29. Research on Arts Education
Paper
University Students' Learning Lifelines as Performative Cartographies: an 'Analysis' from a Post-qualitative Approach
Judit Onsès1, Fernando Hernández-Hernández2
1University o Girona, Spain; 2University of Barcelona, Spain
Presenting Author: Onsès, Judit;
Hernández-Hernández, Fernando
This paper intends to entangle the concepts of life line and immersive cartography from a performative research paradigm with the aim to create new knowledge in a research project about how university students learn [anonymised].
Life lines, also called life maps (Worth, 2011), graphic life map (Kesby 2000; Kesby et al. 2005), life-line (Brott, 2001) or timeline (Adriansen, 2012) are considered a methodological strategy to generate biographical evidence through visual representations. Focusing on their formal sense, Frank Guerra Reyes (2019) defines them as "a diagram that shows events that have occurred throughout the biographical history of a human being" (p. 24). This implies that lifelines collect events, occurrences, situations, experiences or feelings of a person in chronological order, and may include, subsequently or simultaneously, interpretations of the events described (Gramling and Carr, 2004). In this sense, lifelines are considered a suitable tool to strengthen the analysis of subjective experiences (Guzmán-Benavente et al. 2022). All of the above links the lifelines to the social sciences' aim of "understanding social phenomena from the actors' own perspective" (Guzmán-Benavente et al., 2022, p. 2), for which it is necessary to inquire into the ways in which they experience the world. The lifelines strategy contributes to this by favouring the narration and analysis of subjective experiences.
This reporting takes place through the graphic re-enactment and accompanying conversations carried out by university students in the context of the research project [anonymised]. [anonymised]’s onto-epistemological approach is grounded on a relational and performative ethic (Geerts and Carstens, 2019). This position implies considering the "Other" as a 'being in becoming' who is a bearer of knowledge and experiences. In the research, participants can show themselves as becoming subjects in their relationships with learning and knowledge.
In some moments of the research, lifelines connected us with cartography. In recent decades, there has been an increasing interest to work with cartographies in research (e.g. Ruitenberg, 2007; Semetsky, 2013; Ulmer and Koro-Ljungberg, 2015). We understand cartography as research spaces (Hernández-Hernández et al., 2018), a place in which ‘cartographers’ take decisions (Onsès, 2014), a non-neutral territory that creates reality in the same act of cartographing. Cartography challenges us, invites us to think differently about learning and allows us to investigate the multiplicity of worlds intra-acting in a certain encounter to create new knowledge (Onsès-Segarra et al., 2020). In this line, Rousell (2021) introduces the concept of immersive cartography, in which “the qualitative is associated with transversal and transindividual movements of experience within an ecology of immanent forces and felt relations, rather than with any bounded entity” (p. xxviii).
This way to understand cartography in research has many points in common with the performative research paradigm. Trying to entangle post qualitative inquiry and artistic research, according to Ostern et al. (2021), this paradigm includes the following perspectives: “Research is understood as creation . . . The researcher is de-centered and in-becoming throughout the research process . . . The research can be produced, analysed and presented in and through several different modes and materialities for creation” (p.2). In a way that in this paradigm research is understood as “an entangled relation between researcher, researcher phenomenon and the world” (Ostern et al., 2021, p. 7), reality is not represented in research, but created (Ostern et al., 2021). Taking into account all this, we look for different ways to approach the lifelines students produced during the [anonymised] project. For this paper, we focus on an experimental analysis based on creating an immersive cartography of lifelines and sharing which ‘new knowledge’ was created.
Methodology, Methods, Research Instruments or Sources UsedIn the [anonymised] research on how young university students learn, we conducted four individual meetings with 50 young university students using a collaborative approach (Hernández-Hernández, 2017). In these encounters we invited them to: 1) dialogue with what the research says about young people's attitudes and make an approach to how and where they learn; 2) make a visual narrative of their learning trajectory in which they give an account of their learning movements (Jornet & Estard, 2018) over time and in different scenarios; 3) make a learning diary that allows them to situate their learning experiences and meanings; and, 4) collaboratively construct the narrative of their learning life trajectory.
