Dancing the data

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Dancing the data

• Educational Ethnography as Performance Art
• Toward a Sensuous Knowing and Feeling
• Carl Bagley
• Durham University
• United Kingdom

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Dancing the data

• Outside the streets on fire in a real death waltz
  
• between whats flesh and whats fantasy. And the
• poets down here dont write nothing at all they
• just stand back and let it all be.
• (Bruce Springsteen, Jungleland, 1975)

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Dancing the data

• Arts-based research is defined by the presence of
  certain aesthetic qualities or design elements
  that infuse the inquiry process and the research
  text
• Design elements are usually literary in character
  - short stories, fiction, poetry - but can also
  include the visual and performing arts
• (Barone Elliot, 2006)

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Dancing the data

• Research representations in linguistic form
• Short Story (Kilbourne, 1998),
• Creative Non-Fiction (Angosino, 1998)
• Musical Lyric (Jenoure, 2002).
• Poetry (Richardson,1992) ethnopoetics.
• Drama (Mienczakowski, 1995) ethnodrama.

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Dancing the Data

• Research Representations in non-linguistic
  plastic form
• Painting and collage (Finley, 2002)
• Music (Rasberry, 2002),
• Photography (Knowles Thomas, 2002)
• Dance (Bagley and Cancienne, 2001)

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Dancing the data

• Educational Ethnography as Performance Art
• Toward a Sensuous Knowing and Feeling
• (An Extract)
• Scene
• An audience of 100 conference delegates
• enter a dimly lit corridor of a theatre five or
  so at
• a time. As they enter the smell of burning toast
• emanating from a toaster at the far end of the
  corridor in
• the direction in which they are walking fills the
  air getting
• stronger and more pungent as they move towards
  it.

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Dancing the data

• Scene cont
• On the floor of the corridor they walk pass
  discarded items
• of childrens clothing and nappies. They turn the
  corner at
• the end of the corridor and enter the wide open
  space of the
• equally dimly lit auditorium. All the seats have
  been
• removed and the audience find themselves on
  stage,
• adjusting awkwardly and tentatively to their
  unfamiliar and
• unexpected surroundings..

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Dancing the data

• I found this extremely powerful. No talk or text
  could touch
• me in the way this performance did. The
  experience will stay
• with me for a long time, it made me see a bit of
  my own life
• and a bit of theirs I was in the data (audience
  member)

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Dancing the data

• I think that it was very powerful and evocative
  for all of us
• who experienced it, it touched on all the senses,
  we walked
• in we got smell, we got sight, we got sound we
  walked
• through the findings we were very much part of it
  and the
• performance touched and moved me (audience
  member)

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Dancing the data

• I did feel emotional, it was strong and I have
  been affected
• by what I have just experienced. I was, as soon
  as the smell
• hit me, taken back to my own childhood by the
  toast, and
• other parts of the performance, the words, the
  images and
• the sounds in the background sort of there but
  not
• there. Even the silence and monotony of the
  kettle, I could
• feel these peoples lives and the struggles to
  get off that
• starting line. (Audience Member)

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Dancing the data

• Criteria for Appraising Arts Based Research
• Illuminating effect to enable the reader/viewer
  to notice what the researcher claims to be there
  and shed light on the phenomena explored, and
  inquire about the grounds that it does or does
  not.
• Generativity its ability to promote new
  questions. One of the most important functions of
  ABER is that it raises more questions than it
  answers.
• (Barone and Eisner 2006)

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Dancing the data

• Criteria for Appraising Arts-Based Research
• Incisiveness its ability to focus tightly on
  educationally salient issues
• Generalizabilty its relevance to phenomena
  outside the research text..Does it enable the
  reader to make connections that have not been
  made before.
• (Barone and Eisner, 2006)

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Dancing the data

• For decades centuries we have attempted to
  share our
• insights regarding a dynamic process,
  communication, in a
• static environment print. I am truly intrigued
  by what we
• might discover when the medium through which we
• distribute our findings shares the
  characteristics of the
• phenomena we study.
• (Schrag cited in Rich et al. 20038)

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Dancing the data

• Will you, wont you, will you, wont you,
• will you join the dance?
• Will you, wont you, will you, wont you,
• wont you join the dance?
• (Lewis Carroll, Alices Adventures in Wonderland)