenomenology 7 describes P-IP research methodology plain 2023-06-22T17:18:26+00:00 As a research methodology, P-IP (see Figure 1) brings together a focus on human-technology relations and a pragmatic approach to the study of ideas and experiences discovered within usage, design, policy, and research (Rosenberger & Verbeek, 2015). P-IP research explores the ways in which technologies impact relationships between human beings and the world thus shaping human interactions, relationships, and embodiment (Ihde, 2011; Rosenberger & Verbeek, 2015). Following a P-IP approach, my research inquiry examined the lifeworld and lived experiences of TEds relationality (lived relation), corporeality (lived body), spatiality (lived space), temporality (lived time), and materiality (lived things and technologies)(Rosenberger & Verbeek, 2015; Vagle, 2018) while focusing on the phenomenon of MDL within an OEPr.
  
            While Rosenberger and Verbeek (2015) acknowledged the lack of a strict methodology for P-IP scholars to follow, they recognize central concepts and essential elements of those applying this methodology. Since we are always hearing, seeing, feeling, or thinking something (Rosenberger & Verbeek, 2015), the P-IP methodology applied to this research attended to these intentionalities as they occur between participants, technologies, and their lived experiences in the world, both physical and virtual. Post-intentional phenomenologists explore the indirect and mediated relation between human-technology-world (Ihde, 2011; Rosenberger & Verbeek, 2015). This mediation is the “source of the specific shape that human subjectivity and the objectivity of the world can take in this specific situation. Subject and object are constituted in their mediated relation” (Rosenberger & Verbeek, 2015, p. 12) (emphasis in original source). Intentionality is the fountain from which subject and object emerge (Rosenberger & Verbeek, 2015). 
  
            For my research, this fountain was the intentionality of participants within the phenomenon of MDL in their OEPr, revealed through their human-technology-world interactions. The objectivity of the digital world found within open educational networks, spaces, places, and events are reflected within and through the interviews and digital artifacts created and shared by the participants. An awareness of MDL, exhibited through the lived experiences of these micro-events and intentional actions, are revealed in the participants’ stories.
  
            Vagle (2018) suggested that P-IP researchers should follow lines of flight. These occur in three ways: first, by emphasizing connections “as a way to open up complicated movements and interactions” (Vagle, 2018, p. 118); second by remaining “open, flexible, and contemplative in our thinking, acting, and decision-making” (p. 119); and, third by “resisting the tying down of lived experience and knowledge” (p. 119) to allow for unanticipated ways of knowing. With openness identified as a key consideration in P-IP research, there was an evident fit for an investigation into OEPr. 
  
            For this research, technology was an essential factor, particularly in light of COVID-19 pandemic restrictions which heightened the role technology plays in mediating the world of teaching and learning. Ihde (2011) posited that technology is not merely a tool through which we communicate; it is a “socially constructed cultural instrument in which current paradigms were an index of the sedimentation of beliefs” (Kennedy, 2016, p. 94). Ihde (2011) suggested that a reflective arc exists between agent and world, as mediated through the technology. I considered that it was through the active use of technology that TEds “find-ourselves-being-in-relation-with others … and other things” (Vagle, 2018, p. 20; emphasis in original). 
  
            In my P-IP research design I examined the intentionality of technology within the phenomena being studied since a P-IP approach allowed for a pathway that has “parameters, tools, techniques and guidance, but also allows us to be creative, exploratory, artistic and generative with our craft” (Vagle, 2014, p. 48). Reflexivity, a key feature of P-IP research, was described as a “dogged questioning of one’s own knowledge as opposed to a suspension of this knowledge” (Vagle, 2014, p 75), unlike other phenomenological traditions that used bracketing or bridling (van Manen, 2014). Research suggested phenomenologists of all traditions take an open stance to data gathering with a whole-part-whole analysis process. This process stemmed from the idea that phenomenologists think about “focal meanings (e.g. moments) in relation to the whole (e.g. broader context) from which they are situated” (Vagle, 2018, p. 108). For this research, I examined the meanings and moments the participants revealed of their MDL within an OEPr, looking for where these resided within broader global contexts and frameworks.
   
            With this in mind, I focused the research on the lived experiences and the nature of ‘becoming’ literate within MDL practices as revealed in participants’ intentionality of technology/world relationships. It was through this “mediation and mutual constitution” (Rosenberger & Verbeek, 2015, p. 12) between subject and object, between teacher educator-artifact production-world of teacher education that I discovered emerging connections among MDL and OEPr. Since P-IP applied a practical and material orientation in order to examine how human-technology-world relations are organized, this methodological approach suits this research design. 
• 1 2023-06-25T19:49:57+00:00 Contribution to research 2 conclusion section outlining how this research contributes to qualitative research plain 2023-06-25T20:35:59+00:00

  Contribution to qualitative research in education

  This dissertation contributes to qualitative research in education in its unique application of P-IP and crystallization epistemologies and methodologies (see Figure 1; see Figure 13) as well as the application of the ALT-DISS multimodal format using Scalar software. This contributes to capacity development and provides a model for other researchers (Scott, 2014; Tran, 2019) not only to education researchers focusing on teacher education, but to qualitative research and multimodal dissertation applications in other fields of endeavour or other educational research inquiries. In this way, I contribute to the diversity of approaches that are opportunities to unsettle understandings of what P-IP, crystallization inquiry, and multimodal dissertations are or can become (Ellingson, 2014; Tran, 2019; Vagle et al., 2020).
  
            This research contributes to capacity development and adds value to inquiry by/for people, aiding transformation and collaboration (Scott, 2014). Through the open approaches found in OEPr, this dissertation has been created and shared through an open, public-facing portal, where private and critical feedback is part of the process. Additionally, transformation and collaboration is evident in the many contributions to scholarly works in qualitative research in education that have been emerged from this doctoral inquiry. These include multiple peer reviewed publications and chapters focusing on digital literacy policy and practice across Canada (DeWaard & Hoechsmann, 2021), digital literacies in faculties of education in Canada (DeWaard, 2022), cross-cultural mentoring in professional learning (DeWaard & Chavhan, 2022), online course design (van Barneveld & DeWaard, 2021), assessment practices (DeWaard & Roberts, 2021), intentionally equitable hospitality (Bali et al., 2019), intentional open learning design (Roberts et al., 2023), and educommunication (DeWaard, In Press). Additional scholarly works include book reviews (DeWaard, 2021; DeWaard, 2020), research reviews (Farrow et al., 2021; Weller et al., 2023), and conference presentations. These contributions, in turn, have reciprocally shape this dissertation.