Troubling Experience Through an Arts-Informed Research Process

Presentation for:

British Educational Research AssociationManchester, England

September 2004

by

Susan C. Walsh, Ph.D.Assistant Professor

Faculty of EducationMount Saint Vincent University

Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canadasusan.walsh@msvu.ca

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Nine women, including me as participant researcher, met over the course of a year to

explore experiences of fear and pain in teaching through writing, through various artistic

media, and through conversation. The study was my doctoral research (Walsh, 2003).

We shared our stories and responded to one another through painting, drawing, sculpture,

fabric collage, written language, talk, and even, at one point, through a movement

exploration that ended in tableaux. Our purpose was to use our experiences of fear and

pain in teaching as transformational moments, opportunities to foreground and to thereby

‘trouble’our taken-for granted beliefs. What were our blind spots, personally andcollectively? Could we move beyond our habit-formed ways of interpreting our

experiences through a resymbolization process that included writing and other artistic

media? I use the term ‘resymbolization’ here to help frame the process through which we

came to reinterpret our experiences.

The arts have long been acknowledged as ways of knowing and of being in the world

differently (see, for example, Abbs, 1987; Eisner, 1988, 1997; Kenny, 1998). In recent

years, too, a proliferation of arts-informed research has shown how various visual,

dramatic, and textual practices can be productive in terms of exploring issues during

inquiry as well as providing divergent ways of interpreting and re-presenting the research

process (see, for example, Bach, 1998; Crawford, 1997; Edgar, 1999; Hawkins, 1988;

Norris, 2000; Richardson, 1992, 1995, 1997, 2000, 2001; Neilsen, 2002; Neilsen, Cole,

& Knowles, 2001). In this paper, I will highlight two distinct aspects of the

resymbolization process—first, during the exploration phase of the inquiry where weshared experiences of fear and pain in teaching and second, during the interpretation

phase where I created found poetry from the transcripts. I also include an excerpt from a

theme that emerged in the study—that of space and safety—in an attempt to exemplify

how these two aspects of the resymbolization process intertwined in the resultant text.

Underlying the process of resymbolization is the belief that ‘experience’ itself must be

troubled—or made problematic. As Denzin and Lincoln (2000) note, “qualitative

researchers can no longer directly capture lived experience” (p. 17)—we cannot accept

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uncritically what participants or even researchers say about their experiences

Poststructuralism has shown us that experience is contextually written, changeable (see,

for example, Hutcheon, 1989; Weedon, 1997). Like subjectivity, experience itself is a

site of intersecting discourses, some of which conflict with one another. There is no one

clear explanation of experience that can be rendered immutable, nor is there a rational

and self-conscious individual who exists to read experience and present it in an impartial

way. We can no longer simply appeal to the “authority of [our] experience” to validate

our claims and also to silence others, disregard difference (hooks, 1994). We can,however, attempt to disrupt our usual readings of experience and to question why we

have ‘agreed’ to such readings. To this end, in our research about fear and pain in

teaching, we worked to resymbolize experience and thereby provide ourselves with the

space for reinterpretation.

In the initial aspect of the resymbolization process, the work of the group, visual art,

spontaneous writing, and conversation provided us with ways of unsettling how we

usually read our difficult teaching experiences. We were ‘witnesses’ to and responders

for one another; we worked in community, and shared our thoughts and feelings using

various media (see Anderson & Gold, 1998). Group meetings often began with

brainstorming or with me reading aloud a piece about teaching. Next, we wrote

spontaneously, following the work of Goldberg (1986, 1990, 1993) and Turner Vesselago

(1995). One participant would then read her writing aloud. The others responded to the

story using media such as watercolors, pastels, felt pens, crayons, building blocks,playdough, and fabric. Written language in the forms of poetry and prose were also

possible forms of response. Discussion followed. Our process was modeled initially on

the work of Haug et al (1987) who, in the context of a women’s collective, used memory

writing and the responses of others as research process to interrogate how women’s

bodies come to be sexualized. A crucial aspect of Haug’s work was to examine

experience and to look for the ways that we are complicit in the shaping of our gendered

identities—research as intervention and as transformative process (see pp. 34-36). The

transformative dimension—coming to read experience in a different way—is particularly

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pertinent to our work. Our research method differed from Haug’s in that we wrote

spontaneously during our group meetings, and we responded in a variety of media

instead of writing separately from the group, circulating the pieces, then discussing and

responding in written language only. Some of the artifacts that emerged from our

collective included transcripts of the group meetings, photographs of the visual

responses, participant writing, and my field notes.

