22. Research in Higher Education
Paper
Higher Education Teachers’ Ways Of Being And Acting: An Exploration Using Visual Narratives
Mariana Gaio Alves, Ana Sofia Pinho
Instituto de Educação, Universidade de Lisboa, Portugal
Presenting Author: Gaio Alves, Mariana;
Pinho, Ana Sofia
Higher education and the teaching profession have been facing increasing challenges in recent decades. Take, for example, the phenomena associated with the information society and the massification of higher education. At the same time, a convergence of trends regarding policies for higher education have led to the creation of the European Higher Education Area (EHEA), in which 48 countries have been implementing reforms on the basis of common key values intended to make higher education systems more compatible and strengthening their quality assurance mechanisms.
The EHEA officially started in 1999 with the signing of Bologna declaration. Given that political framework, the countries involved started processes of curriculum restructuring in higher education, and changes within academics' professionalism were advocated, with a strong appeal to interrupt the hegemony of the instructional paradigm, emphasizing the need to adopt the learning paradigm. This paradigm transition is particularly underlined in Portugal across the implementation of the Bologna process that started in 2006 (Esteves, 2010).
Within this context, the need to reject the conception of a teacher who holds and transmits knowledge has been emphasised, demanding the reconfiguration of teachers’ ways of being and acting with inevitable implications for pedagogical practices. Such a change is not intended to take place only at the most superficial level with the occasional resource to more active methodologies or with the incorporation of digital technologies in teaching. In fact, a deeper transformation in the core of the professionalism and professionality of the teacher is expected, reaching the level of teachers' beliefs, conceptions and implicit theories.
However, despite the enormous pressure on higher education teachers to change its practices, it has been observed that this type of change does not necessarily follow from political pressure or normative imposition. Instead, it is suggested that pedagogical training might contribute to the reconfiguration of teaching and to improve its quality (Inamorato et all., 2019; Postareff et all, 2007), even if this idea is not fully embedded within higher education institutions, which restricts opportunities for the professional development of academics.
One previous qualitative study with Portuguese higher education teachers suggests, on the one hand, the presence of a dominant professional conception inscribed in the artisanal paradigm and matched with a teaching conception based on the transmission of knowledge, but, on the other hand, indicates that formal pedagogical training might support changes in teachers’ conceptions about the meaning of teaching and learning, with effects on teaching practices and on the quality of student learning (Almeida, Viana, Alves, 2022). This is in line with the assumption that, throughout their professional development process which can be enriched by pedagogical training, teachers structure a personal interpretative framework corresponding to "a set of cognitions, mental representations that work as a lens through which they look at their profession, giving it meaning and acting in it” (Ketchermans, 2009, p.72).
Against this background, the aim of the research reported in the proposed paper is to deepen knowledge about higher education teachers’ personal interpretative frameworks, paying special attention to the dynamic nature of such frameworks when teachers are involved in formal pedagogical training directed to their professional development. Namely, two main questions guide the research: 1) Which are the teachers’ conceptions about ways of being and acting as higher education teacher? 2) Are these conceptions reconfigured across the attendance of a post-graduation degree on pedagogy in higher education that lasts one academic year? The participants are a group of 19 Portuguese academics enrolled on a post-graduation degree on pedagogy in higher education at Instituto de Educação – Universidade de Lisboa in 2022/2023.
Methodology, Methods, Research Instruments or Sources UsedNarrative approaches in education have long been used to access and make teachers’ interpretative frameworks and lived experiences understandable (Clandinin & Connelly, 2000). Particularly, visual narratives, such as drawings, are signaled as strategic mediation tools in such process, due to their dual dimension: on the one hand, as a way of mediating professional learning regarding conceptions and images about teaching in professional development initiatives; on the other hand, as research artifacts, which due to their multimodality features, provide the researcher with the most salient representations teachers experience at a specific moment in time (Orland-Barak & Maskit, 2017).
