Contemporary education and guiding pedagogical principals: the prospects for an embodied and intersubjective interpretation of phenomenology

ABSTRACT

This critical paper posits that an ongoing reconceptualising of educational aims and values is necessary and desirable, especially so given the multiple complexities of current times and the associated need to reappraise the overarching pedagogical principles that inform contemporary education. We propose that phenomenology can yield incisive insights that can inform and shape students’ holistic learning experiences. We focus specifically on the contribution of Merleau-Ponty, as his work concentrates on an intersubjective interpretation of experience which constructively draws on a mix of self and shared, and cultural and environmental occurrences children share. We analyse the seldom explored content of Merleau-Ponty’s Sorbonne Lectures on Child Psychology and Pedagogy and discuss these in relation to embodiment and intersubjectivity; matters which we see as pivotal to the realisation of a more rounded and nuanced education of the mind and body. We then conduct a review of methodological and pedagogical insights which highlight how embodied and intersubjective aspirations could be taken forward in contemporary school education. We argue that if effective, more eventful and at times optimistic pedagogical episodes could support whole school attempts to recover and construct new and enlivening educational opportunities.

KEYWORDS:

• Intersubjectivity
• embodiment
• phenomenology
• Merleau-Ponty
• pedagogy

Introduction

In much of our previous research, we have argued that it is desirable that educational aims and values are contested and should not be taken as static and unchanging (Stolz, 2020; Thorburn & Stolz, 2020, 2021). We argue that given the extent of the current global health pandemic, educational aims and values will necessarily need to be reconsidered, both in relation to school education and students’ wider wellbeing. In addressing these priorities, we argue that school education needs to focus on overarching purposes, which are supported by guiding pedagogical principles that relate to a more insightful and nuanced account of students’ intersubjective school experiences. In this respect, our position broadly reflects Priestley and Philippou's (2018) view, that the development of practices that are attuned to broader pedagogical purposes and educational principles should not be hindered by non-pedagogical pressures that render education a means to an end in an overly performance driven context. Framed this way, aspirations in education are better placed, we argue, to engage, recognise and appreciate many of the uncertainties young people face due to the changed layout of their education and the loss of contact with other people during the recent global health pandemic, when curriculums are not excessively burdened by an overly dominant focus on achieving set objectives.

Encouragingly, there has been a recent increase in writings on education that engage with how phenomenology can help reach beyond potentially narrow and rather restrictive approaches to learning, teaching and assessment, and which offer instead a broader and more uplifting educational perspective; one that is shaped more noticeably by intersubjective experiences (see, for example, Bates, 2021; Rocha, 2015; Shepperd, 2016; Stolz, 2020; Stolz & Thorburn, 2022; Thorburn, 2015). References endorsing such a perspective often highlight the contribution of Merleau-Ponty (1942/1963, 1945/1962, 1964/1968); for as Moran (2016) reminds us, Merleau-Ponty was particularly astute in threading together various strands of thinking on intersubjectivity, especially in relation to empathy and humans’ continuous engagement with their social and cultural life. For Merleau-Ponty, human subjectivity was embodied and interwoven, as self-experience dovetails with a common identification that surrounds our experiences. On this basis, humans are intrinsically social beings operating within identifiable historical, social and cultural contexts and shared life-worlds (Szanto & Moran, 2016). Such a perspective is consistent with Nagel’s (1986) emphasis on the intersubjective nature of subjectivity, where the nature of experience and our understanding of the world contains common properties which can be shared and compared.

Given this contextual backdrop, our purpose in the paper is fourfold. Firstly, to extend phenomenological thinking in education by critically reappraising the contribution of Merleau-Ponty’s eight Sorbonne Lectures on Child Psychology and Pedagogy (Merleau-Ponty, 2010). These lectures were translated into English for the first time in 2010 and Welsh (2013) subsequently wrote extensively on Merleau-Ponty’s perspective on childhood. Secondly, to review further writings of Merleau-Ponty (1942/1963, 1945/1962, 1964/1968) in relation to embodiment and intersubjectivity, and the benefits these can hold for a holistic-informed education with a particular focus on mind/body relationships. Merleau-Ponty’s focus on the importance of embodiment is particularly helpful from an intersubjective perspective as Merleau-Ponty appreciates the marked variation which exists between human beings in relation to how they view and understand the world. Thirdly, we sketch out methodological insights which can enable Merleau-Ponty’s intersubjective interpretation of phenomenology to be taken forward in contemporary school education. Finally, we review the broad pedagogical principles which could provide students with opportunities for reviewing and reflecting on their intersubjective experiences.

