Jade Boyd (2017) (Re)visualizing women who use drugs, Visual Studies, 32:1, 70-80, DOI: 10.1080/1472586X.2017.1286948

Goodfellow, A. (2012). Looking through the learning disability lens: inclusive education and the learning disability embodiment. Children’s Geographies Vol. 10, No. 1, February 2012, 67–81

Boyd expresses quite directly the importance of the ethical commitment in conducting personal visual ethnography with participants, despite the obvious value such research may have to researchers and organizations like VANDU.  In particular, researchers must not only have the right motivations, they must also become supporters and allies of the social justice mission, a subjective action that may be the antithesis to the conventional norms for objective research.  As Boyd states:

“The VANDU guideline, ‘Research and Drug User Liberation’, states that ‘researchers can play a positive role when they act as supporters, allies and partners of this movement for liberation’ (VANDU 2014). However, they note that ‘research is political. . . The relationship between the researcher and the researched is not in and of itself empowering or liberating. . .’ (VANDU 2014).(71)

Several ideas that “popped” for me from this piece:  Although I am not sure I agree in every case, Boyd recounts that participants should be invited to explain the “visual images they create,” which may not always be understandable to researchers or to readers (72).  However, I would qualify this to apply in those cases where, to the best judgment of the researcher, such a practice would benefit the creator of the work, not the reader or researcher.  I think such work should never be shared for the benefit of anyone else, unless the participant/creator explicitly wills it.  Yet,  I may raise this possibility with my students’ work–I expect some of my students would like to speak about the meaning or intention expressed in their work, but some may very well not ever want to nor need they do so.

p.s. The article raises the nefarious consequences of even well-intentioned laws of prohibition (as against drug use).  It may be true that drug addiction is not good for your health, and that we should prohibit it, but such prohibitions at the same time not only marginalize those who succumb to drug use but also disincentivize the legitimate need for investment in harm reduction initiatives for those who do not abstain.  The law may very well aspire to an ideal, but it may be far from the experience of many in reality.  I felt this research methodology acted as an important component in therapy and recovery…in reality.

I have problems with Athena Goodfellow’s article, although she brings up interesting possibilities.  For instance, it is interesting to consider….Can special education spaces create nonjudgmental “places,” as suggested by the students themselves, where they can experience no alienation in the special learning methods and accommodations they desire and embrace in their learning, and yet fend off the disabling social stigma that isolates them as alien to the general education classroom?  Students indicated that they were aware of both realities, but that they fully embrace the former and suffer the latter.  It is also interesting that the students expressed enthusiastically their desire to have adults as teachers who have themselves experienced learning disabilities.

Despite the interesting insights Goodfellow uncovers, what I found most troubling in the piece was the use of probing questions by the researcher to uncover perceptions and feelings of alienation in the student participants.  I did not like that.  Furthermore, I think very few people would argue against the need at times for precisely these very types of services, including self-contained special education classes.  But the arts-based research in this case, though well-intentioned, was I think misapplied in not embracing the need for special education. But rather than directing students to locate their obvious source of pain, perhaps the methodology can direct students through photographs and drawing to identify what it is that gives them power in that experience, what it is that they possess that others never will….  Of course, this is much easier said than done.

I wanted my students to direct the next step of the visual self-reflections practice we began this semester.  Thus, students were given the choice today (Thursday, 4/4/19) to either:

a)  free-draw/write a second visual reflection which was based on two new prompts Visual Self-reflection #2 (this would be the second in-class visual self-reflection we scheduled this semester)

OR

b) view and give comments on the first visual reflection #1 Visual Self-Reflection Prompt #1, created by students two weeks ago, provided each student gives permission for us to share their reflection.

They chose the latter:  I had placed yellow stickies on each desk in anticipation of this so that students could give permission privately to share their work publicly with classmates–on the sticky, they wrote yes/no to share, answered a few other unrelated routine questions I asked, folded the sticky, and dropped at my front desk.  I quickly scanned the responses…

They unanimously chose to do a gallery walk, and seemed enthusiastic about doing so.  I reminded students that their work was laid out with the visual drawing face up (hence, anonymous).

Attached are copies of the student feedback/comments on their peers’ visual art, the comment sheet attached in the order following the original student visual self-reflection: Visual Self-reflections StudentGalleryWalkCommentaryonThur4.4.19

PROCESS:

In the adjoining empty classroom, I had set each student’s visual reflection on a separate desktop, together with two blank sheets stapled together (the drawing and the feedback sheet were coded). Students were told they could circulate and respond anonymously in writing as they wish to the drawings they viewed at each desk, sharing their impressions, what they would like to say, if they agree, understand, not agree, have advice, etc. etc.   I stated that I would like to share their comments with the author of the visual self-reflection, “so be sincere, etc. etc.”