In the second meeting, we talked about what they brought to account for their learning trajectory. This account has both a sense of trigger and onto-epistemological value and acts as a relational space that allows for multiple perspectives, conceptions, experiences and ways of understanding young people's learning, including dissonant and conflicting movements. As Jornet and Erstad (2018) point out, this methodological approach allows us to appreciate their conceptions, strategies, use of technologies and contexts associated with learning scenes.
For the analysis of the learning lifelines, the intra-action (Barad, 2007, p. 141) of the narrative interview and the visual referent must be taken into account. This implies that different strategies can be adopted to analyse this relationship. In this paper,we take the perspective of immersive cartography (Rousell, 2021), which emphasises the transformations and movements of the students and researchers, taking into account that the encounters promoted by Tray-ap are 'situated conversations'. Thus, we create a map that doesn't “really have an image or a form, but more of a sense or feeling of elements in motion” (Rousell, 2021, p. 1). A cartography that allows us to connect and entangle students’ learning life lines and move-with- and-through the dynamic milieus of their and ours life-living (Rousell, 2021).
To carry out this cartographical analysis, we use not only students’ learning life lines, but also the transcriptions of the conversations that accompanied those encounters. In addition, the immersive cartography maps the researchers’ sensations and thoughts in the moment to produce the cartography, as well as the movements, milieus and intensities with the aim to explore which knowledge is created differently than using other types of analysis.
Conclusions, Expected Outcomes or FindingsBringing this mode of 'analysis' to 3 of the learning lines has allowed us to consider that: a) the lifelines are not evidence for the research but constitute the research itself. b) they do not represent a path that has been taken or something that has already happened but are a strategy that makes it possible to continue along the path. c) they do not represent connections but create connections. d) that it does not recapitulate moments of the past, but outlines scenes of the present, which will be different tomorrow. e) that they are not objects drawn by a subject but a proposal of human and non-human agencies that generate joint materiality and that questions the representational function of the lines of learning. Approaching learning lines as immersive cartography enables us to focus on the lines, textures and layers that are generated in the encounters. It is not a matter of deciphering representations, but of accounting for what learning lines 'do', and what the action of the learning lifeline 'does'. This involves activating a new-materialist approach.
ReferencesAdriansen, H.K. (2012). Timeline interviews: A tool for conducting life history research. Qualitative Studies, 3(1), 40-55.
Barad, K. (2007). Meeting the Universe Halfway: Quantum Physics and the Entanglement of Matter and Meaning. Durham: Duke University Press.
Geerts, E., Carstens, D. (2019). Ethico-onto-epistemology. Philosophy Today, 63(4), 915-925.
Gramling, L. F., & Carr, R. L. (2004). Lifelines. A Life History Methodology. Nursing Research, 53(3), 207-210.
Guerra Reyes, F. (2019). La línea de vida: una técnica de recolección de datos cualitativa. Ecos de la Academia, 10(5), 21-29.
Guzmán Benavente, M. del R., Reynoso Vargas, K. M., Gurrola Domínguez, P. B., Maldonado Rivera, C. F. y Linares Olivas, O. L. (2022). La línea de vida como recurso metodológico. Dos ejemplos en el contexto universitario. Revista Latinoamericana de Metodología de las Ciencias Sociales, 12(1), e105.
Hernández-Hernández, F. (Coord.). (2017). ¡Y luego dicen que la escuela pública no funciona! Investigar con los jóvenes sobre cómo transitan y aprenden dentro y fuera de los centros de Secundaria. Editorial Octaedro.
Hernández-Hernández, F.; Sancho-Gil, J. M.; Domingo-Coscollola, M. (2018). Cartographies as spaces of inquiry to explore of teacher’s nomadic learning trajectories. Digital Education Review, 33, 105–119.
Jornet, A., y Erstad, O. (2018). From learning contexts to learning lives: Studying learning (dis)continuities from the perspective of the learners. Digital Education Review, 33, 1-25.
Onsès, J. (2014). La cartografia com a eina pedagògica i sistema de representació ». In: Selvas, S.; Carrasco, M. (eds.). Inter-Accions. Pràctiques col·lectives per a intervencions a l’espai urbà Reflexions d’artistes i arquitectes en un context pedagògic col·lectiu (pp. 43-50). Iniciativa Digital Politècnica. Oficina de Publicacions Acadèmiques Digitals de la UPC.
