67
Authors’ Note: Please address correspondence to Lisa La Jevic, Pennsylvania State
University, Art Education Office, 207 Arts Cottage, University Park, PA 16802-2905: e-mail:
lml150@psu.edu.
A/r/tography as an Ethics of
Embodiment
Visual Journals in Preservice
Education
Lisa La Jevic
Stephanie Springgay
Pennsylvania State University, University Park
A/r/tography is an arts-based research methodology that inquires into educational
phenomenon through artistic and aesthetic means. A/r/tographical research
engages in pedagogical inquiry where the distinctions between researcher and
researched become complicated, responsive, and undone. A/r/tography, the
authors argue, develops the relationship between embodiment and ethics as a
being-with. In this manner, ethics does not refer to the rationalist acquisition of
knowledge or moral codes that advocate particular bodily behaviors but instead
suggests that participating in a network of relations lends itself to gestures of non-
violence. This article extends previous writings on a/r/tographical inquiry
through a particular examination of the use of visual journals in a preservice
teacher education course. Through the intertextuality of image and word, visual
journals enable teachers and students to make meaning and inquire creatively
into educational issues in a space that respects self and other.
Keywords: a/r/tography; ethics; embodiment; arts education; visual journals;
teacher education
A
/r/tography is an arts-based research methodology that inquires into edu-
cational phenomenon through artistic and aesthetic means (Springgay,
Irwin, & Kind, 2005). Yet a/r/tography is more than a mode of scholarly
inquiry or a method of representing research through artistic means, it is an
embodied query into the interstitial spaces between art making, researching,
and teaching. A/r/tographical research engages in pedagogical inquiry where
the distinctions between researcher and researched become complicated,
responsive, and undone (Kind, 2006).
Qualitative Inquiry
Volume 14 Number 1
January 2008 67-89
© 2008 Sage Publications
10.1177/1077800407304509
http://qix.sagepub.com
hosted at
http://online.sagepub.com
at PENNSYLVANIA STATE UNIV on November 16, 2008 http://qix.sagepub.com Downloaded from