The relationship between teacher and student has always been a central interest of the educational process. While the nature of this relationship can be understood from various theoretical frameworks, research that seeks to understand the “lived experience” of this relationship is less prevalent. This research explores the phenomenological nature of the teacher-student relationship in the context of teacher education. Stories of the lived experience of this relationship were hermeneutically interpreted against the philosophical writings of Heidegger, Gadamer, and Buber. The research answers the question: what is the meaning of the teacher-student relationship? Relationships are essential to the educational experience whether this is recognised or not, and whether we are consciously aware of this or not. Once established, relationships continue to exist beyond the time and space of the individuals influencing future relational experiences. In addition, a teacher’s comportment has been found to have a communicative aspect that is felt and sensed by others. A further essential understanding opens the play of relating. That is, the teacher and student experience their relationship as a play that is unscripted, uncertain, and lived beyond the rules of engagement. In this play, teachers who are attuned to relationship show a phronesis, or practical wisdom, as they relate moment by moment. The outcomes of this research call into question technicist and instrumental models of teacher education which are presently underpinned by the dominant neoliberal ideology. Consistent with critical and humanistic approaches to education, this research calls for the humanising of the educational experience through the educating and re-educating of teacher educators and teachers towards essential understandings of relationship.

ABSTRACT Background: A diary often helps the critically ill patient better to understand her/his illness and fill gaps in memory regarding their experiences in the ICU. To date there appears to be a lack of research that specifically focuses on family members’ experiences of the use of a diary within the intensive care setting. Aim: The aim of the study was to explore how family members experienced a diary kept during their sick relative’s stay in the ICU. Methodology: A qualitative methodology and, in particular, a hermeneutic approach were deemed to be appropriate for the study. Eleven participants were interviewed relating to nine diaries. Collected data have been analysed using hermeneutic interpretation inspired by Gadamer. Findings: Family members experienced that the diary sustained strengthened and deepened the connection to their sick relative and confirmed the presence of family members at bedside. The diary worked as a forum for mutual exchange of information between nurses and family members which led to a feeling of being united with the nurses in understanding. This in turn created a sense of togetherness and the family members didn’t feel neglected. In addition the diary was experienced as an implied hope that the outcome of the ICU stay would be good, thereby lending strength to worried family members. Conclusion: The diary was experienced as a tool that enhanced family members’ wellbeing.

Diss.--Berlin--Freie Universität, 1998. / Bibliogr. p. 383-399.

Thesis (M.A.)--Catholic Theological Union at Chicago, 2000. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 137-142).

Controversies invoking the concept of canonicity tend not merely to jump the gun - they assume that there is actually something to debate or discuss, that there are canons or canonical objects which can be deconstructed or preserved, analysed or appreciated. This thesis offers an approach to canonicity which rejects this assumption, but without abandoning the concept. It reconceives the basis of canonicity, through an analysis of the idea of incommensurability and of the hermeneutic or interpretive ideal of openness, by locating the concept and its applications within a semantics of interpretation and recovery which dismisses the very idea of shared structures of canonical meaning. In this way the approach follows Donald Davidson's well-known efforts to avoid a reification of linguistic meaning. The reconception of canonicity offered, however, owes perhaps more to the hermeneutic theories of Hans-Georg Gadamer and to Friedrich Nietzsche's conception of self-transformation. Drawing on all three philosophers it makes canonicity a function of the application of openness within certain kinds of incommensurable discourses, ones which are shaped by and reshape a subject's historical ground; in addition it suggests a resolution to a problem of openness and incommensurability which fundamentally reconceives both concepts.

Subscribing to Hans-Georg Gadamer's belief that human beings are called to be insightful and discerning, this dissertation explores Gadamer's idea and practice of listening to language in order to understand the relationship between a constitutive theory of language and a life of wisdom. As Gadamer's texts reveal, the hermeneutic practice of listening to language is a reflective engagement of language that is theoretically grounded in a constitutive view of language. First, we need to listen to language because language, not consciousness, is the critical element in understanding. Second, the ontological priority of language over subjectivity comes with the nature of our primary relationship to language--we belong to it. Language is the medium in which we think and live, which makes us human. This means that our primary and most consequential relationship to language is as hearers, not users, of language. Third, the nature of language is both binding and expansive; hence the problems that come with its binding nature can be attended to from within language itself, by engaging its expansive nature. In other words, Gadamer does not believe in linguistic determinism. <br>The first chapter explores the conversation between Gadamer and communication studies by surveying what communication scholars have found significant for communication theory and practice in Gadamer's thought. The next three chapters examine Gadamer's idea and practice of listening to language through a close interpretive reading of Gadamer's texts. This reading reveals three key relationships that define the hermeneutic practice of listening to language: the relationship between ordinary language and conceptual thought (chapter two); the relationship between hearing and understanding (chapter three); and the relationship between language and reason (chapter four). The last chapter takes the conversation between Gadamer and communication studies further by considering some ways in which the hermeneutic practice of listening to language can assist communication scholars and practitioners in becoming discerning and insightful. / McAnulty College and Graduate School of Liberal Arts / Communication and Rhetorical Studies / PhD / Dissertation

The relationship between teacher and student has always been a central interest of the educational process. While the nature of this relationship can be understood from various theoretical frameworks, research that seeks to understand the “lived experience” of this relationship is less prevalent. This research explores the phenomenological nature of the teacher-student relationship in the context of teacher education. Stories of the lived experience of this relationship were hermeneutically interpreted against the philosophical writings of Heidegger, Gadamer, and Buber. The research answers the question: what is the meaning of the teacher-student relationship? Relationships are essential to the educational experience whether this is recognised or not, and whether we are consciously aware of this or not. Once established, relationships continue to exist beyond the time and space of the individuals influencing future relational experiences. In addition, a teacher’s comportment has been found to have a communicative aspect that is felt and sensed by others. A further essential understanding opens the play of relating. That is, the teacher and student experience their relationship as a play that is unscripted, uncertain, and lived beyond the rules of engagement. In this play, teachers who are attuned to relationship show a phronesis, or practical wisdom, as they relate moment by moment. The outcomes of this research call into question technicist and instrumental models of teacher education which are presently underpinned by the dominant neoliberal ideology. Consistent with critical and humanistic approaches to education, this research calls for the humanising of the educational experience through the educating and re-educating of teacher educators and teachers towards essential understandings of relationship.

Thèse (Ph. D.)--Université Laval, 2007. / Bibliogr.: f. 270-283. Publié aussi en version électronique dans la Collection Mémoires et thèses électroniques.

Bochum, Universiẗat, Diss., 2008.

Zugl.: Bochum, Univ., Diss., 2007