Afterward, we met back in our regular classroom for quick debrief , and then continued on in our lesson.

Some of my reflections of today’s practice:

The primary sentiment that was voiced by many students in writing about others’ work was that they could relate to the feelings of challenge and frustration expressed visually in the work. Others offered some advice, some encouragement, and even some solutions to math problems alluded to.

In the classroom debrief afterward,  students volunteered to publicly share their experience of the gallery walk with the class.  What was most pronounced with many students who volunteered to speak was their sense of relaxation in knowing that they were not the only ones who were struggling or facing significant challenge.  Most sympathized with this , stating in as much the same way that the first two students E and L unequivocally did, that ” …I just felt comforted to find out that I am not the only one feeling like this in the class.”  A closing comment made by student S in obvious humor cracked up the class: “I can understand the few happy drawings I saw–when you lose all hope, a sense of euphoria can take over…”

Although I am cautiously optimistic in the benefits of this exercise for my students, I am certain that there was some level of cathartic benefit for students in this sharing with one another.  In the climate of a  highly competitive college, students can easily presume everyone else is strong academically and thus not feel welcome to share their own struggles or perceived weaknesses.

I also was inspired, perhaps reassured by some students, and it surprised me that it often was the result of seeing some very subtle passing detail in a student’s work…a reticent student’s image of a bulging boundary that is “almost breaking through,”  or another student’s images of “the cascading/snowballing effect of one tiny unaddressed question.”  I also felt that I saw glimpses of contrary evidence to what I had presumed to be true about students, truths which were not apparent previously from student behavior observed in the classroom:  for instance, I was moved by student P’s work reflecting strength and resolve, which was not apparent in the behavior nor in the limited commitment and work I had seen from him previously.

I will want to think about ways I can continue to improve this experience for students:

-to better build upon what we have started (so that it does not become just a “one-shot” fun exercise),

-to establish a momentum so that subsequent exercises naturally evolve in the practice of visual self-reflection,

-to deepen or extend student reflection, perhaps to their study habits and habits of mind that impact performance (perhaps through visual reflection engendered by focused attention on images I submit to them…?)

-to assess possible refinements and/or modifications for implementing this in other first year community college developmental math classes in the coming weeks.  For instance, I know I would now plan and set better expectations for sufficient time for gallery walk and commentary, so that students can feel free to reflect and comment more extensively on the work of others.  I think I gave the impression that it was a quick scan of the works of others rather than a potential second reflection…..leaving some students to think that perhaps they should only make quick comments.

Trowbridge C.A. (2017) Drawing Attention. In: Powietrzyńska M., Tobin K. (eds) Weaving Complementary Knowledge Systems and Mindfulness to Educate a Literate Citizenry for Sustainable and Healthy Lives. Bold Visions in Educational Research. Sense Publishers: Rotterdam.

Cristina’s insightful sketching methodology inspired me to examine my own sketching reflection method I am exploring.  I wonder what I can employ as an object for students to see and to contemplate upon.  In my current sketching exploration, I encourage students to reflect on their impressions or on their stance towards the experience of learning math, but I provide no particular image for them upon which to reflect.  This may be fine, but I wonder if I can aid a further evolution of their process of self-reflection ( into perhaps a deeper contemplation) by offering specific images as objects of contemplation, in the method that Cristina does here.

I wondered if the dioramas of natural history and science, which Cristina uses as objects of sketching and contemplation, had particular resonance because of their related subject matter for science teachers and students, i.e. if the chosen content was salient for the impact of this arts-based methodology because of its relation to this particular audience.  But I don’t think so.  I think there is something more universal in play here.  Would dioramas from scenes related to science or nature have provided a comparable catalyst for reflection and contemplation for a different audience? I think so.  I suspect that the form of Cristina’s methodological approach was what mattered most— in her modified protocol of Housen’s Visual Thinking Strategy, she still employed his specific question prompts to direct the practice of focused sketching contemplation, but she then created spaces of silence and of mindful contemplation where participants could also have the time “…to  look before verbalizing observations and inferences”(174).  The methodology provides affordances for each participant’s unique way of seeing, the “plurality” of interpretations possible as evidenced by what each participant views, as the different mountain lion diorama sketches by each participant illustrated (176). Participant teachers also shared the therapeutic benefits to their health and wellness of this methodology by finding such times of “silence and peace” healthful and, unlike most classroom environments, a space where renewed attention could be given to details, and where they did not feel compelled to impose learning perspectives or content upon students (178).  However, I cannot discount the universal connection we have to nature, and that this choice in theme may be integral to this methodology, wherever it is applied.  I am motivated to consider this thematic as well but also to consider other potential images to catalyze such contemplation in my field of mathematical content.