Considering the purpose of the current piece of research, a visual narrative approach was adopted and a set of 19 drawings and their corresponding explanations were collected in the context of the above mentioned post-graduation degree attended by higher education teachers from different institutions and disciplinary domains. Such degree lasts one year and the participants were invited to draw themselves as teachers in the 2nd class of the 1st semester of the degree (in the beginning of October 2022). As this is an ongoing study, this first dataset will be complemented by a new round of data collection at the end of the 2nd and last semester of the degree (in the end of June 2023), where the participants will be asked to revise their initial drawing, and to either re-draw it/update it or to draw a new one, according to what they consider to be more aligned with their interpretative frameworks at the time. This new process of data collection will be supplemented with an expanded written account by each teacher.
A content analysis will be applied to both datasets, thus following what Barkhuizen (2011) describes as analysis of narrative content, which consists in looking for similarities and grouping them into categories, through processes like coding for themes, categorization, and pattern finding among them.
Conclusions, Expected Outcomes or FindingsPreliminary results based on content analysis of the first dataset (the 19 drawings and their corresponding explanations collected in October 2022) point out to the centrality of the classroom context and organization, as well as of the pedagogical interaction between teacher-student(s); but it also reveals classroom diversity and the role of emotions and professional values. Interestingly, despite common trends in the teachers’ drawings, the disciplinary field as a teacher seems to play a significant role in the participants’ interpretative frameworks, when they refer to the type of lessons and field work. So, it will be important to deepen the analysis and debate whether changes within academics' professionalism reveal a tension between the instructional paradigm and the learning paradigm in what concerns teachers’ ways of being and acting.
The collection of the second dataset of drawings and their corresponding explanations in June 2023 will be fundamental to examine if and how the attendance of the post-graduation in pedagogy in higher education might result in the reconfiguration of teachers’ ways of being and acting.
More broadly, the results of the study will contribute to deepened awareness about the teaching work of academics exploring ways of being and acting as teachers, as well as how these might be changed across formal pedagogical training, based on a qualitative original approach. Given that research about teaching academic work, namely using qualitative approaches, is not an issue sufficiently developed in the research field on higher education (Tigh, 2019; Kwiec, 2019), the paper is expected to contribute to fill in this gap.
ReferencesAlmeida, M.; Viana, J.; Alves, M. G. (2022). Exploring teaching conceptions and practices: a qualitative study with higher education teachers in Portugal, https://doi.org/10.5817/SP2022-2-2.
Barkhuizen, G. (2011). Narrative knowledging in TESOL. TESOL Quarterly, 45(3), 391-414.
Clandinin, D. J., & Connelly, F. M. (2000). Narrative Inquiry. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.
Esteves, M. (2010). Sentidos da inovação pedagógica no ensino superior. In C. Leite (Ed.). Sentidos da Pedagogia no Ensino Superior (pp.45-62). CIIE/Livpsic.
Inamorato dos Santos, A., Gausas, A., Mackeviciute, R., Jotaytyte, A., & Martinaitis, Z. (2019). Innovating Professional Development in Higher Education: an analysis of practices. Luxembourg: Publications Office of the European Union.
Kelchtermans, G. (2009). O comprometimento profissional para além do contrato: Auto-compreensão, vulnerabilidade e reflexão dos professores. In M. A. Flores & A. M. Simão (Eds.). Aprendizagem e desenvolvimento profissional dos professor
Kwieck, M. (2019). Changing European Academics - a comparative study of social stratification, work patterns and research productivity. London and New York: Routledge.
Orland-Barak, L., & Maskit, D. (2017). Methodologies of Mediation in Professional Learning. Cham: Springer.
Postareff, L.; Lindblom-Ylänne, S.; & Nevgi, A. (2007). The effect of pedagogical training on teaching in higher education. Teaching and Teacher Education 23 (2007) 557–571
Tigh, M. (2019). Higher Education Research – the developing field. Bloomsbury Academic.
