Always Already Inquiry: A/r/tography as a Disruptive Methodology

• In Event: Disrupting Qualitative Inquiry: Possibilities and Tensions of Art-Based Educational Research

Abstract

Troubled by knowledge lost in the research process, the authors question the privileged status of dominant forms of research that claim to produce valid, generalizable, and replicable results. Identifying as practicing artists and teachers, they look to a/r/tography (Irwin & Springgay, 2008)--an arts-based approach to inquiry--to theorize and articulate discomfort with prevalent forms of qualitative research. Explaining how a/r/tography defies a concise definition, they demonstrate how the methodology’s key theoretical underpinnings of relationality, embodiment, and contingency aid them as they seek “to provoke, to generate, and to un/do meaning” (Springgay, 2008, p. 161). The authors use this discussion to describe how a/r/tography disrupts traditional research concepts by sharing pieces of an ongoing “story” about how they are coming to know a/r/tography.

Authors

• Teri J. Holbrook, Georgia State University

• Nicole Manry Pourchier, Georgia State University