Keywords

Introduction

Feminist-physicist-philosopher, Karen Barad writes, “we inherit the future” (2013: 23). This phrase sounds impossible. How can we inherit the future when it hasn’t happened yet? However, this phrase causes us to pause and consider why it matters that we think about the pedagogies of qualitative inquiry (QI) courses. How we teach QI to students is the future we will inherit in the academy and the communities we work with as researchers. Our manifesto is an invitation for instructors of QI to consider how Deleuzeand Guattari’s (1991/1994) writing on art, science, and philosophy might be a catalyst and an orientation for pedagogy. Philosophical concepts should not be ‘applied’ but rather seen as useful in ‘reorienting thought and in inspiring and sustaining the long preparation of reading and studying’ philosophy (St. Pierre 2017: 695). Our hope is that in reading-with-and-thinking-with art, science, and philosophy as concepts, we are reoriented in how we think of pedagogy. Therefore, we write our manifesto for a pedagogy(ies) of QI inspired by Deleuze and Guattari’swritings on art, science, and philosophy to help us foster pedagogical spaces for students to become qualitative inquirers who create newness and difference. We use the term ‘qualitative inquiry’ to shift our conceptualizations of doing research as inquiry, an uncertain process of thinking, rather than a pre-set method that ‘qualitative research methods’ connotes.

Deleuzeand Guattari were interested in creation and difference, not representation and sameness. They discussed three powers of thinking: art as a plane of composition, science as a plane of reference, and philosophy as a plane of immanence (see Colebrook 2002; Deleuze and Guattari 1994 [1991]; Smith 2012). We wondered: what if we teach QI with/as/for art, philosophy, and science? What and where might it get us as instructors, students, the academy? If we thought of QI as a knowing/being/doing/thinking of art, science, and philosophy, could these powers of thinking transform the language we use to talk about (and do) QI pedagogy? We think so.

We invite readers to imagine how QI and the teaching of it becomes arting, sciencing, and philosophizing to/with/and by students (and teachers, art materials, books, theories, languages, histories, politics, digital tools, and…and…and…). Our manifesto about teaching/learning QI is always, already entangled with our experiences with students, textbooks, assignments, and…and…and… Thus our manifesto, our public declaration, troubles both the genres of a manifestoand what might be termed a ‘teacher’s reflection’. Below we share our manifesto as/with a few comments from students in an introductory QI course intentionally designed to disrupt a methods first approach to QI. A methods first approach focuses on teaching students ‘methods’ of data production and analysis rather than perhaps digging deep into philosophical and theoretical readings as a way into thinking/analysis. As instructors of QI courses, we feel pressures to teach QI as an exact science (see Foucault 2005 [1966]) or what has become a normal science (see Kuhn 2012 [1962]), when students inquire about the ‘right’ way to do research. Students are seeking a recipe, a scripted method, a how-to, a checklist (Schulte 2018; St. Pierre 2016).

Deleuzeand Guattari describe science as “fix[ing] the world into observable ‘states of affairs,’” art as that which “creates affects and percepts,” and “philosophy creates concepts.” Philosophical concepts ‘do not label or represent the world so much as produce a new way of thinking and responding to problems’ (Colebrook 2002: 27). In other words, a philosophical concept doesn’t just add another word to a language; it transforms the language (Deleuze and Guattari 1994 [1991]). In our practice as educators, we thought-with these powers of thinking and (re)oriented them to become a pedagogyof QI. For example, we see science in the pedagogy of QI as institutionalized methods (that often students seek); art as the affectual or forces of perception during class engagements (and when students work-with communities as researchers); and philosophy as the art of forming, inventing, fabricating concepts, specifically concepts that we think-with to do inquiry. Thus, we verb these three concepts to indicate the lively, mobilization of these concepts in practice. Arting, sciencing, and philosophizing produce new ways of thinking and are the possibilities of how QI (and higher educationpedagogy) could be otherwise—other than a normalized recipe. With these powers of thinking, QI can be inventive, art-full, force-full with/in/against the neoliberal, positivist, and normalized ways of doing qualitative research method/ologies.

Arting, Sciencing, and Philosophizing

This manifesto emerges from a larger study which examines the pedagogy of two introductory QI courses for graduate students (both had masters and doctoral level students) which disrupted traditional approaches and assumptions to qualitative research. Inspired by posthumanist and feminist ‘new’ materialist theories (Barad 2007; Bennett2010; Braidotti2013), we (Candace instructor, David teaching/researching intern) intentionally created learning engagements that fostered spaces for students to create and think with theory, data, art supplies, digital tools, and others (humans, nonhumans, more-than-humans) as a way to produce new ways of thinking/knowing/be(com)ing/doing QI.