In addition, Cristina makes the important distinction between mindfulness and contemplation (173).  I now ponder that difference within the goal of my current work of authentic student self-reflection , and I consider whether that is different than contemplation. Merriam-Webster conspicuously qualifies the definition of contemplation as a thoughtful consideration that is practiced “…with attention,” or as the act of “regarding steadily.”  This quality of “steadiness” that I sense throughout in Cristina’s field notes reminds me of the frequent discussions I have had with students and exasperated parents, where a frequent culprit identified by both was the apparent inability of students to sustain concentration.  Perhaps more than my current exploration of student self-reflection for the purpose of emotional processing and healing, contemplation may be the next step of this process, where a strengthening of the ability to sustain concentration becomes a focus, a focus which is so crucial in any learning.

In practice, Cristina observes that “The drawing is about focusing attention to detail and not about the actual sketch” (174).  Ways in which fear of failure can be eliminated by sketching, such as Cristina’s later practice of having participants draw with their non-dominant hand, offers options in later reflection practice.  It at least raises consideration for other sketching tools I might employ in my sketching self-reflection explorations, such as a proscription that sketching must be related to this class or to this content.  How may I support freedom from judgment for my students, including from their own?

This week, my aim is to build momentum in the incorporation of visual-based feedback in self-reflection from my freshman mathematics students. They appeared invested in the first exercise of this visual self-reflection, as reflected in these selections from that reflection I posted earlier:  Visual Self-Reflection Expression.

Here is the second prompt I plan to administer this week in follow-up:   Visual Self-reflection #2.

Any feedback appreciated.

See you all soon,

Luis

Luttrell, W. (2010). A camera is a big responsibility: a lens for analysing children’s visual voices. Viusal Studies, 25(3), 224–237. https://doi.org/10.1080/1472586X.2010.523274

Luttrell, W. (2016). Children framing Childhoods. In J. Moss & B. Pini (Eds.), Visual research methods in educational research (pp. 172–188). Palgrave, Macmillan. Retrieved from http://www.wendyluttrell.org/framing-childhoods/

In “Children framing Childhoods,” Luttrell introduces the concept of “collaborative seeing,” the practice of looking and contextualizing with others what they wish to express as salient in their lives (181):

“Theoretically speaking, collaborative seeing allows us to engage what Weis and Fine (2012) call ‘critical bifocality’, which links individual meaning making to larger discourses, public policies and conditions that ‘come to be woven into community relationships and metabolized by individuals’ “(Weis & Fine 2012, p. 174)(p.181)

This innovative use of photography, and later digital and video methods, in a sociological research methodology enlarges the potential and scope for the co-researcher paradigm, and the opportunity for authenticity for participant emotional self-development and growth. This visual method of childhood photography situates adults more properly as respectful of the full lives of children, lives that are equally worthy of adult attention, curiosity and emulation, a curious converse to the way it is often presumed that children should emulate the lives of adults.

Luttrell reaffirms the importance of an effective design and systematic analysis.  I like her careful attention to the use of prompts throughout the course of the longitudinal study.  For children participants, the prompt was “You have a cousin moving to Worcester and attending your school. Take pictures that will help him/her know what to expect…, “ and, for the adolescent middle schooler, “Take pictures of what matters to you” (Children, p.175), and so forth as they aged.  However, what was most apparent to me is the intensity of analysis that is necessary in order to both effectively engage participants in follow-up interviews and systematically sift through large amounts of data in order to draw appropriate inferences.  The latter need for systematicity is reflected by the detailed coding that was part of a comprehensive picture analysis (A camera, 229). Evidently, and even counterintuitively, an arts-based qualitative study analysis, despite one in which control of content is ceded to children too, still requires specificity and comprehensiveness in design and analysis. In fact, I get the distinct impression that qualitative analysis can be more arduous and rigorous than quantitative analysis—more complexity is in play.

