Tag: scaffolding

A philosophical-theoretical perspective on teaching in practice-based film school

This is a very rough draft of an article I’m working on. It still needs a re-write (or two) but as I like working in the open, I thought getting a version online would be in keeping with my intent. Feel free to comment and point out weaknesses and inconsistencies (but be kind!). Praise is also always appreciated, but only if warranted…

Introduction

Most classical film schools harbour an intuitive aversion to the term ‘pedagogy’. It has too much of a ring of kindergarten circle time and school lessons with good behaviour and right and wrong answers, contrasted with the ideal of an artistic process of creation that is essentially irrational, unpredictable, personal and uncompromising.[1]

This quote, by former head of the Danish National Film School Vinca Wiedeman, addresses the challenge of developing a pedagogical framework for a practice-based film school. In fact, the book in which her chapter appears, The 21st Century Film, TV & Media School: Challenges, Clashes, Changes, is illustrative of the issue. There are 18 chapters over 472 pages, and they cover a large variety of approaches to curriculum and teaching—but almost completely overlook educational theory and philosophy.

The only other chapter in that volume to delve into pedagogical theory is the contribution from Nicholas Oughton and Jean-Paul Jarry.[2] Here the authors apply theories of experiential learning as articulated by David Kolb to argue for the continued use of celluloid as the primary medium used in cinematography education.

Similarly, in their influential Educating Film-makers: Past, Present and Future, Duncan Petrie and Rod Stoneman[3] discuss in depth the relationship between film theory and filmmaking practice. But despite analysing different film school models and teaching approaches, they do not discuss film school pedagogy in the light of educational theory and practice. Other publications[4] show similar biases.

These are not failings of the referenced publications. As a body of work, they represent invaluable insights into the inner workings of film schools since VGIK in Moscow opened its doors in 1919. Much of what has been written is in the form of “how to”, and aimed at filmmakers a toolkit to use for transforming their experience into classroom instruction for the next generation, or in the form of surveys, examining the different approaches different film schools have had over the decades.

In my career working at film schools, which spans nearly 30 years and 3 different schools,[5] I have found, however, that the methods, structures, and forms of teaching we do can benefit from being related to existing bodies of pedagogical theory and educational philosophy. Filmmaking is both a highly technical and skilled craft and a complex and collaborative art form, and prospective filmmakers need to learn to balance the two in a way that will make sense for their own visions, careers, and ambitions. In schools like the three I have worked at, and many of the schools the Norwegian Film School compares itself to, the teaching staff are themselves primarily filmmakers who come from outside academics, and seldom identify themselves as primarily teachers or researchers.

In such an environment, with a wealth of experience and expertise, the challenge becomes to enable the teaching staff to have at their disposal the tools to turn their own artistry and tacit knowledge into educational situations for the students. In some cases, this means teacher-filmmakers must combat their own instincts to “make the day” at all costs and provide opportunities for students to test themselves and their own limits, even at the cost of failure.

My approach has been to attempt to answer the questions that are articulated in the Sourcebook of Experiential Education:

  1. “What is learning” and “how do people learn?”
  2. “What is teaching” and “how should teachers teach?”
  3. “What is the purpose of education” and “what is worth knowing and studying?”
  4. “What is the relationship of the schools to society at large and to the world?”[6]

While all 4 of these questions are interconnected, for the purposes of this paper I’ll be concentrating on the first two.

Experience as teacher

In his 1910 work, How We Think, John Dewey writes,

Eagerness for experience, for new and varied contacts, is found where wonder is found. Such curiosity is the only sure guarantee of the acquisition of the primary facts upon which inference must base itself.[7]

For Dewey, and subsequently those of us who work with hands-on, practice-based education, experience, and the motivation to have experience, is the very core of learning and growth. From the very start of Dewey’s career, he emphasized the connection between experience, knowledge, and learning as summarized in the well-known maxim, “Learn to know by doing, and to do by knowing.”[8]

For filmmakers, this seems intuitive. Filmmaking, like any art form that requires physical interaction with the world,[9] is learned through practice. While the approaches to practice may vary from film school to film school—in some cases driven by ideology, in others by available resources—the basic premise holds true. One learns to make film through making film and through practical exercises designed to introduce different aspects of filmmaking, in what Ben Gibson calls the “conservatory” model for filmmaking education.[10] While Gibson primarily writes about conservatory schools outside of universities, there are also schools inside universities—like the Norwegian Film School at the University of Inland Norway—that follow a conservatory model and are “… structured, like working studios, in departments of practice that bring those charged with ‘technical support’ or ‘equipment instruction’ into units with shared cultures of endeavour, led by senior teachers of that specialization.”[11]

While far from the only way of organizing filmmaking education, this conservatory model most closely mimics the professional film industry. This way of structuring education places the emphasis on practical work, and learning to apply the various tools and methods of filmmaking in situations that the teaching staff, who (as Gibson observes) come primarily from the industry, have created based on their own professional experience. And works such as Training the Trainers[12] give filmmakers practical advice on how to construct workshops that will enable filmmakers to turn their own professional experience into workshops for students.

Jean Lave and Etienne Wenger describe this form of education, where experienced practitioners consciously and deliberately introduce less experienced ones to the norms, processes, and methods of the field as a community of practice.[13] In a community of practice, the “…practice of the community creates the potential ‘curriculum’ in the broadest sense—that which may be learned by newcomers with legitimate peripheral access.”[14] Not only does this notion of legitimate peripheral participation in a community of practice emphasize the experiential nature of learning, it also removes it from the realm of individualism and anchors it in a community.[15]

Elkjær also ties this to Dewey’s notion of experience and reflection, and makes the point that, “… Dewey’s notion of experience is both a way of being in the world and experiencing the world, and knowledge is just one part of experience alongside emotion, aesthetics and ethics”,[16] and in this way “connects persons and worlds, action and thinking”.[17] In a film school constructed after the conservatory model, or, more specifically, a “six pack” model[18] like the Norwegian Film School, both the Deweyan idea of experience and the community of practice emphasized by Lave and Wenger are central.

