Die Vignette als Übung der Wahrnehmung / The vignette as an exercise in perception
Zur Professionalisierung pädagogischen Handelns / On the professionalisation of educational practices
edited by Evi Agostin, Hans Karl Peterlini, Jasmin Donlic, Verena Kumpusch, Daniela Lehner and Isabella Sandner
About the book
Pedagogical work requires the willingness to engage with new situations and with people in their diversity. This book does not offer any simple recipes, but a gentle approach to important steps towards professionalisation in the teaching profession. These lead via an open attitude of perception and the inclusion of corporeality to an insight into how learning and teaching processes can be understood in a new or different way. With vignettes and examples from different pedagogical fields, the theoretical concepts are presented and reflected on their application.
The book contains a German-language and an English-language version.
Reading sample from pp. 36–39
What are vignettes used for (in educational practice)?
Work with vignettes attempts to raise awareness of the importance of mindfulness and attentiveness in teaching, which, as has already been highlighted, is an activity that can also give rise to irritation and uncertainty. This enables teachers to adjust their practice to recognise unexpected skills and competences that pupils may have but that have not been
taught in the classroom, and that teachers may previously have overlooked. More in-depth consideration of seemingly everyday situations, such as interruptions to teaching that have previously been seen as disruptive, can give teachers a new perspective on children and young people and how they behave. In this context, professionalism is less about continuous, goal-oriented progress, and more about pausing and stepping back in order to consider situations more sensitively and, where necessary, to reflect and learn. Against this backdrop, the art of education becomes a professional response to the multi-layered needs of pupils, a response that necessitates and fosters understanding, awareness and attentiveness on the part of educators (cf. Agostini 2020a).
What is a vignette?
A vignette is a condensed description of a selected scene (cf. Meyer-Drawe 2012) that acts as an example, allowing a general sense of a specific situation. However, as well as enabling us to learn about the specific situation described, vignettes also facilitate learning that goes beyond it. As well as promoting a more nuanced perception of educational experiences and reflection on them, vignettes also raise awareness of teachers’ practices. They therefore go beyond the collection of experiences and the generation of knowledge, acting as instruments of training and development (cf. Agostini 2020b; Symeonidis/Papadopoulou 2020), e.g. in the context of peer observation or as tools for the improvement of teaching and the development of schools. Vignettes arise from the co-experiental experience of their writers, the assumption being that experiences can be shared. Experiences can be shared when vignette authors have experiences relating to the experiences of participants in a given situation (cf. Agostini 2020b).
Vignette: Nicole and the 12 Apostles – and Patrick
The Religious education teacher, Mrs Jakob, distributes handouts and explains the assignment. “in this word search are hidden the names of the twelve apostles. Mark them in colour and then write them on the lines next to the grid.” With the handout in front of her, Nicole has just picked up her fountain pen when Mrs Jakob’s voice rings out, “Please write in pencil so that you can rub out anything you need to.” Nicole immediately but unhurriedly puts the fountain pen aside and begins to write the names of four apostles neatly on the blank lines without sifting through the word search. The tip of her tongue moves up and down at the corner of her mouth, which is slightly open. She then writes the rest of the names a little more slowly, hesitantly, continually consulting the word search, on the blank lines. When she has written down all twelve names on the empty lines, she takes pencils in various colours and colours in the rows with the apostles’ names. Once she colours beyond the edge of the grid. Her tongue stops moving briefly as she immediately grabs her eraser after the mishap and erases the small stroke of errant colour. As she puts the eraser aside, her gaze falls on a row of letters she has already coloured in. She picks up the same colour again, her tongue once more finding its way to the corner of the mouth. Once again, she colours in this row of letters, so that all the rows are coloured in with equal the same intensity. Finally, Mrs Jakob’s voice rings out, “When you’ve finished, swap with your partner!” Nicole turns her sheet sideways so that Patrick, who promptly leans towards her, can read it more easily. He looks, colours, looks, and colours. Nicole, on the other hand, bends low over her page and colours without blocking Patrick’s view. Her mouth is slightly open, and every now and then she draws her brows together while she erases the names of the apostles she has noted in pencil, rewriting them with her fountain pen. After she has finished, she glances at Patrick’s sheet; he has now also located and coloured in all the names. With one last look at Patrick’s sheet, she begins to put away her pens and pencils. (Mian 2019: 212)
Learning and educational practice – vignette reading
The vignette, an example from an upper secondary school, depicts a situation that arises every day in schools. In this example, the pupils have to complete a task with the help of a worksheet and then discuss it in pairs. In the process, the two children seem to find their own ways of learning – deviating from the teacher’s precise instructions. What is happening here? Is learning taking place? How and in what way does it manifest itself? And what does this mean for my own educational practice?