Onsès-Segarra, J., Castro-Varela, A., and Domingo-Coscollola, M. (2020). Sentidos de las cartografías. In: Hernández-Hernández, F., Aberasturi, E., Sancho-Gil, J.M., and Correa-Gorospe, J.M. (Eds.), ¿Cómo aprenden los docentes? Tránsitos entre cartografías, experiencias, corporeidades y afectos (pp. 61-70). Octaedro, S. L.
Rousell, D. (2021). Immersive Cartography and Post-Qualitative Inquiry. A Speculative Adventure in Research-Creation. Routledge.
Semetsky, I. (2013). Learning with Bodymind. Constructing the Cartographies of the Unthought. In: Masny, D. (ed.). Cartographies of Becoming in Education: A Deleuze-Guattari Perspective (pp. 77-92). Sense Publisher.
Ulmer, J. B.; Koro-Ljungberg, M. (2015). Writing Visually Through (Methodological) Events and Cartography. Qualitative Inquiry, 21( 2), 138-152. doi: 10.1177/1077800414542706
Worth, N. (2011) Evaluating life maps as a versatile method for life course geographies’ Area 43(4), 405-412.
29. Research on Arts Education
Paper
Rural Youth Cinema: Using Ethnographic Video Documentary as an Arts Educational Medium in Rural Youth Art Work
Diederik Mark De Ceuster, Tobias Frenssen
University College Leuven Limburg, Belgium
Presenting Author: De Ceuster, Diederik Mark;
Frenssen, Tobias
Context
There is a need to think about youth art work in rural areas. Youth work organisations that focus on arts education are mostly absent in rural contexts, and are concentrated in urban areas instead. In this paper, we will address this by presenting a new “research in practice” project, funded by the EU’s Erasmus+ programme, in which various youth work organisations are investigating the value of ethnographic documentary making as a creative tool for bringing rural youth art work in the spotlight. We are working together with several other organisations in Europe. These are three organisations that work with youngsters: Limerick Youth Service in Ireland, Asociatia Curba de Cultură in Romania, Theaterhuis Mals Vlees in Belgium. Lastly, the umbrella organisation ECYC (European Confederation of Youth Clubs) is contributing to the dissemination of the project once the first documentaries are ready. Currently, we are in the first of two years of the project, which we have named Rural Youth Cinema.
Rationale
Whereas the use and value of other ethnographic methods in arts education and youth work (such as ethno-fictive writing, or using drawing as an ethnographic method) have been well established in academic literature, ethnographic video documentary has received relatively little academic attention so far. After all, it has only been in recent years that video making has become so accessible and widely available, especially to younger populations. With smartphone cameras getting increasingly more advanced with each year, and video platforms such as YouTube, Instagram and TikTok still on the rise, many youngsters have already been in contact with video content, both as consumers and creators. While in previous years, documentary making was not a financially feasible medium to work with in most youth clubs, nowadays the youngsters themselves already come fully equipped.
Goals and research questions
The aim of the Erasmus+ project Rural Youth Cinema is to scrutinise audio-visual, ethnographic documentation as a means of highlighting the importance of arts education and youth work in rural regions, and moreover to explore its potential as a flexible and open creative outlet that is empowering for youngsters in all kinds of populations. To that end, together with the various partners throughout Europe, we are developing a qualitative methodology that guides young people in making ethnographic documentaries. Although several guides for documentary making that are aimed at youngsters certainly exist, these are usually only focussed on technical elements, such as camera settings, use of artificial light, camera angles and editing techniques. While these are important aspects which, when learned, can boost artistic expression, it is our goal to also study the educative and communicative effects of documentary making with youngsters. What does it mean to make documentaries with young, sometimes disadvantaged, people? How can documentary making promote and contribute to other arts education youth work activities? And above all, how can these documentaries be used to open up debates about the significance and sustainability of rural youth work and arts education?
Methodology, Methods, Research Instruments or Sources UsedFor this project, we have opted to use a flexible methodology, on the one hand to pragmatically accommodate for the differences in the ways the various organisations operate, but more importantly we wish to consider this project as an explorative and fundamental study on the value of ethnographic documentary in youth work, in which the specific results and recommendations were still unknown at the start of the project. What was clear from the start, however, was the choice to focus on ethnography as a broad direction for the documentaries to adopt. As with ethnographic or ethno-fictive writing, ethnographic documentary making has the ability to not just give a voice to the author/documentary makers, but to give prominence to this voice (or voices) within the local environment. The makers (i.e. the youngsters) are on camera themselves, as they are moving and interacting in their community. As such, the documentary making is not just a creative practice, but one that visualises the relations between the artistic medium itself (video documentary) and the context, environment and day-to-day work in which it takes place.
