Esther Fitzpatrick

Disturbing the Divide Poetry as Improvisation to Disorder Power Relationships in Research Supervision

In this article, we share our use of poetry as a research supervision tool. We are not only colleagues but are also in a student–supervisor relationship. Early on in the PhD process, we began writing poems to each other on email as a way of communicating aspects of our research ideas that we felt were not able to be expressed in prose. We found that this use of poetry enabled a direct emotional engagement with the work and ideas we were forming. At the same time, we shaped our writing activities as a form of resistance, indulging in a form of anti-neoliberal critique. Crucially, however, we found that poetry also allowed us to form a closer relationship because it required both of us to be open and vulnerable. We didn’t allow time to write and edit the poems but emailed them as soon as they were written.

Unearthing truths in duoethnographic method

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to engage with challenges the authors encountered in duoethnographic inquiry, including questions about what it means to tell the truth, and the decisions the authors made about what stories to include and exclude. The focus is on the ethical challenges involved in duoethnography and the ways in which the authors chose, and or felt compelled to, overcome them. The authors provide an argument for the need of intimate, eclectic and open-ended inquiry-based research that poses questions, challenges dominant discourses and promotes a compositional methodology in which to explore lived the experience of participants. Design/methodology/approach – The authors’ own duoethnographic process, embedded in an anthropological hermeneutics (Ricoeur, 1991), within a mode of narrative inquiry, developed over a period of three to four months. The authors had a number of formal and informal conversations – some recorded and transcribed, others remembered and reflected on later in e-ma...

Since Feeling is First

We are spacing his words here, infusing the writing with poetic pauses, (re)making them for our own expression; keeping them alive. Writing is, indeed, ‘sensuous,’ lived in the body and felt. It gives us hope, it haunts our days, and it enables a crossing of time … a trail of letters across the spaces. It subverts, rebels, exists.

Creating CRUAT: disrupting supervision and research through collaborative performance

This paper provides the narrative of a collaborative experience using ‘performance in research’ as a method to grow doctoral student research knowledge in an education faculty. We propose creating the conditions for collaboration between researchers through arts-based exploration sustains and extends the work of the research community. We also argue that performance in research disrupts traditional supervisor–student relationships.

Service and leadership in the university: duoethnography as transformation

The purpose of this paper is to use duoethnography to explore experiences of service as work in the university, an institution increasingly shaped by neoliberal values. The authors trace the shift in emphasis within the university from one of a care-oriented form of service to a highly managerial form of service. The authors first interrogate childhood stories to make sense of the initial response to the role of service in a lecturer position, and then to the increasing organisational demand for leadership within the university.,As two women academics the authors see the work in teacher education as a particular form of service—as “our calling”.,This duoethnography reveals different histories in relation to service, but similar ways of thinking about the changing nature of service in the university. With particular regard to women in the academy, it reveals the desire for a more transformative approach, recognising the importance of collegial relationships, and valuing an ethics of care, in order to develop inclusive and transformative service and leadership in the academy.,This paper provides clear links to how changes in the university are understood and approached differently by people.,This paper argues for the importance of autoethnographic and duoethnographic explorations of the personal stories in the university to better understand wider definitions of service and leadership.

Let Us Dance

I looked at the call for papers, “Poetic responses to Orlando” and paused. Should I contribute? And then I thought, how could I hide in the safety of my so-called normality and straightness when others may have become afraid to dance? So I invited my friends to join me in a poetic response.

Critical Autoethnography Conference 2016: A Factionalized Review

In this factionalised script, I provide a review of the Critical Autoethnography (CAE) Conference, which took place in Melbourne, Australia, July 21-22, 2016. Participants gathered from across the globe to discuss the themes of affect, animacies, and objects from a critical autoethnographic vantage point.

A Review: Writing Academic Fiction

A poetic accolade to three academic fiction writers: Patricia Leavy, Toni Bruce, and Christine Sleeter.

Speaking to the ghost: An autoethnographic journey with Elwyn

Abstract As educators we are haunted. This haunting takes place on several levels, through our personal histories, through key theoretical ideas we have encountered on our journeys, and by those significant educators who have gone before. This paper highlights how Elwyn S. Richardson continues to haunt education in New Zealand. Also how Elwyn, in turn, was haunted by ‘Wal’ and John Dewey. Rubbing up against neo-liberal reform, philosophers such as Elwyn, give us permission to develop our own personal educational philosophy. Through employing an arts-based autoethnography, we explore how our educational journeys have been haunted by Elwyn. And by drawing on Jacques Derrida’s directive, ‘speak to the ghost’, we summon up Elwyn. To do this we write a series of fictional letters which enable us to reflect on one author’s memories. Through analysis of these letters we demonstrate the importance of the Arts as a method to critically reflect upon, and rise above, the dominant neo-liberal ideology we work within. We speculate here that a strong personal philosophy has the potential to disrupt and engage educators critically with an institutional philosophy that continues to dominate much of mainstream education in New Zealand.