Category: identity

  • Going against the grain? Arts Based Research and the EdD: Resistance, activism and identity

    Going against the grain? Arts Based Research and the EdD: Resistance, activism and identity

    by Tim Clark and Tom Dobson

    There has been growing interest in the potential of arts-based research (ABR) methods to enrich educational inquiry (Everley, 2021). However, minimal attention has been given to how accessible or relevant ABR is for practice-based researchers (including lecturers and teachers), who undertake the professional doctorate in education (EdD) pathway. We believe that this lack of attention is significant, partly because institutional frameworks for doctoral programmes are often informed by traditional models of PhD research, which may constrain the creative possibilities of practice-based study (Vaughan, 2021), and partly due to the nature and ‘uniqueness’ of the EdD as a research degree (Dennis, Chandler & Punthil, 2023).

    We have previously argued that ABR potentially holds particular promise for EdD research due to its alignment with the programme’s highly relational and contextual nature and its engagement with diverse audiences. In our 2024 paper, which was part of a special issue of Teaching in Higher Education, we mapped the theoretical similarities in understandings of ABR and the EdD, exploring this alignment across aspects including practice, audience and reflexivity (Dobson & Clark, 2024). Our paper called for colleagues to ‘embrace hybridity’ and provide permission for creativity in EdD research and we attempted to illustrate this within the paper itself, entangling examples of creative nonfiction writing with a traditional scoping review to embody our theorisation. However, we also concluded with a realisation that maximising the potential of ABR requires careful attention to how design, practice and regulations support students’ identity development and agency (Savva & Nygaard, 2021).

    To build on this, throughout 2024 we have been working with a group of nine EdD students studying at our respective institutions, who are all exploring the potential of ABR for their work. These students span professional roles from early childhood through to higher education, and disciplines including the arts, business and science. Following initial narrative interviews with each student, we developed an online cross-institution action learning set (Revans, 1982) to facilitate dialogue and learning relating to some of the key problems and opportunities students were experiencing in relation to their engagement with ABR. As a group we met 6 times, each time agreeing an area of focus, and providing opportunities for individuals to present and group members to ask clarifying and open-ended coaching style questions. This process culminated in creative analysis, where we collaboratively analysed and reflected on the learning that had taken place, and each student presented a creative interpretation of their learning to the group. We are currently working with a group of these EdD students to co-author a paper which captures and illustrates this learning and shares these creative outputs.

    Alongside this, the second paper from our project (Clark & Dobson, forthcoming) explores some of the key learning arising from the initial interview phase – in particular the idea of ABR as a form of ‘resistance’ involving potentially either a deliberate, or more hesitant, decision to ‘go against the grain’. Using Glăveanu’s 5A’s theory (actors, actions, artifacts, audiences and affordances) to understand creativity as embedded in social relations, we developed the interview transcripts into vignettes for each student and identified three key strands of the students’ perceptions of their experiences – many of which continued to be key areas of focus as we worked through the action learning set process. The process highlighted the students’ understanding of how methodological expectations were reflected through key audiences and structures, how methodological choices aligned with their sense of self and identity and the role of ABR in promoting action and agency. The vignettes offered a nuanced illustration of the tensions in these areas, which we feel offers wider value due to the fact that, unlike any previous work we had identified in this area, the understandings related to students both with and without previous artist identities, backgrounds or experiences.

    The focus on audience and structures highlighted the numerous audiences which exist for students’ EdD research, often spanning academic, professional and community spaces and how these can create tensions in terms of expectations of what research ‘should’ look like. Some students talked of an ongoing battle to justify and ensure their ABR projects were taken seriously, whilst others positioned their decision to use ABR as an active decision to resist academic or managerial structures they perceived had been unhelpfully imposed on them. This also highlighted that whilst valuing creativity in research within the micro context of an EdD programme itself (through teaching and supervision) was significant and built confidence, students also needed support to consider how to frame their work in wider contexts, including through institutional processes (such as those for ethics approval) and professional and academic communities. One student, for example, highlighted feeling ‘junior’ and ‘a bit insecure’ about engaging in wider university processes designed for what they felt was understood as more ‘serious research’.

    In relation to identities and self, we explored a complex and nuanced understanding of students’ perceptions of the need for ongoing negotiation of the entanglement between professional, researcher, and in some cases, artist identities. Where students identified pre-existing artist identities, for some this created an obvious alignment with their research, but for others they identified tensions, including feeling ‘nervous’ about bringing this identity into their research and apprehensive of their relevance to an academic audience. Where students had no prior expertise or experience in the arts, they often expressed hesitance regarding using ABR, but strong feelings about its potential to align with aspects of their professional identity and values. For example, they appreciated ABR’s affordances in ensuring research was accessible to wider communities and supporting children’s voices to be heard.

    This also connected with the final strand, action and agency, where ABR was positioned by the students as having the potential to facilitate an emancipatory process in education, promote agency and in some cases play a role in research as a form of activism. This was often associated with ideas of social justice, with one student, for example, talking of ABR as providing agency for him to ‘push back against’ an education system that marginalises certain groups. Alongside this, another highlighted ABR as having stronger potential to be participatory and action based, maximising the benefits of the research process itself on her participants who were also her students.   

    As we continue our work on this project, the learning it has generated allows us to begin to reflect on its implications: implications that are both within individual EdD programs, where teaching and supervision have strong potential to offer spaces to explore, and reflect on, the potential value of ABR within EdD research, and at an institutional level, where regulations need to continue to respond to growing focus on the social and professional relevance of doctoral research and the range of models, and methodologies, they encompass. A key part of the action learning sets has also been their role in highlighting the value of facilitating methodological dialogue and creating a community of doctoral researchers exploring ABR. As one of the students reflected, this has helped with their sense of ‘validation’ for their work and provided a space to navigate some of the key tensions.