In the first phase of this project, we put the emphasis on experimentation and learning of filming techniques. As our youth is familiar with smartphones, we chose to embrace a certain DIY approach, starting off with very short videos as fragments of a videographic diary. These first experiments then serve as the inspiration for the making of more full-fledged documentaries in the second phase. In total, six documentaries will be made, which will be shown and distributed in the three participating countries.
Following from these documentaries, a qualitative guide will be developed in which the various challenges and opportunities for such a documentary project are discussed. As such, the activities and the documentary work done by the various partners can be seen as test case studies, in which both practical and artistic elements of documentary making are mapped and analysed. Underlying all objectives and questions is the desire to create synergies between the various approaches in youth work and ethnographic documentary making, and to use this hands-on project as an explorative study of the medium’s potential.
Conclusions, Expected Outcomes or FindingsAs the various case studies are still ongoing and the qualitative guide is yet to be developed, our conclusions and results are merely surmising and preliminary in nature. That being said, we can already see the great potential of this video ethnographic methodology. First of all, like photography, videography has a certain directness as one only has to press ‘record’, and content creation has started. As such, it can be a more adaptive artistic form, requiring less planning and instead allowing for reacting to more ephemeral elements (i.e., whatever happens to be taking place in front of the camera). Yet, with the focus on ethnography the makers are also forced to consider their own position, their agency and their relation to the subjects they are documenting. From an arts educative perspective, this combination can be very interesting, as the medium is both outward-looking and introspective, both creative and reflective.
What is more, we have the belief that through this documentary practice, issues that otherwise stay invisible can be revealed. Each of the organisations performing the first video experiments in the first phase, seek to address local issues in the second phase. For example, Limerick Youth Service found that in their day-to-day work they were confronted with the tensions between the settled community and the travellers in Limerick, and through this video documentation, with interviews and reflections, they used this project as a step towards building bridges. In similar fashion, the youth organisation Asociatia Curba de Cultură addressed the conservative school system in rural Romania through interviews with local youth. As such, this project has the potential of drawing attention to various important themes in youth work and education, such as the sustainability and ecology of rural youth work at large, and the documentation of youth art projects.
ReferencesAdams, T.E., Holman Jones, S., & Ellis, C. (Eds.). (2021). Handbook of Autoethnography (2nd ed.). Routledge.
Barbash, I., & Taylor, L. (1997). Cross-cultural filmmaking: A handbook for making documentary and ethnographic films and videos. University of California Press.
Causey, A. (2017). Drawn to see: Drawing as an ethnographic method. University of Toronto Press.
Kelly, P. (2016). Creativity and autoethnography: Representing the self in documentary practice. Screen Thought: A journal of image, sonic, and media humanities, 1(1), 1-9.
Lee-Wright, P. (2009). The documentary handbook. Routledge.
Lin, C. C., & Polaniecki, S. (2009). From Media Consumption to MediaProduction: Applications of YouTube™ in an Eighth-Grade Video Documentary Project. Journal of Visual Literacy, 28(1), 92-107.
Pyles, D. G. (2016). Rural media literacy: Youth documentary videomaking as a rural literacy practice. Journal of Research in Rural Education (Online), 31(7), 1.
Sancho-Gil, J. M., & Hernández-Hernández, F. (Eds.). (2020). Becoming an educational ethnographer: The challenges and opportunities of undertaking research. Routledge.
Trivelli, C., & Morel, J. (2021). Rural youth inclusion, empowerment, and participation. The Journal of Development Studies, 57(4), 635-649.
VanSlyke-Briggs, K. (2009). Consider ethnofiction. Ethnography and Education, 4(3), 335-345.
