TY - JOUR AB - 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. VL - 19 IS - 4 SN - 1443-9883 DO - 10.1108/QRJ-05-2019-0041 UR - https://doi.org/10.1108/QRJ-05-2019-0041 AU - Arnold Julie PY - 2019 Y1 - 2019/01/01 TI - Artful praxis: experience, inquiry and consciousness T2 - Qualitative Research Journal PB - Emerald Publishing Limited SP - 438 EP - 448 Y2 - 2024/04/23 ER -