ABSTRACT Title of disertation: A CARTOGRAPHIC EXPLORATION OF COLABORATIVE INQUIRY AS A PROFESIONAL DEVELOPMENT MODEL FOR ART EDUCATORS Leslie L. Gates, Doctor of Philosophy, 2011 Disertation directed by: Profesor Linda R. Vali and Asistant Profesor Connie North Department of Curriculum and Instruction This disertation draws on a number of cartographical proceses to explore the particularities and circumstances of eight visual art teachers engaged in a yearlong collaborative inquiry within a formal, federaly funded profesional development program for arts educators. Art educators, many of whom lack content area colleagues within their schools, often work separated by geographical distance and may not have opportunities to regularly engage in profesional development opportunities that are simultaneously content-specific, collaborative, and related to their working contexts. By examining the ways in which collaborative inquiry might provide such an opportunity, this study presents a number of chalenges that emerged for the participants in this study, including: 1) Participants? socio-cultural norms and a desire to belong to a group that could offer the collegial support absent in many of their schools led participants to downplay their diferences and suppres conflict for the sake of inclusion in the group; 2) Teachers? participation in a collaborative inquiry group operating within a funded profesional development program provided them with profesional opportunities and technological equipment, yet offered litle support as they atempted to integrate the technology into their clasrooms and to negotiate their sudden visibility within their teaching contexts; and 3) The researcher, acting as a participant facilitator within the group, unintentionaly asumed a neutral stance in an efort to negotiate her competing desire for a close relationship with participants with her desire to disrupt asumptions and trouble practices for the sake of profesional learning and growth. A number of ?openings? may alow art educators to continue to engage in, create, and advocate for arts-based collaborative inquiry opportunities in a current socio-political climate that threatens such opportunities. For instance, art educators? need for collegial support and the existence of online networks and free internet-based software provides both a motive and means for geographicaly separated art educators to connect. Future research that more specificaly addreses the chalenges of providing art educators with collaborative profesional development opportunities can build on the particular description and identification of chalenges this study offers. A CARTOGRAPHIC EXPLORATION OF COLABORATIVE INQUIRY AS A PROFESIONAL DEVELOPMENT MODEL FOR ART EDUCATORS by Leslie Lynn Gates Disertation submited to the Faculty of the Graduate School of the University of Maryland, College Park in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy 2011 Advisory Commite: Asistant Profesor Connie North, Co-Chair Profesor Linda Vali, Co-Chair Dr. Susan Hendricks Profesor Bety Malen Asociate Profesor John O?Flahavan ?Copyright by Leslie Lynn Gates 2011 !""! Acknowledgements I would like to extend my gratitude to the many people who have inspired, helped, and guided me throughout this proces. Thank you Linda and Connie, for valuing artistic proceses and encouraging me towards engaging in them as part of my research. Thank you also for providing criticism like rain; gentle enough to nourish my growth without destroying my roots (analogy borrowed from Frank A. Clark). Thank you Sam, who supported this efort with love in many forms. Thank you Evelyn Adele, for showing me the beauty of life and the grace of God. Wanting to spend more time with you was fantastic motivation for finishing this work. Thank you Mom, Dad, Sam and Lesa, for believing this was important and for watching Evelyn while I worked. I always worked in peace knowing she was in such good hands. Thank you Mary Elizabeth, for being so close and for sharing so much. Thank you UMD clasmates, for finding space in your busy lives to read and discuss yet another iteration of my ideas. Thank you to the participants in this study, whom I now cal friends. Your laughter made this proces a joy. !"""! Table of Contents Chapter 1: Research as Cartography ? Initial Maping............................................................1 Background..................................................................................................................................2 Rationale: Profesional Development for Art Educators as a Complex Problem......................6 Tension: Content-Specific/Job-Embeded..............................................................................7 Tension: Colaborative/Job-embedded..................................................................................11 Tension: Colaborative/Content-Specific..............................................................................13 Purpose and Significance..........................................................................................................15 Context of the Study...................................................................................................................20 Chapter 2: Preparation for Map-Making..................................................................................25 Coverage....................................................................................................................................25 Theoretical and Historical Underpinings of Profesional Development................................30 Assuming the Language of the Field..........................................................................................32 The Structure and Design of Alphabet Soup..............................................................................35 Schol-based Learning Communities....................................................................................38 Interdisciplinary Learning Comunities in Schols.............................................................42 Non Schol-based Learning Communities............................................................................47 Disciplinary Learning Comunities.....................................................................................50 Reconsidering the Categories....................................................................................................57 Reconsidering Methods..............................................................................................................58 Profesional Development Research with/in Art Education......................................................63 Implications for this Study.........................................................................................................69 Chapter 3: Cartographic Tols and Their Uses........................................................................75 My Hand....................................................................................................................................75 Personal Factors - ?I always use purple. It?s my favorite color.?..........................................76 Philosophical Factors - ?Wel, not al people are the same color.?.......................................77 Practical Factors - ?This gren was the one in the box.?.......................................................81 The Research Context as Surface..............................................................................................88 The Research Methods as Tools..............................................................................................101 Group Metings...................................................................................................................102 Interviews............................................................................................................................104 Documents and Artifacts.....................................................................................................114 Field Notes and Researcher Memos....................................................................................115 !"#! Data Interpretation...............................................................................................................117 Data Re/presentation...........................................................................................................124 Conclusion...............................................................................................................................126 Chapter 4: Mapping the Chalenges.........................................................................................127 The Chalenge of Labels..........................................................................................................127 The Chalenge of Location and Position.................................................................................151 Locating Inequities..............................................................................................................154 Perceptions of Position........................................................................................................163 Hiding Positions..................................................................................................................169 Shifting Positions................................................................................................................174 The Chalenge of Orientation..................................................................................................180 Coordinates of Colaboration..............................................................................................181 The Chalenge of Overlap........................................................................................................216 Neutrality as a Negotiated Stance........................................................................................220 In/visible Self......................................................................................................................225 The View from Here............................................................................................................239 Chapter 5: Searching for Openings..........................................................................................252 Opening: Our Desire for Conection and Our Impetus for Creativity...................................255 Opening: Technology that Builds Community and Suports Colaboration...........................258 Opening: This Research as One Acount................................................................................259 Future Research.......................................................................................................................265 Epilogue.......................................................................................................................................268 Appendix A.................................................................................................................................269 Appendix B.................................................................................................................................270 Appendix C.................................................................................................................................271 Appendix D.................................................................................................................................273 Appendix E.................................................................................................................................274 References...................................................................................................................................276 !#! List of Tables Tables Table 1. Studies of learning communities arranged by location and group composition.38 Table 2. Curry's analysis of interdisciplinary group membership....................................43 Table 3. Characteristics of disciplinary learning communities represented in five studies ...................................................................................................................................52 Table 4. Current teaching asignment and years of K-12 teaching experience of Blue CIG members....................................................................................................................93 Table 5. Blue CIG metings..............................................................................................94 Table 6. An overview of the 20 interviews with individual participants........................105 Table 7. An overview of the three group interviews......................................................105 Table 8. Group-defined tasks for our work betwen March 5 and May 14, 2010, created on March 5, 2010....................................................................................................147 Table 9. Base teacher salary for 2009-2010 school year in districts represented by members of our collaborative inquiry group..........................................................158 Table 10. Number of hours students receive art instruction in districts represented by members of our collaborative inquiry group..........................................................160 !#"! List of Figures Figures Figure 1. ?Archipelago.? Artwork by Mat Borchert, 2009...............................................4 Figure 2. Inherent tensions among three traits of high-quality profesional development when applied to K-12 art educators............................................................................7 Figure 3. Conceptual space of research that explores the relationships betwen collaborative inquiry and three qualities of high-quality PD for K-12 art educators. ...................................................................................................................................16 Figure 4. Visual representation of the filters used in order to narrow broad fields of literature into aspects most relevant for this study....................................................29 Figure 5. Types of profesional development experienced by Sabol's (2006) survey respondents...............................................................................................................66 Figure 6. The geographical realities of this study............................................................87 Figure 7. Series of factors influencing ArtsEdPD applicants' placement into one of six collaborative inquiry groups.....................................................................................90 Figure 8. The transparent layers of data interpretation...................................................119 Figure 9. "Clamp." Artwork by Leslie Gates, 2009.......................................................120 Figure 10. Postcard from September 28, 2009...............................................................122 Figure 11. Our collaborative inquiry group list of characteristics and elements of collaboration...........................................................................................................182 Figure 12. Documentation of our collaborative inquiry group's instalation, exhibited May 14, 2010 at the Regional Education Agency..................................................185 Figure 13. Artifact of our group discussion about methods of exploring our question from our meting on November 13, 2009.......................................................................209 Figure 14. Documentation of my proces creating a three-headed doll.........................217 Figure 15. Photograph of the chair I created for inclusion in our group's collaborative instalation...............................................................................................................219 Figure 16. Postcard from September 25, 2009...............................................................226 Figure 17. Image I chose to represent me in the group collage we constructed during our first collaborative inquiry group meting...............................................................240 Figure 18. Postcard from October 6, 2009......................................................................245 !#""! Figure 19. Postcard from March 18, 2010......................................................................247 Figure 20. Postcard from September 23, 2009...............................................................254 Figure 21. Kim Dingle, United Shapes of America (Maps Drawn by Las Vegas Tenagers), 1991, Oil on wood, 48 x 72 inches.....................................................267 Figure A1. Initial sketches of the tensions I identified when atempting to envision profesional development for art educators that met certain characteristics of high- quality profesional development ???????????????????269 !$! Chapter 1: Research as Cartography ? Initial Mapping The creation of metaphors has always been central to my artistic practice. Metaphors alow me to make sense of the world and provide possibilities for representing my ideas to a broader audience. Making meaning and representing ideas are also central tasks of a researcher, and my fondnes of metaphor has alowed me to se my research as an extension of my artistic practice. I use cartography as a metaphorical proces for this research because a cartographer negotiates both visual and textual elements to represent a space. I have found that my natural inclination to interact with information through imagery is in constant negotiation with the current language-based descriptions present (and required) in much of educational research (Eme, 2001). Eisner states that arts-based research begins with the recognition that the arts as wel as the sciences can help us understand the world in which we live?Arts-based research is a way to ensure that science-based research alone does not monopolize how educational practice can be studied or what needs to be done to describe it (as cited in Wilis, 2008, p. 51). My choices to use arts-based research methods and to conceptualize this research as a cartographical practice alow me to present this disertation in both visual and writen forms. I began to asociate my role as a researcher to that of a cartographer when I started making physical and conceptual ?maps? to understand and ilustrate the landscape of profesional development in art education. In this introductory chapter, I present my initial mapping (e.g., conceptual framework) that served to orient my research. More !%! specificaly, I describe the background, rationale, context, and significance of this journey, as wel as the commitments and lenses I bring to this work. Background My lived experience as an elementary art teacher was very much like being an island. As the only art teacher in the building, I was physicaly isolated from others like me. The emotional isolation was so real that I initiated wekly metings with an art teacher at a neighboring school. In addition to being an island in ?form,? I was also an island in ?function.? I was unprepared for the reality that students and staf saw my art clasroom as a vacation destination. Although many reform eforts have atempted to promote collaboration and disolve the autonomous and isolated nature of teaching, many teachers work in isolation (DuFour, 2011). Art educators in elementary setings, who are likely to be working as the sole teacher in their discipline within their school seting, commonly describe their practice as isolated (Barret, 2006; Chapman, 2005). To further acentuate felings of isolation, some elementary art teachers teach in more than one school and thus rotate among a number of communities. The art educator?s inconsistent presence in any one school may chalenge the establishment of consistent and supportive collegial relationships that potentialy lesen felings of isolation. The culture of isolation in schools (Litle, 2007) leaves many teachers feling that they are, in a sense, islands. Working from the idea of an island, and acknowledging Clandinin and Connely?s (1995) metaphor of ?profesional knowledge landscapes,? I have found the geographic metaphor of an archipelago helpful in describing the field of art education, and as a means to understand the tensions betwen isolation and !&! collaboration related to profesional development for art educators. I located my initial research wonderings (and thus began my cartography) when considering the paralels betwen an archipelago and the field of art education. Gonzalez (2008) recently used the metaphor of an archipelago, a group of islands within an expanse of water, to describe feminist constructions of individual and collective identity. Based on Gonzalez?s work, I chalenge the idea that we can discuss the field of art education as if art educators are a homogenous group. The term ?art educators? is complex and describes a diverse group of individuals. Just as the limits of an archipelago are not fixed, the border that defines who is and is not an art educator is not imediately clear. For instance, artists-in-residence, studio art faculty in departments of higher education, and elementary clasroom teachers may al consider themselves art educators. Seing the field of art education as an archipelago also chalenges easily defined borders and promotes a definition of art education that alows for diversity and intersectionality within a collective identity. In other words, understanding the field of art education as an archipelago chalenges an asumption that everyone who considers herself or himself an ?art educator? shares identical desires, interests, and needs, since variation is also true of islands within an archipelago. Each island is uniquely shaped and has a unique geographical position. Within the archipelago metaphor, individual islands also exemplify the physical separation of art teachers, but downplay the physical separation when we consider the islands as a group. The islands within an archipelago drift and move, which further chalenges the modern notion that identity has stable borders that are fixed and static. Rather, the islands are free to float. Individual art teacher identities also evolve and drift to diferent !'! locations within the field of art education. My space within the art education archipelago has drifted from K-12 teaching into a Ph.D. program and new work supporting profesional development. As I drift, my proximity (not only geographicaly, but also pedagogicaly and emotionaly) to other islands changes. The collective identity of the archipelago alows for those of us who fulfil multiple and/or simultaneous roles to stil self-identify as art educators. I have found a stylized image of an archipelago (Figure 1) helpful when atempting to visualize what an archipelago of art education might look like. The sections of islands and the variation in the borders maintain a sense of visual unity because of the artist?s use of line and repeated shapes. In other words, despite a significant amount of variation, the image appears unified. Figure 1. ?Archipelago.? Artwork by Mat Borchert, 2009. !(! The archipelago provides a means for thinking about the general cartography of art education. Yet, the collective and individual aspects of the archipelago metaphor paralel a tension experienced by many K-12 art educators concerning their profesional development. The isolated feling I experienced in my art clasroom continued even when I found myself among groups of teachers in profesional development setings. For instance, I remember siting among the rest of the elementary school faculty listening to an ?expert? hired by our administration to present various strategies for diferentiating math lesons. As the only art educator in the school, I was used to profesional development that administrators designed without me in mind. At the end of the presentation, the speaker asked if anyone had questions, and a veteran first grade teacher stood up. She looked directly at the principal. With language and a posture that communicated that she was speaking on behalf of everyone, she declared that this was the most relevant profesional development that we had received in years. She, apparently, had not considered those of us who did not teach mathematics in her declaration about ?we.? Based on this experience and after reading the literature presented in the following chapter, I became interested in researching the profesional development of K-12 art educators. This disertation presents a thematic cartography 1 of the art education archipelago by furthering an understanding of the profesional development experiences of K-12 teachers. The following sections describe my rationale for selecting a specific approach to profesional development for K-12 art teachers, and identify the framework and !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! $ !)*+,-."/!/-0.120-3*4!"5!,-36,-7"82!"8!5+0#"/+!.1!-!9.43"/-:4;!2+120-3*"/-:10!-!53+/">"/!-?="+8/+@!A!B0".+!30",-0":4!>10!-8!-?="+8/+!"8.+0+5.+=!"8!.*+!"8.+05+/."18!1>!-0.! +=?/-."18!-8=!301>+55"18-:!=+#+:13,+8.@!)*+!C.*+,+D!1>!.*"5!/-0.120-3*4!"5!E6$%!-0.!+=?/-.105@! !F! research questions that served as my compas, providing me with an initial sense of direction. Rationale: Profesional Development for Art Educators as a Complex Problem Profesional development (PD) research describes the characteristics of high- quality PD, and recommends PD that is job-embedded, collaborative, and consists of relevant content (Birman, Desimone, Porter, & Garet, 2000; Garet, Porter, Desimone, Birman, & Yoon, 2001; Hawley & Vali, 2007; Kennedy, M. M., 1998; Richardson, 2003). I contend that of the many characteristics of high-quality PD, these three specific traits create dynamic tensions for those atempting to provide art educators with high- quality profesional development opportunities. These tensions overlap conceptualy and are complex in nature. In an atempt to ilustrate the complexity and interaction, I began a reflexive proces of manipulating shapes and words (se the initial sketches in Appendix A). I later realized these eforts were an early atempt to ?map? an area of the profesional development landscape within art education. The following map (Figure 3) includes simple definitions for collaborative, job-embedded, and content-specific profesional development within three large overlapping circles. I sought to define the ways in which these circles typicaly overlap in acordance with profesional development literature and my own experience. In the paragraphs that follow, I use the tensions to demonstrate the complexity of providing art educators with profesional development that simultaneously exhibits these three characteristics. !G! Figure 2. Inherent tensions among three traits of high-quality profesional development when applied to K-12 art educators. 2 Tension: Content-Specific/Job-Embedded The current methods of ?top-down? PD, wherein administrators choose a topic and hire an ?expert? to present a one-time workshop to teachers, is stil prevalent in today?s schools (Kooy, 2009; Webster-Wright, 2009). Such PD may not create sufficient !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! % !A8!.*"5!>"2?0+;!A!-=13.!.*+!.+0,!-8=!/18/+3.!1>!C*"2*6H?-:".4!IJD!>01,!.*+!301>+5"18-:!=+#+:13,+8.! 5/*1:-05*"3!B".*!51,+!0+5+0#-."18;!81.!=+5"0"82!.1!30+5+8.!C*"2*6H?-:".4!IJD!-5!-!5.-."/!3*+81,+818! .*-.!5*1?:=!21!?8H?