Artful praxis: experience, inquiry and consciousness

Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to illuminate the way in which pre-service teachers adopt ways of thinking critically about learning and practice. It highlights the unfolding of critical dialogue, knowledge and artful action as a way of “reading the scene” (Pahl and McKenna, 2015). The focus concerns mindshifts that occur while learning to be a teacher. The study sets out to seek factors that contribute towards development as professional practitioner.

Design/methodology/approach

As part of a much larger study involving ten pre-service teachers, this paper focusses on just one participant named Meredith, a pre-service teacher in her fourth year of her teacher education course. The design constructed draws on the data from Meredith’s interview and conversation, art making and gestural activity while painting and communicating her stories. These narratives from interviews exist in this paper as vignettes and privilege of the interplay of art making, interview and gestural responses. Implementing a framework by Denzin (2001) enables a way of reading to note learning and epiphanic moments that exist for Meredith.

Findings

Moment of learning and themes are indicated and suggest that from the original interview there are 11 important moments of epiphanic mindshifts for Meredith.

Originality/value

The method as practice intends to make cogent links to new levels of consciousness by presenting innovative ways in which qualitative research data can be gathered and analysed. Meredith engages in mindshifts that occur as learner and also embraces experiences of praxis as a means of understanding self and teacher identity.

Citation

Arnold, J. (2019), "Artful praxis: experience, inquiry and consciousness", Qualitative Research Journal, Vol. 19 No. 4, pp. 438-448. https://doi.org/10.1108/QRJ-05-2019-0041