| Abstract [eng] |
The topic of pedagogical authority still gives rise to discussions and interpretations. Some authors make claims about the end of authority in the postmodern world and use words such as crisis, extinction, erosion, decline, collapse; while other try to find new solutions on the practical as well as on the theoretical level. An original approach is that of those philosophers and thinkers who have suggested an understanding of authority based on its etymology: deriving from the Latin verb augere it opens one’s mind to an idea of authority that is connected to ‘raising, making grow’ of another. This doctoral thesis tries to follow this path in order to possibly find anew the pedagogical authority on the ontological and experiential levels. The eidetic phenomenological approach is chosen in order to investigate the raising authority of the teacher, that aims at revealing the essential characteristics of the phenomenon using the eidetic description. The empirical doctorate research was conducted with teachers of lower and higher secondary school teachers in Italy and in Lithuania. The teachers were asked about their raising experience. The results of the empirical research in Giussani’s ontological perspective reveal that the raising authority is becoming a phenomenon found not only in the context of school and education but appears as a different kind of being in relation to the reality, characterized by openness to an event, expression of new self-awareness and encounter, opening to the existence in a form of a dialogue. Moreover, profoundly analyzing the depths of the raising authority has revealed yet another ontological aspect, an unexpected and paradoxical turning point not only in our days’ perspective but also in the educational phenomenon: the discovery and re-appropriation of the importance of teacher’s person. |