In Democracy and Education, Dewey writes,

We analyze to see just what lies between so as to bind together cause and effect, activity and consequence. This extension of our insight makes foresight more accurate and comprehensive. The action which rests simply upon the trial and error method is at the mercy of circumstances; they may change so that the act performed does not operate in the way it was expected to. But if we know in detail upon what the result depends, we can look to see whether the required conditions are there. The method extends our practical control.[19]

In this section, he highlights the necessary connection between experience as learning and the conscious act of reflection or thinking about the elements of the experience and how they relate to an intended outcome. This, for him, is the difference between the experience and mere activity.[20] His points will resonate with anyone involved in practice-based arts education, especially when he writes,

To “learn from experience” is to make a backward and forward connection between what we do to things and what we enjoy or suffer from things in consequence. Under such conditions, doing becomes a trying; an experiment with the world to find out what it is like; the undergoing becomes instruction—discovery of the connection of things.
Two conclusions important for education follow. (1) Experience is primarily an active-passive affair; it is not primarily cognitive. But (2) the measure of the value of an experience lies in the perception of relationships or continuities to which it leads up. It includes cognition in the degree in which it is cumulative or amounts to something, or has meaning.[21]

This approach is in part illustrated by Donald Schön, when he writes,

When practitioners respond to the indeterminate zones of practice by holding a reflective conversation with the material of their situations, they remake a part of their practice world and thereby reveal the usually tacit processes of worldmaking that underlie all of their practice.[22]

Not only is this descriptive of filmmaking education; it is also prescriptive. The challenge for film educators is to create learning experiences where students are able to make the backward and forward connections Dewey writes about as they engage with the materials and conditions of their practice. As both Dewey and Schön point out, this engagement is reflective. It requires a progression where the challenges and situations that emerge build on the ones that have passed, and at the same time allow the students to consciously engage in controlled experimentation and discovery.

Lave and Wenger touch on this when they write, “[M]astery resides not in the master but in the organization of the community of practice where the master is part”[23] and go on to point out that the teacher/master “is, after all, as much a product of the conventional, centered theory of learning as is the individual learner.”[24] This too is a reminder to both educators and learners that in an education like industry-focussed, practice-based filmmaking, there exists both a large community of practice the educators are part of and this community of practice has norms and traditions the students need to understand—even should they go on to challenge them—as they emerge from their education. Furthermore, the educators are themselves a product of education, training, and apprenticeships leading to their professional careers, and cannot separate themselves from this personal history.

The nature of this challenge is multi-faceted. Not only must film educators use their professional and pedagogic experience to create learning situations that will challenge the students and stimulate experimentation; they must also understand and interpret the “powers, interests, and habits”[25] of their students in order to create learning experiences that challenge and motivate their students where they are at. (I will return to this in the next section.) And finally, they must be aware of their own path into a professional filmmaking practice and make this transparent enough that their students will be able to gain their own experiences and chose their own path.

Scaffolding the emergent professional

Lebert and Vilarroya define scaffolding as,

derived from Vygotsky’s zone of proximal development, which is a learning zone where a more knowledgeable person’s guidance can enhance learning. The term scaffolding was originally used as a metaphor to explain the role that adults can play in joint problem-solving activities with children, and now it is applied to mean temporary support provided for the completion of a task that learners otherwise might not be able to complete.[26]

This definition of scaffolding has its origin in a 1976 article by Wood, Bruner, and Ross which examines the role of tutoring in the development and education of children.[27] And it further refers to Lev Vygotsky’s zone of proximal development, which he developed to describe “the distance between the actual developmental level as determined by independent problem solving and the level of potential development as determined through problem solving under adult guidance or in collaboration with more capable peers.”[28]

While both Vygotsky and Wood, Bruner, and Ross focussed primarily on young children, and how their learning can be facilitated by the conscious application of timely support or tutoring, many have since taken the step illustrated by Lebert and Vilarroya above, and applied the same principles to different age groups—including adults. In their 2010 review of scaffolding literature, van de Pol et.al. highlight scaffolding at many levels, and show that effective scaffolding involves a gradual withdrawal of teachers’ instruction as students gradually gain expertise and independence.[29] They also point out that “for scaffolding to occur, the teacher must apply scaffolding strategies that are clearly contingent (i.e., based upon student responses)”[30] which evokes Dewey’s emphasis on the “powers, interests, and habits” of students (see above). In their review, van de Pol et.al. do point to the correlation between different scaffolding methods and approaches and the ultimate effectiveness of the scaffolding, although they also point out that “studying scaffolding in a rigorous and systematic way appears to be especially complex probably because of the complexity of a dynamic concept such as scaffolding.”[31]

The practice of scaffolding in film schools was first identified by Danish researcher Heidi Philipsen, in her landmark study of the Danish National Film School in the late 1990s / early 2000s.[32] Philipsen identifies three categories of scaffolding from her study:

  1. Institutional scaffolding
  2. Team scaffolding
  3. Individual scaffolding[33]

She discusses limits her discussion of scaffolding to the constraints placed on the students as a method of stimulating creativity, and elaborates; “creativity is often defined as a talent to be able to think “outside the box.” I would like to stress that in order to be able to think outside the box, it actually helps to have a metaphorical box (constraints).”[34] A full discussion of creativity in filmmaking education is outside the scope of this article, but the three categories of scaffolding nonetheless warrant closer examination.

In institutional scaffolding, Philipsen specifically refers to the rules that the school sets for a particular film exercise. She uses examples like “the natural story”,[35] time constraints, conditions using actors, camera, thematic constraints, etc.[36] She quotes one of her interview subjects, a screenwriter, who argues that “the use of constraints in a writing process actually produces a feeling of relief because he has been partly relieved of the responsibility, which apparently frees up energy enabling him to use his imagination in new ways.”[37]

Team scaffolding, for Philipsen, refers to the support and learning that happens between students, both in a cohort as a whole and in the various constellations they find themselves in.[38] One might also connect it with one of the features of a community of practice, where Lave and Wenger observe that often “apprentices learn mostly in relation with other apprentices. There is anecdotal evidence that where the circulation of knowledge between peers and near-peers is possible, it spreads exceedingly rapidly and effectively.”[39] This also references Vygotsky, who “suggested that through the process of working with others, learners create an environment of shared meanings with peers.”[40] My observations of intra-student dynamics at the Norwegian Film School support these claims, even extending to alumni welcoming new graduates into the industry.

