Polyvocal Poetic Play with Dialogue: Co-creativity in Self-Study Writing

Pithouse-Morgan, Kathleen; Samaras, Anastasia P.

Abstract

We are teacher educators who facilitate and participate in transdisciplinary self-study research communities in our respective home countries of South Africa and the United States of America. Our comparable experiences first brought us together in 2012, intending to learn from each other’s work in facilitating these communities. Digital technologies made possible new, virtual ways of connecting the projects we are enacting in transdisciplinary groups. This work is situated within our evolving conceptualization of polyvocal self-study research. In this chapter, we explore why and how we use and develop literary-arts inspired approaches in composing creative accounts of our scholarly work and analysis. We exemplify our self-study writing process to serve as a resource for others as we consider impetus and impact – both for and beyond the self – as we ask, “What difference can poetry and dialogue make to self-study scholarship?” Taken as a whole, our chapter illustrates the generativity of making time and space for arts-inspired playful writing. Significantly, the chapter highlights the need for universities to acknowledge and support such faculty efforts in methodological innovativeness. In that manner, faculty will be encouraged to move the field forward by exploring unanswered questions with new methods rather than relying only on traditional methods and replicating what others have already discovered. We offer our learning as an invitation to others to consider forming co-creative virtual spaces for exploratory writing that can contribute to changing the status quo for professional knowledge and practice on a global level.

Citation

Pithouse-Morgan, K., & Samaras, A. P. (2021). Polyvocal Poetic Play with Dialogue: Co-creativity in Self-Study Writing. In J. Kitchen (Ed.), Writing as a Method for the Self-Study of Practice (137-154). Springer (part of Springer Nature). https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-16-2498-8_8

• Online Publication Date: Jan 1, 2022
• Publication Date: 2021
• Deposit Date: Sep 22, 2022
• Publicly Available Date: Jan 1, 2024
• Publisher: Springer (part of Springer Nature)
• Pages: 137-154
• Series Title: Self-Study of Teaching and Teacher Education Practices
• Series ISSN: 1875-3620
• Book Title: Writing as a Method for the Self-Study of Practice
• ISBN: 9789811624971
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-16-2498-8_8
• Keywords: transdisciplinarity; self-study research; polyvocality; poetry; dialogue; arts-based research
• Public URL: https://nottingham-repository.worktribe.com/output/9898164
• Publisher URL: https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-981-16-2498-8_8