List of publications related to a/r/tography from the year 2021: Journal articles, book chapters, dissertations, and theses Please note that these works mention or use a/r/tography and not all of them focus on a/r/tography explicitly. LU: 11/JUL/2022
Aksoy, Ş., Özsoy, V., & Güneş, N. (2021). Sanat temelli bir araştırma yöntemi: Yaşayan sorgulama olarak a/r/tografi. Hacettepe University Journal of Education, 1–13. https://doi.org/10.16986/huje.2021066642
Abstract
This article aims at introducing arts-based research method and a/r/tography methodology in particular.
A/r/tography is a methodology that suggests exceeding limits continuing to develop in the framework drawn
with its own principles without denying traditional research methods. In a/r/tographic research, unlike
quantitative and qualitative methods, we can see that principles such as formulation of questions within the
process to create meaning and use of art making as data for inquiries are in place as opposed to proposing
questions to be answered by following certain series of fixed rules and the research report format is developed
in a way to avoid damage to the artistic spirit of the research carried out. Sample research studies investigated
indicate that, such approach allows significant space for the researcher who is both an artist and an educator,
to enjoy freedom. Various research studies have been carried out internationally on this methodology
developed in the beginning of 2000s, by A/R/T/S Research Group in University of British Columbia, Canada;
however, limited field literature can be found in our country. In this context, it is hoped that this article, which
is a qualitative study based on document analysis, will contribute to the field of visual arts education on a
theoretical level.
Keywords: A/r/tography, arts-based research, arts-based educational research, living inquiry, art education
Bird, D. (2021). A living inquiry: Activating and integrating the multiple identities of dramatherapist, researcher, artist and teacher (Order No. 28460603). Available from ProQuest Dissertations & Theses Global. (2507234776). Retrieved from https://www.proquest.com/dissertations-theses/living-inquiry-activating-integrating-multiple/docview/2507234776/se-2?accountid=14656
Abstract
The critical narrative explores published and creative works as a performer and how this has informed the author’s development as researcher, artist, dramatherapist and teacher in Higher Education. Through clinical work as a dramatherapist in different settings and practice as a dramatherapy educator the author explores the integrating of therapy and teaching approaches such as meaning making, deep learning and student-centred learning. The research is a living inquiry that is an unfolding of the researcher’s experience and deepening of understanding over a fourteen-year period as a clinician and teacher. The author examines the encounter and interrelationship dynamic between the performer and audience; therapist and client; teacher and student; and researcher and research participant as a means for co-construction and co-creation of meaning, knowledge and raising awareness. The author explores the importance of a research approach that is congruent with a dramatherapy and teacher identity emphasising non-verbal exploration, the senses, the imagination and play as a means for deepening understanding of dramatherapy and teaching practice. Through the creative works of a solo performer the author explores how engagement as an artist informs and strengthens their identity as a dramatherapist, researcher and teacher. Different research methodologies including heuristic inquiry, autoethnography and a/r/tography are considered for their suitability for a living inquiry that addresses the multiplicity of roles.
Bourgault, R., Rosamond, C., & Ingalls Vanada, D. (2021). Layering, unknowing, and unlocking: Thinking beyond structure through arts-based research. Journal of Curriculum and Pedagogy, 1–19. https://doi.org/10.1080/15505170.2020.1854398
Abstract
While it is still disputed in some academic traditions, the potentials of artistic practice as research and arts-based research have demonstrated that creative engagement with materials, processes and ideas lead to holistic insights that move well beyond the goals of objective research and its quest for solid answers. The article retraces our experience as Art Education instructors guiding graduate students through an online capstone arts-based research course, as we endeavored to bring our students’ artists’, researchers’ and in-service K-12 art teachers’ identities into a productive place of “knowing-in-being,” an embodied and relational model of inquiry. Emphasizing students’ voices and their thinking throughout their a/r/tographic and phenomenological projects, we reexamine their artistic experiences and scholarly reflections as the course unfolded, arguing that our students’ identity as teaching artists transformed in the process of making and thinking in, with, and through arts-based inquiry. The discussion of the paper is a narrative about pedagogical strategies and curricular decisions that were adopted as we designed, taught, and reflected upon the outcomes of the course. The article emphasizes how the processes of layering, unknowing and unlocking constituted experiential thresholds through which students discovered new creative capacities as artists, scholars and art teachers.
Burke, G., Alfrey, L., Hall, C., & O’Connor, J. (2021). Drawing with Art-Well-Being: Intergenerational co-creation with seniors, children and the living museum. International Journal of Art & Design Education, 40(3), 630–654. https://doi.org/10.1111/JADE.12372
Abstract
This article explores how the Museum, Art and Wellbeing project brought primary school children and seniors from the same local community together to engage in explorative activities designed to reveal individual and mutual assets for wellbeing. The Museum, Art and Wellbeing project undertook a participatory arts-based approach to investigate how the assets of a large public institution such as Museums Victoria, Australia could reach out and engage different community groups. The seniors came from a local University of the Third Age (U3A) which offers a wide range of classes but does not usually engage with primary schools. Children at the primary school engage in art learning and separate wellbeing learning but these age-stage sessions, as designated to incremental year levels, had not previously included direct involvement of seniors in learning activities. For both groups, the connection to Victoria’s state museums is marked by previous occasional one-off visits. Museum resources have not been considered as ongoing assets for wellbeing that link to the local community in the way that this project does. The university’s role in brokering such connections by deploying often ignored human/institutional assets to support health and strengthen community has been explored in papers by fellow researchers, Justen O’Connor and Laura Alfrey. Our enquiry is extended in this article by focusing on how art education, specifically art-making, and intergenerational learning can strengthen community and enhance wellbeing across school and community-based educational contexts and museums.
