This educational study on narrative and symbolic art and its impact on me as artist, researcher, and teacher and ultimately how the use of narrative and symbolism impacts student learning was conducted throughout the school year 2013-2014 in the environment of both my home and my classroom in a south metro Atlanta high school. The research is based on my reflections of my artistic processes, my research of family history, and my observations as I introduced narrative and symbolic art in the classroom. The findings of the study reveal that the roles of artist, teacher, and researcher are significantly interrelated and enhance one another; I also believe that my students’ learning was impacted. While students are at first assigned narrative and symbolic art projects, many begin to extrapolate that art is more meaningful to them when it has a story to tell or includes symbolism with which they associate importance.

This thesis interweaves the Reggio Emilia preschool model of atelier (art studio) and atelierista (artist educator), autobiography, timeless and embodied learning. I am interested in exploring approaches in which visual arts education in elementary schools disrupts traditional ways of knowing and learning about art. When an atelierista is embraced in the school environment, a rupture emerges in the landscape of education; one that recognizes the interconnectivity of things, and values difference and unknown. For this reason, I align my research with a form of inquiry – a/r/tography, which acknowledges intertwining roles of artist/researcher/teacher as integral parts of the research process. As such, my own art making is used as a form of inquiry and language in the text of this thesis.

Reflecting on my musical past, my annual participation in competition music festivals in solo and ensemble categories at the local and provincial levels shaped my music education as well as my development as a music educator. I inquire into how re/visiting moments of tension in my lived experiences as a participant in competition music festivals can facilitate my current praxis as artist, researcher and teacher. My inquiry is informed by understandings of a/r/tography as an arts-based educational research methodology. I inquire into these sites of music-making drawing on a theoretical framework of a soundscape, a concept originally proposed by Canadian composer R. Murray Schafer, to generate rhizomatic pathways with/in my research. Through this framework I consider how musical form informs the processes and structures of my thesis. Emphasizing a/r/tography as process-oriented inquiry, understandings emerge through music-making, arts-based journaling and autoethnographic renderings. Rhizomatic soundscapes evoke new understandings and questions contributing to literature on student perspectives participating in competition music festivals and teaching and learning in one-to-one music instruction.

Talking about spirituality can be uncomfortable. The topic is especially precarious within the sphere of education. Despite the discomfort and precarity, many scholars argue that there may be room in the postmodern curriculum for safe, open, and generative dialogue about religion and spirituality as cultural phenomena. These curriculum theorists (see Slattery, 2013; Doll, 2002; Huebner, 1991; Noddings, 2005; Whitehead, 1967a/1929; Wang, 2002) propose a sensitive critique of spirituality and religion that can lead to cultural healing, re-membering, re-integration and re-collection (Huebner, 1991). In an increasingly fractured world (Slattery, 2013), where spiritual and religious underpinnings cause an array of conflict, this study works toward critical dialogue in a secondary level public school art classroom. Through art-making, writing, and class discussions, the teacher and student researchers explored, critiqued, and de/constructed their own spirituality—with the aim of aggregating, accommodating (Rolling, 2011) and appreciating ways of thinking, being, and practicing that were different from their own. The project adopted A/r/tography as a qualitative research methodology, which views art-making, writing, and conversations as generative pools of data that can produce new understandings, meanings, and potentialities (Irwin et al., 2006; Irwin & de Cosson, 2004; Irwin & Springgay, 2008).

This paper explores possible applications of the experiential knowledge of motherhood in the field of art education through self-portraiture, a methodology which blends a/r/tography with elements of portraiture. A review of relevant literature situates the study within the scope of mothering pedagogy and arts-based research. Employing artistic practice and anecdotal journaling as the primary methods of inquiry, the researcher examines her experiences as a mother in a preservice art education program and the intersections of her roles as mother/artist/teacher. The researcher identifies resonant metaphors, including labor, separation, the umbilical cord, circles, the ovum, and pretending; offers parallels between mothering and art education in play, scaffolding, relationality, matrescence, changing plans, and paradigms; presents challenges such as time constraints, breastfeeding/pumping breast milk, and sleep deprivation; and provides an artist statement. The study attempts to address issues of misrepresentation and underrepresentation of mothers in art education by promoting understanding through empathetic participation.

This a/r/tographic research study examines how explorations of identity and place influence a sense of self. An elementary art educator investigated the roles of artist, researcher and teacher by having students create artwork individually and as a class. These pieces reflected their understanding of place and how it contributed to a sense of self. Using the methodology of a/r/tography, this teacher separated her identities of artist, teacher and researcher, and explored the complications and implications of all three in relation to her place as an elementary art specialist and her identity in the classroom. Several important understandings were drawn from this research study, specifically the idea of using art making as a learning tool to uncover identities in relation to place in an elementary classroom, the complications of working with elementary students on a deeper level due to the amount of students and the schedule of an art specialist, and the difficulties of coping with the demands placed on an art specialist.

