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29 SES 12 A: Performing gender and sexuality through arts
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29. Research on Arts Education
Paper I am a Good Mother: Maternal Performance and the Reproduction of Patriarchy Through Musical Mothering of Chinese Mothers Institute of Curriculum and Instruction, East China Normal University, China, People's Republic of Presenting Author:In contemporary China, children’s education has become a key arena through which middle-class families pursue social mobility, moral respectability, and cultural distinction. Within this context, mothers increasingly assume primary responsibility for managing children’s educational and extracurricular trajectories, particularly in culturally valued domains such as piano education. While existing studies document parental involvement in children’s music learning and its cognitive and cultural benefits, less attention has been paid to how such involvement operates as a gendered moral practice. Feminist scholarship conceptualizes motherhood as a socially constructed role shaped by ideals of “good motherhood,” emphasizing intensive care, emotional devotion, and self-sacrifice—expectations further intensified in East Asian societies marked by Confucian family values and educational competition. Piano education thus offers a revealing site to examine how maternal care becomes moralized and gendered. This study addresses an empirical gap by exploring how Chinese middle-class mothers perform “good motherhood” through musical mothering and how these practices reproduce, negotiate, or subtly challenge patriarchal relations within family life. 2. Research Aims and Questions This study investigates Chinese mothers’ involvement in their children’s piano education. It seeks to explore how these mothers perform “good motherhood” through their musical mothering and, in turn, how such practices contribute to the reproduction of patriarchal power. Accordingly, the following research questions were formulated: RQ1: How do Chinese mothers perform “good motherhood” through their musical mothering practices, and what motivates these performance? RQ2: In what ways does musical mothering of Chinese mothers contribute to the reproduction of patriarchal power within family life? 3. Theoretical Framework The study draws on the concepts of doing gender (West & Zimmerman, 1987) and gender performativity (Butler, 2011). From this perspective, motherhood is understood as a situated and ongoing accomplishment produced through repeated social practices. Musical mothering is conceptualized as a gendered performance through which maternal virtue, responsibility, and moral worth are enacted and evaluated. This framework allows for an analysis of both structural reproduction and maternal agency, capturing how power operates through everyday affective and moral labor rather than overt coercion. 4. Methodology This research adopts a qualitative methodology grounded in interpretative phenomenology. Data will be collected through participant observation and in-depth interviews with approximately eleven Chinese middle-class mothers who are primarily responsible for their children’s piano education. Participants will be recruited using purposive and snowball sampling, with inclusion criteria focusing on mothers’ educational background, family income, and sustained involvement in children’s piano learning. Participant observation will take place in piano lesson settings and, where possible, in domestic contexts to capture everyday practices and interactions. Semi-structured interviews will be conducted face-to-face, beginning with open-ended prompts and followed by emergent questions to elicit rich narratives of experience. Data will be analyzed using Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA), following systematic stages of familiarization, coding, theme development, and interpretative synthesis. Ethical approval will be obtained, and informed consent will be secured from all participants. 