Post-Intentional Phenomenology
This framed my understanding that knowledge of the phenomena, and the phenomenon itself, was fluid, always becoming, since knowing about lived experiences with MDL would be “changed to the extent that reality also moves and changes” (Horton & Freire, 1990, p. 101). P-IP researchers suggested that phenomena are not rigid, but were temporal and partial, since the focus of the research is on examining the essential features of the phenomenon “at a given point in time, for a given group of participants, contexts, or cultures” (Valentine et al., 2020, p. 466). Thus, post-intentional phenomenologists take into account the “multi-dimensionality, multi-stability, and the multiple ‘voices’ of things” (Ihde, 2003, p. 25) as well as the variant ways participants’ lifeworlds emerged. It was through the notion of intentionality, or the “directional shape of experiences” (Ihde, 2012, p. 24), that I further determined P-IP was an appropriate theoretical framework for this research. P-IP was theoretically linked to connectivism (Siemens, 2018) in that intentionality was a “commitment to the idea of connection – and that the meaningfulness of living and the lifeworld resides in the connectivity among humans, things, ideas, concepts, conflicts, etc., not in humans or in things or in ideas alone” (Vagle, 2018, p. 128). This suited my research design.
Conceptually, a P-IP paradigm shifted away from the notion that there is a “brute reality out there – present and fixed – with an essence that can be both immediately perceived … and brought to light and expressed in language” (St. Pierre, 2013, p. 651). I considered how the phenomenon of media and digital literacy would be represented by transcendental illusions, contaminated by past, present, and future (St. Pierre, 2013; Vagle, 2018). For this research into MDL in the OEPr, I attended to St. Pierre’s (2013) notion of the “materiality of linguistic and discursive practice” (p. 652) where language and reality exist together. Theoretically, P-IP pushed me to consider where I needed to reject binary thinking about becoming media and digitally literate in favour of a logic of connection (St. Pierre, 2013; Vagle, 2018).
Clarity of the P-IP construct was gained through the Deleuzian conceptions of assemblage and lines of flight (Adkins, 2015: St. Pierre, 2013; Vagle, 2018) as both are seen as central to P-IP. Assemblages, described as the shapes of things, are concrete collections of materials that tend toward both stability and change (Adkins, 2015) while lines of flight are transitory (Adkins, 2015); exhibiting movements of fleeing, flowing, leaking, and eluding (Vagle, 2018) within the phenomenon being researched. Vagle (2018) describes three lines of flight afforded by P-IP which are helpful for this research: first, a “re-conception of the intentional connection” with a “focus on how things connect rather than on what things are” (Vagle, 2018, p. 129, emphasis in original) which emphasizes instability and partiality; second, re-conceiving of intentionality through a both/and perspective of individuals within their worlds, both agent and acted upon; and third, relationships and connections as being less linear, more transitorily multiple and shifting across “distances, intensities, and movements within and among things, relations, ideas, theories, and experiences” (Vagle, 2018, p. 131). These theoretical understandings suited my research design.
When I juxtaposed P-IP with Ellingson’s (2014) conception of crystallization, I confirmed my thinking about how P-IP supported the notion of becoming a media and digitally literate, open educational practitioner. Rocha (2015) re-emphasized that P-IP research was conceived as an assemblage by describing the shifts in phenomenology as it moved from a focus on objects, on being, and on giveness, while adding his own reduction with a focus on offerings. St. Pierre (2013) underscored P-IP as being “entangled, connected, indefinite, impersonal, shifting into different multiplicities” (p. 653).
As a P-IP researcher, seeking to find the stories of MDL within OEPr through lived experiences, I must “examine practices rather than going deep, looking for origins and hidden meanings that exist outside of being” (St. Pierre, 2013, p. 649). It would become evident through productions and provocations created with and without technologies, that the temporal, partial, and contextual features of ambiguous, emergent, and variant phenomena (Valentine et al., 2018) such as MDL in an OEPr might be revealed. Thus, my P-IP research would rely on gathering rich data from a variety of sources and from lived-experiences “meant to stand as testimony, bearing witness” (hooks, 1994, p. 11). In this research, proxies for teacher educators’ MDL within their OEPr were revealed in writing, interviews, observations, media productions, discourses, and histories. Rocha (2015) referred to these as “offerings” (p. 6). In this way, the phenomena of becoming a media and digitally literate open educational practitioner in Canadian FoE was understood as a “relation of possible meanings being shaped, produced, and provoked” (Valentine et al., 2018, p. 467) and as a “movement against and beyond boundaries” (hooks, 1994, p. 12).
For P-IP researchers, reflexivity requires a “dogged questioning of one’s own knowledge as opposed to a suspension of this knowledge” (Vagle, 2018, p. 82). This involves continual attention to moments where connection/ disconnection became evident, where normality is assumed, where bottom lines are discovered, and where shock or insights emerge (Valentine, 2018). Research data is iteratively analyzed through wholistic, selective and detailed readings (van Manen, 2014) that shape and crystallize the facets found within whole, parts, meanings, particularities, and unique assemblages. It was in these crystallizing moments that I as a P-IP researcher used reflexivity to open the potentialities of turning to wonder (Rocha, 2015; Vagle, 2018). It was in these open moments when the lived experiences being researched created feelings of awe, perplexity, and surprise. In this way, the research and the writing of phenomenological research benefited from multi-modal expressions of visual, auditory, language, images, art, video, or music (Vagle, 2018; van Manen, 2014). From this review of P-IP I confirmed that this philosophical framework was the best fit for this research.