Kathryn Church

Employing the Arts in Research as an Analytical Tool and Dissemination Method: Interpreting Experience Through the Aesthetic

The process to knowing entails perpetual curiosity as well as wearied surrender in which one’s understandings transform. This philosophy describes the approach that our team took to research, interpret and exhibit patients’ narratives of open-heart surgery in “The 7,024th Patient” project – an arts-informed, narrative study that resulted in an installation that is 1,739 square feet in area and over 9 feet in height. With the intention to physically and emotionally engage viewers, patients’ stories were aesthetically translated into an installation of poetry and photography that was configured as a winding, labryinth-like path. In this article, we recount the journey of creating “The 7,024th Patient” exhibition illustrating the employment of the arts as a tool in research for acquiring understanding. In order to vividly highlight our journey, poetic excerpts and photographic images from the installation are embedded.

Arts-informed research dissemination: Patients' perioperative experiences of open-heart surgery

BACKGROUNDnThe integration of humanistic approaches, in which patients personal experiences are acknowledged and inform practice, is integral to optimal healthcare.nnnOBJECTIVESnIn this study, we used an arts-informed narrative approach to understand and highlight the experiential and subjective qualities of illness and recovery from heart surgery.nnnMETHODSnAn arts-informed analysis was conducted and we represented participants stories of open-heart surgery through the media of poetry and photographic images.nnnRESULTSnBy using the arts as a method for analysis and dissemination, patients unique and deeply personal experiences of heart surgery were illuminated.nnnCONCLUSIONSnThe arts can be particularly beneficial in healthcare and cardiovascular research, because they can inspire practitioners to become refamiliarized with the emotional, embodied, and psychosocial perioperative experiences of heart surgery from patients perspectives.

Arts-Informed Research Dissemination in the Health Sciences

Arts-informed dissemination of health care research is an emerging field of scholarship. Our team chose to use the arts as a means to disseminate findings from a study about patients’ experiences of open-heart surgery and recovery. We transformed patients’ stories, gathered through interviews and journal writings, into poetry and photographic imagery and displayed this within a 1,739 ft2 art installation titled “The 7,024th Patient.” Our intention was to use the arts as dissemination method that could convey the sentiments and perspectives of patients. To evaluate this novel method of dissemination in the health sciences, we conducted a study to analyze its effect on viewers. We used a narrative methodology with a multimodal theoretical lens. Thirty-four individuals participated in either an individual interview or a focus group. In addition, more than 200 anonymous, written comments were generated at research stations placed throughout the installation. In this article, we present the findings. Participants found this art installation of poetry and imagery to be a valid, meaningful, and authentic representation of patients’ experiences. They also described being immersed into patients’ journeys and evoking self-reflection. Based on this research, arts-informed dissemination is a powerful medium to report findings. Our work provides empirical evidence that expands the different ways to distribute research in the health and social sciences.

Learning through Community

Alumni News 5-7 In your years at SU, you read endless “Tinto” citations in your books and research articles (yes, our very own Vincent Tinto) referencing how critical it is for college students to integrate both socially and academically during the college experience. Immersing or engaging actively in and outside of classrooms with one’s peers, faculty, advisors, and/or student affairs professionals has been a key factor influencing student success, persistence, and graduation. It should be not be a surprise therefore that similar factors would influence the success of graduate students. However, many of our policies (or lack thereof) and actions, often aimed at accommodating graduate students’ complex, demanding lives and competing priorities, have in fact hindered student progress. At the time our department had appeared understanding when it approved students enrolling in a few classes, taking a year long leave, or taking years to start working on (and keep working on) the dissertation. We now realize that often our efforts have only contributed to students feeling disconnected to our program; they are frequently disengaged in the academic experience, and often, unsuccessful in completing their degrees. We all lose and feel badly when these outcomes occur. Consequently, we introduced some expectations that we hope will help promote continued immersion in the graduate school experience. For example, master’s students minimally must complete 9 credits hours per year, typically resulting in a course each semester and one in the summer. They also must participate in a 9-week orientation seminar (Graduate Interest Group Seminar) that serves to help students get to know and work with each other, to learn the habits and norms that characterize serious scholarly work, and to become familiar with critical department and campus resources available to help students meet ongoing program and class requirements (e.g. securing a practicum). All doctoral students are now required to take a minimum of 12 credit hours per year and engage in an intensive all-faculty review every 18 months. The purpose of this review is to examine if sufficient progress has been made and to develop goals and action plans for the months ahead. If students fail to progress, we are prepared to ask them to leave the program so we can redirect our energies as a faculty to those students who are committed to immerse themselves into scholarly work. We recognize that some of these expectations may result in some important negotiations with family members and work supervisors. We truly believe however that the quality of students’ graduate experience (and future professional endeavors) will be enriched by our intentional efforts to integrate our students both socially and academically into our graduate learning community. We look forward to being more consistent with practicing what we preach! Best wishes for a great summer and new beginnings in Fall 2009!

