Like climbing Jacob’s ladder: An art-based exploration of the comprehensive exam process

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Article

Like climbing Jacob’sladder: An art-basedexploration of thecomprehensiveexam process

Sara Scott ShieldsDepartment of Art Education, Florida State University, USA

Abstract

The comprehensive exam process is a rite of passage in the scholarly world, and as such

the movements of this process often feel like a guarded secret to graduate students. As

a PhD candidate, I left the comprehensive exam process feeling both initiated and

inundated. This article is an attempt to uncover the secret that is the comprehensive

exam process, but more importantly this article is an artful documentation of my

journey through the process. Through arts-based engagement with artifacts from my

comprehensive exam process I hope to explore and uncover the power this academic

journey holds so other graduate students can enter their journey with open eyes.

Keywords

Arts-based research, comprehensive exams, higher education, qualitative research,

visual thinking

Jacob left Beersheba, and went toward Haran. He came to the place and stayed there

that night, because the sun had set. Taking one of the stones of the place, he put it

under his head and lay down in that place to sleep. And he dreamed, and behold, there

was a ladder set up on the earth, and the top of it reached to heaven; and behold, the

angels of God were ascending and descending on it! (Genesis 28:10–12, English

Standard Version)

As a recent graduate from a PhD program, I feel as if I have just woken up froma dream much like Jacob’s, a dream where I was faced with the impossible task ofascending (and sometimes descending) a ladder leading nowhere and everywhere at

Corresponding author:

Sara Scott Shields, Department of Art Education, Florida State University, Tallahassee, FL 32306, USA.

Email: [email protected]

at FLORIDA STATE UNIV LIBRARY on March 4, 2015ahh.sagepub.comDownloaded from

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the same time. The chaotic but organized movement of comprehensive exams,prospectus, and dissertation writing is one of great struggle followed by pro-nounced triumph; however, when it is over, the memory of it quickly begins tofade. With graduate school behind me, I feel the once vivid experience quicklyfading from my consciousness, much like a dream. In an effort to create a tangiblemoment, I have chosen to collect and share a portion of my own experience ingraduate school. This is my story of climbing Jacob’s ladder. While it is a storyabout my experience with the comprehensive exam process, it is also a story abouthow I used art to process the process of becoming.

The process of becoming

The comprehensive exam process is a rite of passage in the scholarly world, and assuch the movements of this process often feel like a guarded secret to graduatestudents. In the United States, most PhD students are asked to complete a series ofquestions demonstrating their understanding of their research topic, methodology,and theory. These questions typically come from each of their dissertation com-mittee members and involve a relatively quick turnaround time. At my university,we were asked to write around 20 pages and spend 2 weeks on each question. Theoverarching goal of the comprehensive exam is to prepare your thinking and writ-ing before beginning your dissertation research. As a second year PhD student, Ileft this experience of writing and thinking feeling both initiated and inundated.

This article is an attempt to uncover the secret that is the comprehensive examprocess, but more importantly, this article is an artful documentation of my becom-ing-through process. Having recently been catapulted into the real world, I findmyself in a new role as an assistant professor, forced to consider assuaging mymother’s need for a grandchild, resume the chore of doing laundry in a timelymanner, and once again make sure the grass is mowed so my neighbors will notwhisper when my car pulls out of the driveway. With life swiftly creeping in, I feelthe magic of the graduate experience slipping from my consciousness. There issomething so empowering about allowing yourself to be consumed with a goal,and for the first time in my life, I abandoned all other endeavors and focused onone singular goal, to get a PhD. I want to remember this process the same way youremember your wedding, looking through the albums, touching the invitations,leafing through the cards, recalling the smell of the US$20 a plate dinners, andthe look on your new husband’s face. Why are the memories of that experienceso vivid, but the memories of years in school a myriad of word documents andgrade point averages? I am forcing myself to stop and create a tangible moment. Soas a wedding is the culmination of years of dating, comprehensive exams are theconclusion of years of writing, reading, and presenting. I saved EVERYTHINGfrom my comprehensive exams, and now I am returning to them with new eyes, insearch of insight and inspiration. In this article, I have set the task of re-discoveringthe moments in the comprehensive exam process and exploring them through art,writing, and poetry; all the images you see, the poetry you read, and some of the

2 Arts & Humanities in Higher Education 0(0)




excerpts and journals are artifacts of my exam experience. This article documentsthe process of becoming I experienced. This article captures my ascent and descentof Jacob’s ladder.