5. Expected Contributions This study is expected to contribute to research on motherhood, gender, and education by illuminating how patriarchal power is reproduced through intimate, morally charged parenting practices rather than explicit domination. By foregrounding mothers’ lived experiences of musical mothering, the study offers a nuanced account of how care, love, and sacrifice become mechanisms of gendered governance, while also highlighting moments of negotiation and agency within patriarchal constraints. The findings will be relevant to feminist sociology, music education research, and broader debates on gender, family, and social reproduction in contemporary China. Methodology, Methods, Research Instruments or Sources Used This study adopts a qualitative research design grounded in interpretative phenomenology, aiming to explore Chinese middle-class mothers’ lived experiences of musical mothering in children’s piano education and the gendered meanings attached to these practices. An Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA) framework (Smith et al., 2022) was employed to capture how participants make sense of their everyday mothering practices and moral self-understandings. Data were collected through participant observation and in-depth, semi-structured interviews with eleven Chinese middle-class mothers. Purposive sampling combined with snowball sampling was used to recruit participants who were primarily responsible for their children’s piano education, whose children had received piano instruction for more than one year, and who met defined middle-class criteria in terms of education and employment. Participant observation was conducted in both institutional (piano lessons) and domestic settings, facilitated by the researcher’s role as a piano teacher, allowing access to mothers’ everyday practices and interactions. In-depth interviews were conducted face-to-face, beginning with a broad, open-ended prompt and followed by emergent, iterative questioning to elicit rich narrative accounts. All interviews were audio-recorded, transcribed verbatim, and analyzed using IPA procedures, including familiarization, inductive and deductive coding, theme development, pattern recognition, and interpretative narrative construction. Field notes from observations were used as supplementary data to enhance contextual understanding and analytic depth. Ethical approval was obtained from the researcher’s institution, and informed consent was secured from all participants. Conclusions, Expected Outcomes or Findings This study concludes that Chinese middle-class mothers’ involvement in children’s piano education constitutes a deeply gendered and moralized practice through which “good motherhood” is continuously performed and evaluated. Drawing on interpretative phenomenological analysis, the findings show that musical mothering operates not merely as educational support but as a key site where gender norms, class aspirations, and patriarchal power are reproduced through everyday maternal labor. The study identifies three interrelated strategies through which mothers perform “good motherhood”: cultivating children’s cultural taste and future-oriented capital, providing intensive and devotional care through time- and labor-intensive supervision, and engaging in emotional regulation that oscillates between positive guidance and disciplinary control. These practices are structured by a dual system of accountability. Externally, mothers are subject to social scrutiny and stigmatization shaped by norms of intensive and “scientific” mothering. Internally, they internalize these norms as moral self-identities, generating persistent feelings of anxiety and guilt that further discipline their parenting practices. Importantly, the findings demonstrate that patriarchal power is reproduced less through overt coercion than through the moralization of maternal care and sacrifice. Mothers often cede major educational decision-making to fathers, rationalize paternal absence through gendered narratives of breadwinning and expertise, and individualize structural inequality by embracing self-sacrificing “supermom” ideals. At the same time, the study reveals moments of negotiation and quiet resistance. By redefining the moral meaning of persistence, loosening control, or discontinuing piano education, some mothers subtly rework dominant expectations of good motherhood and reclaim limited agency within patriarchal constraints. Overall, the study contributes to feminist and sociological understandings of motherhood by revealing how gendered power is sustained through intimate, affective, and morally charged parenting practices, while also highlighting mothers’ reflexive capacities to negotiate these structures in everyday life. References Bourdieu, P. (1984). Distinction: A social critique of the judgement of taste (R. Nice, Trans.). Harvard University Press. Butler, J. (2011). Gender trouble: Feminism and the subversion of identity. Routledge. Cho, E. (2015). What do mothers say? Korean mothers’ perceptions of children’s participation in extra-curricular musical activities. Music Education Research, 17(2), 162–178. Daminger, A. (2019). The cognitive dimension of household labor. American Sociological Review, 84(4), 609–633. Douglas, S. J., & Michaels, M. W. (2004). The mommy myth: The idealization of motherhood and how it has undermined all women. Free Press. Hays, S. (1996). The cultural