22. Research in Higher Education
Paper
Postcards of Practice: Capturing the Shifting Work of Teaching in Higher Education
Mark Selkrig, Catherine Smith, Nicky Dulfer
The University of Melbourne, Australia
Presenting Author: Selkrig, Mark;
Smith, Catherine
Globally, Higher Education has undergone fundamental changes through massification, globalisation and marketization (Hil, 2014), and more recently through the impact of COVID 19. We have also seen an emergence of the discourse of quality teaching through various compliance and monitoring regulations (European Association for Quality Assurance in Higher Education, 2015; Tertiary Education Quality and Standards Agency, 2021). Although in spite of these requirements (Bormann et al. 2021), we have seen trust related to quality, accountability and scholarship within higher educational intuitions suffer. For example while promoted in the academy as good practice, opportunities for academics to interrogate, discuss and reflect on praxis (their practices related to teaching and learning and theoretical aspects that inform these) can be problematic for a number of reasons (Mackay & Tymon, 2013).
Along with the aforementioned forces of change and regulation impacting teaching and learning in Higher Education, the perpetual emergence of new, more complex technologies and the disruptive innovation that can result from these technologies has also colonised the field of education and learning (Christensen et al., 2008). Similarly, it is also apparent that teaching academics have diverse levels of skills and familiarities in digital pedagogies creating a digital divide between those who are comfortable or uncomfortable in an online setting (Marioni et al., 2020).
In light of these challenges and shifts, our aim was to explore how learning and teaching approaches are changing in the current higher education climate from the perspective of those who are involved in this work. We engaged with academic staff, who work in a faculty of education in a creative process to explore and share understandings about their prior, current and imagined future approaches to learning and teaching. The following research questions were adopted to guide our project.
- In what ways have academics involved in teaching in a HE setting approached learning and teaching in the past?
- What are the current learning and teaching approaches being enacted in one HE setting?
- What do academics envisage as approaches to teaching and learning that will be practised in three years’ time?
- How do academics’ small narratives, produced and shared via text and image, relate to the meta narratives about pedagogical work in HE?
In addition, we included the following methodological question based on our experimental approach:
- How effective are arts- based and participatory approaches in opening up new possibilities for academics to collaborate and to consider complex notions of identity and collegiality within an academic community?
We draw on Brookfield’s (2017) perspectives and lenses related to critical reflection to interrogate assumptions about our practice, in combination with Bourdieu’s concepts of habitus (the ingrained skills, habits, and dispositions we possess due to our life experiences) and field (arenas of practice that have distinct knowledges and rules) as ‘bundles of relations’ (Bourdieu & Waquant, 1992) to focus on what we can learn about the practices of teaching in higher education. In this presentation, habitus helps us to understand the developments and changes in practice and relationships in teaching through analysing the data and reflections of the participant. Habitus provides a way of understanding how the relationality and understanding of students and teaching context inform teaching through teaching relationships, as well as the course of a teaching career.
Methodology, Methods, Research Instruments or Sources UsedOur project is situated within a supercomplexity paradigm, where reality is seen as dynamic, frames of reference are shifting, conflicted and requires embracing fragility, insecurity, the unknown and strangeness, it involves problematizing and disturbing existing understandings (Ling & Ling, 2020). This paradigm sits well with the reflexive phenomenological approach we adopted for this project to provide participants with opportunities to reflect and adapt their practices. By drawing on a theoretical perspective that recognises the importance of people’s own interpretations of their experiences, our research recognises that participants’ experiences with the same phenomenon are informed by that person’s individual circumstances and worldview, including their pedagogical priorities and values.
After obtaining appropriate ethics approval from our university, we invited all teaching academics in the faculty, via a personalised email with a plain language statement attached and posters located in strategic locations, to become involved in the research. Their willingness to participate was obtained through a brief online (Qualtrics) survey which asked for some rudimentary data such as how long they had been teaching in the faculty. A follow up online survey was sent out approximately three weeks later that included three stem prompts that related to their approaches to teaching and learning; (a) pre-covid (about two years ago); (b) what they currently do; and (c)what they might be like in three years’ time. They were asked to provide a short textual response (no more than 40 words) and an image (they had self-made or sourced from the web) for each of the stem prompts. In total we had 27 colleagues respond to the prompts.
