{"id":10383,"date":"2023-02-24T09:55:21","date_gmt":"2023-02-24T08:55:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/budrich.de\/en\/?p=10383"},"modified":"2023-02-20T13:09:50","modified_gmt":"2023-02-20T12:09:50","slug":"snippet-the-vignette-as-an-exercise-in-perception","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/budrich.de\/en\/news\/snippet-the-vignette-as-an-exercise-in-perception\/","title":{"rendered":"Snippet: Reading sample from \u201dThe vignette as an exercise in perception\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"

Die Vignette als \u00dcbung der Wahrnehmung \/ The vignette as an exercise in perception<\/h3>\n

Zur Professionalisierung p\u00e4dagogischen Handelns \/ On the professionalisation of educational practices<\/p>\n

edited by Evi Agostin, Hans Karl Peterlini, Jasmin Donlic, Verena Kumpusch, Daniela Lehner and Isabella Sandner<\/p>\n

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About the book<\/h4>\n

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.<\/p>\n

The book contains a German-language and an English-language version.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

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Reading sample from pp. 36\u201339<\/em><\/h3>\n

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What are vignettes used for (in educational practice)?<\/h3>\n

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
\ntaught 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).<\/p>\n

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What is a vignette?<\/h4>\n

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\u2019 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).<\/p>\n

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Vignette: Nicole and the 12 Apostles \u2013 and Patrick<\/p>\n

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The Religious education teacher, Mrs Jakob, distributes handouts and explains the assignment. \u201cin 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.\u201d With the handout in front of her, Nicole has just picked up her fountain pen when Mrs Jakob\u2019s voice rings out, \u201cPlease write in pencil so that you can rub out anything you need to.\u201d 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\u2019 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\u2019s voice rings out, \u201cWhen you\u2019ve finished, swap with your partner!\u201d 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\u2019s 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\u2019s sheet; he has now also located and coloured in all the names. With one last look at Patrick\u2019s sheet, she begins to put away her pens and pencils. (Mian 2019: 212)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

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Learning and educational practice \u2013 vignette reading<\/h4>\n

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 \u2013 deviating from the teacher\u2019s 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?<\/p>\n

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The concept of inter-subjectivity or inter-corporeality<\/h4>\n

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 \u2013 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).<\/p>\n

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Intercorporeality<\/h5>\n

The aim of the vignette is to explore intersubjective experience. In line with K\u00e4te Meyer-Drawe (2001: 11), vignette writers start from the assumption that intersubjectivity includes everything that is between (inter) \u2013 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\u2019s (1993) concept of \u201cinter- corporality\u201d 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).<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

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Vignettes thus come with extensive training on how to look and listen, which can professionalise pedagogical perception \u2013 and work against the \u2018false\u2019 idealism of unambiguity. A three-step approach is advisable when dealing with vignettes; the recommended process should<\/p>\n