Tying Knots and Weaving Ends: Toward a Holistic Paradigm of Arts-Based Research

• In Event: Disruption, Collaboration, and Healing: The Roles of Arts-Based Research in Doctoral Education

Abstract

Objectives
The purpose of this paper is to examine the role of listening, collective agency, and wellbeing in my journey from BIPOC textile artist to arts-based researcher. This self-study is part of a larger middle school admissions study in Brooklyn’s District 15 that asks: how can we bring our mind, body, spirit, and joy to all aspects of our work while researching education? Here, joy serves as a tool to resist and maintain balance in a dysfunctional, racist, and oppressive society.

Theoretical Framework
Conceived through the lens of testimonios and authentic inquiry, this work transcends positivist notions of what constitutes knowledge and is of value in educational research (Guba and Lincoln, 1989). Together, these frameworks center voice, solidarity, resistance, wellbeing, and justice (Delgado Bernal et al., 2012). Finally, motivated by an urgency to give shape to that which we have learned not to see, there is a focus on the equitable distribution of whom and what transforms in positive ways through the process of research (Tobin & Alexakos, 2020).

Methodological Contributions to ABER
While choosing art as a primary tool for investigation is already an act of transgression (Eisner, 2006), I turn to textile arts (ancestral knowledge) and critical cartography with the understanding that maps reflect ongoing contestations of power and cultural values (Ribeiro, 2018). Therefore, the map-poems in this project aim to interrupt harm, heal, and transform racist, classist, and oppressive educational terrains. These map-poems serve as heuristics, counterstories (Taylor et al., 2009), and visual testimonios (Cervantes, 2020).

Data
This paper draws upon a self study and seven-month participation in a middle school admissions study. Map-poem #2 (Figure 3), is a physical, cognitive, and emotional transcribing of my first two interviews. If you step outside the perimeters of the red line, you exit the safe space carved out by these families. This work invites the viewer to locate themselves on this map or draw one of their own, to discuss racialized ideas of “safe and unsafe” spaces, including policing and surveillance practices inside and outside of schools.

Results
First, this study revealed critical map making’s ability to reveal and give shape to our stories, to visualize previously unknown spaces and ideas. Second, how the process of making art can help us analyze our data holistically, engaging our emotions, senses, and bodies to see patterns and themes (Keifer-Boyd, 2011). Third, how the imaginative, emotional, and expressive elements of arts-based research increase transparency.

Significance
As a result of this research, I was invited to work with a group of teachers, staff, and administrators who form part of anti-racist professional learning communities (PLCs) in Vermont. Our engagement with arts-based methods and mapmaking as tools for doing anti-racist work led into broader discussions of “brave spaces” - understood as areas where one can intervene and take action to disrupt racist actions, policies, and practices inside and outside of schools.

Author

• Mariatere Tapias, Graduate Center - CUNY