In the second aspect of the resymbolization process, when I was working to interpretwhat had happened in the group, I created found poetry from the transcripts.1 (Found

poetry is poetry that is found in the environment, in this case, the transcripts .) In moving

back and forth between the transcripts and the artwork that had been produced—in a

recursive sort of way—I was able to concentrate, both in the sense of being present and

mindful to these artifacts as well as in the sense of creating succinct forms of re-

presentation. Various researchers have used found poetry as a way of re-presenting what

emerges in their research as well as a way of processing, of working with phenomena

(see Butler-Kisber, 1998, 2000-2001, 2002; Graveline, 2000; Luce-Kapler, 1997;

Richardson, 1992; Stewart & Butler-Kisber, 1999). To create found poetry, I read and

reread the transcripts, made notes, and delineated a number of recurring themes. I culled

words and cut and pasted segments of conversation into specifically labelled files, then

played poetically with the segments of conversation in an attempt to distill themes and

write succinct versions of them. I tried to stay as true as possible to the original words of

the women. I did, however, make choices that were both academic and artistic. Iincluded only those phrases that I saw as pertinent to the theme that was emerging. I

reordered phrases at times to improve clarity for the reader. I wrote, walked away,

rewrote, and revised in an ongoing recursive process. The use of poetry situates me too

as poet, and reminds the reader through its very form that, as poet, I too am the poem. I

resymbolize what occurred in the group according to my own life and experiences. I

cannot do otherwise. There is no one ‘true’ account of what happened and how it

affected each, or any, of us. As Lather (1991) notes, in a poststructuralist view of

research, “attention shifts away from efforts to represent what is ‘really’ there and shifts,

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instead, toward the productivity of language” (p. 112). We are called to foreground too

the shifting subjectivity of the researcher.

In the excerpt that follows, I demonstrate how the two aspects of the resymbolization

process—the work in the group and the creation of found poetry from the

transcripts—intertwine in a textual re-presentation. The theme of this particular piece is

that of space and safety.

***

coming home from vacations lots of times Iwonder what's going tobe on the front of my garage this week wethrew a kid out kicked him out of my officehe's in for assault with a weapon robberywith a weapon and I'm thinkingI'll be coming home andthis guy will be on my front lawn

I went to a meeting at the board office andI'm just sitting there from our board officeyou can see our schoolsomeone had done vandalism on the wall (atthe school) Mrs. K. is a f-ing witchwe're talking it was really heavy and then Ilook over and—

how do other people perceive you how doesit look from the outside at first it was eggswhat a mess we have cedar siding on ourhouse we were out there scrubbingfor a long time we're pissed off but besidesthat what do the neighbors think ? we kept itquiet kept it to ourselves it'sa source of shame really

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it's one thing when it happens on schoolproperty it's another when it happens at yourhome that's a different ball game it changesit becomes personal thenthere is no place to gono place to be safe

houses always stand asa metaphor for ourselvesa house beingmucked about withabused

it's a safety net anda prison tooyou retreat into it tokeep yourself safe you can’tgo out there

you don't have any rules tolive by you thought you weresafe but you're not

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she wakes from a fitful sleep walksaround the house it is 2 am or thereaboutsa June evening cool calm quiet she goesdownstairs to the living room as she always doeswhen she wakes in the night it is herplace to think to stare out at the night sky the streetthe streetlights the houses across the way but tonighton entering the living room she isdisoriented that feeling you get when something iswrong something is amiss the front window is itbroken? no. but white marks are allacross it her heart pounds suddenlyvery awake she races to the front window looks outher flower garden destroyed pansiespulled out by the roots shades of purple allover the sidewalk a sidewalk full of dirt andgreen and purple and those marks on the windowwords? they're backwards to her what dothey say? she can't remember nowor can she?