Chalykoff, J.-P. P. J. (2021). The hauntings and heart of a place: Reconnecting to grandmother lands. In R. Throne (Ed.), Indigenous Research of Land, Self, and Spirit (pp. 215–233). IGI Global. https://doi.org/10.4018/978-1-7998-3729-9.ch014
Abstract
This autoethnographic research presents personal stories from the author, connecting family, land, and music. He recounts stories his Ojibwe grandmother shared about her time in Franz, a small railroad village in northeastern Ontario that is now a ghost town. The connection to Franz is established through memories from his grandmother. Inspired to write a song, the author aimed to reconnect to Franz itself. The study follows the author’s personal journey to visit his grandmother’s land for the first time, making new connections and stories along the way. The research utilizes Indigenous autoethnography, Indigenous storytelling, and arts-based methods, such as a/r/tography, to link his stories to those of his grandmother, resulting in a reflection of storytelling, community history, and (re)connection to land, woven together by stories from the family matriarch.
de Magalhães Rocha, A. I. S. (2021). Cardography as a research method through writing and drawing in higher education workshops. Journal of Writing in Creative Practice, 14(2), 193–207. https://doi.org/10.1386/JWCP_00022_1
Abstract
This article is supported by the author’s experience through a methodology created during her Ph.D. thesis ‘The experience of book’s place at the university’, also during COVID-19 restrictions. The student transformed public presentations into collaborative research workshops, where new interrelations and concepts occurred rooted in arts-based research methodologies, exploring art and education, in its scope. Cardography is an invented designation based on a/r/tography, as a creative living research methodology that uses cards as a device for a visual inquiry, considering that each book’s page is a card to be written or drawn (digital or paper), documenting the dialogic process during each research workshop. The research result contemplates an artistic object, which is displayed afterwards in university and art exhibitions. The reader is invited to follow a fil rouge alignment, inspired by a book structure, reflecting upon concepts and research methods not yet implemented at the art education doctoral course.
Giorza, T. M. (2021). Learning with damaged colonial places. Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-16-1421-7
Abstract
This book offers a close and detailed account of the emergent and creative pedagogies of children learning together in a small, not-for-profit preschool, and the entangled becomings of their carers as well as the researcher–artist–author. The mutually affecting and inseparable realities of the ‘material’ and the ‘discursive’ are made visible through lively and sensual pedagogical invention by a group of five-year olds in the inner-city preschool which is located in Johannesburg, South Africa. These small, local stories are recognized in their emergence with global geopolitical realities. The author makes a valuable contribution to post-qualitative research through the use of visual research methods and non-representational approaches to working with knowledge.
Gregory, D., Fisher, J., & Leavitt, H. (2021). The impact of continual reflection students as partners: Becoming a/r/tographers. Journal of the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning, 21(1). https://doi.org/10.14434/JOSOTL.V21I1.30356
Abstract
In this reflective essay we chronicle working together from fall 2017 through spring of 2020 to discover what Rita Irwin (2013) delineated as “becoming a/r/tography” (p. 198). Our goals are to delineate how undergraduate research as a high impact practice effected the experience of an undergraduate art and design major as she matriculated through the “sticky curriculum” (Orr & Shreeve, 2018, p. 5), and how a/r/tography as a research methodology influenced our collaborative creativity research projects during this three-year period.
Guida, R. (2021). Buscando la tierra de nadie. Obras contemporáneas de arte y matemáticas. Tercio Creciente, 59–92. https://doi.org/10.17561/RTC.20.6424
Abstract
In this article, in the light of what emerges from Bruno Latour’s analysis in the book Research on Modes of Existence, I investigate some relationships between Calvin’s literary categories of lightness, speed, accuracy, visibility, multiplicity and consistency, transferring them to different artistic and scientific contexts and highlighting the flows of exchange at the borders between the different territories of artistic and mathematical knowledge, in particular. […] With the tools offered by A/R/Tography, a relationship map is drawn between the iconic elements, the Calvinian categories and the mathematical concepts of homothety, isomorphism, list, network, surface, stochastic process.
