What time does the bell ring? Problems and potentialities in experiences of temporality in school

Abstract

This paper problematizes the experience of temporality in school education and explores its potentialities, examining the implications for educational justice in and for qualitative research. In a first stage, we develop a pars destruens of how the experience of temporality takes place as a transversal dimension of school activities. Using phenomenological perspective as theoretical and critical lens, we show that the objective of this approach is to organize time and experience in a standardized, contradictory, and tense manner; at the same time, we describe a pars construens of the experience of temporality, endowed with a horizon of possibilities: the school as free time that contributes to questioning certain aspects in relation to temporality as a project of progress in education, without failures, without different rhythms. These approaches propose a link between experience of temporality and educational justice that we discuss in the conclusion.

Keywords:

• Temporality
• phenomenology
• school
• justice

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 Our critical phenomenological approach is not intended to be an exhaustive account of all aspects of the experience of temporality in school life. Our aim is to problematize and explore this experience from the perspective of some of its modes of manifestation in the institution known as school.

2 We would say rather a phenomenon.

3 These temporal markers are conceived here as objects of experience of time in school, in the sense that they are experienced by subjects of the school in a way that shapes their own experience. At the same time, these objects encapsulate a certain way of thinking and living temporality in the school institution.

4 We consider that the phenomenological approach is a deeply critical project (Loidolt, 2021) both in the sense of criticizing something and showing possibilities and virtualities in a phenomenon too.

5 See the timetable photo in Marini and Rodríguez Merchán (2020, p. 533).

6 Non-English quotes were translated by the authors.

7 In Chile, chronological time is that which reflects the duration of a day (5 h of class from 8 am to 1 pm). Pedagogical time is how long a class lasts (for example, 45-min classes). Within this distribution, teaching work outlines teaching time (devoted to the effective performance of the class) and non-teaching time (devoted to preparing the class and other activities with colleagues). In this regard, see https://www.cpeip.cl/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/Orientaciones-Horas-No-Lectivas.pdf

8 This was one of the most dramatic, striking, or downright shocking and questionable aspects of these 2 years of the pandemic. How did children and young people without available digital technology occupy their time during the lockdown? Everything was overly dependent on the initiative of the school institutions.

9 For example, let us consider children and young people who are excluded by the system, perhaps because they drop out and then re-enter it, in accordance with non-linear modalities that show a rhythm or trajectory of life that zigzags or is interrupted.

10 The paper by Murris and Kohan (2021) on temporality in education also makes use of this dichotomy of meanings of the Greek terms chronos and kairos. The former is the time that passes, consuming what happens, while the latter encapsulates the intensity and opportunity of something that occurs in time and leads to something unexpected. We postulate the notion that skholé indicates another specific temporality of those who meet in order to be educated and that, therefore, it does not imply productivity.

11 In the field of the sociology of education, research designs and the use of techniques such as focus groups are used with a focus on the experience of temporality, such as in the work of Kjer et al. (2021).

12 In this respect, it is possible to take into account the suggestion by Ahmed (2006, p. 39) that it would be necessary “to supplement phenomenology with an ‘ethnography of things’,” a sort of “ethno-phenomenology.”

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Carmelo Galioto

Carmelo Galioto has a PhD in Education from Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile. Currently, he is postdoctoral researcher at the Institute of Education Sciences, University of O’Higgins, (Rancagua). His interests focus on how the philosophy of education can think the school as a place for the integral education of the human being, as well as the implications of the school as a public space. He has published papers in Phainomena, Education Policy Analysis Archives, Paedagogica Historica: International Journal of the History of Education, among others journals.

Camila Moyano Davila

Camila Moyano Dávila obtained her Ph.D. in Social Science from the University of Lausanne at the LIVES Research Centre, Switzerland. Currently is an associated professor of the Faculty of Education, Psychology and Family, School of Family Sciences, at the Universidad Finis Terrae. In her previous work, she has followed a biographical approach with a focus on subjectivity. She has developed research on vulnerable children and minorities in the Chilean education system. She edited a book about educational justice in Chile. Currently, she is working on educational technologies and the production of stereotypes at school.