Philipsens third category of scaffolding, individual scaffolding, is perhaps more problematic. She identifies this as occuring “when filmmakers define their own rules for a film process and product.”[41] The fact that individual filmmakers can—and do—impose their own rules and constraints on their own artistic processes and creative work, however, hardly seems to meet an approach to scaffolding “construed as support given by a teacher to a student when performing a task that the student might otherwise not be able to accomplish.”[42] As van de Pol et.al. observe, while definitions of scaffolding can vary, a relationship between teacher (or more experienced peer) and student / learner is common for all,[43] starting with scaffolding as a method for supporting Vygotskys zone of proximal development.

Without getting in to a broad discussion of creativity, it is worth emphasising that one purpose of educational scaffolding in filmmaking education is to foster the students’ development of their creativity and imagination. If one accepts that “everything the imagination creates is always based on elements taken from reality, from a person’s previous experience”,[44] and that “imagination draws on and co-operates with cognitive processes that arise from and span our physical and sociocultural resources and environments”[45] then creative education can be based on “design principles that could guide the crafting of creative experiences in education and beyond, e.g., repositioning and perspective taking, sustaining uncertainty, making the familiar unfamiliar, tinkering and embodied experimentation, use of analogies and metaphors, “as if” and “what if” thinking, pretend play, and so on.”[46] I will return to this in the conclusion.

4E and the phenomenological understanding of cognition

In his 2013 book Making, anthropologist Tim Ingold writes, “the drawing is not the visible shadow of a mental event; it is a process of of thinking, not the projection of a thought.”[47] In this, he also refers to the “active externalism” as developed by Andy Clark and David Chalmers in their 1998 essay, “The Extended Mind”. Active externalism, they claim, means that,

the relevant external features are active, playing a crucial role in the here-and-now. Because they are coupled with the human organism, they have a direct impact on the organism and on its behaviour. In these cases, the relevant parts of the world are in the loop, not dangling at the other end of a long causal chain.[48]

Lebert and Vilarroya further elaborate on this,

the extended-mind approach proposes that cognition is a process that is distributed across the individual and their environment, including objects, tools, and other individuals. By focusing on the ways in which external resources and environmental factors contribute to a concrete experience, the extended-mind feature seeks to provide a more expansive and inclusive view of a concrete experience, one that recognizes the complex interplay between the individual, their environment, and their tools and resources.[49]

This understanding of cognition is also crucial for educators, as it highlights that students do not only learn through rational understanding, logical thinking, and application of knowledge. Rather, learning is an holistic activity that acknowledges the students place in an environment that includes their bodies, the physical surroundings, the tools they use, and their classmates and peers.

The extended mind theory is part of a broader movement in cognitive—and thus also educational—sciences that collect under the term “4E cognition”.[50] 4E refers to cognition being extended, embodied, embedded, and enactive, and collectively they are framed as a response and in opposition to a Cartesian mind-body dualism or separation.[51] In their summary of the “Philosophical and Psychological Influences on Embodied Cognition”, Macrine and Fugate cite a number of influences, including John Dewey’s suggestion “that higher-order cognitive functions are adaptations generated by interactions with the world.”[52] They also emphasise the connection to Phenomenology, specifically to Merleau-Ponty who “maintained that thinking was a fully embodied event: people perceive the world first and foremost through their bodies. [Merleau-Ponty] argued that cognition cannot be understood without the body’s engagement with the world.”[53] Finally, they draw on James Gibson’s ‘ecological theory’ which claimed “argued that perception was direct and the environment meaningful […], Gibson suggested that there was no mind between perception and action, and that action was based in the body, supported through evolution and the environment.”[54]

In making these connections, Macrine and Fugate draw on the book that introduced the concept of embodiment to cognitive theory, The Embodied Mind from 1991. Here the authors write,

We hold with Merleau-Ponty that Western scientific culture requires that we see our bodies both as physical structures and as lived, experiential structures—in short, as both “outer” and “inner”, biological and phenomenological. These two sides of embodiment are obviously not opposed. Instead, we continuously circulate back and forth between them. […] For Merleau-Ponty, as for us, embodiment has this double sense: it encompasses both the body as a lived, experiential structure and the body as the context or milieu of cognitive mechanisms.[55]

This emphasis on the ‘body as a lived, experiential structure’ will resonate with filmmakers and most artistic practitioners. Ingold picks up on this when he observes,

In the act of making, the artisan couples his own movements and gestures—indeed his very life—with the becoming of his materials, joining with and following the forces and flows that bring his work to fruition. It is the artisan’s desire to see what the material can do, by contrast to the scientist’s desire to know what it is, that […] enables the former to discern a life in the material and thus, ultimately, to ‘collaborate more productively’ with it.[56]

Miranda Anderson connects this directly to the arts and artistic practice, by examining the connections between the artist, the body, and materials when describing a work by Nikolaus Gansterer from 2017:

His hands forming and reforming of physical materials, linguistic concepts and diagrammatic symbols, all amidst the random interruptions of living creatures, show the fluidly diverse concert of conceptual and diagrammatic, and embodied and environmental processes in action, and explore the interplay of structured patterns and chance in thinking.[57]

The challenge for education in any practice-based art form is that the students often do not yet have the experience to engage with the materials of their art in an embodied, extended way. Filmmaking, particularly, is (most often) a highly technical art form that combines complex and advanced technologies with logistical puzzles, challenging teamwork and collaboration, restrictions involving time, budget, etc., and the gap between the imagined result and the resources available to achieve it. Filmmakers-turned-educators are faced with the challenge of creating learning situations for students where they will gain the experience and expertise necessary to work in professional productions after graduation. This involves acknowledging that, “Deep and meaningful learning indeed involves the integration of cognitive processes, social interactions, and affective dimensions, fostering active engagement and personal relevance in knowledge acquisition.”[58]

Implications for filmmaking education

In this article, I have attempted to highlight some of the key elements of Dewey’s notion of experiential learning, illuminate some aspects of scaffolding in education, and introduce the concept of 4E cognition as it relates to education. Each of these is, in isolation, worthy of a more in-depth analysis. At this point, it seems most relevant to have lifted them into the consciousness of film schools, and I will now make som concluding observations on how filmmaker-educators can use some of the concepts in a discourse around their own teaching practice.

