Our current times are marked by the unprecedented challenges of environmental and social crisis. Transformative changes need to take place and in this study, we explore the role of Gotlandic citizens engaged in sustainability in creating a sustainable future. We follow a recent scholarship focusing on the power of imagination in the context of shaping sustainable futures. Through the theory lens of spaces, we map Gotlandic citizens’ individual experiences of context where they engage with sustainability in different forms of rational and imaginative reflection, alone or together. We conduct qualitative interviews to investigate existing spaces combined with action research where we create a new space of shared imagination in the form of a workshop. An in-depth understanding is gained of the reactions and emotions that our study participants express towards all of these spaces. Going beyond the (k)now, both in the meaning of going beyond traditional forms of knowledge but also in the sense of going into an uncertain future, allowed us to investigate the role of arts-based imagination in the context of an island community. Our findings suggest that spaces for practicing imagination are lacking, but are highly valued when experienced. They provide an alert hopefulness and a gentle way for ordinary citizens to engage with the complex topic of sustainable futures. Another key result of our study is that communities are important spaces where collective visions can grow.

This musical, arts-based educational research describes the lived experiences of four K-12 New Orleans educators who believe that end-of-year standardized tests hinder their ability to teach in ways they believe are best. Using songwriting as a form of data elicitation and narrative restorying, this study documents the lived experiences of teachers who have experienced test-related cognitive dissonance. While curricular narrowing and other test-related practices have been studied in many contexts, the perspectives of New Orleans teachers are barely documented. Thus, this study fills a content gap in the testing literature. Musically restorying the data contributes to the accountability literature in three main ways. First, restorying the data as song renders the findings evocatively — that is, in ways that capture the emotion with which the data was originally imbued. Second, because this study is performative (the results were sung live in the community), the opportunity exists to ignite a local conversation aimed at helping teachers navigate testing/teaching conundrums. Finally, as music is one of the least utilized forms of art-based research, this study fills a methodological gap in the arts-based research repository.

This study reveals the impact of an exemplar narrative arts learning programme on the self-concept of Grade 9 learners in the Life Orientation classroom. The episodic narrative arts learning programme was designed in response to a suggestion in the government guidelines for Life Orientation and merged the outcomes for Arts and Culture and Life Orientation. The aims of narrative counselling were employed to allow the learners to tell their stories to themselves and others. The arts component, based on the arts therapies, allowed the learners an opportunity to give visual substance to their individual and collective narratives through arts activities that occurred within a small group. Brief video recordings were made of each group’s interactions during the narrative arts episodes in order to compile an edited video overview of the process that could be screened for the learners on completion of the programme. The aims of positive psychology were embedded in the structure and design of the arts episodes and activities. This is an interpretive study with a phenomenological focus, because the lived experiences of the participants and the teacher-researcher are paramount and the narrative element in the study necessitates the inclusion of the postmodern paradigm. This qualitative arts-based research project is based on a two-month Life Orientation learning programme that occurred during school hours on the grounds of a faith-based school. Forty-seven learners were divided into six small groups of approximately eight learners each in which they remained for the duration of the programme and were assigned to a specific teacher-facilitator. Fourteen learners volunteered to participate in four rounds of interviews, which were conducted with each participant to determine the impact of the narrative arts activities on the self-concept over the course of the programme. The transcribed interview responses were interpreted and classified according to five predetermined self-concept domains established by an examination of literature. Data analysis occurred in four cycles which align with the four rounds of interviews. Two data analysis approaches were employed and the data triangulated: a scientifically-accountable and a more intuitive approach. Findings based on the interpreted interview responses of these 14 participants indicate that the exemplar narrative arts programme primarily impacted on two self-concept domains, namely the social and personal-emotional domains. The participants’ self-descriptors revealed that the small group arts activity context allowed them to become gradually more other focused and stimulated varied measures of self-insight and self-growth. Once the limitations are recognised, the study could contribute to the inclusion of more arts-based assignments in Life Orientation programmes to aid the development of self-concept, the inclusion of this particular exemplar approach in more educational settings, openness to “team teaching” in the high school and more innovative applications of video recording within an educational or research setting. The exemplar narrative arts approach is a means for strengthening psychological support services in the school, because it reinforces the formulation of identity by allowing learners an opportunity to become actively busy writing and living their life stories / Thesis (PhD)--University of Pretoria, 2008. / Educational Psychology / unrestricted