Guler, A. (2021). The transformative role of music in visual arts education: Rediscovering intercultural and interdisciplinary possibilities through a/r/tographic inquiry. Eğitimde Nitel Araştırmalar Dergisi, 21(28), 204–240. https://doi.org/10.14689/ENAD.28.9
Abstract
A/r/tographic inquiry is an art-based research method widely used abroad; this method has not yet become widespread in our country’s undergraduate and graduate arts education. To reinvent the results of my a/r/tographic work, which I conducted by visualising the electroacoustic work “Symbolic Gestures” by Malaysian composer and academician Valerie Ross in 2017, with this study I invite my students to an a/r/tographic investigation (understanding/interpretation with artist identity). I aim to reveal intercultural and interdisciplinary creative learning experiences for my students with the methods and techniques (theorising/theory with researcher identity) that I discovered while questioning the transformative role of music in my creative process, and re-question my teaching and learning identities (practice with a teacher identity) through artistic practices. This study reveals a 6-week intercultural and interdisciplinary a/r/tographic inquiry in 2018-2019 with 12 undergraduate and 4 graduate students studying research and art. The research data consists of video and audio recordings, photographs, artistic products, student views, observation notes, diaries, and the work named Symbolic Gestures. The data were interpreted with an a/r/tographic inquiry approach. At the end of the research, the transformative role of music in visual arts education has produced significant results in the experiences of knowing, creating, metaphorical thinking, intuitive listening, and seeing in depth in undergraduate and graduate art students. The provocative, transformative, and convertible role of music can be used in learning, creating, and teaching experiences in visual arts education.
Ings, W. (2021). Resonant voices: The poetic register in exegetical writing for creative practice. Journal of Writing in Creative Practice, 14(2), 121–141. https://doi.org/10.1386/JWCP_00018_1
Abstract
Quality, exegetical writing can be constrained when students marginalize poetic ways of thinking and replace them with carefully edited accounts that reshape the role and nature of emotional response. In the pursuit of rational, theoretically groomed accounts of practice, they can sometimes end up misrepresenting the embodied nature of their inquiries. Considering burgeoning research into poetic inquiry (PI) in the social sciences, this article employs a case study of five doctoral graduates in art and design who have articulated the role of poetic thinking in their creative practice theses. In addition to offering illustrations of how practice-led researchers use PI, the examples demonstrate ways in which poetic approaches can be employed to enhance communicative clarity beyond the constraints of conventional academic writing. Specifically, the examples demonstrate how poetic writing is used to process and articulate indigenous knowledge, enhance embodied thinking and inquiry and deepen levels of reflection and understanding. Such uses can cause a researcher to view the world differently and by extension, expand the nature of what it means to conduct research. In discussing the nature of poetic writing, the article considers three distinct profiles: exegetical writing employed when the nature of the practice is poetic; poetic writing that draws on indigenous approaches to scholarship and poetic writing used as a method for reflection.
Keywords: cultural perspectives, exegetical writing, field notes, method, poetic inquiry (PI), poetic writing
Irwin, R. L. (2021). Le potentiel émergent de l’a/r/tographie [A/r/tography and its emergent potential]. In Miron, I. (Ed.). L’état nomade (pp. 262-284). Longueuil, Quebec: L’instant meme.
Kirkpatrick, D., Porter, S., Speedy, J., Wyatt, J., Dunlop, M., Gallant, M., Laidler,C., Mendus, A., Page, M., Sakellariadis, A., Wyatt, T., Barber, J., Bramwell-davis, P., Brodie, C., Broan, L., Donaldson, M., Filer, J., Gale, K., Barnes, L. G., Kemp, D., Lo, C. Liebmann, M., Maddern, L., Malthouse, M., Martin, V., Nolan, J., Nymanhall, S., Plumb, K., Pyrsou, B., Styles, P., Reece, J., Reed, M., Scarlett C., Spry, T., Vasquez, G. W., Wall, A., & Younie, L. (2021). Artful collaborative inquiry: Making and writing creative. Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780367854843
Abstract
Artful Collaborative Inquiry comprises essays created collectively by a group of scholars and artists, the majority of whom have several decades of experience of working together. The book challenges commonly-held, individualistic beliefs about ownership, authorship and scholarly and artistic ethics and practices.
The essays exemplify the entangled kinds of scholarly and artistic works that emerge in a post-human world, where humans, other species, environments, things and other matters, all matter and are of equal concern in the conduct of ethical artful scholarship. Situated at the (messy) crossroads where contemporary scholarship and artistic practice converge, the seamless mo(ve)ment and interplay between text and image make up the main body of the work in this book.
The chapters combine the playful use and merging of time, space and place, researcher and researched, to give a unique exemplar of research and creativity in the rapidly emerging field of collaborative scholarship. It will be of particular interest to creative and qualitative scholars wishing to conduct more artful research, and artists engaging with scholarship.
Lasczik, A., Irwin, R. L., Cutter-Mackenzie-Knowles, A., Rousell, D., & Lee, Y. S. N. (2021). Walking with a/r/tography. Palgrave.
Abstract
This book brings together visual arts educators working on an international research project titled Mapping A/r/tography: Transnational Storytelling Across Historical and Cultural Routes of Significance. Emphasizing a collaboratory model (Muff, 2014) that fuses concepts of collaboration and laboratory, the project underscores how a/r/tography facilitates participatory, collaborative, and cooperative knowledge creation and mobilization. Each chapter is located in a collaboratory in a particular location.
