The Journal Project

Abstract

The Journal Project is a qualitative research study of self at the crossroads-a female, middle-aged academic, posttenure, postmenopausal-at sea in her profession and not entirely able to inhabit her own skin. My solution to this dilemma was to study an 18-month period of my personal journals written from June 2006 to March 2008, the period after I received tenure from my university. I used standard qualitative research methods of document analysis to study the 303 entries. The materials were organized and analyzed within NVivo, a qualitative data analysis software. Throughout the process of standard social science analysis, I was also employing arts-based approaches (fiber arts in particular) to deepen and extend my understanding of the findings. The outcome of this work was an exhibit of the fiber works at a qualitative research conference in which I was able to blend the findings derived from a social science analysis within an arts-based presentation. In this piece, I describe the genesis of the Journal Project and document my love affair with fiber arts. The heart of the piece is a description of the exhibit, with attention to the ways that the making of art AND the description of that making extend the possibilities of interpretation for qualitative researchers. I conclude with a discussion of the implications of this experiment with arts-based research for my own practice as a qualitative researcher and, by extension, for others.

Estrategias utilizadas en la investigación educativa sustentada por técnicas artísticas

“…En la transferencia de conocimiento son las exposiciones en espacios educativos las que representan cierta notoriedad (13.21%). Además, entre éstos, se ha detectado una mayor preponderancia de los espacios universitarios (Bolden, 2017;Clarke y Bautista, 2017;Davidson, 2012;Hoekstra, 2019;Jokela, 2019;Kaplan, 2020;May, et al, 2014;Sweet et al, 2020). Un ejemplo, es la exposición realizada en una facultad de trabajo social:…”