Threaded together : an arts-based inquiry into the design processes of a team of graduate students working on a professional development infrastructure for teachers in the Anglophone sector in Québec

In an attempt to link my art practice with my educational research practice, and in the spirit of reflective practice, I wanted to create a quilt that would act as a vehicle for reflection on our experiences as a design team while developing a flexible learning network for teachers. What I was attempting to do is to use quilting as a metaphor for our process but also use quilting as a research methodology. The use of quilting as a metaphor afforded me a way to view our design efforts in a way that I had not been able to see or express until that moment. The purpose of using quilting as a metaphor in this inquiry was that I thought it could provide an alternative language for exploring what seemed 'natural' about our way of working. In this sense, what we commonly understand about the instructional design process is supplanted by an alternative vision. The quilt that I created serves as a multi-vocal visual narrative that represents important events, ideas and themes that were identified by the participants in the inquiry and that emerged from my analysis of the data. The quilt offers a site for these co-constructed narratives to be told. There are no right or wrong answers, there are multiple truths that were gathered and shared. I see the quilt as a reflexive intertextual space for conversation, interpretation, and critique of our design practices