Patrick Slattery

The educational researcher as artist working within

This article discusses the complexity of arts-based educational research and arts-based autoethnography and presents a concrete example of an installation tableau that investigates the regulation of the human body and human sexuality in a junior high classroom of a Roman Catholic school in the 1960s. In this article, the modern abstract expressionist painter Jackson Pollock serves as an example of an artist using the unconscious to direct his work. Pollock’s interest in surrealism and Michel Foucault’s discussion of the work of the Belgian surrealist Rene Magritte figure prominently in the theoretical foundation for this article. Pollock provides a parallel to the process of the arts-based educational autoethnographer as researcher working within.

Hermeneutics, aesthetics, and the quest for answerability: a dialogic possibility for reconceptualizing the interpretive process in curriculum studies

This study reviews six traditional approaches to hermeneutics and presents a dialogic understanding of hermeneutics. It concludes with specific applications of hermeneutics to curriculum development practices in schools with a focus on inter‐subjectivity. While 20th‐century access to post‐structural notions of subjectivity through aesthetic experience began to engender a language of possibility rather than a language of certitude for hermeneutic inquiry in curriculum studies, it nevertheless did not fully account for interpretation as a productive and collaborative act in the inter‐subjective sense of being for the other. This study explores the dialogic emergence of this language of possibility through a review of historical and contemporary approaches to hermeneutics, and subsequently proposes an alternative understanding of hermeneutics and aesthetics to offer a reconceptualized vision of the interpretive process for curriculum studies.

Troubling the Contours of Arts-Based Educational Research

The author writes in response to the article presented by his friends and colleagues in arts-based educational research, Maria Piantanida, Patricia L. McMahon, and Noreen B. Garman. Maria, Pat, Noreen, and the author share a commitment to substantive qualitative educational research, particularly as this research is conducted using the arts, autoethnography, and other emerging arts-based methodologies. They have all worked closely together at the American Educational Research Association in the creation and expansion of the Arts-Based Educational Research Special Interest Group. They also were instrumental in the development of a new conference for arts-based research, initially in Albuquerque in February 2000, then in Austin in October 2000, and Victoria, Canada, in 2001.

Who Reveals what to whom? Critical Reflections on Conducting Qualitative Inquiry as an Interdisciplinary, Biracial, Male/Female Research Team

If qualitative inquiry seeks to understand and explain the meaning of social phenomena, then what is the influence of social interactions between researchers in this process? In seeking to understand social constructions of reality, how do racial and gender identities influence qualitative fieldwork? What unique insights can be gained by conducting qualitative research in interdisciplinary research teams? Does a biracial, male/female research team confer legitimacy when the research seeks to uncover experiences related to race and gender? The authors address these questions as they critically reflect and report on their experiences while conducting qualitative research as an interdisciplinary, biracial, male/female research team for a university retention study.

White male teachers on difference: narratives of contact and tensions

This research reflection explores a narrative pattern that emerged in participants’ interviews on student differences. In exploring this narrative pattern, this reflection reveals tensions between participants’ structural and deficit understandings of student differences of race, class, culture, and language. Framing participants’ understandings of structural and deficit thinking, this reflection articulates three discursive contexts relating to participants’ work. Articulating participants’ structural and deficit thinking within discursive contexts, this reflection seeks to re‐initiate the conversation on white teachers through increased attention to researcher positionality, discursive contexts, and research pedagogy.

Voices of imagination: the artist as prophet in the process of social change

In this article we contend that vision, imagination and a passion for justice are in short supply in our schools and society, and we advocate the importance of creating space for the voices of artists to emerge. The preponderance of materials and programmes that emphasize the technical rationality of our work as educators continues to stifle and silence the voices of imagination. If schooling is simply technical, it has reached the end of its usefulness and is incapable of contributing to the social, spiritual and ecological problems of our communities. We are not resigned to the end of education. Rather, we believe that empowering the voices of imagination through the arts will contribute to a renewal of the metaphysical dimension of our work. We advocate such a posture. As we encourage the young to make the arts a natural means of expression we also encourage the development of the prophetic voice. And it is this voice that most certainly can attend to the pressing problems of our postmodern world.

