Research with vignettes at the University of Innsbruck
Mariafrancesca Vassallo, Sofia Cramerotti, Michael Schratz, Johanna F. Schwarz
The present paper aims to present the main features of the vignette, a research approach devised and advanced by the research team of the Institut für LehrerInnenbildung und Schulforschung at Innsbruck University. The focus of this research methodology is to study learning as a fundamental human experience and in order to accomplish this goal, researchers avail of vignettes, which are phenomenological narrative texts that strive to recreate the co-experience of the students’ learning experience that researchers shared while on the field with them. In fact, experience is considered something that it is impossible not to be involved in and for this reason, researchers cannot be just mere observers of what happens without experiencing it at the same time. In the second part of the paper the positive implications of the use of vignettes in teacher training will be presented and light will be shed on how this could increase future teachers’ awareness of learning and of its experiential dimensiont.
Keywords
Vignette, Learning as experience, Phenomenological approach, Teacher training.
