“Attention is the rarest and purest form of generosity.” (Simone Weil)
“Attention, taken to its highest degree, is the same thing as prayer. It presupposes faith and love.” (Simone Weil)
How do I avoid becoming the proverbial practitioner who, instead of earning ten years of experience, repeats one year of experience ten times over? How do I make sense of my own experience as a practitioner and how do I learn from my experience? How do I learn from the experience of other practitioners? How do I give attention to what matters most?
In this course we will consider these kinds of questions. We will draw on the critical reflective practices of other practitioners, we will equip ourselves with the methodological tools of qualitative researchers, and we will cultivate an attitude of attentiveness informed by the approach to practice taken by phenomenologists—becoming philosophically skilful students of our own lived human experience. Doing this course together, we will become more observant participants in our lifeworlds and strengthen our capacity as reflective practitioners in our professions and in our scholarship.
While the focus of this course is on applying research craft to professional practice, the course is also an introduction to graduate level qualitative research and to key perspectives from phenomenological philosophy.
This version of the course will take a hybrid format, with three Zoom sessions, weekly structured interactive online forum discussions in response to reading assignments, and the workshopping of a paper. The Zoom sessions will take place on Thursdays, 6:00 pm - 9:00 pm (September 17, October 15, and November 19). There will be no assignments due during ICS’s reading week, October 26-30. For participants doing the course for credit all outstanding work will be due by no later than January 29, 2021.
ICSDH 132501 / 232501 F20
Dr. Gideon StraussHybrid (Online Asynchronous/Synchronous)
(MA-EL, MWS)
Syllabus