+5."18+=@! !K! opportunities for teachers to engage in content-specific profesional development. While some administrator-selected topics may be relevant to an entire faculty, others may not be of equal relevance. One likely factor determining the content of such experiences is administrators? felt need to improve the quality of reading and math instruction due to the current presure to increase student achievement scores in these areas. Conway, Hibbard, Albert, & Hourigan (2005) painted a picture of what job-embedded PD for arts educators looks like given the policy climate created by No Child Left Behind Act of 2002. They argue, ?Profesional development activities for al teachers have been largely geared toward the ?traditional? academic subject teachers, ignoring the diferent and sometimes unique needs of arts educators? (p. 4). This narrowing of PD content enforces a hierarchy of subjects (Robinson, 2006) and marginalizes profesional learning opportunities for teachers of other subjects, including art educators. This narrowing paralels current cuts in instructional time that further marginalize learning in the arts for K-12 students (McMurrer, 2008). While this policy climate likely limits the diversity of PD content in general, teachers of subject areas not tied to testing may find the content of their PD (e.g., diferentiated instruction in math) largely unrelated to the teaching and learning that takes place within their own clasrooms. Thus, school-based PD using a ?one size fits al? model is unlikely to met the recommended content-specific profesional development needs features for art educators. Other models of profesional development may help to mitigate the chalenge of providing art teachers with content-specific profesional development within their teaching contexts. For wel over a decade, PD scholarship has criticized the traditional !L! model of PD for its unclear relationship to profesional learning (Webster-Wright, 2009) and its inefectivenes to transform teacher practice (Borko, 2004; Fullan, 2007), and advocated for other approaches that involve teachers in the design and implementation of their profesional learning (Hawley & Vali, 1999). Inquiry-based and collaborative approaches to PD move away from the traditional approach; and both have gained support within recent scholarship (e.g., Yendol-Hoppey & Dana, 2009). Action research, for example, involves teachers in an inquiry proces for the purpose of investigating problems of practice that emerge in their clasrooms throughout the year. Unlike the traditional model of profesional development, inquiry-based approaches diferentiate PD based on individual teacher interests and acknowledge teacher?s agency to represent and define their own profesional learning (Webster-Wright, 2009). My experience working to support teacher learning tels me that when given the opportunity to articulate their own learning goals, teachers can quickly identify things that they would like to learn. However, the task of implementing an inquiry-based approach within a formal profesional development structure can be dificult. Administrators who atempt to use an inquiry-based approach to PD within their school must negotiate the benefits of teachers defining their own learning goals with other important learning goals that teachers may not articulate (Borko & Putnam, 1995; Hawley & Vali, 1999) and with external presure to standardize content in order to met acountability requirements (Fenwick, 2004). Alowing teachers to define and investigate their own learning goals is a logical way to diferentiate job-embedded profesional development based on individual teacher interests. However, this proces asumes a level of trust that may not be present betwen !$M! teachers and those responsible for designing the profesional development. Even when the goals are teacher-defined, ?in practice, school districts and supervisors sometimes exert intentional influence on these goals? (Fenwick, 2004, p. 265). The silencing of voices and promoting of certain lines and modes of inquiry create situations wherein inquiry ?may potentialy be co-opted and misinterpreted until it appears as frozen as the methods it was intended to replace? (Beiler & Thomas, 2009, p. 1033). In addition, districts that use teacher-directed inquiry as a profesional development model may lack adequate resources or personnel to appropriately support it. Instructional coaches or mentors can significantly enhance the learning experience for teachers, especialy when the coach is not also an evaluator (Fenwick, 2004). Currently, literacy and math coaches are in place throughout U.S. schools in an efort to improve teacher quality as wel as to raise student test scores. Data presented about district spending in five urban districts reveal large percentages of profesional development contract money spent on instructional coaches, mentors, and outside consultants (Miles, Odden, Fermanich, & Archibald, 2005). However, without political presure for increased student learning in the arts, it is unlikely the resources currently spent on literacy and math coaches wil be available for art educators. In Fenwick?s (2004) study of schools using inquiry as a profesional development model, administrators required every teacher to create a Teacher Profesional Growth Plan (TPGP). In some of the schools in the study, administrators provided time for teachers to dialogue about their various learning goals. When given this opportunity, a large majority of teachers chose to engage in discussion with colleagues about their own TPGPs. This finding supports the work of Kooy (2009) and Yendol-Hoppey and Dana !$$! (2009), who argue that teacher-directed inquiry is most powerful when it takes place within a community that provides opportunities for dialogic and relational learning. While an inquiry model is one potential means to provide art teachers with content-specific PD that is also job-embedded, providing teachers with opportunities (or requiring them) to collaborate may unintentionaly encourage art teachers who lack content area colleagues in their school to choose inquiry topics not specific to their content area in order to be beter understood by colleagues. In other words, school-based profesional development methods that involve collaboration may disuade art teachers from pursuing their content-specific interests that an individual inquiry model may have encouraged. The following section describes the tensions art teachers may experience when atempting to engage in collaborative profesional development with colleagues from other disciplines within their schools. Tension: Collaborative/Job-embedded PD models that involve teachers working together respond to the cal in the PD scholarship for teacher learning that is collaborative, sustained, and focused on student learning (Hawley & Vali, 2007; Richardson, 2003). The collaborative models use a number of terms to describe groups of teachers working together, including Profesional Learning Communities (PLCs), Profesional Learning Networks (PLNs), Collaborative Inquiry Groups (CIGs), and Critical Friend Groups (CFGs) among others. Learning communities can be organized (by teachers and/or administrators) in many ways: teachers might be grouped by grade level, or subject mater, or assigned to a focus group, or to an interdisciplinary group. These groups usualy involve teachers collaboratively !$%! viewing student work while planning, implementing, and reworking asesments of student learning. Atempts to create more collaborative PD opportunities within schools have not sufficiently resolved the lack of content-specific profesional development art educators experience within their school contexts. However, I do not claim that art educators cannot be meaningfully involved in school-wide improvement. Certainly, an art educator may be very commited to the overal school goals and should be expected to participate in and contribute to PD opportunities related to the school at large. Because art educators share students with other teachers, they wil likely contribute substantialy to any asigned group. Stewart and Davis (2007) list art teachers? creativity, knowledge of art materials, and the relative flexibility of an art teacher?s curriculum as advantages when working with teachers of other subjects. However, placing art teachers on interdisciplinary teams also has disadvantages. The disadvantage of having an art teacher on the team is that this configuration can create scheduling dificulties, because administrators often create common planning time for a grade level team by scheduling students for art, music, or physical education clases. Thus the art educator, even as an official member of the team, is often absent from team metings. These scheduling dificulties create a situation where art teachers are not able to participate in al aspects of the team activities (Stewart & Davis, 2007). Additionaly, because the arts are almost never the focus of the profesional development, art teachers may not experience content-specific profesional learning when asigned to groups organized by grade level or another subject mater. For instance, if an administrator has given a group the task of improving the fourth grade students? !$&! writing, a visual art teacher may help the team to identify weakneses in a piece of student writing. However, the fourth grade teachers are not then also responsible to provide fedback on a fourth grade student?s sketchbook. Districts that always require art teachers to take part in learning communities organized by grade level (or perpetualy asign them to a focus or interdisciplinary group) with tasks related to other content areas create situations wherein the art teacher is unlikely to receive the content-based profesional development that is regularly aforded to other members of collaborative teacher groups. Thus, art teachers who desire profesional development that is both collaborative and content-specific are likely to engage in PD opportunities outside of their schools. Tension: Collaborative/Content-Specific In general, the content of PD opportunities offered within school districts are not meting the stated desires of visual art educators (Charland, 2006; Conway et al., 2005; Sabol, 2006). Sabol?s (2006) survey of the members of the National Art Education Association (NAEA) revealed that art teachers who desire to atend profesional development outside their school district run into the additional obstacles, such as distance and time, both of which create the need for funding. More specificaly, Sabol reported that 17% of art educators cite problems with profesional development opportunities being too far away, and 34% identified time as an obstacle to atending profesional development activities. Without comparative statistics, I do not claim that the obstacles faced by art educators are more chalenging than those faced by teachers in other content areas. Rather, these statistics ilustrate the existence of obstacles that art educators have encountered. !$'! Acording to Sabol?s (2006) study, art teachers atending profesional development outside their districts often do so outside their normal school day, when time for profesional development is in competition with personal and family responsibilities. Sixty-one percent of art teachers atended profesional development opportunities on wekends, after school, and during the summer, and ?art educators bear the major degrees of responsibility for pursuing their own profesional development? (Sabol, 2006, p. 48). Despite receiving some funding from their schools, 58% of Sabol?s respondents reported that the support they receive to atend profesional development experiences is inadequate. When asked about drawbacks to atending profesional development opportunities, teachers? most frequent response (35%) was that atending profesional development was ?too expensive.? These obstacles, though not an exhaustive list, demonstrate the chalenges art teachers experience in acesing collaborative profesional development outside their schools. Despite these chalenges, art educators who lack content area colleagues in their school and who are looking to collaborate likely leave their school context to do so. Their need to go beyond their teaching context to find content-specific collaboration presents a logistical tension with the profesional development literature?s recommendation for high-quality PD that is simultaneously collaborative, content-specific, and job-embedded. While art teachers have likely engaged in PD experiences that are collaborative, content- specific, and job-embedded, it is unlikely these three characteristics were present within a single profesional development opportunity given many art teachers? content area isolation within their teaching contexts. !$(! Purpose and Significance Having acknowledged the logistical chalenge in providing a profesional development opportunity for art educators that is simultaneously collaborative, content- specific, and job-embedded, I began to consider how various profesional development models appeared to met one or two of these recommended characteristics but not the other(s). For instance, atending a National Art Education Asociation annual conference is highly content-specific and likely collaborative. However, conferences take place outside of teachers? schools, where presenters provide information without knowledge of atendees? students within their particular contexts. The atendees must translate this learning back to their working contexts (Barret, 2006). The purpose of this study, then, is to explore the relationships betwen one profesional development opportunity for art educators and the collaborative, content-specific, and job-embedded recommendations from the PD literature. I identified collaborative inquiry as a PD model wel matched to my interest in exploring an approach to profesional development for art educators. A collaborative inquiry group is "a group of six to twelve profesionals who met on a regular basis to learn from practice through structured dialogue and engage in continuous cycles through the proces of action research" (Dana & Yendol-Hoppey, 2008, p. 16). The commitment of feminist research to investigate relationships influenced my choice to advocate for and to study collaboration within profesional development contexts. Orland-Barak (2009) argues that profesional conversation is inherently feminist because of its relational nature and its valuing of diversity/multiple perspectives. I believed that studying art educators engaged in collaborative inquiry would alow me to further understand the !$F! relationships betwen art educators in the group as wel as the group?s relationship to the job-embedded, content-specific, and collaborative characteristics recommended in the PD scholarship (Figure 3) for a number of reasons. Figure 3. Conceptual space of research that explores the relationships betwen collaborative inquiry and three qualities of high-quality PD for K-12 art educators. Collaborative inquiry would aford teachers an opportunity to collaborate. From my own experience, I knew that art educators valued spending time with colleagues who ?have a shared set of ideas and a vocabulary that [alows] them to understand one another? (Lind, 2007, p. 8). Studying a collaborative inquiry group of al art educators would likely offer an experience that was content-specific in addition to collaborative. !$G! Finaly, although the collaborative inquiry group could not met simultaneously in each member?s physical clasroom, the action research element of collaborative inquiry would likely require the group to relate the experience to their working contexts as teachers collaboratively inquired about their practice. The number of teachers participating in collaborative inquiry groups is increasing as schools adopt new school reform models that promote teachers working in collaboration to examine their problems of practice (Craig & Deretchin, 2009). However, the limited data available suggest that visual art teachers rarely engage in collaborative inquiry with other visual art teachers. A lack of collaborative opportunities for art educators may partialy result from visual art teachers working as the only art teacher within their school seting. I was able to find only one empirical study (Lind, 2007) and a few brief summaries (Beatie, 2006; Charland, 2006, 2008) that described art teachers? experience with any type of profesional development. Thus, this study?s significance lies, in part, in its ability to describe and interpret how a smal group of visual art educators, a population largely unrepresented in profesional development literature, experienced collaborative inquiry. This study?s significance also lies in its ability to cast a vision of profesional development for arts educators by describing their engagement with an ongoing and sustained model of profesional development, supported by a literature base of efective PD practice. The potential value of collaborative inquiry for teachers? profesional growth as wel as the ability to contribute to profesional development research in art education drove my desire to understand how visual art teachers viewed their experience in a collaborative inquiry group. A number of questions asisted my investigation of this main !$K! wondering. The questions drew on the three recommended profesional development characteristics identified in Figures 2 and 3: ? In what ways do the participants view this experience as collaborative? Non-collaborative? ? In what ways do the participants view this experience as related to their content area? Unrelated to their content area? ? In what ways do the participants view this experience as context-specific? Unrelated to their context? Feminist conceptions of research significantly influenced how I chose to explore these questions. I desired to treat participants ?not as objects of exchange and spectacle, voyeurs or eavesdroppers on a conversation not meant for them, but rather interlocutors of our storying of their lives? (Lather, 2003, p. 10). For this reason, I sought methods that would ?de-center my role as a researcher and forward voices of participants? (Bode, 2005, p. 108). Extending this idea to my study, I believed that teachers? lived experience was legitimate knowledge through which they could ??test? the adequacy of systemic knowledge? (Smith, 2008, p. 42). Viewing participants in this way directly chalenged traditional modes of profesional development, which operate on a behaviorist model that discredits teachers? direct experience (Smith, 2008). The direct experience of the teachers in my study was valuable to our inquiry proces. Teachers had crucial knowledge about their students and their teaching contexts that informed and situated our collaborative work. !$L! As I conceptualized my study and considered both my identity as an art educator and my research commitments, I made the decision to position myself as a participant in my own study. The choice to participate in my own study is an atempt to demonstrate, rather than to hide, my reflexive role in the research. By virtue of asuming the role of a participant in my own study, I investigated my experience within the collaborative inquiry group among and in addition to the experience of the other group members. I was also the group facilitator, hired by a profesional network in advance of the group forming. A feminist framework also led me to acknowledge the power that I had and the power that other group members would likely atribute to my roles as a facilitator and doctoral student researcher. I desired to investigate this power dynamic, and was interested in how the multiple roles of visual art teacher (participant)/facilitator/researcher were made in/visible within the collaborative inquiry group. Thus, the following sub-questions asisted my investigation of my experience within the collaborative inquiry group: ? How do I negotiate the multiple roles of participant, facilitator, and researcher? ? How are these roles made in/visible within the collaborative inquiry group? ? How do participants view my role(s)? I elaborate on my decision to participate in my own study and discuss the benefits and limitations of this choice in Chapter 3. As I mentioned previously, the research questions and the conceptual framework served as a compas as I began this research. I intentionaly relate the research questions and conceptual framework to the general direction provided by a compas rather than the turn-by-turn directional commands provided by a global positioning system (GPS). The !%M! precise directional data provided by a GPS is dependent on a predetermined end location. This research, motivated by a desire to explore and to map art educators? experience with collaborative inquiry, did not include precise directional data or clear end location predetermined by an outside source. The research questions thus provided me with a sense of direction but necesitated that I remained alert and open to shifting my route. While the research questions provided a sense of direction, I chose a collaborative inquiry group of art educators as my beginning location. In the following section, I describe the broader context in which our collaborative inquiry group existed to further iluminate the space in which I centered my research. Context of the Study The geographies and setings in which this study took place are esential elements of understanding my proces of map making. I played a role in creating the specific space years before I set to research it, and therefore, in addition to description for the sake of reader understanding, I define my role in creating the research seting for the sake of transparency. This study took place in a northeastern state where the organization of the public education system into localized school districts creates smaler districts overal than county-based schools systems. Regional education agencies (REA) channel state services to local school districts. The REAs do not play the same role as county boards of education in other states because they have no power to create policies or govern the districts in their region. Instead, the REAs often act as an agent betwen the districts and the state department by providing services such as localized special education services, hiring and dispersing of substitutes, and centralized technology trainings. The REAs !%$! throughout the state vary in the services they provide to the local districts, in part due to diferent needs in the districts they serve. For example, the REA that serves school districts in the geographic area in which this study took place serves a three-county area that includes 25 school districts. Sixten of those districts met the U.S. Department of Education?s clasification of ?high poverty? by having more than 50% of their student population receiving free or reduced meals. I worked closely with a staf member at this REA and a representative from the state department of education to apply for a U.S. Department of Education (USDOE) grant to provide profesional development to arts educators in high poverty setings. During the proces of writing the application, we realized that we were a synergistic trio. The state department representative?s knowledge of government bureaucracy, the staf member?s position at an REA wiling to act as the grante and provide her with time to take on another project, and my imersion in the profesional development scholarship as a result of my Ph.D. coursework were al vital to the grant application proces. In August of 2008, the USDOE awarded the REA funds to launch our proposed project and to sustain it for three years. The staf member from the REA and the representative from the state department took on the role of project co-directors, fulfiling tasks originaly drafted and proposed in the application to the USDOE. For the purpose of this disertation, I wil cal the profesional development project ArtsEdPD. The REA advertised the program to fine arts teachers in its 25 school districts. We acepted al 24 applicants, which were predominately teachers of visual art and music. ArtsEdPD hired me to mentor to 12 participants who were visual art educators and an additional mentor with a music education background. In the first year of ArtsEdPD, my !%%! role as a mentor included helping teachers construct standards-based units and to design and implement a personal profesional development plan for that year. Although I was not one of the grant directors, the representatives from the state department and the REA continued to involve me in some conversations about grant administration and implementation. The three of us began to reflect on what we would change for the following year. 3 At this time, I began to consider ArtsEdPD as a potential site for my disertation research. The project directors, uninterested in continuing with the ArtsEdPD model from year one, asked me to propose a diferent profesional development model that I thought had the potential to be meaningful for arts educators. I elicited fedback from the participants I was mentoring and began to evaluate a number of PD models that I had encountered through my Ph.D. coursework. While I atended to that task, the REA staf member atempted to secure private funds in order to extend the ArtsEdPD project to teachers who taught in schools serviced by the REA but that did not met the ?high poverty? designation required for participation in the grant. The grant directors also sought and gained approval from the USDOE to make changes to the proposed model of ArtsEdPD for the upcoming year. In March 2009, I presented the entire grant faculty and the REA with a proposal that we use collaborative inquiry groups for the second year of ArtsEdPD. As I led the faculty through some descriptions of what collaborative inquiry groups might offer to teachers and described how grant faculty could position themselves as participant facilitators in the group, the faculty became more excited about using this model for the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second year of the project. After the faculty agreed to the model, I continued to initiate conversations during our monthly planning metings about collaborative inquiry groups and our role as facilitators of those groups. In preparation for year two, ArtsEdPD hired additional facilitators and made necesary adjustments to the budget. So, I played a key role in choosing collaborative inquiry and a supportive role as a general faculty member; but, I had no involvement in many of the administrative tasks such as managing the budget and scheduling. Because of increased in federal funding as wel as a supplemental private grant award, ArtsEdPD was able to acept al 42 applicants who applied to be involved in year two of the project, when I collected data for this disertation. The application included open-ended questions that asked applicants about their teaching context, their reasons for wanting to be involved in the project, and isues or topics about which they would like to learn. I chose to study one group of eight visual art educators (myself included) engaging in collaborative inquiry within ArtsEdPD. This collaborative inquiry group was a space in which each of the group members engaged in collaborative inquiry for the first time. The chapters that follow serve to describe our experience in a number of layers. In Chapter 2, I review relevant bodies of literature that generated my interest in collaborative inquiry as a profesional development model for art educators. The proces of reviewing the literature shaped our collaborative inquiry group?s experience insofar as the review proces unintentionaly generated a number of personal commitments that informed my methods of research and facilitation. I describe my research methods, and their relationship to the literature, in Chapter 3. Chapter 3 also introduces the members of our group and describes our position among other ArtsEdPD colaborative inquiry !