A core issue for film schools is that we are teaching both a highly technical craft and creativity, and we are doing so in a setting where the individual cannot work in isolation but is part of an extended cognitive reality. Bruce Sheridan sums it up as consisting of

three key points: 1) collaboration is the default process by which individual creative vision is realized in screen arts, 2) collaboration will be central to the work our students undertake beyond graduation, and 3) discrete individual contributions to screen art are rendered porous through, and ineluctably modified by, dynamic and contingent interactions amongst individuals and creative sub-groups, such as teams dedicated to writing, design, cinematography, editing, sound etc..[59]

Further to this, “experiences are not just based on abstract, decontextualized information but are also deeply influenced by the specific social, cultural, and environmental contexts in which they occur”[60] and it necessitates an awareness of these contexts by planners and educators at film schools. The key to a successful practice-based arts education like a film school is to create opportunities for the students to have concrete learning experiences. Here, a “concrete experience refers to an embodied, embedded, extended, and enactive engagement of an individual with their environment”,[61] where the environment includes the physical surroundings, the analogue and digital tools used, the constraints placed by the institution, other students and collaborators, as well as the student’s own prior knowledge and experiences, goals and ambitions, fears and uncertainties, and emotional state.

Dewey highlights the social, extended and enactive aspects of this when he writes,

not only does social life demand teaching and learning for its own permanence, but the very process of living together educates. It enlarges and enlightens experience; it stimulates and enriches imagination; it creates responsibility for accuracy and vividness of statement and thought.[62]

This is also well-summarised by Elkjær,

Experience occurs when habitual action and thinking are disturbed and calls for inquiry. Inquiry begins with emotion, but may develop into new experience and knowledge when language (ideas, concepts and theories) is used to define and resolve the disruption. This process may be supported by education and teaching. The process of inquiry concerns the consequences of different ways to define and resolve uncertainties. Inquiry is an experimental process in which ideas, hypotheses, concepts and theories are used instrumentally as ‘tools to think with’, and are as such a playful, creative and potentially innovative process. The result of inquiry, the new experience or ‘warranted assertibilities’ (knowledge), is therefore open-ended (fallible) and can be re-interpreted in light of new experiences.[63]

And so, to return to the questions in the introduction: 1. How do people learn? has been the focus of this article. There is no single answer, but the key is that we learn through the conscious, reflective interpretation of embodied, extended, enactive, and embedded experiences. We make films, we find ways to collaborate with others in achieving a common vision, we reflect on the relationship between the film we wanted to make, the film we ended up with, and the process and decisions that led us there, and, at the Norwegian Film School at least, we watch the films and reflect on these things together so the experiences of one can be shared and understood by all.

And 2. How do we teach? As best we can to create a positive and scaffolded environment for students to have and reflect on the experiences they have while in our care.