contradictions of motherhood. Yale University Press. Ilari, B. (2013). Concerted cultivation and music learning: Global issues and local variations. Research Studies in Music Education, 35(2), 179–196. Lareau, A. (2011). Unequal childhoods: Class, race, and family life (2nd ed.). University of California Press. Savage, S. (2024). Musical mothering: Intergenerational strategies amongst the middle classes. Palgrave Macmillan. Savage, S., & Hall, C. A. (2017). Thinking about and beyond the cultural contradictions of motherhood through musical mothering. In L. Ross, M. J. Rose, & J. Hartmann (Eds.), Music of motherhood: History, healing, and activism (pp. 32–50). Demeter Press. Smith, J. A., Flowers, P., & Larkin, M. (2022). Interpretative phenomenological analysis: Theory, method and research (2nd ed.). Sage. West, C., & Zimmerman, D. H. (1987). Doing gender. Gender & Society, 1(2), 125–151. Zhang, W. (2020). Shadow education in the service of tiger parenting: Strategies used by middle-class families in China. European Journal of Education, 55(3), 388–404. 29. Research on Arts Education
Paper Masculinities and Subject Positionings in Boys’ Performance in the Visual Arts Classroom University of Gothenburg, Sweden Presenting Author:The Pisa survey shows that equivalence has deteriorated in Swedish schools (SOU 2025:19) and the National Evaluation in Arts Education (The Swedish Agency for Education 2015) shows a gender gap in study results in the school subject visual arts to the detriment of boys. Previous research in the field of gender perspectives on visual arts education shows how the subject has been gendered throughout the history of the subject (Saar, 2005; Wikberg,2014). Studies by Hellman (2017) demonstrate how students can transcend gender norms of masculinity by creating video diaries, using popular culture. Objectives Several studies on gender and student behavior in school (Holm, 2008; Skarre Aasebø, 2010; Zimmerman, 2018) acknowledge the issue of anti-school culture and the culture of effortless achievement among boys. These behaviors can be understood as connected to hegemonic masculinities. Öhrn and Asp-Onsjö (2014) notes how the hegemonic and accepted ways of performing masculinity in school balance study efforts and social positionings. This could be explained as an expression of a postindustrial society. Aim and research questions The overall aim of the study is to contribute to knowledge about the conditions for equivalence in visual arts education in grades 7–9 in Swedish compulsory school, with a focus on both students’, especially boys’, participation and the visual arts teacher’s didactic considerations. The specified aim of the study is to investigate boys’ subject positionings (Foucault, 1982) and performative stagings (Butler, 2007; Hellman, 2017) of self in the school subject visual arts. This, to understand the conditions for participation in visual arts education and further reflect on what kind of possibilities there are to encourage boys’ engagement in the subject by encouraging the use of different multimodal forms of expressions. The aim of the study is achieved through the following questions: • What subject positionings are assumed and staged by boys in the subject visual arts in the teaching situations where the study is conducted? Theoretical framework: The main focus of the study is to understand prerequisites for boys’ participation in the subject visual arts in compulsory school. To achieve this, I use theories about masculinities to comprehend the social regulations and norms that influence boys’ behavior and performative stagings (Butler, 2007) in school. The theories applied in this study are mainly within a poststructural framework. This approach stems from my interest in the gaps and inbetweens within the social structures of the visual arts classroom, where cracks and openings for change can occur. These theories are framed within this study through the concepts of affordance (Gibson, 1979/2015), liminal space (Turner, 1982; Maddison, 2020) and lines of flight (Deleuze & Guattari, 1988). To understand how these concepts unfold concretely in the investigated contexts, I use the theory of performativity (Butler, 2007) to reflect on the material in the study. Here the concepts subject positionings and agency (Foucault, 1987/2003) as well as affordance (Gibson, 1979/2015) are significant. The dynamics of subject positionings and agency are analyzed using multimodal social semiotic theory (Kress & van Leeuwen, 2001), which helps to examine how these are expressed in films and videos created by the students. Connell’s (2005) theory of hegemonic masculinity is utilized to understand how different masculini-ties relate to hegemonic structures.