%'! groups. In Chapter 4, I present a close interpretation of our experience acording to four main themes. Our experience within the group lead me to reframe a few of the initial research questions that I?ve presented in this chapter, and the revised questions appear alongside the interpretation in the fourth chapter. In Chapter 5, I describe the ways in which our experience can inform future collaborative inquiry opportunities, especialy for art educators, and situate our experience within the social and political contexts that have and may continue to threaten future collaborative inquiry opportunities for art educators. !%(! Chapter 2: Preparation for Map-Making This chapter provided me with an opportunity to explore a number of areas that other researchers have mapped and thus prepare for my own cartographic work. Through the exploration, I locate and evaluate the kind of tools others have used to map surrounding or conceptualy adjacent areas. When I considered the vastnes of the landscape (literature), as wel as the role I play in recording it, I identified with Paul Cezanne who mused, ?Here, on the river's verge, I could be busy for months without changing my place, simply leaning a litle more to right or left.? 4 In preparation for my maiden expedition as a cartographer, I identify the literature that informs this study and provide a critical synthesis of both the content and methods presented in that literature. In so doing, I demonstrate the significance of my cartography within both art education and profesional development (PD) scholarship. Coverage I entered my doctoral program with the desire to study the profesional development of K-12 art teachers. My desire has not changed. Thus, the reading, evaluating, and synthesizing that appear in this literature review have taken place over a three year period. My ideas about the relevance of literature to my own study have evolved over time. These ideas are reflected in the narrative approach that I use to discuss the isue of coverage; specificaly, what I have included and excluded from this review and my justifications for doing so. !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! ' !N8>10.?8-.+:4;!.*+!301:">+0-."18!1>!B+O5".+5!.*-.!-.0"O?.+!.*"5!H?1.+!.1!I-?:!T+U-88+!>-":!.1!/".+!.*+! 51?0/+!1>!.*+!H?1.+!-8=!=+53".+!5"28">"/-8.!+>10.;!A!/1?:=!81.!:1/-.+!-8!10"2"8-:!51?0/+@!A!0+.0"+#+=!.*+! H?1.+!>01,!*..3VWBB@20+-.6H?1.+5@/1,WH?1.+W$&LG$L(!18!X?8+!';!%M$M@! !%F! Based on a requirement to write a general review of profesional development in K-12 art education for an entry-level doctoral course, I first atempted to aces literature about the profesional development of art educators using the terms ?art education? and ?profesional development? to search five databases available through the university library. This search yielded 62 sources. I evaluated these 62 possibilities, and chose to include any empirical, descriptive, or theoretical sources related to the profesional development of K-12 art teachers. Consequently, I excluded sources about preservice teachers, teaching artists, arts integration PD for teachers of other subjects, and sources that, once explored, appeared completely unrelated to my search terms. The sources I did not include lacked either a focus on profesional development and/or lacked art educators as the participants in the study. Of the 62 original sources, four met my criteria for inclusion (Charland, 2006, 2008; Hutchens, 1998; Jefers, 1996). That is, four empirical studies explored the profesional development of art educators. I knew I had to broaden my search. I conducted another database search using ?arts education? and ?profesional development,? because visual art education is couched in the larger discipline of arts education. This search yielded 99 hits, including many duplicates from the initial search. I applied the same criteria for inclusion and exclusion, and added a criterion for exclusion that filtered sources that dealt solely with music, dance, or theater teachers. I included those that used ?arts educators? broadly and/or included visual art educators. This search yielded an additional three sources (Barret, 2006; Bodenhamer, 1997; Conway, 2005). As I progresed through my coursework, I continued my search for relevant sources. I soon realized the value in the references cited within the articles I had found, !%G! and began to locate a few additional sources through Google Scholar and through my membership in the National Art Education Asociation. As my knowledge of arts education journals grew, I conducted journal-specific searches in International Journal of Education & the Arts, Studies in Art Education, Art Education, and Arts Education Policy Review with search terms such as ?profesional development,? ?profesional learning,? ?teacher development,? and ?teacher learning.? The journal-specific searches typicaly provided one additional source that met my criteria. The number of sources that I compiled related to art education and profesional development had not grown as fast as my conviction that there was much work to be done in this area. Three arts education scholars whom I contacted via email confirmed my growing belief that the profesional development literature within art education was ?almost nonexistent? (B. Sabol, personal communication, June 17, 2008). In my teacher education and profesional development coursework, I began to encounter various types of profesional development models and structures. I recognized the importance of applying the profesional development scholarship to my conceptions of profesional development in art education and began a second wave of literature review, this time within a literature base that was much larger and growing rapidly. My proces of becoming familiar with the broader profesional development literature relied on a number of sources in addition to electronic searches. I subscribed to numerous RSS feds that offered me profesional development literature abstracts, received articles from clasmates and colleagues with similar interests, followed leads and recommendations from profesors, and continued to pursue references located within other sources. I also perused the profesional development-related holdings at the university library, at one !%K! point checking out more books than I could physicaly carry out of the library. As I narrowed my interest to collaborative profesional development, I then began the process of applying search terms (e.g., ?collaborative profesional development,? ?collaborative inquiry,? and ?learning communities?) to searches in library databases and in Google Scholar. For the purposes of this literature review, I narrowed the profesional development scholarship to sources that provide rationale, descriptions, or empirical studies of collaborative learning opportunities. Based on the pre-existence of two comprehensive literature reviews of collaborative learning communities (Bolam, McMahon, Stoll, Thomas, & Walace, 2005; Vescio, Ross, & Adams, 2008) and my desire to apply this work to art education, I further narrowed the sources. Ultimately, I chose to include the profesional development literature that extends, chalenges, or raises tensions for me as I consider how learning communities, specificaly collaborative inquiry, might create new possibilities for profesional development in art education. Thus, I use the profesional development literature from within art education to ?filter? the wider literature on profesional development. Figure 1 provides a graphic representation of the literature presented and discussed in this chapter. !%L! Figure 4. Visual representation of the filters used in order to narrow broad fields of literature into aspects most relevant for this study. 5 !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! ( !In this image, I hoped to convey the way in which my search began with two broad literature bases (i.e., profesional development and art education). However, these bodies of literature overlap so they are not completely separate as they appear in this image. !&M! I recognize that this criterion for inclusion is subjective. Like Paul Cezanne?s statement that opens this chapter, I acknowledge that what ultimately ends up in the composition is the result of ?leaning a litle more to the right or left? based on what I was interested in ?painting.? I atempt to make my choices for including or excluding certain sources more transparent as I draw connections betwen the literature in profesional development and art education throughout this chapter. In the following section, I briefly describe how theory and policy have prompted new recommendations within the profesional development literature. Theoretical and Historical Underpinnings of Profesional Development Traditional profesional development practices that atempt to transfer knowledge from an expert to teachers (often siting as pasive participants) became suspect amidst research about adult learning that acknowledges profesional knowledge as complex, diverse, particular, and intimately related to practice (se Clandinin & Connely, 1995). Sociocognitive theories of learning proposed by Bruner (1985) and Vygotsky (1978) promote the role of collaboration in learning and chalenge the objectivist epistemology of knowledge as a transferrable object. The design of emerging profesional development opportunities began to reflect the principles of sociocognitive learning theory; specificaly, that learning takes place through interaction and dialogue. As Issacs (1999) wrote, ?Dialogue can empower people to learn with and through each other? (p. 12). New profesional development opportunities also began to label themselves as ?constructivist? (se Nelson, Slavit, Perkins, & Hathorn, 2008) based on the primary role teachers played in helping to design and control the content of the profesional development. These new models for profesional development no longer relegated teachers to pasive participants. !&$! Based on a cal to redefine traditional profesional development practices and to support school improvement eforts (Guskey, 2003), educational researchers generated lists of characteristics of ?efective? profesional development practices (e.g., Barret, 2006; Birman, Desimone, Porter, & Garet, 2000; Garet, Porter, Desimone, Birman, & Yoon, 2001; Hawley & Vali, 2007; Kennedy, 1998; Richardson, 2003). These lists describe the structural elements of profesional development that atend to psychological research about optimal learning (Murphy & Alexander, 2002). For example, Murphy and Alexander suggest that learners? agency and freedom to choose tasks related to a learning objective is a necesary structure for learning given research that defines the unique and diverse ways in which people learn. In addition, researchers recommend that student learning be the focus of teacher?s PD (Alexander & Murphy, 1998; Hawley & Vali, 2007). Hawley and Vali (2007), for example, suggested nine design principles that re-focus PD on improving student learning through increased teacher learning. They argue that profesional development should: 1. Focus on what student are to learn and how to addres the diferent problems students may have learning that material; 2. Be driven by analyses of the diferences betwen (a) goals and standards for student learning, and (b) student performance; 3. Involve teachers in the identification of what they need to learn and, when possible, in the development of the learning opportunity or the proces to be used; 4. Be primarily school based and integral to school operations; 5. Provide learning opportunities that relate to individual needs but are, for the most part, organized around collaborative problem solving; !&%! 6. Be continuous and ongoing, involving follow-up and support for further learning?including support from sources external to the school that can provide necesary resources and an outsider perspective; 7. Incorporate evaluation of multiple sources of information on (a) outcomes for students, and (b) proceses that are involved in implementing the lesons learned through profesional development; 8. Provide opportunities to engage in developing a theoretical understanding of the knowledge and skils to be learned; 9. Be integrated with a comprehensive change proces that deals with impediments to and facilitators of student learning. (pp. 117-137) Education policy in the United States has used many of the characteristics of efective profesional development to define ?high quality profesional development? in No Child Left Behind. Despite the growing research describing profesional development opportunities that met many of these characteristics and the inclusion of this language in educational policy, the existence of such characteristics does not guarante that the profesional development teachers regularly experience has these common characteristics. Asuming the Language of the Field Although I did not desire to take a research stance that adopts the ?efectivenes? and ?high quality? language, I had to first asume the language of the field (Mehta, 2009). My initial readings of the profesional development literature indicate that the interests of those funding the research and the social and political contexts of the research !&&! both strongly influence the research agenda. I expect this influence is present in every field and not specific to educational research. The profesional development research agenda has, at this time, an overwhelming focus on the structures and designs of profesional development as potential models of school reform. Specificaly, researchers evaluate these structures and designs to test their ?efectivenes? in advancing student achievement by transforming teacher practice. While I do not contest the strong influence of good teaching on student learning, I believe this atempt to generate tidy lists of characteristics through which we can evaluate the succes of programs operates on the asumption that we can and should normalize and regulate teaching and learning. I did not want to blindly adopt this terminology, or to asume that the frequency with which researchers use this framework means that this is the only reasonable approach to profesional development research. Consequently, I expect that this literature review wil ilustrate my struggle to present a field of literature based on a number of asumptions, many of which I do not share. The phrase profesional learning beter captures my own definition of and vision for profesional development. Webster-Wright (2009) describes profesional learning as an alternative conceptualization of profesional development that acknowledges philosophical and empirical research about how profesionals learn. Based on such research, Webster-Wright recommended, ?a shift in discourse and focus from delivering and evaluating profesional development programs to understanding and supporting authentic profesional learning? (p. 702). I value Webster-Wright?s critique of the current conception of profesional development and hope that this research follows her !&'! recommendation by alowing for new understandings about how collaborative inquiry might support authentic profesional learning. However, I continue to use the term profesional development rather than profesional learning throughout this research for two reasons. First, I believe that by using the term profesional development, I alow others to aces this research easily using a common search term. The ability of others to find this research is important given my desire for this research to inform and chalenge the current conversation in the profesional development scholarship. Second, I use the term profesional development because scholars have used this term in much of the research that has informed my practice of creating profesional development opportunities for art educators. Using one term to describe previous research and another to describe this research would likely create an artificial separation betwen the two. Furthermore, the use of separate terms throughout this study may have been unnecesarily confusing for the readers. By using this common term for the purpose of my own research, I am not also pledging alegiance to or suggesting my support for al of the practices that scholars have named profesional development. Profesional development research has guided but not prescribed my own beliefs about profesional learning. Hargreaves and Fullan (1998), wel respected for their research in school reform, stated, Research can give us promising lines of thinking but never a complete answer. To some extent, each group must build its own model and develop local ownership through its own proces (p. 582). I have chosen to adopt Hargreaves and Fullan?s perspective that research can guide our work but cannot provide complete or prescriptive answers in particular situations. Thus, !&(! in the following sections, I describe the research that guides my own ideas and propose methods of study that honor particularities, acknowledge social and political contexts, and focus on teachers? experiences. However, in order to do so, I must atend to the structure and design of collaborative learning opportunities, which I have found to be the central concern of current profesional development scholarship. The Structure and Design of Alphabet Soup Researchers have studied a variety of learning communities and have categorized and labeled them acording to a variety of characteristics. The labels include ?profesional learning communities? (DuFour & Eaker, 1998), ?critical friend groups? (Curry, 2008), ?content-based collaborative inquiry groups? (Zech, Gause-Vega, Bray, Secules, & Goldman, 2000), ?communities of practice? (Wenger, 1998), ?teacher learning communities? (Horn, 2005), ?teacher networks? (Hofman & Dijkstra, 2010), and ?teacher inquiry groups? (Cochran-Smith & Lytle, 1999). However, the criteria by which researchers asign groups with one label or another are not clear. Often researchers refer to these groups using an acronym, and before long, the literature about learning communities resembles alphabet soup with the organization of the leters dependent on who is holding the spoon. Levine (2010) proposed that the proliferation of terms used to describe learning communities reflects both a trend in profesional development design but also a potential absence of meaning. 6 He cautioned researchers from using these terms as the only constructs through which they atempt to study teacher collaboration when he wrote, !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! F !Y+/-?5+!.*+!301:">+0-."18!1>!.+0,5!-:51!:-/75!/:+-0!="5."8/."185!O+.B+8!.+0,5;!A!"8/:?=+=!-:! /18/+3."185!1>!.+-/*+05!+82-2+=!"8!/1:-O10-."#+!:+-08"82;!81.!S?5.!.*15+!53+/">"/-:4!:-O+:+=! !&F! Most conceptions of teacher community do have a common core, i.e., the notion that ongoing collaboration among educators produces teacher learning, and this ultimately improves teaching and learning for K-12 students. Diferent constructs, however, can also focus us on diferent aspects of teacher learning from collaboration?some additional theorizing regarding how individuals may act and learn together offer even more afordances for studying collaborative teacher learning. (2010, p. 110) Here Levine caled for researchers to extend the ways in which they have conceptualized and branded the concepts of collaboration and community. While Levine?s (2010) article contributed significantly to my understanding of the labels and the general purposes of certain types of collaborative teacher learning, it did not discuss the location or contexts in which the groups traditionaly operate. For instance, Levine did not suggest that research using the label ?profesional learning communities? often describes interdisciplinary groups of teachers from the same school, although I have found that those engaging in and writing about such configurations typicaly cal them profesional learning communities. I have a special interest in the location and context of the groups based on my desire to create collaborative spaces for art educators who are not in the same geographical location. Thus, I began to consider studies of learning communities based on the group?s location and structure rather than by community label. By atending to the groups? locations, I began to se the diferent and complementary roles that profesional development opportunities ?external? and ?internal? to teachers? schools might provide to their participants (Morris, Chrispeels, & !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! C/1:-O10-."#+!"8H?"04@D!A!B+:/1,+=!.*+!B-45!"8!B*"/*!.*+5+!=">+0+8.!/18/+3."185!/1?:=!"8>10,!,4! B107@! !&G! Burke, 2003). Moreover, the structure and composition of the group appears to have a significant impact on both teacher satisfaction and group ?efectivenes.? (Curry, 2008; Levine & Marcus, 2010). In the following sub-sections, I discuss learning communities using the following four traits: school-based, non-school based, disciplinary groupings, and non-disciplinary groupings. I recognize that not al of the studies fal neatly into these categories, yet I chose to use the constructs because they appeared to have a significant impact on teacher satisfaction and group efectivenes. Although I artificialy separate the studies in quadrants that alowed me to simultaneously acknowledge both a group?s location and composition (Table 1), each of these studies involved places and structures and therefore overlapped significantly. Because some studies include data from a number of groups with diferent structures, I created an additional column and row in which to place these studies. I included studies that described collaborative learning communities of two or more members. !&K! Table 1. Studies of learning communities arranged by location and group composition Disciplinary (learning comunity members teach the same subject) Interdisciplinary (learning comunity members do not teach the same subject) Both/Other School-based (learning comunity members teach at the same school) Moje, 200 Clausen, 209; Cury, 208; Given, 2010; Jennings & Mils, 209; Levine & Marcus, 2010; Stewart & Davis, 207 Nelson, 209; Nelson & Slavit, 2008 Non school-based (learning comunity members do not teach at the same school) Fairbanks & LaGrone, 2006; Lind, 207; Swidler, 2001; Watson & Manning, 2008 Hofman & Dijkstra, 2010 Both/Other Zech, 200 School-based Learning Communities School-based learning communities have gained popularity as a school reform movement that promises ?a fairly straightforward, wel-established way to appreciably improve both teaching and qualities and levels of learning? (Schmoker, 2005). In the introduction to On Common Ground: The Power of Profesional Learning Communities, the editors asociate profesional learning communities with school reform when they wrote, ?We hope [that this book] wil be a valuable tool for educators who are doing the hard work of improving their schools? (DuFour, Eaker, & DuFour, 2005, p. 6). !&L! Many of the characteristics of ?efective? or ?high quality? profesional development, including Hawley and Vali?s (2007) design principles (listed earlier in this chapter), are recommendations for transforming teacher practice through school-based profesional development. School-based profesional learning communities can met many of the criteria for efective profesional development because they are collaborative, sustained, centered on student learning, and aligned with comprehensive school reform eforts. Researchers who have studied learning communities situated within schools (e.g., Clausen, 2009; Curry, 2008; Given, 2010; Jennings & Mils, 2009; Levine & Marcus, 2010; Moje, 2000; Nelson, 2009; Nelson & Slavit, 2008; Stewart & Davis, 2007) list the benefits of having profesional development take place inside teacher?s working contexts. These benefits include: a) coupling school-wide macro isues with clasroom-level micro concerns, b) creating spaces in which to discuss sensitive school isues, c) becoming informed about school reform choices and commitments, and d) sustaining a focus on specific aspects of student learning/achievement. However, having these recommended design principles in place does not ensure al of the promised benefits. The extent to which learning communities afect teacher learning and school improvement is dependent on how schools design and negotiate the enactment of these communities (Curry, 2008; Levine & Marcus, 2010; Nelson, 2009). Curry?s (2008) investigation of an urban high school?s implementation of critical friend groups (CFGs) highlighted how design choices (a diverse menu of activities, decentralized structure, interdisciplinary membership, and reliance on protocols) enabled certain aspects of teacher learning and school improvement while constraining others. More specificaly, Levine and Marcus (2010) found in their study, !'M! Decisions about the structure and focus of teachers? collaborative activities can both facilitate and constrain what teachers can learn together by influencing: whether teachers make their own practices in the clasroom public; which aspects of teaching are discussed; the degree of specificity with which teachers share aspects of their work; and the kinds of information about students teachers make available to each other. (p. 397) By exposing the complexities of implementing learning communities, these studies and others (e.g., Given, 2010; Moje, 2000; Nelson, 2009; Stewart & Davis, 2007) chalenge the general optimism surrounding collaborative profesional development as a model for school reform. The following statement displays the general optimism that these studies cal into question: So what if there was, right now, a fairly straightforward, wel-established way to appreciably improve both teaching quality and levels of learning? What if evidence from numerous schools and the research community points to proven structures and practices that (1) stand to make an imediate diference in achievement and (2) require reasonable amounts of time and resources? The fact is that such structure and practice do exist and there is no reason to delay their implementation. (Schmoker, 2005, p. xi) The hope for teacher learning that results in ?imediate diferences in achievement? with the promise that this learning can occur with ?reasonable amounts of time and resources? appears to falsely advertise the complexity of this work. Levine and Marcus (2010) raise questions about guaranted outcomes when they conclude that, ?Even with this one case, educators? joint work within the context of profesional community was not a unitary !'