Marta Kawka

Multiple selves, multiple voices, multiple genres: reflections in writing and art making

Abstract In this article, I use the method of ‘talking to myself’ as a mode of critical reflection about the practices of art making and art writing. This ‘reflective conversation’ manifested the multiple voices of the dialogic self who either thwarted me or spurred me on, in the process of writing. The article presents reflection as a conflict between an authentic reflection which is true to one’s sense of lived being with the requirements to fit within a particular writing genre suitable for a disciplinary tribe that may reject or support the particular method of reflection. I suggest that attending to, and critically reflecting upon, our internal dialogue and acknowledging its conflictual nature can be a sustained process of reflection where different points of view are explored, questioned, reinterpreted and reshaped. The conversation with my multiple selves is presented in the form of a play script as an authentic format to capture multiple selves interacting. In so doing, I reflect upon artistic practice and its relationship to thought, reflection and action.

The Arithmomania Maths App: The glitch that corrupted learning to leave only fun

ABSTRACT In this article we critique, disrupt and resist the taken for granted use of the term fun in learning; specifically as it is used to justify mathematics education apps that purport to portray maths learning as a fun experience. We accomplish this critique through the creation of a digital artwork called Arithmomania. This artwork challenges how users interact with education apps by employing the aesthetic of the glitch, an aesthetic characterized by reifying disorder and malfunction. Arithmomania shows fun as a miasma to learning, rather than the nostrum it is believed to be.

Empowering educators: Promoting enabling teaching and learning in research and practice

An abiding ambivalence attends the work and identities of contemporary educators. On the one hand, few informed and well-disposed commentators would doubt the importance of teaching and its transformative potential, encapsulated in representations of the teaching profession both in films (Ellsmore, 2005) and in novels (Carr, 1984). On the other hand, teachers are seen as increasingly pressured and under threat, including through (albeit often reluctant) complicity with high-stakes standardised testing (Au, 2011), responding to individual accountability and school league tables (Perryman, Ball, Maguire, & Braun, 2011), engaging with school leaders who have varying degrees of competency (Tschannen-Moran, 2014) and sometimes experiencing feelings of not belonging at school and of emotional exhaustion (Skaalvik & Skaalvik, 2011).

Transgressive Play: "Contiguity" and "Excess" in the Creation of an a/r/tographical Text.

In artist-teacher practice, what separates the art practice of an artist-teacher from their art teaching? At what point does art practice stop and art teaching begin? In what instance does an artwork concept begin? Where does an idea for a student art activity come from? Is the creative process different in conceptualizing our own artwork compared to conceptualizing an art task for students? How does artist-teacher practice embody knowledge and at what point is this knowledge generated? This a/r/tographical lived inquiry captures the process of our thinking through a concept for an art installation, in contiguity with conceptualizing an art activity for students. The questions above underlie our explorations. This article is presented in reflexive form where conversations, images, and reflections are woven together to render a moment in transition between us. These rendered movements reveal that in-between reflections come the generation and interplay of our subjectivities as teacher-artists. Artistic knowledge is embodied in making and pedagogic conversations, and is ambiguous at the onset of inquiry. In our intersection we find that we are connected by our childhood fantasies and obsessions through playful acts which resist heteronormativity. In turn, the inquiry becomes a polyphonous text which vacillates between resolution and unfinalizability to encapsulate the process of artistic research.