Post-Intentional Phenomenology
This frames my understanding that knowledge of the phenomena is fluid, always becoming, since knowing is “changed to the extent that reality also moves and changes” (Horton & Freire, 1990, p. 101). P-IP researchers recognize that phenomena are not rigid, but are temporal and partial, the focus 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) and variant ways participants’ lifeworlds emerge. P-IP is theoretically linked to connectivism (Siemens, 2018) in that intentionality is 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).
Research within a P-IP paradigm shifts away from a notion of ‘giveness’ or 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). It shifts toward Derrida’s conception of différence (1972/ 1981 as cited in St. Pierre, 2013) whereby phenomena are transcendental illusions, contaminated by past, present, and future. It is shaped by Foucault’s focus on the ‘materiality of linguistic and discursive practice” (St. Pierre, 2013, p. 652) where language and reality exist together. It follows an experimental Deleuzian ontology (St. Pierre, 2013) with lines of flight as a central concept, while rejecting binary logic in favour of a logic of connection (St. Pierre, 2013; Vagle, 2018). It is through the Deleuzian conceptions of assemblage and rhizomatics that the notion of becoming a digitally literate, open educational practitioner as a teacher educator can be revealed as “entangled, connected, indefinite, impersonal, shifting into different multiplicities” (St. Pierre, 2013, p. 653). Rocha (2015) builds on this conception of assemblage by describing the shifts in phenomenology, moving from a focus on objects to a focus on being, then to a focus on giveness, while adding his own reduction towards a focus on offerings.
Since P-IP researchers must “examine practices rather than going deep, looking for origins and hidden meanings that exist outside of being” (St. Pierre, 2013, p. 649), it is an appropriate theoretical framework for this research. It is through intentionality, or the “directional shape of experiences” (Ihde, 2012, p. 24), as evident through productions and provocations created with and without technologies, that the temporal, partial, and contextual features of highly ambiguous, emergent, and variant phenomena (Valentine et al., 2018) are revealed. P-IP research relies 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 are revealed in writing, interviews, observations, media productions, discourses, and histories. Rocha (2015) refers to these as “offerings” (p. 6). In this way, the phenomena of becoming a media and digitally literate open educational practitioner in Canadian FoE can be 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 become evident, where normality is assumed, where bottom lines are discovered, and where shock or insights emerge (Valentine, 2018). Research data are iteratively analyzed through wholistic, selective and detailed readings (van Manen, 2014) that can shape and crystallize the facets found within whole, parts, meanings, particularities, and unique assemblages. It is in these crystallizing moments that P-IP research reflexivity is open to the potentialities of turning to wonder (Rocha, 2015; Vagle, 2018). Researchers are open to moments when the lived experiences being researched create feelings of awe, perplexity, and surprise. In this way, the research and the writing of phenomenological research benefits 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 posit that this framework is the best fit for this research.