I still experience a velleity of the ethical quandaries I have raised earlier from Luttrell’s work as well, but to a lesser degree than I have felt in methods of community arts-based research articles we recently studied.  Perhaps it is because the students are the sole creators of the art in her photography method.  Yet, she herself acknowledges that the quandary still exists.  In her other article, “A camera is a big responsibility,” she states that the “..persistent conundrum in this mode of research is finding the line between children’s voices and those of adult researchers,” a conundrum she concedes she does not resolve but at least wishes to acknowledge.  In “Children’s Voices,” she indeed took great care to involve participants (children) in the research authentically and transparently. I do feel that children were afforded the respect and the space to exercise independent volition and control over the form and nature of their participation.  In fact, the research here allowed students a means for meaningful self-reflection and growth, including that of examining the central aspect of the influence of family and the wider community on the formation and negotiation of childhood identity.  Any understanding gleaned by researchers is thus not initiated from an imposition, but rather by a researcher’s intention to…”…listen carefully and systematically” (Camera, 226).

Luttrell expands on child-centered methodologies in “A camera is a big responsibility,” where a closer look at the theoretical framework undergirding the concept of voice is examined, and where the method offers a means to unlock the “hidden transcripts of power expressed in children’s photography” that often can be unduly influenced by dominant ways of seeing (225).  She makes the entwinement of photography and narrative salient, in that the lack of linearity and logic endemic to both can be the very form and value that is characteristic of this type of research. This observation encourages me to persist in my visual qualitative work, despite doubts about the “unscientific” and “free form” expression afforded to and generated by students in my visual self-reflection investigation.

Students’ work in “A Camera..” also serves, perhaps more importantly, as a catalyst to potentially more comprehensive exploration and dialogue afterward.  For instance, Luttrell engenders a multiplicity of perspectives in a student’s voice through multiple “audiencings” of the work they produced (227).  Through this design, she gleans the salience of the “work of care” as a primary expression across students’ work.  I also wonder what might be the other salient themes observed, the others that she insinuates were “beyond the scope of the article” (230).

“While ‘voice’ should not be conflated with language, language does allow for some expression of ‘voice’ that is beyond words” (A Camera, 233).  And the camera can be one visual method that “affords voice” to those who otherwise may not have one in “the body politic”(233), and one method I hope of many others that can transform the often unexamined asymmetric relation between researcher and subject into one of parity between adults and children as co-researchers.

This is the first time that I have ventured to encourage students to reflect freely and, in particular, visually, on their recent conceptual challenges and victories in their experience thus far in elementary calculus.

AIM:  I want students to reveal their thinking to me, and to examine affect and emotional stances, although through their own volition and on their own terms.  Thus, I aim to cede to students the necessary creativity in reflection that need not conform to conventional math reflection practice.

Rationale:  In setting the expectation, I wanted to bring attention to what students’ previous experience has been in the past with reflection, or with self-reflection.  Would they feel comfortable trying things “outside the box,” including other modes of attempting to reflect and to express what they sense and what they feel?

Methods:  In order to give some sense of structure to this reflection, I provided the attached  Visual Self-Reflection Prompt, but with encouragement that “any expression need not make sense to anyone else.  It only has to make sense to you, or it could be only an impulse that seems to feel right, and that may (or may not) lead to what you wish to express.”

The prompt initially included typical written reflection too, just to provide some familiarity in order to ease the bridging to other creative modes;  it then added the suggestion for reflection using any other chosen expression, particularly visual.  Again, only to provide some focus, I articulated recent seminal calculus concepts developed in the course upon which they might reflect, if they wish, and suggested that they could examine their inward stance towards these concepts in visual modes….

Student work:  Some excerpted anonymized reflections are posted here:  Visual Self-Reflection Expression.  These only show visual portions of their reflections, not the written format portion.

My reflection:    I view this as a starting step in an expanding dialogue that I may be fortunate to have with students.  Although some student reflections may appear antic, they may mean much more.  Some were revealing to me and insightful.  For instance, students  who outwardly do not appear committed or hardworking expressed the centrality of will-power; ironically, some high performing students expressed macabre disaffection.  Some visual representations were cryptic and abstract.  I wonder if I should ask more, or if I have the right to probe. Maybe. Furthermore, some students asked to take the reflection prompts home to reflect more deeply on them before sharing with me.  Thus I will make more observations, and I may share more later, especially in an attempt to further refine, support and appraise the possible development in students of visual representation and expression as a tool in self-reflection practice.

Luis

Restler, V. (2017). Re-visualizing Care: Teachers’ Invisible Labor in Neoliberal Times (the digital assemblage)

Although I understand this digital assemblage may be only a portion of the dissertation research, the work appears to push the parameters of the practice of collage to a scope more generally encompassing that of evocative ethnography. The content of the images of artefacts produced by rubbings are dictated by what exists contiguously in the space, and return the viewer to a “haptic seeing” of that space.  While the juxtapositions may in fact appear to be disjointed at times, like collage, they may also appear complementary and whole.

