Post-Intentional Phenomenology
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.