Endnotes

  1. Wiedeman, Vinca. ‘Educating for Innovation: Ten Tips for (Future) Film-School Heads’. The 21st Century Film, TV & Media School: Challenges, Clashes, Changes, edited by Maria-Dora Mourão et al., CILECT – The International Association of Film and Television Schools, 2016, pp. 95-96.↩︎
  2. Oughton, Nicholas, and Jean-Paul Jarry. ‘Learning Cinematography at Film School: Old Ways, New Directions’. The 21st Century Film, TV & Media School: Challenges, Clashes, Changes, edited by Maria-Dora Mourão et al., CILECT – The International Association of Film and Television Schools, 2016, pp. 280–315. 21st Century Film, TV & Media School 1.↩︎
  3. Petrie, Duncan, and Rod Stoneman. Educating Film-Makers: Past, Present and Future. Intellect Ltd, 2014, https://www.intellectbooks.com/educating-film-makers.↩︎
  4. See, for example, the newsletter archive kept by CILECT (The International Association of Cinema, Audiovisual and Media Schools) at https://cilect.org/archives/newsletter/ and the CILECT-supported publication: Ross, Dick. Training the Trainers. The Norwegian Film School, 2005.↩︎
  5. I have worked at Vancouver Film School (1997-2001), the Canadian Film Centre (2002-2006), and the Norwegian Film School (2009 – present day).↩︎
  6. Smith, Thomas E., Clifford E. Knapp, ´Part I: Philosophers and Educational Theorists´. In Smith, Thomas E and Clifford E. Knapp (eds.), Sourcebook of Experiential Education. Routledge, 2011. p. 13.↩︎
  7. Dewey, John. How We Think. D.C. Heath & Co., 1910. Reprint, Anson Street Press, 2025. p. 24.↩︎
  8. McLellan, J. A., and John Dewey. Applied Psychology: An Introduction to the Principles and Practice of Education. Archive.org digital facsimile. Educational Publishing Company, 1889. https://archive.org/details/appliedpsycholog00mclerich/. p. 182. In fact, the maxim is so central to McLellan and Dewey that they include it on the title page.↩︎
  9. Whether or not this would also hold true for AI filmmaking is a subject for a different discussion. For the context of this paper, I am talking about traditional filmmaking with physical cameras, sound recording equipment, lights, sets, actors, crew, etc.↩︎
  10. Gibson, Ben. ‘What Is “Conservatory Training” for Film and Television?’ In The 21st Century Film, TV & Media School: Challenges, Clashes, Changes, edited by Maria-Dora Mourão, Stanislav Semerdjiev, Cecília Mello, and Alan Taylor. 21st Century Film, TV & Media School Project 1. CILECT – The International Association of Film and Television Schools, 2016.↩︎
  11. Ibid.↩︎
  12. Ross, Dick. Training the Trainers. The Norwegian Film School, 2005.↩︎
  13. Lave, Jean, and Etienne Wenger. Situated Learning: Legitimate Peripheral Participation. Cambridge University Press, 1991. See especially chapter 4.↩︎
  14. Ibid. p. 93.↩︎
  15. See Elkjær, Bente. ‘Pragmatism: Learning as Creative Imagination’. In Contemporary Theories of Learning: Learning Theorists … in Their Own Words, 2nd edn, edited by Knud Illeris. Routledge, 2018. p. 67↩︎
  16. Ibid. p. 70.↩︎
  17. Ibid. p. 71.↩︎
  18. The six pack model grew out of a desire to create a film school structure where the different heads of department are empowered to be artists and storytellers in their own right, rather than playing a supporting role for an auteur director. At the Norwegian Film School, the six pack consisted 6 specializations—screenwriting, directing, producing, cinematography, editing, and sound (subsequently expanded to include production design)—with 6 students in each. This means that whenever the students make a film exercise, the team will consist of 1 student from each specialization. In between the film exercises, the students of each specialization receive discipline-specific education designed to increase their skill and artistry.↩︎
  19. Dewey, John. Democracy and Education: An Introduction to the Philosophy of Education. The MacMillan Company, 1916. E-Book. Standard Ebooks, 2023. https://standardebooks.org/ebooks/john-dewey/democracy-and-education. Chpt. 11, “Experience and Thinking”.↩︎
  20. Ibid.↩︎
  21. Ibid. Emphasis in original.↩︎
  22. Schön, Donald A. Educating the Reflective Practitioner: Toward a New Design for Teaching and Learning in the Professions. The Josey-Bass Higher Education Series. Jossey-Bass, 1987. p. 36.↩︎
  23. Lave and Wenger, 1991. p 94.↩︎
  24. Ibid, ibid.↩︎
  25. Dewey, John. ‘My Pedagogic Creed’. School Journal 54 (January 1897). 2009 Digital edition released under a Creative Commons Public Domain Declaration on archive.org.↩︎
  26. Lebert, Angélique, and Óscar Vilarroya. ‘The Links between Experiential Learning and 4E Cognition’. Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences 1541, no. 1 (2024): 37–52. https://doi.org/10.1111/nyas.15238. p. 44.↩︎
  27. Wood, David, Jerome Bruner, and Gail Ross. ‘The Role of Tutoring in Problem Solving’. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry 17 (1976): 89–100. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1469-7610.1976.tb00381.x.↩︎
  28. Vygotsky, L. S. Mind in Society: Development of Higher Psychological Processes. Edited by Michael Cole, Vera John-Steiner, Sylvia Scribner, and Ellen Souberman. Harvard University Press, 1978. http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/hilhmr-ebooks/detail.action?docID=3301299. p. 86.↩︎
  29. van de Pol, Janneke, Monique Volman, and Jos Beishuizen. ‘Scaffolding in Teacher—Student Interaction: A Decade of Research’. Educational Psychology Review 22, no. 3 (2010): 271–96. p. 275.↩︎
  30. Ibid. ibid.↩︎
  31. Ibid. p. 282.↩︎
  32. Philipsen, Heidi. ‘Dansk films nye bølge: Afsæt og aftryk fra Den Danske Filmskole’. Syddansk Universitet (SDU), 2004. https://portal.findresearcher.sdu.dk/da/publications/dansk-films-nye-b%C3%B8lge-afs%C3%A6t-og-aftryk-fra-den-danske-filmskole/.↩︎
  33. Philipsen, Heidi. ‘Constraints in Film Making Processes Offer an Exercise to the Imagination – A Pleading Based on Experiences from Denmark’. Seminar.Net 5, no. 1 (2009). https://doi.org/10.7577/seminar.2470.↩︎
  34. Ibid, p. 3.↩︎
  35. Ibid. p. 5↩︎
  36. Ibid. pp. 4-5↩︎
  37. Ibid. p. 5↩︎
  38. Ibid. p. 6↩︎
  39. Lave and Wenger, 1991. p. 93.↩︎
  40. Lebert and Vilarroya, 2024. p. 38.↩︎
  41. Philipsen, 2009. p. 3.↩︎
  42. van de Pol et.al., 2010. p. 274.↩︎
  43. Ibid.↩︎
  44. Vygotsky, Lev Semenovich. ‘Imagination and Creativity in Childhood’. Translated by M. E. Sharpe. Journal of Russian & East European Psychology 42, no. 1 (2004): 7–97. https://doi.org/10.1080/10610405.2004.11059210. p. 13.↩︎
  45. Anderson, Miranda. ‘4E Cognition and the Mind-Expanding Arts’. European Journal of Philosophy in Arts Education 7, no. 02 (2024): 7–64. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.7451462. p. 51↩︎
  46. Glăveanu, Vlad P., and Ronald A. Beghetto. ‘Creative Experience: A Non-Standard Definition of Creativity’. Creativity Research Journal 33, no. 2 (2021): 75–80. https://doi.org/10.1080/10400419.2020.1827606. p. 79↩︎
  47. Ingold, Tim. Making: Anthropology, Archaeology, Art and Architecture. Routledge, 2013. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203559055. p. 128.↩︎
  48. Clark, Andy, and David Chalmers. ‘The Extended Mind’. Analysis 58, no. 1 (1998): 7–19. p. 9.↩︎
  49. Lebert and Vilarroya, 2024. p. 46.↩︎
  50. A good introduction to the breadth and scope of 4E can be found in Newen, Albert, Shaun Gallagher, and Leon De Bruin. ‘4E Cognition: Historical Roots, Key Concepts, and Central Issues’. In The Oxford Handbook of 4E Cognition, edited by Albert Newen, Leon De Bruin, and Shaun Gallagher. Oxford University Press, 2018. https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780198735410.013.1.↩︎
  51. Ibid. This claim can be found in all the literature I have come across on 4E cognition.↩︎
  52. Macrine, Sheila L., and Jennifer M. B. Fugate. ‘Embodied Cognition and Its Educational Significance’. In Movement Matters: How Embodied Cognition Informs Teaching and Learning, edited by Sheila L. Macrine and Jennifer M. B. Fugate. The MIT Press, 2022. https://direct.mit.edu/books/oa-edited-volume/5306/Movement-MattersHow-Embodied-Cognition-Informs. p. 16↩︎
  53. Ibid. ibid.↩︎
  54. Ibid. ibid.↩︎
  55. Varela, Francisco J., Evan Thompson, and Eleanor Rosch. The Embodied Mind: Cognitive Science and Human Experience. 1991. Revised edition. The MIT Press, 2017. https://doi.org/10.7551/mitpress/9780262529365.001.0001. pp. lxi-lxii.↩︎
  56. Ingold, 2013. p. 31.↩︎
  57. Anderson, 2024. p. 18.↩︎
  58. Lebert and Vilarroya, 2024. p. 43.↩︎
  59. Sheridan, Bruce. ‘Creativity, Physical Space, and Teaching Screen Directors’. In The 21st Century Film, TV & Media School: Directing the Future, edited by Maria-Dora Mourão, Stanislav Semerdjiev, Cecília Mello, and Alan Taylor. 21st Century Film, TV & Media School Project 2. CILECT – The International Association of Film and Television Schools, 2019. p. 203.↩︎
  60. Lebert and Vilarroya, 2024. p. 46.↩︎
  61. Ibid. ibid.↩︎
  62. Dewey, 1916 / 2023, Chpt. 2 “Education as a Social Function”.↩︎
  63. Elkjær, 2018. p. 79.↩︎

Draft overview: Dewey, Vygotsky, Micro-phenomenology

‘Film needs theory’ said Alan Parker, ‘like it needs a scratch on the negative.’[1]

The origin of this project is my experience with the training and education provided for filmmakers who become film educators within the confines of a formal educational programme. And the Alan Parker quote above is representative of filmmakers (no, not all filmmakers…) both in their artistic and educational practice. And no, this is not a case of anti-intellectualism but rather a distrust of any theory[2] that might distract filmmakers from focussing on both their craft and their intuition.