Merleau-Ponty and phenomenological thinking in relation to child psychology and pedagogy

Merleau-Ponty is most noted for his writings on the structure of behaviour (Merleau-Ponty, 1942/1963), where he drew on findings from Gestalt psychology to criticise theories of behaviourism that informed the psychology of learning. Additionally, Merleau-Ponty is recognised for his writings on the phenomenology of perception (Merleau-Ponty, 1945/1962), where he critically examines how we move and understand the world and how we create meaning from bodily experiences, and for his writings on the visibility and invisibility of experiences (Merleau-Ponty, 1964/1968). However, Merleau-Ponty (2010) also produced, between 1949 and 1952, a series of lectures on child psychology and pedagogy. In these eight lectures, Welsh (2013) highlights how Merleau-Ponty considered that children possess distinctive analytical abilities that requires children’s analytical capacities to be considered differently to those which adults use for analysis. By basing his views on the lived experiences and cultural context of child-parent relationships, rather than the cognitive and behaviourist psychology which dominated child development thinking at the time, Merleau-Ponty’s perspective connects with his wider phenomenological thinking on embodiment and intersubjectivity. However, the unique position taken forward in Merleau-Ponty’s Sorbonne Lectures in relation to mainstream psychology requires acknowledging that, in Merleau-Ponty’s view, children’s relationships take place in a complex context which benefits from phenomenological enquiry, as in practice such approaches can overcome practical challenges, and resist the objectifying of children. Thus, an overly realist perspective by teachers needs to be avoided in order to grasp the relationship between the psychological and sociological aspects of each child, for ‘the child is, simultaneously and without difficulty, in the social realm and his own body’ (Merleau-Ponty, 2010, p. 386) at one and the same time. Such a conjunction is fundamental according to Merleau-Ponty, as the early experience of the child informs their later reflections as conscious adults. Therefore, experiences are vital to our understanding of the nature of knowledge and the psychology of experience. In setting out this position, Merleau-Ponty contradicts Piaget’s intellectualist claim ‘that the child is a natural metaphysician by portraying children more as natural phenomenologists’ (Welsh, 2013, p. xx).

In the lectures, Merleau-Ponty variously highlights how the child’s proficiency is organised via their background experiences and visual connections with different objects and environments (Gestalt theory), as well as through their social interactions with others. On this collective basis, a child’s upbringing should not be framed by reaching certain age and stage expectations but regarded as something which is subject to states of flux, relapse, deviations, and degrees of unpredictability as the ‘child learns to see herself in a social role and this involves a reorganization of her relations with others that continues into adolescence’ (Bates, 2021, p. 139). Merleau-Ponty (1942/1963) in developing his position drew on findings from Gestalt psychology to criticise behaviourism under which learning may become a process that only provides the stimuli for certain actions and movements to become linked together in a stimulus-response chain. By contrast, Gestalt psychology affirms that whole movements cannot be deconstructed into their constitutive parts in order to work out which parts are associated with a stimulus-response reaction. Instead, individual parts of movements are determined by whole movements and as the links between the body and world develop and improve, the body can make finer and finer discriminations of situations coupled with improved and ever more appropriate responses. On such an account of knowledge and experience, Merleau-Ponty (1942/1963) formed the view that the problems between a conscious mind and inert body can be enhanced by coming to know the world through our experience-informed and embodied phenomenal body.

In taking forward key aspects of Merleau-Ponty’s thinking on child psychology and pedagogy, Welsh (2013) recognises that they are working against the grain of many current trends in developmental psychology such as theory of the mind research, which argues that intersubjectivity is fundamentally cognitive and that the adult arises from the child rather than considering the child in terms of their position in history, their culture, and their own psychological-physical state. These approaches, Welsh (2013) argues, make it difficult to fully access the world of the child. A phenomenological approach by contrast helps through recognising that our earliest life is not wholly subjective but is also intersubjective i.e. shared and social. For Merleau-Ponty (1942/1963, 1945/1962) argues that, in terms of intersubjectivity, social awareness precedes and underlies our sense of self-awareness, and that empirical and scientific accounts of human experience can lead to distortion. Merleau-Ponty’s analysis also highlights concerns over the superficial nature of behaviourist knowledge as similar experiences do not lead to similar accounts of experience. For Welsh (2013), children design and shape their diverse world view according to values uncovered through experience and during interaction with others. Therefore, children contribute to their development through their interpretive capacities and choices.

Moreover, experiences progress to self-awareness after an appreciation of how others develop. Merleau-Ponty (2010) calls this early state a state of syncretic sociability which is characterised from the earliest months of the child by a lack of distinction between self and other and self and openness towards the world. As Waldenfels (2008, p. 82) notes, ‘Merleau-Ponty adheres to a structural point of view, assuming a syncretism of early childhood, that is, a relative indifferentiation of child and adult, which despite all actual differentiation leads to a continuation of the same in the other and of the other in the same’. Additionally, Welsh (2013) judges that the types of intersubjective bonds children develop enables in due course mature relations to develop. This line of thinking connects with Gallagher’s (2005) view that embodied receptivity towards others is sufficient for learning through imitation for children are naturally inclined towards phenomenology as the basis for comprehending their being-in-the-world. Thus, initiation is ‘an important capacity directly related to questions about perception, social recognition, the ability to understand another person, and the origins of a sense of self’ (Gallagher, 2005, p. 68). Take, for example, a young skier trying to follow the advice and demonstration of their ski teacher. Their movement response would be part imitative but also larger part experiential as the young skier uses their natural proprioceptive‐kinaesthetic awareness to allow their body to remain experientially visible to themselves through a kind of situational spatiality derived through them being aware of the possibilities for action that this milieu affords (Merleau-Ponty, 1945/1962). Such movements ‘provides a sense that one is moving or doing something, not in terms that are explicitly about body parts, but in terms closer to the goal of the action’ (Gallagher, 2005, p. 73). In this example, the young skiers' experientially visible movements may sufficiently fuse with the ski teacher’s task explanations and therefore bridge the differences between child and adult analysis of movement. This potential fissure is a key distinction, as Merleau-Ponty (2010, p. 164), principally through reference to drawing, emphasised that, ‘we should not interpret the child’s drawing as a strict imitation of nature, but rather as an expression. Since the drawing represents an attempt to transpose onto a single plane what we see in depth, we use expression more than imitation.’ Thus, for Merleau-Ponty (2010, p. 170) ‘the principle of all drawing is to express things, not to resemble them’. A wise ski teacher would therefore appreciate that young skiers’ responses are more a set of personal movement experiences in response to terrain than they are a set of movements designed more narrowly to merely copy or imitate those of the teacher.

