Keywords

This chapter explores techniques for integrating iconographic research poetry in the classroom. I begin by providing an overview of arts-based research (ABR) pedagogy (Barone & Eisner, 2006; Bresler, 2018; Dixon & Senior, 2009). Next, I describe pedagogical innovations that embrace research poetry (e.g., Benton & Russell, 2016; Guyas & Keys, 2009; Jacob & Kincaid, 2018; Lahman & DeOliveira, 2021; Lapum & Hume, 2015; Leggo, 2005; Meyer & Helmer, in press; Romero, 2020). Finally, I offer readers a toolkit that they can use to incorporate iconographic research poetry into their qualitative research courses. In the toolkit, I adapt techniques developed by writers who teach (e.g., Addonizio, 2009; Cohen, 2009; Padgett, 2000) in an effort to generate poetry-centered exercises for the classroom. By prompting students to create a broadside (a poem incorporating an image), a shape poem with line breaks, or a found poem shaped like a calligram, qualitative research instructors can cultivate creativity in the research methods classroom and encourage students to begin thinking about concepts like crystallization and alternative representation of findings (Ellingson, 2009; Richardson, 2000).

4.1 Arts-Based Research Pedagogy

According to Bresler (2018), ABR pedagogy seeks to produce “expanded seeing, listening, and understanding of outer and inner landscapes through resonance with artworks in the role of a viewer or a maker” (p. 651). Teacher-scholars from a variety of disciplines, including communication studies, education, social work, sociology, and theater (e.g., Benton & Russell, 2016; Lapum & Hume, 2015; Leavy, 2009, 2015; Meyer & Helmer, in press; Norris, 2011; Romero, 2020) have embraced ABR practices such as writing poetry, creative nonfiction, and scripts; performing music, dance, and theatre; creating visual art and crafts; and producing documentaries. Dixon and Senior (2009) framed ABR instruction as “transgressive pedagogy” (p. 9), a creative alternative to traditional teaching methods. Recently, scholars (e.g., Benton & Russell, 2016; Lapum & Hume, 2015; Romero, 2020) have demonstrated that ABR methods increase student engagement and foster students’ curiosity and creativity. Leggo (2005) argued that poetry, in particular, invites creativity and creative living, which in turn promote transformative learning. Jacob and Kincaid (2018) found that integrating poetry into the curriculum was associated with positive learning outcomes. Indeed, Traver (2018) reported that students who learned sociology through poetry felt encouraged to write, to read carefully, to think creatively, and to expand their vocabulary. Romero (2020) noted that students developed enhanced empathy and analytical skills, as well. In addition, Raingruber (2009) observed that poetry reading helped students develop an appreciation for ambiguity in language, a skill that is needed to conduct qualitative analysis.

A number of parallels can be drawn between arts-based research and arts-based pedagogy. First, both practices are question-oriented. In his poem, “essences of inspirational pedagogy,” Schoone (2020) wrote

what if?

is not a method

it’s

life

As Schoone aptly observed, arts-based pedagogy seeks to inspire students by asking them questions, rather than spoon-feeding them answers. Like arts-based educational research, arts-based pedagogy raises more questions than it answers (Barone & Eisner, 2006). Bresler (2018) noted that “(traditional) research courses tend to emphasize accumulation of knowledge and skills, silencing, even shaming unknowing, thus ignoring its role in propelling perception and engagement” (p. 653). In contrast, ABR methods promote student curiosity (Benton & Russell, 2016; Lapum & Hume, 2015) and appreciation for ambiguity (Raingruber, 2009).

Second, both arts-based research and arts-based pedagogy value process over product. Researchers and students are not expected to produce professional works of art—they are only asked to engage in the artistic process. In a related manner, ABR pedagogy invites students to work at a relaxed pace that allows them to practice their craft and reflect on the ways in which they are affected by their practice. Bresler (2018) noted that this slower pace facilitates relationship building. Just as poetic inquiry is a way of being in the world as well as a research method (Prendergast, 2009), arts-based pedagogy is a way of building community in addition to a method of teaching. As Prior (2018) concluded, “Seeing art as a process, in which understanding is constructed and co-constructed with others, is very much at the heart of using art as research.” (p. 11). Clearly, the processual and relational emphases of arts-based research extend to arts-based practices in teaching and learning.

