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If unprepared for them, the realities of teaching can challenge, confront and paralyse the valued ideals and philosophies of teachers. An orientation to teacher education that embraces the ambiguous, dilemma ridden nature of teaching and encourages teachers to contextualise personal knowledge and ways of knowing within an understanding of story, time and place is crucial if teachers are to stay the course, manage surprise, and maintain their hope and vision. As the nature and complexity of teachers' work has continued to intensify so has the realisation that different approaches to understanding educational dilemmas are needed. A desire to create knowledge based on resonance and understanding has encouraged educational researchers to look beyond traditional research approaches to new methodological genres capable of exploring educational questions in personal, social, engaging and connected ways. There is a growing awareness that narrative forms of knowledge and arts-based inquiry (research inquiry which embraces aesthetic ways of knowing and the language, practices and forms commonly employed in the arts) offer unique representational resources for understanding experience and for illuminating the particular educational dilemmas and situations we care about. This paper reveals something of the incredible meaning-making and pedagogical capabilities of arts-based research methods, where metaphor, drawing, and story serve as research methods and representational resources central to inquiry and reflection. A metaphor of teaching as 'a composing of a music' frames a sonata-formatted narrative which tracks the journey of an early childhood teacher as she engages in a personal and collaborative inquiry into what it means to teach. It follows her experimentation with narrative and arts-based resources as she (re) lives and (re) tells her story about the challenges of working and teaching in a privately owned childcare centre, and demonstrates how these resources acted as catalysts for discourse, awareness, insight and clarity.
Ali is a Senior Lecturer in the School of Education. Her research seeks to understand the lived experiences of others - their stories, feelings, thinking, ways of knowing and being. She is interested in learning and experience as holistic processes that engage body, mind, emotions, spirit - and the power of the arts to represent and make sense of personal and professional meanings. Using research to address and explore real world problems and experiences as part of a commitment to personal, professional and community renewal is a priority. Ali’s research with the teaching profession has focused on supporting the continuing professional development of teachers, valuing teacher voice and teachers' work and everyday experiences. Understanding the many dimensions and unique characteristics of educational worlds has been a key focus. Her research to date has focused on understanding of self, identities, ways of knowing, sense-making, and the relationship of these to particular professional and community contexts. Narrative and arts-based methodologies are key to her research. Artistic and aesthetic ways of knowing are of central interest in terms of understanding learning processes and representing tacit understandings. Ali believes that artistic forms of representation are important tools in the creation, application and redevelopment of knowledge, and essential to personal and professional education into the future.
24 April 2012
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