Braving educational research ideology in higher education: an arts-inspired collaborative self-study using visual artwork

Abstract

Traditional research often portrays the educational researcher as primarily recommending changes to others' educational practices. We have challenged this perspective by using a starting-with-ourselves approach to seek sustainable, achievable self-improvement in our professional practice. At a 2024 South African Education Research Association (SAERA) conference workshop, we individually created and reflected on self-created artworks, exploring how our art-making evoked new and alternative ways of thinking and understanding research. We were thus inspired to collaborate on a project using visual artwork co-creation for research purposes. Our data sources were our individual artworks and our collaboratively created artwork. Found pantoum research poems facilitated the analysis of our individual and collaborative reflections. We concluded that research art-work serves both novice and experienced artists; provides valuable, unconventional, unexpected reflexive opportunities; highlights the importance of transdisciplinary educational research in knowledge construction; and facilitates re-imagining, re-thinking, and re-defining our professional practices amidst social issues.