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This research was simultaneously collective and individual. In this dissertation, my team and I inquired into what it means to undertake playbuilding as qualitative research and be a practitioner, specifically focusing on the roles of artist, researcher, and educator from an applied theatre graduate student perspective. I drew upon the methodological and theoretical frameworks of playbuilding as qualitative research and a/r/tography. Playbuilding as qualitative research offers creative methods for un/re/covering collective and affective ways of knowing. A/r/tography offers the opportunity to explore self and roles through art-making and reflexivity. For me, both are manifestations of the same creative impulse to make meaning and generate new understandings expressed through different perspectives and processes. This research consisted of a cohort of applied theatre graduate students who collectively explored and devised a play on what it means to be an artist/researcher/educator. The play, To Spin a Red Yarn: Enacting Artist/Researcher/Teacher stands as an artefact to the collectives’ generation, interpretation, and performance of research. In addition, I wrote an exegesis that spins my individual story within our collective. The exegesis, Behind the Curtain, extends the world of the play into the text by taking the reader on a dramatic journey through soliloquizing as dialogue. As a result of this study, I theorized a translated a/r/tographical framework into theatre- based language for the use by practitioners that is rooted in theatre practitioner praxis (theory and practice). This praxis-based study was intended to provide knowledge for artist-researchers, educators, and theatre-makers. This research offers artists/researchers/educators access to more stories, insights, and ideas about what it means to be a theatre-based artist/researcher/educator undertaking playbuilding as qualitative research. This research opens up rich possibilities that are commonplace to theatre-makers and performing artists on how different theatrical conventions could be used in playbuilding as qualitative research. For theatre-makers who are interested in combining theatre with academic research, it offers another paradigm to consider, expand, and interconnect the work that they do. Likewise, for a/r/tographers who are theatre-based, this research offers a way to conceive the work they do rooted in theatre-based language. / Graduate / 0465 / 0516 / 0727 / bishopk@uvic.ca

Made available in DSpace on 2016-03-15T19:42:57Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Jade Pena Magave.pdf: 7217758 bytes, checksum: ba7f70c1f369db8325a72e36759c91a5 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2014-12-01 / What is the role of art within the Academy? How can art be conceived as something beyond a contemplative object and become an active base for research? Such questions, which inquire about the potential of art as a way of knowledge, will give the guide lines to this work on Arts-Based Research, allowing us to rethink the role of art in the academic research and, more generally, aiming for a deeper understanding of art as a way of thought. With that in mind, this research addresses questions regarding the relation between art and knowledge and for that it explores the Arts-Based Research field based on the writings of Elliot Eisner and Tom Barone (2012); Joaquin Roldan and Ricardo Marin Viadel (2012). The Arts-Based Research is also analyzed in a case study: six papers presented during the 1st Conference on Arts-based Research and Artistic Research held in Barcelona in 2012. Furthermore, this work includes some visual and verbal narratives, expanding the reflection and analysis of the potential use of art in research, as well as emphasizing the importance of creation processes in the construction of knowledge in academic research. / Qual o papel da arte dentro da Academia? Como a arte pode ser mais do que um objeto contemplativo para se tornar uma base ativa de pesquisa? Perguntas como essas, que questionam o potencial da arte enquanto forma de conhecimento, norteiam este trabalho que busca na Pesquisa Baseada em Arte um meio de repensar o papel da arte na pesquisa acadêmica e, de uma forma mais geral, busca aprofundar o entendimento da arte como forma de pensamento. Assim, essa pesquisa se dirige a questões quanto à relação entre arte e conhecimento e para isso explora a Pesquisa Baseada em Arte tomando por base os escritos de Elliot Eisner e Tom Barone (2012), Joaquin Roldán e Ricardo Marín Viadel (2012). A Pesquisa Baseada em Arte é também analisada em um estudo de caso: seis trabalhos apresentados na 1st Conference on Arts- Based and Artistic Research realizada em Barcelona em 2012. No decorrer do trabalho são apresentadas narrativas visuais e verbais ampliando a reflexão e análise das potencialidades do uso da arte na pesquisa ressaltando a importância dos processos de criação no processo de construção de conhecimento em uma pesquisa acadêmica.

