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Reconsidering the Communicative Space: Learning to Be

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Educating Future Teachers: Innovative Perspectives in Professional Experience

Abstract

In this chapter, we ask the reader to set aside existing perceptions of mentoring, supervision and their relatedness to professional experience and instead join us in a sharply reconsidered analysis of the communicative space in which teachers and preservice teachers negotiate the phenomenon of ‘learning to be’. We take the Habermasian concept of communicative space (Habermas J, Theory of communicative action, vol 2: Lifeworld and system: a critique of functionalist reason (trans: McCarthy T). Beacon, Boston, 1987) and earlier notions of lifeworld (Heidegger M, Being and time (trans: Macquarrie J, Robinson E). SCM Press, New York, 1962/1927; Merleau-Ponty M, Phenomenology of perception (trans: Smith C). Routledge & Kegan Paul, London, 1962/1945; Sandberg J, Dall’Alba G, Organ Stud 30:1349–1368, 2009) as a theoretical frame to foreground learning and practice as ‘ways of being in the world’. A series of three vignettes are presented to illustrate how mentoring is both epistemological (what we know or can do) and ontological (how we are learning to be). It is this learning to be, in the teaching and learning to teach relationship, that we aim to identify, illustrate and elaborate in this chapter.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Griffith University, Mt Gravatt, QLD, Australia

    Mia O’Brien

  2. Macquarie University, Sydney, NSW, Australia

    Bronwen Wade-Leeuwen, Fay Hadley & Rebecca Andrews

  3. Queensland University of Technology, Brisbane, QLD, Australia

    Nick Kelly & Steven Kickbusch

Authors
  1. Mia O’Brien
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  2. Bronwen Wade-Leeuwen
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  3. Fay Hadley
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  4. Rebecca Andrews
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  5. Nick Kelly
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  6. Steven Kickbusch
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Mia O’Brien .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Melbourne Graduate School of Education, The University of Melbourne, Parkville, Victoria, Australia

    Jeana Kriewaldt

  2. Central Queensland University, Noosaville, Queensland, Australia

    Angelina Ambrosetti

  3. University of Adelaide, Adelaide, South Australia, Australia

    Doreen Rorrison

  4. Queensland College of Teachers, Toowong, Queensland, Australia

    Ros Capeness

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O’Brien, M., Wade-Leeuwen, B., Hadley, F., Andrews, R., Kelly, N., Kickbusch, S. (2018). Reconsidering the Communicative Space: Learning to Be. In: Kriewaldt, J., Ambrosetti, A., Rorrison, D., Capeness, R. (eds) Educating Future Teachers: Innovative Perspectives in Professional Experience. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-10-5484-6_7

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-10-5484-6_7

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