Dissertations / Theses on the topic 'Arts-informed inquiry'

Thesis advisor: M. Brinton Lykes
Every day Muslim women in the United States wake up to a harsh political world that attacks their identities, communities, and freedom. In this context, Muslim women endure immense psychological tolls on their sense of identity, safety, and relationships. For many of them, walking out the door and claiming their Muslim identity is an act of political resistance. Despite the disempowerment they may experience, many engage in social actions to resist these oppressive forces. Yet, Muslim women activists have received strikingly little attention in the psychological literature. To date, no research has explored the psychosocial experiences of Muslim women who engage in activism, nor the meanings they make of these engagements or their trajectories of resistance. Using a participatory research approach informed by art-based inquiry techniques, this inductive qualitative study explored 10 Muslim women activists’ trajectories into and experiences of engaging in social action. A constructivist theoretical model of Muslim women activists' processes of resistance and community liberation was developed through qualitative inductive analyses of in-depth interviews and participants’ illustrations. Eight “clusters” have been configured to map a model that represents both processes and outcomes of how these 10 women engaged, experienced, and made meaning of their activism. They include: (1) living in a post 9/11 sociopolitical context; (2) navigating the Muslim community context; (3) internal experiences of being a Muslim woman; (4) guiding ideals toward activism journey; (5) development of political analyses; (6) resistance actions toward social change; (7) burdens and benefits of engagement in resistance; and (8) supportive forces in the process of resistance. Although only representative of 10 participants, the model is sufficiently theorized to suggest that life in a multiply traumatizing context shapes Muslim women activists’ experiences, precluding and contributing to their persistence and resistance throughout and during their engagement in social change work. Political analyses and ideals are vital in their descriptions of their trajectories of becoming activists. Benefits and burdens that are inevitable in social change work include both the thrill and fun of engaging in activism as well as the costs to relationships and conflicts inherent in such work. Finally, encouragement by other Muslims and allies is discussed as a valuable source of support to Muslim women activists. Limitations are discussed and implications are proposed to inform possibilities for future healing centered research and action
Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2020
Submitted to: Boston College. Lynch School of Education
Discipline: Counseling, Developmental and Educational Psychology

At the outset, I dis-claim any knowledge or understanding what-so-ever, which is a peculiar stance to take for a nurse educator immersed in the language of “expertise,” “best practices,” and “champion” healthcare offerings. I do not dis-claim knowledge to absolve my professional accountability, nor do I absolve myself of being responsible for my text, rather I apprehend this journey of sentience and incarnation as an infant experiencing and learning the world in which it finds itself. It is only through a naïve, furtive play that I am able to proceed, through the difficulties and paradoxical tensions of constructed identities, without complete paralysis. As I play and ponder my way through multiple methodologies, a representational form emerges between repetitious moments of contemplation, remembering lived experiences, and reflecting on philosophical discourses. The difficulty or tension lies in the provocation of identities, as nurse, educator, and mother, among many other stances and formulations. Each identified discourse compels me to challenge the gaps in my knowledge in new ways. As I explore, I unravel the forms of text that are various incarnations of narrative reflection. The choices I make are about inquiring through concept, form and identification, which I both uniquely challenge as an individual and hold in common by being socially and historically situated. Each transition, contemplation and provocation is hopeful and volatile. I am always attuned to how it is that I live the spaces between each, unknowing my “self” as my otherness, letting go the ideal/real and becoming the (/) through a relational pedagogy.

This thesis investigates how my representations of experience through arts-informed autoethnographic research are significant in establishing the pedagogical nature of place. I seek to understand how place-conscious education in a community setting can encourage students’ relationships with the spaces they inhabit and lend to a more just learning environment. Many educative tools are provided and analyzed which are derived from wayfinding and psychogeographic methods. Data was collected over two months throughout the Summer of 2015 while participating in the Onward Israel service learning program in Israel and Palestine. My digital photographs and excerpts of stream-of-consciousness style poetry serve as the data set to illuminate the rich sensory encounters and art making processes indicative of experiential learning.

