Tending Paper and Ourselves: A Creative Parallel

• In Event: Tending, Teaching, Writing, and Walking: Arts-Based Educational Research Methodological Possibilities and Praxis

Abstract

This paper describes leadership experiences of two mid-career, tenured professors at a southwestern university. While serving as program coordinators, both faculty members felt tethered, burdened and beholden to micro-managerial approaches and policies designed to undermine public education. Ultimately, we resigned from these positions and have been subject to professional discrediting at our institution. We utilize self-study and arts-based methodologies as forms of inquiry and resistance to reconnect and recommit to imagination as a central commitment in teacher education. We describe how using specific arts-based methodologies allowed us to see our work through lenses more traditional methodologies did not. Additionally, we focus on the arts-based method we developed and call paper tending, and offer it as a method to excavate experience.

Authors

• Laura C. Haniford, University of New Mexico

• Rebecca M. Sanchez, University of New Mexico