Polyvocal Poetic Play Through Self-study Research: Challenging the Status Quo to Improve Professional Practice

Abstract

AbstractIn self-study research, numerous approaches are used, including collaboratively creative poetic inquiry. In this chapter, two teacher educators and self-study scholars consider how their polyvocal poetic play has helped challenge the status quo of method in researching professional knowledge and practice over the years. Looking specifically at their polyvocal poetic play within their larger corpus of the diverse self-study methods they enacted, a word cloud of frequently used words in publication titles made this work’s central features visible. Juxtaposing their word cloud with two more that included others’ poetic self-study scholarship allowed them to examine their work as a duo in the context of two decades of poetic self-study research. The words bricolage, polyvocal, creativity, play, transdisciplinary, virtual, and place are featured distinctively in the titles of their scholarship. The “why” and “so what?” of their poetic self-study were clarified by interweaving their thoughts prompted by these phrases to produce a double voice poem, followed by letter writing. This chapter illuminates how co-creative self-study can grow possibilities for expansive learning, providing diverse epistemic options for bringing us to new understandings of professional activity, and changing professional ways of knowing and being.KeywordsPoetic inquirySelf-study researchCo-creativityProfessional practiceProfessional knowledge