Merleau-Ponty, embodiment, and intersubjectivity in relation to education

Building on Merleau-Ponty’s view of child psychology, we now focus on critically considering how key aspects of Merleau-Ponty’s thinking on embodiment and intersubjectivity could be taken forward. We do this through analysing how a holistic perspective that aspires towards nurturing enhanced mind/body relationships could be pursued via an integrated and shared quest for enhancing embodied and perceptual experiences in education. In doing so, we join others researching the usefulness of Merleau-Ponty’s overview of child psychology in relation to current educational issues. Bates (2021), for example, draws heavily on Merleau-Ponty’s thinking to outline how concerns over a narrowing of students’ school experiences, reductive ‘toolkit-type’ pedagogical practices and an over absorption with achieving set outcomes is stifling the development of children’s character. In addition, Welsh (2013) considers that the later postmodern-infused writing of Merleau-Ponty in his final and unfinished work, The Visible and the Invisible (Merleau-Ponty, 1964/1968), is also apt to consider as it connects with his lecture writings on the syncretic sociable stage (Merleau-Ponty, 2010) and ‘presents us with an element of experience that defies traditional separations between self and other and between body and world’ (Welsh, 2013, p. 150). Moreover, as Merleau-Ponty (2010, p. 253) notes in relation to syncretic sociability, we ‘can presume that just as the child makes a global identification with the mirror image, there will be identification with the other. The child cannot limit himself to his own life, hence the phenomenon of transitivism: indistinction between self and other’. In summary, therefore, phenomenology is useful for two initial reasons: firstly, in terms of coming to know the self (ego), and secondly, in terms of coming to the know the other (as well as the self) through intersubjectivity.

In relation to the mind/body, Merleau-Ponty (2010) considers that there is a similar transitivism synergy between the body and the world as they are not separate, instead they merge into one another and in so doing untangle the distinction between the body and the world. In this respect, ‘the body must be thought of as a mirror: the expression of the total subject’s psyche, the expression of a psychological history’ (Merleau-Ponty, 2010, p. 406). Similarly, Merleau-Ponty came to consider that paintings are self-referential as they show both the world as-seen-by-the-artist and the artist-seen-by-the-world. As such, the ‘unity of the body exists, which is not itself a sum of tactile or kinesthetic sensations, but rather a corporeal schema. This schema cannot be reduced to a sum of sensations, since it encompasses both the spatial awareness of our bodies and the unity which embraces all sensory givens’ (Merleau-Ponty, 2010, p. 145). Therefore, what ‘the child understands by body is not the physical body, but the phenomenal body: a body which the child experiences intimately. The child uses the body as a system of means in order to enter into contact with the external world’ (Merleau-Ponty, 2010, p. 143). To further dissolve the distinction between the body and the world, (the subjective and the objective), Merleau-Ponty (1964/1968) developed his ontology of ‘the flesh’ (la chair) as a device for understanding better the sensation of experience and the connections between human beings. By using a series of crossing over devices, Merleau-Ponty describes the interweaving differences between subjective experience and objective existence. Such thinking highlights the important role embodiment plays in opening up the world for human beings. In this way, flesh, as with syncretic sociability, presents elements of experience that defy long-established separations between the self and other and between the body and the world. Situationally, within wider developments in phenomenology, Merleau-Ponty’s writings have led to embodied subjectivity emerging as a prominent strand of research, where elaborations about the inner processes between the body and consciousness have benefitted from the separating out of the lived body (Leib) from the inert physical body (Körper).