The concept of inter-subjectivity or inter-corporeality
Vignettes capture intersubjective moments of perception and experience that have an impact on the vignette writers in the field. When habitual courses of action and categories of understanding are thwarted, i.e. irritated, something can strike the vignette-writer that gives rise to a new interpretation. They attempt to set down this co-experiental experience in writing, transforming those memorable moments into the narrative format of a vignette, where the vignette writers themselves have had experiences and thus learned from them. They put into language the actions, physical gestures, atmospheres and moods that are key to the scene they have experienced, in an aesthetically pithy manner – pithy here should be understood as cogent or full of meaning. Vignettes do not attempt to reconstruct situations retrospectively, or reproduce them in their entirety. They deliberately describe only what is challenging, stimulating, attractive or repulsive; things that confound preconceived expectations. They show how the experience of learning can lead learners to understand the self, the world and others differently than they did before (cf. Agostini 2020b).
Intercorporeality
The aim of the vignette is to explore intersubjective experience. In line with Käte Meyer-Drawe (2001: 11), vignette writers start from the assumption that intersubjectivity includes everything that is between (inter) – thus including experiences between researchers and participants. The point of reference for these kinds of intersubjective perceptions and experiences is the body, which enables and mediates all experience. Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s (1993) concept of “inter- corporality” makes clear that the other is essential to my access to myself and thus to my own (physical) experience. The lived experiences of others elude our perception, but the movements of their body do not. As perceivers, we are always affected by the bodily expressions of others. This means when I share an experience with others, they reveal something that I can also experience in my own body. Collective, shared experiences have the potential to give rise to intersubjective social meaning, which is attributable neither to me nor to the other; however, I need the other in order to express it. Terms or expressions used to define perceptions and experiences cannot be unambiguous. Since concepts arise out of experiences in the lifeworld, they too ultimately remain charged with meaning. Thus we always experience and know more than can be thought and said. Vignettes transcribe this meaningful excess of experience intersubjectively without ultimately codifying or appropriating it. Phenomenological research is thus based on the intersubjective character of experience. When, for example, the readers of a vignette comprehend the actions it depicts, they can verify the plausibility of that specific example for themselves. The validity of a vignette lies solely in this comprehensibility, and puts it to the test (cf. Agostini 2020b).
Vignettes thus come with extensive training on how to look and listen, which can professionalise pedagogical perception – and work against the ‘false’ idealism of unambiguity. A three-step approach is advisable when dealing with vignettes; the recommended process should
- start with a collective reading of selected vignettes and
- progress to written reporting of the experience of reading the vignettes in form of vignette readings
- and finally condense meaningful experiences (a demanding process) into vignettes.This process requires a certain sensitivity of perceptionon the part of those involved.
Literature
Agostini, Evi (2020a): Aisthesis – Pathos – Ethos. Zur Heranbildung einer pädagogischen Achtsamkeit und Zuwendung im professionellen Lehrer/- innenhandeln. Erfahrungsorientierte Bildungsforschung, Volume (6). Innsbruck, Wien: StudienVerlag.
Agostini, Evi (2020b): Fünf Antworten von Evi Agostini (Universität Wien) auf Fragen der Studentin Wiebke Rolfs (Universität Bremen) zur Vignettenforschung. Digitale Lehr- und Lernplattform, Institut für Kunstwissenschaft – Filmwissenschaft – Kunstpädagogik, Universität Bremen. https://blogs. uni-bremen.de/ikfklehre/schreiben/ [Access: 12.04.2021].