Perhaps as a result of this, or perhaps because of other traditions, filmmakers tend not to look for the theoretical basis for their teaching, but are more preoccupied with learning “how to”. Nowhere is this more clear, perhaps, than in the groundbreaking guide Training the Trainers (2005)[3], which, in a series of 10 booklets and accompanying DVD, gives filmmakers a step-by-step guide on how to use their own practice, understand students, structure workshops, assignments, and grading, and so on — all very practical and useful. And all presented without reference to extant educational theory and philosophy.

Around the same time as Training the Trainers was being completed, a Danish researcher was completing her PhD thesis, which analysed the Danish Film School of the late 1990s and early 2000s.[4] In her research, Heidi Philipsen studied teaching methods at the Danish Film School in the late90, also conducting interviews with students, teachers, and colleagues from affiliated film schools. Presenting her work at a conference in 2008, Philipsen states, “My research has illustrated, that the terms ’scaffolding’ (Wood, Bruner & Ross, 1976) and ’the zone of proximal development’ (Vygotsky, 1935) are indeed very useful in explaining for instance the methods used at the National Film School in Denmark.”[5]

In her thesis and other writings, Philipsen elaborates on the role and meaning of educational scaffolding DFS with reference to both Wood et.al. and to Vygotsky, and shows how the teaching methods at the school led to the emergence of Dogma ’95, the radical renewal of Danish film of the 1990s. In the process, she highlights the importance of constraints for creativity[6] and goes on to argue that “…to be able to think out of the box (= to be creative) it helps you to have a box.”[7]

Philipsen’s work has been crucial for understanding the mechanisms of how scaffolding can support the development of unique artistic talents in a film school setting. But understanding the role of scaffolding and the function of the zone of proximal development are not sufficient for understanding film school pedagogy. In the following paragraphs, I’ll try to show how a variety of educational theories and philosophies can combine to provide a more complete picture of how film education works.

While many philosophers through the ages have engaged with education and attempted to explain how children and adults learn, for my purposes here the story begins with John Dewey and Lev Vygotsky.

Dewey and experience

Dewey developed formative theories of education and the role of education in society, and showed the close relationship between knowledge, reflection, and experience. Already in 1889, Dewey had formulated one of the idioms he became best known for: “Learn to do by knowing and to know by doing”[8] In his later work, How We Think, (first published in 1910; revised and re-released in 1933) he specified, “We do not learn from experience. We learn from reflecting on experience.”[9]

While Dewey was not the first philosopher to examine the importance of experience, and many have built on his work since[10], he remains the key figure in contemporary educational theory for understanding this. There is also no end of material written that references Dewey and his influence on education.

For the purposes of a practice-based film school education, the key is the combination of reflection and experience. Dewey examines this closer in his Art As Experience, where he observes, “The artist does his thinking in the very qualitative media he works in, and the terms lie so dose to the object that he is producing that they merge directly into it.”[11] This observation is echoed by Tim Ingold in his description of sketching and drawing in Making, where he writes, “… the drawing is not the visible shadow of a mental event; it is a process of thinking, not the projection of a thought.”[12] (emphasis in original)

This means that in the context of practice-based fine arts education, the emphasis is just as much on developing reflection during experience as it is on developing reflection on experience. The latter half of that formulation—reflecting on experience—is a staple of education everywhere. Teachers give an assignment of some form, and when it is complete, lead an assessment of this assignment. Ideally, this assessment will include a great deal of emphasis on the process—why did this result end up as it did, and what steps and decisions did you, the student, undertake that led to this result. Properly done, the realizations gained through this sort of assessment will enable the student to make choices next time that can lead to a better result.

Reflection in or during experience is what Donald Schön called “reflection in action”,[13] where the emphasis is on the ability of the practitioner to reflect while in the middle of experiencing, and use their previously acquired knowledge and expertise to make decisions and adjust course while in activity. This is something we all do, every day, but that is absolutely essential for artists and professionals who are constantly facing the unexpected where they have to rely on their best judgement in order to achieve a desired goal.

And back to scaffolding

The question of how to teach students to reflect while in activity, and to use their previous experience and developed skills to make qualified decisions on how to handle a new or unexpected situation is a key question for film schools. And it brings us back to the description of scaffolding from Philipsen (above).

In her research, Philipsen identified 3 levels of scaffolding: institutional scaffolding, team scaffolding, and individual scaffolding.[14] For her, these connect closely to the constraints the Danish Film School set for the students in their “pen test” film exercises, and, in fact, the key element in the institutional scaffolding is the set of rules, or constraints, the school presented the students with for their films.

Institutional scaffolding

Institutional scaffolding is more than this, however. Some constraints are easy to see, and they consist of things like budgets, physical facilities and equipment, availability of permanent and temporary teaching staff, dates for start and end of term, etc. These will be constraints that are common to all film schools, even though the details will vary. All of these will affect how the curriculum is organized, including the placement and design of film production exercises.

These are imposed constraints, that come from outside the film school itself. They affect how the school is organized and provide the limits to the freedom of the school—and they in turn are passed on to the students through the way their classes are planned, teaching and mentoring are organized, the budgetary and time limits placed on the film exercises, and so on.

In terms of the film production exercises, institutional scaffolding is the way in which the school—through academic leadership, pedagogical traditions, and staff input—creates constraints for specific exercises. The Norwegian Film School has some general constraints that apply to all exercises; these have to do with the pedagogical approach to the exercises as vehicles for learning and not as finished films. One consequence of this is that the school will set budgets, the amount of time allocated to development, production, and post-production, the length of the final projects, the balance between studio and location, the date for final screenings, and so on.

