Unflattening Research in Visual Arts Education

• In Event: 35.047 - Unpacking Unflattening: Interdisciplinary and Multimodal Inquiry in Teaching and Research

Abstract

This presentation will discuss how the metaphor of “unflattening” developed by Nick Sousanis (2015) is used in a low residency Master of Arts program for k-12 art teachers. The program is structured so that each graduate student can formulate an individual arts or action based research question and complete a qualitative research study. Both Action Research taking place in educational settings and Arts Based projects are supported in the program. The comic “Unflattening” is used at the beginning of a Research Methods in Art course to position research as a process of encounter and awareness, building upon the metaphors of rhizomes (Irwin, 2008) and diffraction (Davies, 2014). Throughout the research process, MA candidates are encouraged to acknowledge questions that arise through lived experience. The paper offered for this session employs a Portraiture Model (Lawrence-Lightfoot, 1997) to examine how Sousanis’s concepts of “de-privileging the absolute vantage point” (p.36) is developed through the initial work and completed art and action based research projects. This method takes into account relationships within the cohort and with the research advisor and is particularly suited for educational research (Hackmann, 2002). The presentation addresses the following questions. How does the concept of “unflattening” support teachers new to research methods in finding multiple perspectives, unexpected results and an openness to alternative narratives in their examination of their own teaching and artmaking? Does the comic form and academic content of Unflattening cause students to examine presuppositions about the purposes and formats of research? How does a qualitative research MA program support teaching? Written responses to the book “Unflattening” indicate that the book was an unexpected introduction to a research class with students identifying sharing stories, embracing failure and acknowledging community as research processes. The completed Action Research projects that will be described in this presentation include those completed by a high school teacher in a rural area, an elementary teacher in a rural area, an elementary teacher in a suburban metropolitan area, and a volunteer working with preschool age children with refugee status. The arts based projects include a young teacher/mother remodeling a home for her family, and a teacher examining her own history as an immigrant child sheltered by nuns in the sanctuary movement. Final conclusions will describe an “unflattening” of the role of teachers as also artists and researchers and the reciprocal relationships of research to teaching.

Author

• Connie Stewart, University of Northern Colorado