Incorporating arts-based pedagogy in the classroom may have positive relational implications for students and instructors. Norris (2011) advocated implementing concrete poetry as an icebreaker activity in an introductory graduate course for in-service teachers. Guyas and Keys (2009) identified arts-based educational inquiry in dissertation research as a site for emerging mentorship. Bresler (2018) argued that “ABR pedagogies entail a different pace that is... dedicated to processing and incubation” (p. 657). ABR’s processual focus may be conducive to developing meaningful relationships in a community of learners who support one another in their arts-based journeys. In a recent collaborative ethnographic study about the experiences of teaching and learning in an arts-based organizational culture class (Meyer & Helmer, in press), my colleague and I found that students developed positive collaborative relationships in which graduate students mentored undergraduate students, members pulled their own weight, and individuals appreciated the unique contributions that various group members made to the teams’ ABR projects. (See Table 4.1.)

Table 4.1 Benefits associated with teaching iconographic research poetry
Full size table

4.2 Pedagogical Innovations

Instructors have used a variety of techniques to incorporate ABR into the classroom. Some instructors use ABR as a method for contextualizing course content, whereas others use ABR as a means to encourage students to create arts-based representations of research projects. Still others have used concrete poetry as a mechanism for building relationships. For example, Norris (2011) asked graduate students to introduce themselves using concrete poetry, an activity designed to encourage students to think about themselves in nontraditional ways and to use an arts-based medium to communicate and process information.

Lapum and Hume (2015) employed ABR to contextualize course content by using poetry, film, dance, and story to teach graduate students about abstract qualitative research concepts. In one assignment, the instructor asked students to read poetry and prose from an online blog about living with cystic fibrosis, then conduct a thematic analysis of the material, which became the basis for a discussion about interpretive analysis.

Lahman and DeOliveira (2021) also incorporated research poetry into a graduate-level qualitative research course. The authors designed a class activity in which they asked graduate students to create three-dimensional found poems derived from handwritten or computer-printed lines of interview transcripts and researcher’s reflections. Using brads, narrow strips of paper, fine tip markers, lollipop sticks, and pipe cleaners, they instructed students to begin by choosing phrases from a research transcript or reflection paper. Next, students wrote or typed the phrases in single lines, which they cut on strips of the same width and length. By punching holes on each end of the line, stacking the slips of paper, and securing the stack by inserting a brad in each end, students created three-dimensional poems in the shape of orbs. Lahman and DeOliveira gave students the option of creating an alternative form, a poetry flower, by pinching both brads together, securing them in the middle, and affixing them to a lollipop stick or pipe cleaner. Students could hold their finished products in their hands or display multiple artifacts together in a vase, which provided them with a metaphorical opportunity to “stop and smell the roses” during the research process.

Traver (2018) incorporated poetry into an introductory sociology course to contextualize concepts for her students. Traver described her writing prompt in the following way:

In a lecture on social identity, students were asked to write a poem that began “I am . . . .” Although these poems were collected by the author, they were used to verify students’ comprehension of the course material—not to evaluate their creative expression.

Similarly, in an attempt to create a low-stakes environment that would encourage students to be creative, Benton and Russell (2016) offered the following extra credit option in a graduate-level social work class:

Individually, students will select the research project (social justice issue) that is addressed by the program you have evaluated in your program/practice evaluation project and craft a format to creatively deliver this message, issue, and/or information. This project must be your own original work completed for this class. Some suggestions are, but are not limited to: art, photography, video, poetry, narratives, music/audio, socio-drama/acting, etc.

Romero (2020) created an opportunity for undergraduate honors sociology students to learn how to conduct an iterative inductive analysis by practicing poetic transcription. She began by assigning different sets of poems that addressed social justice issues to groups of students. She instructed students to analyze the poems as if they were data, using grounded theory techniques to identify emergent themes in the poems. Next, she asked each group to use poetic transcription to create an artistic representation of their findings. Students employed free verse and blackout poetry to generate poems that challenged the status quo, demonstrating their ability to think critically about oppressive power structures in society, as well as dominant methodological paradigms.

My colleague and I (Meyer & Helmer, in press) employed ABR as a method to encourage graduate and undergraduate communication studies students to create arts-based representations of research projects. I asked students to create arts-based representations of ethnographic research project findings in this way:

Create an original arts-based representation related to your analysis. Products may include (but are not limited to) poetry, narrative, fiction, creative nonfiction, script, screenplay, music, dance, photography, video, visual art, sculpture, collage, sewing, baking, etc. The goal of this activity is to create something artistic that represents your findings, not to achieve perfection or produce a professional product. Feel free to work alone or in collaboration with your research partners.

Given that half of the assignments described thus far were geared toward ABR in general, rather than poetry, in particular, I consulted books about teaching and writing poetry (e.g., Addonizio, 2009; Cohen, 2009; Padgett, 2000) in an effort to generate poetry-centered exercises for the classroom. I have adapted these poets’ writing exercises to offer some suggestions for integrating iconographic research poetry into the classroom.

