Constellations of alternative education tutor essences: A phenomenological poetic inquiry

Abstract

Every year, approximately 3500 students are alienated from conventional secondary schools in New Zealand. The students, of whom the majority are M!ori and Pasifika, are directed to continue their learning with alternative education providers, under the guidance of tutors rather than trained teachers. As a trained teacher who has spent the past 13 years working with tutors in New Zealand’s largest provider of alternative education, I have been inspired by tutors’ unique ways of being-in-education that artfully reengaged many of these vulnerable young people into learning. Yet, tutors’ voices are largely absent from education literature. Thus, I sought to understand and make visible the contribution of tutors and their pedagogies to the field of education. Drawing on phenomenological theory, I sought to find and represent the essences of the lived experiences of alternative education tutors using a poetic inquiry approach, which privileged the poetic in the everyday language of tutors. The phenomenological poetic methodology I utilised throughout this study gracefully and playfully engaged my research participants. The methodology demonstrated the powerful way poetic inquiry can honour a marginalised workforce, in a provocative and transforming manner. During this research I also experienced re/finding myself as a poet. Thus, the form of this thesis reflects my journey, in which prosaic ways-of-being disintegrates - opening up a clearing space for poetic dwelling. Based on in depth interviews, field work, and a performative workshop with eight tutor participants, I created more than 200 poems that represent who tutors are in-the-world of education and of life. I then drew from these poetic findings to create 21 constellations of tutor essences, entitled: call, love, joy, empathy, grace, mana, watching-over, commitment, past experience, criticality, wh!nau, guidance, poiesis, talanoa, holism, thoughtful pedagogy, inspirational pedagogy, epiphany, movement, transformation, and mystery. The constellations navigated my return to the ancient tutors we once knew, albeit refreshed for a new age. I discovered that the tutor is other than the teacher, emerging as an holistic educator in response to a dehumanising neoliberal education agenda. And so, I conclude that tutor pedagogies offer a conceptual foundation which future training and development of tutors can build, and from which conventional school can learn inclusive ways of working with all students.