Principles in Lived Experience

16 In order to prevent that, the texts need to be well-oriented, strong, rich, and deep Van Manen, 1990, pp. 151-153. The texts need to be oriented to the research purpose. The texts need to be strengthened in order to reach understanding and interpretation. The texts need to be rich in order to discover the phenomenon. The texts need to be deep. Van Manen 1990, p.152 says that depth is what provides the phenomenon or lived experience to which we orient ourselves its meaning and its resistance to our fuller understanding. 6 Balancing the Research Context by Considering Parts and Whole Van Manen 1990, p.33 states that one has to measure the overall design of the studytext against the importance that the parts must play in the total textual structure. Hence, the researcher will be lost in the process of writing since the writing of parts is going to make up the whole writing. Therefore, a well-organized writing is highly important. The texts are written thematically, analytically, exemplificatively, exegetically, and existentially Van Manen, 1990, pp. 168-172. The text is written based on the theme as the guidance. The text is analyzed through anecdotes. The text is exemplificatively through rendering the nature of the phenomenon and filling out the initial description by systematically varying the examples Van Manen, 1990, p. 171. The text is exegetically through seeing other works. The text is existentially through seeing lived time, lived space, lived body, and lived relationship to others. b. Fields in Lived Experience Lived Experience has five important elements namley understanding, belief, intention, action, and feeling. Those five elements will be discussed further in this section. 17 1 Understanding Lived experience attempts to understand the meaning of phenomenon. I discover the phenomenon and grasp the meaning through understanding it. Lived experience is included in human science. It is as stated by Van Manen 1990, p.40 that human science is to explicate the meaning of human phenomena and to understand the lived structure of meaning. It is also supported by Alvesson and Skoldberg 2000, p.56 that understanding relates to comprehending the past experience emphatically in each individual. Additionally it is also done in the form of depth understanding. Likewise, Van Manen 1990, p. 156 emphasizes that phenomenological research requires a depthful understanding. Heidegger as cited by Palmer 1969, p.131 also states that understanding attempts to gain the experience of the existence of human being. 2 Belief Lived experience of the students has relation to students’ belief. Students’ belief influences the action and feeling that they have. Tatto and Coupland 2003, p.124 describe that belief is “as a tenet or body tenet of some statement or the reality of some being or phenomenon, especially when based on examination of evidence”. Therefore, it can be concluded that belief can be obtained through experiencing the phenomenon. Belief in this research refers to the belief toward project based learning. Each student as the participant absolutely has his or her own belief on project based learning. 18 3 Intention Intention is one of the parts of lived experience. Intention can be inferred as a plan or a goal. It is what people intend to do or to achieve. Intention is almost similar with expectation which means a prediction or an estimate or subjective probability that a behavior will actually be performed. Willis 2001 retained Husserl’s idea of intentionality that human thinking always linked to something as an end point to the act of thinking. Setiya 2014 proposes three areas of intention. The first is intention for the future, as when I intend to finish my study this semester. The second is intention with which someone acts, as I am typing with the further intention of writing a thesis. The last one is intentional action, as in the fact that I am typing this thesis intentionally. 4 Action Lived experience is closely related to action. Van Manen 1990, p. 154 describes that human science focuses on action in which hermeneutic phenomenological reflection deepens thought and thus creates fundamental thinking and the acting that comes from it. In conclusion, this theory attempts to say that lived experience included in the hermeneutic phenomenology focuses on how people behave toward the reflection. Moreover, Van Manen, himself, 1990, p.154 emphasizes that phenomenology refers to a philosophy of action in personal and situated sense. In other words, each person has his or her own action in his or her experience. Action is also closely related to feeling and understanding. Van Manen 1990, p. 155 provides an example that “as I act towards children, I feel responsible to act out of a full understanding of what it is like to be in this world as 19 a child”. From the example, it can be inferred that action of experience results in feeling and understanding of the experience. 5 Feeling Lived experience focuses on how people feels the experience that they have. Patton 2002, p.104 emphasizes that lived experience is about how people experience some phenomenon. It also about how they perceive it, how they feel about it, how they judge it, how they remember it, how they make sense of it, and how they talk about it with others. Therefore, feeling is included in the lived experience. Husserl as cited by Patton 2002, p. 105 also emphasizes that phenomenology is in accordance with the study of how people describe things and then experience them through their senses. In other words, people do use their senses to experience and then feel the experience. The aforementioned fields of lived experience are shaped or caused by intentionality, historicity, ideology or belief, and awareness. Each individual has unique lived experience which is different from one another. The differences are resulted from the aforementioned structures. The first structure is intentionality. According to Husserl’s phenomenology 1963, one’s experience is intended or represented toward things through particular concepts, thoughts, ideas, or images. In Husserl’s phenomenology, intentionality is the base of consciousness. It represents one’s consciousness or awareness which shapes and causes one’s understanding, belief, feeling, action, and intention towards things in the world McIntyre Smith, 1989. It explains how one sees an object based on previously experienced phenomenon. 20 The second structure is historicity. Individual consciousness, as the essential structure of phenomenology, is historical Drummond, 2000, p. 133. First, it can be characterized as having historicity which means that it is formed by one’s prior experience. Secondly, individual consciousness has its own place in objective history. It is situated in a certain time and place and circumstance. Therefore, one’s understanding, belief, action, feeling, and intention are influenced by his her historicity. The third structure is ideology. Eagleton 1991 defines ideology as “the process of production of meaning, signs, and v alues in social life”. Ideology, as a set of beliefs, signifies one’s thought on an object or phenomenon. With regard to the purpose of phenomenology i.e. to assign essential meaning of lived experience, ideology forms how one sees the life world. The last structure is awareness. In Husserl’s phenomenology, awareness is structure that makes experience conscious Smith, 2013. To put it in other words, a certain awareness of the experience one has while living through or performing it is what makes experience conscious. Moreover, Smith 2013 points out that awareness is also a defining characteristic of conscious experience which gives the experience a first-person perspective of the object of the study. Therefore, awareness allows an individual to have a first-person perspective on certain experience. In sum, intentionality, historicity, ideology of belief, and awareness are the structures that form the ELS students’ lived experience. The meaning of their lived experience is manifested in their understanding, belief, feeling, action, and intention. 21