This context-driven artwork encourages questions and dialogue about sociopolitical conflict and wars, migration and occupation. It is concerned with physical as well as psychological borders, checkpoints and boundaries. I utilized poetic and photographic inquiry as well as cognitive mapping to explore how concepts of travel are intricately linked to practices of self-reflexivity, community building and alternative curricula development outside of the formal classroom setting. This qualitative data is not a strictly defined set of interviews or statistics. Instead, vignettes of a more totalizing experience can be extracted, analyzed, dissected and/or rearranged. It is an exploration of identity, agency and untraditional ways of knowing the self/Other. I underscore how new pathways and possibilities for teaching emerge from a greater acceptance and validation of experiential knowledge and an attuned consciousness to place.

This thesis investigates how my representations of experience through arts-informed autoethnographic research are significant in establishing the pedagogical nature of place. I seek to understand how place-conscious education in a community setting can encourage students' relationships with the spaces they inhabit and lend to a more just learning environment. Many educative tools are provided and analyzed which are derived from wayfinding and psychogeographic methods. Data was collected over two months throughout the Summer of 2015 while participating in the Onward Israel service learning program in Israel and Palestine. My digital photographs and excerpts of stream-of-consciousness style poetry serve as the data set to illuminate the rich sensory encounters and art making processes indicative of experiential learning. This context-driven artwork encourages questions and dialogue about sociopolitical conflict and wars, migration and occupation. It is concerned with physical as well as psychological borders, checkpoints and boundaries. I utilized poetic and photographic inquiry as well as cognitive mapping to explore how concepts of travel are intricately linked to practices of self-reflexivity, community building and alternative curricula development outside of the formal classroom setting. This qualitative data is not a strictly defined set of interviews or statistics. Instead, vignettes of a more totalizing experience can be extracted, analyzed, dissected and/or rearranged. It is an exploration of identity, agency and untraditional ways of knowing the self/Other. I underscore how new pathways and possibilities for teaching emerge from a greater acceptance and validation of experiential knowledge and an attuned consciousness to place.

This arts-informed inquiry is grounded in the lived experiences of five self-proclaimed artists including the researcher, who have turned to careers in teaching at varying stages of their lives. The stories of their transitions and evolving identities as both artists and teachers provide the investigative focus for this study. Although this research is relevant to teachers more generally, it specifically focuses on those who have chosen to teach Visual Arts. Particularly suited to a postmodern, arts-informed inquiry, the diverse forms of knowing that create our everyday experiences are acknowledged. The researcher became the bricoleur who collaged the individual stories of the first year artist-teachers into an integrated work of art. This constructivist approach included the use of visual imagery to transcend linguistic description. Through artworks, photographs, a self-narrative and novelette, the multiple ways these early career Visual Arts teachers came to understand themselves and their journeys are explored. This study has the potential to inform novice teachers of the transitions they may experience as they enter the teaching profession. Possible challenges, including the recognition that idealised beliefs might be traded in for more realistic representations, are discussed along with the notions of teaching as an art and the concept of resilience.

Doctor of Philosophy
This arts-informed inquiry is grounded in the lived experiences of five self-proclaimed artists including the researcher, who have turned to careers in teaching at varying stages of their lives. The stories of their transitions and evolving identities as both artists and teachers provide the investigative focus for this study. Although this research is relevant to teachers more generally, it specifically focuses on those who have chosen to teach Visual Arts. Particularly suited to a postmodern, arts-informed inquiry, the diverse forms of knowing that create our everyday experiences are acknowledged. The researcher became the bricoleur who collaged the individual stories of the first year artist-teachers into an integrated work of art. This constructivist approach included the use of visual imagery to transcend linguistic description. Through artworks, photographs, a self-narrative and novelette, the multiple ways these early career Visual Arts teachers came to understand themselves and their journeys are explored. This study has the potential to inform novice teachers of the transitions they may experience as they enter the teaching profession. Possible challenges, including the recognition that idealised beliefs might be traded in for more realistic representations, are discussed along with the notions of teaching as an art and the concept of resilience.