Keywords: A/r/tography, Mapping, Walking inquiry, Mapping a/r/tography
Lee, N. Y. S. (2021). Squares for breathing, becoming, and beholding: Cultivating a relationship with the unknown [Doctoral Dissertation, The University of British Columbia]. https://doi.org/10.14288/1.0401116
Abstract
Drawing from the autobiographical context of impossibility to know and understand a suicide loss, this writing traces concept-based (Bal, 2002, 2009) paths for personal becoming. The work entails an exploration of what it means to cultivate a relationship with the unknown. It illustrates a four-movement conceptual framework inspired by a meditative square breathing exercise: the unknown, attunement, presence, and home. The framework offers a structure to brave the chaotic, tumultuous unknown with the goal of finding peace and equanimity. Though this writing outlines a series of paths, journeying through the square demands individuals to repeatedly meet, adjust, and transform themselves in the process. Navigating the four movements encourages one to live life as a constantly emerging and unfolding revelation. The author makes her journeys in relation to academic, artistic, curricular, pedagogical, and personal inquiries and practices, using methodological compasses of living inquiry (Irwin & de Cosson, 2004; Meyer, 2006, 2010; Springgay et al., 2005), specifically a/r/tography (LeBlanc & Irwin, 2019; Springgay et al., 2008; Triggs & Irwin, 2019), currere (Pinar, 1975, 2004), and contemplative practice (Garbutt & Roenpagel, 2018; Kumar, 2013).
Liu, L. B., & Wang, J. (2021). Exploring teacher quality with a/r/tography in a teacher education course in China. Qualitative Research Journal, 21(1), 101–112. https://doi.org/10.1108/QRJ-05-2020-0041
Abstract
This self-study engages a/r/tography and currere to explore teacher quality in a teacher education classroom in a Chinese university. A/r/tography (Irwin et al., 2006) considers teacher quality through the conventional lens based on standards and through a more aesthetic lens shaped by cultural nuances and personal experiences. This self-study engages currere (Pinar, 2004) as a methodology marked by contiguous living inquiry explored with an abstract lens aimed to see openings for insight leading to transformation (Pourchier, 2010).
Marín-Viadel, R., & Roldan, J. (2021). Arts-based educational research and social transformation: A project of social a/r/tography. In Maarhuis, P. L. & Rud, A. G. (Eds.), Imagining Dewey (pp. 350–368). Brill Sense.
Abstract
Dewey’s concept of experience, developed in relation to art, is inspiring for art education projects in schools. When the school is in a marginalized social context, this idea is even more important, because social marginalization corresponds to artistic marginalization. A/r/tography is a methodological approach within arts based educational research, which proposes to develop simultaneously three dimensions in the same project: artistic creation (artist), education (teacher) and research (researcher). Project BombeArte in Tegucigalpa, Honduras is a social a/r/tography approach in visual arts. As a main objective, two of the a/r/tographic interventions transformed the space and the classroom furniture into a contemporary art exhibition. The challenge was to transfigure the functional environment of school, through a participatory intervention of students and teachers, in a surprising visual installation. A/r/tography proposals developed the visual answers to two questions: What would I like to say to my desk, in which I spend so many hours sitting? What would I like to see through the window of my classroom? The two collaborative interventions proposed writing in prohibited places in school. This dynamic process between each of the individual marks in the installation and their relationship to those of the other people in the school can be interpreted through Dewey’s thinking.
Martín-Alonso, D., Blanco, N., & Sierra, E. (2021). The pedagogical presence in the construction of the educational relationship. The case of a Primary School teacher. Teoria de La Educacion, 33(1), 111–131. https://doi.org/10.14201/TERI.23389
Abstract
The relationship experience cannot be fully defined –in a positivist sense– because its nature is ineffable, so it is risky to think of the relationship only from an analytical point of view. Although this descriptive and conceptualization work is essential, a comprehensive look at the relationship experience and the qualities that make it educational is also necessary. This is the purpose of the text: to think in a comprehensive, holistic way about the symbolic and physical place of the teacher in the educational relationship. We carry out this task through the notion of presence and thinking with the experience of two primary school students whom we have accompanied for two school years. Following the proposals of hermeneutical phenomenology, the research processes have been close observation and hermeneutical conversations. From this field work, we began a dialogue with studies on presence, the pedagogy of presence and the narration of concrete experiences that we have lived together with the students; so that this dialogue allows us to glimpse some structural aspects of the educational relationship.
Mayers, R. (2021). See the light: ‘Biking-with’ as an a/r/tographic method of public pedagogy. Journal of Arts & Communities, 12(1), 105–118. https://doi.org/10.1386/JAAC_00025_1
Abstract
Given the prevalence of cycling as a recreational activity and mode of transportation, cities are continuously increasingly incorporating cycling into their plans for the future. Considering the rise of cycling in popular and academic discourse, it is paramount to consider the lived experience of cycling and be able to conduct and disseminate research in a meaningful way. Drawing upon a/r/tography as a methodology, whereby the artist/researcher/teacher coexist, this article explores ‘biking-with’ as a political practice and critical public pedagogy opposed to dominant discourse of mobility and space in the city of Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. The findings suggest that ‘biking-with’ as civic action and challenge norms around private/public space.