Candace conceptualized this pedagogy as intra-active or as an ethico-onto-epistemological pedagogy (Lenz Taguchi 2010). In other words, it wasn’t about creating an arts-based pedagogy or simply adding materials to a course. Rather, it was a philosophically inspired orientation to how the world comes to be and how we come to know (i.e., epistemology) in our relationships (i.e., being and doing or ontology and axiology) or throughmaterial-discursiveintra-actions (Barad 2007). A quote by St. Pierre at the top of the syllabus, informed students to our beliefs on qualitative research becoming ‘a low-level description of process, procedure, design, and method and so, not surprisingly, too often produced and continues to produce as ‘findings’ inconsequential themes, untheorized stories’ (St. Pierre 2011a: 2–3). We provided our students with our rationale on why traditional qualitative research needs to be disrupted. Our objective was to have students understand the politics of inquiry and structures that enable (and constrain) certain analytical approaches.

With this in mind, we chose textbooks to create tensions between conventional humanist qualitative methodologies (St. Pierre 2011b), research ideas, and thinking-with theories (for example, two of the books we chose were Brown et al. 2014 and Savin-Baden and Howell Major 2013). We also started the term with discussions on theory instead of a methods first approach. We had students read theory and examples of more disruptive approaches to qualitative research alongside more traditional, normalized examples so we could ‘stay with the trouble’ as Haraway (2016) writes, work the tensions, and imagine otherwise. The assignments, such as a ‘thinking with theory’ paper inspired by Jackson and Mazzei’s (2012) scholarship, created spaces for students to wrestle with how theory becomes analytic, thinking tools. Candace often used the phrase ‘it depends’ to answer questions students asked as she hoped this would help them consider how paradigmatic views enable research questions and practices. We also created spaces for students to physically think-and-create-with art and digital materials as a way to learn differently about QI (see Kuby and Christ 2018a, 2018b). For example, students worked-with their thinking with theory assignment papers, articles on/about theories, paint, coloured paper, iPhones, and…and…and… to become-with and make news ways of knowing/be(com)ing/doing the theories they were reading. However even with these attempts, students wrestled between needing procedural guidelines and embracing an ability to be creative. One of our students, Pam (all student names are pseudonyms) stated, ‘in my mind I needed a box [a chart about] paradigm[s] – the books [e.g., Savin-Baden & Howell Major] tried, I wanted that…but don’t think you can ever really get that [boxes in QI].’

Scientific Performances

In the beginning of the course, our students saw the many possibilities for QI as threatening to their socialized, scientized idea of research, yet they also questioned their preconceived notions. Omie, a student, said in previous qualitative research courses she felt there was a right or wrong way to do research. However, in our course Omie was given permission to do otherwise, she stated ‘maybe there isn’t a way to make everything fit … no way to wrap them [paradigms and research approaches] up nicely.’ The course enabled students to question ingrained conceptions of traditional qualitative research. Andrew commented:

I thought that qual [qualitative research] was more like a clean slate [not seeking a hypothesis]. You could just sit down and look for things and pick people’s brains and find new concepts. I really like qual for that. But [I] had no idea that it was deeper than that and that there were theories, paradigms, and all that stuff.

Over the semester, we noticed a shift of perspectives from students: a shift from solely a scientized idea of QI to embracing an arting and philosophizing perspective of QI that has depth and infinite possibilities.

Students began to welcome the complex, uncertain, variations in doing research, which permitted to them a different way to approach QI. A third book we used in the course, Reconceptualizing Qualitative Research: Methodologies without Methodology (Koro-Ljungberg 2016), enabled students to challenge normative, science thinking. Omie said the book ‘pushed my thinking. That is the book that I find myself going back to…it was a challenge, [it] made me uncomfortable … maybe there is no [right] answer [in how to do QI].’ The uncomfortable space of not having an answer or the way to do QI was a (welcomed) challenge for our students. However, several mentioned going back to this book and yearning for the thinking it provoked for them. The course challenged their ideas of scientific ways to do QI, ways they thought they were to perform social science researcher. The uncomfortableness experienced by students is an a/effect which perhaps was a catalyst to engage in arting, opening a possibility into philosophizing the creation of new concepts and ways of inquiring (hence, sciencing, arting, and philosophizing are mutually constitutive of each other).

Secretive Identities

Students spoke of their identities as taking a significant shift from a place of secrecy (i.e., not following paths of inquiry that they thought the academy and/or advisors would not approve of) to unravelling and peeling off layers of fear and shame. From the beginning of the course we provided an invitation to do QI by engaging in arting, philosophizing, and sciencing. For example, they took their thinking with theory paper assignment and worked-with paint, tissue paper, discarded books, and yarn as a way to create newness through playing/thinking. When we asked the students to talk about these experiences, Julia Ann stated,

I thought it was really interesting to have an opportunity to play with materials … I was more excited to go back and look at some of my work because I think I got some sort of liberation because [in this class], oh you’re not doing something strange…when I did this [artistic mapping of paradigms and theories] I thought this is actually really empowering in that there’s value [a teacher values my way of thinking through/with materials].