In addition to these general constraints, the teaching staff will design constraints that aim to challenge the students skills and creativity. This is an application of Vygotsky’s zone of proximal development (ZPD)[15]; a framework he developed to show that in every educational situation, the learner comes in with existing skills and knowledge, and the challenge of the educator is to create a learning situation where they have to stretch beyond what they already know but not so far as to make the task of learning insurmountable. ZPD is the “sweet spot”, where the challenge is achievable but requires effort and new learning.

In their article “The Role of Tutoring in Problem Solving”, Wood, Bruner, and Ross introduced the term scaffolding[16] as the metaphor for what tutors and teachers do in order to create and maintain the ZPD. At the Norwegian Film School, the scaffolding elements include the teaching the students have had before they start an exercise and the mentoring / tutoring they receive during their work, the specific creative challenges given to the group and the individual for the exercise in question, the limits placed on which production challenges they should focus on, and so on. The students are actively followed up through the entire process, and the constraints they work under become less and less visible as they become more expert and confident as filmmakers.

Team scaffolding

The structure of the Norwegian Film School determines the composition of the teams in film production exercises. The school accepts students into 7 disciplines at the BFA-level: screenwriting, directing, producing, cinematography, production design, editing, and sound. Each discipline has 6 students, meaning that every production exercise consists of 6 teams with 7 members (one from each discipline) of each team. As the student group progresses through their studies, they gain more influence over who they work with, but initially this is wholly decided by the teaching staff. Even on the final examination projects, the teaching staff have the final word in order to ensure each of the 42 students will have a satisfactory learning experience.

These teams of 7 people who may or may not have wanted to work together are where the students become practitioners, where they have an opportunity to test their creativity, the skills and techniques they’ve learned along the way, and to experience their role as an artist working in a defined field in a team working towards a common artistic goal.

Team scaffolding here works in several ways. There are the constraints the team set for themselves, in terms genre and story, visual style, locations and settings, characters, editing style (which will affect how the film i shot), sound design, etc. They will also determine if they are going to work along traditional roles or if they will—within the constraints of their disciplines—challenge traditional ways of working and explore alternative hierarchies. In short, the team has some leeway to set their own rules. In this process, they will explore the balance between their own ambitions and abilities, and create a form of scaffolding for themselves where they become each other others peer support (i.e. scaffold each other). In high-functioning teams, this is very effective.

Another function for the team scaffolding is in the creative process itself. In most processes, there will come a time when students enter a state of flow. Csikszentmihalyi describes a number of psychological, sensory, and experiential conditions for entering flow, which revolve around enjoyment of an activity, understanding the purpose of that activity, having the desire to enter into the activity, and the challenge being presented by the activity being beyond current abilities but not so far as to make achieving a result frustrating or impossible.[17]

In a collective artistic process such filmmaking, this may also develop into a state of group flow, where the individuals function as a cohesive group while in the state of flow. Keith Sawyer examined group flow in 2015 through a study of jazz improv ensembles, and concluded that an added element for groups is that the group members is that the group must know each other well enough to be comfortable experimenting together, but not so well as to be predicable to each other. There needs to be an element of uncertainty for flow to exist.[18] In his study of group flow in the bands Black Sabbath and Joy Division, Steve Taylor found that in these groups, which were defined by fairly rigid rules around the sound and structure of their music (unlike improv jazz), a highly cooperative creative process and a lack of conscious deliberation were also key factors.[19]

Because group flow is so dependent on the interplay between individuals and the creative “contract” they have made with each other, team scaffolding is essential to enable the students to enter this state in their team exercises. They must both agree on a set of constraints or common rules for their projects, and be willing and able to enter into a collaborative and experimental state together.

Individual scaffolding

In her article, “Constraints in film making processes…”, Heidi Philipsen defines individual scaffolding as “…the level at which the filmmaker dictates his/her own rules for the film process.”[20] and gives some examples of filmmakers continuing to apply rules and constraints to their own work after they started their professional careers (with the most obvious example being Lars von Trier). And that filmmakers (and other artists) set themselves constraints is a well-known phenomenon. One can make an argument that individual artists in this way create the conditions for their own ZPD, by defining their own conditions that will challenge them.

At the Norwegian Film School, a tool for this kind of individual-centred scaffolding is called a statement of intent (intensjonserklæring in Norwegian). This is primarily used in film production exercises, but some instructors use them in other settings too. The description of this statement is that in it the student defines their personal learning outcomes and artistic ambitions for the given exercise, within the given constraints of the exercise.[21] Ideally, this document should function as a set of self-imposed constraints, designed by the student to be personal ZPD that also can be conducive to flow.

Another set of methods and tools are described by the Thinking at the edge approach to embodied critical thinking described by a number of researchers from the TECTU (Training Embodied Critical Thinking and Understanding) project.[22] Among the techniques examined in this project are focusing, as developed by the psychologist Eugene Gendlin and described as, “…an experiential, embodied and evidence-based practice of self-reflection. […] It’s called Focusing because it requires a special kind of focus to notice what is not yet clear, fuzzy and vague, implicit in how you interact with your situations and environment.  This fuzzy dimension of experience is called the “felt sense.”  Focusing on the felt sense allows an in-depth clarification process to happen.”[23] Several of the researchers and educators involved in the TECTU project describe how they applied focussing as a tool for self-scaffolding and teaching others how to self-scaffold.[24]

Micro-phenomenology

Related to this, and also touched on by the TECTU researchers, is the method called “micro-phenomenology”. This is, among other things, an interview method described as follows,

The specificity of the micro-phenomenological interview method is that it focuses on a singular experience. The premise of the method is indeed that only the exploration of a singular concrete experience makes it possible to practice an épochè: to “bracket” or suspend our preconceptions and theorizations about experience, and notably our implicit belief in the existence of an objective world independent of experience. This act enables us to leave our “natural attitude” of absorption into the content of experience (the “what”), to reorient our attention towards the way this experience appears to us (the “how”), and notably towards the usually prereflective micro-acts through which this appearance is constituted.[25]

In the same article, she goes on to state,

[… A]t the core of singular experiences, what we discover is not private features proper to the history and peculiarities of each individual, but the shared intimate structures through which the world appears to us, as well as the shared intimate processes through which these structures arise, and eventually vanish. Surprisingly, if universal structures were to be discovered, it seems that it would be in the most invisible and the most intimate.

