To start, I embraced Hooks who stated that “Teaching is a performative act” (1994). I believe this quote illustrates the role of the teacher and researcher by bringing into that act of teaching the importance of hybrid methodological research practices in art as education.
As said before, I research to better know and understand how to address the needs of my immigrant students who oftentimes are overlooked in and out of the school. Because of this, making an introspective stop moment regarding the importance of exploring my coloniality in a multicultural class is necessary. I look at my own body but also look at the bodies my students inhabit. The body(ies) is/are inevitably at the core of my research project and my researcher position(s) presents a level of complexity directly intersecting with it. A variety of bodies, territories, external factors, the world, and theories create a conglomerate of elements, which I describe within the different perspectives of gazes that influence my research.
- Scribbling While Walking Through Hybrid Arts-Based Research Methodologies
- My researcher position(s)
- Being a Teacher
- Being a Mother
- Being an Artist
- Being a Researcher
- Togetherness: Ethnography, theory, subjects, objects, pedagogy, and ethical considerations
- Ethics
- Ice Cracks as Ruptures for Scribbling a Dynamic Research Map
- Intersections in the Research Territory
- Encounter Resistance
- Wandering on/in/around Cracks with Ethnography, A/R/Tography, and Art-Based Research Methodologies.
To illustrate being aware of the four roles and feeling the research territory under my foot, I thought of Haraway’s tentacular thinking description. Haraway (2016) explains that everything matters to tell a story so I choose a doodle of a living sea creature to illustrate how I perform being a researcher-artist-teacher-mother. This octopus was made by my students during a collaborative brainstorming session about the relation between art and the ocean which is shown in image 2. To me, like the octopus, I need to touch and sense where I am standing so I can think of my moves. I am also quite multitasking, I need to deal with time management and many tasks that overlap. Sadly, but also true, the research facts on the drawing show that like octopuses and exhausted teachers-mothers-artist-researchers can become non-social creatures for a period of time. Especially during the writing season of a doctoral thesis where we tend to hide in cave-like office spaces.
My researcher position
The ancient philosopher Eraclito said that we never walk on the same river twice. I thought that my winter walks on the Stjørdal fiord shown in image 1 –which is shaped every day by the low tides creating new territories–, illustrate how I conduct research. Similarly, the school context and the multiple roles I perform make me observe and act differently within a changing research environment. But before I continue, I would like to establish some relation with you, the reader, as it urges me to confess: Conducting research as a mother-artist-teacher-researcher in academia while working is very difficult. What does being an artist-researcher-art teacher-mother look like?
To start, I embraced Hooks who stated that “Teaching is a performative act” (1994). I believe this quote illustrates the role of the teacher and researcher by bringing into that act of teaching the importance of hybrid methodological research practices in art as education.
As said before, I research to better know and understand how to address the needs of my immigrant students who oftentimes are overlooked in and out of the school. Because of this, making an introspective stop moment regarding the importance of exploring my coloniality in a multicultural class is necessary. I look at my own body but also look at the bodies my students inhabit. The body(ies) is/are inevitably at the core of my research project and my researcher position(s) presents a level of complexity directly intersecting with it. A variety of bodies, territories, external factors, the world, and theories create a conglomerate of elements, which I describe within the different perspectives of gazes that influence my research.
Being a Teacher
As a teacher of art, I am concerned about the lack of critical thinking skills taught through art and the realities of my students’ live experiences brought into the classroom as part of a hidden curriculum. I teach art to discuss with students their concerns about the world climate in and out of the school. I aim to design a curriculum that can host mediations through the arts regarding intersectionality and the environment at school. In a way, this feels like a studio practice being the school the laboratory for experimentation. In my praxis, I reflect beyond language and switch from being reflexive to diffractive. I believe it would be needed to further reflect on the fact that teachers don’t have paid positions to conduct research and that there are few spaces for teachers to conduct research in academia. I argue that critical pedagogy in my praxis is vital to re-think approaches through art, the teacher’s training, and curriculum design. We, teachers, don’t have the comfort and economic support to conduct research.
Being a Mother
I am an immigrant mother, and it matters. Whether this is academically correct or not, it affects my position as a researcher and significantly inspired me to write this paper about research methodologies in art education at school. In my role as a mother, while performing as a researcher and artist, I think of Focault’s philosophical ideas regarding power relations in institutions and the importance of giving a voice to students and teachers. I agree with Seton & Trouton (2014: 98-103) since they emphasize the importance of analyzing the power relations following Focault’s ideas of ethics in research to address silencing in academia. For example, in professional training and working as an artist-researcher, I still witness and deal with exclusion and exclusiveness when thinking about how personal situations ‘interfere’ with developing an academic career. Parenting is part of everyday life. Very often, I have to deal with time management issues. For the academy eye, it reinforces established prejudices against being a mother and artist. I am saying this because after being a student of art in four universities worldwide, I believe that the art world is not yet inclusive and quite patriarchal for those who can’t have a full-time dedication to the artist-researcher profession.
Being an Artist
There is a similarity to the art-making process artwork: What if…? Why not…? Experimenting and trying new things in research is what I do to approach it as an artist. When conducting research as an artist, I sense freedom because I am breaking the exclusivity of this role as a sole luxury object maker. I use art as a dialogic tool to create pedagogical strategies and foster a liminal-critical-creative space for difficult dialogues. Being an artist is a disruptive game between the analytical and creative mind binary.
Being a Researcher
From a post-qualitative perspective, I understand there is an entanglement of ontological and epistemological relations when the researcher is part of the research (Østern et al., 2021). But, how do I relate the multiple roles I perform and the other actors and factors within the research to produce knowledge? What does that knowledge look like? In my role as a researcher, I think and act also with an artist mindset because I can critically and creatively counteract the normativity and hierarchies of conducting research in academia. Using art materials, encouraging my students to perform their life experiences, and also working with them when making art. While I do this, I also collect evidence for the research. I am also aware that I can not disrupt the colonial structure of conducting research as a doctoral student so I use it for the practical purpose of creating disruptions as pedagogical approaches. The disruptions are the themes embedded in my lesson plans to open conversations about difficult themes which are not very often discussed at school. From a researcher's position, I write these words considering the feelings of embodying the other roles I perform.
[Mental disruption of artist-teacher-researcher in an attempt to gain perspective begins here]
How do I put everything together in research through the arts?
How can I map my pendular and sometimes erratic movements?
[Researcher-mother in a sarcastic tone]
Should A/R/Tography also include the M from the mother?