$! phenomenon, nor one that automaticaly would result in every kind of learning anticipated by champions of teacher collaboration? (p. 397). The research that problematizes the optimism asociated with profesional learning communities and suggests that despite strong support in the literature, strong profesional communities are rare in schools should generate questions about the chalenges schools face in creating and supporting such communities (Nelson, 2009). Certainly, creating and enacting a collaborative, inquiry-based profesional development model amidst the isolated and non-democratic realities present in many schools wil create tensions (Balock, 2009; Curry, 2008; Drennon, 2002; Given, 2010; Levine & Marcus, 2010; Nelson, 2009). Balock (2009) writes, ?The task of replacing traditions of isolation, privacy, and competition with habits of collaboration, collective responsibility, and ongoing inquiry can be a chalenging enterprise? (pp. 40-41). For instance, if ?sustained critical inquiry into practice? is not a regular characteristic of school culture, teachers may struggle to develop critical examination skils, let alone find time to participate in a formal inquiry (Nelson, 2009, p. 551). Teachers involved in profesional learning communities must then negotiate the everyday demands of teaching and their inquiry work (Nelson et al., 2008). Despite these complex chalenges, Nelson (2009) labels her atitude toward profesional learning communities as ?cautious optimism,? that acknowledges both the powerful potential of collaborative learning while respecting the deep complexities involved in its implementation (p. 579). The majority of the literature I encountered on school-based profesional learning communities involves teachers working in interdisciplinary teams. Earlier, I cited Curry?s (2008) study that considers how interdisciplinary compositions both enable and constrain !'%! aspects of teacher learning. In chapter one, I described the dificulties art teachers have encountered when placed on interdisciplinary teams within their school (Stewart & Davis, 2007). In the next section, I briefly review Curry?s findings and related studies in an atempt to consider the possibilities and limitations that membership in an interdisciplinary learning community might have for an art educator. Interdisciplinary Learning Communities in Schools Curry (2008) describes the endemic tensions that exist when interdisciplinary learning communities (in this case, critical friend groups, or CFGs) purport to improve instruction. While members benefit from the diversity of experience represented in the group, many of the teachers in Curry?s study were disatisfied with the inability of other CFG members to atend to content-related instructional isues. Although I only highlight some aspects of what interdisciplinary membership enables and constrains, I present Curry?s full analysis in list form in Table 2. !'&! Table 2. Curry's analysis of interdisciplinary group membership Enables Constrains ? Brings together a diversity of expertise ? Provides sustained and extended opportunities for communication betwen people from programs across the school ? Fosters collegiality ? Aleviates isolation ? Provides a space for teachers to share about their disciplinary programs ? Fosters a collective responsibility for student learning, and the mentality of being a ?team player? ? Fosters curricular coherence and cross-fertilization ? Heightens teachers? awarenes of general pedagogic ?best practices? ? Develops a common language of practice ? Creates a shalow distribution of content expertise ? Creates an environment where teachers are les prepared to provide content-specific help ? Constrains members? ability to asist peers with content-related teaching and learning isues ? Fosters a generic type of talk about general pedagogical principles rather than subject-specific ways of implementing new strategies ? Focuses teachers on the ?glitz rather than the substance? of student work !''! Curry?s (2008) study included Lars, an art teacher who withdrew from his CFG stating that he was ?not sure that people who teach other disciplines can help [me]? (p. 761). However, teachers? desire for profesional development activities to increase their pedagogical content knowledge (Shulman, 1987) is not only an art educator?s desire. A math teacher in another CFG stated, ?The thing that bothers me is that I wish I had more time with math teachers? (p. 763). A biology teacher in Levine and Marcus? (2010) study also wished her group was composed of more teachers from ??within the content area,? because ?nobody else has that bag of tricks to be able to aces what I?m trying to teach?? (p. 396). In fact, a teacher?s years of experience may be a more acurate predictor of her or his content-related expectations of profesional development than the discipline she or he teaches (Curry, 2008; Jefers, 1996). Some veteran teachers appear to desire more content-specific help than novice teachers and voice more disappointment when interdisciplinary groups are unable to deepen their pedagogical content knowledge (Curry, 2008). Conversely, Curry found that the generalized pedagogic strategies often offered by members of interdisciplinary groups are especialy valuable for novice teachers who desire general pedagogic support. One novice science teacher in Curry?s study stated, I?m not realy concerned about the subject mater. I?ve had lots and lots of that. What I need is the stuff from them that applies to al the subjects. You know, how the kids work, how they think, and beter ways to present things to the kids?that definitely applies to al the subjects. (p. 760) !'(! The results of a survey of art educator?s profesional development preferences (Jefers, 1996) afirm that the profesional backgrounds and interests of beginning, mid- career, and veteran teachers may difer significantly. 7 The profesional development topics of interest to novice art educators in Jefers? study were clasroom management, curriculum development, diversity, and creativity. Meanwhile, veteran art educators expresed virtualy no interest in these topics, but instead desired profesional development content focused on computers in art; technology; and new trends, techniques, and proceses in art-making. Based on these survey results and Curry?s analysis, the interdisciplinary groupings present in most school-based reforms may beter match novice teachers? profesional development interests. However, the ability for interdisciplinary groups to met novice teachers? needs may be dependent on a diverse range of experience among teachers in the group. Thus, the diversity of teacher backgrounds and PD needs represented in the group is both a benefit and a chalenge to interdisciplinary groups. The ability of interdisciplinary groups to atend to novice teachers? desires for general pedagogical strategies does not negate veteran teachers? PD interests or their frustration with a lack of content-specific support. Huberman (1993) raises concerns that the diverse disciplinary representation in collaborative communities is potentialy antithetical to the collaboration usualy expected within such communities when he asked, How much collaboration can we expect betwen 9 th grade physics teachers, 11 th grade English teachers, and physical education instructors? Why are we putting !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! G !X+>>+05Z!5?0#+4!"8/:?=+=!$ML!0+53185+5!>01,!-0.!+=?/-.105!"8!.*+!5.-.+!1>!E-85-5@! !'F! these people together to draft objectives, plan curricula, and monitor one another?s test results when their actual instructional contexts are so diferent? (p. 45) Echoing Huberman?s concern, Nelson (2009) observed that composing collaborative groups across subjects and/or grade levels requires additional trust-building and the development of a shared language that can atend to diferences in teacher?s content areas. The complexity of this work may actualy chalenge the group?s ability to engage in collaborative inquiry. If teachers are unable to find a common language or develop a collective responsibility for student learning, they may resort to sharing stories from their clasrooms or about individual students (McLaughlin & Talbert, 2006) rather than engaging in collaborative work. Groups with interdisciplinary membership may lack the ability to atend to teachers? content-specific interests, but the benefits of school-based collaborations appear to outweigh the constraints. In Curry?s (2008) study, for example, ?roughly two thirds of my sample of 25 interviewes perceived CFGs in a strongly positive manner? while only a fourth of the sample ?displayed mixed views on their CFGs? (p. 768). Based on these data, Curry recommends that collaborative experiences (perhaps from outside the school) might complement school-based, interdisciplinary groupings by composing groups acording to subject mater. Levine and Marcus (2010) also recommend that ?teachers may need to engage in more than one type of collaboration? (p. 397) in order to met their diverse profesional development needs. In conclusion, interdisciplinary groupings can provide a valuable structure for school-based profesional development, but the !'G! interdisciplinary nature of these groups often prevents the group from meting the diverse needs of its membership. Non School-based Learning Communities Teachers who seek content-specific profesional development and are not finding it within their school may choose to participate in disciplinary profesional development opportunities outside of their school. Morris et al. (2003) proposed that these ?external? sources of profesional development ?focus predominantly on enhancing teachers? pedagogical knowledge and collaborative and leadership skils in the content area? (p. 764). These external opportunities often include: profesional specialized asociations, profesional networks, seminars and workshops hosted by non-profit, for profit, and private agencies, and courses offered through colleges and universities (Barret, 2006). Of these opportunities, profesional specialized asociations and profesional networks appear to be the most likely places where an ongoing collaborative community could develop. The continuous structure of these opportunities difers from the independent episodic nature of seminars or a university course, which may provide a structure for disciplinary collaboration but likely exists only or a short time. In this section, I specificaly investigate profesional networks for their potential to provide content-based, collaborative opportunities. While some profesional networks have their beginnings at a university, others evolve within a profesional asociation or from the grasroots eforts of educators, and state departments of education have initiated others (Firestone & Pennel, 1997). Profesional networks vary in purpose, size, and structure, and therefore a common definition is problematic. However, the networks often share common features, which !'K! include: (a) members? common purpose and identity that results from a clear focus on a specific subject area, teaching method, or approaches to reform; (b) a variety of activities that provide opportunities for teachers? self-determination; (c) communities of discourse where members addres problems of teaching through exchange with other members; and (d) opportunities for leadership within the network and within members? schools (Lieberman & McLaughlin, 1992). A number of beneficial aspects of teacher networks exist by virtue of the network being located outside of the schools in which teachers work. For example, network leaders often organize activities around the desires of their members by building agendas sensitive to the collective and individual profesional interests of its members (Hofman & Dijkstra, 2010). The ability of profesional networks to ?[engage] school-based educators in beter directing their own learning; alowing them to sidestep the limitations of institutional roles, hierarchies, and geographic locations; and encouraging them to work with many diferent kinds of people? (Lieberman & Grolnick, 1996, p. 1) may contribute to teachers? expectation that profesional networks wil be succesful at meting their profesional development needs (Boyle, Lamprianou, & Boyle, 2005). If a primary goal of profesional networks is to met teachers? profesional development interests, profesional networks wil likely exhibit noticeable diferences from school-based collaborations, where school reform agendas and administrative concerns, which may or may not align with teacher interests, often influence the goals of collaborative work (Fenwick, 2004). Teacher collaboration that exists outside a school or district structure can provide teachers a space to voice dilemas and controversies that the system in which they work !'L! often silences (Orland-Barak, 2009). For example, teachers may sek fedback on how to negotiate a personal or profesional commitment that does not align with the social, political, or organizational forces at work within their school. For networks using inquiry- oriented models, the external nature of teacher networks may also provide teachers with a space where they do not have to worry about designing ?safe? inquiries that wil not disrupt the status quo (Drennon, 2002). In addition, teachers who are able to interact with teachers from other contexts may have a beter understanding of their own context as a result (Nelson & Slavit, 2008). Profesional networks are not without their limitations. Because profesional networks are comprised of teachers who may not live in close geographic proximity, teachers? involvement in networks may be constrained by practical isues such as travel time and costs (Hofman & Dijkstra, 2010). Furthermore, because network-related activities involve teachers from multiple districts, participation in a profesional network often takes place in addition to a teacher?s full-time job. Thus, the atempt for network participants to find a common meting time and a central meting place can pose additional obstacles. Art teachers frequently cite these practical isues as obstacles to their involvement in external profesional networks (Sabol, 2006), which I have presented in more detail in Chapter 1. New social networking tools available online have the potential to mitigate some of the practical isues teachers experience in participating in profesional networks, and the loose, flexible structure of profesional networks may enable networks to quickly adapt to new methods of working (Lieberman, 2005). While practical isues do threaten teachers? involvement in profesional networks, other limitations also exist. Morris et al. (2003) wrote, !(M! The chalenge faced by such external networks has been to keep the fires that were lit at the external institutes burning once teachers return to their schools. Indeed, network participants often face school environments that are, at best, not structured to alow teachers to share what they have learned. At worst, school environments may even be hostile to their new ideas (p. 767). Thus, they acknowledge an important reality: the ability for teachers to implement changes in their practice as a result of an experience in an external network is potentialy constrained by teacher?s working environments, over which the external networks have litle control. In other words, whether or not atendees transfer new knowledge back to their specific working contexts is partialy dependent on ?the extent to which teachers work in setings that alow them to incorporate what they have learned into their clasroom practice? (Lieberman & McLaughlin, 2000, p. 233). Granted, not al external profesional development opportunities aim to transform teacher practice. However, if the transformation of teachers? clasroom practices is the goal, external networks must consider how to support teachers? learning within their working contexts (Watson & Manning, 2008). Disciplinary Learning Communities The majority of learning communities composed of teachers who teach the same discipline appear to exist outside of schools. The instances where this is not the case often occur when teachers work with a co-teacher or instructional coach inside a clasroom (e.g., Moje, 2000; Zech, 2000). However, this co-teaching model may not fit the traditional definition of ?a community? because of the limited number of participants working in collaboration. Other opportunities for disciplinary learning communities may !($! be possible if enough teachers exist within a content area in the school to comprise an entire learning community. Thus, this arrangement is more likely to exist in some content areas than others. For art teachers, disciplinary groupings within a school are unlikely due to the smal number of art teachers typicaly employed at a school. I have not found any studies that document a school-based collaborative community consisting of only art teachers. In this section, I synthesize five studies (Fairbanks & LaGrone, 2006, Lind, 2007; Moje, 2000; Swidler, 2001, Watson & Manning, 2008) in order to consider how teachers describe their experiences in disciplinary groups. Table 3 presents some characteristics of these groups for easy comparison. While these studies share similar group compositions, the groups represented in these studies do not share a common purpose for their metings. The group of literacy teachers in Fairbanks and LaGrone?s study and the science teachers in Watson and Manning?s study met to formaly inquire about their own teaching practices, while the music teachers involved in Lind?s study had the primary task of learning a new method of curriculum design. The group of elementary teachers in Swidler?s study met to dialogue about their teaching practice; while the collaboration present in Moje?s article met with the intent to transform one teacher?s literacy pedagogy. !"#! Table 3. Characteristics of disciplinary learning communities represented in five studies Study Number of participants Discipline / teaching assignment Group purpose Group affiliation/history Role of the researcher(s) Fairbanks & LaGrone, 2006 7 ? 2 directors ? 4 literacy teachers ? 1 graduate research asistant To formaly inquire about their own literacy teaching practices National Writing Project (NWP) Fairbanks and LaGrone are NWP directors who participated as members of this group and who authored the article; the graduate research assistant participated in the group and assisted with documentation and analysis Lind, 207 6 ? 1 high school band director ? 1 middle school band director ? 1 elementary general music teacher ? 3 middle school general music teachers. To create a unit of study based on Wigins & McTighe?s Understanding By Design curiculum framework The Colaborative Design Institute (CDI), a subject matter colaboration developed and implemented by teachers working through The California Arts Project Lind, the author of this article, is a university faculty member investigating the CDI model and was not a member of this group. Moje, 200 2 ? 1 junior high schol English teacher ? 1 university profesor To enact a literacy pedagogy diferent from that which the junior high teacher had typicaly used This project was mutualy initiated after the teacher took a master?s level clas taught by the university Moje is the university profesor involved in this collaboration and author of this study !"$! profesor Swidler, 2001 6 ? 2 fifth grade teachers ? 1 elementary teacher (unidentified grade) ? 1 third grade teacher ? 1 second/third grade teacher ? 1 teacher educator ? some ocasional members To create a space for ?thoughtful? teachers to dialogue The teacher educator knew and invited two members of the group, who invited the additional members. Swidler is the author of this chapter and was an elementary teacher before becoming a teacher educator. He was a member of the group. Watson & Maning, 2008 10 ? 10 science teachers (grade level and specific content area not identified) To help teachers move from a basic level of expertise to a level at which they consid- ered themselves to be accomplished teachers of inquiry The group was part of a continuing professional development program carried out at King?s Colege, London, UK and the Weizmann Institute, Israel Watson and Maning, authored this article, researched factors influencing teachers? suces, and were not members of the group. !"#! In addition, these groups are not as mono-disciplinary as they first appear. The groups represented in the studies by Lind (2007) and Watson and Manning (2007) were composed completely of music and science K-12 teachers respectively, yet the diversity of their teaching asignments introduced significant disciplinary variation within each group. Furthermore, Swidler?s (2001) group was composed of elementary teachers, who taught a variety of grades and who were responsible for teaching many disciplines. The specific information about teachers? working contexts demonstrates the rich diversity that might exist in groups even when members are al teaching a common subject. Other facets of group members? identities further iluminate the potential diversity within a group (e.g., years of experience, gender, and socioeconomic status of a teacher?s student population). The amount and type of information presented about individual group members varied greatly among these studies. I believe that this variation is a reflection of the studies? varied purposes as wel as the researchers? commitments. I believe that the stories behind the formation of these groups were integral to understanding how disciplinary groups outside of schools manage to operate, given the practical obstacles outlined in the previous section. Both Lind (2007) and Watson and Manning (2007) describe groups that operated as part of formal profesional networks. The teachers in both studies voluntered to participate and school districts supported their participation in the group metings, the majority of which took place during the school day. Teachers in both these studies voiced concerns about mising school and having to negotiate their time betwen the network and their students. For example, an elementary music educator in Lind?s study stated, !""! For me the biggest chalenge was the amount of time. Taking off from school was realy dificult for me. I know it is for al teachers. In my case, if I mis one day at my school I don?t se those students that wek. For the clases that I saw on Friday, I didn?t get to se them much. That was the most chalenging. I had complete support from administration but I had trouble mising at school. (p. 13) The disciplinary learning communities that were not part of formal programs appear to have begun after a member of the group (typicaly the researcher) extended an invitation to other potential members. The three authors who described groups formed in this way (Fairbanks & LaGrone, 2006; Moje, 2000; Swidler, 2001) each acknowledged that they and other members of the group had pre-existing profesional contact. For the teachers in the Fairbanks and LaGrone (2006) study, each of the members ?shared an afiliation with the National Writing Project in the southwest? and the four teachers in the study atended a 2002 summer writing institute together (p. 10). In Moje?s (2000) study, the collaboration emerged from one of her former students demonstrating an interest in working with her around isues of literacy pedagogy. In his study, Swidler?s (2001) worked with two of the teachers prior to the formation of this group. The remainder of the teachers invited each other after mutual involvement in a teacher education program or placement. The formation stories of the groups represented in these studies describe the facilitating role of a formal program or pre-existing profesional relationships for initiating collaborative communities outside school contexts (Zech, 2000). Formal programs can also provide a space in which teachers, engaged in disciplinary learning communities, experience profesional development meaningfully related to their content area. The teachers in Lind?s study (2007) found such groups able !"$! to met their desires for content-related profesional development, citing the discipline- specific model of the external network as the single most important component of the profesional development experience. One middle school music teacher stated, The collaboration with so many music colleagues has been wonderful. It has provided me with an array of ideas that has reinforced my teaching in a way that has provided support, reasurance, and understanding. I have felt very alone in the music profesion until now. (p. 8) Acording to a science teacher in Watson and Manning?s (2008) study, the discipline- specific conversations facilitated the sharing of particular teaching strategies: I think it?s realy good when you talk to other teachers. It?s just about sharing ideas... seing how other people do enquiry in their own schools and then using that information to kind of fed back into your own work. For example, if someone recomended a particular activity and said: ?Oh yeah, I did this activity and it was realy good?, then I would come back to school and try that because I would think: ?Oh yeah, OK you know, they thought it was realy good so I?m going to try that and se how it works for me.? (p. 703) The remaining three studies did not include any explicit analysis about the disciplinary composition of the group. Such analysis is likely absent because the group?s composition was not asociated with the focus of the research. In conclusion, disciplinary groupings provide a valuable structure for content- based profesional development, but the external natures of most groups may present obstacles for teachers who desire to participate. Teachers who do participate may struggle to implement what they have learned back into their teaching contexts. Furthermore, !"%! teachers in these groups share a commitment to a common discipline, but the external location of these groups iluminates the diverse teaching contexts (and potentialy, other characteristics) of its members. Reconsidering the Categories In the previous four sections, I presented the literature about learning communities acording to four self-created categories (school-based learning communities, interdisciplinary learning communities, non school-based learning communities, disciplinary learning communities). In doing so, I risk appearing as if I intended to compare the various types of profesional development in order to determine which may be most ?efective.? I also risk presenting profesional development opportunities as if they can/should be easily clasified into static categories. However, I am not interested in crowning a specific type or brand of profesional development ?most efective;? neither do I desire anyone to continue to use these categories to create standard ?traits? of profesional development. Instead, I have atempted to present literature that demonstrated how the structures and locations of profesional development opportunities aford certain opportunities and constrained others. By presenting the literature in this way, I have come to appreciate the ways in which a variety of profesional development opportunities may be required in order to addres the diverse interests of teachers. The four categories I chose do not imply equal numbers of profesional development experiences in each of these categories. In addition, by using ?disciplinary? and ?interdisciplinary? as a way to categorize learning communities, I have temporarily !"