Header image: ﻼF in Kashmir, somewhere near Kargil (April 2009)
I am framing my dissertation as a “pilgrimage”. Yes, this is a “journey” but a special kind of journey and one more meaningful for me, given where I’ve some from, where I am, and were I may be going.
McCulloch, A. (2013). The quest for the PhD: A better metaphor for doctoral education. International Journal for Researcher Development, 4(1), 55–66. https://doi.org/10.1108/IJRD-05-2013-0008
- KF – McCullough writes how the most commonly used metaphor – “the journey” is “too simple”, proffering “the Quest” as an alternative.
- Neither is appealing to me but I agree that helping “to understand and to make sense of their experience, [is] one of the key functions of metaphor” – my PhD experience is best described through the metaphor of “pilgrimage”.
- KF: McCullough dismisses the “journey” metaphor
- “too simple relatively predictable… too routinized”
- “not particularly generative, being descriptive rather than heuristic”
- too linear
“Metaphor works by bringing “into cognitive and emotional relation any two separate domains, using language appropriate to the one as a lens for seeing the other” (Haynes, 1975, p. 275)
“metaphors operate at two different levels, “the comparison level and the interactive level. The latter is not mere comparison, but the whole eureka process which, in bringing together the hitherto unconnected gives a new insight which belongs to neither” (Haynes, 1975, p. 273)
- KF: my pilgrimage reflects the other penitents I’ve met along the way
- KF; the affective element of my doctoral education has been central; I haven’t thought my way through this, I have felt my way through this, guided by my heart more than my head.
- Brown states, “(t)he idea that learning is an intellectual pursuit separate from emotional processes has long been dismissed as nonsense” (Brown, 2009, p. 9).
- Haynes argues that metaphors “offer a meta-dialogue concerning the researcher, the process of research, relationships with self and others involved with them in this lived experience”
Pinar and Huebner were exploring the theme of pilgimage 50 years ago
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Pinar, W. (1975). In W, Pinar (Ed.), Curriculum theorizing: The reconceptualists (p. 396-414). McCutchan.
- “The study of currere, as the Latin infinitive suggests, involves investigation of the nature of the individual experience of the public: of artifacts, actors, operations, of the educational journey or pilgrimage.16”
- 16: Huebner used the word most recently at the 1973 Uniersity of Rochester Curriculum Theory Conference. See his “The Remaking of Curricular Language,” in Heightened Consciousness ed. Pinar
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Huebner, D.W. (1974). Toward a remaking of curriculur language. In. W. Pinar (Ed.), Heightened consciousness, cultural revolution, and curriculum theory: The proceedings of the Rochester conference (pp. 36-53). McCutchan.
- The tension between care for the new being and care for collective wealth is lived out in the community and in the struggles among diverse communities. If a community is a group of people with common or shared memories and intentions, then the new being is pushed out, not only into a public world but into an ongoing community with traditions of care for people and traditions of care for collective or public wealth.
- The Biblical image of people in pilgrimage is what I have in mind. The wayfaring communities carry with them their care for each other and care for their possessions and their memories stored in their poetry, their songs and rituals, their tools, and their other traditions. The presence of a community with traditions of care for people and for collective wealth, a community that honors and develops individual and collective memory, that articulates and acts out intentions is the third fact that gives rise to educational concern. Without education the community could not maintain its pilgrimage beyond a single generation. It would die out along the way and foreclose the rest of the journey. Without education, traditions and memories would be forgotten, hope would be ignored, and futures would remain unclaimed. Without education the new being would be lost and transcendence would be unknown
- KF: “the new being” student(s) / teacher candidates
- The Biblical image of people in pilgrimage is what I have in mind. The wayfaring communities carry with them their care for each other and care for their possessions and their memories stored in their poetry, their songs and rituals, their tools, and their other traditions. The presence of a community with traditions of care for people and for collective wealth, a community that honors and develops individual and collective memory, that articulates and acts out intentions is the third fact that gives rise to educational concern. Without education the community could not maintain its pilgrimage beyond a single generation. It would die out along the way and foreclose the rest of the journey. Without education, traditions and memories would be forgotten, hope would be ignored, and futures would remain unclaimed. Without education the new being would be lost and transcendence would be unknown
- I am right where every other educator has been. Nothing is new here, except perhaps some of the terminology used to articulate the place. An educator cannot intentionally educate without thinking about the individual, the society, and the culture or tradition. It is in talk about these three presences and their being together in a place that we clarify our memories, share our intentions, and feel our powers in conflict. It is in talk about these three presences that we find the stuff for our hermeneutical and world-building arts. It is in asking how these three presences have been together in the past that we give direction to historical inquiry. It is in thinking about the togetherness of these three presences that we articulate educational organization and educational method.