    Dr Timothy Clark is Director of Research and Enterprise for the School of Education at the University of the West of England, Bristol. His research focuses on aspects of doctoral pedagogy and researcher development, particularly in relation to academic writing and methodological decision making on the professional Doctorate in Education (EdD). https://www.linkedin.com/in/drtimothyclark/

    Dr Tom Dobson is Professor of Education at York St John University, where he leads the Professional Doctorate in Education (EdD) programme. His research explores creative writing in education as well as the use of arts-based research by EdD students. https://www.linkedin.com/in/tom-dobson-84860388/

    Author: SRHE News Blog

    An international learned society, concerned with supporting research and researchers into Higher Education

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  • What does it mean to be political for today’s students?

    What does it mean to be political for today’s students?

    When we think about student politics, it is inevitable that the images of student protest and rebellion come to mind. These views of what counts as student politics have been shaped by rather romantic ideals of what it meant to be a student and do politics in 1960s, or perhaps even in 2010-2011 when we witnessed the last large scale student rebellion in England, but also more globally. When we stretch our imagination, perhaps we can also see students engaging with electoral politics, and them being stereotypically more left leaning compared to the general population – or ‘woke’ as portrayed by many right-wing media outlets today. In cases where students do not meet these expectations of political activity, they are often derogatively called ‘snowflakes’: a fragile generation of apolitical students. While there may be some truth in students becoming less politically active, it is important to question why this might be the case, but also to consider the extent to which our own understandings of student politics are perhaps outdated and need changing.

    The cost of student protest

    In contexts where higher education is marketed as an investment into one’s future, the student-as-consumer positioning becomes unavoidable. Consumerism in our universities may be brutally explicit as in the UK where students are protected by the Consumer Rights Act 2015, or more subtle in systems where laws and regulations do not treat students as consumers, but the transactional idea of higher education and human capital development still imply similar understandings. As students are constantly reminded to prioritise ‘value for money’ and question their investment into successful graduate employment, deviating from such a mindset and standing out as a disruptive or disobedient student cannot be a preferred or safe option. This was evident with the recent pro-Palestinian encampments which on British campuses were rather short-lived, often adopted around the exam periods and ending with the closure of the academic year 2023/2024. The cost of non-compliance is very high for our students: how could a student who has accumulated an average of £45k student debt with already insecure graduate employment trajectory drop everything and revolt? My recent book Student Identity and Political Agency: Activism, Representation and Consumer Rights deals with these dilemmas and argues that the modes of student politics have had to change alongside the generational pressures that contemporary students face. In other words, the form that student politics takes is intertwined with what it means to be a student today.

    Alternative forms of political agency

    To counteract the view that students have become apolitical or snowflakes, we need to imagine student politics as more fluid and situational: something that gets embedded within the everyday practices of being a student.

    First, this revisioning invites us to be more open-minded about what counts as student protest. For example, it is evident that when today’s students do protest, their actions tend to be more short-lived while triggered by identity-based issues that matter to them personally. We should also look at the new and alternative spaces that activism takes place within, eg digital platforms. The latter could of course relate to generational shifts and students being more digitally adept, but also to the fact that the university campuses have become heavily regulated by timetabling pressures and health and safety rules, making it difficult for students to socialise, let alone organise on campus.

    Second, our universities have never emphasised student voice as much as they do today. In addition to students’ unions, there is a wide range of new representative roles on university committees and working groups. While there are questions about tokenism and the effectiveness of these roles – and perhaps fairly so – one cannot deny that there is an incredible infrastructure emerging for students to (peacefully) exercise their interest. This could also be politically motivated, and we should not underestimate the power that students as collectives hold through such representative roles.

    Finally and perhaps most importantly, I invite us to consider the power that the student-as-consumer holds. In the age of marketised universities, we need to ask some uncomfortable questions related to the extent to which student-as-consumer positioning itself empowers students with new types of political agency. We know that an increasing number of students are exercising their right to complain, and they often do this to call out universities for their wrongdoings. These wrongdoings may relate to consumer rights and personal grievances, but often they also reflect wider structural inequalities. It could therefore be argued that consumer rights have granted students new tools to exercise their interest. There is a tendency for the sector to view student complaints as something negative and unreasonable, and none of us would want to be the subject of one. However, it is likely that if students are increasingly treated as consumers, it is also this consumer positioning that offers new opportunities for political agency to be exercised. In today’s highly pressurised university environments, consumer complaints might be a more effective way to make oneself heard: making complaints is a legal right for our students, and the potential reputational damage to universities makes complaints high stakes.

    In summary, I argue that the market forces and consumerist discourses that brutally shape students are also what trigger, enable and disable certain new and altered forms of political agency. Such understanding invites us to shift away from the prevailing assumption that contemporary students are becoming apolitical and instead to rethink our normative understanding of what counts as political agency.

    For more details, please see my book published as part of the SRHE and Routledge book series Research into Higher Education:

    Raaper, R (2024). Student Identity and Political Agency. Activism, Representation and Consumer Rights Oxon: Routledge

    Rille Raaper is Associate Professor at Durham University. Rille’s research interests lie in the sociology of higher education with a particular focus on student identity, experience and political agency in a variety of higher education settings. Her research is primarily concerned with how universities organise their work in competitive higher education markets, and the implications market forces have on current and future students. The two particular strands of Rille’s research relate to: a) student identity and experience in consumerist higher education; b) student agency, citizenship and political activism.

    Author: SRHE News Blog

    An international learned society, concerned with supporting research and researchers into Higher Education

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