The inclusion of visual imagery as a data source to understand complex circumstances is well established in areas such as arts-based research (Leavy, 20150), visual phenomenology and photovoice (Wang & Burris, 1997) to elicit creative multi modal responses from participants. Bourdieu also espouses the benefits of imagery/ photography to illuminate aspects of habitus. (Bourdieu, 1990). The data (both image and text) were analysed by the three researchers and involved using inductive approaches to identify emergent themes. The process involved analysing each type of data separately to ascertain if there were themes within the text only, as well as sorting images by content and form to identify groupings and then together, with images and text collated in the form of a poster, to explore the relationships between text and images.
Conclusions, Expected Outcomes or FindingsThe images and text that the participants provided vividly reveal the impact and a/effects of the changed work/life circumstances and how particular dispositions of habitus inform practice over a period of massive disruption. Reflecting on past/present while engaging with explicit conceptualisation on what their teaching may be in the future, highlight aspects of Brookfield’s four critically reflective lenses of autobiographical analysis; student perspectives, conversations with colleagues; and educational literature. From the data we were able to identify themes that positioned reflexivity around educational and pedagogical theories, a concern and care for their students, the significance of relationality and the increased presence of technologies. Participants used imagery in a range of ways to provide literal representations of their text response for example images of classrooms and people or blank zoom screens to emphasize the importance of interaction or as metaphorical depictions that show sunsets and patterns to capture the ‘bundles of relations’ and disruptions in practice that represent a particular temporal moment in a way that may not so easily be captured in words. In many of the responses we also see representations shift from images of togetherness, often represented by interaction either of human or non-human objects, to the present where the machine, screen and tensions were depicted, while in considering the future participants emphasized aspects of growth, reconciliation and integration of past practices with technologies to that have either emerged or are yet to emerge.
By encouraging academics to share experiences related to their teaching we have illuminated both individual and shared narratives about pedagogic work in higher education. Their representations also traverse a spectrum of metaphorical and literal perspectives that capture the nuances involved, while also providing opportunities for academics to develop reflexive practice and agency in relation to their own and their colleagues’ praxis.
ReferencesAssunção Flores, M.; Gago, M.(2020) Teacher education in times of COVID-19 pandemic in Portugal: National, institutional and pedagogical responses. Journal of Education for Teaching. 46, 1–10 .https://doi.org/10.1080/02607476.2020.1799709
Aucejo, E.M.; French, J.; Ugalde Araya, M.P.; Zafar, B. (2020). The impact of COVID-19 on student experiences and expectations: Evidence from a survey. Journal of Public Economics. 191, 1–15. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jpubeco.2020.104271.
Bormann, I., Brøgger, K., Pol, M., & Lazarová, B. (2021). COVID-19 and its effects: On the risk of social inequality through digitalization and the loss of trust in three European education systems. European Educational Research Journal, 20(5), 610–635. https://doi.org/10.1177/14749041211031356
Bourdieu, P. (1990) In other words : essays towards a reflexive sociology, Polity Press.
Bourdieu, P., & Wacquant, L. J. D. (1992). An invitation to reflexive sociology. University of Chicago Press.
Brookfield, S. D. (2017). Becoming a critically reflective teacher (2nd ed.). San Francisco, CA: Jossey Bass
Christensen, C. M., Horn, M. B., & Johnson, C. W. (2008). Disrupting class: How disruptive innovation will change the way the world learns. McGraw-Hill.
European Association for Quality Assurance in Higher Education (ENQA). (2015). Standards and Guidelines for Quality Assurance in the European Higher Education Area. Brussels. Retrieved from https://www.enqa.eu/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/ESG_2015.pdf
Leavy, P. (2015). Methods meet art: Arts-based research practice (2nd ed.). Guilford.