Petitmengin also applied micro-phenomenology in a study of intuition, in an effort to see if the subjects would become able to describe and understand the moment of “immediate” knowledge, where the insight or inspiration arrived as if by magic.[26]

One of the challenges for filmmakers, and thus those who teach filmmakers, is the challenge of how to mine the deeply personal and intimate to create stories that feel universal. For those who succeed, this is often an intuitive process. As Petitmengin and others have observed, the intuitive is usually characterized by tacit knowledge, the kind of embodied and sensory knowledge that seems to transcend words and explanation.

Micro-phenomenological interview techniques that illuminate the intensely subjective and enable the exploration of very specific experiences can work especially well to illuminate tacit knowledge and give the subject the language to explain what was tacit.[27] As such, teaching these interview techniques to students (and staff!) can enable a much more precise and illuminating dialogue around the process of artistic creation.

Footnotes

  1. Lapsley, Robert, and Michael Westlake. Film Theory: An Introduction. 2nd edn, Manchester University Press, 2006, JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org.ezproxy.inn.no/stable/jj.17842197. p.iv
  2. Whether that distrust has any basis in reality is a question far beyond what I am examining here. Film theorists have written volumes attempting to show that film does need theory, but the distrust and distancing remains. Even at (some) film schools. Also, this distrust is not universal. The French novelle vague grew out of a group of filmmakers who were very interested in film criticism (or critics who were also interested in filmmaking, depending on which director one studies).
  3. Ross, Dick. Training the Trainers. The Norwegian Film School, 2005.
  4. Philipsen, Heidi. Dansk films nye bølge: Afsæt og aftryk fra Den Danske Filmskole. 2004, https://portal.findresearcher.sdu.dk/da/publications/dansk-films-nye-b%C3%B8lge-afs%C3%A6t-og-aftryk-fra-den-danske-filmskole/. Syddansk Universitet (SDU).
  5. Philipsen, Heidi. ‘Rules Can Inspire Creative Processes’. 2008, Digital Content Creation.
  6. Philipsen, Heidi. ‘Constraints in Film Making Processes Offer an Exercise to the Imagination – A Pleading Based on Experiences from Denmark’. Seminar.Net, vol. 5, no. 1, Nov. 2009, https://doi.org/10.7577/seminar.2470.
  7. Philipsen, Heidi. ‘Rules Can Inspire Creative Processes’. 2008, Digital Content Creation.
  8. McLellan, J.A., and John Dewey. An Introduction to the Principles and Practice of Education. Educational Publishing Company, 1889. Applied Psychology.
  9. Dewey, John. How We Think. 2025 edn, Creative Media Partners, LLC, 1933.
  10. A small handful of relevant educational theorists to further examine the relationship between experience, reflection, and learning are David Kolb, Paolo Freire, bell hooks, Maxine Greene, Donald Schön. I’ll be be touching on many of them in later writings.
  11. Dewey, John. Art As Experience. Perigree Trade Paperback, The Berkley Publishing Group, 1934.
  12. Ingold, Tim. Making: Anthropology, Archaeology, Art and Architecture. Routledge, 2013, https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203559055.
  13. Introduced in Schön, Donald A. The Reflective Practitioner: How Professionals Think in Action. Routledge, 1983, https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315237473.
  14. Philipsen, Heidi. ‘Constraints in Film Making Processes Offer an Exercise to the Imagination – A Pleading Based on Experiences from Denmark’. Seminar.Net, vol. 5, no. 1, Nov. 2009, https://doi.org/10.7577/seminar.2470.
  15. See the chapter “Interaction between learning and development” in Vygotsky, L. S. Mind in Society: Development of Higher Psychological Processes. Edited by Michael Cole et al., Harvard University Press, 1978. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/hilhmr-ebooks/detail.action?docID=3301299.
  16. Wood, David, et al. ‘The Role of Tutoring in Problem Solving’. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, vol. 17, 1976, pp. 89–100. ResearchGate, https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1469-7610.1976.tb00381.x.
  17. See Csikszentmihalyi, Mihaly. Flow: The Pyschology of Happiness. Rider, 1992.
  18. Sawyer, Keith. ‘Group Flow and Group Genius’. NAMTA Journal, vol. 40, no. 3, 2015, pp. 29–52.
  19. Taylor, Steve. ‘Channelling the Darkness: Group Flow and Environmental Expression in the Music of Black Sabbath and Joy Division’. Metal Music Studies, vol. 7, no. 1, Mar. 2020, pp. 85–102.https://doi.org/10.1386/mms_00033_1.
  20. Philipsen, Heidi. ‘Constraints in Film Making Processes Offer an Exercise to the Imagination – A Pleading Based on Experiences from Denmark’. Seminar.Net, vol. 5, no. 1, Nov. 2009, https://doi.org/10.7577/seminar.2470.
  21. Summarized and translated from an internal document at the Norwegian Film School written by the author in 2018.
  22. Schoeller, Donata, et al., editors. Practicing Embodied Thinking in Research and Learning. Routledge, 2024, https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003397939.
  23. ‘What Is Focusing?’ The International Focusing Institute, https://focusing.org/felt-sense/what-focusing. Accessed 14 Jan. 2026.
  24. See, for example, Jóhannesdóttir, Guðbjörg R. ‘Sensing and Thinking from within: Aesthetic Perception and Embodied Thinking’. ; Sandberg, Ole Martin. ‘Focusing on Emotions in Climate Education: A Felt Sense of the Climate’.; Sauka, Anne. ‘Embodied Critical Thinking and Environmental Embeddedness: The Sensed Knots of Knowledge’.; and Eisenberg, Ramio. ‘Focusing in the School of Architecture’. All in Practicing Embodied Thinking in Research and Learning, Routledge, 2024.
  25. Petitmengin, Claire, et al. ‘Discovering the Structures of Lived Experience’. Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences, vol. 18, no. 4, Sept. 2019, pp. 691–730. Springer Link, https://doi.org/10.1007/s11097-018-9597-4.
  26. Petitmengin-Peugeot, Claire. ‘The Intuitive Experience’. Journal of Consciousness Studies, vol. 6, nos 2–3, 1999, pp. 2–3.
  27. See Petitmengin, Claire. ‘Micro-Phenomenology as Coming into Contact with Experience: Subtilisation, Surprises, and Liberation’. Practicing Embodied Thinking in Research and Learning, Routledge, 2024.
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