Summer 2018 - EDUC 943 G001

Arts-Based Inquiry in Educational Research (5)

Class Number: 6032

Delivery Method: In Person

Overview

  • Course Times + Location:

    May 7 – Aug 3, 2018: Tue, 4:30–9:20 p.m.
    Surrey

Description

CALENDAR DESCRIPTION:

This doctoral seminar will explore modes of inquiry through the arts that are important for education. Participants will be introduced to, and learn to practice, various arts-based methods including narrative, performative, poetic, autobiographical and living inquiry.

COURSE DETAILS:

LOCATION:  Please note this class is on Tuesday nights at SFU Surrey. May 8 – July 24 (a few other times to make up hours)  See below There will also be times where we meet off-campus in galleries or performances spaces and site-specific sites for field trips. 
DATES for Field Trips May 22 – Surrey Art Gallery June 14/15 or 16, “Perfect Imperfections: The Art of a Messy Life” 8:00-9:30 at the Vancouver East Cultural Centre July 3 at 2:00 UBC Botanical Garden July 10 (Dancing on the Edge in Vancouver)  possibly

This course provides students with training in the methodologies of arts-based research that are considered essential for students undertaking doctoral dissertations in arts education. Arts-based research in educational research exists today as a creative, critical, and communal practice of inquiry and performance that seeks to challenge the status quo, and imagine new possibilities of engagement, venturing across curricular boundaries of exploration. Arts-based Inquiry in educational research invites, challenges, and questions social and individual practices of participation, and seeks to voice new ways of engaging children, youth and adults in their learning and in understanding of who they are as individuals, and in community. We will also consider the arts in relationship to inquiry as an act of creativity, resistance, exploration, and hope. This doctoral seminar will explore modes of inquiry that intersect performance, embodiment, visual and poetic engagement through the arts. Participants will be introduced to arts-based educational research methodologies within qualitative inquiry that support alternative forms of scholarly discourse. The literature will be reviewed with attention to the theoretical frameworks that inform alternative arts-based research and curricular theories. This seminar will problematize current and past paradigms of how arts-based research has been conceptualized and practiced, and its positionality in the academy. Questions of the connections between physicality and spirituality that arise out of artistic inquiry will be attended to with its impact to its connection between the personal and the universal. This includes a grappling with phenomenology, hermeneutics and holistic education in terms of our understanding of our roles as educators and researchers. In addition, in this seminar students will engage in narrative inquiry, performative inquiry,embodied forms of inquiry, living inquiry, poetic inquiry and autobiographical forms of research. If possible, guest arts-based researchers will be invited into the class in order to be exposed to a variety of people working in the field. Students will be encouraged to explore two art forms within the inquiry process: one that is in their repertoire of artistic experience, and the other that pushes the boundaries of their comfort level. Students will also be required to look at other forms of dissertations and theses that are exemplary, alongside the reading of primary texts. Students will come to an understanding of what it means to live aesthetically and with integrity as scholars, educators and artists. This is be a required course for all doctoral students within the arts education program, as it will prepare them for integrating their scholarship and artistic inquiry with the emergent social, political, corporate demands of contemporary life and vocation.

COURSE-LEVEL EDUCATIONAL GOALS:

The student will gain a more thorough comprehension of the complexity and variety of arts-based inquiries, theories, literature, and forms of representations that inform research through the arts.

The student will learn how engagement in an arts medium impacts learning, perception, and understanding.

The student will learn how to articulate the theoretical underpinnings that inform his or her arts practice and medium of inquiry.

The student will be able to represent and express the learning and understanding and its implications and applications that emerge through an arts-based inquiry.

The student will have a thorough understanding of the historical development and current issues of arts-based research and representation.

The student will develop an understanding of how cultural and social factors have shaped his or her perceptions and practices of research and representation.  

Grading

  • Major arts-based inquiry with a reflective essay on what you learned 70%%
  • Group literature review 20%%
  • Attendance/weekly writing shared in class 10%%

NOTES:

1. Major arts-based inquiry: Performance piece, visual arts installation, and/or writing that may be individual or collaborative in nature, that draws from an inquiry in an arts medium outside the student’s own arts practice. Choose an arts medium with which you are unfamiliar with and design an arts-based inquiry to explore your learning through working in this new arts medium. Maintain fieldnotes to track your feelings, insights, observations, questions as they emerge over the course of the inquiry. It is not intended that a polished performance piece will result from this inquiry, however, a representation of the inquiry, and a sharing of your learning, insights, and implications for education (as broadly defined) is required. This may be a collaborative or individual project.

