This article discusses how Merleau-Ponty’s existential phenomenology may serve as the lens and theoretical frame in a qualitative research study of the lived experience of patients, their families, and nurses during critical illness in the intensive care unit. Merleau-Ponty's unique existential concepts of corporeality, spatiality, temporality, and relationality provide a useful foundation and serve as a unifying philosophy of science in understanding this nursing phenomenon that is grounded in philosophical beliefs about humans, and the holistic nature of professional nursing that (...) is not amenable to experimental investigative research methods. The research sheds light on the patients, families, and nurses’ embodied temporal, spatial, and relational horizons, and reveals a new conception of critical illness that will provide caregivers with knowledge about effective humanistic, and more holistic care, that opens new ways for coping amongst patients and their families, as well as caregiving possibilities for the nurses. Findings from this qualitative inquiry can help contribute knowledge about family engagement that would impact the provision of care in the intensive care unit, thus improving patient, family, and organizational outcomes. (shrink)

Current educative practices have given rise to the predominant pressure to increase production and speed in academic work and education in general. Educators need to ask whether conceiving of education in such terms is what we really want our children and youth to experience. In this paper, we aim to interrogate the question of how a deceleration of education is possible, and why this would be desirable for students and teachers. We do this in a circuitous way, by exploring four (...) exercises in pedagogical deceleration. These exercises are inspired by philological, didactical, pedagogical, and phenomenological practices. (shrink)

Book review of N. Friesen's (Ed.) (2022). Tact & the Pedagogical Relation. Introductory Readings. Published by Peter Lang.

In this text, I explore the phenomenon of moral disquiet as an existential phenomenon with its invariant qualities. This intention makes the paper both methodological and educational. The reason I consider it worthwhile to explore moral disquiet and distinguish this phenomenon from other phenomena is twofold. First, I want to establish a reliable phenomenological research basis and an argument for moral disquiet as an educationally relevant quality. Second, as an educationally relevant quality, moral disquiet must imply phenomenological clarity to avoid (...) confusion with other phenomena that are similar but not the same. I start by exploring the two words ‘moral’ and ‘disquiet’ that constitute the phenomenon 'moral disquiet’. I explore the word disquiet in relation to three related phenomena: fear, distress, and critique. Then I investigate the connection between moral disquiet and tact as presented by van Manen. Finally, I bring in methodological and epistemological arguments to try to substantiate what I have been doing and why the phenomenon of ‘moral disquiet’ is a highly significant educational issue. (shrink)