Bresler on Aesthetics

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My Journal Project is really percolating along and the outline and ideas are falling into place.  I've contacted several friends to ask for resources and feedback.  Liora Bresler from the University of Illinois sent me three great articles:

"Experiential pedagogies in research education: Drawing on engagement with art works"

"Embodied narrative inquiry: A methodology of connection", and

"Toward connectedness: Aesthetically based research" (this one was published in Studies in Art Education, September 2006). 

What a treat!  And wow were they helpful.

Here is what I am taking away with me:

• Connectedness is something that aesthetics and the arts can lend to qualitative research.  Connectedness in the arts offers a means for us to make sense of our relationship with participants AND the scholarly community.  Connectedness provides a means to fulfill qualitative research's desire for empathic understanding (verstehen) with which we have long struggled.  
• Embodied Narrative Inquiry...by drawing upon arts-based understanding of embodiment to inform qualitative research's use of narrative inquiry we will have access to a much richer conceptualization as researchers.  Embodied Narrative Inquiry allows us to make sense of silence/voice; musical/visual; self/other in new ways that can enlarge qualitative research.  Considering the nature of sound.. the possibilities of musical improvisation...and the characteristics or qualities of musical presentation--all of these offer ways to flesh out the notion of embodied narrative inquiry.  
•  Qualitative Research Instruction:  In "Experiential pedagogies..." Liora shares a wonderful assignment from her qualitative research course.  Students do sustained observations of paintings--one they like and one they dislike.  She shares a large number of the comments made in students' journals or papers and discusses the issues in qualitative research that are raised through this exercise.  I want to do it in my class!  It's a winner.

Thank you Liora...now to integrate all of this good stuff into my arguments. 

Congress on Qualitative Inquiry: May 2010

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An update on some upcoming fun for qualitative researchers.  I will be attending the Sixth Annual Congress on Qualitative Inquiry in late May.  I will be making two presentations:

1.  "Qualitative Research and Technology:  In the Midst of a Revolution" Davidson & diGregorio.  We will be talking about a chapter we have written for the fourth edition of the Handbook of Qualitative Research (Denzin & Lincoln). 

2.  "Wikis as a form of Qualitative Data Analysis Software" is a paper that will be part of a panel titled:  "Innovative Areas of Inquiry with Qualitative Data Analysis Software:  Adapting to Improve Research in Diverse Global Seettings". 

I invite you to join me at the University of Illinois, Champaign Illinois for these and many other interesting discussions.  This meeting is always a great opportunity for good connection.  My thanks to Norman Denzin and his crew for creating this opportunity for qualitative researchers.