Mobilage thinking and empirical encounters

Data gathering and analysis of networked learning experiences

Abstract

This short paper heralds a chapter in a forthcoming book showcasing phenomenology in networked learning research and practice. One of the arguments treated in the chapter relates to expectations that doctoral educational research projects will gather data, often through interviews. Doctoral students would also be expected to ground their projects philosophically and this can be difficult without a background in philosophy. Various methodologies seem attractive because they have dealt with the philosophical groundwork, laying out a parsimonious, safe and routinised path from proposal to completion. One such candidate methodology is phenomenography, which also appeals because of its origins and achievements in the field of educational research; and not least in networked learning, where phenomenography supported early work in defining networked learning and researching staff and student experiences, helping maintain a focus on human relations in online learning. Phenomenology and phenomenography are used to research experience, and both observe a hermeneutic gap within interview-based research: between the phenomenon of interest and what is said in interviews about that phenomenon. The latter provides interview-based research with data but without necessarily addressing the hermeneutic gap. By contrast, phenomenology’s concern with the prereflective, the so-called structures of consciousness, acknowledges that researchers bring their own preconceptions to any enquiry and some attempt ought to be made to recognise and set them aside: also known as “bracketing” (or epoché), originating in nonempirical philosophy, has been taken up in empirical qualitative research, including phenomenography. However, far from closing the hermeneutic gap, admitting even a simplistic place for bracketing also admits of a need to attain greater clarity in what bracketing is and what it entails. Something of the illusiveness of absolute bracketing may be understood if we consider that even naming the experience for investigation sets off wandering thought paths. This paper suggests “reverse bracketing” may help, by redirecting those thought paths which may be anticipated, to restore thinking to the desired state of wonder instead. Mobilage thinking is proposed as one example of how a blend word was constructed to help maintain a state of openness to the target experience: in this case, being a healthcare student with a mobile phone.