The funny thing about ladders

The funny thing about ladders is once you go up them, you usually have to comeback down. They take you somewhere with the exact goal of bringing you back downat some point. I see the comprehensive exam process as the going up part of myencounter with Jacob’s ladder, and this arts-based engagement of the experience asgoing down. In the middle of those two experiences is a lot of climbing up and down,backtracking and retracing my steps. What I hope to create is something new andexciting, to capture the essence of an experience through art, poetry, and research.This arts-based pursuit is not without influences, so next I hope to explore someof those influences and establish an understanding of knowing as an artful action.

The art of knowing

From my comprehensive exam responses

Eisner (2008) has written extensively on the epistemology of art in an attempt tomove away from the positivist tradition of art as emotive and into a place where art isviewed as a way of knowing. ‘‘The point here is that knowing is a multiple state ofaffairs, not a singular one . . .we need to know different things for different purposes’’(Eisner, 2008). Barone and Eisner (2012) discuss the practical, theoretical, andproductive manifestations of knowledge. Practical knowledge is the ability to deter-mine ‘‘courses of action, and commitments in order to resolve a particular situationthat needs attention’’ (Barone and Eisner, 2012: 58), while theoretical knowledge islikened to the knowledge found through the hard sciences, a way of knowing derivedfrom hypothesizing and systematic experimentation. The third form of knowledgeBarone and Eisner draw on is productive knowledge; this way of knowing dealswith the process of creating. ‘‘Productive knowledge is a making of something, notsimply the ability to understand what a person has done. Productive knowledge lives inthe universe of action’’ (Barone and Eisner, 2012: 58).

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Because I am interested inwriting prose, poetry, and creat-ing artwork to work through thisprocess, I thought it relevant toexplore other arts-based under-standings of knowledge, sokeeping with the arts-basedinterests of knowledge as active,I searched the writings of EstelleBarrett and Barbara Bolt(2010). As scholars in creativepractice and production as activeforms of research, I found theytoo had a multifaceted view ofwhat constitutes knowledge.Making a distinction betweenprecise or explicit knowledge and‘‘tacit knowledge’’ (Barrett and

Bolt, 2010: 4) allows for a con-ception of the action of makingas a way to construct knowledge.Tacit knowledge considers ‘‘whatBourdieu has theorized as thelogic of practice or of being in-the-game where strategies arenot pre-determined, but emerge

and operate according to specificdemands of action and movement intime’’ (Barrett and Bolt, 2010: 4).Graeme Sullivan differentiates betweenknowledge that is collected and know-ledge that is created, identifying thelatter as knowledge realized through artistic production (Sullivan, 2010). ‘‘The ten-dency to identify research exclusively with science has created a limiting imbalance’’





(McNiff, 1998: 31) and expanding an understanding of knowledge to include artisticendeavors is an attempt at returning a balance to research. What all these conceptionsof knowledge share is the acknowledgement of multiple ways of knowing paired withthe construction of knowledge occurring in a progressive, active manner. Additionally,these explorations of knowledge consider the role of art in the creation of under-standing. It seems to be a universally accepted reality that we gain something fromlooking at and making art, but what is that something? Additionally, when consideringthe juxtaposition of language and art in this project, the relationship becomes evenmore complex. Because much of what we know is situated and expressed in language,the added dimension of the visual forced me to closely examine the relationshipbetween art and language as it informs the relationship of knowledge and truth.

