Being Within and Without: Cases of Phenomenological Embodiment in Art Education

Intrigued by the body’s place within education, I investigate the diverse ways that embodiment manifests in secondary school visual arts classrooms. This thesis presents a multiple case study analysis of two school residency projects, which were part of a multi-year research-creation project, The Pedagogical Impulse (TPI) led by Dr. Stephanie Springgay (PI) and funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC). The data used in this thesis was generated within the larger TPI project. The two case studies were conducted in two different visual arts classrooms in the Toronto District School Board (TDSB) during the 2012 academic year. I was the lead research assistant at the two school sites. TPI engaged with transpedagogy, a term noted by Pablo Helguera (2011), meaning that the focus of the study is not on the refinement of artistic techniques but on the creation of artwork through processes and experiences. The research-creation projects worked with social practice artists, Hazel Meyer and Sarah Febbraro, who took up residency in two secondary schools. Students from grades 10, 11, and 12 and their art teachers participated in these case studies. For my thesis research, I focus on delineating elements of embodiment experienced throughout the case studies. I observe a time lapse/incubation period in the development of certain embodied processes in myself, the teachers and the students in the two cases. Using various theories of embodiment, phenomenology and practitioner research, I develop a theory of embodiment, body-in-the-making, to support my analysis. I engage in and examine the inside and outside spaces that enfleshed the TPI study, and how they have interjected themselves into spaces in teaching and learning systems. Although there have been numerous studies related to the phenomenology of embodiment within arts education, there is a lack of clarity about what embodiment looks like in visual arts education from the perspective of the visual arts teacher. My study demonstrates the many intricacies that exist in education as an institution and how making changes to the concept of the body in schools may alter the many institutional structures that exist around the Cartesian divide in schools.Ph.D.2020-11-19 00:00:0