Arts-Based Reflexivity for Qualitative Researchers: A Daoist Practice

• In Event: Questioning in the Margins: Centering Qualitative Methodology and Methods in Historically Marginalized Traditions

Abstract

Arts-based practices are widely adopted by researchers throughout all phases of qualitative research, including data collection, analysis, and presentation. Through creative writing, music, performance, dance, visual art, film, and other creative media, researchers illuminate human perspectives and experiences in qualitative research (Cahnmann-Taylor & Siegsmund, 2018). Newer technologies like social media and digital tools expand arts-based creation and opportunities for qualitative researchers to further explore the affordances and possibilities of arts-based methodologies and research (McCaffrey & Edwards, 2015). As researchers who conduct arts-based educational research (ABER), we are also led to arts-based reflexivity.

Reflexivity is “the researcher’s ability to be able to self-consciously refer to him or herself in relation to the production of knowledge about research topics.” (Roulston, 2010, p. 116). By being reflexive, researchers can understand ourselves in relation to our research site, participants, and progress. For researchers, there are a plethora of methods to conduct reflexivity, including memos/journals (Marshall & Rossman, 2016), transcription practices (Shelton & Flint, 2019), and creative approaches, such as drawing (Skukauskaite et al., 2022). How individual researchers conduct reflexivity depends on specific research contexts. The parallel to draw between arts-based methods and reflexivity is that our research and artworks are "personal, tender, and felt. . . when we engage in different ways of thinking, of being, of educating, and of revealing truth, we engage hearts and minds simultaneously." (Walrath, 2018, p. 128).

In a Daoist/Taoist onto-epistemology, reflexivity is constant, systematical self-unfolding and developing. Daoist interdependence and yin-yang dynamic deem that self-(re)construction is impossible without continuous (un)learning about our relation to the world (Hung, 2015). Thus, Daoist reflexivity emphasizes that the knower and the known engage in a mutual transformation in which the known becomes the world that we dwell in for mutual meaning-making. To achieve such goals, ancient and modern Daoists alike have embraced methods that consciously involve visual (e.g., Chinese landscape painting), audio (e.g., instruments), written (e.g., calligraphy and poetry), spatial (e.g, Taichi), and spiritual (e.g., meditation) learning which reflect upon and aim for the harmony between us and the universe from multiple perspectives (Ho, 2020). Daoist scholars adopted these methods because they believe that writing and written texts are inadequate to capture the world and self that are in constant mutual transformations. Hence, writing is merely a linguistic vehicle that points to reality which is partially accessible to language, but much more complicated than the linguistic representation (Chia, 2003).

Incorporating Daoism and ABER, this presentation showcases how I reflect upon my roles as a researcher, community member, insider/outsider of my study that examines how different communities in a southeast university town perceive three Asian grocery stores in physical and virtual spaces through digital collages, creative writing, and mapping. The artmaking process, whether directly or indirectly contributes to data analysis and representation, refined my understanding of my identity and ways to re-story my study. This presentation invites researchers to consider this question: How do qualitative researchers include arts-based methods to become a reflexive scholar and self?

Author

• Yixuan Wang, University of Georgia
  Presenting Author