Julia Ann was able to think through mapping (sciencing, arting, and philosophizing), which was validated, enabling her to feel liberated, instead of stifled by the academy’s rigidity.

Another student saw his identity as removed from his research based on previous experiences with advisors. Andrew stated:

I feel like it would be dangerous in a way, to do it [a personal narrative inquiry on his aromantic identity, an aromantic is a person who experiences little or no romantic attraction to others]. I feel like it’s that thing that I’m doing on the side. I haven’t even told my advisor that I’ve been working on this, it feels like it’s, I feel like, not that it’s personal and I shouldn’t talk about it, but it feels like it doesn’t belong to the research I should be doing here [in the academy].

Here, Andrew had learned that his official grounded theory thesis on international students in higher education was an acceptable topic and approach for research in the academy, but his nagging passion to study aromanticism through a personal narrative inquiry was not. The rigidity of the academy in conducting effective, rigorous ‘science’ stifles students like Andrew and Julia Ann from engaging in inquiries that are affectual (arting) and that produce depth and newness of concepts (philosophizing). Andrew was trying to suppress himself as part of his research in order to survive (and thrive) in higher education. As we heard and witnessed students’ shifts in thinking through the course, we noticed them working through what they believed were acceptable (scientific) research strategies and topics in relation to more art-full approaches to inquiry. Students described being afraid to be creative or keeping their artful ways a secret in relation to research they thought their advisors and disciplines would allow.

Craving-Resisting the Messiness of Becoming Qualitative Inquirers

As the course progressed, students began to welcome the (inherently) messy aspects of QI. The course provided a space where students were able to challenge their beliefs, while at the same time it gave them permission to explore otherwise. Some students noted that many of their graduate courses did not challenge their philosophical thinking. Entering this course, students not only wrestled with new concepts, but they were asked to embrace being uncomfortable. For many, this space was welcomed, yet difficult. Omie shared:

Most of my life I felt different; this way of doing [creative QI] allowed me to be different. [After] reading Foucault [and] creating [with materials, it] symbolized to be okay to not know or to be unsure. That my work didn’t have to look like writing, like academic pieces of paper. It could look creative, messy.

This arting, sciencing, and philosophizing that Omie describes helped us to see the need to ‘give permission’ (a phrase Candace often said) to students to imagine inquiry as otherwise. The students, like Omie, called this pedagogical space ‘an allowing’—allowings of doing QI otherwise.

Aware of the politics of inquiry and power dynamics of teacher/student, we tried to create spaces of becoming-with (Haraway 2016) or thinking/learning/teaching in relation-with students. We wanted students to engage in arting, sciencing, and philosophizing without fear and we tried to be transparent about our own struggles as inquirers. Thomas noted the course was attempting to shift ‘academic culture’ and that the course exposed them ‘to new academic culture’. This ‘new academic culture’, if it is such, would be one that enables students to think and to think differently. Perhaps a new way of conceptualizing sciencing. Andrew stated the course ‘felt like a philosophy class. It wasn’t like a ‘step one, step two’ class. It taught me this is your thinking process, but it is up to you [me] ultimately, that there are no guidelines [recipes].’ Pam described the intensity of the course and the readings, for example: ‘The Koro-Ljungberg book was all over the place, I liked the white spaces [to write in the book], but the thinking was all over and too much for my brain.’ Overall, we heard this mixture about how the course was one of the hardest students had taken, how the readings challenged them and caused them to think, yet at the same time students expressed a yearning, craving for thinking about the messiness of doing inquiry.

An Ethical Invitation

This manifesto is an invitation for instructors to consider how arting, sciencing, and philosophizing as powers of thinking could be (inspiration for) pedagogyandtherefore the QI practices our students engage in/with. Concepts need conceptual personae or, as Massumi translates it, ‘rhythmiccharacters’ (Deleuze and Guattari 1994 [1991]: 2). How might these three powers of thinking create rhythmic characters that produce difference—of QI pedagogy and research practices? How might doing QI be the discipline of creating/thinking? How do these powers of thinking a/effect whatcurriculum we teach and how we teach it pedagogically?

For us, this (re)orientation to arting, sciencing, and philosophizing is an ethical call and response-ability (Barad 2007; Haraway 2016). As instructors, we plan our courses but also make in the moment decisions that a/effects who (and how) our students become as qualitative inquirers. We have the ability to respond in the pedagogies of QI and this matters. How we teach QI to students is the future we will inherit in the academy and the communities we (and they) work with as researchers. How are you creating QI pedagogies with your ability(ies) to respond? We think it is our ethical response-ability to art, to science, to philosophize QIpedagogywith our students.