Notably, for Merleau-Ponty, the body is the object of experience and while it shares similarities with other bodies, how we come to understand our body is different because we never occupy the same space at the same time. In this complex world, humans can adjust and become accustomed to different circumstances. Such a perspective enables children to distinguish and understand their experiences from their own and others' perspective and through combining and applying different approaches to phenomenological practice. Thus, ‘perception [original emphasis retained] does not commence through multiple, disjointed experiences, but rather through some very nebulous global structures that undergo a progressive differentiation. Prior to judgment, a more fundamental unity exists’ (Merleau-Ponty, 2010, p. 146). Fundamentally, Merleau-Ponty (1964/1968) was seeking to further re-define the Leib viz. Körper distinction by reconceptualising how the body could be in permanent unity with our consciousness (Moran, 2000). In this way, the eye and the mind can reinterpret bodily awareness through an integration that exhibits itself via language and speech (Merleau-Ponty, 1964/1968). To explain the process of integration, Merleau-Ponty (2010) has recycled the Hegelian idea of exceeding while sustaining, whereby ‘the individual must take up again what the present bodily state has rendered possible’ (p. 407). For Hegel, phenomenology involves a logic of contents whereby organisation does not stem from a preset logical form but, rather one that spontaneously realises a logical organisation (Merleau-Ponty, 2010).

To integrate embodiment into our culture and to avoid considering embodiment as something which is detached from our lives, Merleau-Ponty (2010) advanced a use of language where it contained a representative (factual) function, an expressive function, and a social function. Merleau-Ponty highlights that the creative role of expression can be met on occasion by spoken language, but it is not always possible to put all experience into words – relative to seeing, sensing and thinking as forms of expression. This has ramifications for registering that understanding experience exists in its differentiated as well as holistic forms, within which the child becomes immersed in a shared universe of discourse. In this arena, how we relate to each other is connected to our subjective experience of engagement, which in part arises from embodied interaction. Crucial to this ontological venture is the notion of reversibility where the mind and the body, the subject and the body, the self and other are engaged with each other, and not separate from each other. As such, at one and the same time the body is both a certain kind of body as well as containing an individual and cultural aspect to its being (O’Loughlin, 2006). In this context, it is pre-reflective knowledge (experiences) of the body that enables meanings to develop. For example, very often young alpine skiers (e.g. five to seven years) can remain in dynamic balance as they travel downhill. However, while these young skiers have an ability to perceive what to do by means of steering and turning their skis, they may not necessarily understand the principles or rules that underpin their skills. What these skiers have gained are skills born by distinctive experience rather than skills grasped through detailed reference to universal movement principles (Thorburn, 2017). Consequently, experience is not something to be understood in a detached way, but rather sensed as a result of active engagement with the world. Therefore, knowledge is founded upon integrated perceptual experiences, which reveal ever more of the world as we live and experience them (Merleau-Ponty, 1964/1968).

Moran (2016) considers that Merleau-Ponty could develop a more integrated ontology (based around a smaller collection of assertions) as he was alert to recognising a middle ground between the subjectivity of each individual and the objectivity of knowledge-led (domain specific assertions) thinking on humans as objects in the world. Actualising these forms of plurality (diverse nature of assertions) requires building consensus around shared practices and observations and thereafter using speech, judgment, and action to confirm the authenticity of experiences. In this way, embodied beings can unify our understanding of the world both internally and externally. In developing his overview of how human capacities and habits can develop intentional practices, Merleau-Ponty extended Husserl’s (1931/1950) belief that the object and the intentional act are in a narrow correlative relationship, as for Merleau-Ponty (1964/1968) the invisibility of experiences can become more visible in variegated and differentiated forms. Thus, Merleau-Ponty (2010) considered that the habitual act can be clarified by mechanical insight rather than being classed as a purely intellectual act. For example, when set shooting in basketball it benefits technique to tuck the elbow in so that the shooting arm and hand is aligned with the sighting of the target.

Moreover, considering habits as aptitudes permits ‘us to respond to situations of the same type by adaptive and nuanced behavior (knowing how to dance, knowing how to swim)’ (original brackets retained) (Merleau-Ponty, 2010, p. 212). Thus, for Merleau-Ponty (2010, p. 452) ‘habits are plastic … (and) … not subjugated to strictly defined situations. Habit is an aptitude to respond to a certain type of situation by a certain kind of solution. The habitual operation is thus at once corporeal and spiritual; it is an existential operation’. Consequently, by avoiding the artificial separation of perception and motor functions, we can understand the phenomenon of habit. Central to this habitual life and familiar world are experiences which are relatively stable and normal as Merleau-Ponty (1945/1962) appreciated the importance of context and background, and of how habits operated in a sense-giving and pre-objective ways, rather than in intellectual and analytical ways that are rule governed. In such ways, bodily habits can convey meaning and significance and are a way of considering the infinite possibilities of how immediate experiences can through language and speech merge in due course with conscious reflection. As such, ‘all habit is general in the sense that it consists of a reorganization of myself which facilitates the ability to grasp the right relationship, the real function of intelligence’ (Merleau-Ponty, 2010, p. 154), in a context where it ‘is not about reducing language to thought, but about introducing thought into language’ (Merleau-Ponty, 2010, p. 47).

