More than glitter and glue: an arts-informed autoethnographic exploration of school-based art education

Harrison, Karyn Leigh (2021) More than glitter and glue: an arts-informed autoethnographic exploration of school-based art education. Ed.D thesis, University of Glasgow.

Abstract

This doctoral study offers a space to inquire about and explore complexities, joys and obstacles faced in the teaching of art in a school setting. It takes the form of an arts-informed autoethnography and is viewed through a combined new materialist, decolonial, and affective lens. Within the presentation of this study, I look to acts of making and reflecting that explore the impact of materials and how they act to mediate knowing and making meaning through embodied relationship. Used flexibly and reflexively, this combination of theoretical and methodological approaches enables an emergent methodology that initiates a call to seek more than what is traditionally expected and supposed within a Western framework of thinking. Through this approach an intentional examination and questioning of human and more-than-human experience is considered. By charting my navigation of time and space, and by identifying possibilities, differences, and possible mismatches, of the perception of the role of visual arts education, perhaps other arts educators can feel supported and empowered to share their stories, concerns, and ideas for change. Guiding this study are three questions that ask: In what ways do individual school experiences influence perspectives and approaches to visual arts education? What social practices and value systems are at play in dominant approaches to visual arts education that need to be considered and interrogated? Recognizing public education as a complex space, how can new materialisms inform an expansive practice of arts education? Using these questions to frame explorations and unfolding understandings, ideas and concerns were able to surface. Within the presentation of this study, I share three ideas, or threads, that developed through the art making and reflexive research methods. In the first thread, a sense of not belonging and its effect on identity opened to choosing to embrace ever-changing, emerging entanglements. In the second thread I look at the conception of time in a school. I then interrupt linear time’s hold through material intervention. In the third thread I confront narratives of scarcity at play in my teaching practice. I attempt to navigate an understanding of the craving for control and predictability in the face of ‘not enough’. Rather than allowing myself to disengage from ambiguity and uncertainty, I embrace exploration with materials and affects. In this way I look to enact interconnectivity and subjectivity as strength through making as a way of knowing and a lived form of inquiry.

• Item Type: Thesis (Ed.D)
• Qualification Level: Doctoral
• Colleges/Schools: College of Social Sciences > School of Education
• Supervisor's Name: Perry, Dr. Mia
• Date of Award: 2021
• Depositing User: Theses Team
• Unique ID: glathesis:2021-82769
• Copyright: Copyright of this thesis is held by the author.
• Date Deposited: 30 Mar 2022 14:34
• Last Modified: 08 Apr 2022 16:41
• Thesis DOI: 10.5525/gla.thesis.82769
• URI: https://theses.gla.ac.uk/id/eprint/82769