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J. Kriewaldt et al. (eds.), Educating Future Teachers: Innovative Perspectives
in Professional Experience, DOI 10.1007/978-981-10-5484-6_7
Chapter 7
Reconsidering the Communicative Space:
Learning to Be
Mia O’Brien, Bronwen Wade-Leeuwen, Fay Hadley, Rebecca Andrews,
Nick Kelly, and Steven Kickbusch
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 rea-
son (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.
M. O’Brien (*)
Griffith University, Mt Gravatt, QLD, Australia
e-mail: [email protected]
B. Wade-Leeuwen • F. Hadley • R. Andrews
Macquarie University, Sydney, NSW, Australia
e-mail: [email protected]; [email protected];
[email protected]
N. Kelly • S. Kickbusch
Queensland University of Technology, Brisbane, QLD, Australia
e-mail: [email protected]; [email protected]