The insightful way that the author exploits her role as “artist” allowed her to position herself as an adjunct to the other participants of her research, rather than as  an outside observer, in order to subvert the perceived “criticality” of the gaze upon teachers by a “researcher.”  It seems to effectively minimize the natural barriers that those observed erect against “outsiders” whose presence is often judgmental. “Claiming ‘artist,’ was a form of release, an acceptable excuse for my odd objectives” (Restler, positionality/art, p.1).

The final dyad, care/tactile epistemology, does serve to express the care demonstrated both by the researcher in the tactile sensitivity in creating representations of the life in a classroom, and by the teacher in the myriad details of preparing a clean, inclusive environment for students.  However, the connection of this methodology to new and expanded epistemologies is not clear to me.

What is beyond doubt is the impossibility to capture any comprehensive image of a reality, even of any infinitesimal moment.  She states in reference to the particularity and the locality of the rubbings that, “…they remind us of all that can’t be seen and known about the ever-changing, relational, and ephemeral pedagogical moment” ( Restler, Beyond Rubbings, conclusion).  We are finite in capability, thus necessarily incapable of attending to the infinity of infinitudes present in each moment that passes.  The dissertation encapsulates this humility, not only in the practical limitations of being able to rub only a selected number of items, or of rubbing 3 dimensional figures into 2-dimensional representations, but also in the fact that any means of showing aspects of care can only be partial, of only one perspective of a moment that has passed, and thus an incomplete visual testament of the true breadth and depth of teachers’ work.

Perspectives or aspects of teacher care evoked by the work will be not only be different for each viewer, but perhaps even ultimately ineffable.  Like a visually tactile Scheffer stroke, Restler’s descriptions of the work thus also makes evident to me the inadequacy of trying to articulate its precise objectives for practice or pedagogy through the use of language, which is itself inadequate to the task.  Despite the specificity of the work, “These images don’t aim or claim to measure,” (Restler, Beyond Rubbings, conclusion).  Though it may be difficult to put into words exactly what the images do aim or claim to express, it does evoke a means to honor the work of teachers, although I believe it to be a testament that would be valid for both neoliberal or classical liberal times.

http://scalar.usc.edu/works/re-visualizing-care/positioning-art?path=rubbing-every-object-and-surface-in-bettys-high-school-math-classroom–engaging-tools-of-visual-

Some questions that came to mind…

Was there practical limitations for scheduling the visit on the last day of school?  About getting student participation (although it may not be  a central objective of this research focused on teachers).

How did you get permission to enter the school for this work?

What is the platform host site of this work?  Is scalar the blog publisher?  How did you choose the format and resources to publish your work?

hooks, bell (1992). Black Looks: Race and Representation , Boston: South End Press. 115-31

hooks’ essay is an inducement to challenge and subvert a black imagery in America that she believes perpetuates, in black identity, an exploitive and immanently harmful status quo.  So how is this done?  I’m not sure.

The essays, hooks asserts, are…”gestures of defiance” (4). But I think, and she later asserts, that art can play a role that is more than mere challenge, resistance, or defiance, all of which I believe are terms that are essentially reactive, even passive—since they still have the need to acknowledge a perceived outsider, dominant power against which action is necessarily directed.  Why must we refer or even acknowledge any other power? A new creation that is transformative is not necessarily a reaction or resistance to any other perceived power or threat, as it can be likewise said that dominant power, where it exists, does not appear to acknowledge what it is dominating.  hooks herself later affirms this in her essay ( I think mis-titled), “Oppositional Gaze,” in reference to the creation of radical black female subjectivity in film:  a critical gaze by black female spectators will have to “… do more than resist. We create alternative texts that are not solely reactions“ (128).  This is the creation that is truly transformative because of its independently conceived creation.   Thus, revolutionary attitudes, the titular theme of her introduction, can be a creation wholly independent of any considerations of perceived domination or exploitation.  She alludes to how such independently operating power may be instigated when she cautions, “…that little progress will be made if we transform images without shifting paradigms, changing perspectives, ways of looking”(4).

Yet, in this worthy pursuit, I think she slips back frequently into unhelpful tropes—that the root of much of this oppression lies in “white supremacist ideology,” or that white people cannot help but reproduce the imperial gaze of colonization and dehumanization (124).  It may also not be realistic to think that any one person has the ability or the power to deliberately steer change in broader social perceptions towards a particular aim, that is, to “collectively change the way we look at ourselves and at the world [so] that we can change how we are seen”(6).   Such utopian generalizations presume individuals can engineer perceptual changes of collective identity on the grand scale of the social, whose complexity no one will ever understand.  It pulls focus from the imperative of each individual to work in their art on their own particular vision, for him or herself.  Perhaps it may be sufficient unto itself, perhaps even for a lifetime, for any one individual to endeavor to accomplish this shift of paradigm, this change of perspective, in their own life.  Art may offer that necessary means through the explorations of image, within this or any other theme, that reflect, refract, re-create paradigms of perceived reality for an individual.

