Mixing Mediums and Telling Tales With Pecha Kucha: Toward Socially Just Methodological Moves in Arts-Based Educational Research

• In Event: 52.057 - Exploring the Use of Pecha Kuchas as a Participatory Form of Arts-Based Research

Abstract

Objectives or Purposes
This pecha kucha focuses on the creation of a mixed-medium autoethnographic art piece depicting the narrative of a female, transnational educator of color, situated within the College of Education at a university in the U.S. The narrative demonstrates the various ways in which oppositional ideas were negotiated, how intersectionalities of gender, culture of higher education, shuttling between multiple cultures, and mindfulness, were navigated in juxtaposed contemplative fragments, weaved together using the figuration of mirror, window, and a window pane. I explore how the process of creating a pecha kucha presentation informed and enhanced my methodology by creating new data, understanding, and reaching a new dimension, and thereby becoming generative (Canhmann-Taylor & Siegesmund, 2008).

Perspective(s) or Theoretical Framework(s)
This work is informed by discourses in scholARTistry (Cahnmann-Taylor, 2006) where art and scholarship are merged, as well as at the intersection of post-oppositional (Anzaldua & Keating, 2002; Keating, 2013) and contemplative theoretical approaches and practices (Barbezat & Bush, 2014). Post-oppositional approaches privilege an ontological and epistemological understanding beyond an either/or thinking while holding contradictions, tensions, and possibilities in the same space. Contemplative theories and practices bring a deep awareness to one’s inquiry and knowledge production that becomes critical in social justice work.

Additionally, because this piece depicts the navigation of a transnational woman within the structure of higher education in the U.S., it is also informed by transnational feminism (Bhattacharya, 2009; Kaplan & Grewal, 1999). Evoking the notion of shuttling between cultural homes, I activate the concept of nepantlera (Anzaldúa, 1987/1999), who travels between multiple contesting worldviews without the need to settle into any one of them.

Methods, techniques, or modes of inquiry
In creating the original mixed methods arts piece, I collaborated with a local, professionally trained artist. We worked with objects and symbols that held meaning for me and weaved through narratives that were represented and hidden in various layers of the final piece. In creating the pecha kucha piece, the mode of inquiry is specifically driven by conceptualizing the various ways in which describing the process of creation could be generative, making space for divergent understandings, and creating new data.

Data Sources
The mixed-medium autoethnographic art piece inspires the pecha kucha presentation and discussion. Therefore, the data sources for the pecha kucha would be the documentation of the various stages of creating the mixed-medium art through pictures, video, and narration.

Results
The result is the final pecha kucha piece demonstrating methodological moves while creating an autoethnographic narrative, while becoming its own metanarrative, where the role of pecha kucha is explored in arts-based educational research.

Scientific or Scholarly Significance
As such narratives from female faculty of color in higher education are scant compared to other scholarly products. This process of creation and an engagement in discussion, allows for building bridges amongst like-minded social justice scholars. This work invites scholars and activists to use arts-based approaches for solidarity in praxis and to understand how globalized social structures of oppression play out in higher education in the U.S.

Author

• Kakali Bhattacharya, Kansas State University