While No One is Watching: Learning in Social Action Among People who are Excluded from the Labour Market

This chapter profiles non-profit community/trade union organizations run by/for marginalized groups. Under the pressures of a turbulent social and economic context, many have evolved a contradictory practice that blends social and economic development. While breaking with earlier traditions of opposition, they have fostered new traditions that operate “while no one is watching” to transform the lives of individuals facing a rough ride in capitalist societies. Informal learning is a significant part of this shift. The authors of this chapter have been involved for many years in community organizations and/or trade unions. Our argument draws on several years of collaborative research done with three such organizations in Montreal and Toronto, Canada. It documents informal learning arising from practice in three areas: learning to participate; learning to re/connect with others; learning a new definition of self. We view these as core features of what Foley (1999) calls “learning in social action.” For us, this phrase references actions ranging from informal conversation to formal collective process. In aligning ourselves with Foley’s work, we are contributing to a stream of literature on informal learning that could be characterized as “learning power and action in resisting communities” (Adams, 1997). It encompasses the learning struggles of women, First Nations and other racial/ethnic minorities, youth and the elderly. As much as possible, we have written this chapter in plain language with words in common use. We did not want the academic use and histories of words to take precedence over their every day meanings. Also, we have organized the presentation of our findings in generic categories. This strategy arose from our discomfort with the ways in which terminology used in previous drafts, term such as “political learning” or “solidarity learning,” required us to reference and position ourselves with respect to academic debates (Church et al. 2000). Against the grain of academic practice, we chose not to privilege the categories derived from our work over the case descriptions that give them life. Thus, while broadly locating ourselves, we have resisted establishing our legitimacy in this way. Our primary focus is on the community organizations we have studied, and how their participants live

Pictorial Narrative Mapping as a Qualitative Analytic Technique

Qualitative analysis is often a textual undertaking. However, it can be helpful to think about and represent study phenomena or narrative accounts in nontextual ways. In this article, we share our unique and artistic process in developing and employing pictorial narrative mapping as a qualitative analytic technique. We recast a nontextual, artistic–analytic technique by combining elements related to narrative mapping and narrative art. This technique involves aesthetic attunement to data and visual representation through pictorial design. We advanced this technique in the context of a narrative study about how arts-informed dissemination methods influence health-care practitioners’ delivery of care. We found that the Pictorial Narrative Mapping process prompted an aesthetic and imaginative experience in the analytic process of qualitative inquiry. As an analytic technique, Pictorial Narrative Mapping extends the inquiry process and enhances rigor through artistic means as well as iterative and critical dialogue. Additionally, pictorial narrative maps can provide a holistic account of the phenomenon under study and assist researchers to make meaning of nuances within complex narratives. As researchers consider employing Pictorial Narrative Mapping, we recommend that they draw upon this technique as a malleable script yielding to an organic process that emerges from both their own data and analytic discussions. We are further curious about its imaginative capacities in social and health science literature, its possibilities in other disciplinary contexts, and the prospects of what Maxine Greene refers to as becoming more wide awake—in our case, in future research analytic endeavors.

Dressing Corporate Subjectivities: Learning What to Wear to the Bank

This chapter is an experiment in writing subjectively about subjectivity. It gives an account of a four year study that was designed to discover the learning strategies used by disabled employees within a major financial institution that I refer to as Everybank. By “playing” with the research team’s experience as female academics – our bodies, our wardrobes, our clothing practices – I explore what my co-investigators and I learned of our own subjectivity in the course of researching “corporate disability.” Even as we attempted to maintain an external focus on the learning practices of disabled employees, we were compelled to attend to what we ourselves were being taught through an unfamiliar set of relations. Inhabiting corporate spaces and interacting with corporate managers meant learning new practices of communicating and interacting: speaking, writing but also dressing. For members of the research team, passing through corporate environments has given new meaning to the term “self-study.” I conclude that learning by watching and learning by doing have not yet given way to computerized selfdirected learning, at least not when it comes to the acquisition of work-able workplace subjectivities.

Knowledge Translation Capacity of Arts-informed Dissemination: A Narrative Study

Background:xa0 Arts-informed dissemination is an expanding approach to enhancing knowledge translation in the health sciences. Problematic is the minimal evaluation studies and the rare reporting of the influencing factors of knowledge translation. “The 7,024 th Patient” is a research-derived art installation created to disseminate findings about patients’ experiences of heart surgery and the importance of humanistic patient-centred care approaches. The current study’s purpose was to explore how arts-informed dissemination (i.e., “The 7,024 th Patient”) influenced healthcare practitioners’ delivery of care. Methods: An arts-informed narrative study was guided by the Promoting Action on Research Implementation in Health Services framework. The sample included a multi-disciplinary group of 19 individuals who worked with patients undergoing and recovering from heart surgery. Two interviews were conducted with each participant at the time of viewing the installation and 6 months later. A narrative analysis was conducted using Pictorial Narrative Mapping techniques. Results: Study findings indicated that the arts as a form of evidence provide an experiential and aesthetic encounter, which stimulated reflective practice. Participants’ accounts reflected cognitive and behavioral modifications related to empathy, holistic approaches and relational care. However, the complexities associated with the interpretive process and the influencing knowledge translation elements indicated a need to dialogue about the translation process, including deconstructing the evidence within the context of one’s own practice. Conclusions: Art is not just works of beauty or eccentric paintings. There is an imaginative and aesthetic capacity that can be cultivated with diligence, creativity, and rigour in the world of healthcare research and knowledge translation. Next steps require the examination of the knowledge translation capacity of different art forms with a range of populations and disciplines. Additionally, this study suggests the need to explore arts-informed dissemination that draws upon a more dialogical intervention in which knowledge users are involved in the interpretive processes of knowledge translation.