Program evaluation is a form of systematic inquiry designed to meet the needs of those who are working on or who are responsible for a program. One challenge faced by the field of evaluation is responding to the increasing complexity of social programing and diverse informational needs. Methodological innovation is a trait of the field of program evaluation that provides opportunity for responding to challenge faced by the field. Evaluation orientations that rely on qualitative methodologies, which seek to describe, to understand or to interpret complex phenomena are potential sites for arts-informed inquiry. Arts-informed inquiry draws from creative strategies in the arts, where art is produced for the sake of inquiry. Accordingly, through this research I adopt dual roles of evaluator and researcher, to gather empirical evidence about the power of integrating arts-informed inquiry into frameworks for evaluation. In this research, I document how arts-informed inquiry draws from artistic processes to broaden perceptions, make meaningful contributions, and expand evaluator skills. Specifically, the potential for arts-informed inquiry in evaluation is investigated by conducting an evaluation of one program, in one school district. Analysis of this two-phase process occurred by applying a heuristic of three groupings of key concepts within the field of evaluation: methods, values and use. In doing so, I provide a detailed description of the potential for arts-informed inquiry within one program evaluation. This study provides a transparent account of the inquiry process to document the implications for undertaking arts-informed inquiry in program evaluation. In addition, there are theoretical implications for the field of evaluation when they consider the process and representations shaped by inclusion of arts-informed inquiry.
Thesis (Ph.D, Education) -- Queen's University, 2013-06-28 21:49:48.1

I explore how recreational canoeists develop sense of place developed and ecological identity through experience. The intersection between artefact and narrative is the entry-point of exploration of understandings of how recreational canoeists learn through experiences. There are three structural elements. A factional narrative arc of a canoe trip frames the work. Fragments of collective narratives: weave into this story and add richness and depth of experience. Participants’ interwoven narratives form the second element of this work. Finally, footnotes underpin this text to explain and support the research. They emerge to reflect the complexity of telling, and understanding, experience. This is a story of stories. This is a story of a trip that never happened. It holds real participants’ narratives based in lived experiences that shape this story. Narratives emerge between artefact and experience, between experience and ecological identity, between ecological identity and place, and between place and story.

Artwork / Streetlives is a community-based, arts-informed, research project which addresses harm reduction amongst street youth in Thunder Bay, Ontario. Nine street-involved participant researchers (supported by a team of researchers and community organizations) used art making and storytelling as ways of understanding the risks specific to street-involved youth in Thunder Bay. Due to the heterogeneous nature of the participant researcher group and a majority of Aboriginal research participants, a novel approach was used to create principles of research collaboration, in pursuit of the principles of ownership, control, access and possession for ethical research with Aboriginal peoples. The participant researchers found that their most common experience was their vulnerability to governmental social services and law enforcement personnel and policies. They further agreed that the risk of losing their children to child protection services is a source of increased vulnerability and a barrier to accessing treatment. They all agreed that the process of art making was fruitful and were surprised by the clarity and evocative nature of their artwork, finding that meeting weekly to do art is gratifying and therapeutic. They were interested to discover that the art they created, just by telling their stories, contained strong prevention messages they would have been influenced by as younger people. As such the participants want to continue making art, and showing their work, particularly to young people, social service providers, and law enforcement officers, who they think are in the best position to learn from it. This project is building capacity in the community (by teaching artmaking, group work, organizing, critical thinking, and presentation skills), is contributing to scholarship, and significantly and positively impacting the lives of the participant researchers. This work is represented in traditional academic prose and as collaborative fiction.