OR Arts –based Inquiry and Representation In consultation with course instructor(s), students will undertake an arts-based research project in an area of choice, read the pertinent literature, and present his or her work. An opportunity for a creative collaboration of arts-based reserach is possible if a group of students so wish. REFLECTIVE ESSAY Write a reflective essay interacting with the arts-based inquiry you explored (a or b), which highlights your learning, transformative moments, and how it will inform your future research and practice.


2. Group literature review The group project is designed to give you the opportunity to work together, to research and share ways of inquiry and representation through the arts that are currently being practiced in the academy.

Literature Review of all arts-based literature in an assigned arts-based methodology. Read and discuss the primary texts within an arts-based research methodology with a partner and then collaboratively write a literature review that will introduce readers to the methodology and the key literature that informs that methodology. This information will be presented to classmates. The purpose of this assignment is to familiarize students with the practice of literature reviews and to begin to become familiar with the literature of a particular arts-based research methodology.


3. Performative and Embodied Writing practice You will be encouraged to write weekly, based on performative/narrative/poetic and/or embodied moments of learning, and share with the class weekly. This performative writing practice is to open up spaces for cultivating a relationship to language, which is authentic, aesthetic, and alive. This performative writing practice is also to develop a practice of noticing, which is critical for artistic research and creation, and to engage in inquiry and knowledge dissemination.

Materials

MATERIALS + SUPPLIES:

There will be a fee for gallery admission and Botanical Garden and perhaps a performance.

REQUIRED READING:

Leavy, P. (Ed.).  (2017) Handbook of arts based research. New York, NY: Guildford Press. ISBN 978-14-6252-195-1

Snowber, C. (2016). Embodied inquiry: Writing, living and being through the body. Rotterdam, The Netherlands: Sense Publishing. ISBN 978-94-6300-753-5

Selected Journal Articles and Chapters.

RECOMMENDED READING:

Bagley, C. & Cancienne, M, (Eds). (2002). Dancing the data. NY: Peter Lang. ISBN 9780820455259

Chambers, C., Hasebe-Ludt, E., Leggo, C, & Sinner, A, (Eds).  (2012) A Heart of Wisdom: Life Writing as Empathetic Inquiry. NY: Peter Lang. ISBN 978-1-4331-1529-5

Knowles, G. & Cole, A. (Ed) (2008). The handbook of the arts in qualitative  inquiry: Perspectives, methodologies, examples, and issues.  New York, NY: Sage. ISBN  1412905311  

Leavy, P. (2008). Method meets art: Arts-based research practice.  New York NY: Guilford Press. ISBN 9781593852597

Pendergast, M., Leggo, C. & Sameshima, P. (Eds.) (2009) Poetic Inquiry: Vibrant Voices in the Social Sciences. Netherlands: Sense. ISBN: 9789087909499  

Richmond, S. & Snowber. C. (2009/2011). Landscapes in Aesthetic Education. Newcastle, England: Cambridge Scholars ISBN 1443813966

Graduate Studies Notes:

Important dates and deadlines for graduate students are found here: http://www.sfu.ca/dean-gradstudies/current/important_dates/guidelines.html. The deadline to drop a course with a 100% refund is the end of week 2. The deadline to drop with no notation on your transcript is the end of week 3.

Registrar Notes:

SFU’s Academic Integrity web site http://students.sfu.ca/academicintegrity.html is filled with information on what is meant by academic dishonesty, where you can find resources to help with your studies and the consequences of cheating.  Check out the site for more information and videos that help explain the issues in plain English.

Each student is responsible for his or her conduct as it affects the University community.  Academic dishonesty, in whatever form, is ultimately destructive of the values of the University. Furthermore, it is unfair and discouraging to the majority of students who pursue their studies honestly. Scholarly integrity is required of all members of the University. http://www.sfu.ca/policies/gazette/student/s10-01.html

ACADEMIC INTEGRITY: YOUR WORK, YOUR SUCCESS