The visual and verbal as languages in the development of knowledge

Much like Barone and Eisner (2012), Gadamer draws on a triadic relationshipwhen he conceives of intellect, application, and agreement as components of under-standing and thus knowledge (Grondin, 2002). For Gadamer, intellectual understand-ing is a methodological understanding that is ‘‘the manifestation of life experience(Erlebnis), which our understanding actually strives to reenact (nacherleben) or toreconstruct’’ (Grondin, 2002: 37) while applicable knowledge deals with the use ofknowledge, leaving us with agreement as a component of understanding. For Gadamerthis agreement is relatable to a harmony, through language we seek to create aharmony between what we know through intellectual and applicable knowledge.The act of agreement ‘‘is something that occurs mostly through language, dialogueor conversation’’ (Grondin, 2002: 41). Gadamer believed that to understand or knowsomething, we had to be able to put it into language, allowing us to convey ourunderstanding through dialogue. By establishing the goal of understanding asrooted in language, Gadamer provides a justification for the ‘‘universality of hermen-eutic experience . . . to articulate (a meaning, a thing, an event) into words . . . theapplication that is at the core of every understanding process thus grounds inlanguage’’ (Grondin, 2002: 41). This focus on application as the goal of knowledgeor understanding is foundational to the epistemology of knowing through creation.When engaging in art making, the participant is seeking a resolution to a tension; inthe process of resolving the tension, the participant uses both visual and verbal lan-guages to understand and communicate (Dewey, 1910). The interpretation ofthoughts or ideas realized through the application of visual and verbal forms of com-munication constitutes an active knowing. What is important in the process ofcreating is that the participant ‘‘be taken up by what he seeks to understand, thathe responds, interprets, searches for words or articulation and thus understands. It isin this response that Gadamer sees the applicative, self-implying nature of understand-ing at work’’ (Grondin, 2002: 42). This application of understanding can be furtherextended to include the previously mentioned work of arts-based research. Throughthe application of understanding, we engage in the acquisition of knowledge founded inaction.

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The act of creating art in response to or in tandem with research is a way ofdocumenting knowledge founded through action. It becomes both the vehicle foraction and the collector of knowledge derived through action. By capturing theactivity, we create a point of reference to return to, something documentingknowledge.

This back and forth motion between the art/ifact and the research is central tomy research interest in this project because I believe in these moments of activeknowing, of seeking connections, and experimenting with outcomes, we come tothe dark places in our understanding of things. These dark spaces are difficult tonavigate, and this project I am making, if whole-heartedly engaged, may offeropportunities for illumination. What follows is my attempt to illuminate thedark spaces found in the art/ifacts of my comprehensive exams.





The first question (on philosophical hermeneutics and practi-tioner research)1

Journal entry 1: Loneliness

Just the other day, a professorstopped me as I walked down thehallway and asked, ‘‘How’s itgoing?’’ I replied with, ‘‘I’mstruggling.’’ In that moment,I chose to make visible the struggle Iwas encountering during my firstquestion. With only 2 weeks and theexpectation of 20 pages, I feel over-whelmed with my task, and I stillhave three to go. My professorstopped and said, ‘‘The compsprocess is a lonely one.’’ Thesewords reverberated in my gut. It isso true; this is the loneliest thing Ihave ever done. I am not a strangerto loneliness. As an artist I am quitecomfortable with loneliness, not in anegative, self-loathing way, but in aquiet and peaceful way. To make artis to exist in solitude, to centeryourself and open up a space tocreate. As an art teacher, Iconfronted loneliness in myclassroom, as both the only adult ina room of adolescents and as theonly art teacher in a sea of coresubjects. But as a scholar, I havenever encountered loneliness andup to now my experience has beenone of deep collaboration. Throughclass discussions and guest lectures,I found a place of belonging. Thencomps began, and my 8 weeks ofcomplete and utter lonelinessstarted. I am isolated with mythoughts and words; it is likenothing I have ever

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experienced before. Although surrounded by the work of other scholars, I amcompletely alone in the process. There is no asking for help or clarification, justa blank computer screen staring back at me. Even as I sit here now, I feel theloneliness creeping back in. This is why I am writing in this journal. I hope toremember my process . . . to process this process. I have been working for 2 years.THIS is important enough to be remembered!!!!

Excerpt from my question 1 response

Using words and images to create a moment, holding on to what is important in life,returning to those moments with new eyes, allowing those moments to dialogue withus, and listening to the soft whispers coming from the page constitute both the visualjournaling [artmaking] and hermeneutic experience. It is this experience that inter-ests me and through which I believe there is something deeper and more powerful—thetransformation of lived experience into an object speaking to you, something thatdocuments and illuminates your experience through images and words.

Then and now

As I sit in my office revisiting this first comprehensive exam response and the art-based renderings accompanying it, I realize at the core of this loneliness and solitudeI stumbled upon one of the most valuable parts of the comps process. My desperatefeelings allowed me to tap into the process of reading and writing with purpose. Isuppose during my graduate experience I had encountered this process, but it feltsuperficial, always peppered with the reality of a course assignment or presentation.What sets the comps process apart from these experiences is that it takes your livedexperiences from graduate school, all the information you read and clicked throughin power points, and allows you to be lonely with it, then just when you think you canno longer stand the loneliness anymore, those memories speak to you. During theprocess of responding to my first question, I realized I was transforming my experi-ence into an artifact representing a much larger one. Now as I create this meta-reflection about the process as a whole, I am attempting to create an experience forothers to learn from, a companion for others to find when they are faced with thecrushing loneliness that initially comes with writing for yourself. I hope to encourageyou on your own journey and reassure you that feelings of great accomplishmentoften follow our darkest moments of solitude, for in dialoguing with our writing andwith our self, we often come to see things in new and exciting ways.





