Post-Intentional Phenomenology
While Rosenberger and Verbeek (2015) acknowledge 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 always hear, see, feel, or think something (Rosenberger & Verbeek, 2015), the P-IP methodology applied to this research will attend to these intentionalities as they occur between participants, technologies, and their lived experiences in the world, both physical and virtual. So, 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). Intentionality is the fountain from which subject and object emerge (Rosenberger & Verbeek, 2015).
For my research, this fountain is the intentionality of participants within the phenomenon of MDL within OEPr discovered through their human-technology-world interactions. The objectivity of the digital world found within open educational networks, spaces, places, and events will be 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, will be revealed in the participants' stories.
Vagle (2018) suggests that P-IP researchers should follow lines of flight in three ways: first, by emphasizing connections “as a way to open up complicated movements and interactions” (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 is an evident fit for an investigation into OEPr.
For this research, technology is an essential factor, particularly in light of COVID-19 pandemic restrictions which heighten the role technology plays in mediating the world of teaching and learning. Ihde (2011) posits 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). There exists a reflective arc between agent and world, as mediated through the technology (Ihde, 2011). It is 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 will examine the intentionality of technology within the phenomena being studied. A P-IP approach allows 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, is described as a “dogged questioning of one’s own knowledge as opposed to a suspension of this knowledge” (Vagle, 2014, p 75) as compared to other phenomenological traditions that use bracketing or bridling (van Manen, 2014). Phenomenologists have an open stance to data gathering with a whole-part-whole analysis process. This process stems 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 my research, I focus on meanings and moments which participants reveal as I look for connections to broader, global MDL frameworks.
With this in mind, I will focus 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 is 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 may discover emerging connections among MDL and OEPr. Since P-IP applies a practical and material orientation in order to examine how human-technology-world relations are organized, this methodological approach suits this research design.