Poetry, Method and Education Research; Doing Critical, Decolonising and Political Inquiry

307 Pages·2020·19.33 MB·English

by  Esther Fitzpatrick and Katie Fitzpatrick

Poetry, Method and Education
Research
Poetry can be both political and pedagogical. It is utilised in a variety of ways
in research to enhance, critique, analyse, and express diferent voices.
Poetry, Method and Education Research brings together international scholars
to explore issues as diverse as neoliberalism, culture, decolonising education,
health, and teacher identities. A key strength of the book is its attention to
poetry as a research method, including discussions of “how to” engage with
poetry in research, as well as including a range of research poems. Poetry is
thus framed as both a method and performance. Authors in this book address
a wide variety of questions from diferent perspectives including how to use
poetry to think about complex issues in education, where poetry belongs in
a research project, how to write poetry to generate and analyse “data”, and
how poetry can represent these fndings.
This book is an essential resource for students and researchers in education
programmes, and those who teach in graduate research methods courses.
Esther Fitzpatrick is a Senior Lecturer at The University of Auckland. Her
current research includes critical arts-based methodologies to explore emerging
in-between identities, culturally responsive practice, and the impact of neolib-
eral ideologies on academic identities. She has several publications employing
creative methods in educational research.
Katie Fitzpatrick is an Associate Professor at The University of Auckland.
Her research focuses on health education, physical education, sexuality educa-
tion, critical pedagogy, and critical ethnographic and poetic research methods.
Katie has published numerous articles and book chapters, and six books in these
areas, including an international award-winning book.
“This book is terrifc. It covers the wide-ranging power of poetic inquiry
across disciplines and continents. Bringing together in one place a collection
of creative and diverse ways of writing poetry as a method of inquiry. I am
in awe!”
Laurel Richardson, Distinguished Professor Emeritus,
Ohio State University, USA
“This book ofers an exciting approach to critical and decolonizing meth-
ods in education research. Poetry is often the super-power that can reach
and engage learners in ways that connect their feelings and thoughts, their
bodies and experiences, their dreams and voices. In the hands of critical
educators and researchers it can open up new possibilities and insights. The
authors in this book approach this super-power with respect, awareness and
hopefulness.”
Professor Linda Tuhiwai Smith,
The University of Waikato, New Zealand
“Pushes the felds of poetic inquiry and education forward, beautifully docu-
menting how poetry may be used to subvert dominant ideologies and collab-
orate with indigenous partners. Every researcher and creative writer should
have this on their bookshelf – makes a wonderful addition to courses that
deal with pedagogy, education, methodology, and social justice.”
Patricia Leavy, Ph.D., author of Method Meets
Art and Spark
“An extraordinary and important book. This is a text that sings to the reader.
Its poetry, and its writing about poetry, lifts us, transports us; and it calls us,
too, to see poetry’s capacity for subversion and resistance. It makes us want to
write poetry, and to bring poetry into our inquiries. What a gift.”
Professor Jonathan Wyatt,
The University of Edinburgh, UK
“Reading this collection of poetic, personal, and inspiring essays reminds us
why creating space for poetry and imagination in the academy is vital. The
editors have gathered authors from around the world that breathe life into
research, lean on uncertainty, and challenge the status quo in beautiful, con-
vincing ways. A must read for educators and researchers in all felds!”
Professor George Belliveau,
University of British Columbia, Canada
Poetry, Method and
Education Research
Doing Critical, Decolonising and
Political Inquiry
Edited by Esther Fitzpatrick and
Katie Fitzpatrick
First published 2021
by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
and by Routledge
52 Vanderbilt Avenue, New York, NY 10017
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
© 2021 selection and editorial matter, Esther Fitzpatrick and Katie
Fitzpatrick; individual chapters, the contributors
The right of Esther Fitzpatrick and Katie Fitzpatrick to be identified as
the authors of the editorial material, and of the authors for their individual
chapters, has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the
Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or
utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now
known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in
any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing
from the publishers.
Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or
registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation
without intent to infringe.
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Fitzpatrick, Esther, editor. | Fitzpatrick, Katie, 1975- editor.
Title: Poetry, method and education research : doing critical, decolonising
and political inquiry / edited by Esther Fitzpatrick and Katie
Fitzpatrick.
Description: Abingdon, Oxon ; New York, NY : Routledge, 2020. | Includes
bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2020009759 (print) | LCCN 2020009760 (ebook) | ISBN