The second question (on methods for analyzing the visualjournal)

Journal entry 2: Poems

During my experience with the first question, I was confronted head on with over-whelming loneliness. One of the smartest decisions I made during this semester wastaking a course while working on my questions. Not only does this class [arts-basedresearch] allow me to escape the process of writing, but it also provides muchneeded social interactions. The class is filled with 13 other grad students, all inter-ested in the intersection of art and research. Recently in class I discovered poetry asa form of data analysis. Well, I do not know if it is solely data analysis, really it isa way to be with your research in new ways and to see your concepts and thoughtsin a different light, to experience the process of researching in alternate forms.This newest question is asking me to explore options for data analysis; I knowfor sure I want to explore poetic/lyric inquiry. The only problem is that I have notwritten a poem since I was 13 . . . and it was not one of those angsty poems thatmost teenagers write when they are alone at night thinking about their lostlove . . .NO . . . this was a poem I wrote to appease my too cool for school literatureteacher. I do not even remember what the poem was about. What does that sayabout me and poetry?


The impact of the arts on my learning process pushed me to explore methodologiesembracing the process of artistic creation as part of data analysis and representation.When considering what art forms have impacted my current trajectory, poetry was thefirst to emerge. The entirety of my work in graduate school has been impacted by apoet, MC Richards (1964). In her poems, she conjures images of teachingand creating, challenging her readers to re-evaluate what they know and how theyknow it. A poem does for a reader what a painting does for a viewer, it pulls you in,pushes you out, makes you question and explore ideas. It is this movement I speak ofso often in my writing, the navigation of experience is what I strive for in my engage-ment with the visual journal and the movement of life is an undercurrent in myteaching philosophy. The arts have a way of addressing parts of us that are otherwiseignored, causing us to break a linear trajectory in search of understanding. Thissemester I enrolled in an arts-based research class; admittedly I thought poems as

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a form of inquiry and analysis was a ridiculous idea. Then I wrote my first poem as aresponse to my first comp question. The process was both liberating and centering,with each line I struggled to say in a few words what I spent twenty pages saying in thepaper. I found direction and focus through the creation of a poem, more importantlymy peers understood what I was trying to say. While they did not know every nuanceof my research design, they felt the process of writing comps, they felt my passion forartful experiences and illuminated spaces; they felt what I was feeling. These qualitiescalled me to explore lyric inquiry more closely.

Lyric inquiry refers to both the process of writing and the outcome of the writingprocess, and as such it encompasses all avenues of a quality research methodology.Through lyric inquiry, the research can ground both ‘‘the personal and the aesthetic’’(Neilson, 2008: 94). As a research tool, lyric inquiry is often used to explore and torepresent data. This is not just a new or different way to present data but rather allowsthe research to ‘‘evoke different meanings from the data’’ (Leavy, 2009: 64), enga-ging the reader/researcher in multiple ways of knowing (Leavy, 2009). Lyric inquiryincludes many genres of writing, two of which are poetic and textu(r)al inquiry (deCosson, 2008; Leavy, 2009).

Lyric inquiry ‘‘as a research strategy challenges the fact/fiction dichotomy andoffers a form for the evocative presentation of data’’ (Leavy, 2009: 44). As a meth-odology, lyric inquiry is broad, allowing for multiple iterations of data, each of whichhas the potential for ‘‘addressing issues in research such as the qualities of our rela-tionships and the relevance and inclusiveness of our work’’ (Neilson, 2008: 94). Oneof the prominent goals of lyric inquiry is its ability to engage and impact the readerthrough resonance.

Liminality, ineffability, metaphorical thinking, embodied understanding, personal evoca-

tions, domestic and local understanding, and an embrace of the eros of language—the

desire to honor and experience phenomenon through words and to communicate this

experience to others (Neilson, 2008: 94).

My interest in poetic inquiry is twofold: first, the form of poetry is more accessibleto an audience and second, poetry allows the researcher to say something that trad-itional prose cannot. Often words fall short when talking about the process or outcomeof creative endeavors. It seems to me that by using poetry the researcher would be ableto mirror the creative process in their poems, using poetic devices to engage the readerin a sensory experience that mimics the experience of creation, essentially the toolmatches the job.

