Constellations of Alternative Education Tutors: A Poetic Inquiry

117 Pages·2020·2.957 MB·English

by  Adrian Schoone

SPRINGER BRIEFS IN ARTSBASED
EDUCATIONAL RESEARCH
Adrian Schoone
Constellations
of Alternative
Education Tutors
A Poetic Inquiry
SpringerBriefs in Arts-Based Educational
Research
Series Editor
Barbara Bickel, Southern Illinois University, Carbondale, IL, USA
Editorial Board
Kakali Bhattacharya, Kansas State University, Manhattan, KS, USA
Pam Burnard, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, UK
Mindy Carter, Department of Integrated Studies in Education, McGill University,
Montréal, QC, Canada
Kelly Clark/Keefe, College of Education and Social Services,
University of Vermont, Burlington, VT, USA
Walter S. Gershon, School of Teaching Learning, Kent State University,
Kent, OH, USA
Peter Gouzouasis, The University of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC, Canada
Andrea Kantrowitz, State University of New York, Pelham, NY, USA
Alexandra Lasczik Cutcher, State University of Southern Cross, East Lismore,
NSW, Australia
Morna McDermott McNulty, Towson University, Towson, MD, USA
Richard Siegesmund, School of Art and Design, Northern Illinois University,
Dekalb, IL, USA
Arts-Based Educational Research continues togarner increasedinterest anddebate
among artists, arts writers, researchers, scholars and educators internationally.
Further,themethodologiesandtheoreticalarticulationsassociatedwithArts-Based
Educational Research are increasingly employed across the disciplines of social
science, education, humanities, health, media, communications, the creative arts,
design, and trans-disciplinary and interdisciplinary research.
This book series offers edited collections and monographs that survey and
exemplify Arts-Based Educational Research. The series will take up questions
relevant to the diverse range of Arts-Based Educational Research. These questions
mightinclude:WhatcanArts-Basedmethodologies(suchasArts-BasedResearch,
Arts-Informed Research, a/r/tography, Poetic Inquiry, Performative Inquiry, Arts
Practice-Based Research etc.) do as a form of critical qualitative inquiry? How do
the Arts (such as literary, visual and performing arts) enable research? What is the
purpose of Arts-based Educational Research? What counts as Arts-Based? What
countsasEducational?WhatcountsasResearch?HowcanArts-BasedEducational
Researchberesponsiblyperformedincommunitiesandinstitutions,individuallyor
collaboratively? Must Arts-Based Educational Research be public? What ways of
knowing and being can be explored with Arts-Based Educational Research? How
canArts-BasedEducationalResearchbuildupondiversephilosophical,theoretical,
historical, political, aesthetic and spiritual approaches to living? What is not
Arts-Based Educational Research?
The hinge connecting the arts and research in this Arts-Based Educational
Researchbookseriesiseducation.Educationisunderstoodinitsbroadestsenseas
learning/transformation/change that takes place in diverse formal and informal
spaces, places and moments. As such,booksin this series might take up questions
such as: How do perspectives on education, curriculum and pedagogy (such as
critical, participatory, liberatory, intercultural and historical) inform Arts-Based
inquiries? How do teachers become artists, and how do artists become teachers?
Howcanonebeboth?Whatdoesthislooklike,inandbeyondschoolenvironments?
Arts-Based Educational Research will be deeply and broadly explored,
represented, questioned and developed in this vital and digitally augmented
international publication series. The aesthetic reach of this series will be expanded
by a digital on- line repository where all media pertaining to publications will be
held.
Queries can be sent via email to Barbara Bickel at editor.aber.
[email protected].
More information about this series at http://www.springer.com/series/13576
Adrian Schoone
Constellations of Alternative
Education Tutors
A Poetic Inquiry
123
Adrian Schoone
Schoolof Education
Auckland University of Technology
Auckland,New Zealand
ISSN 2524-7506 ISSN 2524-7514 (electronic)
SpringerBriefs inArts-Based Educational Research
ISBN978-3-030-35494-7 ISBN978-3-030-35495-4 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-35495-4
©TheAuthor(s),underexclusivelicensetoSpringerNatureSwitzerlandAG2020
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’
Series Editor s Foreword
Finding the Poetry of Tutors
For almost two decades, I have watched the field of Arts-Based Educational
Research (ABER) push the boundaries of what gets to count as rigorous and
meaningfulscholarship.Ihaveread,assignedtostudents,andcontributedmyown
writing andresearchcreationstothisrichandtransformativeendeavor.Ihavealso
witnessed the power of ABER to open audiences of readers and viewers to per-