&! adopted the asumption present within the literature and broader U.S. education system that the academic disciplines are disparate in nature and therefore easily clasified. Thus, I also risk privileging content-level expertise and content-related knowledge over other characteristics of teaching. However, art educators have voluntarily organized themselves into disciplinary asociations such as the National Art Education Asociation and its afiliate state asociations. Art educators also have articulated a desire for content- specific profesional development (Sabol, 2006). Therefore, I have chosen to consider the benefits of profesional development opportunities along disciplinary lines, so I can reflect on potential applications for K-12 art educators. In the next section, I describe the ways in which the scholarship on collaborative learning opportunities informs the research methods I chose to use in this study before returning to additional considerations of how the bodies of profesional development and art education literature intersect. Reconsidering Methods Research describing learning communities shifts the unit of analysis from individual teachers to the group (Curry, 2008) and requires a type of collective examination rather than a focus on individual teacher practice (Nelson, 2009). The downplaying of individual atributes in an atempt to create a description of a group mirrors the development of a common set of approaches used in much of the learning community research including: a limited atention to individual group members (e.g., Nelson & Slavit, 2008), a lack of teacher voice (e.g., Hofman & Dijkstra, 2010), a disembodied researcher and/or facilitator (e.g., Hofman & Dijkstra, 2010; Levine & Marcus, 2010), and untroubled group practices (e.g., DuFour, Eaker, & DuFour, 2005). !"'! In this section, I describe why future research should beter atend to these characteristics in order to create new ways of seing and understanding teacher learning communities. The amount of information researchers provide about individuals within their studies varies. In the discussion following Table 3, I described the uneven and limited nature of the information given about the individuals represented within the learning community literature. The limited information about study participants may be due to word limits imposed by publications or may go uncollected by researchers who do not anticipate its relevance to their research questions. However, teachers? involvement in collaborative communities rarely changes the reality that they teach alone. Whether the collaborative community benefits and/or influences teacher practice is often dependent on teacher?s perceived (individual) needs and whether their individual teaching context welcomes and supports new learning (Morris et al., 2003; Watson & Manning, 2008). Therefore, the many studies that intend to describe the potential succes or impact of a learning community should not continue to minimize the information about the experiences and teaching contexts of individual group members. One possible way to include the experiences of individual teachers is to make teacher voice a more prominent part of al aspects of learning community research. Drennon (2002) points out that democratic beliefs are at the core of the practitioner inquiry movement. Thus, teachers should have a significant voice in determining the structure of and research about learning communities. In Moje?s (2000) view, ?research should make positive change in the lives of those who participate in research, change that the participants desire and articulate for themselves? (p. 25). Unfortunately, teacher voice is not always included in studies about teachers, and researchers may not consider the !$(! potential role teachers might play in their research. For example, despite Hofman and Dijkstra acknowledging that their research on profesional networks ?wil [make] clear that the voice of teachers themselves is a useful indicator of what happens in profesional development programs, more specificaly in teacher networks? (2010, p. 1032), they interviewed the network initiators rather than the teachers in their study. Thus, this study demonstrates how researchers can both acknowledge the importance of teacher voice and yet not alow teachers to describe their own experiences. As I indicated in my discussion of Table 1, a number of the studies I reviewed for this chapter lack transparency about the roles of the researcher and group facilitator within the teacher learning communities. Fontana and Frey (2005) remind researchers that they are the one ?who ultimately cuts and pastes together the narrative, choosing what wil become a part of it and what wil be cut? (p. 697). I desire to se more research about learning communities wherein the researchers acknowledge their role in the research and in the learning community. Researchers and participants ?reciprocaly influence each other,? in ways that can strengthen rather than destroy qualitative research (Kvale, 1996, p. 35). In a few instances, the disembodiment of the researcher is obvious through the lack of a subject in the writen acount, which leaves the reader wondering who was acting and making the research decisions. For instance, Hofman and Dijkstra write, ?the goal of the network can best be defined?? and in doing so, keep the reader from knowing who defined the goal of the network (2010, p. 1034). In Levine and Marcus? (2010) mixed-methods study, they described the various structures used to facilitate group metings without acknowledging who chose and incorporated these structures. They stated that their research is ?built on the premise that the quantity, !$)! specificity, and content of talk about practice shapes individuals? opportunities to learn from their work with others? (p. 390). As a reader, I find this articulated premise ironic, given the way in which the researchers? lack of specificity about the workings of the teacher collaborations hinders my ability to learn from their work. A group facilitator, a position advocated by Balock (2009) and Nelson and Slavit (2008), supports teacher communities by working to establish a safe space, and can atend to necesary administrative details such as reserving meting space. Aligning with learning theories proposed by Bruner (1985) and Vygotsky (1978), collaborative inquiry groups use a facilitator who serves to expand and extend learning rather than directly transmit knowledge. For example, a facilitator plays a crucial role within group dialogue by ?paying atention to themes emerging from the group that have not been articulated by any single person? (Isacs, 1999, p. 297). Given the ?pivotal? role of the facilitator acording to studies that include them in the description of the group (Given, 2010, p. 42), the studies of learning communities must beter atend to the roles and identity of the group facilitator. Drennon (2002) echoes my concern, noting that when the facilitator is invisible, critical reflection, dialogue, and action just sem to happen. In a more realistic depiction, facilitators would be central in the efort to democratize knowledge production in inquiry groups, yet they would struggle to do so in the cross- currents of internaly and externaly based power dynamics. (p. 62) By acknowledging the role and struggles encountered by a group facilitator, researchers can beter present aspects of group life that learning community research often presents as automatic or easy. !$*! The power and politics at work both inside and outside of teacher learning communities create complex and chalenging interactions (Drennon, 2002; Moje, 2000). However, the practices of a teacher learning community may appear untroubled depending on the researcher?s focus and atention. As Drennon (2002) wrote, ?many descriptions of democratic inquiry communities are constructed as if the material realities of this world are not being played out? (p. 62). At present, the complexities of human interaction appear as the focus of a study (i.e., Drennon, 2002; Moje, 2000) or as tangential comments during a discussion of study implications (i.e., Jennings & Mils, 2009; Nelson, 2009; Nelson et al., 2008) rather than woven into the storying of the group. The characteristics with which individuals are born (i.e., race and gender), the characteristics not necesarily an afect of birth (i.e., religion, sexual orientation), and characteristics of organizationaly structured roles (i.e., teacher, principal, researcher) constitute the power and politics at play within collaborative inquiry groups (Drennon, 2002). In order for researchers to acknowledge these power relationships, they must consider the individual bodies and roles of the group members. Perhaps the appearance that collaborative work is easy or automatic is a result of researchers? lack of atention to individual members within the group, inatention to teacher voice, and/or unequal power dynamics. By including teacher voice in the presentation of her data, Lind (2007) was able to present some of the chalenges teachers experienced when atempting to collaborate: [Collaboration] is not as easy as one might think. Especialy because, as arts teachers, most of us are acustomed to being on our own and alone, teaching and planning the way we se fit. While the 3rd grade teachers are al at their grade !$+! level metings, we are (I am) back in the band room trying to write a 4th clarinet part for the Star Spangled Banner, before that evening?s performance. But I think our cadre is realy geting good at working collaboratively and it is evidenced by the amount of work we are cranking out. (p. 9) Additionaly, Moje (2000), in atending to the characteristics of her body, demonstrated how her clas, race, and gender have influenced her expectations and understandings of collaboration: As Banning (1998), Evans (1998) and hooks (1990) have argued, collaborative relationships?especialy betwen women teachers and researchers?are very likely to be shaped by white, middle-clas notions of nicenes, notions that serve to control and discipline our practices.? (p. 32) These two examples ilustrate the importance of atending to the politics and power at play within a learning community in my own research design and methods, which I describe in chapter three. By providing readers with more information about individual group members, representing teacher voice, embodying research, and presenting the power and politics involved in group practices, researchers can create new ways of seing and understanding teacher learning communities. Having considered the profesional development literature related to collaborative learning and suggesting the ways in which it informed my research, in the next section, I atend to the scholarship within the field of art education related to my research. Profesional Development Research with/in Art Education In this section, I present the art education literature that atends to the profesional development of art educators in relationship to the learning community literature !$#! presented previously. The slash (/) in the above section heading indicates the dynamic relationship I sek to create betwen these two largely unconnected bodies of literature. As noted above, few researchers have published studies of the profesional development that art educators experience (Conway, et al., 2005; Sabol, 2006). Nevertheles, the survey data collected by various art education researchers (Brewer, 1999; Burton, 1998; Elis, Shields, Jur, & Spomer, 1980; Jefers, 1996; Lehr 1981; Sabol, 2006) provide important information about the demographics and needs of art teachers, al of which have implications for designing and implementing profesional development. As a whole, the surveys of art educators demonstrate the diverse interests of art educators related to the content of their PD. However, the surveys did not elicit information about educators? interests related to the structure (design and implementation) of PD experiences. Indeed, only one of these surveys (Sabol, 2006) set out to answer research questions specificaly related to the profesional development of art teachers. In addition, the reporting of survey data does not provide readers with descriptions of profesional development programs and other important components for understanding the profesional development experiences of art educators. Lind (2007), Charland (2006, 2008), and Stewart and Davis (2007) have begun to addres this need for research that extends beyond what survey data have revealed. Both the survey and descriptive research of profesional development within art education suggest that PD opportunities offered within school districts are not meting the stated interests of visual art educators (Charland, 2006; Conway et al., 2005; Sabol, 2006). Eighty-three percent of Sabol?s (2006) survey respondents indicated that their district provided local profesional development, but only 41% percent agreed that !$"! district-sponsored profesional development was beneficial. An additional 19% were undecided. However, al forms of school-based profesional development were included in this one question, and the survey did not distinguish betwen learning communities within or outside of schools. Based on the learning community literature reviewed in this chapter, school-based learning communities may play a role in relieving art teachers? sense of isolation and provide a valuable opportunity for art teachers to advocate for their programs among their peers (Curry, 2008). Novice art teachers may find the general pedagogic support they sek in an interdisciplinary, school-based group (Jefers, 1996). However, having art educators as members of these communities creates logistical isues (e.g., scheduling common meting times) and may actualy prevent art teacher?s meaningful participation in such a group (Stewart & Davis, 2007). The survey data presented by Sabol (2006) does not present a clear picture about art educators? experiences within learning communities, but does list the most frequently atended profesional development opportunities that respondents have had (Figure 5). !""! Figure 5. Types of profesional development experienced by Sabol's (2006) survey respondents. From ?Profesional development in art education: A study of neds, issues, and concerns of art educators? by R. Sabol, 206, National Art Education Asociation. !"#! The profesional development formats most frequently experienced by art educators are workshops (89%) followed by state art education conferences (73%), department metings and lectures (62% each). The responses presented in Figure 2 do not make clear whether any of these activities happen within a learning community, although 57% of respondents indicate having experienced collaboration with other teachers as a form of their profesional development. Without suficient descriptive research, we know litle about the structure and format of the profesional development that art educators experience. For instance, Sabol (2006) reports that 66% of respondents have been involved in ongoing and sustained profesional development. However, the types of profesional development most frequently atended by Sabol?s survey respondents (workshops, conferences, department metings, and lectures) are not the formats frequently asociated with ongoing or sustained profesional development. This potential mismatch raises questions about how teachers interpreted ?ongoing and sustained,? especialy since the survey did not provide a definition to survey respondents or readers of the study. Information about the type and frequency of profesional development experiences atended by art teachers shows a potential disconnect with the type of profesional development currently advocated in the research. Nevertheles, art educators appear to be optimistic about the role profesional associations and networks play in their profesional development. Seventy-percent of respondents (Sabol, 2006) agreed that their state art asociation provided beneficial profesional development experiences. The word ?beneficial? appeared in the survey question eliciting these statistics. However, since the researcher did not ask the !"$! respondents to define ?beneficial,? the readers of the study do not know the criteria upon which respondents decided what constituted ?beneficial? PD. Charland published a couple of articles that, although not based on empirical studies, (2006, 2008) begin to describe the experience of art educators engaged in profesional development which was absent from Sabol?s (2006) study that relied solely on survey methodology. Charland?s articles advocate for profesional asociations to work in conjunction with universities to provide art educators with residential and extended programing which is unlike what many art educators experience in their schools. The first article (2006) described the rationale for such a partnership, and the second (2008) described such a partnership in Michigan. In 2007, Lind published an empirical study of arts educators working within learning communities as part of an external network. The external network included visual art, music, dance, and theater teachers, but the focus group Lind used for research purposes was composed entirely of music educators. I have yet to find any empirical studies that have documented the experience of a learning community composed of art educators. With no empirical research describing learning communities of art educators, the literature about non school-based learning communities reviewed in this chapter can only propose the possible benefits and limitations of such a group. Non school-based learning communities such as state asociations may play a role in developing art educators? content and pedagogical content knowledge. In addition, art teachers might find that external networks provide a place to voice dilemas and controversies (Orland-Barak, 2009) and may understand their own teaching contexts beter as a result of participating !"%! in them (Nelson & Slavit, 2008). However, finding the time and resources to participate in opportunities outside of their schools is often fals on the art educator (Sabol, 2006). Such circumstances present obstacles for those seking profesional development opportunities outside of their working context, and likely generate inequities in profesional development opportunities (where the teachers who can personaly aford to go is more likely to, which may further cement existing disparities). While a few studies within art education have begun to describe the profesional development opportunities in which art educators engage as wel as some of the obstacles art educators face, additional research wil continue to develop the profesional development scholarship with/in art education. Implications for this Study My decision to study a learning community comprising art educators responds to needs within the profesional development literature at large and within art education. An historical unevennes in funding has generated profesional development research in some subject areas and not in others (Borko, 2004). I value Borko drawing atention to previously overlooked and underfunded subject areas within the profesional development literature when she suggested, there is an urgent need for?work in areas that have received litle atention to date. As on example, researchers might investigate whether profesional development programs with demonstrated efectivenes for elementary mathematics teachers can be adapted to diferent subject areas and grade levels. (p. 12) !#&! Art education is one area that has received litle atention to date. The limited profesional development research in art education provides an enormous opportunity for this study to fil a long-standing void. I believe that my study is the first empirical study of art educators engaged in a non school-based learning community, and thus simultaneously extends the existing scholarship in art education and teacher learning communities. In her example about extending research, Borko acknowledges that we should not asume that efective profesional development in math education is transferrable without adaptation to al subject areas. My research does not atempt to claim whether a specific method of profesional development is ?efective,? or to conduct a design experiment as she suggests later in her recommendation. Although I do not intend to study art educators? profesional development experiences in order to prove the efectivenes of the learning community model, the descriptive acounts of learning communities in the literature have informed my decision to study art teachers? engagement with collaborative inquiry. In the following paragraphs, I describe my initial expectations about ways in which a learning community would met many of the stated profesional development needs of art educators. I developed these expectations before embarking on this study, and I believe being transparent about these expectations adds trustworthines to my research. Insofar as learning communities create dialogic, collaborative spaces, they fulfil art educators? desire and appreciation for times where they are able to be together. Providing teachers with space to talk and to share ideas is central to the fostering of collegiality, and to the collaborative inquiry proces (Jennings & Mils, 2009) and alows !#'! for initial ?problem finding? (Isacs, 1999, p. 44), and collaborative problem solving. Inquiry-oriented dialogue aims to produce knowledge on which participants can take action. When practiced wel, dialogue is ?a proces and method by which the awarenes and understanding that you already posses may surface in you and be acted upon? (Isacs, 1999, p. 386). The opportunity for teachers to collaborate presents an alternative to the isolation many art educators experience. Teachers can participate in learning communities across school and district lines, which is another benefit to art educators who may work in isolation. Collaborative inquiry, the nexus of action research and profesional learning communities (Yendol-Hoppey & Dana, 2009), encourages teachers to problematize and investigate their practice. The action research elements embedded within learning communities empower teachers to define their own lines and modes of inquiry rather than having it prescribed and enforced by an outsider. This model is potentialy wel-suited to met art educators? diverse and varied profesional learning interests by alowing individuals and groups of art educators to define and structure their own profesional learning. Art educators may find learning communities valuable for their ability to foster collegiality and act as a support when teachers face dificult and chalenging situations. Art educators are keenly aware of the ways in which the current educational policy climate has afected their clasrooms. The increased focus on tested subject areas has cut instructional time in other subjects and has further marginalized learning in the arts (McMurrer, 2008). Acording to Orland-Barak (2009), collaborative inquiry ?enhances and sustains a motivated profesional community that can withstand the presures and !#(! chalenges of acountability and standardization? (p. 23). As art educators face additional chalenges such as funding their programs, educating English language learners, or navigating their first years as a teacher, learning communities may be places of valuable support. Not only might learning communities operate to support and transform teacher practice, they also may make the transformation of the larger system (in which the collaborative inquiry group operates) possible. The communities exist in places (profesional, cultural, societal, etc.) that influence how group members act and interact. The relationships within the group exist in a larger network of relationships, both physical and social. As new understandings surface, group members may be more keenly aware of the context in which they exist, including the sociopolitical structures of power at play (Orland-Barak, 2009). As Isacs (1999) writes, ?One of the possibilities of inquiry is becoming aware of the ?sea? in which [teachers] swim, and in doing so, fundamentaly alter it? (p. 39). Art education scholars (Cosier, 2004; Darts, 2008) have recently caled for art educators to chalenge the structures in which they find themselves. For example, Cosier (2004) writes, ?If we are to craft an art education that is meaningful and relevant to the lives of students, we should focus on developing tools to help them connect to ways of knowing the world that may be alien and/or inacesible in current school paradigms? (p. 48). Darts (2008) also asks art teachers to stand united as ?freedom fighters? because ?significant institutional and profesional change is unlikely to occur without direct intervention, including political lobbying, profesional development, and teacher education? (p. 115). Art teachers who hope for a new paradigm in art education may find that the traditional educational system is one of the main !#)! barriers to meaningful student learning. Thus, if art educators are commited to meaningful student learning, they must necesarily chalenge the structures that stand in the way. Learning communities can begin to investigate these structures and support teachers? eforts to work towards positive change. Teachers? engagement with collaborative inquiry can also provide a responsive and dialogic pedagogical model. Maxine Greene (1988) has long advocated for the use of collaborative inquiry as a pedagogical model for K-12 clasrooms and caled for teacher education that can ?empower students to create spaces of dialogue in their clasrooms, spaces where they can take initiatives and uncover humanizing possibilities? (p. 13). Additionaly, Hagaman (1990) describes the powerful learning that can take place in an inquiry-oriented art clasroom and recommends that, ?if teachers are expected to organize and facilitate meaningful dialogues and collaborative inquiry in the clasroom, they must be provided with opportunities to experience the nature and rewards of such proceses firsthand? (p. 155). The potential benefits of teachers working in collaborative comunities do not guarante that these benefits wil be the experience of the art educators in my study. Yet, this examination and application of the profesional development research to art education afords a clearer picture of the reasons I have chosen to sit ?on the river?s verge.? The Cezanne quote in the introduction of this chapter does not explicitly acknowledge the number of choices artists make before they begin to work. Cezanne chose the river?s verge as a place ripe with opportunity. Through this literature review, I have atempted to demonstrate the ways my choice of location (studying a group of art !#*! educators engaged in a teacher learning community) is a ripe location for research. In Chapter 3, I describe the tools I used to map this uncharted territory. !#+! Chapter 3: Cartographic Tools and Their Uses ?Whatever the medium, there is the dificulty, chalenge, fascination and often productive clumsines of learning a new method: the wonderful puzzles and problems of translating with new materials? ? Helen Frankenthaler (Kern, 1980, p. 25). In Chapter 1, I equated research methods to the tools used by a cartographer. As a novice researcher, al research methods fel like new tools to me. This chapter describes my proces of learning, choosing, and using a specific set of tools for my cartographic work. My work as an artist has significantly informed the way that I come to understand and work with new materials as a cartographer/researcher. Felow artist Helen Frankenthaler (1980) stated that learning a new method involves dificulty, chalenge, fascination, and often a productive clumsines. Her statement eloquently describes my experience as a novice cartographer. As I expected, cartography and art-making are similar endeavors, and my experiences choosing artistic media paraleled my atempt to find appropriate cartographic tools. Artists recognize that their end product is the result of a dynamic interaction betwen hand, tool, medium, and surface. Consequently, this chapter describes my cartography as a dynamic interaction betwen research tools and methods, my participants, the research seting, and me. My Hand One of the most delightful things about teaching elementary art was observing and talking with students about their artistic choices. Their rationales for choosing a !