A Bricolage of Voices: Lessons Learned From Feminist Analyses in Educational Leadership

• In Event: Can We Research Leadership for Social Justice in Rigorous and Meaningful Ways?

Abstract

In art, collage is a technique of pasting materials together, a type of makeshift handiwork that changes the nature of a creation as a whole. In literature, collage, often referred to as bricolage, is a piece of work created from diverse sources, and is the use of words as an artistic form of expression. Bricolage offers readers an assemblage of forms, or stories, that create a new whole. The weaving of stories together also facilitates a connection between the viewer (reader) and creator (writer). According to Denzin and Lincoln (1994), a researcher who brings together multiple perspectives is, herself, a bricoleur or quiltmaker (2000) as she pieces together a body of perspectives that, together, help readers understand a complex problem that cannot be explained by one of the perspectives alone (p. 4). This paper comprises a collection of the findings of the studies of the author’s studies of women whom she has engaged for over a decade and attempts to transform them into a story that is multidimensional. It moves beyond perspectives from different studies in isolation to reflecting upon them as a whole and considering what significance they hold together for advancing equity and social justice in the field of education and leadership practice.

Author

• Whitney Sherman Newcomb, Virginia Commonwealth University