Bearing Witness as an Enactment of Educational Inquiry

• In Event: AERA Roundtable Session 11
  In Roundtable Session: Disrupting Norms in Teaching and Doing Qualitative Research (Table 15)

Abstract

This presentation puts forward the idea of bearing witness as a distinctive mode of qualitative inquiry. The particular domain of interest is the world of teaching and teachers. Bearing witness points to ways of appreciating critically the complex, sometimes unfathomable social and intellectual depths of teaching. As an enactment of inquiry, bearing witness constitutes an orientation rather than a discrete method that could be taught or learned like a skill. Put another way, it comprises ‘an enacted ethics’ that combines aesthetic, epistemic, and moral dimensions. To elucidate these claims, I draw on extensive fieldwork in classrooms I have undertaken, as well as on a long-standing critical literature on bearing witness as a moral endeavor.

Author

• David T. Hansen, Teachers College, Columbia University