Another form of lyric inquiry I find interesting is textu(r)al representation andexploration of research. Similar to poetic inquiry in the use of poetic devices, tex-tu(r)al inquiry deals with building textures and written sculpture out of text. Whilenot explicitly described, de Cosson (2008) bases the concept of textu(r)al sculpture‘‘within the context of methodologies based in journaling and autoethnography’’ (deCosson, 2008: 277). In his writing, de Cosson (2008) attempts to situate textu(r)alwriting within the realm of a/r/tography while demonstrating the form and method of





inquiry in his writing. Using words, poetry, and different fonts, de Cosson createslanguage-based sculptures. An example can be found below (fonts have been adaptedon my computer to the best of my ability)

Just as we listen for a sound to emanate from a wind-chime

(all its potential awaiting but a breath of air) so too a methodology based in sculpture awaits the fluidity of forms

forming, its being becoming.

It is fluid always forming,

(re) forming once formed

always awaiting new trans(form)ations. (de Cosson, 2008: 280)

I really love that this method for working through and being with your dataembraces a process that creates meaning as you write it and later as you read it,with an additional layer of texture through font changes. The textual insertions allowthe reader and the researcher to really illustrate thinking, processing, and all themessy parts of research. ‘‘Ordinary time is the spaces between events, the parts ofa life that do not show up in photo albums or get told in stories’’ (de Cosson,2008: 282).

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Found poem from my comp questions

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Then and now

Stepping away from the comprehensive exam work allows me the opportunity tore-evaluate my thinking, to re-examine what I believe, and how those beliefs havechanged in the wake of my dissertation and graduation. While this section of mycomps served as a springboard for my methodological structure, what I learnedmost from this writing is how valuable time is in developing your thinking. As Ibegan to draft my dissertation, I realized that poetry and textual elements wouldplay a role in my writing, but that these were not in isolation from larger ideas.Poetry as a form of data representation allowed me to attempt to create a feeling,to evoke a guttural response from my reader. I came to think of poetry as a way ofrepresenting feelings about my data, rather than representing my data itself. In thissense, poetic devices serve the same goal as the images in this piece, to create anexperience for the reader and encourage them to engage my research in a differentspace than traditional academic prose often allows. In my response to questiontwo, I spend some time discussing the idea that poetry is more accessible to audi-ences than traditional academic writing, but is it really? In thinking about thesestatements, I realize effectiveness or accessibility is not what pushed poetry into analternative space for me, rather poetry allowed me to capture the essence of anexperience and to express this essence in a nonlinear way. Poetry engages the readerin an aesthetic experience and much like looking at art, poetry encourages thereader to feel the words. The power of poetry as an art form representing researchand thinking is its ability to transform the writer and the reader.

In its irreplaceability, the work of art is no mere bearer of meaning – as if the meaning

could be transferred to another bearer. Rather the meaning of the work of art lies in

the fact that it is there . . . above all, this creation is not something that we can imagine

being deliberately made by someone (an idea that is still implied in the concept of the

work). Someone who has produced a work of art stands before the creation of his

hand in just the same way that anyone else does (Gadamer, 1986: 33).

The third question (on teaching the course ‘‘Art and theChild’’)


The language of art is not affected by the accidents of history that mark off different

modes of human speech. The power of music in particular to merge different individua-

lities in a common surrender, loyalty and inspiration, a power utilized in religion and in

warfare alike, testifies to the relative universality of the language of art. The differences

between English, French and German speech create barriers that are submerged when art

speaks (Dewey, 1934: 349).

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Maxine Greene (1995) writes extensively on the role of arts to arouse the sensesand encourages us ‘‘to experience art as a way of understanding’’ (Greene, 1995:149). While this does not directly assert that art is a language, it does speak volumesabout the arts as an alternate way of communicating, and thus knowing. Being withart and creating art opens up new spaces for understanding. Through artful engage-ment with research, the researcher is able to come to new understandings. Just as artseducation engenders a school community of wide-awakeness and awareness, so doesliving an artful life and engaging in artful research. My idea of illuminated experience,transforming the mundane into the lasting, is supported by a conception of artfulliving. I propose Greene’s (1995) understanding of art education’s role in schoolsas a parallel argument for art as a source of qualitative expression of experience andthereby a viable medium for research. Through increased awareness, attention to theunnoticed, engagement in experience, and exploration of unexplored paths, we cometo know more. Having the ability to teach others to imagine things in a different wayis crucial to educative processes. Having the ability to evaluate this development iscrucial as a research process. Through the use of art as a language, I believe I canfoster an appreciation and acknowledgement of multiple ways of knowing, and moreimportantly see from multiple vantage points when and how this knowing occurs.