Ling, P., & Ling, L. (2020). Introduction: Employing paradigms in scholarship and education research. In L. Ling & P. Ling (Eds.), Emerging methods and paradigms in scholarship and education research (pp. 1–21). Hershey, PA: IGI Global
Mackay, M., & Tymon, A. (2013). Working with uncertainty to support the teaching of critical reflection. Teaching in Higher Education, 18(6), 643-655. https://doi.org/10.1080/13562517.2013.774355
Marinoni, G., Van't Land, H., and Jensen, T. (2020). The Impact of Covid-19 on Higher Education Around the World. IAU Global Survey Report. Available online at: https://www.iau-aiu.net/IMG/pdf/iau_covid19_and_he_survey_report_final_may_2020.pdf, Accessed 19 January, 2023.
Navickiene V, Dagiene V, Jasute E, Butkiene R, Gudoniene D. (2021). "Pandemic-Induced Qualitative Changes in the Process of University Studies from the Perspective of University Authorities" Sustainability (13)17: 9887. https://doi.org/10.3390/su13179887
Tertiary Education Quality and Standards Agency (TEQSA). (2021). Higher Education Standards Framework (Threshold Standards). Canberra: Australian Government Retrieved from https://www.teqsa.gov.au/how-we-regulate/higher-education-standards-framework-2021
Wang, C. C., & Burris, M. A. (1997). Photovoice: Concept, methodology, and use for participatory needs assessment. Health Education & Behavior, (3), 369-387.
22. Research in Higher Education
Paper
Local Innovation, Transformation for Future-oriented Learning or Knowledge About Discipline-specific Teaching? Aims of the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning
Alexa Kristin Brase, Eileen Lübcke
University of Hamburg, Germany
Presenting Author: Brase, Alexa Kristin;
Lübcke, Eileen
The Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL) is an opportunity for appreciating and using diversity in higher education: The research-based and systematically reflective engagement with one’s own teaching and the students’ learning offers room for dealing with the learning prerequisites and different resources of students as well as colleagues’ perspectives. Since its first naming in the 1990s, SoTL practices evolved and differentiated, making it difficult to define SoTL (Fanghael et al., 2016; Simmons & Marquis, 2017). There are not only diverse practices and focuses, but also different normative demands: While most SoTL work is oriented to students’ understanding within the disciplines, Kreber and Kranton suggest a broader view on SoTL including a critical perspective and transformative learning of both teachers and students (Kreber & Kranton, 2000; Kreber, 2022). The international discussion is very lively, showing a development towards the acknowledgement of teaching and learning’s socio-political purposes (Kreber, 2022).
The SoTL discussion in the German speaking world is not parallel to the English speaking one: while SoTL took off in the United States in the 1990s (Huber & Hutchings, 2005; Kreber, 2022), there was little visible activity in German-speaking countries for some time and basic discussions are still caught up with (Fahr, 2021; Huber, 2018). This raises the question of whether international developments are having an impact in Germany: Do scholars in Germany use SoTL for their transformative learning to support students better or to involve them more? Do they orient their interest towards socio-political purposes or are they striving for discipline-specific knowledge on teaching and learning? Are there even specificities that might be inspiring for other contexts?
To explore German scholars’ aims and place them against the background of the international development, the question guiding our study is: What are the aims that can be identified in current German SoTL publications? We take an empirical approach by conducting a literature review and subsequently discuss our findings against international claims and developments, including developments in other European countries.
At the conference, we are particularly interested in other European perspectives. The presentation can also encourage an overarching normative discussion on SoTL and its support in universities: Is SoTL supposed to relate to specific aims and values or a process in which each scholar is to set his/her/their own goals and priorities? Can normatively charged academic development programs result in a contradiction to academic freedom?
Methodology, Methods, Research Instruments or Sources UsedOur analysis is based on the review of 68 journal, book and handbook articles from SoTL outlets and outlets which university teachers use for an exchange about teaching. All articles are peer- or editorial-reviewed and are subject to a selection process with regard to SoTL criteria. We join a “big tent” (Huber & Hutchings, 2005, p. 4) understanding and relate to basic aspects found in most SoTL descriptions: scholars undertake systematic or methodical inquiry into their teaching related to the students’ learning and share their results to give impulses for the improvement of teaching beyond their own practice (Kern et al., 2015). Since the sharing aspect is obviously fulfilled when there is a publication, we concentrate on the foundation in the authors’ own teaching practice resp. in their students’ learning and the inquiry character. In a broad understanding, inquiry means that theoretically informed reflection is included as well as empirical investigation.