- KF: I have shared with others, many times now, how I feel that I really only started to “get” education when I returned to grad studies here in Canada. To be more specific, it was when I started working towards finding my place here, in the sense of coming to feel like this place was home. Starting my PhD and beginning my work with the Technology Education cohorts created a situation where I needed to know more about myself, this society, and this new community of which I had become a subscriber member. This created conflict but also great opportunity for personal and professional growth.
- I do not make any claim to the uniqueness of my pilgrimage; I believe anyone reading this will have found themselves dealing with similar issues. What I offer here is a narrative of how I navigated these conflicts and worked towards reconciliation.
- The educator must also care for the past, conserve it so it will not be forgotten or lost for use and reference. It is this aspect of the educator’s task that receives most attention here, but he must also care for the community of which he is a part. This means attending to the memories, intentions, and power of those with whom he dwells; in other words, the educator must seek to be part of a pilgrimage.
- KF: Part of a community; a group of seekers; of journeyers
- Open education points to the search for communities by groups of people on pilgrimage, working the land with their tools, building the structures that house them from the elements, caring for those who are pushed into their presence, reshaping their life together, and telling and retelling the stories of where they have been and where they seem to be going.
- [an open place of education must be interpreted as a place where adults seek to influence the young, where the young seek to influence the adults; a place where the past as present may be used, interpreted, rethought, and reworked; a place not of submitting to someone else’s power and accepted ways but of negotiating for power in the maintaining and reforming of the public world.]
- KF: I gained access to an open form of education
- [an open place of education must be interpreted as a place where adults seek to influence the young, where the young seek to influence the adults; a place where the past as present may be used, interpreted, rethought, and reworked; a place not of submitting to someone else’s power and accepted ways but of negotiating for power in the maintaining and reforming of the public world.]
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Dyas, D. (2021;2020;). The dynamics of pilgrimage: Christianity, holy places, and sensory experience (1st ed.). Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003094968
➡ https://www.york.ac.uk/projects/pilgrimage/intro.html
- The Latin peregrinus (per, through + ager, field, country, land) denoted a foreigner, an alien, one who is on a journey; peregrinatio signified the state of being or living abroad. Peregrinus was used in the late fourth-century Latin Vulgate translation of the Bible to render the Hebrew gur (sojourner), used of Abraham in the Hebrew Bible, and the Greek parepidemos (temporary resident), used of all Christians in the New Testament.
- These biblical terms carried an important additional connotation signifying the special ways in which the people of God were to relate to the world around them. This required a blend of engagement and detachment: engaged in daily life yet sitting loose to earthly ties and answering to a higher authority. In the New Testament and the Early Church, to be a ‘pilgrim and stranger’ was to be an ‘exile’ in this world, committed to a lifelong journey towards the heavenly Jerusalem, the ultimate homeland of the Christian.64
- Found a home
- I wish now to attend to what I have called hermeneutical activity, for therein I see a way of getting at pedagogical method and interpreting what goes on in the classroom or other educational places. My source is Palmer’s book Hermeneutics, although my own introduction to hermeneutics is by way of Heidegger in his many writings, Ricoeur in his work on Freud, and Habermas‘ Knowledge and Human Interests.