Journal entry 4: Process

I am in awe of process. As an artist I findthat my biggest insights come in themoments where I am wrapped up inwhat I am doing. This question forcedme to really examine my process oflearning and teaching, to look closelyat what I value and why I value it.Process is the place where wisdomemerges from, and for me the processof creating artwork is the space I ammost comfortable in. I want to make art-work about this process of writing mycomps . . . but I am struggling with whatto make. I keep thinking of books.Books are so much a part of this processof writing, they surround me always . . . -with APA citations floating through myhead constantly as I navigate throughmy day. But what kind of book tomake? What is this journey like? I keepreturning to the story of Jacob’s ladderfrom my childhood, faced with an insur-mountable task, much like Jacob. Thisprocess is like climbing Jacob’s ladder.Maybe I will make Jacob’s ladder book-s . . . these books remind me of this jour-ney. How when you turn them theyreconfigure themselves and how theyare so fluid and changing. They arelinear but not, changing but constant. Idon’t know what to make my booksabout. Do I use new thoughts andideas or do I find words from mycomps to include on the pages? MaybeI could use the poem I wrote earlier forclass? The one inspired by my Compquestions? I could create visuals of thepoem’s lines on the pages of the book.But then what? Is that enough? Whoreally cares . . . I just want to capturethis journey, these moments, mythoughts and ideas.

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Then and now

What I have come to understand about the comps process is that the value of theexperience lies in its ability to inspire creation. The comps process afforded me theopportunity to allow my lived experiences as a graduate student to fuel an inwardfacing light that then reverberates back and lands on the page. The pages of mycomprehensive exams became illuminated not just by what I was experiencing on amicrolevel through my reading or thinking, but also on a macrolevel. For the firsttime in my academic career, I granted myself permission to engage in art making,writing, and questioning that was directed inward, and through this introspection Iwas able to push outward in my formal writing for the exam. This comps processbegan an experiential reaction. Through the task of recording, I documented myexperience with the questions, allowing an inner light to project itself outward.Now that I am sitting on the outside of this experience, with both time and dis-tance, these questions and answers become more than just a documentation ofexperience—they are somehow transformed into a much more important thing. Ihave returned to it from a new angle, a new perspective. This arts-based explor-ation has allowed me to re-visit, re-examine, and re-search my ideas. With thisdialogue now beginning, I see new light emerging, encouraging me to manipulatethese lights in different ways and take new understandings away from the processof completing my comprehensive exams (Scott Shields, 2014).

The fourth question (on the ‘‘pedagogical life’’ of the visualjournal)

From my notebook





Excerpt from question 4 response

illumination (n.)

late 14c., ‘‘spiritual enlightenment,’’ from Latin illuminationem (nominative

illuminatio), . . . ‘‘to throw into light, make bright, light up;’’ (Harper, 2012)

I saved this section for the end, partly in passive avoidance of the topic and partlybecause I did not know how to start it. So again I sought out the origins of the wordillumination. ‘‘Spiritual enlightenment . . . to throw into light, make bright, light up’’(Harper, 2012). These phrases are powerful, mystical even; the spiritual undertone ofthe definition moved me to search inward for understanding. As a child I attendedQuaker meetings; before you stop reading, I promise to not get all preachy! My fatherwas raised Quaker, as was I. A central tenant of the Quaker tradition is light, as is myconception of the visual journal. So while you have read about light in the visualjournal in my other questions, you may not know about light in the Quaker sense.The doctrine of the inner light is what has kept me connected to the Society of Friendsfor so many years. Quakers believe that within each of us is a light, we are born withthis light; however, not all lights project the same and not everyone chooses to engagetheir light. The goal of spirituality is to nurture your light and the way to nurture yourlight is through experience. This inner light has two purposes, one to distinguishbetween good and evil, empowering you with choice, while the other is to bring toyour own consciousness the unity of humanity. Through the nurturing of this light, thepower of spirituality is realized in a state of becoming more than what you were andthrough this becoming your light grows. In Quakerism, the goal of spirituality is anilluminated soul. Through a combination of nurturing your inner light and an aware-ness of the unifying existence of humanity, you are always constantly becoming(Dandelion, 2007; Blackmar, n.d.).

