Cultivating Educational Opportunities in Qualitative Research: A Comic Strip of Learning

• In Event: AERA Roundtable Session 10
  In Roundtable Session: Disrupting Norms in Teaching and Doing Qualitative Research

Abstract

Teaching and learning qualitative research is often fraught with tensions, challenges as well as transformations students experience in their graduate education. The ambiguity of qualitative research and its varied epistemologies can be intimidating for beginning students, but arts based methods can help students recognize the logic and structures in the ambiguity. Comic strips, as a sequential form of art, encourage creativity while also providing structure. Comics speak to readers through repeated, juxtaposed images intentionally arranged to communicate emotional connections through imagery recognizable to the readers (Eisner, 1985). In this paper, we explore how a comic enabled a doctoral student to understand, appreciate, and represent her learning of qualitative research.

Authors

• Nicole Narkiewicz, University of Central Florida

• Audra Skukauskaite, University of Central Florida