We do not use data bases but the archives of specific journals and edited volumes. The selection process in several stages (title review, abstract review, full paper review) is guided not only by the broad SoTL term, but also by intentionally set geographic and time limitations: authors are working in a German higher education institution and the article has been published in 2021 or 2022. This way we can ensure that the results are up to date. We cannot provide a development study over a longer period. The identified full papers are read, coded and analysed by both authors using Citavi’s knowledge management and thought features (used analogously to MAXQDA, Kuckartz & Rädiker, 2019).
Our approach is accompanied by limitations: by analyzing only papers published in full articles, we cannot represent the breadth of SoTL in Germany. There is much valuable informal exchange that should be considered in further studies. In addition, topics and types of analysis are influenced by calls for papers or specific SoTL support programs. Nevertheless, they reflect SoTL in Germany.
Conclusions, Expected Outcomes or FindingsFirst, it is a challenge to identify SoTL work as such in the first place. Many authors distance themselves linguistically from their own teaching and present SoTL projects in an objectified style. Moreover, some authors are publishing with co-authors from higher education or education departments. These papers are characterized by sound theoretical concepts of teaching and an elaborate empirical methodology deeply rooted in educational research.
The analysis is still running, but will be completed before the conference. We give an outlook here based on the preliminary analysis of 20 coded articles meeting SoTL criteria. In terms of methodology, most of the articles have an empirical focus, few are making use of a theoretical research approach. Due to a focus on innovation, the research approach often has an evaluative character. This shows that some observations by Huber (2014) are still valid for current SoTL in Germany: reports on teaching innovation are dominant. However, some of the evaluation of these innovations is complex; scholars focus on student learning and use mixed method designs. Regarding the proclaimed aims of the SoTL projects, further teaching development and discipline-specific knowledge are mentioned in addition to the evaluation of innovations, but socio-political considerations only play a role in a few individual cases. There, too, they represent an overarching framework rather than a specific development goal or they are clearly connected to the discipline, which encompasses topics with socio-political relevance like teacher education or social pedagogics. Lecturers' commitment to transformative learning is undoubtedly there, but might still often remain below the radar of the - in Germany still few - SoTL groups and publications.
ReferencesFahr, U. (2021). Probleme und Entwicklungspotenziale des Scholarship of Teaching and Learning. Die Erforschung der eigenen Lehre als professionelle Herausforderung. In U. Fahr, A. Kenner, H. Angenent & A. Eßer-Lüghausen (Hrsg.). Hochschullehre erforschen: Innovative Impulse für das Scholarship of Teaching and Learning. Springer VS.
Fanghanel, J., Pritchard, J., Potter, J. & Wisker, G. (2016). Defining and supporting the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL): A sector-wide study. Literature Review. Higher Education Academy. https://s3.eu-west-2.amazonaws.com/assets.creode.advancehe-document-manager/documents/hea/private/literature_review_1568037331.pdf
Huber, L. (2014). Scholarship of Teaching and Learning: Konzept, Geschichte, Formen, Entwicklungsaufgaben. In L. Huber, A. Pilniok, R. Sethe, B. Szczyrba & M. Vogel (Eds.), Forschendes Lehren im eigenen Fach: Scholarship of Teaching and Learning in Beispielen (2nd edition, p. 19–36). wbv.
Huber, L. (2018). SoTL weiterdenken! Zur Situation und Entwicklung des Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL) an deutschen Hochschulen. Das Hochschulwesen, 66(1-2), 33–41.
Huber, M. T. & Hutchings, P. (2005). The Advancement of Learning: Building the Teaching Commons. Jossey-Bass.