#"! certain color often ranged from personal (?I always use purple. It?s my favorite color.?), to practical (?This green was the one in the box.?), to philosophical (?Wel, not al people are the same color.?). The factors that influenced my students? artistic choices are similar to those present as I designed and conducted this research. Like my students, I had to negotiate personal, practical, and philosophical factors in order to make methodological decisions that would afect the final product. These decisions represent my ?hand? in this research. Personal Factors - ?I always use purple. It?s my favorite color.? When young artists are engaged in their work, you can se it in their bodies. I found that five year olds working hard on a painting almost never sat quietly. Their minds and bodies work together. They stand, clap, talk, and even dance. Like the work of these young artists, my physical characteristics and the roles I played impacted this research. Because my second research question specificaly considers the way in which my participants viewed my role(s), I discuss the related nature of my identities and power and position as a researcher in Chapter 4. However, my personal beliefs and preferences (a defining aspect of my identities, I would argue) directly shaped my methodological decisions and so I provide a slice of the discussion about my identities here. In my first semester as a doctoral student, I sat in a research methods clas participating in a discussion about the beliefs and asumptions underpinning a number of research examples that we had read. Many of my clasmates began to identify with one ?philosophy? or another. I became discouraged. Each of the three philosophies appeared quite similar to me, and al three felt misaligned with my ideas about research and research participants. Without knowledge of any alternative research philosophies, I was !##! unsure if research was something that I wanted to do. Over time, I learned about alternative philosophies that beter aligned with my beliefs and research aspirations. In the same way that an elementary student justifies the personal nature of their color choice (?I always use purple. It?s my favorite color.?), my ideas about knowledge, research, and participants resulted in my choice to use participatory and arts-based research methods. While I do prefer these to other methods I have encountered, the ?It?s my favorite color? rationale is woefully inadequate in this instance. Indeed, hearing a student claim a favorite color provokes additional questions such as, ?Why is it your favorite? What do you like about it?? These questions necesitate a rationale for how collaborative and arts-based research methods align with my beliefs, which I present in the next section. Philosophical Factors - ?Wel, not all people are the same color.? The elementary art student who defended her color choice with the statement ?Wel, not al people are the same color,? demonstrated an atention to relationships. She recognized diference. After a careful examination of al of the color choices in the container, she chose the one that best represented her understanding. Like the diference noticed by this young artist, I recognize that the philosophies underlying research methodologies often difer significantly. After considering a number of research methodologies ?in the container,? I chose two research methodologies that could best represent my own understandings about research. Participatory action research (PAR) and arts-based research (ABR) are methodologies that do not prescribe a set of methods or techniques for conducting research. Instead, by including participants as co-researchers (PAR) and promoting arts- !#$! based proceses as important tools for the researcher (ABR), both these methodologies offer alternative approaches to knowledge production. Although PAR and ABR each have their own distinct literature base, PAR projects often incorporate alternative forms of doing and presenting research, many of which are arts-based (Conrad & Campbel, 2008). Similarly, arts-based research projects have become increasingly collaborative and participatory (Rumbold, Alen, Alexander, & van Lar, 2008). Finley (2003) described the collaborative possibilities within art-making when she wrote, ?Making art is pasionate, visceral activity that creates opportunities for communion among participants, researchers, and the various shared and disimilar discourse communities who are audiences of (and participants with) the research text? (p. 288). I chose to use both PAR and ABR for this study after recognizing the philosophical and methodological congruency of these two methodologies. As I indicated in Chapter 1, I was atracted to PAR because it atempts to democratize knowledge, ?queer the relationship betwen the researcher and the researched? (Brydon-Miler & Maguire, 2009, p. 254), and investigate questions that emerge from participants? lived experiences. I also appreciated that PAR emphasizes collaboration, which, to some extent, is present (though often ignored) in al research endeavors. Fine et al. (2004) argue that, ?al research is collaborative and participatory?More researchers must acknowledge the co-construction of knowledge and that material gathered from, with, and on any community?constitutes a participatory proces (p. 119). Furthermore, I began to se my own beliefs about research reflected in the ?underlying tenets of PAR: (1) an emphasis on the lived experiences of human beings, (2) the subjectivity and activist stance of the researcher, and (3) an emphasis on !#%! social change? (McIntyre, 1997, p. 21). While my initial desire to atempt a PAR study was due to the alignment betwen the tenets of PAR and my research philosophy, my desire to use ABR as an additional methodology was due to an alignment betwen ABR and my tendency to use artistic proceses in order to make sense of the world. Researchers have employed arts-based methods both for their ability to generate sophisticated analyses and in an efort to chalenge the ?monopoly of the writen word? (Conrad & Campbel, 2008, p. 252). Ewing and Hughes (2008), citing the lack of an acepted definition of arts-based research within the literature, synthesized research from Barone and Eisner (1997) and Knowles and Cole (2008) to provide the following list of commonly acepted characteristics of arts-based research: , the use of expresive and/or contextualized vernacular language as appropriate; , the promotion of empathy or engagement with the audience; , the presence of an aesthetic form or forms (literary, visual and/or performing) in data collection and/or analysis and/or representation and disemination of the research findings; , the relationship betwen the research topic or isue and its form has integrity; , the opportunity to explore multiple perspectives around the research question(s) or dilema(s); , reflexivity and the personal signature or presence of the researcher/writer, even though the researcher may not be the subject of the research. (p. 514) These characteristics include the engagement of research participants and the active presence of the researcher, both of which align with tenets of PAR. However, the !$&! presence of an aesthetic form listed as a common characteristic of ABR studies is something that PAR does not guarante. Combining PAR and ABR methodologies provided me with an opportunity to conduct research that is both participatory and artistic. For this reason, these methodologies have provided an alternative to the post- positivist methods of research that framed the discussion in my earliest doctoral research courses. However, a post-positivist framework continues to dominate much of the educational research literature, especialy in regards to evaluation and rigor (Finley, 2003). Because of this framework?s prevalence, I anticipate questions about the objectivity and rigor of this research. Traditionaly, those evaluating research would deem research ?objective? when it separated ?the knower from what he knows and in particular with the separation of what is known from any interests, ?biases,? etc., which he may have which are not the interests and concerns authorized by the discipline? (Smith, 2008, p. 40-41). However, I do not believe that by conducting research I am able to reveal an objective truth. Instead, I am aware of how my position and power as a researcher afect what I come to understand through my study (Foucault, 1977). These epistemological beliefs about the relationship betwen knowledge, power, and researcher positionality have motivated me to be transparent about my role and relationship to this research, and alows those who read it to judge its objectivity (and thus, its legitimacy) not from the distance I keep, but from the trustworthines I establish (Guba & Lincoln, 1989; Scheman, 2008). In order to establish trustworthines in my research, I do not deny or atempt to obscure the fact that, like my young elementary art students, I was deeply engaged in this proces. !$'! While my rationale for choosing these methods is not as straightforward as my elementary art student?s statement, ?Wel, not al people are the same color,? I hope that in describing the philosophies that underlie ABR and PAR as wel as my epistemological beliefs, I have made my rationale for choosing these methods clear. I chose these methods for their ability to alow me to work in ways that felt ?right? to me. Despite being satisfied with what PAR and ABR offered me as a researcher, I quickly realized that I was unable to enact either of the methodologies fully due to a number constraints. This recognition paralels something that my elementary art students also came to understand. As these students matured, they became increasingly frustrated when they were unable to realize in their product what was in their heads. The young student who stated, ?Wel, not al people are the same color,? eventualy found even the set of multicultural crayons woefully inadequate. I remember watching her as she held crayons up to the skin of her felow clasmates, working hard to find the best match, but never feling quite satisfied. What she was learning is that al artists have practical constraints on their work. At times, the constraints create situations that are les than ideal. However, when this student asked me if mixing the colors together might actualy get her closer to using the crayons straight out of the box, she reminded me that exciting possibilities exist even amidst constraining circumstances. Practical Factors - ?This gren was the one in the box.? Because this discussion on practical factors is part of a larger section describing the ways that I have shaped this research, here I discuss my role as a doctoral student, my geographic proximity to the research site, and my responsibilities outside of this research !$(! project. Readers of this study who subscribe to a post-positivist research framework may consider the practical realities in which I conducted this study as ?limitations.? While practical factors do limit some aspects of the study, they also create spaces of new possibilities, like my elementary student?s desire to learn how to mix colors. In addition, practical factors are only limitations if the readers of this study expect it to met an ?ideal? model proposed in theoretical literature. PAR and ABR researchers recognize that theories are ?historicaly produced, traveling through time and space as transplanted and translating phenomena, changing significantly in the proces of particularization (Friedman, 1998, p. 69). As a result, neither PAR nor ABR adherents view theory as a static object or recommend using theory to evaluate the merits of a particular study. PAR scholarship also has chalenged the asumption that readers should use an ?ideal? model of the methodology as a standard for evaluating individual PAR studies. As Conrad & Campbel (2008) argue, We must ases [participatory research?s (PR)] acomplishments acording to how wel it has addresed the unique chalenges of a specific project. Since one cannot expect a single project to exemplify al of the ideals of PR (Parks, 1993), we need not ases it in terms of how closely it has adhered to PR principles. Rather, one must ases each project acording to the particularities of its own context, considering what might be realisticaly acomplished in the research project over a limited span in time. (p. 257) By proposing that readers should ases a research project acording to its particularities, PAR and ABR projects acknowledge that researchers ?work within the constraints of the society as [they] find it? (Melor, 1988, p. 80). Similarly, my elementary artists worked !$)! with a limited number of colors and other practical constraints. Yet, because these students did not work under an expectation that al their work should look the same or met a certain standard, the constraints rarely troubled them. A student who stated, ?This green was the one in the box,? communicates his wilingnes and ability to work with what he had available to him. As I came to understand the set of expectations that acompanied my status as a doctoral student, I realized that the university-driven nature of my research constrained my methodological choices in ways that were not as trouble-free as the constraints of my elementary art students. Even if I had believed enacting an ideal PAR model was possible, the university-driven nature of my research alone posed significant chalenges to my atempt to conduct PAR in at least three ways. First, doctoral study required me to predetermine aspects of this research such as research questions and research design. These requirements were chalenging to negotiate given PAR?s atempt to involve participants in posing research questions and designing the inquiry proces (McIntyre, 1997). Reflecting on her experience as a doctoral student, Maguire (1993) asked, ?How could I write a disertation proposal with its problem statement unles I did it unilateraly?the antithesis of participatory research?? (p. 162). Like Maguire, I created and proposed my research questions and study design before meting my study participants. However, I did atempt to include participants in aspects conducting this research (e.g., having participants facilitate group interviews) as the proces alowed. Secondly, PAR is idealy a collaborative endeavor. Many universities expect that doctoral students individualy conduct al aspects of their research and award degrees based on an individual student?s completion of university requirements (Maguire, 1993). !$*! Despite participant involvement in group organization and problem formation, Maguire (1993) describes the writing and defending of the disertation as a solitary proces that did not include her participants in the final presentation of their collaborative research. My experience writing and defending this research was similarly a solitary endeavor. Finaly, ?universities often encourage knowledge production that fils gaps in scholarly literature and, in the proces, demonstrates a researcher?s intelectual competence? (Gates & North, in pres). PAR, on the other hand, aims to produce knowledge that is specific to local contexts and that is useful (primarily) to participants in the study (Herr & Anderson, 2005). As a researcher atempting to met both of these expectations, I had to negotiate an inquiry topic that was both important to teachers? individual contexts and filed a gap in scholarly literature. Other scholars have described the chalenges faced by any member of the academy (doctoral student or otherwise) when atempting arts-based research. Arts-based research contests Carey?s (2005) asertion that language is superior to other semiotic systems, even though it often includes some form of text. The inclusion of text in arts- based research endeavors may be a necesary concesion given that the academy has not fully embraced arts-based research methods. However, the academy has welcomed arts- based research as an integral part of research rather than research itself (Ewing & Hughes, 2008). The academy?s skepticism toward such research has generated a discussion about what delineates fine art making from arts-based research (Cutcher, 2004; Eisner, 2008; Ewing & Hughes, 2008). However, I gain litle from categorizing a researcher?s work as art or research. I suspect that a clean distinction betwen art and research would abolish conversations in the academy centered on how a research study !$+! helps us to make meaning and draw connections. This making of meaning and connections is, after al, a common goal of art and research. In addition, doctoral students may struggle to defend the rigor of their arts-based research to commite members unfamiliar with the methodology. Commite members without experience in the arts may not recognize the criteria of rigorous ABR (such as a systematic engagement in an inquiry proces, a transparent research proces, and the provision of strong warrants) as characteristics of the art-making proces itself (Cutcher, 2004; Grumet, 1995). I am not the first doctoral student to have my role as a doctoral student impose methodological constraints on my research. Maguire (1993) and McIntyre (1997), both respected participatory action researchers, have writen about their struggle to employ PAR for their doctoral disertation research. Yet, deeply commited to its potential to transform lives, both chose to use the methodology to the greatest possible extent. Their atitude and commitment mirrors the perspective I have about this research: despite the ways in which my role as a doctoral student limited this research, I have atempted both PAR and ABR to the extent it was possible to do so in this situation. While collecting and analyzing data for this study, I had other responsibilities in addition to my role as a doctoral student researcher that presented practical constraints. To make my doctoral studies afordable, I worked as a teaching asistant at the university. Although I taught only one clas, the 150-mile roundtrip drive to campus meant that I was commited to the university for an entire day each wek. I also acepted a semester-long adjunct position at a local university to teach one section of art education methods in order to gain additional teaching experience. Based on the lavish support I received from my spouse throughout my doctoral program, I atempted to reciprocate by !$"! remaining involved at our church, and thus, in my husband?s career as a pastor. At the very least, I was at church and smiling on Sundays (although on a few occasions I locked myself in his office during Sunday School in order to transcribe interviews)! These teaching and personal responsibilities supported me financialy and emotionaly while I conducted this disertation research. At the same time, they required my physical presence and did not alow me to temporarily relocate myself closer to the research site. The regional education agency (REA) that administered ArtsEdPD and where we held a number of our group metings was 325 miles roundtrip from home and 350 miles roundtrip from the university. I found that my multiple responsibilities and geographic distance betwen these responsibilities were spaces of both restriction and possibility (Figure 6). !$#! Figure 6. The geographical realities of this study. For instance, the distance betwen my home, research site, and university meant that I stayed at the research site for two to three days every time I visited. During those days, I atended ArtsEdPD planning metings, facilitated collaborative inquiry group metings, conducted interviews, and visited participants? schools. The pace was exhausting, but this arrangement aforded me the opportunity to gain local knowledge by eating, sleping, and driving in and around the three-county area with which my participants were so familiar. The amount of driving involved in data collection also provided many opportunities for creating voice memos. Thanks to a hands-free headset !$$! and voice recorder on my cel phone, I was able to memo my thoughts imediately after group metings, interviews, and school visits. Teaching an undergraduate clas at the university demanded a significant amount of time, my physical presence, and thus, additional travel. However, my frequent trips to campus aforded me regular aces to the campus libraries and art galeries as wel as regular in-person contact with my advisors and felow doctoral students. I found these contacts extremely valuable as a novice researcher. The practical, philosophical, and personal realities that shaped this study undoubtedly influenced my methodological choices and the way in which I conducted the research. In other words, the artist has a choice about which tools to use and must negotiate how to use them based on both her artistic intentions, her circumstances, and the surface in which she works. The Research Context as Surface Similar to an artist choosing a surface on which to work, researchers choose a context in which to conduct research. When artists choose a surface, they recognize that their choice of surface afects the way in which they work, and that in order to achieve their intentions, some tools are more efective than others are. For example, a chisel is more efective than a paintbrush for an artist hoping to carve a statue out of marble. Artists also recognize that surfaces can resist particular media and thus must choose appropriate media with which to work. For instance, watercolor paint, designed for a porous surface, beads when applied to a gesoed (nonporous) canvas. I chose the surface (context) of this research based on my interests in art education and profesional development, which I described in Chapter 1. In this section, I describe the context of this research and the ways in which this context both necesitated and resisted certain !$%! methodological tools. Although I briefly mention specific tools (e.g., interviews, recording group metings) throughout this section, I present a more explicit discussion about how I used these tools in the sections that follow. The collaborative inquiry group of art educators who participated in this study was one of six groups formed within the ArtsEdPD project during the 2009-2010 school year. ArtsEdPD grouped the 40 visual art, music, and theater teachers who applied using information harvested from the teachers? applications to participate in the project. Although the original intent of the ArtsEdPD faculty was to place teachers into groups based on their interests, a number of other non-negotiable factors afected the groups? compositions (Figure 7). !%&! Figure 7. Series of factors influencing ArtsEdPD applicants' placement into one of six collaborative inquiry groups. I worked with one of the grant co-directors and another ArtsEdPD faculty member (also a doctoral student researcher) to place teachers into collaborative inquiry groups consisting of 6-8 teachers. We asigned each facilitator (and eventualy, their group) a color for !%'! identification purposes. Our initial placement of teachers began by considering the following factors: 1) ArtsEdPD had both public and private grant money funding the project. The federal government awarded ArtsEdPD a grant in order to provide profesional development opportunities for teachers in ?high poverty? districts. Thus, we were required to separate teachers into two initial groups based on whether the teacher worked in a school defined as ?high poverty? according to federal guidelines. Of the 40 participants, 27 teachers worked in high poverty schools and 13 did not. 8 2) Because there were two ArtsEdPD faculty members collecting data about our experiences within a collaborative inquiry group, we sorted participants based on their wilingnes to participate in research (as indicated in their applications). Sorting the participants acording to their wilingnes to participate in research was an atempt to both satisfy requirements from Institutional Review Boards as wel as an atempt to create an opportunity to include al the members of a group in the research about collaborative inquiry. We continued placing teachers into groups based on a host of other factors, such as the discipline and content level that they taught, their topic of study preference as indicated on the application, and known personalities of returning participants. At the end of the placement proces, I was discouraged by the fact that, in some instances, the requirements for conducting my research trumped a teacher being placed in a group purely based on her or his topic of interest. For instance, if a teacher had interests wel- !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! $ !Separating teachers based on the poverty level of their students was logisticaly necesary given the parameters of our funding. However, segregating teachers in this way may have been potentialy harmful in that it perpetuated the segregation of these teachers within the profesional development oportunity.! !%(! matched to the interests of the teachers we had already asigned to my group, yet was not wiling to participate in research, we did not place that individual in my group. For a profesional development approach that estems teachers working collaboratively to explore a common interest, the situation was far from ideal. We completed asigning each applicant to one of the six groups. My ?blue? collaborative inquiry group consisted of seven other visual art educators who taught in schools that were not ?high poverty? and who were wiling to participate in research. The ?green? collaborative inquiry group also included teachers wiling to participate in research, but unlike the ?blue? group, the ?green? group was composed of both art and music teachers. Thus, another researcher with a research interest that did not necesitate having a group in which the members al taught the same discipline worked with the green group. When I first contacted the teachers in my group by email, I welcomed them and thanked them for their wilingnes to participate in research. I also described the formal consent proces involved in participation. A few days before the first meting, I phoned each member to introduce myself and to answer any questions related to ArtsEdPD or my research. The ?Blue CIG? met for the first time on September 25, 2009. The group was composed of four elementary art teachers, two middle school art teachers, one art teacher who taught both middle and high school, and me (Table 4). Thus, I was the only group member who was not currently teaching full time in a K-12 context. I was also the only member with a pre-defined role (facilitator) and had the least amount of K-12 teaching experience. Our group was composed of seven females and one male. Al of the group members were White. Of the seven K-12 teachers in our group, Veronica and Bonnie !