Eliciting Identity Artifacts to Harness Creative Expression in Qualitative Higher Education Research

• In Event: AERA Roundtable Session 12
  In Roundtable Session: Divergent Methods: Interdisciplinary Arts-Based Methodologies in Educational Research

Abstract

As much as qualitative research has attempted to circumvent systemic oppression, traditional modes of qualitative inquiry often perpetuate colonial harm against systemically minoritized identities. While arts-based methods have been offered as one way to decenter hegemonically accepted modes of knowledge production in qualitative research by centering participants’ embodied ways of knowing, many arts-based approaches are specialized for use in specific theoretical traditions and educational contexts. This paper offers the elicitation of identity artifacts (IAs) as a malleable method for use in identity-based qualitative research across a variety of postsecondary contexts. The authors offer two examples of creative elicitation strategies that demonstrate the method’s potential to disrupt researcher-participant power dynamics and critically center reflexivity and reciprocity in research design.

Authors

• Justin Andrew Gutzwa, University of Utah

• Annie M. Wofford, Northern Arizona University