Returning to the notion raised earlier of understanding experience in its differentiated as well as holistic forms, more recent research has sought to identify the surplus there is in learning which lies beyond intentional and purposeful striving. In this respect, it is useful to review the later works of Merleau-Ponty (1964/1968) from the perspective of his earlier lectures on Child Psychology and Pedagogy (Merleau-Ponty, 2010). For example, Waldenfels (2008) considers that Merleau-Ponty's notions of ‘flesh opens up a wide semantic array’ (p. 83) as flesh can accentuate ‘the textuality and materiality [original emphasis retained] of the body, while at the same moment restraining the moment of propriety’ (p. 83). Such restraint can, under educational circumstances, help ensure that an undue emphasis on conformity and correctness does not stifle differentiation of experience relative to ‘extending towards a flesh of the world, the flesh of being, of the idea, of language and time’ (p. 83). Moreover, in relation to the aims of the paper, integrated viz. differentiated thinking has largely been pursued in education from overly theoretically perspectives (Brinkmann, 2020), so the next step is to critically consider how first-person methodologies of embodied subjectivity can be taken forward in applied terms and what their benefit and significance for education more widely might be in the future.

First-person phenomenology-informed methodologies and their significance for education

One criticism of phenomenology is that in application terms some of the concepts are not easy to unpack in ways which provide methodological insights or aid reflection, particularly so for practitioners and researchers in educational contexts (Vagle, 2014). We contend that this criticism is less applicable to Merleau-Ponty as ontologically he provides insights into the structure of being in a context where there is central emphasis on the subjective nature of experience. For Husserl, ‘liberating psychology from its entrapment in methodological difficulties’ (Merleau-Ponty, 2010, p. 320) was required in order to discover a mode of understanding that does not unduly separate itself from experience. Husserl (1931/1950) considered that the solution was to develop ‘a form of understanding which possesses the concrete character of psychological knowledge and the dignity of philosophical knowledge’ (Merleau-Ponty, 2010, p. 320). However, Merleau-Ponty (1942/1963) was aware that the fusion between the self and others cannot be achieved by meditative reduction and static analysis alone: rather what is required is recognition that a viable conception of intersubjectivity needs to have the capacity for both personal privacy and shared empathy. In this respect, Merleau-Ponty overtakes Husserl’s dilemma of retaining an integrated transcendental intersubjectivity by starting with an orientation towards intersubjectivity that commences with a consciousness which is neither self nor other.

In building on these ideas, Merleau-Ponty (1942/1963) considered that a corporeal schema needs to exist within ‘a context of syncretic sociability, a context defined as prior to any distinction between perspectives or differentiation between what is mine and what is other’ (Dillon, 1997, p. 118). On this basis, the second person phenomenological standpoint becomes interesting relative to social ontology: what are peoples’ obligations and what conditions might benefit the development of a shared sense of communicative practice and empathy. How can the first-person benefits of choice and autonomous thinking dovetail with a shared sense of conduct and responsibility? To address these questions what is required is some form of shared acknowledgement and responsiveness, whereby how others respond is closely aligned with first-person sensitivity and alertness. This includes needing to recognise that bodily activities and language interchange with each other when there is a shared appreciation of the connectedness of our intersubjective being. In order to understand experiences better it is beneficial to engage with phenomenological methods that can generate shared understandings of basic truths from which each person can reflect on their experiences or intentionalities. Typically, in areas where embodied experiences are involved, forms of interpretive phenomenological analysis are used where participants’ accounts of their experiences dovetail with emerging categories of data. While this can be a valuable approach in some educational contexts, the potential for participants’ accounts to be overly descriptive relative to finding out about their deeper experiences and intentions towards learning can render these approaches rather shallow and self-contained, not to mention privileging first person accounts which others cannot access or share an understanding of (Stolz, 2020).

In this light, we now consider in broad terms what forms of methodological insight might illuminate how holistic ‘whole’ child aspirations can be taken forward in contemporary school education. This is a necessary next step, as one of Welsh’s (2013) main concerns in reviewing Merleau-Ponty’s lecture series is in finding viable methodologies that can study childhood as part of a trajectory from childhood to adulthood, and in ways which provide a structure from which we can organise and interpret the world. As Welsh (2013, p. 148) states, ‘to begin and end with experience requires a method which does not take any philosophical assumptions for granted’ and which necessarily avoids the excesses of overly scientific approaches, which fail to capture the experiences of the human condition sufficiently, or an overly relativist ontological starting position that insufficiently appreciates the effects upon individuals of their varied social, cultural, and historical situations.