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and you're crying white linesthe word BITCHyour image now to the peoplewho live around

you're walking down the hallway thinkingokay does everybody in this school exceptme know who this is? is it you? is it you? isit you? or I saw you do this or that--maybe itis you how can you teach when you can'ttrust people? and it got to the point wherewhenever we were away from the housewe'd come back and we’d think is somethinggoing to be wrong? is something going tohave happened to our house?

the remnants of whatpeople had left deathweird and bizarre theywere right there but more importantlythey'd come inside left their marks andwhere were they? whatwas going to happen after that?

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when you walked down the stairs it waspeaceful quiet pink in my mind pink representssafety I had to physically cut this paper because Ithink of the barrier between what was and suddenlywithin a split second something happens changesyour whole perception the perception that you havefrom inside and the perception that it gives fromoutside but what clouds this whole issue is theconfusion the questions that it bringsconfusion pain darkness

the inside is no longer pristinecomfortable cozy a haven suddenlythere is a not a great deal of differentiation betweenin and out

suddenly there is a not a great deal of differentiation between in and out

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the house a comfy home cottage withthe flowers growing up flowersbeing chopped off they're headlessnow they're all on the sidewalkthe window pane as a barricade between youbeing able to go out and do something aboutthis it's a safety net but it's a prison tooyou retreat into it to keep yourself safe butyou can't go out there you can't go out andget this person

you don't have any rulesto live by you thought you were safebut you're not

your line where your perceived personalspace is and basically you have the feeling thatwhen you leave work your home is yourcastle you leave work behind andwhen you go home it doesn't affect youyou don’t have your phone numberlisted as a teacher things like that becauseyou don't want to be phoned at home bykids the breaks in it the breaks and the orangerepresents your fear and the red is the beating ofyour heart and the blue is where you knewyour personal space of safety was but you don'tknow quite where it is now and where it isgoing to form again or how muchyou have after that

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just protecting your ownpersonal space that whole idea of theboundaries and stuff we don't talk withthe students about we don’t even thinkabout you just think oh well you justgo out and do this job but it isn't like thatteaching is a very vulnerable thingpublic it's a public act

***

In the preceding excerpt, I have highlighted one theme—that of space and safety—that

emerged for us in the course of our research. The found poetry from the transcripts and

the images from the collective work together to exemplifythe two aspects of the

resymbolization process. Writing, drawing, painting and so on in the group served to

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foreground issues that had previously been hazy, nebulous, internalized, or maybe just

avoided. Through sharing stories and responding in various artistic ways to one another,

we were able to disrupt what we had previously taken for granted in terms of our difficult

teaching experiences. Further, as I culled found poetry from the transcripts and worked

recursively between it and the visual artwork created in the group, I became aware of

themes that arose for individuals as well as for the collective. Together, then, these two

aspects of the resymbolization process functioned to create possibilities for troubling the

ways we had previously interpreted our difficult teaching experiences.

Note

1. I wish to emphasize that the found poetry that I created in the course of this research isonly one aspect of a larger writing-as-inquiry approach to interpreting what happened inthe group. Specifically, I used writing as process of further resymbolizing theexperiences that were highlighted through the explorations of the group. In addition tocreating found poetry, I included some of original poetry and wrote expressively in firstand third person to highlight my own shifting subjectivity as researcher. I also wrotelarge chunks of traditional academic expository writing, some of which was juxtaposedwith images, found poetry, and expressive writing, and some of which was footnoted.Playing with language –and traditional forms of re-presentation of research— in this wayenabled me to further resymbolize and thus reread what happened in the group. Further,such play with re-presentational practices problematizes how the reader situatesherself/himself in relation to what appears on the page. Little can be taken for granted.

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