Methodology, Methods, Research Instruments or Sources Used Method The method of this study is visual ethnography with autoethnographic parts due to me having several positionings as artist, researcher and teacher (Irwin & De Cosson, 2004) in the visual arts classes where the study was conducted. Participatory observations took place during the period of 2019–2021. In total, 81 students in grade 7–9 participated in the study. The main focus of the observations was one class in 8th grade and students in three classes in grade 9. I observed a total of 40 lessons, where every lesson lasted 90 minutes. Observations in the form of written text and sketches were used to capture different teaching situations in the classroom but also conversations with the students (Fors & Bäckström, 2017). The empirical material produced consists of participatory observations, fieldnotes and sketches, photographic documentations and students’ art works. The study is conducted as a visual ethnography (Pink, 2013) but also partially an autoethnography (Chang, 2016) since I study my own work as a visual arts teacher. Methods used are participatory observation where data is produced through both written field notes and visual field notes in the form of reflective sketches (Calvo, 2017) from my teaching in the classroom. In the material is included photo documentation of the students’ artistic works such as drawings, paintings, sculptures and films. In addition, there are also influences from the students’ visual culture in the form of artefacts and documents from digital learning platforms. Screenshots from students’ photographs and films are processed by me in watercolor as part of the de-dentification of the students. In my research I have adhered to the general aspects of ethical considerations that were followed by me throughout this study. These included following guidelines of ethics from the Swedish Research Council (2017), obtaining consent from students and their parents, deidentification of the participating students in the research material, and an ethical approach towards participants, the empirical material produced, and the visual and textual presentation of the study. Thus, following the ethical guidelines concerning information, consent and confidentiality, the students could end their participation any time. Being both artist, teacher and researcher, inspired by an a/r/tographic triangulation (Spring gay, Irwin & Wilson Kind, 2005), at the same time called for careful ethical consideration, as it was important that the students didn’t feel obliged to take part in the study due to me being their teacher. Conclusions, Expected Outcomes or Findings Findings Expected findings are related to use of an expanded classroom (Palmér 2024). The findings show notable changes in how the students stage themselves in the visual arts classroom, shifting from more macho- and antischool positionings to more helpful and caring student positionings. When other spaces for learning were made available for the students outside of the physical classroom, which created affordances in the teaching, the students positioned themselves differently in the visual arts classroom. Variations in stagings within the classroom setting were also observed, depending on where and with whom they were working. Sitting in smaller groups and other smaller rooms facilitated lines of flight to both more helpful collaborations and, at times, cultures of effortless achievements. The affordance of the mode of film-making made available a range of different semiotic resources for meaning-making, such as environment, body, voice, movement, facial and bodily expressions, clothes, other props and shifting camera angles. The intertwining of the students’ visual culture, the camera’s affordance, and the diverse locations created liminal spaces that disrupted traditional school norms of masculinity. This broader range of subject positionings was partially reintegrated into the visual arts classroom, with digital tools acting as a bridge to more diverse stagings. References Butler, J. (2007). Genustrubbel. Göteborg: Daidalos förlag. Calvo, M. (2017). Reflective Drawing as a Tool for Reflection in Design Research. International Journal of Art & Design Education, 36(3), 261–272. DOI: 10.1111/jade.12161 Chang, H. (2016). Autoethnography as method. New York: Routledge. Connell, R. & Messerschmidt, J. (2005). Hegemonic Masculinity: Rethinking the Concept. Gender and Society, 19(6), 829-859. Deleuze, G., & Guattari, F. (1988). A thousand plateaus: Capitalism and schizophrenia. London: Athlone. Foucault, M. (1982). The Subject and Power. Critical Inquiry, 8(4), (Summer, 1982), 777–795. University of Chicago Press. Foucault, M. (1987/2003). Övervakning och straff: fängelsets födelse. Lund: Arkiv. Gibson, J. (1979/2015). The ecological approach to visual perception. Psychology Press & Routledge Classic Editions. Hellman, A. (2017). Visuella möjlighetsrum gymnasieelevers subjektsskapande i bild och medieundervisning [Doktorsavhandling]. (Gothenburg studies in educational sciences, 399). Institutionen för pedagogik, kommunikation och lärande, Göteborgs universitet. Irwin, R. L. & De Cosson, A. (2004). A/r/tography: Rendering Self Through Arts-based Living Inquiry. Pacific Educational Press Kress, G. & van Leeuwen, T. (2001). Multimodal discourse. The modes and media of contemporary communication. London: Hodder education. Madison, D. S. (2020). Critical ethnography. Method, Ethics and Performance (3rd edition). Los Angeles: Sage. Palmér, L. (2024). Expanderande klassrum: En didaktisk studie om killars deltagande i bildundervisning [Licentiatuppsats]. ArtMonitor: Göteborgs universitet. Pink, S. (2013). Doing visual ethnography. SAGE publications. Saar, T. (2008). Skapandets ramar. I: M. Norberg (red.), Maskulinitet på schemat – pojkar, flickor och könsskapande i förskola och skola. Stockholm: Liber. Skarre Aasebø, T. (2011). Anti-schoolness in context: the tension between the youth project and the qualifications project. Social Psychology of Education, 14(4), 503–518. DOI: 10.1007/s11218-011-9153-3 Skolverket [The National Agency for Education] (2015). Bild, musik och slöjd i grundskolan. En sammanfattande analys av de nationella ämnesutvärderingarna. Rapport 426. Stockholm: Skolverket. SOU 2025:19 Kunskap för alla – nya läroplaner med fokus på undervisning och lärande. Stockholm: Regeringskansliet. Vetenskapsrådet (2017). God forskningssed. Stockholm: Vetenskapsrådet. Wikberg, S. (2014). Bland själporträtt och parafraser; Om kön och skolans bildundervisning [Doktorsavhandling]. Institutionen för estetiska ämnen, Umeå universitet. Zimmerman, F. (2018). Det tillåtande och det begränsande : en studie om pojkars syn på studier och ungdomars normer kring maskulinitet [Doktorsavhandling]. Acta Universitatis Gothoburgensis, Göteborgs universitet. 29. Research on Arts Education
Paper School of Love and Craft. A Collective Artistic Study of Love and Sexual Reproduction LUCA School of Arts, Belgium Presenting Author:The School of Love & Craft is an artistic research project developed at the request of the Flemish Government delegation in Mozambique. The project addresses sexual and reproductive health not as a field of instruction or behavioural intervention, but as a complex, lived and relational terrain that can be explored through artistic forms of inquiry. While sexual and reproductive health is widely addressed through policy, education, and service provision, many approaches remain grounded in normative frameworks that privilege clarity, outcomes, and predefined values. This project departs from such models by situating art as a mode of research capable of engaging uncertainty, multiplicity, and affect. The central objective of the School of Love & Craft is to create conditions in which dominant discourses on love, sexuality, and reproduction, whether traditional, biomedical, or Western, can be made perceptible and momentarily unsettled. Rather than aiming to replace these discourses with alternative truths, the project seeks to map points of interruption: moments, spaces, and relations where established narratives falter, overlap, or remain unresolved. Artistic practice is employed here as a method of attention, allowing what is usually silenced, fragmented, or contradictory to appear without being immediately stabilised. Conceptually, the project is grounded in artistic research traditions that understand knowledge as situated, embodied, and emergent. Drawing on the notion of scholè (Masschelein & Simons, 2013), the School of Love & Craft is conceived as a temporary artistic infrastructure that suspends instrumental demands in order to make space for study. Schooling is approached not as a mechanism of socialisation or qualification, but as an act of world-disclosure: an invitation to encounter love, sexual reproduction, and relationships anew. This orientation is further informed by the work of Michel Serres. From Serres’ perspective, dominant discourses are understood as porous systems continuously disrupted by noise, interference, and translation. The project situates itself deliberately within these zones of interference, treating moments of confusion, contradiction, and misunderstanding not as failures of communication but as productive sites of inquiry. Love operates within the project both as its thematic focus and as its organising principle. It is not approached as a fixed concept or moral category, but as an orientation characterised by attentiveness, vulnerability, and commitment. Methodology, Methods, Research Instruments or Sources Used The School of Love & Craft adopts a methodology rooted in artistic research, grounded in relationality, situatedness, and openness. Rather than relying on predefined variables or measurable indicators, the project employs artistic practices as research methods capable of engaging with complex, embodied, and often ambiguous experiences related to love, sexuality, and reproduction. Knowledge is