Syracuse University SURFACE Teaching and Leadership School of Education 2010 Art Education at the Turn of the Tide: The Utility of Narrative in Curriculum-making and Education Research James Haywood Rolling Syracuse University Follow this and additional works at: https://surface.syr.edu/tl Part of the Arts and Humanities Commons, and the Education Commons Recommended Citation Rolling, J. H. (2010). Art education at the turn of the tide: The utility of narrative in curriculum-making and education research. Art Education 63 (3), 6-12. This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the School of Education at SURFACE. It has been accepted for inclusion in Teaching and Leadership by an authorized administrator of SURFACE. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Art Education at the Turn of the Tide: The Utility of Narrative in Curriculum-Making and Education Research iven current developments in contemporary art, learning narrative turned and the sentimental theory and art education, Julia Marshall (2006) declares the story line of the affable Gandalf that once merely sheltered his friends from Gtimeliness for substantively new “ideas and models for art danger now shifted. Suddenly, he offered education” (p. 17). Clearly, the story of art education practice is ever them redoubled strength and the real evolving and has historically given place to new tellings (Hamblen, possibility of fulfilling their charge at the moment when the Fellowship was at its 1984). On the surface, relating our professional narratives is vital weakest. Likewise, the place of the arts because unless an art educator tells the story of what s/he does and in education has emergent qualities that, why s/he does it, someone else may tell the story and leave out some- from time to time, need to be recalibrated (Hamblen, 1984; Pearse, 1992). If the arts thing important. Collectively documenting and telling stories of our in education now stand before us at the individual pedagogical practices helps educators argue against the turn of the tide, how ought we to relate notion that that arts learning is less relevant and more expendable to it? than other subjects (Stankiewicz, 1997). It is useful to note that contemporary art education practice overlaps a unique Looking deeper, narrative is a funda- storytelling, for example, is an ancient period of change in neighboring social mental process of human research and re-searching practice that identifies and science disciplines, a turn of the tide development. Brent Wilson (1997) writes: examines problems of the human condi- that involves the embrace of narrative “I like to think of research as re-search, to tion. Filmmaking is a contemporary methods to rewrite prevailing working search again, to take a closer second look. methodology that can serve as narra- models and paradigms of social science Research implies finding evidence about tion of our experience of the world and practice (Clandinin & Connelly, 2000; the way things were in the past, how they the meaning we make of it (Connelly & Riessman, 2008). The proliferation are presently, and even about how they Clandinin, 2006). of narrative methodologies in social might be in the future” (p. 1). Narrative In the second installment of the research emerges from what has been practices are re-searching methodologies popular Lord of the Rings1 film trilogy called the narrative turn in contemporary giving rise to meaningful or useful stories by Peter Jackson (2002), the tattered life, a clarion call to “look on traditional that encapsulate “the entire research Fellowship of the Ring is confronted empirical research with new eyes that see process from problem identification to with the glowing form of their dear the significance of stories at all stages in data analysis” (Creswell, 1994, p. xvii). friend Gandalf the Grey, a wizard who the research process” (Day Sclater, 2003, Analyzing and interpreting the data at perished while defending his friends p. 622). hand, narrative processes tell a story that against a powerful Balrog, a large creature Over recent decades, there continues informs others of who we are, where we able to shroud itself in fire, darkness, to be a nagging ill-fittedness about the come from, where we are going, and what and shadow. Upon the occasion of place of the arts in modern education our purpose may be (Rolling, 2008). Oral this unexpected reunion, the resur- (Eisner, 1965; Johnson, 1971; Hoffa, rected wizard—now much stronger 1979; Anderson, 1981; Sullivan, 1999; Narrative inquiry practices and wiser—casually explains that his Stankiewicz, 2004). This article is a narra- name is no longer Gandalf the Grey, tive of professional practice intended generate the possibility of and is no longer the person they once to evoke similar probative rewritings. grieved for, emphatically stating: “I am Unless art educators write and overwrite new story arcs emerging from Gandalf the White. And I come back to our stories of K-12, community, and