What appears necessary is that viable methodologies include the full range of matters which are part of our being-in-the-world, e.g. our fears as well as our hopes, our ambitions as well as those concerns which matter less to our overall sense of self. For as Merleau-Ponty (2010, p. 386) notes, ‘we must avoid the realist thought of the adult in order to understand the relationship between the psychological and sociological aspects of the child. The child is, simultaneously and without difficulty, in the social realm and his own body’. Moreover, if we can recognise that a child’s progress is rarely linear and almost inevitably subject to regression and uncertainties, then educators will need to bracket their assumptions in order to view students’ worlds from a new and shifting perspective. If effective, phenomenology can serve as a methodology which suitably verifies empirical facts with the everyday experiences of students (Stolz, 2020; Thorburn & Stolz, 2020). This perspective is not without its challenges, however, especially in terms of accessing and capturing the meaning and significance of children’s situated experiences. In probing the connections between child psychology and a phenomenological informed pedagogy, it is Merleau-Ponty’s pursuit of a qualitatively rich account of childhood, which merges phenomenological thought with psychoanalysis and Gestalt psychology, that provides the stimulus for coherent progress (Bates, 2021). Such progress needs to consider how Merleau-Ponty’s account of individuals’ subjective and phenomenal experiences can become illuminating as part of educational progress in ways that capture how unconscious experiences can later inform consciousness and a certain dexterity with representational language; see, for example, Thorburn and Stolz (2017), where the potential for dynamic and interactive practice opportunities in dance could lead to informed conversations on matters such as poise, precision, projection, relationships, the uses of space, feeling, mood and ideas on music, which collectively enhance the likelihood of achieving excellence and a shared sense of telos.

Thus, the goal is to acknowledge that, while human beings are not capable of capturing every detail of their experiences, the subjective character of their experiences should be able to be described, at least in some form of comprehensible and verifiable way, that others who have not had similar experiences can understand (Stolz, 2020). Such efforts are likely to be effective and constructive when students recognise the benefits of retaining and recalling their experience-centred and action-orientated experiences. For this to happen, there is a need for students to understand the subjective character of their experiences, and for their analysis of experiences from first-person descriptions to be capable of closing the gap between the subjective and objective. For as Merleau-Ponty (2010, p. 67) remarks, the ‘meditation of the objective and the subjective, the interior and the exterior, what philosophy searches for, we can find in language if we succeed in approaching it closely’.

In order to connect with a suitably objective phenomenology that engages with new concepts and methodologies, Stolz and Thorburn (2022) advise that students need to develop the capacity to distance some aspects of the first-person point of view for the purposes of objective explanation, for instance, by taking up a point of view other than one’s own to generate phenomenological data that is objective and can be shared. In turn, others will need to take up a point of view other than their own in order to comprehend and understand the experiences of someone else. This opens the possibility of intersubjective validation and throws light on the kind of phenomenological method that can merge the subjective and objective. Thus, the intersubjective nature of subjectivity entails that the nature of our experiences, actions, and our understanding of the world are open to comparison and are not private matters. As such, we can holistically enhance appreciation of our embodied sense of being-in-the-world, and the part our animate body plays in understanding other people. In this way, embodiment can contribute to appreciating the complexities between the intersubjective and incorporeal nature of our experiences, and the social and cultural contexts within which we live.

The pursuit of these aspirations is pivotal to establishing the viability of phenomenology as a feasible dialogic approach in education. Reflecting Merleau-Ponty’s (2010) identification of a categorical attitude which is premised on a series of operations that includes: the capacity to take the initiative in executing a linguistic performance; the possibility of examining the same problem in different ways; the capacity to distinguish the essential from the accidental; the capacity to think not only of the real but of the possible; and the capacity to distinguish the ego from the exterior world, we have recently argued that phenomenological enquiry should include a structural fourfold focus on: providing a clear procedure for accessing and investigating phenomena; a reduction that consists of bracketing and intuitive (first-person) evidence; the temporal context; and expression and validation (intersubjectivity) as a clear means of engaging within a community of learners (Stolz & Thorburn, 2022). This core structure requires sustained practice and discipline in order to become established, most notably in the practice of students becoming aware, through various exercises, of learning with an agent (mediator). The contribution of the mediator or second person is necessary in developing first-person methods that are rigorous when engaging with expression and validation; for as Zahavi (2015) frames the matter, one of the major applied challenges in developing a phenomenological account of intersubjectivity is to find an acceptable balance between the similarity and difference of self and others’ experiences. Moreover, without explicitly opening up first-person accounts of experience to others for intersubjective validation, there is a risk of solipsism, or the creation of self-contained worlds which others cannot access, and which might in any event be inaccurate and invalid. Therefore, structurally, Stolz and Thorburn (2022) are open to the inclusion of concrete experiences of the self and other coupled with appreciation by the embodied subject that is contingent on their sense of being-in-the-world and shared sense of empathy between the first-persons perspective and others experience. Such settings can yield more finely grained descriptions that are underpinned by objective explanation (expression) and the quality of the validation process (intersubjectivity). By contrast, phenomenological conclusions deduced from phenomenological descriptions alone can assume that there is only one interpretation possible, and this is deeply problematic.

The fourfold structure outlined is useful for a range of reasons, most notably in that it provides a common language or terminology for application within a community of practice that is familiar with the language and terminology outlined in the structure. Stolz (2020) does not consider that extending the structure need be overly pedagogically technical to be effective or educationally meaningful for children. For example, children can disagree on the variation of colour that they perceive but recognise that this variation is due to perceptional reasons and not on whether there is a universal property of colour or not. Indeed, having such discussions around the experience of perception, and to testing these perceptions with others who have experienced the same thing (i.e. intersubjectivity) supports educational arguments for establishing communities of practice. Clearly, however, pedagogical sensitivity will be required, not least regarding the differentiated ways in which children might report on their experiences.

