Following A/r/tography in Practice: From Possibility to Potential

• In Event: Relationality and Pedagogy in A/r/tography

Abstract

Objectives
This presentation’s aim is to explore a/r/tography as an educational practice-based research method that acknowledges the reality and complexity of moving bodies entangled in a moving world.

With reference to a recent artist-led event with teacher candidates, this paper offers a sense of how others might engage a/r/tography’s method, discusses how a/r/tography differs from other methods and how the integrity of qualitative research is nurtured.

Perspectives
Rethinking the concept of methodology as a “living practice” (Irwin, 2004, p. 34), was integral when a/r/tography was first conceived at The University of British Columbia in Vancouver. No matter how practiced the practice, the result remains as much involuntary as it is elicited. Living, according to Brian Massumi (2002) is not prefigured, but rather continually re-fused. The body is always becoming, and the living of the body cannot be understood without reference to its immediate movement away from its own originating point; it is a paradox of concrete abstractness. A/r/tography is an example of a method that emphasizes its own self-differentiating unity, a continuity that is complete only in its openness.

Methods
Two invited contemporary artists engaged teacher candidates in art events using copies of a 1960s classic about a school run by children premising emotions rather than intellect as the primary force that shapes learning.

Their project resituated what it means to learn with activities led by inquiring bodies. Teacher candidates and instructors participated in the project as part of regular secondary art classwork. Using the texts as catalysts for new vectors of movement, they made art and went on a variety of field trips where discussions were generated informally.

Researchers involved were interested in the impact of identities and practices of artists, researchers and teachers on learning to learn in a teacher education program, and secondly, how contemporary practices of art and inquiry affect understandings of pedagogy.

Data
Group interviews were audiotaped and returned to teacher candidates and recordings transcribed to preserve emerging impressions of becoming a teacher.

The visiting artists viewed the events as pedagogical engagements for the teacher candidates but also as a finished project culminating in a collaborative exhibit in a gallery space later in the schoolyear.

Results
Teacher candidate responses in the interviews provoked our own questions regarding our a/r/tographic process: how we might enjoy discussing the variety and depth of understanding that emerges in interview/discussion groups; how we might respond to where teacher candidates might take their futures of practices; how we might continually reposition to ensure that creative movement is nurtured.

Significance
A/r/tograhy offers capacities for repositioning towards what holds everything together which is the uncertainty of what a body can do.

Beyond assisting teacher candidates to be more creative, at issue is an increased capacity for repositioning to find creative movement everywhere.

Teacher education methods and practices are not meant to stop the world’s movement nor give final word in its controversies, but to inspire and stimulate its potential of associations that overflow purpose or expectation.

Author

• Valerie Triggs, University of Regina