spectives previously unconsidered or considered, but only from limited (and lim-
iting) vantage points. Those who follow the field are undoubtedly aware of the
robust passion with which arts-based educational researchers have, since its
inception, thoughtfully engaged questions (both across and within the field) about
criteria for quality, built strong arguments for ABER’s theoretical value, and bril-
liantly showcased the unique ways in which arts-based approaches help critique
narrow conceptions of knowledge’s production while also creating paths for his-
toricallyundervaluedwisdomandmeaning-makingtraditionstothrive.ABERasa
movement has always been and continues to endure as a tour de force connecting
educational research and inquiry through the arts.
Sometimes though, movement of and in the field of ABER takes on a subtler
hue, one that asks us to move slowly and to carefully contemplate the generative
spacesbetween,forexample,wordsandthebodieswhospeakthem,ortolistento
ancient Māori teachings to “look to the stars to see where they are guiding us”
(p.90,thisvolume).Onoccasion,weareinvitedtoconsiderthatsomeofthemost
telling evidence of a field’s power and promise might be coming through quieter,
unheroic scholarly gifts.
Ifyouhavecommittedtoreadingthisbook,youwillmostcertainlybetreatedto
one such gift. Just as the metaphorical container of stars and constellations that
Adrian Schoone carefully crafts to bring the lived experiences of alternative edu-
cation tutors from Auckland, New Zealand to life, the book as a whole offers the
experience of wandering within a poet’s universe, where bits and strings of words
and shadowy spaces, illumine and lead the way. Deftly connecting his read on
v
vi SeriesEditor’sForeword
Heideggerianphenomenologytohisownbrandofpoeticinquiry,Schoonecultivates
a convincing critique of the ways in which the perspectives and practices of the
tutors he engages in his study have historically been devalued and marginalized
throughaseriesofneoliberalreformstoNewZealand’seducationsystem.Duetohis
ownexperienceworkingalongsidetutorsandeventuallytakingaleadershiprolein
New Zealand’s alternative education sector, Schoone’s tone and tack swiftly gains
distance from thecommonly-held deficit framing of tutors as largely “unqualified”
by conventional standards. Instead, Schoone commits his poetic exploration to
illuminating tutors’ lived experiences, including lessons learned from their own
schooling,thedrivetheyhaveforteachingandmentoringfromastanceofcultural
appreciation,andthevaluesofcompassioneachworktoholdandusetoguidehow
theyworkwithstudentsforwhomeducationaloptionswereseverelycircumscribed.
Part I. of Schoone’s book develops much of the social and vocational back-
ground of alternative education tutors I sketch above. In this early section, the
author introduces readers to the rational for his thoughtful blending of phe-
nomenology and poetic inquiry as well as provides the specifics of the research
contexts. Foreshadowing Schoone’s facility with utilizing poetic structure as his
centralmediumforcreatingandcastingmeaningforthereaderthroughoutthetext,
Part I. concludes with individual poems introducing each of the eight tutors par-
ticipatingintheresearch.PartII.ofthebookiswhere,forme,Schoone’sgiftsasan
artistic scholar shine. Here, we are granted a tour of what Schoone describes as an
‘unfolding’ of his research methods. From his description of moving through
fieldwork, to initial analysis using conventional poetic inquiry techniques for
developing found poetry, to then his account of engaging several highly unique
approachesforbendingandopeningthepoeticartformforfurtheranalysis,Ifeltan
interlocuterinaskilledpoet-researcher’sstudio.Spoileralert:readersevenhavethe
opportunitytomeetMaximus,acompanionpoeticinquiryrobot,who,inthehands
and hearts of the tutors and Schoone, has much to say and gains international
acclaim.InPartIII.,theheartofthebook,wearegiftedagain,thoughdifferently,to
Schoone’s insights and artistic skillfulness. The inquiry’s findings and the process
by which these insights about tutors’ lived experiences emerge, get fully revealed,
taking the form of what Schoone calls “constellation poems.” The accompanying
photographic archive of Schoone’s found poetry and analysis process brings
three-dimensional form and interpretive force to what he describes are the
“essences” of the tutors’ circumstances, beliefs, and commitments. Overall, this
book casts brilliant light into the less visible aspects and undervalued worlds of
alternativeeducationtutors,doingsowhilealsogiftingthefieldofABERarareand
exciting glimpse into a previously uncharted poetic inquiry universe. I am per-
sonally grateful for the journey.
Kelly Clark/Keefe
University of Vermont
Burlington, USA
Acknowledgement

My gratitude to tutors, for their heartfelt pedagogies.

