المجلد 1، عدد 1Art/Research

In the early 1970’s and into the 90’s philosophic and ethnographic worlds encountered a crisis of representation. During this time, the world of qualitative research opened up to include a deep and meaningful exploration of the guiding epistemological, ontological and axiological values inherent in inquiry. Scholars began exploring the how and why of representation in the context of qualitative research. This paper is positioned as a continuation of that line of inquiry. In the following pages, we investigate the role of representation in qualitative research and postulate the medium of video as a means for opening up new ontological possibilities for how we represent our research findings. We explore the idea of video as an imaginative invitation for the viewer/audience to collaborate and engage in research.

This article presents an excerpt from an interview with Judy Schavrien, a transpersonal psychology scholar, poet, and artist. In the course of this dialogue, Schavrien uncovers the philosophical and psychosocial underpinnings for the artworks included in her books Alice at the Rabbithole Café and Everything Voluptuous: The Love Songs 1970-2014. The collegial conversation, unstructured in advance yet guided by the art it explores, inquires into the following: the role of the transpersonal artist-scholar; the meaning Schavrien attributes to her subject matter; the environments and people that act as catalysts; the relevance of her choice of media and process; and, finally, whether the aims in her art and research converge. It becomes clear that, for Schavrien, it is not enough for artists to be mere custodians of their culture. Their role, in her view, is to challenge conventions, cry out, provoke thought, engage multiple ways of knowing, and offer alternatives that push society forward. Her research intends the same. Both Schavrien and the interviewer perceive a participatory element in her art, her research, and the approach taken in this article that explores them.

This article presents an excerpt from an interview with Judy Schavrien, a transpersonal psychology scholar, poet, and artist. In the course of this dialogue, Schavrien uncovers the philosophical and psychosocial underpinnings for the artworks included in her books Alice at the Rabbithole Café and Everything Voluptuous: The Love Songs 1970-2014. The collegial conversation, unstructured in advance yet guided by the art it explores, inquires into the following: the role of the transpersonal artist-scholar; the meaning Schavrien attributes to her subject matter; the environments and people that act as catalysts; the relevance of her choice of media and process; and, finally, whether the aims in her art and research converge. It becomes clear that, for Schavrien, it is not enough for artists to be mere custodians of their culture. Their role, in her view, is to challenge conventions, cry out, provoke thought, engage multiple ways of knowing, and offer alternatives that push society forward. Her research intends the same. Both Schavrien and the interviewer perceive a participatory element in her art, her research, and the approach taken in this article that explores them.

With the intention of disrupting and re-imagining traditional conference spaces, this article is a poetic compilation developed from a Curriculum Studies conference symposium that took place on a school bus. During the School Bus Symposium, in situ poetry writing and reading, song and storytelling occurred in response to open ended prompts and facilitation of creative activities. After the symposium, a call was issued to invite participants to submit any poetry or stories produced during, or inspired by the session. Consisting of 18 submissions including poetry, story, photography and creative essays, infused by curriculum theory and poetic inquiry, this collection offers an inclusive, reflective, participatory, and experiential rendering where participants are living and journeying poetically. Emphasizing creative engagement with personal memories, the authors collectively aimed to promote art education through imaginative approaches to curriculum studies, poetic inquiry and academic conferences.

Within this article I offer a brief rationale for de-disciplining and re-disciplining research communication, present a drama script using the narrative experience of six women casual academics from across three Australian universities, and offer a succinct rationale for employing artistic forms of communication more generally, and drama more particularly, for re-presenting lived experience. The article predominantly focuses on the stories of women causal academics in Australian universities. It is their voices that are privileged and centralised. Women casual academics make up the majority of academics in Australia, yet they are currently ‘un-voiced’. This article therefore creates some space for the voices of women causal academics to be heard and known in a form that is congruent to their lived experience

Listening to the Silences is an ethnodrama – an example of verbatim theatre that evokes a teacher’s first year in the Chicago Public Schools (CPS) based on the words voiced during a series of four interviews sessions conducted by the author. The protagonist, Indiana Ingelside, spent her first year in CPS in an African American school in one of Chicago’s poorest neighborhoods. The show is intended to help the audience reflect on the beginning teacher’s experiences of working in that setting. The script evokes the challenges of teaching within environments shaped by social policies that do not address, and frequently exacerbate, the poverty, racism, and other forms of injustice that shape the lives of children and families of color. The article begins with the complete playscript and then concludes with an afterword that describes what the author learned from developing and producing the show. Photos from the Philadelphia workshops are included.