%)! were the only teachers who taught in the same school. The other five members taught in diferent districts and thus, diferent schools. The K-12 teachers in the Blue CIG taught in districts that did not met the federal definition of ?high poverty,? yet the Blue CIG members agreed that the afluence of their schools varied considerably. The teachers agreed that despite the varying afluence, al of their schools were unquestionably rural. Table 4. Current teaching assignment and years of K-12 teaching experience of Blue CIG members Name Current teaching assignment Years of K-12 experience Keara K-6 16 Dominick K-6 35 Jenni 7-12 8 Veronica 6-8 32 Bonnie 6-8 25 Jackie K-4 36 Lisa PreK-5 10 Leslie Higher Ed 3.5 Note: With the exception of the researcher, all of the names used are pseudonyms. Throughout the school year, our group met for ten formal and three informal metings (Table 5). Six of these metings took place at the REA as part of a full-day ArtsEdPD program, two metings took place at the REA but were not part of a full-day ArtsEdPD program, and five took place in a private meting room at a local restaurant. !%*! Table 5. Blue CIG metings # Date Location Length Type ArtsEdPD program day? # of members present 1 9/25/09 REA 2 hours Formal Yes 7 2 10/6/09 Restaurant 3 hours Formal No 8 3 11/13/09 REA 2 hours Formal Yes 8 4 11/16/09 Restaurant 3 hours Formal No 7 5 12/4/09 REA 2 hours Formal Yes 8 6 1/14/10 REA 2 hours Formal Yes 8 7 3/5/10 REA 2 hours Formal Yes 8 8 3/17/10 Restaurant 3 hours Informal No 7 9 3/18/10 Restaurant 3 hours Formal No 7 10 4/30/10 REA 7 hours Formal No 8 11 5/13/10 REA 2 hours Informal No 4 12 5/14/10 REA 1 hour Formal Yes 8 13 5/20/10 Restaurant 2 hours Informal No 7 Formal metings were those during which the group atended to its collaborative inquiry. I regularly asked the group members for input about how we should spend our meting time. The agendas, which I drafted ahead of each meting, included items based on member input (including my own), as wel as items that addresed the expectations communicated to me by the ArtsEdPD co-directors. The formal metings typicaly included a brief time for administrative tasks such as planning the next meting date followed by a larger block of time for collaborative inquiry work. We held informal metings to addres concerns that emerged throughout the year; atendance by al members was not expected or required at informal metings. For instance, I suggested scheduling an informal meting after one or two group members? specific technology- related isues began to take up significant amounts of time the group had intended to devote to their collaborative research. Group members suggested additional informal !%+! metings in order to instal a collaborative artwork at the REA and to have a nice dinner together to celebrate our year together. Approximately half of the Blue CIG metings occurred within ArtsEdPD program days, scheduled on six Fridays betwen September and May. The ArtsEdPD program days typicaly included a two-hour time slot for collaborative inquiry group metings as wel as time to view and respond to a work of art, explore new technological equipment and applications, and eat lunch. With the exception of the two-hour collaborative inquiry group meting, al 40 ArtsEdPD participants and faculty members asembled in a large group seting. Even though al 40 ArtsEdPD participants and faculty members participated in these activities, the project co-directors encouraged collaborative inquiry groups to sit together for a majority of these activities. The ArtsEdPD faculty worked collaboratively to design the technological and artistic activities in order to met ArtsEdPD project goals originaly articulated in the federal grant proposal. These goals included building a community of practice among arts educators in the three-county area served by the REA and conducting al learning opportunities through the introduction of new and emerging technologies in order to promote 21 st century learning skils for both arts educators and the students they serve. As part of the ArtsEdPD program, teachers enrolled in a three-credit continuing education course, which required 90 hours of documented work time. The six ArtsEdPD program days constituted 42 of the 90 hours, and ArtsEdPD required teachers to document an additional 48 hours of engagement in collaborative inquiry. For this reason and others, the situated nature of the CIGs within ArtsEdPD had a significant impact on the ways in which the Blue CIG operated. I !%"! provide some observations and interpretations of the relationship betwen the Blue CIG and ArtsEdPD in Chapter 4. In order to progres in our collaborative inquiry and to document the additional 48 hours required by ArtsEdPD, the Blue CIG held additional metings. Most Blue CIG metings lasted betwen two and three hours, with two exceptions. ArtsEdPD had built in a snow make-up day and, since this day was not needed, offered participants the chance to use the day as an al-day CIG work sesion. ArtsEdPD agreed to reimburse districts for substitute costs if CIGs chose to take advantage of this daylong work sesion. Although ArtsEdPD did not require atendance, al members of the Blue CIG chose to atend this meting. The shortest Blue CIG meting, lasting only an hour, took place on the last ArtsEdPD program day. The purpose of this meting was for each CIG facilitator to engage their group in reflection about their experiences with ArtsEdPD and with collaborative inquiry. Every Blue CIG member completed the required 48 hours by atending group metings and by documenting the time spent on their individual inquiry- related tasks such as reading, reflecting, collecting data, or preparing to share their work. Earlier in this section, I described the research context as the surface on which I worked. However, this analogy fails to communicate the reality that I was not just the artist, but also part of the surface. My choice to situate myself inside a collaborative inquiry group as a participant/facilitator was both a strength and a chalenge of this research. My involvement in the group provided an opportunity to experience the content, power, and politics of the group in addition to the design choices and structures typicaly reported by researchers located outside communities (Clausen, 2009). Maguire (2008) suggested that researchers who position themselves as participants in their own study, !%#! and therefore engage deeply with participants, add a level of authenticity to their research. I agree. In addition, my involvement in the varied aspects of group life was an atempt to avoid the oversimplification of communities and especialy of collaboration, present within much of the learning community literature (Dooner, Mandzuk, & Clifton, 2008; Drennon, 2000; Moje, 2000). My position within the group also answers a cal within profesional development scholarship (e.g., Curry, 2008) to locate research inside rather than outside communities of practice. Locating myself within the group provided me with an opportunity to take part in informal conversations and events that were significant in helping me to understand how participants were experiencing collaborative inquiry. My status as both participant and researcher also posed significant chalenges. In addition to experiencing many of the dilemas (e.g., negotiating my own democratic aims for the group amidst group members? expectation that I should tel them what to do) inherent in the proces of facilitation (Curry, 2008; Drennon, 2000; Given, 2010), I struggled to negotiate the preferences of my participants, ArtsEdPD goals, and my own research goals. These diverse and, at times, competing agendas alowed me to recognize the ways in which the surface of this research both necesitated and resisted certain tools, as I suggested previously. For instance, participants often used me as the first point of contact with questions about documentation, technology, or ArtsEdPD-related paperwork. These interactions, typicaly over the phone or email, were unscheduled yet very much a part of our ?group life? as I came to cal it. The frequency of these informal, unscheduled interactions necesitated that I carry a tablet in my purse to ensure a place in which I could record notes in any location. When these conversations happened in !%$! person, I resisted the urge to take notes as we were talking and atempted to capture my thoughts as soon as possible afterwards in order to document the parts of our conversation that semed related to my research interests, or to remind me to atend to their questions about ArtsEdPD requirements. When I learned that six of the eight members of our group were atending the National Art Education Asociation (NAEA) convention, and that three of the members were staying in an adjoining hotel room, I made the choice to relax my researcher instincts. In other words, I chose to use my energy to engage with the conference content and enjoy the opportunity to forefront my role as their colleague rather than a researcher or facilitator. I found that any time I spent with the participants, whether formal/informal, planned/unplanned, inquiry-related or not, influenced my perceptions of my participants and of the group. I also found that much of the negotiating among participants? needs, ArtsEdPD goals, and my own research goals centered on time-related isues. Despite teachers? appreciation for content-specific profesional development, the teachers in this study voiced their frustrations with having to mis school in order to atend ArtsEdPD because they valued their time with their students. Mising school was a special concern for three of the four elementary teachers in the Blue CIG, who taught on a schedule in which each clasroom of students had art clas on one specific day of the wek. Their schedules, combined with the ArtsEdPD program days always faling on a Friday, meant that their Friday clases would often have substitute teachers. District substitute shortages created an even greater frustration when Blue CIG teachers learned that administrators were canceling their art clases altogether if the substitute had to cover another clasroom. For Keara, her administrator?s decision to cancel the art clases created animosity among her !%%! colleagues who did not receive the expected (and often, contracted) time for preparation if their students did not have art clas. The complex dilemas created by teachers mising school to participate in ArtsEdPD caused our group to schedule al of our Blue CIG metings (happening outside of the six ArtsEdPD program days) after school. While this arrangement alowed us to avoid the dilemas created when teachers mised school, teachers often came to these metings with noticeably les energy. The after-school metings were also dificult to schedule when personal events and family responsibilities competed for after-school time. As a researcher, I wanted to be sensitive to teachers? complex teaching situations and busy lives. Asking for an hour in which I could conduct an interview seemed like a huge imposition, especialy at the beginning of the year when I was only beginning to establish rapport with my participants. I atempted to make the interviews les of an imposition by alowing them to choose the location of the interview and offering to pay for the meal when the interview took place in a restaurant. Despite my initial hesitancies to ask for their time, I found that these interviews were invaluable opportunities for trust building as participants and I talked one-on-one. I had originaly planned to conduct three face-to-face interviews with each participant spread over the course of the year, but had to modify this plan due to a month of treacherous winter weather and my geographic distance from the research site. During the month of February, our collaborative inquiry (and thus, my research) was stunted. In the words of Jackie, ?We lost the whole month of February!? Many of the Blue CIG participants went for a wek or more without electricity and/or running water in their homes. As a result, we canceled two scheduled metings; I was unable to conduct the mid-year interviews I had planned; and, the !'&&! teachers struggled to collect data related to our collaborative inquiry due to the many canceled school days. We added an extra meting in March to regroup, but the interviews I planned to conduct in the middle of the year ended up closer in proximity to the end of the year interviews than I had hoped. I also found myself negotiating my desire to audio-record the interviews and group metings with participants? comfort levels. At the beginning of our second Blue CIG meting, Dominick specificaly asked me not to turn on the audio recording device. Having mised the first group meting due to a family vacation, Dominick was not part of our group?s initial conversation about my research, the recording devices, and how I planned to use the recordings, which I discuss in the next section. The other group members, who welcomed the recording equipment after the discussion during the first meting, helped me to recreate parts of our initial discussion. Eventualy, with Dominick?s permision, I was able to record the second group meting. In a few instances, I struggled to negotiate my need to document conversations with my own comfort level doing so in public setings. Throughout the year, I interviewed each Blue CIG member at his or her school. Having visited a large number of schools due to my recent roles as a university supervisor and as a faculty member during the first year of ArtsEdPD, I desired to photograph each school seting. I reasoned that photographs would help with recal and serve as an important visual reference when creating researcher memos about the school visits, particularly the influence of the institutional seting on my participants? teaching and learning. Based on the intended purposes of the photographs, I decided the internal camera on my iPhone would be sufficient. What I soon realized was that, in addition to !'&'! the cel phone ban in many of the schools I visited, another problem surfaced; I found it dificult to take images without including the students whom I did not have permision to photograph. In the end, I ended up with a few pictures of most of the schools and no pictures of others. Most of the images were of empty clasrooms, empty halways, or of the outside of the building. Although the contexts in which this research took place resisted my eforts to record aspects of our work, the fact that ArtsEdPD required participants to document an additional 48 hours of collaborative inquiry work was very helpful in my work as a researcher. The documentation requirement, combined with ArtsEdPD?s expectation that participants would use new and emerging technologies to exhibit their experience, meant that each Blue CIG member was documenting our collaborative inquiry from his or her own perspective and sharing the documentation in online spaces. The context of this research undoubtedly influenced the way in which I was able to conduct this study. As this section began to ilustrate, the type of research tools I used and how I used them were in a dynamic relationship with the surface of this research. In the next section, I describe how and why I used specific methods (tools) to conduct this research. The Research Methods as Tools When artists choose a tool with which to work, they consider its appropriatenes for the task. Similarly, I chose research tools that enabled me to collect, interpret, and/or present data in order to investigate my research questions. Because my first research question atempted to iluminate art educators? experience within a collaborative inquiry group, the social practices and activities of the group become the primary unit of my data !'&(! collection and interpretation (Stein, Silver, and Smith, 1998). Thus, I collected a broad variety of data about al aspects of the collaborative inquiry group in which I was involved and/or invited, such as phone cals, shared meals, three informal group metings, collaboratively produced artworks, a trip with members to a national conference, and a surprise baby shower. Desiring a rich and rigorous set of data, I initiated other opportunities (such as interviews) that provided me with additional and diverse data sources (Lennie, 2006). I found some of these data sources equaly valuable for collecting data related to my second research question investigating my multiple roles within this research, and initiated one additional data source (the group interview) to more specificaly addres this second question. Group Meetings In the previous sections describing the research context, Table 2 provided specific information about the number, frequency, length, and location of the 10 formal and three informal collaborative inquiry group metings. My position as the group facilitator was my primary focus during the formal group metings, and audio recording each of those metings alowed me to revisit events at a time when I was free of my responsibility as a facilitator. I would often listen to the recordings while driving home after the group metings. I chose not to record the informal metings for a variety of reasons. Our first informal meting ran as ?office hours,? where I located myself in a local restaurant for three hours during which participants could come work with each other or me on items of individual concern such as troubleshooting technology isues or documenting their hours for ArtsEdPD credit. The overlapping conversations, seating arrangement, and drop-in !'&)! style meting format made the first informal meting a chalenge for a unitary audio- recording device. Approximately halfway through this meting I recognized the significance of the interactions taking place and began taking scrupulous field notes, something I was typicaly unable to do while facilitating formal group metings. The second informal meting involved unloading a truck and carrying artwork into the REA?s conference room. In this instance, the constant movement inhibited the use of an audio recorder. The third informal meting was a celebratory dinner in an intimate local restaurant. In this situation, audio recording felt robotic and insensitive. In lieu of an audio recording, I atempted to write or record field notes during these informal metings as wel as create researcher memos shortly afterwards. The audio-recordings and field notes created during these metings alowed me to actively participate in the collaborative inquiry and simultaneously collect data that were important to my research. In other words, I used data collection strategies that alowed me to participate in the study. However, I could not artificialy separate my roles as researcher and as the group facilitator. While I was fully engaged as facilitator, I was also aware that my desire to conduct participatory research influenced the content of our formal group metings. For instance, I atempted to support the group by engaging them in ongoing and explicit discussion about group norms (Nelson & Slavit, 2008), which included their involvement in this research. As a result, participants played a role in matters of establishing appropriatenes, acesibility, confidentiality, and trustworthines related to our group norms. The formal and informal group metings were instrumental in my atempt to understand participants? experiences within a collaborative inquiry group. However, I did !'&*! not asume that group members would have a uniform experience, or that the context of the group was the only location where I could gather data about the group. I found that conducting interviews, both with the group and with individual group members, was helpful in understanding our collaborative inquiry proces. Interviews I used a variety of interviews to gather data about how participants viewed the collaborative inquiry proces. The interviews also served as an important tool for investigating my second research question by helping me to understand the ways in which participants viewed my roles. Tables 6 and 7 provide an overview of the interviews that took place throughout this study. !'&+! Table 6. An overview of the 20 interviews with individual participants Participant Interview Date Location 11/12/09 Restaurant Jenni 5/13/10 Clasroom 11/12/09 Restaurant 3/18/10 Clasroom Keara 5/5/10 Skype 11/14/09 Restaurant 3/17/10 Clasroom Lisa 5/5/10 Skype 11/15/09 Restaurant 3/17/10 Clasroom Dominick 5/11/10 Skype 11/15/09 Coffe shop 3/17/10 Clasroom Veronica 5/28/10 Email 11/16/09 Restaurant 3/17/10 Clasroom Bonnie 5/6/10 Skype 12/3/09 Restaurant 4/28/10 Clasroom Jackie 5/11/10 Phone Table 7. An overview of the thre group interviews Date Conducted by Location 11/16/09 Jenni Restaurant 3/18/10 Dominick Restaurant 5/14/10 Leslie REA My initial reason for conducting individual interviews was to gather data about how individual group members viewed our collaborative inquiry proces. While I found interviews valuable for this purpose, I quickly realized that the 20 individual interviews I conducted served a variety of other purposes. Kong, Mahoney, and Plummer (2002) describe interviews as part of a ?methodology of friendship? (p. 254). !'&"! My initial interview with each member of the group provided the first opportunity for a sustained one-on-one dialogue, and many of these first interviews began with a lengthy conversation one would expect at the beginning of a new friendship. By atempting to set a casual, conversational tone for the interviews, participants and I were able to first exchange information about our lives. A fuller knowledge of my participants was crucial in helping me to understand how they were making meaning of the collaborative inquiry experience. I believe that talking with participants about my life outside ArtsEdPD played an important role in establishing rapport and building trust. In addition, I found that the individual interviews were places of reflexivity: as I got to know each participant, I came to a beter understanding of who I was as wel as my role in the group (Fontana & Frey, 2005). I also came to realize that ?regardles of how open-ended and negotiable our two- way conversations may have been, they were stil interviews, with al the psychological inequalities inherent therein? (Goldstein, 2000, p. 520). The interviews were not naturaly occurring circumstances, and my participants and I were both aware that our conversation had a purpose. Early on in the year, participants were very concerned about whether their responses were ?enough? or what I ?had in mind.? Participants appeared to be les concerned about the adequacy of their responses as the year progresed. I conducted an initial interview with each group member at a restaurant or coffe shop, often over a meal. I audio recorded and transcribed each interview. I wil elaborate in the role of transcription in my data interpretation in a later section. The purpose of the first interview was to talk with participants about how they viewed their roles in the Blue CIG at the beginning of the year. I drafted a set of potential questions (se Appendix B) !'&#! and emailed the questions to each teacher a few days before the interview. When a few participants arrived at the interviews with hand-writen notes to help them respond to each question, I quickly realized that my atempt to be transparent and to build trust by emailing the questions to the participants ahead of time negated my intention for these questions to serve as ?potential? questions. Rather, a few of the participants saw the questions as a list of things I realy wanted to know. The first interviews took place over a two-month period, and thus not at the same chronological point in our group life. For instance, the first interview took place with a group member after only two Blue CIG metings, while the last group member I interviewed had already participated in four metings. While the number of group metings atended by each participant before the first interview varied, I was not interested in comparing the experience of one participant to another and thus unconcerned by the fact that it took two months to conduct the seven interviews. I had a greater desire to interview teachers at a time and location that was convenient for them. Having interviews spread over the course of a couple months aforded me the ability to have lengthy conversations with participants throughout our yearlong proces. In turn, I was able to gather participants? ongoing descriptions of our proces, which were important in my atempt to forward participant voice (Bode, 2005) in my presentation of the data. I conducted a second interview with each of the participants at her or his school. The in-context interviews took place on four diferent days throughout the spring. The purpose of the second interview was to observe the group members? working contexts so that I could construct a more critical analysis of the relationship betwen our !'&$! collaborative inquiry work and the teachers? school contexts. Because the purpose of the interview did not necesarily require my presence while they were teaching, I atempted to schedule the interviews at times when the teachers had a break for lunch or planning, or at the end of the day. In four of the seven interviews, the time I slated to be at their school overlapped with their teaching, and I felt welcomed to observe while they taught. Like Goldstein (2000), I overlooked the ways in which my presence during their teaching may have complicated the purpose of this visit. Stacey (1991) cautioned, ?[N]o mater how welcome, even enjoyable, the field-worker?s presence may appear to ?natives,? fieldwork stil represents an intrusion? (p. 113). The feling of intrusion may be especialy troublesome in schools (Musanti & Pence, 2010) if teachers view researchers as one of many more powerful others who visit their clasrooms in order to evaluate their effectivenes. Unfortunately, my good intentions did not disipate the culture of surveilance (Foucault, 1977) operating in many of the schools. In fact, when I read the transcript from one of the group interviews (for which I was not present), I was horrified at how participants described the experience of having me visit their schools. One group member described the experience as ?embarrasing.? Two group members who worked at the same school said, ?I don?t think she noticed al the neat stuff?we were actualy hurt.? In my atempt not to evaluate the teachers by providing fedback (positive or negative), I had severely disappointed my felow group members who ?wanted a few ooohs and ahhhs.? Although the school visits provided me with very important information about the teachers? working contexts, the fact that I had not been clear about the purpose of the visit led to group members feling confused and hurt. !'&%! The third individual interview was similar to the first interview, in that participants chose a time and location for the interview. Unlike the first interviews during which I met participants in restaurants or coffe shops, a majority of the third interviews happened using Skype, a voice over internet protocol (VOIP). Most participants encountered Skype for the first time during an ArtsEdPD program day and were excited for a chance to apply this new technology. I interviewed four participants using Skype, one on the phone, and one via email after many failed atempts to find a time that we were both available. I recorded and transcribed the interviews that took place using Skype and the phone. I was unable to interview Jenni a third time due to some dificult life circumstances she faced at the conclusion of this study. After reflecting on my experience conducting the first interviews, I decided not to use a set list of questions for each participant?s third interview. I wanted to know more about how each participant viewed her or his role in our Blue CIG at the conclusion of our year together, but I had individualized, unique wonderings about each participant. I also wanted to pose questions in a way that would elicit ?nuanced descriptions that depict the qualitative diversity [and] the many diferences and varieties of a phenomenon, rather than on ending up with fixed categorizations? (Kvale, 1996, p. 32). For instance, I asked the question ?Do you have any general comments about the CIG so far?? to each participant in the first interview. The following interaction was part of Lisa?s response to this question: Lisa: I like our group. I don?t like that there?s two teachers in the same group from the same building. That?s tough. Leslie: How come? !''