In chapter 7, hooks asserts that existing film theory paradigms, whose visuals she asserts have been and continue to be in conformance to prescriptions of a dominant white, male perspective, reinforce a dominant male/female power dynamic that ignores race, and hence, disallows any radically subjective racialized perspectives. The woman inscribed in early film narrative is actually the white woman, a role later replaced by the black woman.  “Woman” is the representation, not necessarily the “black woman.”  The distinctness of the black woman’s reality is never represented.  But this may be one consequence of who is making the art.  As she aptly states in her later search for the black female perspective, “It is difficult to talk when no one is listening” (125).

Cole, Teju. (2018, May 24). What Does It Mean to Look at This? The New York Times Magazine.

Like the “brilliant skepticism” initially exercised by Susan Sontag in her work, “On the Pain of Others,” as the art scholar Susie Linfield characterized it, I am skeptical too about the value and aim of photography of human subjects as “objects,” and especially of that depicting human suffering.  I would disagree with Sontag’s later relaxation in her stance, that “There’s nothing wrong with standing back and thinking.”  I think there is something wrong with it.  Beneath every stance taken in representing another person is a moral conundrum, and I find that conundrum in nearly all qualitative research of human subjects:   there is always a cost and it is hard to pin down when it is often unrecognized, its danger compounded by its subtlety.  In particular, images of suffering, as both Sontag and Linfield observe, position any viewer of that work, however moved emotionally, as separated consumers of an image whose evocation and effect on the viewer the human subject may not have intended nor given consent to.  In today’s media-saturated ethos, were it not for the discernment of the journalistic profession, seldom would consumers concur that there exist images that no one has the right to ever see.

On the other hand, art that respects the complexity of its ethical and moral dimensions may the sine qua non of any transcendent art.  For instance, art freely created by the subject is obviously created with the full consent of the artist, who consciously creates with the intention of sharing, welcoming the range of possible impressions upon, and interpretations by, viewers.  Art created with subjects, which arts-based research can at times employ, does require researcher care in the ways of interacting with subjects that preserves the ethical and moral integrity of all participants.

Pink, S. (2011). Multimodality, multisensoriality and ethnographic knowing: social semiotics and phenomenology of perception. Qualitative Research, 11(3), 261–276. https://doi.org/10.1177/1468794111399835

Jordan, C. M. (2017). Directing energy: Gordon Matta-Clark’s pursuit of social sculpture. In Gordon Matta-Clark: Anarchitect (pp. 36–63). New Haven, CT: The Bronx Museum of the Arts and Yale University Press.

In PInk:  “Perception begins in the body and ends in objects”(Csordas, 1990, p. 8, as cited in Geurts, 2003)” (265).  

Theme: The visual in use as a sensory ethnographic evocation in “phenomenological” ethnography, rather than as a traditional recording of data in classical ethnography, can lead to a more comprehensive anthropological ethnography.  Pink reaffirms Merleau-Ponty’s views that the body senses with all its organs simultaneously and in an interconnected manner.  But in the attempt to linguistically express that sensory experience we find restriction by the conventional five-sensory model.  The breadth of sensory experience,  requiring a true “phenomenological ethnography,” cannot, even in moments, fit neatly into the limitations of linguistic-based models. (270)

Not only can Art be used as a tool of expression when the linguistic mode may not be sufficient to the task, a phenomenological ethnography of ”being with” seeks to understand and express what others understand and feel.  The visual, for instance, is not viewed merely as a “photographic” recording of data or evidence as in classical ethnography, but as a means to elicit, empathize, or to evoke a more comprehensive experience of a moment, a true anthropological ethnography.  Imaginative use of even one sensory mode, such as the visual, say, can evoke a multi-sensory experience (synaesthesia). It is intriguing that the visual alone can be more precise than the linguistic:  although Pink disagrees with Kress’s binary schematic between words and images in general, she appears to agree with Kress’s (2005) counterintuitive assertion that images can depict experience with greater fullness of meaning, detail and precision, while words are more “general, ….empty and vague.” (264). Although most would agree that words, by context for instance, are indeed imbued with meaning anew in any instance by the hearer/reader (264), is the visual truly less amenable to that distortion in communication? It is so counterintuitive that it must be true.

