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Please note that all times are shown in the time zone of the conference. The current conference time is: 19th Aug 2026, 21:29:11 EET
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Daily Overview |
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29 SES 08 B: Disquietings in Arts Education Classrooms: How Can Poetic Writing Engage Us in Collective Research?
Research Workshop | ||
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29. Research on Arts Education
Research Workshop Disquietings in Arts Education Classrooms: How Can Poetic Writing Engage Us in Collective Research? 1: UIDEF, Instituto de Educação, Universidade de Lisboa, Portugal; 2: UIDEF, Instituto de Educação, Universidade de Lisboa, Portugal Presenting Author:This proposal reflects a journey undertaken by two teachers over a decade of co-research with students, within the scope of a PhD in Arts Education. The call on “Experimental and risky formats to present ‘research other’ in arts and education” prompted us to reflect on how we started working in this disciplinary area, using poetic writing as a means of building academic knowledge. In this co-teaching and co-research journey, there was a constant attempt to challenge existing knowledge (Atkinson, 2015), as reported in a previous publication (references withdrawn to ensure blind review). Ever since our paths converged, we have been asking ourselves how we can teach (and learn) arts education while embodying its content and bringing our diverse backgrounds and interests to the table. These concerns led us to explore risk-taking in multiple ways, by encouraging different approaches to engaging with knowledge in the classroom and experimenting with unfamiliar research methods, particularly in co-research projects with students (references withdrawn to ensure blind review). In this workshop, we aim to explore with the participants the possibilities of participatory processes venturing into the unknown (Atkinson, 2015, 2022) and dismantling what is already known. In recognition of the diversity of learning processes and modes of constituting legitimate knowledge in arts education, we propose exploring the concept of 'disquiet', based on The Book of Disquiet (2002) [original title: Livro do Desassossego], written by Bernardo Soares, heteronym to the Portuguese journalist, poet and translator Fernando Pessoa. The use of poetry and a free-writing style does not clash with academic writing, and can legitimately construct knowledge in all academic subjects, as has been repeatedly demonstrated across multiple scientific disciplines. There are currently at least four large areas of exploration where poetry and science meet. (i) Science poetry recognises that the processes of teaching and communicating science are enhanced by this intertwining (Frazier et al., 2009; Gorrell & Colfax, 2012). Similarly, (ii) the poetry of science acknowledges the importance of scientists engaging in creative writing to raise awareness of their research and writing methods (Osbourn, 2006). (iii) In a third sense, science and art “are not mutually exclusive, but rather complementary in nature” (Illingworth, 2021), also because the ‘specialist eye’ that was shaped after the 17th century science set them apart (Midgley, 2001). Over the last decades, (iv) poetic inquiry has been granted a particular space into the legitimate modes of researching in the qualitative approach (Faulkner, 2017), and the educational sciences have used it in teaching training programmes and research in professional development (Edge & Olan, 2021; Hopper & Sanford, 2008). Therefore, investigations in arts education have often embodied poetic processes by using arts-based research, a/r/ography or (auto)ethnography (Chilton & Leavy, 2014; Greenwood, 2019). We are interested in exploring “epistemic disobedience” by highlighting poetry and poetic forms of writing as a means of “destabilising” the supposedly “objective, neutral and universal” approaches to producing science (Alvarado & Hermida, 2022, p. 1). Inspired by the restless and unsettling poetic prose of Pessoa/Soares, the aim of this workshop is therefore to: - Identify the disquietudes experienced in specific arts education events by a collective of researchers from different geographical areas and artistic fields. - Explore possibilities for risky and experimental presentations of our processes and engaging into collective productions, during the workshop. - Analyse in place the experience of a collective of researchers when invited to become unsettled, explore and share their disquietudes through “alternative discourses” in a workshop context. Methodology, Methods, Research Instruments or Sources Used After a brief presentation of our journey and theoretical and methodological positioning, we propose that the group join us in a reflection and investigation of their practices and their disquiet, and together engage in the creation of a form of presentation for publication by NW29, which constitutes a risky and experimental format to present “research other”. Therefore, we will briefly introduce Fernando Pessoa and his many authors before focusing on his closest heteronym, Bernardo Soares, and the unfinished Book of Disquiet project, where he presents himself as someone who writes not to publish, “or merely to write, or to produce art”, but otherwise defines himself who writes “because this is the final goal, the supreme refinement, the organically illogical refinement”, of his own “cultivation of the states of soul” (Soares/Pessoa, 2002, p. 905). The workshop will be organised according to the following steps: All the persons attending the session will be invited to participate and join us in a risky process of collective research, based on our goals. Afterwards, to start with, we