Det finns en likriktning i de berättelser som görs synliga genom konstnärligt arbete idag, där storstäder utgör centrum och orter runt om i landet inte sällan glöms bort. Många verksamhetssatsningar på ungas konstnärliga skapande har gjorts i storstadsområden för att öka intresset för konst och design bland ungdomar i förorter. I detta arbete har jag tillsammans med en studiekamrat Anna sett att det finns ett behov av verksamhetssatsningar även längre ut i landet. Därför har vi provat vingarna för en mobil verksamhet som har tagit sig ut i landet med ambitionen att utjämna mellanrummet mellan centrum och periferin, och skapa plats för fler berättelser i kulturens centrum. Mina frågeställningar har varit: Hur kan en mobil estetisk verksamhet skapa utrymme för ungas berättelser och synliggöra platser i periferin? På vilket sätt kan denna verksamhet bemöta en hotad bildundervisning? I undersökningen har jag tagit mig tillbaka till min uppväxtort Värnamo där jag genom ett a/r/t/ographiskt förhållningssätt tagit mig an platsen. Jag har genom att uppleva, filma och fotografera tagit nya perspektiv vid en ny tidpunkt på en gammal plats vilket har varit en del i designandet av de workshopar som vi hållit både i Värnamo, och i Kiruna. Syftet med workshoparna har varit att stärka deltagarna till att berätta sina berättelser genom konstnärligt skapande och ta plats. Undersökningen tar ett intersektionellt perspektiv där platsen är i fokus, och där normer kring centrum och periferi undersöks. Mobila Designfabriken gestaltades på Konstfacks vårutställning i Tellusgången 16, där besökarna fick möjlighet att ta plats i en buss och uppleva resan mellan Kiruna och Värnamo. Deltagarnas visuella och auditiva berättelser fanns representerade och verksamhetens webbsida fanns att titta på digitalt. Genom arbetet med verksamheten har vi kunnat visa att en mobil plattform kan nå ut till fler människor på platser som kanske inte har samma tillgång på kultur som i storstaden.

Denna undersökning syftar till att hitta utvecklingsmetoder för hur jag som bildlärare i skakunna undervisa om graffiti och gatukonst, som en del av kontexten samtidskonst ur ettteoretiskt och estetiskt perspektiv på lärande. Jag valde att fördjupa mig i graffiti som visuellkultur och genom ett konstnärligt undersökande utveckla min egen praktik och estetiskakunnande utifrån tekniska metoder och material. Dessa hämtade från kreativa praktiker inomtraditionell graffiti för att utveckla min kunskap genom kroppslig upplevelse.Undersökningens frågeställning är: På vilka sätt kan graffiti som praktik förstås genom ettkonstnärligt praktiskt undersökande, i ett utvecklingsdidaktiskt syfte?Genom A/R/Tography som metodologiskt förhållningssätt har jag under studien agerat somkonstnären, forskaren och läraren (Artist - Researcher - Teacher) och undersökt graffiti somvisuell kultur . Under den gestaltande redovisningen och examensutställningen, menar jag attförsöka återskapa platsen för min studie, och synliggöra de förutsättningar som styrt minkreativa praktik och individuella lärprocess . Syftet med den slutgiltliga gestaltningen är attbjuda in till en interaktiv installation med en öppen vägg i ständig förändring. Här jag vill gebesökare möjlighet att få ny kunskap och själva få uppleva en graffiti inspirerad kreativprocess.

A junior high teacher and artist altered the curriculum of his Art Foundations II course and his own artistic practice in response to complexity thinking. This teacher-artist-researcher uses the arts-based methodology a/r/tography to make meaning of the relationship between his art and pedagogy. The a/r/tographer explains the impact of complexity on the philosophy of education, a/r/tography as a methodology, and the meaning making that occurred are included. Evolution was used as a methodology for art making and as constraint for developing artworks in the classroom and in the author's own art. The teacher-artist-researcher conceptualizes art as an emergent complex cultural practice that evolves over time. He argues that artists, teachers, consumers, and students are implicated in the evolution of art.

This dissertation is an a/r/tographic inquiry (Irwin & Springgay, 2008) that explores postmodern picturebooks and writing theory. Postmodern picturebooks have been described as texts that blur traditional literary boundaries and text-image relationships, while employing devices like metafiction and playfulness (Goldstone, 2002; Sipe, 2008). As meaning becomes more ambiguous, readers are positioned as co-constructors of meaning (Serafini, 2005). Research has shown students enjoy reading postmodern picturebooks and constructing meaningful transactions despite the complex nature of these texts (McGuire, Belfatti, & Ghiso, 2008; Pantaleo, 2004, 2007, 2008), but few have begun to explore how these texts are written. Therefore, I used a/r/tography (Irwin & Springgay, 2008) to theorize about the relationship between these texts and what it means to write. As a method of inquiry, a/r/tography is an arts-based approach to research that is interested in how artistic practices produce meaning and a/r/tographers use art to “construct the very ‘thing’ [they] are attempting to make sense of” (Springgay, 2008, p. 159). In this study, I wrote and illustrated a postmodern picturebook and interpreted how this experience generated understandings about what it means to write. In response to the process model of writing (Flower & Hayes, 1981), the data led to representations that offer new perspectives on contemporary writing theory, in particular, the interpretive, public, and situated nature of writing (Kent, 1999). As a result, I use theories of metaphor (Lakoff & Johnson, 1980/2003; Lakoff & Turner, 1989) to critique writing process theory (Elbow, 1973, 1981; Flower & Hayes, 1981) and propose that a/r/tographic inquiry creates openings for new possibilities within the post-process movement (Kent, 1999) by demonstrating how a writer’s evolving questions (Irwin & Springgay, 2008) relate to writing pedagogy.