Visual Documentation as Space of Entanglement to Rethink Arts-Based Educational Research

Abstract

How can a practice of documentation escape from linear thinking and ways of seeing the world? How can the assemblages and entanglements that actors generate when participating in Arts-based educational research be accounted for? How can visual documentation open up other spaces of thinking and understanding in Arts-based educational research? In this paper, we mapped our understanding of these questions through a project focusing on the documentation of learning processes using a do-ityourself approach that opened up new spaces of learning and agency for children aged 10 and 11. Through these processes, we approached Arts-based educational research (using visual documentation that both we and the children involved had generated) to explore educational entanglement, the becoming-child and becoming-researcher (Deleuze & Guattari, 1980/1987, and visual documentation as an event. Our final aim was to explore the possibilities of visual documentation in the sense that it enables the emergence of a multiplicity of gazes and stories in and during research-what is becoming in the simultaneity of movements and speeds. We based this exploration on the concept of the pedagogy of the encounter (Atkinson, 2012). In alignment with this approach, our study's results and conclusions are part of the conversation rather than being located in a separate session.

Nurturing youth film literacy: Post-qualitative arts-based inquiry into critical self-awareness

“…Arts-based researchers believe that by using arts-based methodologies and methods that encourage creative expression, they can 'gain better access to the emotional, affective and embodied realms of life, cultivate empathy and challenge and provoke audiences to engage with complex and difficult social issues'. 44 Additionally, several arts-based educators 43,45,46,47 believe that the creative arts are modes of inquiry and representation that provide significant perspectives for making decisions about pedagogical theory, policy and practice.…”