A phenomenological reading of integration in the longitudinal integrated clerkship

Abstract This paper reports on a phenomenological reading of integration in education programs, through three layers of specificity: (1) broadly, on integration as an educational idea; (2) more particularly, on integration as expressed in the program model of the longitudinal integrated clerkship (LIC); and (3) with the highest degree of specificity, on integration ‘at work’ in an actual LIC program. Each layer of penetration found different aspects of the phenomenological nature of integration. A further integrative leap across these aspects phenomenologically revealed four essential qualities of integration, being: integration transforms parts into wholes; integration’s animating locus is mutable, mobile and multiple; integration is already at work and is sustained through possibility; and integration holds open for ‘more’ integration. By appreciating integration for its essential qualities, this research adds foundational value to the literature on educational integration, and opens new questions about how we, as educators, might deliberately work with both its presence and its promise in our educational pedagogies, practices and programs.