reinterpretive acts of research. you now—at the turn of the tide.” The university education practices, making BY JAMES HAYWOOD ROLLING, JR. 6 ART EDUCATION / May 2010 The Utility of Narrative in Curriculum-Making and Education Research the intractability of the positions we often the practice of art education in a particular prevailing discourse—in order to reinterpret occupy more public, we will remain at the school. Narrative methodologies invite the them and render them more easily under- service of paradigms that no longer fit us description and meaningful interpreta- stood (Johnson, 1987; Turner, 1996). very well at all. Narrative inquiry prac- tion of experiences, artifacts, phenomena, The third and final story is a negotiation. tices generate the possibility of new story performances, and events as research data It is a text that (re)writes the implications of arcs emerging from reinterpretive acts of (Connelly & Clandinin, 2006). a particular curricular outcome by one of research. The second story is speculative. Using a my former 3rd-grade students, negotiating particular conflict between two competing past practice and future pedagogy. Narrative Narrative Inquiry, Social notions of art teaching practice as a starting methodologies offer the opportunity to Research, and Art Education point, this text reflects on the significance of (re)write prior texts—interfacing with and Narrative inquiry is a kind of social the work of Harold Pearse (1983, 1992) and altering the shape of past practices—and research, “a collaborative method of telling his suggestion that paradigms of art educa- thus adding to the continuum of alternative stories, reflecting on stories, and (re)writing tion practice need not oppose one another, stories. stories” (Leavy, 2009, p. 27). Narrative but can coexist, offering vantage points By telling stories, reflecting on stories, and methodologies have been of great utility to from which to map “the potential space that (re)writing stories of art education practice, I arts-based researchers (Barone & Eisner, our own and others’ stories provide” (Day seek to model the utility of narrative research 2006; Leavy, 2009). In contrast, the scien- Sclater, 2003, p. 623). Narrative methodolo- methodologies in analyzing the many facets tific method is most useful for addressing gies capture contradictory texts—abstracted of art education practice and arts learning hypothesis-based questions—guesses about from diverse personal and/or collective as phenomena worthy of study (Connelly & what will happen given a particular set of experiences, image schemata and meta- Clandinin, 2006, p. 375). controlled variables and ultimately requiring phors retained in memory, and citations of experimentation to collect replicable data as evidence that the hypothesis is true. Social science researchers face major limitations carrying the success of the scientific method within the physical sciences over to social research since “persons are more difficult to understand, predict, and control than molecules” (Zeiger, n.d., para. 1). Narrative methodologies offer researchers another approach to educational research questions. A narrative methodology inaugurates an inquiry as it simultaneously seeks to proliferate new tellings, not primarily to redeem a set of “facts,” but to articulate “the significance and meaning of one’s experiences” (Bochner, 2001, p. 153). As the products of narrative methodologies each tell a story, each product must itself be considered a text or analogous to text.2 Such text can be collected as data. In this article I examine three narratives that are connected to my practice as an art educator. The first story is descriptive. It is a text that tells of a Figure 1. A screenshot of a video taken within our art studio that offers a glimpse of our cavernous unfinished ceiling and metallic surfaces. confluence of circumstances that hindered May 2010 / ART EDUCATION 7 Story #1: The Imposed Ceiling bounding footstep, and each awkward shift administrative supervisor was a former art of stool legs across the floor. These interrup- teacher who helped establish a school on the In 2003, just after the completion of tions were compounded by the fact the art Upper West Side that valued the arts. Yet, it my doctoral studies in education, I was studio was designed so that three art classes became quickly apparent that her concep- recruited as part of the faculty of a new could be scheduled to use the art studio tion of the job of an art teacher reflected a elementary school that launched in New simultaneously; even if only two different different model of practice than what the York. I was asked to help lead a staff of visual classes were scheduled to use the art studio at other art teachers and I sought to establish. arts teachers and to pioneer a visual arts the same time, the noise level was amplified program that was thematically linked with I find little, if any, relevance to the point of being near intolerable.