Then and now

My fourth question was the hardest, not hard in the way mountain climbing orliterature reviews are hard, but hard in the way getting off the couch to do thedishes when all you want to do is watch TV is hard. I was exhausted and over-whelmed and had been given a question I did not know how to answer. But in thisquestion I discovered more about myself, this process and this current project thanI had in any other. What is interesting about the comps process is not only thatlearning has occurred in the answers I bound and submitted to my committee, butrather that the most valuable learning is occurring now. I have learned aboutmyself as a researcher and artist. I have challenged myself to find ways to bringthe worlds of my art making and my scholarly writing together. This question iswhere my concept of the Jacob’s ladder really came full circle.

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u





Journal entry 5: The book and the defense

This last question really pushed me towant to do more with my ideas. I’vestarted making this book, I had to makeabout two before I got the format right,but now that it is right it is SOOO cool! Iused this beautiful batik fabric and col-ored paper to create the individualpanels, then I used vellum to create theindividual images that coincide with thelines of my first poem (the one inspiredby Leggo). I have divided the poem soevery other line is on each side of thebook, that way the book creates a newversion of the poem each time you flipthe pages. I really think mirroring thecomps process is important in this book.I may make more? I’m not quite sure. Iknow that I will be creating several differ-ent books to display. So on top of creat-ing the book and doing this writing, I willbe showing the artifacts of this journey atan art-based research exhibit. I’m still onthe fence about how to do this. Since Ihave just finished my defense, I reallywant there to be a collaborative elementthat reflects the defense process . . . I wasso inspired by the collaborative energy inthe room when I defended my comps.Even though my questions were far fromperfect, the group embraced the conversa-tion and gave me such good feedback. I’mthinking of trying some found poems atthe presentation? The process of creatinga found poem is so much like the defen-se . . . all the different ideas and perspec-tives coming together to createsomething that never existed before weall came together to talk. All thismaking and thinking and collaboratinghas transformed the experience of compsinto something so much more thananswering four questions . . .

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The Exhibition

(scan the QR code to find online or go to http://youtu.be/jTB2qb-1u7Q)

Then and now

Taking the opportunity to look back on my comprehensive exams has allowed meto think critically about what I learned and how this could impact how othersapproach their own engagment in the comprehensive exam process. Within thescope of an 8 week period, I found myself moving from feelings of intense loneli-ness to penetrating insight, pushing me toward who I am as an artist and aresearcher. In looking back at my exam responses, the visual artifacts, and theculminating books and exhibition, I realize the key to my transformation wasnot in the exam questions or responses but in their ability to move me from astudent to a researcher.

Comprehensive exams, much like academic writing, tend to follow a formula forsuccess. I see this piece as pushing back on what that formula looks like. Byjuxtaposing my own comprehensive exam responses with journal excerpts, art,video, and reflective writing, I wanted to create an experience for both myselfand the reader. While I have had the opportunity to think reflectively about myown experience as a graduate student, I also hope to also inspire dialogue amongother academics about this process and how to best engage in it. As a seminalexperience for every graduate student, I believe it is important to think carefullyabout how we frame and engage our students in this culminating exam. While theprocess has a clear and useful place in the graduate experience, I wonder: is thislinear trajectory adequate? What more could graduate students learn through anintense and focused documentation and reflection on the experience? Is the goal ofthe exam the 80 page product, bound and submitted for review, or should theprocess play a more central role in the experience? I encourage graduate studentsto consider documenting their own experience during the exam process. Then con-sider letting these artifacts rest, pack them away in a box for a few months, untilone day you go back and rediscover them. Look back over your experience and seewhat core understandings you can extract from your meta-reflection. Through thisarts-informed exploration, I suggest the power of this process is not in the answersfervently typed on a computer screen at two in the morning, but rather in thecollective experience and opportunities for personal growth.



http://youtu.be/jTB2qb-1u7Q



Note

1. In full, these were the four questions set:

1) Discuss your interest in visual journaling. Drawing on Greene, Dewey, and Gadamermake a case for why you believe visual journaling is a unique form of engagement. Thenconsider how philosophical hermeneutics might inform your practitioner research design.