understood as emergent and processual, arising through encounters rather than being extracted or verified. The first research intervention consists of conversations and semi-structured interviews with actors within a neighbourhood in Maputo. The material generated through these encounters is translated into a symbolic, layered collage that brings multiple voices and narratives into relation while preserving their heterogeneity. In a subsequent phase, this artistic material informs the exploration of lover’s discourses in the sense proposed by Roland Barthes (1977): fragmentary, affective, and non-linear forms of expression that resist totalising explanation. Through this artistic research framework, the School of Love & Craft contributes to alternative ways of engaging sexual and reproductive health as ways that privilege experience, relation, and imagination over prescription. Conclusions, Expected Outcomes or Findings The School of Love & Craft does not aim to produce conclusive findings in the conventional sense, but to generate situated outcomes that remain open, relational, and generative. As an artistic research project, its primary outcome lies in the creation of new conditions for thinking, sensing, and speaking about love, sexuality, and reproductive relations beyond normative and instrumental frameworks. A first outcome of the project is the emergence of an artistic body of work, most notably the composed collage, that brings together multiple voices, narratives, and experiences from the neighbourhood context in Maputo. This work functions as both a research outcome and a mediating object, making visible the plurality, tensions, and interruptions present within dominant discourses on sexual and reproductive health. Rather than resolving these tensions, the collage sustains them, allowing ambiguity and difference to remain perceptible. A second outcome concerns the development of alternative discursive forms. Through experimentation inspired by Barthes’ concept of lover’s discourses, the project contributes fragmentary, affective, and non-linear modes of articulation that resist explanatory closure. These discursive forms offer a language that is not oriented toward instruction or correction, but toward attentiveness, resonance, and relational understanding. At a methodological level, the project demonstrates the capacity of artistic research to engage sexual and reproductive health as a field of inquiry without reducing it to behavioural change or knowledge transfer. The School of Love & Craft proposes an alternative pedagogical imaginary in which education is approached as an act of world-disclosure, grounded in scholè, care, and shared study. References Barthes, R. (1977). A Lover’s Discourse: Fragments. New York: Hill and Wang. Haraway, D. (1988). Situated knowledges: The science question in feminism and the privilege of partial perspective. Feminist Studies, 14(3), 575–599 Ingold, T. (2018) Anthropology and/as Education. Routledge. Masschelein, J., & Simons, M. (2013). In Defence of the School: A Public Issue. Leuven: E-ducation, Culture & Society Publishers. Rolnik, S. (2011). The body’s contagion: Lygia Clark’s experimental propositions. Manifesta Journal, 12, 26–33 Serres, M. (1997). Troubadour of Knowledge. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. Spivak, G. C. (1999). A Critique of Postcolonial Reason. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Springgay, S., & Truman, S. E. (2018). On the Need for Methods Beyond Proceduralism. Qualitative Inquiry, 24(3), 203–214. Thrift, N. (2008). Non-Representational Theory: Space, Politics, Affect. London: Routledge 29. Research on Arts Education
Paper ***WITHDRAWN*** Seeing Otherwise: Arts-Based Visual Research as Methodological Intervention in Post-Soviet Gender Research Almaty Management University, Kazakhstan Presenting Author:This paper critically examines the use of arts-based visual research (ABVR) as a methodological intervention in a study of doctoral-student mothers (DSMs) in Uzbekistan, where knowledge production remains shaped by Soviet legacies, gender conservatism, and institutional gatekeeping. ABVR enabled participants to voice unspeakable tensions and negotiate agency within restrictive contexts, while also requiring us, as researchers, to engage in ongoing reflexivity and ethical care. Our findings reveal that ABVR can unsettle silences and power relations, transforming research encounters into co-produced, dialogic spaces, yet it also exposes persistent hierarchies and emotional risks. We argue for seeing otherwise not simply as a method, but as a political and ethical intervention that expands the possibilities of qualitative research in contexts marked by regulation and cultural conservatism. By reflecting critically on our use of ABVR in this setting, the paper advances methodological debates on visual research in non-Western contexts, foregrounding its potential to reconfigure power, voice, and representation in gender-focused inquiries.
