ARTful Design: Disruptions Within the Dissertation in Practice

Peaches Hash

doi:10.5195/ie.2022.229

Abstract

A student within a university’s Ed.D. program is encouraged by her director to narrow her research focus; however, her interests in Curriculum Studies, Arts-Based Educational Research, and Composition Studies led her to design a practitioner action research study examining intersections between the fields. As she collected participants’ data, she experienced poststructural disruptions within all stages of the dissertation process, from designing and collecting data to formatting and identity as a researcher. This narrative, exploratory article showcases how dissertations in practice can follow nonlinear pathways to knowledge when researchers are open to possibilities.

Highlights

During my first semester of doctoral coursework, I had so many ideas for my dissertation that I could hardly keep them straight
I came to my Ed.D. program with two degrees in English, knowing that I could write a standard dissertation but my coursework encouraged me to think of different ways to use the paint
I thought that my question contained an openness to possible outcomes that is reflective in both arts-based educational research (ABER) and the interpretive or constructivist paradigm, which “examines [how people engage in processes of constructing and reconstructing meanings through daily interactions” (Leavy, 2017, p. 129) as well as the meaning people assign to their experiences

Summary

DISRUPTION OF DESIGN

When I began designing my dissertation study, I thought that it would fall solely within the constructivist paradigm. Constructivism is utilized to explore how art-making contributes to the construction of reality for those interacting with them. 72); art-making can deepen and enhance previously constructed knowledge as well as provoke the formation of new knowledge. With these theories in mind, I sought to explore how curriculum could be used to facilitate knowledge construction, both knowledge of writing and knowledge of. This journal is supported by the Carnegie Project on the Education Doctorate: A Knowledge Forum on the

This journal is published by the University Library System of the

DISRUPTION OF KNOWLEDGE

DISRUPTION OF FORMAT

DISRUPTION OF IDENTITY

CONCLUSION