I am most intrigued by the use of visual arts as a means of approaching a fuller anthropological ethnography, with its attendant precision, and how this ethnography would manifest in a range of practices, including that of educator, student and researcher.  

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So, is Matta-Clark a community activist who employs arts-based research, or an artist who employs community-based research?  Although either description is easily justified, the former may be closer to the core of his identity.  Ultimately, he wanted to realize community engagement and empowerment, the identification of and resistance to socioeconomic inequality and governmental neglect, and a heightened community political awareness.  Matta-Clark’s experience may be emblematic of realizing the potential of this methodology in other vocations that aim to employ arts-based research, including educators who aim to employ arts-based research.  It also highlights possible questions of ownership and ethics.

His arts-based research provides a tool for participants to shape their world.  Ironically, this was most apparent to me in the photo of the four men sitting in a dirt lot with shovels in hand, ready to begin that act of creation upon a blighted, desolate lot.  The shape that it would take was yet to be realized. I wonder what it was going to become. Completed installations, including Pig Roast and restaurants such as Food, Matta-Clark incorporated highly participatory experiences with food in community. He aimed to employ “professional and non-professionals” alike as participants in work valuing inherent “human capital,” not the narrow political or economic capital that is often absent from such communities.  The work characterized the creation of a community that together invests in themselves and addresses together the problems that they face.

Is the question about the attribution and ownership of community-based works of art in fact an important question or not? There is an ethical rub here that Jordan insinuates.  Ownership of many of these works and extant installations were, in the end, attributed solely to the artist, as was the case with Matt-Clark and Beuys, although many community residents together created the work.  Is this important?  If it was their aim, then these great artists were ultimately not successful in that attempt to “…eliminate the hierarchic relationships between [artists] and their audiences”( 53).

The question of durability is related.  After the death of Matta-Clark, and of Beuys, the power of their work would dramatically diminish later for those who were not present firsthand to experience it with the artists’ direction (53).  Evidently, the artist was the lodestar of an ephemeral artefact of community shaping only for an instant in time.  Perhaps the the return of attribution to the progenitor artist also made vulnerable the legacy of that art’s influence.  Nevertheless, the arts-based research in shaping community did in fact impact the community in that time in significant ways.  The fact that such artefacts are not eternal, like great art is supposed to be, does not diminish the fact of what the community created, even if ephemeral, using arts-based research.  Thus, the question, “Was it ever art?” is moot.  So is the question “Whose art was it?” The only answer that matters is that the sensibility of art as a methodology was successful in allowing citizens to create and shape a community, at that instant in time.  It is also crucial that the research project was conducted ethically, with transparency and respect for all who participated. I like that art is not held in reverence here;  the community is.  We do not have to esteem “art” too highly in arts-based research, where we have the right to demote art to take a subordinate role in the service of other higher purposes, even other higher purposes that are ephemeral.

Barone, T., & Eisner, E. (2006). Arts-based educational research. In J. L. Green, G. Camilli, & P. B. Elmore (Eds.), Handbook of complimentary methods in education reserach (pp. 95–110). Washington, D.C.: American Educational Research Association.

Barone, T., & Eisner, E. W. (2012). What is and what is not arts-based research. In Arts-based research (pp. 1–12). Los Angeles: SAGE Publications.

Eisner, E. W. (2001). Concerns and aspirations for qualitative research in the new millennium. Qualitative Research, 1(2), 135–145. https://doi.org/10.1177/146879410100100202

One of the primary challenges that confronts me from this first set of readings is the need to make a distinction between art and arts-based research, that is, the determination of what is uniquely able to be obtained not solely from an encounter with art, but from the practice of arts based research.

With respect to art, Eisner (2001) evinces the ability of visual art to express “…by nuance and drawing attention to particulars, which …slow down perception and invite exploration” (Dewey, as cited in Eisner, 134). Eisner’s focus is to compare the similarities of the quality of art to that of qualitative research.  What interested me was his observation that  “Researchers involved with human relationships do not solve problems, they cope with situations….whose resolutions lead to other situations” (138). Further, there exists the potential to address the concept of form, for the artist knows “…that form and content cannot be separated” (138).  It is vaguely provocative: “..that the form of representation one uses has something to do with the form of understanding one secures” (139).  These would certainly be components to be mindful of in the design of art-based research. Though Eisner believes it is necessary to theorize arts-based research, I am not yet convinced by this argument.