29. Research on Arts Education
Paper
“Flexing my Creativity”: Young People’s Literacy and Self-Concept in a Collaborative Writing Intervention
Yvonne Skipper1, Joe Reddington2
1University of Glasgow, United Kingdom; 2eQuality time
Presenting Author: Skipper, Yvonne
Literacy is fundamental to human development as it enables people to live full and meaningful lives and contribute to their communities and society. Literacy is also essential for learning, as much of our learning is mediated through texts and writing is a key medium for communication. Furthermore, nearly all job postings indicate a need for writing skills in job descriptions, for example “excellent written communication skills” under preferred requirements (Messum et al., 2016). However, around 70 million Europeans lack adequate reading and writing skills (European Skills Agenda, 2020). A recent report from the World Literacy Foundation (2022) shows that literacy difficulties cost the global economy 1.1 trillion euros in 2015.
Creative writing can both rehearse young people’s existing writing and literacy skills and inspire them to develop those skills. There is a consistent positive association between writing skills and academic performance (e.g., Bangert-Drowns, Hurley, & Wilkinson, 2004). Moreover, “professional and academic success in all disciplines depends, at least in part, upon writing skills” (Cho & Schunn, 2007, p.409). However, by age 11 years, around 20% of pupils do not perform at expected levels for their age group in writing, spelling, grammar and punctuation (Department for Education, 2018). More alarmingly, only 50% of young people report enjoying writing (Clark & Teravainen, 2016).
Therefore, a key question for educators is to understand how we can enhance the development of writing and literacy skills and simultaneously encourage young people to feel more positive and enthusiastic about writing. This paper reports on a trial of an innovative approach, White Water Writers (WWW), that aims to do both things by giving groups of young people the experience of collaboratively writing and publishing a full-length novel. The key contribution of the intervention is that it can achieve this in a week’s concentrated effort. WWW is based on Ryan and Deci’s (2000) Self-Determination Theory (SDT) which posits that humans have an inherent tendency towards growth. Three needs; autonomy, competence and relatedness, must be satisfied to facilitate growth and foster wellbeing, motivation, and positive psychological functioning. This talk will explore the impact that the intervention has on writing and the psychological and broader benefits of the intervention: specifically, the impact that it had on self-efficacy, self-concept and feelings about other group members. It also measures the impact that the project has on academic performance.
Furthermore, WWW has also developed into a novel research method. By giving our participants autonomy over the content of their novels we have been able to use their books to learn more about what they think about different topics. Some of our recent novels have explored what it is to be human, how the pandemic has impacted life, societal inequality and how people cope with the end of the world. As the plots are fully developed by our authors, they allow us to explore their views on these important topics. Therefore, we have developed a novel method to research our authors views on important topics. We have used this research method to explore our authors views on inequality. Therefore, in this talk we will also discuss the themes of these novels.
Methodology, Methods, Research Instruments or Sources UsedParticipants
Participants were N=272 young people from 26 schools. Participants were aged 8 to 17 and 140 were male. Participants completed questionnaires before the intervention and immediately after the intervention.
We also analysed a sub-set of the novels produced by the writers, particularly focussing on 5 which explored inequality.
Measures
Participants completed a questionnaire examining their self-efficacy in different domains, their self-esteem (Piers Harris Children’s Self-Concept Scale, Second Edition (Piers-Harris 2, 2002) and locus of control (Nowicki & Strickland, 1971). They were also asked about their feelings about working and socialising with group members.
We also collected data on predicted performance of a sub-group of pupils at the beginning and end of the school year. This was provided by teachers.
Novels were analysed using thematic analysis.
White Water Writers Process
Participants plan their novel on Monday. They develop the plot and characters and plan the chapters of their novel. Each participant takes control of a character. On Tuesday and Wednesday, participants write their novel using specialised software. They begin by producing bullet points which give extra detail on what happens in each chapter. They then flesh out these bullet points to produce the text. On Thursday, the participants proofread their novel, checking for spelling and punctuation errors and issues with the plot. On Friday they complete a final check of the novel and create the blurb, author biographies etc. We have professional illustrators produce the cover of the novel based on a description from the participants. The book is placed for sale online. Authors receive reviews of their work and people can purchase copies of their novel, with any profits being split between the authors to keep or donate to charity. We also host a book signing event where we present authors with professionally printed copies of their work. At this, they do a reading from the novel and friends and family can have their books signed by the authors.