In other words, since you will be studying your own teaching of pre-service teachers’ useof visual journaling, how does philosophical hermeneutics support practitioner research?As part of your response, begin sketching, even tentatively, a methodological approach(e.g., research purpose, selecting participants, data collection, etc.) that outlines how you

might conceptualize visual journaling as both a method for data collection and analysisand the focus of your study.2) For your dissertation you are interested in studying the visual journal as an arts-based

research method and as a pedagogical tool for facilitating illuminated experience. Whatare some methods for analyzing the visual journal as a form of data? In your response,first discuss the visual journal from an epistemological perspective, drawing on the phil-

osophy of Dewey, Gadamer, and anyone else you deem relevant, perhaps scholars writingwithin arts-based inquiry. Then explore methods for analyzing the visual journal, givingan assessment of the merits and disadvantages of different approaches, using relevantliterature to support your response.

3) Discuss the philosophy you have developed that guides your teaching of ARED 3050:Art and the Child, summarizing the historical and theoretical influences that have con-tributed to this philosophy. Why is the visual journal of particular relevance to this class?

Be sure to use the existing literature on reflection within education in general and arteducation in particular to support this discussion. What special role do you see reflectionplaying within your approach to ARED 3050? How does it embody your philosophy? In

particular, how do you see it contributing to what you term ‘‘illuminated experience?’’4) This comprehensive exam question has to do with the ‘‘pedagogical life’’ of the visualjournal. As such, this particular question has three parts that are separate yet intimately

connected: (1) how and why, when the visual journal is conceived of and used as a visualresearch method, is it a shared experience? (2) How and why, when the visual journal isconceived of and attended to as visual data, is it a shared construction? (3) How isilluminated experience a shared experience?

References

Barone T and Eisner EW (2012) Arts Based Research. Thousand Oaks: Sage Publications.Barrett E and Bolt B (eds) (2010) Practice as Research: Approaches to Creative Arts Enquiry.

New York: IB Tauris.

Blackmar MK (n.d.) Inner light. Available at: www2.gol.com/users/quakers/inner_light.htm(accessed 2 January 2012).

Dandelion P (2007) An Introduction to Quakerism. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

de Cosson A (2008) Textu(r)al walking/writing through sculpture. In: Knowles JG and ColeAL (eds) Handbook of the Arts in Qualitative Research. Los Angeles: Sage, pp.277–287.

Dewey J (1910) How We Think. Mineola: Dover Publications.

Dewey J (1934) Art as Experience. New York: Minton Balch & Company.Eisner EW (2008) Art and knowledge. In: Knowles JG and Cole AL (eds) Handbook of the

Arts in Qualitative Research. Los Angeles: Sage, pp.3–12.

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www2.gol.com/users/quakers/inner_light.htm



Gadamer H (1986) The Relevance of the Beautiful and Other Essays. New York: Cambridge

University Press.Gadamer H (2004) Truth and Method, 2nd edn. London: Continuum.Greene M (1995) Releasing the Imagination: Essays on Education, the Arts, and Social

Change. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.Grondin J (2002) Gadamer’s basic understanding of understanding. In: Dostal RJ (ed.) The

Cambridge Companion to Gadamer. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp.36–51.Harper D (2012). Online etymology dictionary. Available at: www.etymonline.com/

index.php (accessed 3 January 2013).Leavy P (2009)Method Meets Art: Arts-Based Research Practice. New York: Guilford Press.McNiff S (1998) Art-Based Research. London: Jessica Kingsley.

Neilson L (2008) Lyric inquiry. In: Knowles JG and Cole AL (eds) The Handbook of the Artsin Qualitative Research. Los Angeles: Sage, pp.93–102.

Richards MC (1964) Centering in Pottery, Poetry, and the Person. Middletown: Wesleyan

University Press.Scott Shields S (2014) In pursuit of hermeneutic visual journaling: Conceptualizing the visual

journal as both a mode and method of inquiry. PhD Thesis, University of Georgia.Sullivan G (2010) Art Practice as Research: Inquiry in Visual Arts. Thousand Oaks: Sage.

Author biography

Sara Scott Shields is a recent graduate from the University of Georgia with a PhDin Art focused in art education. She is currently assistant professor of art educationat the University of Florida. Her research interests revolve around arts-basedapproaches to both research and learning, with a specific focus on arts informedqualitative research methodologies, visual thinking strategies in higher educationcurriculum and pedagogy, and teacher/researcher identity development.



www.etymonline.com/index.php

www.etymonline.com/index.php


Like climbing Jacob’s ladder: An art-based exploration of the comprehensive exam process

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