Kern, B., Mettetal, G., Dixson, M. & Morgan, R. K. (2015). The role of SoTL in the academy: Upon the 25th anniversary of Boyer’s Scholarship Reconsidered. Journal of the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning, 15(3), 1–14. https://doi.org/10.14434/josotl.v15i3.13623
Kreber, C. (2022). The Scholarship of Teaching and Learning. In G. Reinmann & R. Rhein (Hrsg.), Wissenschaftsdidaktik I: Einführung (S. 222–243). transcript.
Kreber, C. & Cranton, P. A. (2000). Exploring the Scholarship of Teaching. The Journal of Higher Education, 71(4), 476. https://doi.org/10.2307/2649149
Kuckartz, U. & Rädiker, S. (2019). Analyzing Qualitative Data with MAXQDA. Springer International Publishing. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-15671-8
Simmons, N. & Marquis, E. (2017). Defining the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning. The Canadian Journal for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning, 8(2). https://doi.org/10.5206/cjsotl-rcacea.2017.2.2
22. Research in Higher Education
Paper
The ‘Persona Vignette’: A Hermeneutic Phenomenological Method for Reflecting on Educators' Lived Experiences
Felicity Healey-Benson
University of Wales Trinity St David
Presenting Author: Healey-Benson, Felicity
This paper presents a novel method, known as the "persona vignette" developed during a doctoral hermeneutical phenomenological study of the lived experiences of educators facilitating higher-order thinking skills (HOTS) in Higher Education (Healey-Benson, 2022). The study employed an interpretive phenomenological approach which aims to understand and interpret participants' experiences (Ary et al., 2006). This is an approach characterized by the lack of formal analytical methods, with the context of the phenomenon dictating how data is analyzed (Langdridge, 2007). The primary objective of the study was to gain an in-depth understanding of the experiences of educators engaged in the phenomenon. To operationalize the research, a 5-part "persona vignette" method was developed by the researcher to capture an interpreted mimetic representation of each of the 12 educator study participants drawn from five countries. The final collection of persona vignettes provides readers with imaginative and evocative stimuli that invite reflection on one's own unique representation and experience of the phenomenon and aims to provide guidance to Higher Education educators of all contexts on the challenges of their HOTS development day-to-day practice
The theoretical framework
The paper is informed by the researcher’s doctoral hermeneutical phenomenological investigation of the lived experiences of educators facilitating HOTS in Higher Education. The study included participants from five countries: Australia, Canada, India, the UK, and the USA. The hermeneutic phenomenological methodology provided "direct access to a solid base of pure knowledge" (McIntosh & Wright, 2019, p. 451) by tapping into people's experiences, while an existential lens provided a focus on relationality, intersubjectivity, and otherness.
To protect participant anonymity while still inviting readers into the disclosed world of the research participants, the researcher developed an imaginative persona vignette framework as a form of interpreted mimesis. In this context mimesis is an act of poiesis, a ‘bringing-forth’ (Heidegger, 1971) rather than imitation. The decision to capture in detail the representation of the variation of the educator experiences was made by the researcher as their 'wholeness' was too rich to omit from the summary findings which were primarily focused on the phenomenological (essential) themes. Consequently, the researcher resolved to consider the hermeneutic 'mimetic dimensions' of the individual stories as means to bring a form of "evocation of experience in its reflection of and distinction to reality" (Gosetti-Ferencei, 2014, p. 4). The researcher worked with an illustrator to enhance the evocative quality of the personas, a process fully informed by the ongoing analytic process and refined through a series of conversations and iterations. The resultant persona illustrations help attune to the voice of the participants in the transcripts and to surface details that may otherwise be overlooked or taken for granted.
The persona vignette format is a five-part structure that includes a bespoke imaginative persona label that captures the life-world of the participant HE educator, an opening statement that reflects the overarching ontological experience of the phenomenon, a persona image drawn by a professional illustrator to bring the participant's lifeworld evocatively to life, an anecdote formed by a collection of selected and edited quotes from the original transcript, and a succinct researcher interpretative analysis. The 'persona vignette' format blends anecdote, metaphor, and imagery aiming to bring the wholeness of the lived experience to life, to share the nuances of contextualized experiences to re-presence and provoke further thinking and action. The researcher aims to "illuminate and evoke lived meanings beyond immediate tangible experience" (Nicol, 2008) by drawing on interview transcripts of metaphor descriptions and emotionally expressive language.