Utilizing autoethnographic reflections in the forms of lyric, collage, and personal narrative, this inquiry shows how one teacher developed resiliency. That teacher is me. My early teaching experiences in an Ontario high school provide a qualitative focus of an inner, emotional journey to regaining strength and rediscovering passion after a period of burn-out. Tracing the passage from idealism to defeatism to resilience through metaphors, this arts-informed inquiry represents the inner life of a young woman and teacher.

Through narrative, poetic, and visual inquiry, this arts-informed thesis reclaims the silenced voices and life histories of both our elderly farmers and of our elderly architecture--the barn. Using the life history model of research (Knowles & Cole, 2001), I engage in informal "chats" (Archibald, 2008, p. 377) with my elderly father to seek out the meaning and significance of his life spent on the farm--and his emotional response to the taking down of his two bank barns after the sale of his farm. What results is a "responsive" (Knowles & Cole, 2001, p. 10) representation of data, an alternative type of meaning and knowledge that is known as arts-informed qualitative representation.

In this Arts-informed Life History I use dialogue and narrative to illustrate “pedagogy in practice” and illuminate the life’s work of Métis adult educator Dave Skene. Skene tells stories of experience working cross-culturally to illustrate how individuals are transformed by learning experiences and how they contribute to transformative learning in others' lives. He recounts experiences of working for social justice and community development in the global context of north-south knowledge exchange. Skene’s life crosses many borders and the research account walks readers through a life growing up in an urban setting, surviving on the street, discovering God, working internationally with indigenous peoples, listening to stories in areas of protracted conflict and war, and co-founding a Non Governmental Organization, Global Youth Network. As researcher I interweave reflexive accounts of cross-cultural experiences in Canada and Latin America to contribute to understanding how to undertake life history research and issues in its representation.

This is an inquiry that explores both then and now. Father and Daughter. Temporality and Geography. Within these pages stories are used to explore my family’s present and past; migration, settlement, memory, experience and connection to place – Glace Bay, a village on Cape Breton Island. Through narrative, poetry and photography, the contrasting experiences of having lived in Glace Bay in the past, and the struggle to connect with Glace Bay in the present, and future, are explored. Finally, within this manuscript I examine the impact of my father’s stories and I identify storytelling as an important factor in developing a critical consciousness. My father inspired my sense of social justice at a young age and the impetus for this project was not just to document his stories for the sake of posterity, but also to exemplify the way consciousness is cultivated and passed down; across generations, despite changing landscapes, through story.

Using interpretive methods of social inquiry, this thesis explores the socio-political significance of body tattoos made of Chinese-like text, which have recently become popular Western phenomena. It theorizes how contemporary Western tattooing complicates bodily and social boundaries, providing context to interrogate ideas of authenticity. Coining the term "Chinesenough" (from “Chinese” and “enough”), I describe how many such tattoos do not reflect in Chinese what many wearers and viewers assume they do. I contrast how Chinesenough tattoos (re)produce whiteness to the multiple and contradictory Chinesenesses that are also (re)produced. Reading Chinesenough flash art on tattoo studio walls as objects constituting social space, I consider the social meaning of their English subtitles and manner of organization. I theorize the body’s absence from Chinesenough flash art while articulating my body’s sense experience of encountering the same. Finally, I produce and theorize five illustrations that carnivalize Chinesenough iconography to disrupt and transform the phenomenon.

This qualitative study uses narrative inquiry (Connelly & Clandinin, 1988, 1990, 2001) and self-study to investigate ways to further understand and facilitate the integration of holistic philosophies of education with media literacy pedagogies. As founder and director of the Youth Media Literacy Project and a self-titled Imagitator (one who agitates imagination), I have spent over 10 years teaching media literacy in various high schools, universities, and community centres across North America. This study will focus on my own personal practical knowledge (Connelly & Clandinin, 1982) as a culture jammer, educator and cancer survivor to illustrate my original vision of a ‘holistic media literacy pedagogy’. This research reflects on the emergence and impact of holistic media literacy in my personal and professional life and also draws from relevant interdisciplinary literature to challenge and synthesize current insights and theories of media literacy, holistic education and culture jamming.