What Does Phenomenology Mean to Teacher Education?

• In Event: Confucianism, Phenomenology, and Teacher Education

Abstract

Objectives
          This paper aims to reveal (1) the meanings of phenomenology to people and (2) the significance of phenomenology to teacher education. The paper also wants to (3) explore the history of phenomenology and on that basis, reconstructs the intrinsic value of phenomenology to human subjectivity discovery.

Theoretical Framework

In phenomenology, the world is not the objective that lies there. On the contrary, the world is constructed by the subject. Constructing is not generating, is not activating, is not deductive, is not restoring. Construction is only a possible condition for the object to appear. Constructing is simply saying that the world is planned by the subject itself. The composition of the world and the expansion of self which means the establishment of intersubjective is a unified process. This constructive ego is associated with other constructive egos, and in interaction, the self establishes the complete meaning of the world together.

Methods
This study simply and systematically combs the history of phenomenological development and puts the phenomenological thoughts that reveal the subjective discovery of human beings at the center. Through the core spirit of phenomenology, the discovery of subjectivity, we investigate what the discovery of human subjectivity means to teachers.

Data
Classical Chinese and modern Western theoretical texts. The main materials are from the classic texts focus on phenomenology and teacher education.

Results
Phenomenology provides a way of directly describing the world without mediation. It frees thoughts from the mechanical deterministic assumptions in hidden science and political thought, and frees people from resorting to ideology and scientific theory. Phenomenology emphasizes that individuals face the real world directly, reveal the living world of people from the structure of consciousness, and understand the meaning of the world without prejudice and preset real self-consciousness. This draws away a series of dogmatic foundations of the authoritarian totalitarian pseudo-scientific worldview, objectification, and even materialization of human beings, returning to real human nature and the phenomenon of human beings can only be understood in the world of life. In short, almost all of phenomenology's inspiration for political philosophy lies in its rediscovery of self, freedom, and personal value. The ethical responsibility of the individual is also established accordingly-people must be responsible for their existence.
For teachers, what is important is not to understand phenomenology, but to discuss phenomenology and form phenomenological attitudes. Phenomenological view means that education is brought into view with a free plan. What matters is not familiarity with ideas, but insight into phenomena. Phenomenological attitudes means the suspension of judgments on what is education and other disciplines. Suspended judgment is not exclusion, but censorship, from conviction to suspicion. Teachers should have faith in education. But teachers need to learn to hold back the beliefs of their predecessors. Overcoming preconceived beliefs is for truth, for proof.


Significance
Preunderstanding the phenomenological spirit and reconstructing the intrinsic significance of phenomenology to the discovery of human subjectivity is of great and important significance to both education and teacher education.

Author

• Wei Gao, Jiangsu Normal University