Contemporary education and guiding pedagogical principles

In reviewing the broad pedagogical principles which should shape and inform whole school planning, we consider that these should necessarily begin against a backdrop which has already reviewed the wider schooling environment e.g. in terms of the design of the school buildings and associated matters such as students' dress code, classroom layout and play spaces (Thorburn & Stolz, 2020a). Thereafter, pedagogically, the main task is focusing on how to provide students with opportunities for reviewing and reflecting on their self and shared experiences, in a way which recognises that similar experiences do not lead necessarily to similar accounts of experience. Guided by this insight, teachers become pivotal in being able to mediate environments that can foster a shared learning focus, but which are not dependent on achieving the same outcome for each child; or at least achieving the same outcome via the same methodology. Reflecting MacIntyre’s (1981/2007) views on the internal and external goods of practice, teachers need to facilitate discussion and help students to critically engage with their experiences, recognise available choices and discern viable ways forward. This enables students to make a greater sense of their world, with their qualms and instincts informing the establishment of more rounded conceptual understandings which are both accurate (objective) plus relevant to their lives (i.e. having a subjective benefit). In this micro community of practice, extended opportunities become available for students to exercise reflection and deliberation and to share instances of listening and leading as they make increasing sense of their inner world and the wider world around them. As such, practice experiences can become part of students’ wider social conversations with the goods of practice shared both internally (within class groups) and externally (within the wider life of the school). Some pedagogical adeptness and refinement at not inviting students to rush to judgment and recognising the merits of revisiting, recasting and re-emphasising diverse points of detail requires pedagogical adroitness in the context of individual and group planning, practice and learning; see, for example, Thorburn (2019).

In this regard, one key task is in considering how dialogic exchanges can capture the importance of subjective experiences that possess transferable learning gains at a self and social (whole school and community) level. For as Merleau-Ponty (2010, p. 41) notes, ‘Language is an act of transcending. Thus, we cannot consider it to simply be a container of thought; we must see in it an instrument of conquest of self through contact with others’ as ‘language is a manifestation of human intersubjectivity’ (Merleau-Ponty (2010, p. 63). Thus, for Merleau-Ponty language provides an access route to understanding experience which demands, in educational contexts, patience and time if students are going to be able to dwell on their experiences, and for teachers thereafter to be alert in avoiding the illusory expectation that students’ experiences are necessarily shared by others. Such a perspective can ensure there is no limitation on the differentiation of experience in a context where ‘certain modes of experience and behaviour are outlined, without being constricted to fixed paths’ (Waldenfels, 2008, p. 80).

In a general teaching context, Ryen (2020) investigated the role of teachers in interpreting content-driven curriculum that considered, from a pedagogical perspective, when, where and how the reflection and recording of experiences might best take place, e.g. during activity, directly following activity, or after a gap of some determinate amount of time. Progress on this matter might assist planning and consideration of how diverse experiences and identifiable occasions can become the focus of reflection and provide the basis for more extended and nuanced description of experiences (Thorburn & Stolz, 2020). In this way, a first-person led recollection of experiences can be ‘bound by the same checks-and-balances, or judgements as anyone else when it comes to claims being made about notions of being and associated truth or truths’ (Stolz, 2020, p. 1091). Progress on this basis can help ensure that accounts of experience can be shared as knowledge when constructed with the required degree of objective reliance, and when they avoid becoming prone to undue subjectivism. Such endeavour can also aid the transition from description to interpretation, where language is designed to verify the veracity of experiences and avoid an undue focus on reaching pre-determined conclusions.

Reflecting, Huizinga’s (1949) belief that play is present in all spheres of culture and is one of the most fundamental categories in life, Zimmermann and Morgan (2011) consider, in specific body-subjective led movement and play contexts, that experiences like those sketched above can create open and authentic dialogic conflicts that merit exploration rather than be suppressed or avoided. The sense of conflict also requires more than being intellectually resolved. What is required is that ‘the child must be put in relation to the other as the other. I have an exterior aspect; I am visible for the other. The other has a view of me’ (Merleau-Ponty, 2010, p. 255). In this personal and interactive context, ‘the relation with the other has the value of a real structure; it is a system of relations at the interior of my experience’ (Merleau-Ponty, 2010, p. 255), where the nature of experiential activity is more than an intellectual activity. Thus, by considering the embodied subjective body as a context for holistic-infused developmental activity, students can learn through movement to understand and appreciate the wider human condition as well as enhancing their personal capacities. In this way, the body can become a mediator of the world in an environment ‘which allows the refutation of subjectivism and the supremacy of representation’ (Zimmermann & Morgan, 2011, p. 54). This in-between positioning is a desirable one educationally both for enhancing students’ self-expression and for building a shared sense of class empathy in relation to the tasks at hand and in relation to coping and adjusting to the demands of school life and the wider world. Thus, by viewing the world as an intercorporeal community and by engaging with a self and shared perspective on learning situations, students can discover things about themselves and others that were not already known.

