Reconnecting with Experience and Sensitive for instructional Practices fostering Inclusivity, Resilience and Equity – RESPIRE

The results of a preliminary survey will lay the groundwork for an action-research project at the core of RESPIRE, of the participatory action-research (RAP) type, involving the trainers-researchers in all stages of the co-construction of research: co-elaboration, co-development, and co-evaluation.
Each national team is made up of trainers-researchers, working in different university training contexts (University in Quebec, Haute École Pédagogique in Switzerland, National Higher Institute of Teaching and Education in France). They teach in various initial and continuing training programs, all professionalizing, relating to various disciplines. Several of these courses are related to the analysis of professional activities or are interested in the development of reflective practices.
The research project has two main components evolving together: support and research-training.
Support for professional development constitutes the binding space between all the trainer-researchers and supports the transdisciplinary and transnational weaving of the project. The group will operate as a community of practice with a background of somatic explorations guiding reflection, while promoting its deepening.
Each national group will follow its own calendar, including national moments in presence (subject to sanitary conditions), transnational moments (online in two or three places). In the same way as the situations experienced in their professional activities, the trainers will experience the support group in a hybrid way, each national group carrying a share of autonomy in its way of appropriating and living the system co-constructed by all.
The research/training will include several stages, to ultimately lead to the development of experiential hybrid training devices. These devices will be put in place in accordance with the didactics of the course taught, the pedagogy recommended by the trainer, as well as with the planned teaching modality (presence, distance, hybrid, comodal, etc.). The following orientations could be explored: manipulation of language and/or artefacts, integration of touch and gestures, movements in space, somatic exercises of centration, awareness, attention, reflexive exercises on one's practice and/or its learning, reflection on one or other of the components of corporeality, learning in context, localization/delocalization of learning, etc.
Each year, the three national research teams will meet to take stock of the progress of the project, create group cohesion, through somatic practice sessions, ensure that everyone agrees to the common objectives and the relevance of the means put in place in each national context.

Through a partnership between Canada, France, and Switzerland, we anticipate the following results: 1) a better understanding of the role of sensitive experience, effect of context and embodiment in pedagogical relationships and learning; 2) instructional schemes easier to adapt to differing modalities, in person and at a distance, and within different field realities; 3) the development of new knowledge in the research fields of sensitive experience and contextualization. Scientific writings from this project will be a source of inspiration for decision makers in charge of support university trainers.

All project results will be shared freely in a data warehouse repository like Zenodo, under Creative Commons CC-BY license. We thus hope to offer the research community, the managers of vocational training establishments and the decision-makers responsible for reflecting on the support of trainers in the development of their digital and relational skills a set of transferable elements in several training contexts. : face-to-face, hybrid, comodal, fully remote.

This part will be completed as the project progresses.

This project investigates the question of the resilience of university instruction following the shock of physical and mental isolation into which trainers and learners were thrust during the COVID-19 pandemic. It constitutes a central issue insofar as everything suggests that digital interactions and hybrid teaching are here to stay. We defend the idea that the resilience of university environments, and of society, depends on a new balance between the inevitable use of digital tools and the place for sensitive experience and embodiment. The final goal is to empower teachers in higher education to face the new situations in various contexts.

We seek to participate in the restoration of the synergy between the cognitive and the sensitive by: 1) Provide an overall picture of distance training practices implemented during the pandemic, in each of the partner institutions, in the disciplines concerned by the project; 2) Explore hybrid experiential support as a space for in-action dialogue between teachers, learners, and knowledge, with a view to reducing inequalities in learning; 3) Investigate the place of sensitive experience within a given context as a space for learning by taking into account embodied knowledge in a hybrid model; 4) Provide material for the renewal of training practices, toward greater equality and inclusion, in various modalities, including distance learning.

Through a partnership between Canada, France and Switzerland, we anticipate the following results: 1) A better understanding of the role of sensitive experience, effect of context and embodiment in pedagogical relationships and learning; 2) Instructional schemes easier to adapt to differing modalities, in person and at a distance, and within different field realities; 3) The development of new knowledge in the research fields of sensitive experience and contextualization. Scientific writings from this project will be a source of inspiration for decision makers in charge of support university trainers.