Methodology in the Afterglow

Abstract

My dissertation study seeks to understand how artist-teacher renewal may be nurtured through aesthetic experiential play in a Masters of Art Education degree program, and beyond, as my former students/participants and myself experience finding ourselves in its afterglow. Aesthetic experiential play could be described as a playful, curious, questioning, artful engagement with the world; an engagement that sparks an aesthetic swell, which moves us in surprising, unanticipated ways from play to its afterglow. In this sense, afterglow may be the unfolding answer to an open question, and the open question may be a place to play (Schwandt, 2007). Barone and Eisner (2012) posed such an open question, asking: How may we employ “the arts methodologically to reveal what the arts make possible in various situations?” (p. xii). This paper engages with their provocative question by exploring the spaces between my research interest and the methodology constructed to pursue it. Further, I consider the expansion that blooms out of the multiplicity of engagement that arts based research inspires and commands- an expansion that illuminates my research process as an unfolding methodology in the afterglow.