McLean, N. G. (Chinook). (2021). Creating transformative space in our classroom : Entwining circles, restorative practices in education, and student voice [MA Thesis, The University of British Columbia]. https://doi.org/10.14288/1.0400089 http://hdl.handle.net/2429/78879
Abstract
This study explored the creation of transformative learning entwining circle pedagogy, restorative practices in education, and student voice in a Humanities classroom within a rural grade 7-12 school in British Columbia, Canada. Current literature supports taking up restorative practices in education, student voice, and circle pedagogy as interconnected and relational processes that promote learning, empathy, and community building (Cranton & Roy, 2003; Wachtel, 2016). This study employed qualitative practitioner inquiry (teacher research) as a methodology (Cochran-Smith & Lytle, 2009; Dana & Yendol-Hoppey, 2014), and incorporated concepts from a/r/tography and living inquiry (Irwin, 2004; Meyer, 2010). There were nine student participants, two Certified Educational Assistant (CEA) participants, and one teacher-researcher participant. Qualitative data in the form of student artifacts, focus group circles, one-on-one interviews with classroom CEA participants, and researcher reflective journaling were collected. […] Finally, this study provides insight into the synchronous application of a/r/tography and living inquiry as practical classroom pedagogies, including their promise for generating resonant transformative space (Chambers et al., 2008; Meyer, 2010).
Mickel, L. (2021). Performance practice as research, learning and teaching. Teaching in Higher Education. DOI: 10.1080/13562517.2021.2000385 https://doi.org/10.1080/13562517.2021.2000385
Abstract
This article considers how the performing arts integrate with research, learning and teaching. In doing so, it addresses the relation between research and performance practice, and the connections between research/practice with learning and teaching. Reference to A/R/Tography is made as a constructivist praxis facilitating integration of these pedagogic and creative activities. The discussion extends from performance education and how it is assessed in terms of teaching and research quality to consideration of how performance practice may be applied in diverse educational, social and professional contexts. Performance practice is shown to integrate learning and teaching in a holistic process. It also supports reflexivity as a basis for learning and cognitive development. Reference is made to specific examples of performance pedagogy and applied performance practice to demonstrate how this creative approach supports learning in educational and social contexts.
Miranda, O., & Sasiain-Camarero, A. (2021). Las relacionalidades estéticas de las configuraciones espaciales en el contexto de educación infantil: Ejercicios con cuerdas, trapos y cuerpos. Arte, Individuo y Sociedad, 33(2), 397–411. https://revistas.ucm.es/index.php/ARIS/article/view/68405/4564456555925
Abstract
The materialistic turn translated into the pedagogical theories helps us to understand learning and knowledge in a direct material relationship with the world. In the context of children’s education, we consider spatiality and materiality to be fundamental elements in the learning process of children, and from this consideration we will try to analyze the potential of spatial configurations as ethical and aesthetic relationalities for the creation of meaning and identity, belonging and autonomy. On the other hand, spatial configurations as an artistic practice carried out together with students in the Childhood Education Degree, help us to think critically about the type of spaces, times and forms of activity that we build, and the forms of relationship and experience that these produce or could produce. In conclusion, through these aesthetic configurations we will try to think about the possibility of being in relation to everything that surrounds and constitutes us.
Møller, T., & Riis, K. (2021). Exploring craft practice in learning communities. FORMakademisk, 14(2). https://doi.org/10.7577/FORMAKADEMISK.4204
Abstract
This paper presents an initial research project to explore what characterizes knowledge production in craft practice situated in an informal/neutral learning arena outside the education institution. The research project is carried out by craft and design researchers from Norway and Denmark. The project participants include students, academics, older generation volunteers with craft experience, freelance designers, and arts and craft persons, as well as researchers. The overall methodology is a case study approach and has references to practice-led research, participatory design research and A/R/Tography. In this paper we present the research design of the project. Along a theoretical framework consisting of research perspectives of each of our institutional traditions, we lastly discuss the challenges in engaging a neutral learning arena, throughout and as preparation for our research project.
Morales, M. M. (2021). Articulation from an aesthetic environment: Experience of Research A/r/tographic. In P. L. Maarhuis & A. G. Rud (Eds.), Imagining Dewey (pp. 292–307). Brill Sense.
Abstract
This chapter describes the construction of project area for a/r/tographic practice in the teacher education programs at a university in the degree courses in Early Child Education. These practices are based on Deweyan concepts of experience; specifically, that the value of experience does not reside in the object or situation that produces it, but in the consequences and impacts on the participants, who experience it. A/r/tographic research is understood to be collective and relational, which enables forms of networking, as it enacts connection between participants within unfolding situations. With this, one of the primary aims of this research lies in promoting a/r/tographic actions, in which the participants involved build their own structures of organization and production of their own experience. A/r/tographic research practices are based on experience as the central concept, a space and place for relationships, and an organization or network of people involved.
Olsen, B. K. (2021). Dansens dannende potensial. Nordic Journal of Dance, 12(2), 14–18. https://doi.org/10.2478/NJD-2021-0008
Abstract
The purpose of this presentation is to communicate the main arguments from my master’s thesis, «The Liberal Learning Potential in Dance» (Olsen 2019). The thesis focuses on the potential and power that lies in dance and dance teaching in connection with liberal learning, defined as human growth at folk high schools. I present the four liberal learning potentials in dance that formed the basis for the thesis and their relation to the experiences of previous students, as well as the didactic thinking of my colleagues and I. This thesis brings new knowledge about what liberal learning in/through dance can be. This is of relevance both to the context of folk high school in particular and to the wider discussion of aesthetic subjects in society and the school system. Norwegian schools, like folk high schools, have a mission to facilitate human growth. This thesis is a voice that indirectly speaks of the place of dance in Norwegian schools and teacher education from a liberal learning perspective. Keywords: Liberal learning, dance, folk high school, pre-study, a/r/tography, professional development
Patterson, J. A. (2021). Working manifesto/a for rovers. International Journal of Education Through Art, 17(3), 407–413. https://doi.org/10.1386/ETA_00076_3
Abstract
This arts-based exploration offers potentiality and theory to the wider arts-based research field by expanding and naming embodied experience as it relates to mechanical means of transport. The author dubs such a practice of physically moving the body between vast and varied spaces to be a roving art practice. She offers modes of potential, a preliminary list of protocols to contextualize a rover’s manifesto/a and ways to use roving as an educational tool applicable to the field of art education.
