Metaphoric cartography as dual-layered practitioner inquiry: Arts-based educational research in the construction of place

Abstract

ABSTRACTAs place is intimately tied to students' lived experiences, investigations into place can illuminate knowledge of students, schools, and communities and serve as inspiration for future place-based curricular endeavors. This study, through a dual-layered, arts-based educational research (ABER) design, offered student teachers the opportunity to conduct firsthand, sensory investigations into place, the spaces of their larger teaching context, and allowed their instructor to examine their learning of place and consider implications for the practice of teacher education. Through psychogeographically wandering and mapping their school zones, student teachers developed understandings of the physical landscape, mental conceptions of place, and fledgling critical geographies. These critical geographies represented mergers of place, student lived experience, and critical pedagogy as student teachers began to reconceptualize their teaching practice in terms of place. Through the act of sculpturally and metaphorically mapping student teachers' explorations, the instructor identified levels of student teachers' sense of place, noted the vital role of their critical geographies, and considered how her future teaching practice might support further development of these critical geographies. This study suggests a second layer of ABER can be generative as it has the potential to stimulate critical reflections on pre-service teachers' learning and offer insight into the process of engaging pre-service teachers in research.