Unfolding the unexpectedness of uncertainty : arts research as a triptych installation : a conversation of processes, practices, products

• Main Author: Sinner, Anita Elizabeth
• Language: English
• Published: University of British Columbia 2008
• Subjects: Arts-based research; Teacher education
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/2429/532

This conversation is an invitation to a research and artistic experience engaging in teaching and learning with sensitivity and consideration, and in the course of doing, revealing insights about the transformative processes of becoming-teacher in art education. Invoking the architecture of the contemporary triptych, this installation involves structural frames of arts research processes, practices and products, and iconographic frames of becoming-teacher as unfolding, unexpectedness and uncertainty. I explore how arts research opens possibilities through the act and art of sharing stories and visuals in a triptych which may be read sequentially, or out of order, as a relational experience, entering at any point across and/or within each panel. In doing arts research, I question: What insights are generated through the arts in a case study concerning the lived and learning experiences of women becoming-teachers? How does arts research inform research processes, practices and products? How do I theorize arts research as customary methodological ecotones? Based on this study, a number of key issues are illuminated concerning teacher education. The reconceptualization of teacher education in terms of health and well-being is critical. Emphasis on geographies of self and the evolution of situated knowledges as a means to negotiate becoming-teacher, along with notions of teacher as researcher and collaborative leadership in teacher education, provide a basis for active reform in teacher education. An emotional journey, complex and complicated, rich in artful expressions, this conversation moves between theoretical and methodological considerations and culminates in a series of realizations about becoming-teacher and arts research, honouring the knowledge creation of research partners, and my discoveries and realizations as an arts researcher, to make this expression of arts research an opportunity to share alternate perspectives within teaching culture.