Keywords: a/r/tography, art education, arts-based research, field work, research, roving, walking-based research
Pavlou, V. (2021). Reflective visual journals as a means for promoting generalist preservice teachers’ professional identity in art education. International Journal of Education Through Art, 17(2), 253–270. https://doi.org/10.1386/ETA_00064_1
Abstract
In many countries, the subject of art in primary education is entrusted to generalist teachers rather than art specialists. This article explores ways of promoting in-depth learning in art education courses while simultaneously gaining an understanding of how preservice generalists develop their professional identities. This study focuses on the journey of five senior B.Ed. in primary education students from Frederick University in Cyprus, who were invited to engage with reflective practices through visual journaling on art, education and on art integration with social issues. The findings suggest that reflective visual journals can be used to promote generalist preservice teachers’ autonomy and self-reliance in their art making and art responding as well as in the design of art units for their future pupils. The implications of the study open up possibilities for teacher education as it recognizes the role of visual journaling in enhancing different forms of knowledge, acknowledging feelings of both tension and pleasure, promoting perceptions of self-efficacy and supporting inquiry. Overall, such efforts allow preservice teachers to transition from student to teacher identity.
Keywords: art integration, preservice education, reflection, self-efficacy, teacher identity development, visual journals
Pellegrin, R. de, & Cunico, A. P. de O. (2021). O sketchbook como recurso no estímulo da experiência de criação no ensino da Arte Contemporânea. Revista Apotheke, 7(2). https://doi.org/10.5965/24471267722021224
Abstract
The article seeks to problematize the use of the sketchbook as a didactic tool that helps and enhances the development of the creative process in art education, relating it to Contemporary Art. It also emphasizes the importance of stimulating creativity in the student, an important skill, not only for teaching, but also for contemporary life, seeking to demystify some myths related to creation. To this end, we brought authors such as Charles Watson (2020), John Dewey (2010), Belidson Dias and Rita L. Irwin (2013), Icleia B. Cattani (2007), and others, in order to support and justify active methodologies based on practical experience of the student, as well as creativity in art teaching. We present Brazilian and contemporary artists who use the sketchbook as a means to stimulate creative thinking in their poetic process. In addition, we report particular experiences with our own sketchbooks and with the application of classes.
Ramírez, G. (2021). Who am I and what is my role in reconciliation with indigenous peoples? Journal of Intercultural Studies, 42(3), 346–361. Https://Doi.Org/10.1080/07256868.2021.1935617. https://doi.org/10.1080/07256868.2021.1935617
Abstract
This paper reports on an auto ethnographic examination of my identity, my positionality, and my role in reconciliation with Indigenous peoples in Canada and to decolonising and indigenising the academy through my research and teaching practices. It is an individual response to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada (TRC) calls to Action. I weave in personal narratives, theory, and poetry to engage with deep reflection on my lived experiences and the historical and social contexts that have influenced the construction of my identity and educational praxis. I examine these experiences within the context of colonisation, moving from historical to current perspectives and its specific implications within the Canadian context. Intersectionality and Indigenous theories and perspectives guide this examination. The aim is to further my understanding of Indigenous issues and to prepare myself to be an active and effective agent in the process of reconciliation with Indigenous peoples. The insights I have gained and share in this paper may inspire other educators to initiate their own journeys.
Keywords: autoethnography, a/r/tography, decolonisation, indigenisation, reconciliation
Redmond, T. A., Luetkemeyer, J., Davis, J., Hash, P., & Adams, T. (2021). Creating space for care: Sustaining the emotional self in higher education. In I. Ruffin & C. Powell (Ed.), The emotional self at work in higher education (pp. 120-145). IGI Global. http://doi:10.4018/978-1-7998-3519-6.ch007
Abstract
This chapter describes how a community of practice explored arts-based research and expression to examine issues of inequity in education. Through visual journaling, the authors found growth within their scholarly practices and care towards their emotional selves at work. Using a hybrid of self-study methodology, arts-based research, and narrative inquiry, the authors examine the outcomes of their work, illuminating how visual journaling may be used to grow one’s scholarly teaching. Ultimately, the authors found their process was generative, reflective, and one that serves to generate conversations about emotional workspaces in higher education. Further, this chapter provides practical guidance for readers seeking to develop communities of self-care through visual journaling in higher education.
Ricketts, K. (2021). The butterfly catcher. In C. Shields, A. G. Podolski & J. J. Guiney Yallop (Eds.), Influences and inspirations in curriculum studies research and teaching (pp. 83–91). Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003154112-10
Abstract
I arrived at a dance studio in Copenhagen at the age of 28 to meet up with Jorge Holguin, a dear friend and collaborator from Vancouver. I was called to be at Jorge’s side during his last years as he was suffering from AIDS. He was one of the first generations to die of AIDS with only rudimentary drugs in place to prolong the imminent outcome.