2. Project-based learning

As PBL has been applied in many kinds of disciplines in the classroom contexts, there are many definitions of this theory which people can take a consideration first before they further study about it Welsh, 2006. In the fields or in the disciplines other than second and foreign language, the Buck Institute for Education BIE, an American research and development organization, defines project-based learning as one of the teaching methods which systematically makes the students involved in learning knowledge and skills through an extended inquiry process structured around complex, authentic questions, and carefully designed products as well as tasks Markham, et al., 2003, p.4. Solomon 2003, p.10 also points out that the project-based learning is one of the learning processes which creates the students to be responsible for their own education. Students work collaboratively to find solutions for the problems which are close to the real life situation or authentic, based on curriculum, and often interdisciplinary. Learners study how to create or produce their own learning process and how to determine what and where information can be obtained. The students are studying and synthesizing the information and then applying and exposing their new knowledge at the end. Moreover, from the entire of the learning process, teachers take a role as managers and advisors as well. The project-based learning PBL was promoted into second language education during seventies Hedge, 1993. In one of the second language classrooms, PBL becomes an instructional method which systematically improves the language skills of the students, the cognitive domains and global personality skills through valuable projects Ribe Vidal, 1993. Moss and Van Duzer 1998, 22 p.1 defines PBL as an instructional approach which contextualizes learning by exposing the students with questions or problems to solve or products to develop. Fried-Booth 2002, p.6 further develops a definition of PBL as student-centred and driven by the need to produce an end-product. Fried-Booth also further states that PBL is one of the tools to produce an end-product in an authentic surrounding with confidence and independence. Project work is led by the intrinsic needs of the learners who enlarge their own tasks independently or in small groups. This approach is to establish the links between authentic language and language in textbooks. PBL was constantly exposed by the majority of the experts in second language and foreign language practices Florez, 1998; Hutchinson, 1993; Maley 2002; McGrath, 2003; Ribe and Vidal, 1993 as one of the influential and motivating teaching methods to improve students’ second andor foreign language through learning by doing. Language learners frequently consider the target language as something outside their world as they do not have any opportunities to use the language learnt in their classroom or to apply it outside the class. PBL, thus allows learners to work together with applied experience in a real world and in a meaningful context Fried-Booth, 2002 and controls them with a question to resolve or a product to create. Students either work independently or in groups with their own responsibility and the challenge to resolve the authentic problems and to determine their own approaches for finishing their goals Hutchinson, 1993. At the end, students show their newly acquired knowledge and a product which exposes their learning. They are then evaluated in the entire of the process by their mates as well as their teachers. The role of the teachers in this process is as 23 a facilitator and also an advisor. Additionally, PBL develops useful research and study skills, such as the use of reference resources and modern technology for instance, computers, the internet and its useful search engines, all of which are beneficial to lifelong learning Markham, et al., 2003; McGrath, 2003. From the above definitions and explanations of PBL in second language and foreign language studies, the definition of PBL in this study is sum up as a comprehensive learning which focuses on authentic problems and challenges that involve the students who work individually or in a team within meaningful activities resulting in an end outcome. It is then confirmed that the PBL is a possible and a useful means or tool for allowing the students to improve their language, content, as well as their communicative skills. They can apply and can combine language and actual knowledge in their real lives while managing and creating the project. In contrast, PBL is the opposite of traditional classroom in which their teachers only internalize the knowledge through textbooks to their students. To have better comprehension on how PBL is discerned from other similar learning methods, such as problem-based learning, the similarities and differences between these two methods are presented in the following section.

