Abstract
This chapter brings into dialogue the perspectives of two South African teacher educators and their doctoral research supervisor. In focusing on arts-informed self-study research, the chapter demonstrates how researchers who might describe themselves as non-creative, and used to written rather than visual expression, can tap into the art world to produce relatively simple visual representations such as collage portraits. Such representations can give depth and meaning to the work and allow novice self-study researchers to reimagine their lived experiences and look at themselves and their practice from multiple angles. The polyvocality of different voices infused into this chapter draws attention to the contributions of a transdisciplinary group of critical friends, showing how teacher educators’ self-study research can develop in relation to others within and beyond teacher education.
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Notes
- 1.
In South Africa, research supervisor is the term used to indicate someone who advises and mentors a graduate student during her or his research project. Typically, South African graduate students have only one supervisor.
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Acknowledgements
We gratefully acknowledge support and grant funding for TES project activities from the National Research Foundation of South Africa (Grant Numbers 74007 and 90380Â and Incentive Funding for Rated Researchers). We further acknowledge that any opinion, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the authors and therefore the funders do not accept any liability in regard thereto.
We would like to highlight the contributions of the TES participants who attended Refilwe’s and Anita’s collage portrait presentations. In particular, we thank Inbanathan Naicker, Lungile Masinga, Chris de Beer, and Daisy Pillay for their valuable input.
We appreciate the insights offered by our critical reader, Anastasia P. Samaras, our professional editor, Moira Richards, and our peer reviewer, Karen Rut GĂsladĂłttir.
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Hiralaal, A., Matebane, R., Pithouse-Morgan, K. (2018). Learning Through Enacting Arts-Informed Self-Study Research with Critical Friends. In: Ritter, J., Lunenberg, M., Pithouse-Morgan, K., Samaras, A., Vanassche, E. (eds) Teaching, Learning, and Enacting of Self-Study Methodology. Self-Study of Teaching and Teacher Education Practices, vol 19. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-10-8105-7_26
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