Exploring imagination as a methodological source of knowledge: painting students’ intercultural experience at a UK university

Abstract

Imagination, as an essential aspect of human nature, is fundamental to all ways of thinking. However, this powerful faculty is usually overlooked or marginalised in educational research. In the article, I explore imagination as a methodological source for researchers to generate expansive, purposeful, fluid, and developmental knowledge about the subjective realities constructed by individuals as meaning-makers. To do so, I illustrate how I use two variations of painting (i.e. cartoon-and freestyle-painting) to facilitate such an imaginative space for understanding students' meaning-making about intercultural experience. Imagination, as facilitated through the subjective, transformative space of arts methods, can extend the epistemological and methodological possibilities of knowledge for educational research. It provides a post-qualitative methodology which can be particularly useful for enabling conceptually-abstract and structurally-complex knowledge that may not be expressible or interrogatable in a coherent way through traditional research methods in education.

Searching for belonging: learning from students’ photographs about their higher education experiences

“…Our use of photography as an arts-based method distinguishes itself from these studies in the epistemological position of visuals. We see visuals as an imaginative, artistic space of knowing and as a legitimate source of knowledge, rather than merely as an elicitation tool for knowledge that is verbally articulated (Huang, 2021). Our intention is to challenge the hierarchical norm of positioning language as a privileged vehicle (Huang, 2022a), and, as Thurlow (2016) argues, the almost god-like central medium of knowing.…”

“…Our intention is not to reinforce the divide between the visual and the verbal, but to see them through a non-binary lens as they together provide sites of meaning making for understanding student experience and their belonging. This epistemologically more equal, inclusive positioning of photography can enable us to better understand and ask questions about the holistic, subconscious, embodied and ineffable aspects of subjective realities that are important to individual students (Eisner, 2006;Huang, 2021Huang, , 2022aLeavy, 2015). It could contribute new insights into the research on student experience (Huang, 2022b), especially in terms of understanding students' sociocultural experience and well-being beyond the formal curriculum, and performing their epistemic agency in navigating the complexities and making meanings in new academic environments.…”

Intercultural personhood: A non-essentialist conception of individuals for intercultural research

“…This conception of individuals challenges the simplistic and conventional categorisation of people which usually uses 'national culture' (or ethnicity) as an untested, defining vector of identity (Titley, 2012, p. 16). By using the term 'intercultural personhood', Kim seeks to move beyond the boundaries of 'ascribed' or 'assigned' categorisations (2015, p. 6), and to provide a more hybrid, liberal (Tebble, 2006), creative (Huang, 2020) and cosmopolitan (Delanty, 2006) space for understanding individuals.…”

“…By using the multiple creative-arts methods outlined here, I facilitated a postqualitative methodological space of imagination (Huang, 2020) for the participants to produce knowledge about their intercultural personhood. In doing so, I generated rich insights into their conceptualisations (i.e.…”