The Living Experience of Mortality Among Curriculum Graduate Students: A Heuristic Inquiry

• Author / Creator

  Jacobs, Nicholas

• Death is an ungraspable phenomenon that will grasp us all, and while humans may go to great lengths to avoid confrontations with death, it inevitably seethes its way into the psyche. The mortal condition of humanity warrants thoughtful and careful consideration, including the ways in which it is woven within curriculum studies. While research has explored how educators might best deal with death and dying in the experience of education, little research has focused on what death is. As such, this study aims to investigate the living experience of mortality among curriculum studies graduate students, and explores the implications of students’ experiences of mortality for curriculum studies. This study approaches the nature of mortality from a depth psychology lens, examining how unconscious processes of mortality relate to experiences of paradox and human creativity, and inform the field of curriculum studies. Heuristic inquiry was utilized to investigate the living experience of mortality, seeking to explore the phenomenon through its phases of engagement, immersion, incubation, illumination, and explication, arriving at a creative synthesis representing the nature of mortality. Data collection involved individual and group interviews with five curriculum studies graduate students and myself, before and after viewing Chernobyl, a mortality-themed televisual text. Data was analyzed based on the tenets of heuristic inquiry and was presented in the form of individual depictions, a composite depiction, and a creative synthesis which was then amplified through a depth psychology lens. The living experience of mortality among curriculum graduate students involved themes of paradox, an opportunity for becoming, a return to one’s humanness, and a relationship to innocence, which are explored and discussed in terms of implications for curriculum studies. The findings from this research assist in explicating a fuller phenomenon of mortality, while examining its implications towards a curriculum of mortality. This study might aid others in applying the findings of this research to applicable aims within curriculum studies and beyond.

• Subjects / Keywords

  • heuristic inquiry
  • analytical psychology
  • curriculum studies
  • death
  • mortality
  • graduate education
  • psychoanalysis

• Graduation date

  Spring 2024

• Type of Item

  Thesis

• Degree

  Doctor of Philosophy

• DOI

  https://doi.org/10.7939/r3-dfb7-xb41

• License

  This thesis is made available by the University of Alberta Libraries with permission of the copyright owner solely for non-commercial purposes. This thesis, or any portion thereof, may not otherwise be copied or reproduced without the written consent of the copyright owner, except to the extent permitted by Canadian copyright law.