Conclusions, Expected Outcomes or FindingsA paired samples t test was used to explore changes in each of the variables from pre- to post-test. Results indicated that changes pre- to post-test were significant and positive for self-efficacy of writing, communication, working under pressure, teamwork, locus of control and feelings about working with group members, with small to medium effect sizes. Differences were not significant for self-esteem or feelings about socialising with group members.
A paired samples t test was also used to explore changes in predicted performance at the beginning and end of the end of the year. Results suggested that participants performed better than predicted, with a large effect size.
In terms of the novels, various forms of inequality were explored, mainly financial inequality and racial difference, which in the novels was explored through differences in eye colour.
In novels where financial inequality was explored, the rich were portrayed as being unfeeling for the suffering of others and disconnected from the world. The poorer people were often portrayed as being more happy and fulfilled in personal relationships compared to the wealthy. These novels typically involved some sort of rebellion against the rich organised by the young people. However, interestingly, after the rebellion the writers did not seem to be clear on what would change and how society would then function.
In terms of racial inequality, characters in the novels often showed overtly racist attitudes. However, often the young characters of the novels see beyond race and again try to change the status quo, again without always being clear how this would change society.
ReferencesBangert-Drowns, R. L., Hurley, M. & Majee, Z. (2004). The Effects of School-Based Writing-to-Learn Interventions on Academic Achievement: A Meta-Analysis. Review of Educational Research 74(1):29-58. https://doi/.org/10.3102/00346543074001029
Cho, S. & Schunn, C. D. (2007). Scaffolded writing and rewriting in the discipline: A web-based reciprocal peer review system. Computers & Education 48, 409–426. https://doi.org/10.1109/icalt.2004.1357474
Clark, C. and Teravainen, A. (2017). Enjoyment of Writing and its Link to Wider Writing: Findings from our Annual Literacy Survey 2016. London: National Literacy Trust.
Department for Education (2018). National curriculum assessments at key stage 2 in England, 2018 (revised).https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/774446/KS2_Revised_2018_text_MATS_20190130.pdf
Ryan, R. M. & Deci, E. L. (2000). Self-Determination Theory and the Facilitation of Intrinsic Motivation, Social Development, and Well-Being. American Psychologist 55(1), 68-78. https://doi.org/10.1037/0003-066X.55.1.68
29. Research on Arts Education
Video
"Articulation" - Reflections on Artistic Doing Through a Collaborative Short-film Production with Students.
Bárbara Carmo
FBAUP - I2ADS, Portugal
Presenting Author: Carmo, Bárbara
The aim of this proposal is to share “Articulation” through video. “Articulation” is an animation practice in a collaborative production with pupils. I used video to document and reflect on the challenges of collaborative practice in arts education classes as part of formal school education. Video is used as a documentation process through this practice, which includes the participants as active members in producing memories for research reflections.
”Articulation” is one of the practices developed as a part of my Ph.D. in Arts Education at the Faculty of Fine Arts at the University of Porto. This practice has involved middle school students from the 7th to the 9th grade in the cities of Braga and Gaia in Northern Portugal, from 2018 until today, and teachers of Visual Education classes, including myself.
The purpose of the practices developed was to reconfigure school curricula for the duration of one year. Instead of keep doing Visual Education classes based on short-term exercises or small projects that test pupil skills and technical abilities in visual arts, I intended to deal with the curricula collaboratively, on a short-film animation production with students. With these practices, we wanted to deviate from the positive and predictable rhetorical effects and learnings of their curricula (Gatzambide-Fernandez, 2013, p.215). We based our practice on the uncertainties of the learnings and the artistic ‘doings’. Instead of respecting the need to complete the project, we assumed that we need to value the artistic learning processes of the students. We managed the tasks collaboratively. We purposely did not establish a rigid schedule of tasks, taking the risk of not finishing the animated shorts in time. We did not correspond with a perfect articulation of this project with the school curriculum themes, nor with the illusion that all students must learn to perform the same tasks.