9780367193881 (hardback) | ISBN 9780367516222 (paperback) | ISBN
9780429202117 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Education--Research--Methodology. | Poetry in education |
Poetry--Study and teaching. | Education students--Biography.
Classification: LCC LB1028 .P5735 2020 (print) | LCC LB1028 (ebook) | DDC
370.72--dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020009759
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020009760
ISBN: 978-0-367-19388-1 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-0-429-20211-7 (ebk)
Typeset in Bembo
by Cenveo® Publisher Services
Contents
List of figures viii
Foreword ix
1 What poetry does for us in education and research 1
ESTHER FITZPATRICK AND KATIE FITZPATRICK
SECTION I
Poetry and poetic methodologies 19
2 Poetic inquiry 21
LYNN BUTLER-KISBER
3 Poetic representations, not-quite poetry and poemish:
Some methodological reflections 41
ANDREW C. SPARKES
4 Education and/as art: A found poetry suite 51
MONICA PRENDERGAST
5 Sensible poets and the poetic sensibility: Mitigating
neoliberal/audit culture in education through
arts-based research 61
ROBERT E. RINEHART
SECTION II
Poetry, politics, and educational issues 83
6 Poetry and cancer: Six ruminations 85
CARL LEGGO
vi Contents
7 Writing the university through poetry: The pleasure of
scholarship against the spike of neoliberalism 97
KATIE FITZPATRICK
8 My middle-aged rage burns the template in front of the
Provost’s office after the assessment meeting 104
SANDRA L. FAULKNER
9 Community and belonging: An international
student’s journey in North America 106
FRANK C. WORRELL
10 The Munchkin and the medicine man: Poetry’s
place in a “hard” world 121
LAURA HOPE-GILL
11 Becoming a first-time mother as an international
graduate student: A poetic ethnography 132
KUO ZHANG
SECTION III
Decolonising education and indigenous poetry 153
12 Cultivating resonant images through poetic meditation:
A de/colonial approach to educational research 155
KAKALI BHATTACHARYA
13 Making the invisible visible: Poetic explorations of a
cross-cultural researcher 172
PAULINE ADAMS
14 The tukutuku panel is never bare: Weaving bicultural
relationships through poetic performances 183
VIRGINIA TAMANUI AND ESTHER FITZPATRICK
15 Traversing Pacific identities in Aotearoa/
New Zealand: Blood, ink, lives 207
JACOBA MATAPO AND JEAN M. ALLEN
Contents vii
SECTION IV
Poetry and critical pedagogical research 221
16 Why I use a poem in every single classroom 223
SELINA TUSITALA MARSH
17 Re/turning the world into poetry [an alternative
education portfolio] 226
ADRIAN SCHOONE
18 Creasing and folding language in dance
education research 238
ALYS LONGLEY
19 Poetry drops a plumbline into meaning:
Findings from an inquiry into teacher creativity 254
SHELLEY TRACEY
20 Memory, poetry, art, and children: Understanding
the past from the present 268
MARÍA ESPERANZA ROCK NÚÑEZ
Index 284
Figures
14.1 Tukutuku panel in workshop. Virginia Tamanui photo files. 190
14.2 Weaving of tukutuku panel. Virginia. 191
20.1 Drawing of the centenary school. 273
20.2 Drawing of the sea with fish, a fisherman with a net and an
oar in a boat. 274
20.3 Drawing of a shovel and a pillory. 276
20.4 Drawing of a woman folding clothes at home. 278
20.5 Drawing of the church of the rooster. 280
20.6 Drawing of the poor miner. 281
Foreword
Writing a foreword and looking back:
An homage to poetry teachers and
poetic inquirers past and present
Maria Cahnmann-Taylor
University of Georgia, USA
When asked to write the foreword to the Fitzpatricks’ new book, Poetry,
Method and Education Research, I can’t help but also look, or rather listen,
backward. Behind me I hear the words of so many poetry teachers layered
into my own understanding of what poetry can and cannot do in the envi-
ronment of educational inquiry. I can’t help but imagine this volume’s con-
tributors in a seminar room together with poem drafts in front of us, taking
turns responding to one another’s work, bringing our many diferent poetry
teachers’ voices into the room. Patti Lather, William Wordsworth, Wallace
Stegnar, and so on – how many diferent poets and scholars would guide
our responses to one another’s work, defning what makes a poem and then
what makes a poem good? I’ve elbowed on many such workshop tables with
other poets and teachers but never in a textual room like this one, convening
scholars in many diferent felds, from so many diferent continents and con-
texts, bearing witness to urgent matters of our time. From concerns about
the neoliberal, audit culture overtaking universities (e.g. Robert Rinehart,
Katie Fitzpatrick, Sandra Faulkner) to displacement and de/colonization,
and dialogic revoicing projects (e.g. Frank C. Worrell, Kakali Bhattacharya,
Virginia Tamanui and Esther Fitzpatrick, and Kuo Zhang); to medical leave,
medical stories, and medical care (Carl Leggo and Laura Hope-Gill) – each
of these and other contributors turned to poetry to transform what was often
painful and pressured to be scientifc, evaluative, and objective into some-
thing beautiful and often personal and full of feeling.
As I read this volume’s contents, I heard my poetry teacher, Maxine
Kumin’s voice (may she rest in peace), reminding me to ask if the poems held
enough “geography, chronology, and furniture” to help ground the reader
in the poem’s sense of place and time, furnished with sufcient sensory detail
to convey the poet’s intentions. Another recently departed poetry teacher’s
voice, that of Thomas Lux, asked me if I’d put on my “verb hat” – to consider