a. The comparison of project and problem-based learning

Both problem-based learning and project-based learning shares similar abbreviation known as PBL Lee Tsai, 2004, even though in this research the abbreviation of PBL is contextually used for project-based learning. Similarly, these two instructional methods focus on authentic and applied investigations to improve the learning process. The teachers give the students open-ended projects or problems with more than one correct model or answer, intended to allow students 24 to generate their ability in making decision and to generate their ability in skills in solving problem while actively creating the answer for the problem Moursund, 2002. Moreover, the students also acquire a conceptual comprehension of specific content knowledge. Additionally, the students work collaboratively and discuss their ideas throughout the process of learning. Jones, 1996; Park Peggy, 2007; Markham, et al., 2003. Since these two methods are constructed on constructivism, students build their own learning from their experience and reflect on what they have learned through their learning practices. Deep learning is generated in the learning process Sas, 2006. Furthermore, the two methods of learning stress on the students at the center with the teachers as facilitator or advisor Markham, et al., 2003. The teacher encourages the students to relate their prior knowledge to the new knowledge related to the problem. Besides, the students also learn how to communicate their new knowledge to their friends, question their peers and share their learning. Although both methods share many similar things, they have distinctive points or learning. In problem-based learning, a teacher starts with the presentation of a problem relevant to the field in which students will become proficient. Students begins with identifying the problems and factors that they need more information about, and pose questions for information they do not know. The teacher guides the students to the questions that are pertinent and essential to this stage of their study Engel, 1997. Some questions are followed up by the whole group and some are allocated to individuals to find the answers. In addition, the teacher discusses the resources that are needed for the research with the students. The students construct plans to find their own answers, create solutions, and later share the information or 25 solutions with their peers Boud Feletti, as cited in Duch, Groh, Allen, 2001. The goal of problem-based learning is problem-solving skills which contain various approaches to counter problems, while an end product is not a key concern Jones, 1996. Unlike problem-based learning, the process of project-based learning typically begins with driven questions or problems that help students to select their topic of interest or a topic which they believe is important and relevant to their studies. Students work collaboratively and design plans for their research before commencing the project. At the end, students have to develop a meaningful product, presentation, or performance Markham, et al., 2003; Moss and Van Duzer, 1998; Stanley, 2000. Even though the principal goal is the final product which can be shared with others and evaluated Brophy, 2004; Sas, 2006, the most important feature that shows the success of learning is the production process in which students acquire their new content knowledge and communicative, social and management skills Curtis, 2002; Guo, 2006; Helle, Tynjala, Olkinuora, 2006; Markham et al., 2003; Solomon 2003. It is clear that in project based learning, students control their own learning and collaboratively work together to achieve their goals. They have the opportunity to construct their knowledge and demonstrate their creative thinking and skills through their projects. The characteristics of PBL activities are different from other teaching approaches; therefore the following section identifies the principal features of PBL.

b. Principal Features of PBL

The characteristics of PBL are consistent among educators who studied and implemented this teaching method Curtis, 2002; Hedge, 1993; Helle, Tynjala,