AED 815 - Action Research in Art Education

       For this exploration, I started by keeping a drawing journal in which I drew my gaming console for a week. So far, I used drawing to reflect on my gaming experience, but I have not yet focused on my gaming console – which is the vessel for my gaming – from an artistic lens. In my problem statement, I have emphasized my gaming console as apparatus from a new materialist perspective of the impact of non-human agency on my self -making. So, during the one week that I have kept drawing my gaming console, I have tried to analyze the ways in which I make kin with it. Even though my first intention was to look at my gaming console as a still life when drawing, I could not help but think about the video games it holds in its body. I cannot see it as still life, my gaming console is also an extension of my avatar selves. My self-making process is not merely abstract but physical because, in a way, the gaming console represents the physical consequences of how I embody...

  Exploration 4 – Layered Analysis Layer 1: Code to Disassemble and Reassemble Layer 2: Inquiry Prose             My journal writings and notes in Layer 1 focused on dialogism and self-making through the avatars I am embodying in the video games I play. In looking at my gameplay with them, I documented some screenshots and I also looked at random gameplay YouTube videos about the video games I was playing. I chose to focus on three video games and three avatars. As a matter of fact, one of the avatars I have chosen to focus on is one that I have not played with, at least yet. The video game’s name is Celeste , and I learned about it from a gamer friend. I became fascinated with the story and the music; I played the game for a bit but did not want to continue playing because it seemed too hard. However, I did not stop engaging with it – I watched gameplay videos and reviews on YouTube and became obsessed with its soundtrack....

 

              Back in my undergrad years, I used to associate social justice and art with murals, graffiti, etc. I was not familiar with arts-based research at all. Needless to say, I had a very limited understanding of socially engaged arts-based research examples. Of course, since then, I got more and more familiar with arts-based research and even conducted one for my master’s thesis – even though it was not social justice elated. I think that because of my academic background in Painting and Visual Arts, I tend to think of arts-based research as always something visual. Reading more about different arts-based research methodologies and examples expanded my vision and introduced me to multi-sensory examples as well as narrative ones. However, when I was looking for a socially engaged arts-based research example for this exploration, I still searched for visual examples. I do not know if this is because of my fine arts back...

  Exploration 1 – Critical Action Research             After reading Smith (2013), Klein (2012) and Keifer-Boyd (2014), I gained a general understanding of what action research is. Before doing the readings, I had a limited understanding of the environments or surroundings that action research could take place in. I thought it was a method that only teachers could use, within an educational setting. Luckily, it did not turn out to be that way. Based on the readings and my understanding of them, action research is much more inclusive in the way it can be used by a wide range of people such as teachers, artists, teacher-artists, scholars, researchers, etc. It contains multiple methods of inquiry such as arts-based research, narrative inquiry, a/r/tography, etc. It is a methodology that brings the unconscious details of everyday practice environments to consciousness through the multiple methods that emphasize on reflexivity. Al...