I was there as an extension of his body, a conduit for his wild imagination, and an amplifier to his dancers who eagerly awaited the completion of a show Jorge had already started before becoming very ill.
We undoubtedly had intermingling souls and thus his expressions and invitations to movement were easily caught by me like a delicate net catching exotic butterflies. I transformed these “butterflies” into movement, which in turn was interpreted and transformed yet again by the dancers who were eagerly poised before me.
With this experience and with a kaleidoscopic journey of mentored scholarship I was able to create a method that I called Embodied Poetic Narrative. And to take this forward with my passion to resuscitate voice within disenfranchised communities such that I did with Jorge in the studio long ago.
Rigau, M. P., & Tejo, C. (2021). Fingerprinting. VI International Performance Art Conference proceedings. https://issuu.com/fugasinterferencias/docs/actas_fugas_e_interferencias_vi_international_perf
Sasso, L. (2021). Practicing the new school: Dewey, a/r/tography, and the intrusion of poetics in education. In P. L. Maarhuis & A. G. Rud (Eds.), Imagining Dewey (pp. 336–351). Brill Sense.
Abstract
This chapter describes the construction of a project area for a/r/tographic practice in the teacher education programs at a university in the degree courses in Early Child Education. These practices are based on Deweyan concepts of experience; specifically, that the value of experience does not reside in the object or situation that produces it, but in the consequences and impacts on the participants, who experience it. A/r/tographic research is understood to be collective and relational, which enables forms of networking, as it enacts connection between participants within unfolding situations. With this, one of the primary aims of this research lies in promoting a/r/tographic actions, in which the participants involved build their own structures of organization and production of their own experience. A/r/tographic research practices are based on experience as the central concept, a space and place for relationships, and an organization or network of people involved.
Shigematsu, T., Cook, C., Belliveau, G., & Lea, G. W. (2021). Research-based theatre across disciplines: A relational approach to inquiry. Applied Theatre Research, 9(1), 55–72. https://doi.org/10.1386/ATR_00048_1
Abstract
Research-based theatre (RbT) is an innovative research methodology that draws on theatre practices and conventions to engage in and share research. It is an inherently collaborative and relational methodology, inviting research participants, artists and researchers to take part in embodied data generation, analysis and knowledge-exchange activities. This methodology encompasses writing, rehearsing and performing a research-based monologue, scene or play. In this article, the authors share three recent examples from interdisciplinary projects where researchers and artists engaged with different communities to dramatize data using an RbT methodological approach. To add to literature in the field, the authors consider their experiences leading RbT projects in three disparate fields: theatrical, social and therapeutic. The authors explore the question of how RbT transforms relationships and how relationships transform RbT.
Sievers-Hunt, T. S. (2021). Called to the Conversation: A Digital Ethnodrama Exploring Collisions of Calling and Shadow across a Cohort of Journeys into Professional Musicianhood – ProQuest [Doctoral Dissertation, Oakland University]. Retrieved April 7, 2022, from https://www.proquest.com/docview/2634873371?pq-origsite=summon&accountid=14656
Abstract
Called to the Conversation is a digital ethnodrama in three movements. It is the final research product resulting from a series of interviews with nine graduates of a small liberal arts college in Detroit as conducted by their former professor. This dissertation study arose from the question: How might the curriculum of a college music department be meaningfully informed by examining the musicianship journeys of its alumni? While transcribing and exploring the nuclear episodes (McAdams, 1997), stop moments (Fels, 2019), and narrative and resonant threads (Clandinin, 2013) from these participants’ interviews, I discovered that a calling to professional musicianhood (Ansdell, 2016) leading to the pursuit of an undergraduate voice performance degree enkindled a narrative structure similar to a hero’s journey (Vogler, 2020; also Campbell, 1949/2008; Ford, 2000; Frankel, 2010). Specifically, I focused on how the interaction between the Call to Adventure (crossing the Threshold into the Otherworld of higher music education) and their Shadow fear culminated in an Ordeal to be faced before leaving the Otherworld
Sinner, A. (2021). Speculative steps with story shoes: Object itineraries as sensual a-r-tography. Educational Philosophy and Theory. https://doi.org/10.1080/00131857.2021.1872019
Abstract
Informed by understandings of affect theory, the pedagogic potential of object itineraries, or simply, the journey of things, is proposed in this case as a form of sensual a-r-tography. A pair of sporty shoes as mundane objects are at the heart of this deliberation, and the mechanism through which to consider the scope of conversations underway about more-than-human perspectives and how objects can be activated as sites of educational inquiry. The embodiment of each step in this walk is an opening to interrogate how the potential materiality of artefacts ‘enflesh’ object-body-space as artist-researcher-teacher. Mapping geographies of self-in-relation, and guided by the betweenness in landscape encounters as relational and contingent, this speculative account with theoretical perspectives is rendered through the entanglements offered by story shoes.
Keywords: Object itineraries, sensual a-r-tography, affect
Sinner, A., Irwin, R. L., Kovallevska, M., Moussavi, Y., Sarreshtehdari, E., & Yazdanpanah, E. (2021). Gradients-in-relation: Distance as continuous variations in artographic practice. In Coutts, G. & Jokela, T. (Eds.). Relate North: Distances (pp. 30-49). InSEA.
