A Phenomenological study of student thinking autonomy: Analysis of student-teacher interactions from Rwandan Teacher Training Colleges

Abstract

Using a phenomenological perspective as both the theoretical and methodological framework, this study investigates how TTC Teachers facilitate and experience the students’ thinking autonomy with CBC (Competence Based Curriculum), a pedagogy rooted in Cartesian philosophy which is characterized by individualistic thinking as its essence. Thinking in the Rwandan context does not seem to be primarily individual but community and culturally determined. This experience is interpreted by the researcher by means of a phenomenology that describes first-hand teachers’ and researcher’s experience. This study opines that students and teachers in Rwanda (a sub-Saharan context) are challenged with the experience of power relations during their interactions. These power relations are apparently determined by hierarchical social stratification which influence the way teachers dominate students, thus influencing them to possibly orient their thinking according to the community paradigms of thinking. Given that the researcher assumes that CBC advocates for the prevalence of human equality and individual thinking autonomy over one’s institutional or cultural authority, it seems paradoxical to him how this approach which seems equalitarian in essence can be effectively implemented in a hierarchical context which does not celebrate equality within the dialogue teacher-student. The findings reveal that, in the Rwandan context, the community thinking paradigms seem to take precedence over the individual thinking autonomy, which, in return, hinders the facilitation of individual thinking autonomy according to the western Cartesian philosophical culture. It appears to the researcher that the key to CBC success in the Rwandan context is dependent on dissociating or disconnecting the teacher’s intellectual competence on the one hand, and the teacher’s moral and cultural authority on the other hand, in order to bring relative equality in knowledge co-creation and sharing between teachers and students to allow free flow of knowledge that can guarantee the student’s autonomy.