As Baldacchino stated, learning “(…) cannot entertain an end-objective (…)” or “(…)entertain an accumulation of knowns achieved through a process that eliminates the unknowns.” (Baldacchino, 2019, p.43) The intention was to experience gestures of artistic education that aim to be collective (Bishop, 2012, p-93-99) and resist instrumentalized practices (Baldacchino,2019, p.x), segmentary and sedimented subjects as well as the exclusive individualism approach to the student’s technical and personal skills which is currently present in the process of educating arts in Portugal in mass formal education (Martins, 2011, p.235-237). In contrast, I aimed to activate practices ”that understand the impact of learning, beyond the institution .” as Jake Watts (2018) proposes. As part of my research, this video reflection mobilizes the challenges of constituting a participatory practice in schools beyond the interactive and the active /passive binary of participation (Bishop, 2012, p.93); based on my diary reflections on that matter (Carmo, 2022). Through these moving image records, I discuss the tensions and conflicts that such collaborative practice poses to elitist and a technocratic way of teaching, doing, and thinking about arts and arts education practices. I have been bringing to the reflection of this research the diversity of doing and thinking the artistic, in a transdisciplinary way, and thinking about the importance of relativizing what it is to be artistic, and what is artistic doing to young students. As my theoretical concepts, I have been searching to develop and questioning the ephemeral, the invisible learnings, the sensitivities that a scale cannot measure or an evaluation grid (Ranciére, 2010), the impact and the differentiation of long-term projects in the pupils’ life (Mörsch, 2009), the unpredictable (Watts, 2014) and the risks, within a school system over bureaucratic, and over planned by the institutionalization of the art education. (Baldacchino, 2019, p.13)
Methodology, Methods, Research Instruments or Sources UsedI use video as a tool for documenting through the participant's eye what’s happening in my art education classes. This particular video plays with the boundaries of reality and fiction because I use the footage and images taken by the students and the teachers in different classes, and parts of the animation short films that resulted from the project. I reflect with and through the documentation images, and I set a video essay with them to show. I intended to make sure that the audience understand that this film is just one of the possible narratives that could be brought for presenting these practices. This tool helped me to see and think about the experiences in the classroom through other participants' perspectives, and to be aware of things that I didn’t understand at the moment. As the form chosen for this presentation, video allows the audience to enter in participants' eyes and to be aware of my reflections in the moment of the practice and the experiences. When I choose to use video as a method for research, I ask participants to collect their contributions freely, of what they want, and whenever they want. They were encouraged to develop their own preferences regarding visualities and poetics in the images captured. We have collected testimonials of the participants in memory diaries and reports in every classroom session. I also presented through video, other videos and projects of dissemination done by the teachers to present the animation project to school community. The quotes presented in the movie have been extracted from comments and opinions that have been expressed during the process of the project; preferring this strategy over an intrusive inquiry or interview that might break the flow of the class. Their workflow, their participation, and their presence in the project have been reflected also and commented on in the video.
The practice-based approach of my project follows the aim to turn my research as artistic as possible and to dissolve the project within the school community. This turns a balance move for the way the artistic is experienced in schools. My practice is focused on long-term projects within the school community, rather than single workshops, exclusive visits to an art exhibition, or short-term projects. My presence in schools as an artist invited and as an art teacher merged, and I became one more teacher through the pupils' school year.
Conclusions, Expected Outcomes or FindingsThis video presents a view of my practice-based research and does not intend to present a one-fits-all formula practice or reveal the positive effects of an experience. Instead, it aims to demonstrate the awareness of the sensitivities of the relations, the ephemeral, the unexpected workflows, and the representations that have been left apart from the academic research, if not shown by video. It is a capture of its movement, its visualities, and its poetics. During the processes of arts education practices, they used to be left apart if they were being transformed into a text, a paper, or a flyer. We intended to formulate questions rather than answers. We aim to share and create a dialogue of experiences to do justice to their diversity and their singularities. We experiment with the ‘doing of the artistic’ in schools as a way to resist the controlling of arts, to the programming and segmentation in school curricula.
In a normalized approach, artistic used to produce: exclusive, limited, and fragmented moments of engagement. My year-long presence and the integration of the animation project with continuity make students realize that they are no longer responding to a large number of predictable tasks, for short periods of time. This project becomes theirs, as the decisions are taken by them every step of the way, and they feel control over what is to be made in the next class session in order to continue.
ReferencesBaldacchino, J. (2019). Art as unlearning: towards a mannerist pedagogy. Abingdon, Oxon; New York, NY: Routledge, Taylor and Francis Group.
Bishop, C. (2012). Artificial Hells: Participatory art and the politics of spectatorship. 1ªed. London: Verso.
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