Alice’s Adventures in Graduate School: The Transformation Inside the Rabbit Hole

The purpose of this study was to explore the ways in which doctoral students completing Art Education Ph.D. programs in Schools of Education and Schools of Fine Art experience and perceive their enculturation and socialization into the worlds of higher education in both similar and different ways. It sought an understanding of the ways in which these different academic environments mold and influence student perceptions about what it means to be a graduate student in the field of art education. Given the significance of visual and metaphorical forms of communication in art education, this study further sought an understanding of the usefulness of arts-based and image-based practices in promoting dialogue about the research topic and within the research design. Thus using the question, ‘How and to what extent can images and metaphors in Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland be used to inform and examine the experience of completing a doctoral degree?’ this research used visual and verbal metaphor to illustrate the socialization of art education graduate students. Using Lakoff and Johnson’s theory concerning the Systematicity of Metaphorical Concepts (1980), Habermas’ Theory of Communicative Action (1984), and Carspecken’s Pragmatic Horizon Theory (1996) to ground the research in communication for consensual understanding, I focus upon the use of metaphor to communicate about experience. I present stories of helplessness, vulnerability, shame, and resilience that emerged from seven interviews with students enrolled in the top 15 “most influential United States and Canadian art education graduate programs” (Anderson, Eisner, & McRorie, 1998, p. 15)