Keywords: Arts-Based Visual Research (ABVR); Methodological Intervention; Post-Soviet Gender Research; Reflexivity; Representation Methodology, Methods, Research Instruments or Sources Used Our research is inseparable from our histories of marginalisation, a lived reminder that research is never neutral but always implicated in either silencing or amplifying experience. Guided by feminist and decolonial inquiry (Lather, 2007; Tuhiwai Smith, 2012), we crafted a reflexive and politically attuned methodology that foregrounds power and voice (Ahmed, 2017; Mignolo, 2009). Anchored in hermeneutic phenomenology (van Manen, 1990; Finlay, 2012), our inquiry sought to access the embodied meanings often left invisible in conventional methods (Bynum & Varpio, 2018). However, in Uzbekistan, direct speech is fraught; experience is frequently withheld, reframed, or left unsaid to avoid sanction. As Ahmed (2017, p. 34) reminds us, “When we give problems their names, we can become a problem for those who do not want to talk about a problem even though they know there is a problem.” To navigate this constraint, we turned to ABVR, combining phenomenological interviewing with metaphor and image (Barone & Eisner, 2012; Leavy, 2020; Mitchell, 2011), to evoke what is challenging to say or voice. We blended three creative tools to foster thick, participant-led narratives. First, Critical Incident Timelines (CIT) enabled participants to visually map out pivotal academic and caregiving moments across nonlinear timelines, surfacing memories and turning points often omitted in structured interviews. Next, we introduced a carefully curated selection of 25 Dixit image cards (Figure 2), chosen for their emotional accessibility and symbolic openness. We asked participants to select an image from the Dixit cards that they felt metaphorically represented their lived experiences of navigating their mother, wife and doctoral student roles. This approach allowed participants to author and reflect on their own narratives, supporting participant-led, dialogic knowledge production (Gubrium & Harper, 2013; Leavy, 2020; Mitchell, 2011; Rose, 2016). Finally, semi-structured interviews provided space for participants to deepen and clarify the meanings behind their images and timelines, linking artefacts to lived experience in their own words (Gubrium & Harper, 2013; Luttrell, 2020). This process prioritised participant agency, balancing structured reflection with open-ended dialogue. By integrating image-making with conversation, we ensured that meaning-making remained participant-driven and co-constructed, a multi-layered exploration that foregrounded reflexivity and voice throughout (Mitchell, 2011; Luttrell, 2020). Throughout, we maintained detailed fieldnotes that captured not just data, but the emotional textures and tensions of each session. Conclusions, Expected Outcomes or Findings This study highlighted that ABVR, when approached with reflexivity, ethical care, and a commitment to methodological transparency, offers more than a novel technique: it reconfigures what is possible in qualitative inquiry. By enabling DSMs to narrate and symbolise the emotional and social complexities of their lives, ABVR surfaced hidden struggles and acts of agency that conventional methods would likely have missed. At the same time, this research has shown that creative methodologies are never neutral or risk-free; every act of curation, facilitation, and interpretation is a situated intervention that both opens and delimits the field of knowledge. In a global moment marked by growing attention to decolonial and feminist methodologies, and continued resistance to their implications, our work invited our readers to see otherwise by offering a concrete, reflexive account of how creative, participatory research can foster inclusion, unsettle methodological orthodoxies, and