Methodology, Methods, Research Instruments or Sources UsedVignettes, written or visual, are often used during data collection as a tool to elicit responses, foster conversation, and explore participants' perceptions, emotions, opinions, attitudes, and values related to the research topic of interest (Skilling & Stylianides, 2020). They are useful for gaining deeper insights into participants' beliefs and attitudes and useful in allowing certain kinds of questions to be asked without imposing any viewpoints (Richard & Mercer, 2002). The persona vignette method crafted for this study combines the disciplines of van Manen's Phenomenology of Practice, Heideggerian, and Gadamerian philosophy and makes use of imagery, metaphor, and anecdote to evoke the lived experiences of a shared phenomenon. The researcher used van Manen's phenomenological heuristic reduction (2014) as a guide in their analysis of audio-recorded interview transcripts. This hermeneutic phenomenological method involves the use of two reductions, the epoché-reduction and the reduction-proper.The researcher specifically focused on identifying evocative metaphor descriptions and expressive language in the transcripts to "illuminate and evoke lived meanings beyond immediate tangible experience" (Nicol, 2008).
From 1-2 hours of transcribed text, individual participant experiences were shaped into one-page interpreted summaries which allowed for persona identities to show themselves. This approach was aligned with Gadamer’s view of mimesis as a phenomenological act (1975) and made clear the “created personas would be seen not as imitating an objective reality, but…a creation to foreground a lived experience” (Hardwicke & Riemer, 2018, p. 3).
The persona vignette illustrations were developed in collaboration with a professional illustrator, Vanessa Damianou, to provide a visual representation of the participants' lived experiences. These illustrations are not a literal depiction of the participants' physical appearance, but rather an embodiment of the researcher's interpretation of the participants' experiences, emotions, and feelings. They are an imaginative representation of the participant's subjective experiences and provide a holistic understanding. Informed by the researcher’s draft vignette material and digital images made from icons and clipart, and through detailed researcher/illustration conversations and several iterations, a set of original persona illustrations were drawn to evoke the presence of each of the participants.
The method produced 12 persona vignettes which were an evocative capture of the interpreted mimetic representation of each of the 12 participants. Furthermore, as a collection, they invite readers to personally reflect on their own experience of the phenomenon and to consider their own unique representation of their current or aspired persona.
Conclusions, Expected Outcomes or FindingsThis paper describes the use of the persona vignette method in a hermeneutic phenomenological study of higher education (HE) educators. The method, which was developed in compliance with ethical commitments and collaborated with a professional illustrator, allows for a deeper understanding of the subjective experiences of educators and how individual differences shape their perceptions and interpretations. Each persona vignette brings the wholeness of the lived experience to life and shares the nuances of the contextualized experiences to re-presence and provoke further thinking and action. The vignettes present a paradox by evoking individuality while highlighting common themes among participants' experiences of the phenomenon. The study shows that the persona vignette method provides a deeper understanding of educators' subjective experiences and how individual differences shape their perceptions and interpretations. Unlike traditional typology methods, which focus on objective characteristics and fail to capture individual complexities and nuances, the persona vignette emphasises that individuals cannot be reduced to predetermined categories.
The persona vignette method has provided a way to investigate the phenomenon of HOTS development facilitation among HE educators in different countries, providing structure to discussion on aspects of HOTS development work that may be difficult to express. The study has revealed insight that has made a valuable contribution to the existing literature on HOTS development with implications for the preparation, guidance, and support of higher education educators in their day-to-day practices.
The paper presents specific examples of research insights and also addresses the limitations and areas for future research. Ongoing research examines the practical uses of persona vignettes as prompts for practice, reflection, and discussion for educators and educational management.
Overall, the method may be adapted for use in other research contexts and can contribute to a deeper understanding of the complexities of teaching and learning in higher education across the world.
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