As an art educator, I found student art lacking in meaning and students lacking personal engagement. I sought a way to engage students in more meaningful art-making in the classroom by exploring family heritage and personal spaces. This case study searched the family heritage and personal spaces of students in a junior high art class to engage students and find deeper meaning and context for student art-making. The research was informed through an arts-based inquiry with a/r/tographic influence. It was a qualitative inquiry, mining the familiar for development of a curriculum rich in context and personal significance for students. This inquiry examined the influences of family through art-making and research into the visual culture of student homes and heritage. We curated our personal spaces and made art that reflected our findings, keeping reflexive journals of our experiences, and exhibiting our art in a culmination of our research. The results were meaningful content in student art as well as more enthusiastic engagement in the art making process. This experience gleaned more than just student art rich in meaning, but in a deeper understanding of one another in our classroom.

This arts-based, qualitative investigation focused on high school English teachers of students with learning dis/abilities (Baglieri & Knopf, 2004) who used visual arts integration (Eisner, 2002) to find out how teachers experience using visual arts in English and what their experiences mean (Zoss & White, 2011) in order to understand why certain experiences stood out for the teachers as being important. I framed the study theoretically with complexity theories of teaching and learning (Davis, Sumara, & Luce-Kapler, 2008), while combining aspects of sociocultural theory (Smagorinsky, 2001; Vygotsky, 1978; Wertsch, 1991), cognitive pluralism (John-Steiner, 1997) and Dewey’s notion of experience (1934/1980). The teacher participants were three high school English teachers employed at an independent school for students with learning dis/abilities. A/r/tography (Irwin & Springgay, 2008; Springgay, Irwin, & Kind, 2005, 2008) influenced my methodology in that I created visual art to theorize the data and my experiences conducting the study. I collected data during spring and summer 2011. Data sources included participant observation and field notes (Dewalt & Dewalt, 2002), photography (Coover, 2004; Harper 2000, 2002), teachers’ visual texts (La Jevic & Springgay, 2008), artifacts (Prior, 2003), and interviews (Smagorinsky, 2008; Smagorinsky & Coppock, 1994). I used qualitative methods of coding analysis (Charmaz, 2006; Ezzy, 2002; Saldaña, 2009) and visual analysis (Riessman, 2008; Rose, 2001), as well as arts-based methods for educational research (Cahnmann-Taylor & Siegesmund, 2008). This study fills a gap in empirical research in both English education and special education by examining English teachers integrating art in classes for students with dis/abilities. Furthermore, understanding how teachers experience visual arts integration can inform methods courses for teaching secondary English educators.

As the number of non-native English speakers in US schools continues to rise, there is growing need to find a way to teach English while still engaging with students’ fluid identities around citizenship and national identity. This MFA thesis document explores the impact of an autobiographical playbuilding project with refugee and immigrant youth. The mixed-methods study uses a quantitative performance assessment scale and grounded theory analysis of playscript and performance to examine how students’ definition and understanding of citizenship is activated through the pedagogy and practice of theatre. Throughout, this document argues that arts-based research practices can support both qualitative and quantitative research goals. However the findings suggest that qualitative research offers a more complex understanding of potential program impacts. The document concludes with a discussion of the tensions between research and practice when applied theatre is facilitated in an educational context. / text