expand the horizons of qualitative inquiry (Mitchell, 2011; Morris & Paris, 2022). For researchers seeking to employ ABVR or other creative qualitative methods, especially in politically or culturally sensitive contexts, several recommendations emerge from this study: • Approach ABVR with humility, curiosity, and openness to being changed by participants and context. • Stay flexible, adapt your tools and methods as challenges or surprises arise. • Centre participant agency through genuine collaboration and shared interpretation. • Keep reflexive notes and be transparent about your methodological choices. • Build ethical and emotional care into every stage, anticipating vulnerability. • Reflect critically on your own positionality and assumptions. • Seek mentorship and value learning from both process and unexpected outcomes. References Adkins, L., & Skeggs, B. (Eds.). (2004). Feminism after Bourdieu. Blackwell Publishing. Ahmed, S. (2017). Living a Feminist Life. Duke University Press. Barone, T., & Eisner, E. W. (2011). Arts-based research. Sage. Ayrton, R. (2020). The case for creative, visual and multimodal methods in operationalising concepts in research design: An examination of storyboarding trust stories. The Sociological Review, 68(6), 1229–1249. Bynum, W. E., & Varpio, L. (2018). When I say… phenomenology. Medical Education, 52(11), 1107–1108. https://doi.org/10.1111/medu.13643 Chilton, G., & Leavy, P. (2014). Arts-based research practice: Merging social research and the creative arts. In P. Leavy (Ed.), The Oxford handbook of qualitative research (pp. 403–422). Oxford University Press. Davidson, J. (2004). ‘I am a fieldnote’: researching and teaching with visual data. Qualitative Research Journal, 4(2), 47–75. Eisner, E. (2008). Persistent tensions in arts-based research. In M. Cahnmann-Taylor &R. Siegesmund (Eds.), Arts-based research in education: Foundations for practice (pp. 16–27). New Routledge. Ellis, C. (2007). Telling secrets, revealing lives: Relational ethics in research with intimate others. Qualitative inquiry, 13(1), 3-29. Finlay, L. (2002). Negotiating the swamp: the opportunity and challenge of reflexivity in research practice. Qualitative research, 2(2), 209-230. https://doi.org/10.1177/146879410200200205 Finlay, L. (2012). Debating phenomenological methods. In Hermeneutic phenomenology in education: Method and practice (pp. 17-37). Rotterdam: Sense Publishers. Jackson, A. Y., & Mazzei, L. A. (2009). Voice in qualitative inquiry. Challenging conventional, interpretive, and critical conceptions in qualitative research. Gafu, B. (2023). Researching education in Uzbekistan: Ethical challenges and navigating institutional constraints. Central Asian Survey, 42(3), 345–362. https://doi.org/10.1080/02634937.2023.xxxxxx Garlock, L. R. (2016). Stories in the cloth: Art therapy and narrative textiles. Art Therapy, 33(2), 58-66. Harden-Wolfson, E., & Shakirova, L. (2025). Current and emerging issues in gender equality in education: What does the data tell us? In Gender and education in Central Asia (pp. 47–75). Springer Nature Switzerland. Harper, D. (2002). Talking about pictures: A case for photo elicitation. Visual studies, 17(1), 13–26. Jewitt, C., Bezemer, J., & O’Halloran, K. (2016). Introducing multimodality. Routledge. Kandiyoti, D. (2007). The politics of gender and the Soviet paradox: neither colonised, nor modern?. Central Asian Survey, 26(4), 601-623. https://doi.org/10.1080/02634930802018521 Kress, G. (2019). Transposing meaning: Translation in a multimodal semiotic landscape. In M. Boria, Á. Carreres, M. Noriega-Sánchez, & M. Tomalin (Eds.), Translation and multimodality: Beyond words (Kress, 2019), pp. 24–48. Routledge. Leavy, P. (2020). Method meets art: Arts-based research practice. Guilford publications. Lefebvre, H. (1991). The production of space. Wiley-Blackwell. | ||