Abstract:

Background:
I decided to do a PhD in the mid-2000s after a career as school teacher then educational developer and course coordinator in the vocational and tertiary sectors in Australia. My involvement in university-level education has been in programs that prepare students for the world of work, and this became the context for my research. I chose the topic ‘meaning making capability for twenty-first century university professional education’. I wanted to address the broad question, how can university education equip students to survive and thrive in the twenty-first century? I liked the idea of ‘meaning making’ because it felt like a malleable concept that could be shaped as the project unfolded. I was committed to a philosophical hermeneutic approach because hermeneutics is the academic field interested in growth in understanding, which in large measure was the phenomenon I wanted to study: I was keen to align my researching practice as closely as possible to the phenomenon of inquiry, enacting a project of research as lived experience and lived experience as research.

My presentation:
In the time available I will introduce the core components of my research product – a design framework for a university curriculum of becoming, central to which is the concept of hologenesis, ‘the coming to be of wholes’. In the same way that a work of art emerges on the canvas or manuscript paper, the enactment of a curriculum of becoming arises out of the progressive transformation of teachers and students into a community of belonging. Central to this transformation is an inner transformation into hermeneutic consciousness: we learn how to treat life as a hermeneutic journey.

This framework is offered to the field as a fluid blueprint against which to evaluate existing practice, and to provide a language for collaborating to provide a ‘fit-for-greater-purpose’ education for the professions, wherein we graduate novice rounded, grounded practitioners. The challenge for course teams interested in this framework will be to translate its essential features into a workable and working modus operandi for transformative practice.

Keywords:

Higher education curriculum, philosophical hermeneutics, professional education.