Agostini, Evi/Mian, Stephanie (2019): Phänomenologisch orientierte Vignetten als Instrumente der Schulentwicklung. In: Journal für Schulentwicklung 23, 3, pp. 25-30.
Helsper, Werner/Tippelt, Rudolf (Hrsg.) (2011): Pädagogische Professionalität. In: Zeitschrift für Pädagogik (Supplement), 57. https://www.pedocs. de/volltexte/2013/7084/pdf/Helsper_Tippelt_Paedagogische_Professinalitaet.pdf [Access: 12.04.2021].
Mian, Stephanie (2019): Lernen zwischen Gewohnheit und Leidenschaft. Zur Bedeutsamkeit des Sich-Einlassens im Erfahrungsvollzug. Paderborn, München, Wien, Zürich: Schöningh.
Merleau-Ponty, Maurice (1993): Die Prosa der Welt. Edited by Claude Lefort, from the French by Regula Giuliani, with an introduction to the German edition by Bernhard Waldenfels. 2nd edition. München: Fink.
Meyer-Drawe, Käte (2001): Leiblichkeit und Sozialität: Phänomenologische Beiträge zu einer pädagogischen Theorie der Inter Subjektivität. 3rd unchanged edition. München: Fink. Meyer-Drawe, Käte (2012): Vorwort. In: Schratz, Michael/Schwarz, Johanna F./Westfall-Greiter, Tanja (Eds.): Lernen als bildende Erfahrung. Vignetten in der Praxisforschung. Innsbruck, Wien, Bozen: StudienVerlag, pp. 11-15.
Schratz, Michael (2020): Den Musterwechsel anbahnen. Die Praxis in Schule und Unterricht forschend erkunden. In: Brinkmann, Malte (Ed.): Forschendes Lernen: Pädagogische Studien zur Konjunktur eines hochschuldidaktischen Konzepts. Wiesbaden: VS Springer, pp. 123-140.
Schratz, Michael/Schwarz, Johanna F./Westfall-Greiter, Tanja (2012): Lernen als bildende Erfahrung. Vignetten in der Praxisforschung. Innsbruck, Wien, Bozen: StudienVerlag.
Symeonidis, Vasileios/Papadopoulou, Vassiliki (2020): I mathisi os empe iria: Mia fainomenologiki proseggisi stin ekpaideutiki ereuna me ti xrisi vignettwn [A phenomenological approach within educational research illustrated by the example of vignettes]. Educational Review 37, 70, pp. 143-158. https://ojs.lib.uom.gr/index.php/paidagogiki/article/view/9690 [Access: 12.04.2021].
Thielmann, Anja (2020): Von der Wahrnehmung zur Vignette. Wie Vignetten leibliche Wahrnehmungen und intersubjektive Erfahrungen in Sprache ‚übersetzen‘. In: Peterlini, Hans Karl/ Cennamo, Irene/ Donlic, Jasmin (Eds.): Wahrnehmung als pädagogische Übung. Theoretische und praxisorientierte Auslotungen einer phänomenologisch orientierten Bildungsforschung. Erfahrungsorientierte Bildungsforschung, Volume (7). Innsbruck, Wien: StudienVerlag, pp. 65-80.
Westfall-Greiter, Tanja/Dienhofer, Helga (2017): From Evidence-Based to Evidence Generating Practice: Implications for Education Research in the Context of Innovation. In: Ammann, Markus/Westfall-Greiter, Tanja/Schratz, Michael (Eds.): Erfahrungsorientierte Bildungsforschung. Erfahrungen deuten – Deutungen erfahren: Vignettes and Anecdotes as Research, Evaluation and Mentoring Tool. Erfahrungsorientierte Bildungsforschung, Volume (3). Innsbruck, Wien, Bozen: StudienVerlag, pp. 77-94.
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Die Vignette als Übung der Wahrnehmung / The vignette as an exercise in perception
Zur Professionalisierung pädagogischen Handelns / On the professionalisation of educational practices
edited by Evi Agostin, Hans Karl Peterlini, Jasmin Donlic, Verena Kumpusch, Daniela Lehner and Isabella Sandner