Addonizio (2009) generated the following activity to create word/art, or a broadside (a poem incorporating an image):

Ask a visual artist to respond to lines of your poetry, or to an entire poem, with a drawing or painting, or photograph. Print them together as a broadside . . . . [Alternatively], illustrate a short poem by someone else. (p. 265)

Addonizio’s activity would be an excellent choice to encourage collaboration between poets and visual artists, a practice that I recommended in Chaps. 2 and 3. If students write and illustrate poems that represent their research findings, then the collaborative visual poems that they produce would be iconographic research poems.

Cohen (2009) developed a writing exercise designed to “work the white space” or shape poems with lines. To this end, she presented an excerpt from Jane Hirshfield’s poem, “Lake and Maple,” in paragraph form without the author’s line breaks. She challenged the reader to “Take this paragraph and shape it into lines. Don’t worry about right or wrong. Try to feel what shape would best embody the emotion, language, and narrative of the poem” (pp. 110–111). Cohen’s exercise would be a good way to illustrate that there are many different ways to use space to complement the text of a poem. If the initial paragraph of text were taken from an interview transcript and the final shape reflected the theme of the excerpt, then the resulting poem would be an iconographic research poem.

Padgett (2000) offered two exercises related to found poetry and calligrams. If you ask students to explore these two exercises sequentially, the end result would be an iconographic research poem. First,

Have each [student] select a passage from a book, newspaper, or conversation, write it down as if it were a poem, give it a title (which they might also find) and read it aloud . . . You might ask [students] why some found poems work better than others. (p. 119)

Next,

To write a calligram, you might first want to choose a shape that has a clear outline, such as a basketball or a window. Then fill in the shape with words and lines that come to you when you think about a particular basketball game or a particular window you look out of. Or you might want the words to be spoken by the basketball or the window. Remember, you can make the words any size, style, or color you want. (p. 151)

If the shape that a student selects represents the theme of the text (e.g., a basketball-shaped poem that represents a conversation about basketball), then the poem would be an iconographic research poem.

4.3 Debriefing

Many of the ABR exercises presented above have clear connections with the processes of qualitative analysis (Tracy, 2013, 2020), crystallization (Ellingson, 2009), and creative analytic practices (Richardson, 2000). Recall from Chap. 1 that crystallization involves the representation of research findings via multiple genres. Richardson (2000) generated 21 creative analytic writing practices that could be adapted for classroom use (pp. 941–943). Embedded in her writing exercises are questions that would be interesting to ask students as you debrief any of the assignments described above. For example, if you instruct students to create research poems out of interview transcripts, you might ask them, “What do you know about the interviewee and about yourself that you did not know before you wrote the poem?” and “What poetic devices have you sacrificed in the name of science?” Alternatively, if you instruct students to create multiple representations of their data (e.g., a poem, an image, and an iconographic poem), you might inquire, “What do you know in each rendition that you did not know in the other renditions?” and “How do the different renditions enrich each other?”

Romero (2020) and Meyer and Helmer (in press) prompted students to write self-reflection essays after they presented their arts-based research projects. Some of the questions that they asked may help students process their experiences verbally or in writing. Romero asked students to identify “the skills they built practicing poetic transcription, how they might use these skills later in life or other research, and how the assignment helped them become better sociologists” (p. 215). Similarly, I asked my students

What did you learn about organizational culture and doing ethnographic research? Did you feel motivated to learn about these subjects? Why or why not? What did you learn about yourself? . . . your research partners? . . . your interviewee? Did your view of yourself as an artist or creative person change over the course of the semester? If so, how? How would you feel about volunteering in the future for the organization that you studied? (p. 4)

Queries such as these can guide students to reflect on the extent to which the ABR exercises helped them achieve desired learning outcomes. Instructors can also analyze students’ essays to assess the effectiveness of ABR exercises and assignments in meeting course learning outcomes. Alternatively, they could create iconographic research poems from students’ responses (e.g., the mountain poem in Fig. 2.1).

Whether you decide to incorporate iconographic research poetry into a semester-long research project, an in-class writing exercise, or both, I hope that the assignments and activities presented in this chapter will help you expand your arts-based repertoire in the classroom. By embracing ABR pedagogy as an alternative to traditional teaching methods, you will give your students and yourself an opportunity to cultivate curiosity and creativity in teaching and learning. Besides, what could possibly be a more fun way to teach qualitative research methods?