Blurring Art and Science: Synthetical Moments on the Borders

Abstract This article rejects the assumption that art and science are dichotomous in favor of a holistic and interdisciplinary understanding of the intimate relationship between the arts and sciences. The authors advance the notion that artistic modes of thought and aesthetic experiences are essential to the cognitive and expressive development of students and to the quality of the instructional milieu orchestrated by teachers. The authors respond affirmatively to Eisner and Powell’s rhetorical question as to whether or not we can think about education as a process aimed at preparing the artist, and they discuss several projects designed to advance the arts in education by integrating aesthetics into the philosophical understandings of teaching and learning. The authors diverge from Eisner and Powell on one significant issue: the nature of the aesthetic experience. Instead, they propose a Deleuzean reading of synthetical moments and experiences of profound insight that merge time, space, and self in a seamless transhistorical moment. The authors hope that this article will contribute to an ongoing discussion about the nature of aesthetics, philosophy, and the experience of self, as well as generate a fresh look at the expressive quality of arts-based research, particularly using the philosophy of Gilles Deleuze as a theoretical foundation.

Teaching Gender and Sexuality Diversity in Foundations of Education Courses in the US.

This article is a summary of comprehensive units on gender and sexuality diversity that the authors have used in teacher education courses in undergraduate and graduate social foundations of education classes over several years. The course lesson plan includes a five‐part analysis of the following categories: biological sex; gender identity/sexual identity; gender roles; sexual behavior; and sexual orientation. The authors have experienced much success and positive student evaluation by using this approach. This is true even in religiously and politically conservative universities. The authors introduce the complexity of biology, gender roles, and gender identity, before addressing human sexuality. This helps to diffuse many stereotypes and misconceptions in the initial lessons.

A Curriculum of Being With, Being For and Becoming

Stanley, W. B. (1992). Curriculum for utopia: Social reconstructionism and critical pedagogy in the postmodern era. New York: SUNY Press. Stanley, W. B. (2005). Social studies and the social order: Transmission or transformation? Social Education, 69(5), 282–286. Stanley, W. B. (2007). Critical pedagogy: Democratic realism, neoliberalism, conservatism, and a tragic sense of education. In J. L. Kincheloe (Ed.), Critical pedagogy: Where are we now? (pp. 371-389). New York: Peter Lang. Stanley, W. B., & Whitson, J. A. (1992). Citizenship as practical competence: A response to the new reform movement in social education. International Journal of Social Education, 7(2), 57–66. Whitson, J. A. (2003). What social studies teachers need to know: The new urgency to old disputes. In S. Adler (Ed.), Critical issues in social studies teacher education. (p.9-36). Greenwich, CT: Information Age Publishers. Wraga, W. G. (1999a). Extracting sunbeams out of cucumbers: The retreat from practice in reconceptualized curriculum studies. Educational Researcher, 28(1), 4–13. Wraga, W. G. (1999b). The continuing arrogation of the curriculum field: A rejoinder to Pinar.Educational Researcher, 28(1), 16. Wraga, W. G. (2002). Recovering curriculum practice: Continuing the conversation. EducationalResearcher, 31(6), 17–19.

I Am Nature: Understanding the Possibilities of Currere in Curriculum Studies and Aesthetics.

ABSTRACT This article explores a perspective on nature and aesthetics as currere, which is the foundational concept of curriculum theory. Beginning with the statement “I am nature” by Jackson Pollock and moving through works by of Kiefer, Hofmann, and Magritte, this article explores contemporary art theory and connects the notion of synthetical moments in curriculum theory to an integrated understanding of aesthetics. Michel Foucaults dialogues with Rene Magritte on philosophy and art inform understandings of the unconscious to form a vision of nature and self in the aesthetic process. This article reviews significant historical aspects of currere, from Schubert, Pinar, and Grumet in curriculum theory, and relates the development of curriculum theory to Jackson Pollocks abstract expressionism.