Cootie Catchers and Fortune Tellers: Folding Creative Origami Play Into Analyzing and Presenting Qualitative Research

• In Event: AERA Roundtable Session Thursday 1:45 pm Four Seasons Ballroom 4
  In Roundtable Session: Futures of Qualitative Methods and Analysis (Table 3)

Abstract

This paper connects Deleuze’s concept of the fold and folding with Barad’s spacetimemattering to illustrate how (un)folding origami crafts can be a playful enactment and embodiment of qualitative inquiry. Following many qualitative researchers’ efforts to infuse play and playfulness in qualitative inquiries, this paper presents how we use origami forms called cootie catchers or fortune tellers to extend poetic inquiry in data analysis, (re)presentation, and audience engagement. We present how we incorporate and think with origami in our individual inquiries to exemplify ways origami offers a multimodal, multidimensional, and material-discursive contribution to poetic inquiry. In addition, engaging and entangling with the origami craft enables researchers and audiences to enact and embody becoming-together with qualitative inquiries.

Authors

• Yixuan Wang, Gwinnett County Public Schools

• Shannon Perry, Valdosta State University