Skregelid, L. (2021). Dissensuality and affect in education. International Journal of Art & Design Education, 40(4), 690–701. https://doi.org/10.1111/JADE.12381
Abstract
This article is a contribution to arts-based approaches to education. It makes a proposition for pedagogy of dissensus, a pedagogy inspired by Jacques Rancière, that is informed by the characteristics of art that possibly enables transformations and de-territorialisations of the subject. The ongoing project My stunning stream – Made with a little mischief (2020–) combining art and running in a repetitive manner is used as a point of departure. The project is used to discuss how art-practice as a lived inquiry relying on dissensual and affective awareness can inform teaching. Important and visible parts of the project are films made about three times a week from the same spot by the sea. The article makes use of a /r/tography as an arts-based research methodology and thereby investigating the art practice from a first-person perspective. The article demonstrates the importance of embodying and living the concepts and the pedagogy one calls for.
Søyland, L. (2021). Grasping materialities: Making sense through explorative touch interactions with materials and digital technologies [Doctoral dissertation, University of South-Eastern Norway]. https://openarchive.usn.no/usn-xmlui/handle/11250/2756969
Abstract
Our senses are deeply ingrained in the materiality of the world, and our embodied minds are shaped by touch interactions with the environment. Arts and crafts education is characterized by explorative, creative processes wherein children’s and adults’ tactile and haptic experiences are central to their interactions with various materials and technologies.
In recent years, there has been a digitalization of materiality in educational settings. This digitalization involves a change from using physical materials in early childhood education (ECE) and in early childhood teacher education (ECTE) to those based in the virtual realm. There has also been renewed interest in the connection between embodied action and cognition in recent years in studies documenting learning as an embodied process. However, few empirical studies on embodied cognition have been conducted to study the sensorial and explorative aspects of interaction with the materiality of digital technologies. The overall research question of this doctoral dissertation is: How can explorative touch interactions with physical and virtual materialities facilitate processes of sense-making? The conceptual framework of this dissertation is related to the theory of embodied cognition. The theory acknowledges that we develop knowledge and make sense through our embodied minds, which are rooted in the bodies’ sensory experience. This study applies an arts-based research (ABR) methodology in order to investigate haptic and tactile experiences. The study draws inspiration from sensory ethnography and a/r/tography and is supported by video documentation.
Vanover, C. (2021). The magic of theater: Photographing a performative academic career. Cultural Studies ↔ Critical Methodologies, 21(1), 41–55. https://doi.org/10.1177/1532708620931136
Abstract
I discuss my efforts as a “good enough” photographer and describe the role photographs play communicating important moments from a series of ethnodramas I built about the Chicago Public Schools. I discuss my early efforts to use photography to legitimize my arts-based research practice, describe how my goals changed, and explain how I created images to communicate the energy of live theater. Building on Eisner’s theoretical work, I discuss three tensions of my photographic practice: intention versus improvisation, action versus artifice, and safety versus possibility. These tensions emphasize my limits as a photographer and the possibilities of arts-based research.
Yakamovich, J., & Wright, T. (2021). Care-full, convivial, curious: Weaving Canadian artists’ conceptions of art as a form of transformative environmental education. Journal of Environmental Education, 52(4), 223–238. https://doi.org/10.1080/00958964.2021.1929801
Abstract
Addressing global climate change beyond short-term fixes requires wider cultural change. Artists, as cultural workers, play a valuable role in attending to questions of social and ecological justice. While there is growing artistic engagement with environmental research, there are few studies which critically explore the confluence of contemporary art, sustainability, and informal education within Canada. Using a framework of poetics (poiesis), this study explores how an environmentally engaged arts practice is a form of transformative environmental education. We interviewed 24 current Canada-based visual, installation, and performance artists to understand how they conceptualize their role in fostering socioecological transformations. We used an inductive thematic coding scheme to analyze transcripts and compared emergent themes to current ecocritical literature. Results reveal a framework of artist-researcher-teacher as facilitator of conviviality, curiosity, and care, showing the agency of artists and a need for poetics in environmental work, research, and education.
Keywords: environmental art, environmental education, art in the Anthropocene, cultural transformation, poetics, informal education
Yanko, M. (2021). Living assessment : the artful assessment of learning in the arts [Doctoral dissertation, The University of British Columbia]. https://doi.org/10.14288/1.0396866
Abstract
Arts learning experiences often embrace a canvas of colourful interpretations and creativity that necessitate assessment practices unique to the arts. However, conventional practices (i.e., rating scales, rubrics, and checklists) struggle, or are unable, to meaningfully assess students’ creativity, imagination, and meaning making. Therefore, guided by a framework of artography and autoethnography, I developed a novel, formative means of assessment grounded in artistic thinking, doing, and making—living assessment. Living assessment encourages l’art pour l’art, and is rooted in underpinnings of pedagogical documentation, learning stories, and living inquiry. That foundation evokes three guideposts—documentation, artistry, and augmentation— to support teachers as they engage with artistic practices, tools, and frameworks to creatively illuminate values and judgments of their students’ creativity, imagination, and meaning making in arts learning experiences.