intend to share some citations extracted from our reference book. We extracted these quotes by using keywords of the NW 29 special call proposal, namely: education, art, risk; experiment research; imagine; re/present. These provocative items should open up for the first group discussion, starting with these provocative topics e.g.:“Art is a science… It suffers rhythmically” (Soares/Pessoa, 2002, p.250) This first common talk should be able to introduce some topics that will allow to move towards the next step. Participants will accommodate themselves and we will provide them some sentences, after their own choices. Around 10 minutes will then be provided so that participants can choose a phrase and produce a poetic written and/or visual registration from their personal experiences of disquiet in arts education. When this period is over, there will be a second dynamic of sharing productions and its meanings, creating a common output, that we suggest should be in the form of an installation. Finally, there will be a final talk to reflect how this work can be translated into an experimental, plurimodal and polivocal format to present in the Proceedings of ECER - NW29, such as a poetic form (Edge & Oland, 2021; Patrick, 2016; Pithouse-Morgan & Samaras, 2019) and/or a cartographic representation (Atkinson, 2022; Gerlach, 2014; Hernández-Hernández et al., 2018), and/or ‘other’. Conclusions, Expected Outcomes or Findings Is it worth to take the risk? In the adventure of 'un'learning… ‘Everything is worthwhile/If the soul is not small’, as in Pessoa’s "Message" (1934). We expect that taking risks with Bernardo Soares, who is closest to Pessoa himself and therefore engages in polivalent reading and writing across multiple disciplines and styles, may help us to bring disquiet into the room and, if possible, have a lasting effect on our teaching and the restlessness of classrooms. Consequently, we hope to raise awareness of these dangerous places where education and research gather into the Arts Education, and where the person and the professional are strained in unstable and shifting balances. Rebellious. To what extent? Can we give up control and let ourselves go? It is restlessness that keeps us in a permanent process of (un)learning. This questioning ourselves, this becoming aware, this writing and sharing our lives is a nuclear part of disquieting the already known. Learn from what did not work out as expected! To wait for it to happen next time? Or to learn not to wait and enjoy what is happening, as if there were no tomorrow? Counteract this fever for results, for a consequent product serving some extrinsic purpose. Be with others, in the pleasure of exploring and creating together. And trust that at some point what did not happen will give way to something, somewhere in time, revealing a new meaning that is discovered or invented. Always the ‘and’, emerging beyond the ‘or’!!! Our collective research presentation in the "Proceedings" can also be an ‘and’ - joining our writings in a found poem? in a collaborative vernacular cartography? and/or in ‘’other’ risky format to be imagined together? References Alvarado, M. & Hermida, M. E. (2022). Feminismos del Sur: nudos epistemológicos para articular una investigación otra [Feminisms of the South: epistemological knots to articulate another investigation]. PACHA, 3(9), e210121. https://doi.org/10.46652/pacha.v3i9.121 Author & Author (date). reference withdrawn to ensure blind review. Author & Author (date). reference withdrawn to ensure blind review. Atkinson, D. (2015). The adventure of pedagogy, learning and the not-known. Subjectivity, 8(1), 43-56. https://doi.org/10.1057/sub.2014.22 Atkinson, D. (2022). Inheritance, disobedience and speculation in pedagogic practice. Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education, 43(5), 749-765. https://doi.org/10.1080/01596306.2021.1975911 Chilton, G., & Leavy, P. (2014). Arts-based research practice: Merging social research and the creative arts. En P. Leavy (Ed.), The Oxford Handbook of Qualitative Research (pp. 403-422). Oxford University Press. Edge, C.U., & Olan, E.L. (2021). Learning to breathe again: Found poems and critical friendship as methodological tools in self-study of teaching practices. Studying Teacher Education, 17(2), 228-252. http://doi.org/10.1080/17425964.2021.191 Frazier, W.M & Murray, K.B. (2009). Science Poetry in Two Voices: Poetry and the Nature of Science. Science Education Review, 8(2), 58-78. Gerlach, J. (2014). Lines, contours and legends. Coordinates for vernacular mapping. Progress in Human Geography, 38 (1), 22-39. https://doi.org/10.1177/0309132513490594 Greenwood, J. (2019). Arts-Based Research. Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Education. https://doi.org/10.1093/acrefore/9780190264093.013.29 Faulkner, S. L. (2017). Poetic Inquiry: Poetry as/in/for Social Research. In P. Leavy (Ed.), The Handbook of Arts-Based Research (pp. 208-230). Guilford Press. Nancy G. & Colfax, E. (2012). Writing Poetry through the Eyes of Science. University of Toronto Press. Hernández-Hernández, F., Sancho-Gil, J., & Domingo-Coscollola, M. (2018). Cartographies as spaces of inquiry to explore of teachers’ nomadic learning trajectories. Digital Education Review, 33, 105-119. Hopper, T.,& Sanford, K. (2008). Using poetic representation to support the development of teachers' knowledge. Studying Teacher Education, 4(1), 29-45. https://doi.org/10.1080/17425960801976339 Illingworth, S. (2021). A sonnet to science: Scientists and their poetry. Manchester University Press. Osbourn, A. (2006). The poetry of science. Nature Reviews, Microbiology, 4(1), 77–80. https://doi.org/10.1038/nrmicro1321 Midgley, M. (2001). Science and Poetry. Routledge. Soares, B./Pessoa, F. (2002). The book of disquiet. Richard Zenith (Ed. and Translater). Penguin. | ||