A tutor! What a noble soul!
Jean-Jacques Rousseau, 1762

vii
Contents
Series Editor's Foreword..........................................................................................................................v
Acknowledgement ................................................................................................................................vii
About the Author ...................................................................................................................................xi
Introduction ......................................................................................................................................... x iii
Part One: Found by the poem. ............................................................................................................ .1
Alternative education in New Zealand .................................................................................................... 1
Being found by the poem ........................................................................................................................ 2
Phenomenological poetic inquiry............................................................................................................ 3
Poetic Inquiry .......................................................................................................................................... 4
Research context and participants ........................................................................................................... 6
Introducing the research participants ...................................................................................................... 8

Part Two: In search for shining fragments............................................................................... 13
Finding the words ................................................................................................................................. 13
Creating found poetry from interview transcripts ................................................................................. 14
Deepening the found poems .................................................................................................................. 20
Creating Maximus ................................................................................................................................. 24
Maximus and the imprinting of essences .............................................................................................. 30
A pause: Considering poetry in research .............................................................................................. 34
Part Three: Constellations....................................................................................................... 39
Making sense through constellations .................................................................................................... 39
From crystallizations to performing constellations ............................................................................... 40
Creating concrete constellation poems ............................................................................................ 41
The lines that join ............................................................................................................................. 43
essences of call ..................................................................................................................................... 45
essences of love..................................................................................................................................... 47
essences of joy ...................................................................................................................................... 49
essences of empathy ............................................................................................................................. 51
essences of grace.................................................................................................................................. 53
essences of mana................................................................................................................................... 55
essences of watching-over .................................................................................................................... 57
essences of commitment ....................................................................................................................... 59
essences of past experiences ................................................................................................................. 61
essences of criticality ............................................................................................................................ 63
essences of whānau................................................................................................................................ 65
essences of guidance ............................................................................................................................. 67
essences of poiesis ................................................................................................................................ 69
essences of talanoa ............................................................................................................................... 71
essences of holism................................................................................................................................ 73
essences of thoughtful pedagogy .......................................................................................................... 75
essences of inspirational pedagogy ....................................................................................................... 77
essences of movement .......................................................................................................................... 79
essences of epiphany............................................................................................................................ 81
essences of mystery .............................................................................................................................. 83
essences of transformation................................................................................................................... 85
The interlocking horizons of alternative education tutor essences .................................................. 86
Conclusion: Making landfall ................................................................................................................ 88
The inland journey for tutors ............................................................................................................ 90
References ..............................................................................................................................99
ix
x Contents
Table of Figures

Figure 1. Couplet found poem created from Amosa’s research interview transcript. ..........................18
Figure 2. “Whoa” (Lincoln), black ink lino print; a common expression of Lincoln’s,
voicing surprise. ........................................................................................................................... 19
Figure 3. “AE is like Facebook you post on each other’s’ walls” (Amosa), black crayon rubbing
from cardboard block....................................................................................................................19
Figure 4."We have scholars here" (Fetu), red, yellow, blue crayon rubbing from cardboard block..... 19
Figure 5. Pages from my observation notebook. .................................................................................. 20
Figure 6. Maximus, the three-dimensional concrete found poem. Photo credit: Kareen Durbin. ........ 26
Figure 7. Words and phrases pasted on Maximus. ............................................................................... 27
Figure 8. A Philip Larkin collection of poems gifted to me at the Fourth International Symposium
of Poetic Inquiry, with a written tribute to Maximus...................................................................31
Figure 9. Te Kuaka Research Publication, ............................................................................................ 31
Figure 10. Plans to create your own Maximus ...................................................................................... 32
Figure 11. Maximus made from plans........................................................ ...........................................32
Figure 12. Morpheus, the alternative education student ....................................................................... 33
Figure 13. Polly, the culturally responsive teacher (AUT University, Auckland) created by BEd.
students. ........................................................................................................................................33
Figure 14. Healthy Be Bob, made by year 5 and 6 students, Auckland ...............................................33
Figure 15. Maman, the vocational educator created by Indonesian vocational teachers......................33
Figure 16. Single star suspended by nylon string ................................................................................42
Figure 17. Constellation of joy, the words superimposed in production for clarity..............................42