Opening the door : service-learning teaching assistants explore the unfamiliar and the meaning made from their service-learning experience, an interpretative phenomenological analysis

Abstract

Standing at the threshold of the door, the participants entered the experience and take you through their feelings as they encountered the unfamiliar. Once passed the door, the participants unfolded the unfamiliar through a mirrored, self-reflective space of engaged reality from their S-L life-worlds. Reflecting on self and with others in context, the participants then translated the unfamiliar to discover a window of opportunity into personal meaning and application. An Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA) guided the participants' and the researcher's experiential journey for exploring meaning from the unfamiliar and for discovering how conscious educational growth can be sustained by introducing a more critical perspective. Through this qualitative methodology, the shared participants' interpretative stories were brought to life. The rich contextual renderings remind all that learning was once unfamiliar and that meaning made it personal, conscious, and transformative.