Donald S. Blumenfeld-Jones

Fidelity as a criterion for practicing and evaluating narrative inquiry

“Fidelity” is presented as a criterion for practicing and evaluating narrative inquiry, linking narrative inquiry to both social science and art. “Fidelity” is contrasted with “truth” and characterized as moral in character. “Fidelity” is further characterized as a “betweenness,” construed as both intersubjective (obligations between teller and receiver) and as a resonance between the story told and the social and cultural context of a story. Storytelling as an arena of purposeful reconstruction of events on the part of both the teller and the narrative inquirer links narrative inquiry to art making. Using Ricoeurs work on emplotment and Langers work in aesthetic philosophy, a criterion of “believability” is established. The narrative is believable when it can be credited with conveying, convincingly, that the events occurred and were felt in ways the narrator is asserting. Dilemmas with achieving “fidelity” and aesthetics in narrative inquiry are investigated.

Dance as a Mode of Research Representation

Dance as a viable representation mode for research is discussed in the light of Clifford Geertzs assertion that ideas can be reflectively addressed through the arts. Dance is described as an autonomous field of aesthetic perception with its own meaning working through the categories of motion, time, space, and shape. Western culture is described as logo centric and nondance, fixed on the myth of words as transparent conveyors of thought. Adopting a hermeneutical stance, the transparency of words is critiqued and, ironically, dance is analogized to text, although not words. How dance can be treated as text is elaborated by using the Ricoeurean idea of action as meaningful text.

The Artistic Process and Arts-Based Research A Phenomenological Account of the Practice

Arts-based research (ABR) leverages art practice for performing inquiry. An important component of art practice is the inner life of the artist. However, in the literature, this inner life, what the author terms process, is not much discussed although method finds voice there. This distinction grounds the phenomenology presented. The phenomenology is an Husserlian–van Manen mixed account of the artistic process that, the author claims, provides a basis for performing ABR. The phenomenology is cast as a nested set of ways of awareness characterized by feeling of various sorts (Husserlian) and is accompanied by narrative renderings of the process (van Manen).

CHAPTER 2: Fostering Creativity and Aesthetic Consciousness in Teachers

ABSTRACT In the first section of this chapter, Blumenfeld-Jones critically explores the twin concepts of creativity and aesthetic consciousness by examining their conceptual and classic roots for the purpose of rediscovering their usefulness for all people performing all kinds of acts in the world. This exploration is offered to demonstrate that teachers can “be creative” and already have “aesthetic consciousness.” It is also used to set the theoretical grounds for understanding the practice of cultivating creativity and aesthetic consciousness. In the second part of the chapter, which depends upon this theory analysis, Blumenfeld-Jones presents numerous examples from his teaching as to how to cultivate creativity and aesthetic consciousness in teacher preparation and curriculum studies classrooms.

Critical Democratic Teacher Preparation and the Practice of Council

“If democracy is to become a way of life in contemporary North American life, we certainly need to have schools with strong democratic commitments... if we are going to have democratic schools, we need teachers with the knowledge, skills, and attitudes necessary for developing sustained democratic ways of educating... if we are going to seek and sustain democratic teachers, we will also need... democratic teacher educators...” (Novak, 1994, p. ix)