In making good on the general and specific purposes highlighted, improving and modifying recording experiences (e.g. completion of reflective journals) may well be needed if the focus on self and shared empathetic experiences is to contribute sufficiently to a set of more sharply focused curriculum intentions. Taking forward this focus may well be aided by a sharper concentration on questions and circumstances that naturally arise through happenings and encounters experienced in lessons. In this way, students can come to reflect on their visible and bounded, sense-laden experiences that can yield shared understandings of basic truths from which each student can reflect on and analyse their particular experiences (Thorburn & Stolz, 2021). This holistic intention is predicated on the view that educational matters of self and shared importance can be sustained and represented by ‘the desire to exist in a particularly concrete, embodied, perceptual and human kind of way’ (Rocha, 2015, p. 15). These intentions broadly dovetail with the German tradition of self-cultivation (Bildung; see Thorburn & Stolz, 2020b for example) where philosophy and education are linked together through a process of both personal and cultural maturation, and in which Brinkmann (2020, p. 119) considers that education from a phenomenological and existential perspective can become an ‘eventful experience in which the relationship to oneself and to the world is changed’.

Conclusion

In this paper, we have continued our research into the important role phenomenology can play in education; a perspective and methodology which we argue is capable of informing and supporting a greater emphasis on students’ holistic learning experiences in contemporary education. Contextually, we recognise that such a perspective benefits from curriculum arrangements that are not unduly burdened by set objectives and which encourage professional dialogue about how a pedagogical emphasis on students' holistic and intersubjective development can inform learning and teaching and the enrichment of the wider school ethos. For the first time, we have explored and analysed the content of Merleau-Ponty’s Sorbonne Lectures on Child Psychology and Pedagogy and discussed the content of these lectures in relation to a child-centred focus on how students can develop their interpretive capacities and decision making choices. This, along with an appreciation of how others develop (syncretic sociability), enables mature relations to develop. Thereafter, we discussed embodiment in relation to intersubjectivity and reviewed ontologically how the animate body can become in permanent unity with our consciousness, and thus integrated with our use of language and speech and its expression via a representative, expressive and social function. This mid position between subjectivity and objectivity enables students to become constructively engaged with others through sharing active and engaged experiences. Appreciation of this point highlights the indicative possibilities for sensory experiences, where bodily activities can respond to the dynamics of the surrounding perceptual field. On this basis, new meanings can link up with each other as new habits are formed and communicated. In such environments, bodily habits can convey meaning and significance through experiences which in due course can merge with conscious reflection. Next, we considered how first-person methodologies could be developed as a viable form of phenomenological enquiry, where intersubjectivity gains can benefit both personal privacy and shared empathy. To make good on these intentions, and to establish the viability of phenomenology as a feasible dialogic approach in education, we advanced an overview of how a fourfold focus on procedure, reduction, the temporal context and expression and validation (intersubjectivity) could potentially engage students in communities of learners and provide the foundational cornerstone for further related studies. In the final part of the paper, we highlight the benefits we perceive for students in being able to directly attend to the goods of their experiences, especially in terms of reviewing and reflecting on the plurality of their experiences in a contemporary education context where teachers can facilitate discussion and help students critically engage with their experiences and their choices. Progress on this basis would help students to make greater sense of their world and to establish more rounded conceptual understandings that are both accurate, verifiable, and meaningful to their lives. Such important, eventful and, where appropriate, optimistic experiences would be well placed to support pedagogical attempts to engage students in their education during the recovery years following a global health pandemic.

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Additional information

Notes on contributors

Malcolm Thorburn

Malcolm Thorburn is an Honorary Fellow at the Moray House School of Education, University of Edinburgh. His main research interests are conceptualising educational values, curriculum planning and enacting pedagogical practices. He has published widely on aims and values, policy and professionalism and planning and practice issues from a range of perspectives. His publications include as first author, recent articles in: Journal of Curriculum Studies; Curriculum Journal; Oxford Review of Education; Educational Review and the British Educational Research Journal. He is Editor of Wellbeing, Education and Contemporary Schooling. Routledge: London. 2017.

Steven A. Stolz

Steven A. Stolz, PhD, is a Senior Lecturer (Teaching and Research) and Programme Director (Master of Teaching) at the University of Adelaide, Australia. His background in analytical and continental traditions of philosophy has led to a diverse array of research interests that range from: epistemology, phenomenology, embodied cognition, ethics or applied ethics, narrative inquiry, psychology, virtue, and character development, particularly the Bildung tradition. At the moment, his primary area of scholarship is concerned with the relationship between theory and practice, particularly how theory informs practice, and/or how practice informs theory. Recent publications of note include: The Body, Embodiment, and Education: An Interdisciplinary Approach (Routledge), Measuring Up in Education: Philosophical Explorations for Justice and Democracy Within and Beyond Cultures of Measurement in Educational Systems (with S. Webster & published by Routledge), MacIntyre, Rationality and Education: Against Education of Our Age (Springer), and Theory and Philosophy in Education Research: Methodological Dialogues (with J. Quay, J. Bleazby, M. Toscano, & S. Webster & published by Routledge).