Barone & Eisner (2012) reaffirm the role of art, and art-based research in particular, as one means of seeking and expressing truth, a way to provide “methodological permission for people to innovate with the methods they use… “(2), which may not necessarily conform to that of the conventional scientific paradigm.  But what are the more general kinds of truth beyond that of scientific propositional truths, and how can such truths be sought and expressed?   In Heidegger’s philosophy , Truth is more generally defined as revelation, the  experience of unhidden-ness.   Perhaps this is one possible notion that I suspect would be relevant in seeking other forms of truth, those less easily quantifiable, and even ineffable.

Seeking expression for such non-propositional forms of truth has value, but what value may it have as a research methodology?  Barone & Eisner (2012) allude to its potential to “..adumbrate in symbols something important….that can become a source for debate and deliberation” (5), and to function as …”illuminating vehicles” in research activities (6). I think it can allow students a wider canvass upon which to express and un-hide their thinking, both to others, such as the teacher, and to themselves.  I also believe in the primacy of developing aesthetic judgment, which ABR may engender in students, and which I believe may most enable students to appropriate knowledge and to exercise power and discrimination over it.  As Barone & Eisner (2012) comment, arts-based research is “..the utilization of aesthetic judgment and the application of aesthetic criteria in making judgments about what the character of expected outcomes is to be” (8).  (however, I do think that his later generic descriptions fall short of developing this thread, i.e. that ABR’s benefit include the ability “…to create an expressive form that will enable an individual to secure an empathic participation in the lives of others and in the situations studied” (9), or that arts based research is “an emotionally drenched expression that makes it possible to know how others feel.”  Not as helpful. I would like to develop myself.. )

Other generalities may not uncover the true value of arts-based research, such as the assertion that it “…addresses complex and often subtle interactions and that it provides an image of those interactions in ways that make them noticeable… It is a “heuristic through which we deepen and make more complex our understanding of some aspects of the world (3)”.  I am not so sure that complexity is what is always desired.  Specificity and detail, perhaps even simplification, can also be possible, as Eisner (2001)  asserts below.  Nevertheless, I would like to explore potential methods relevant to me within the ABR methodology:  how art can provide emotional dimension to STEM education;  how art can be used as a tool for student self-discovery;  how the use of limitation can, like in theatre, catalyze the imagination; how art can support equity in the STEM classroom (not only participation, engagement, but as an aid in understanding, and in precision of expression)…. Can art-based research unify content areas that presently appear distinct? Can the precision of the scientific inform traditional art and elevate it?

I appreciate the cautionary in both Rose and Eisner’s articles.  What does “critical” mean in the context of ABR?  She does state the danger of a criticism that is both “easy and ineffectual,  because it changes nothing of what it criticizes “( Rose 29). The act of observing art for the sake of critiquing it can in effect cheapen the very experience it has the potential to evoke (29).  (As I mentioned earlier, I am not sure that Art is meant to be theorized.)  Further she affirms that “there are many times that I yearn for something in excess of the research” (Holly in Cheetham et al., 2005:88, as cited by Rose,29).  Scholars emphasize “the embodied and the experiential as what lies in excess of the representation” (Marks and Hansen, as cited by Rose, 29). Delueze suggests, with reference to cinematic art, that perhaps this “beyond” may consist in the ability to “…lose control of ourselves, undo ourselves, forget ourselves while in front of the cinema screen” (29).

Rose, G. (2016). Visual Methodologies (4^th Edition). London: SAGE Publications.

Rose also insinuates some ethical concerns with subjects in ABR.  Thus, I would expect research guidance is vitally important and necessary in order to responsibly and ethically employ arts-based research in the classroom, and more generally, in educational research.  It is not anyone’s right, for instance, to expose or to reveal the feelings of others, if they are not so informed and freely participating in the search, etc..

In the arts, there is the notion of subjectivity and relativity in judgment, an indeterminacy that can appear to subvert its value in arts-based research.  However, Eisner (2001) addresses this and provides a counterpoint to universality:  art can in fact delineate distinctive individuality of creation and expression of understanding.  Perhaps the most value for pedagogy that an arts-based research method can assess is that distinctiveness “…if the tasks that students are asked to engage in are sufficiently open ended to allow their individuality to be expressed and if the appraisal of their performance employs criteria that suit the work to be assessed”(142).  It is not valid to compare one’s work with that of another in this context either.  He reminds us of Dewey’s cautionary note about the uniquely distinctive and particular nature of art, and that “…nowhere are comparisons more odious than in the arts” (141).  Lastly, work and skill with art must be developed as well as appreciated by practitioners of ABR.  “You need refined sensibilities, you need an idea, you need imagination, and you need technical skills” (143).