&! Lisa: Just because, it gives a sense that they get to work together and nobody else does. It?s like an unfair advantage almost. They get to do things together, to share workload, they know each other and they know exactly how they think. Whereas the rest of us al have to get to know each other. You know. That?s always tough. (personal communication, November 14, 2009) When planning for my third interview with Lisa, I wanted to return to this interaction to get Lisa?s thoughts on the ?unfair advantage? six months later. I emailed Lisa the transcript from the first interview with some follow-up comments and questions in the margins that corresponded to specific highlighted sections. In my third interview with Lisa, my question was much more specific: ?Here you were talking about how Bonnie and Veronica having a shared teaching context is almost like an unfair advantage. Can you describe a time when you felt that this impacted our CIG (positively or negatively)?? I used this procedure for al of the third interviews, in which I returned to themes in the first interview based on my belief that our subjectivities as individuals are not fixed, and that ?no story or self-representation wil ever or should ever be understood as complete or final? (Bloom, 1996, p. 193). Thus, my third interviews provided a space for my participants to respond to their earlier ideas, as wel as my interpretations of those ideas. In this way, the third interview also served as a member check by providing clarity and insight to my initial interpretations. As a standard part of the third interview, I also provided participants the opportunity to return to sections of the transcript that they thought were important, and/or to talk with me about anything that had not come up in the interviews that they wished to discuss. !'''! In addition to the thre individual interviews, I conducted a group interview during our last formal meting. My desire to conduct a group interview grew out of my wish for participants to hear each other?s rich reflections about their yearlong experience with collaborative inquiry that I had heard during the individual interviews. I was also interested in observing how group members would respond to hearing each other?s experiences. When faced with the reality that scheduling an additional group meting in which to have this interview was nearly impossible, I approached the ArtsEdPD faculty with the idea of embedding a reflective group interview into the last ArtsEdPD program day. They agreed that group reflection was valuable and encouraged me to speak with the project evaluator about using these reflective interviews in place of the smal group interviews she had planned to conduct. With al parties in agreement, the project co- directors asked each ArtsEdPD facilitator to conduct a reflective interview with his or her CIG on the last ArtsEdPD project day. The faculty worked together to generate a list of potential questions for the interviews, but did not atempt to create a set of required questions. Each facilitator had the autonomy to use questions from the faculty-generated list or to create her or his own. I provide a list of the questions I chose to ask the Blue CIG in Appendix B. While the reflective interview was the only group interview I conducted, the Blue CIG participated in two additional group interviews during which I removed myself from the room. The purpose of these interviews was to create a space in which participants could discuss how they viewed my role(s), an efort to gather data directly related to my second research question. Based on the recommendation of a member of my disertation commite, I sought to hire someone to conduct, record, and transcribe these interviews !''(! as wel as to save both the audio file and the transcript until the end of the school year. This arrangement was an efort to establish a safeguard for participants who may fel unable to be honest about my roles within the group if I was present and/or had aces to their thoughts before the year ended. As someone interested in participatory research, I first approached my group members to find out if any of them would be interested in this task. Jenni imediately voluntered. I drafted a contract (se Appendix C) that both of us signed. Jenni conducted the first group interview by asking each of the questions I had drafted in order (see Appendix B). The second scheduled group interview was canceled because of February?s bad weather. When Jenni informed me that she was unable to atend the meting during which she was going to conduct the final group interview, I asked Dominick to conduct and record the interview. He agreed. I provided him with the list of questions that I had originaly sent to Jenni. Jenni was stil interested in transcribing the final interview, so I posted the file to a secure online site where she could download and listen to the interview. Following our last CIG meting, Jenni sent me the transcripts and audio files of the two group interviews. The two group interviews both lasted approximately 15 minutes and consisted of two or three questions that I created. I constructed questions about my role in the group that helped to elicit a dialogue that may have taken on a diferent form had I been present. For instance, I wondered how participants felt about our school visits, and created a question for the group interview format that served to archive how teachers were feling, since this group interview took place only a day or two after the majority of visits had occurred. !'')! Although the group interviews served a unique role by generating discussion about participants? multiple perspectives without me present, I did not find that the group interviews stimulated the ?embelished descriptions of specific events or experiences shared by members of the group? (Fontana & Frey, 2005, p. 704) for which I had hoped. I believe that the participant comments within the group interviews lacked a certain descriptive quality for at least three reasons. First, because of the group dynamics present, conducting group interviews often requires greater skil than conducting individual interviews (Fontana & Frey, 2005). However, other than asking if Jenni or Dominick had any questions, I did not provide any resources that may have beter prepared them for the dificult task of conducting a group interview. Secondly, both group interviews took place at the end of a three-hour CIG meting scheduled after a full day of teaching. In hindsight, placing these interviews earlier in the meting or scheduling them within an ArtsEdPD program day when teachers had more energy may have elicited more in-depth, descriptive responses. Finaly, I constructed the group interview questions as if I was the one doing the interview and thus failed to acount for the fact that Jenni and Dominick did not ask the spontaneous follow-up questions that I typicaly pose to probe for clarification and elicit a more detailed response. Jenni and Dominick delivered the questions I created as actors reading a script; they provided time for group members to respond and then moved on to the next question. Despite these complications, I believe that having group members (rather than an outsider) conduct these interviews created a safe space for the dialogue and provided me with important insights about involving participants in research. 9 !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! % !I suspect that if I would have given Jeni or the entire group the task of drafting the questions, their ownership over the proces would have influenced the way they participated as wel as the quality of their !''*! Documents and Artifacts ArtsEdPD expected that each group would document their collaborative inquiry proces. Not surprisingly, the documents, images, and artifacts that documented the Blue CIG?s collaborative inquiry proces became an important data source for this research. As a data source, the documents and artifacts produced during the Blue CIG?s collaborative inquiry proces provided me with an opportunity for in-proces and retrospective reflection and interpretation. A variety of documents including meting agendas, meting notes, photographs, emails, and working documents served as important data sources. Early in the year, I struggled to define parameters to determine whether and how each artifact related to our collaborative inquiry and thus, whether certain artifacts should count as ?data.? For instance, I received an email from Dominick asking if I knew of any good places he and his family could stop to eat on a highway near my house. While the content of the email was not specific to our collaborative inquiry, the email and others like it documented the developing relationships within our group. I decided that such exchanges were stil valuable sources of data and thus decided to keep al of the artifacts to which I had aces. The decision to consider al of the artifacts as possible data sources paraleled my artistic tendencies to keep interesting objects, scraps, and trash. As an artist, I recognize that given a diferent day with diferent problems to solve, that piece of trash may prove to be priceles. !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! participation. ! !''+! Field Notes and Researcher Memos While others produced many of the documents and artifacts I collected, I was also producing data in the form of field notes and researcher memos to document both the collaborative inquiry group experience and the research proces. I wrote field notes during the few events that did not require my active engagement as the group facilitator, such as the informal group metings and during a few ArtsEdPD program day activities. In those instances, I was stil participating and thus unable to create a running log of events. Instead, I jotted down notes to capture an important participant quote, remember a thought, or to draft a question for an upcoming interview based on what had happened. Although I know that many researchers create field notes during interviews, I found that continuous writing during an interview inhibited the casual, conversational tone I desired. The task of writing also pulled my atention away from listening and responding meaningfully to the interviewe. I took field notes during my first interview with Jenni and abandoned the proces after only one interview, in order to beter engage with my participants. I reasoned that the audio recording equipment and a researcher memo following the interview were sufficient tools to archive the experience. I created researcher memos shortly after each event that required my active engagement either as the group facilitator or interviewer. My participation in the CIG alowed me (consciously and unconsciously) to collect ?headnotes? (Otenburg, 1990, p. 144-16), or memories of the field research that I later included in the researcher memos. As I mentioned previously, the researcher memos were usualy in the form of voice memos that I recorded while driving. The researcher memos captured my reflections on !''"! elements of the event that felt significant, such as our first atempt to construct a question for our collaborative inquiry: We tried tonight to get our question for our collaborative inquiry. It semed a litle dificult. There were a couple of people realy interested in technology ideas but then there were a few other folks who were scared of putting the word technology in our question because they didn?t fel prepared to investigate [technology]. That was interesting, I gues because they wanted to be at a place where they had some existing comfort with the topic that we were going to explore. So we ended up with an inquiry question that was very broad, and I?m not realy sure how that?s going to work. (researcher memo, October, 2009) I also used the researcher memos as a place to document my felings about my role within the collaborative inquiry group, and to remind myself of things on which I wanted to follow up later. For instance, after I completed the first round of interviews, I was reflecting on how to structure the next round of interviews, I think what I might do for the next interview is try to summarize the first interview and give it to the person before the second interview with questions that I'd like to ask them now. That way they read a short summary (or maybe the whole transcript?) and se the connections betwen our interviews and our practice. I don't know. I just hate to give them more work. (researcher memo, January 15 th , 2010) I also created researcher memos after having conversations with my advisors, felow doctoral students, or ArtsEdPD faculty members that influenced the way I was thinking about my research. Insofar as the research memos and field notes captured my initial !''#! observations and interpretations about the data, they often served as starting points for my writing. Data Interpretation Throughout the proces of data interpretation, I atempted to resist a tradition that tends to ?simplify the complex proceses of representing the ?voices? of respondents as though these voices speak on their own, rather than through the researcher who makes choices about how to interpret these voices and which transcript extracts to present as evidence? (Mauthner & Doucet, 2003, p. 418). Thus, I intentionaly use the term data interpretation rather than data analysis in order to stres the role I play in making meaning of data rather than simply separating, organizing, and categorizing it. In an efort to carry my embodied and participatory research goals into the interpretative proces, and to mitigate any potential predisposition to present only positive aspects of the group?s inquiry, I atempted to involve others in data interpretation as much as possible. For instance, I used the third interviews as a method of member checking. More specificaly, I provided each participant with a full transcript of our first interview in which I had inserted a number of interpretations and questions using the comment feature in Microsoft Word. The third interview involved, among other things, me asking each participant to comment on the interpretations I had inserted in the initial transcript. Additional member checking occurred throughout the year when I shared my observations of the group with felow group members, often while we were having lunch or during another informal time. By relying on participants to help interpret the collaborative experience of our CIG, I present my data as ?a conversation, not an interview or a portrait? (Grumet, 1990, p. 119). !''$! Because I believe a diverse representation of perspectives provides a rich description of an event, I commited to represent the learning of al study participants, even (and especialy) if their experience was diferent from my own. Thus, I collected and interpreted data generated by al members of the collaborative inquiry group and not solely data that I collected. In other words, I have chosen to present my experience as situated within and among the experiences of al Blue CIG members. Although I failed to ask participants explicitly for fedback about my research methods, I did initiate many conversations with colleagues in an atempt to invite a constant critique of my own research proces. By providing ?critical scrutiny? (Lennie, 2006, p. 32), three doctoral students and my disertation co-advisors also played participatory roles in this research. I began to se how many of my data collection methods were also methods of interpretation when a doctoral student suggested that by creating artwork, I was also engaged in interpretation. I constructed a diagram (Figure 3) in order to represent the layers that emerged in my eforts to interpret data. I found that my eforts to interpret the data often took a similar direction. First, I made initial observations and interpretations in field notes, researcher memos, visual metaphors, and postcards. I then worked to identify themes and relationships in the data set through content logging, transcription, and concept mapping. As themes emerged, I worked to organize the themes for presentation by supporting them with the relevant data. I purposefully present the layers of interpretation in ways that demonstrate how the interpretation occurring in one layer related or connected to the others. Although the data interpretation proces often followed a similar direction, it overlapped chronologicaly with data collection and presentation. In Figure 8, I atempted to disrupt the sense of an exact chronological order with the blue !''%! arrow, indicating the active relationship betwen the data collection, data interpretation, and data presentation. By repeatedly engaging with the data throughout the year, I found that the proceses of data collection, interpretation, and presentation repeatedly informed one another. The discussion that follows describes the methods I used within my layered interpretation. Figure 8. The transparent layers of data interpretation. In my initial stages of data interpretation, I often relied on metaphors to communicate how specific participant comments afected me. For instance, I created ?Clamp? (Figure 9) following an interview with Keara. !'(&! Figure 9. "Clamp." Artwork by Leslie Gates, 2009. I recorded my thoughts in a memo: I created this piece to ilustrate the moment when Keara told me (in her first interview) that Jackie announced that the group was ?lucky? that I was the facilitator asigned to their group. Jackie said this having only received a ?helo? email from me and seing what I looked like on the first morning of ArtsEdPD. I wondered on what basis Keara and Jackie decided that they were lucky to have me rather than someone else. The clamp demonstrates the presure that I have felt !'('! from the beginning to facilitate wel. Keara probably believed that I would receive Jackie?s announcement as a compliment, but instead, I felt that she had just given the clamp a squeeze. (Research journal, February, 2010) In creating this artistic metaphor and acompanying text, I was both collecting data about my own experience within the collaborative inquiry group and interpreting the data presented to me in an interview. While some might also consider this work a method of data presentation, my purpose for creating the works was to reflect on my experience rather than to create a means for exhibiting data. In fact, this visual and a number of other artworks I created throughout the year do not appear in the following chapters in which I present the data. However, I include this artwork here to demonstrate the ways in which data collection and interpretation were not always separate proceses in my research. This example also demonstrates the transparency of the layers of analysis by forging an explicit relationship betwen an interview transcript, a researcher memo, and a visual metaphor. Similar to the proces of creating visual metaphors, I also engaged in creating a series of postcards. The postcards extended the idea that this research was an exploration and mapping venture within a geographic place, and that I, as the cartographer, was able to mark the journey. The postcards (e.g., Figure 10) served as in-proces reflections and as a record of my movement without predicting the next steps (Block & Klein, 1996). As a whole, the series of postcards described my proces of becoming a researcher, and thus played an important function in interpreting data connected to my second interview question about my role in this research. !'((! Figure 10. Postcard from September 28, 2009. 10 In addition to recording my initial observations and interpretations in both visual and textual forms, I engaged in a second layer of interpretation by content logging group metings, transcribing interviews, and creating concept maps. Content logging stems from a common practice in video production, where someone watches and labels a video acording to its content to aid in post-production activities. In a first atempt to manage the large amount of data generated from ten formal CIG group metings, I logged each audio file by listening to the recording and taking notes that indicated the content of the conversation at certain times in the recording. I also made notes about important ideas to which I expected to return. I would stop logging in order to transcribe if I felt the conversation was significant in relationship to my research questions or to the themes that had emerged within the first layer of analysis. By logging each group meting, I was able !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 10 Text reads: Today I drove to campus to turn in my proposal. My first face to face meting with research participants is in two days. I am anxious. I spent the entire drive to and from campus thinking about whether I neded a back-up plan for my recording equipment. Would I need a back-up for the back-up? How intrusive will the recording device fel? How do I explain my ned to record our metings? I am also debating with myself about whether we need an agenda for our first meeting. If we do, would the act of me designing [an] agenda alone completely contradict my collaborative research goals? These questions haunt my inexperienced researcher self. !'()! to easily return to the proper place in the recording if I desired to transcribe additional sections based on themes that did not appear significant earlier in the proces. I transcribed each individual interview and the reflective group interview. As I logged metings and transcribed interviews, I became interested in a number of themes and relationships present within the data set. In order to have a place for these themes to ?live? while I continued collecting and transcribing data, I created a concept map on which I could begin to consider how the themes related to each other and to my research questions. The concept map also provided a space in which I could view the themes holisticaly and systematicaly examine how themes emerged across various data sources. After identifying themes and relationships in the data set, I realized that I could organize the information for presentation in many diferent ways. In my third layer of analysis, I continualy asked myself, ?What is the most useful story?? During this proces, I became very aware that I was one of eight participants in this study, and yet, as the researcher, I was the one ?who ultimately cuts and pastes together the narrative, choosing what wil become part of it and what wil be cut? (Fontana & Frey, 2005, p. 697). Moje (2000) described the complications inherent in this situation when she wrote, There are advantages, particularly in regard to honesty and voice, to writing about our experiences as individuals. It is, however, a complicated endeavor to reflect on one?s role in a relationship without othering, through re-representation, someone else?s voice and experience. (p. 29) In the following section, I describe a number of cartographical proceses that I found useful for framing my atempts to acknowledge the need for me to interpret the words !'(*! and actions of others is an inevitable aspect of disertation writing and my eforts to diminish the ?othering? that Moje previously described. Data Re/presentation I have found three fundamental cartographic proceses helpful in shaping my approach for re/presenting the experiences of the teachers in this study: editing, generalizing, and designing. Cartographic editing is the reflexive proces whereby a cartographer selects traits of the objects to map based on the map?s intended purpose. For instance, a cartographer creating a map to communicate the locations and features of rest stops along a turnpike would likely include whether the rest stop has a fueling station but would likely exclude details unrelated to the map?s purpose, such as the date of construction. Thus during the editing proces, the cartographer determines which pieces of information related to the rest stops are most helpful to those using the map. This disertation atempts to iluminate the helpful and unhelpful aspects of art teachers? experiences in collaborative inquiry so that others interested in art education and profesional development can learn from it. Like a cartographer engaged in the proces of editing, I have used a reflexive proces to select the conversations, images, and other artifacts that best answer my research questions. Cartographic generalization is the proces in which cartographers decide how and when to reduce the complexity of a map in order to make the map more user-friendly. Topological maps (such as those portraying subway systems) are often simplified and, in the interest of clarity, disregard scale and other non-vital information. For example, a topological map of a subway system might straighten curved tracks and limit topographical information such as county borders or bodies of water to present vital !'(+! information as clearly as possible. In the next few chapters, I have straightened curved tracks by editing direct quotes for clarity and readability while atempting to preserve the content. In a few instances, I have removed content (such as someone apologizing for their phone ringing) from an exchange in an efort to limit confusion. Cartographic design is the proces of ordering the elements of a map in such a way that the reader can easily find information and the purpose of the map is clear. Cartographers must label items of interest in ways that do not displace or cover other items of interest. At times cartographers break a uniform system of labeling (e.g., decreasing the font size of a label) or label things in a les ideal location (e.g., writing the name ?Rhode Island? in the Atlantic Ocean with an arrow to its referent rather than placing the label inside the borders of the state). Thus, cartographers are engaged in a constant proces of negotiation. I have atempted to present teachers? varied experiences clearly by organizing and presenting relevant data in themes. The proces of determining how I generated and supported themes from the data involved a significant amount of negotiation as I realized the many ways in which the themes relate and intersect. I atempted to be sensitive to the fact that naming, coding, and labeling, although necesary in cartography and data interpretation, create an unequal power dynamic betwen the labeler and the labeled. Earlier in this chapter, I described the ways in which I atempted to democratize the data interpretation proces by inviting the teachers in this study into the proces through interviewing. I have employed additional methods in the writing of following chapters that also atempt to empower teacher voice and to make dificult a blind aceptance of my labels as a final or exact interpretation. For instance, the inclusion of direct quotations from group members (especialy when we disagreed) is !'("! an atempt to represent our diverse individual experiences rather to present a prevailing opinion as the unitary group experience. Despite these eforts, I am the one teling the story and therefore act as a representative from our collaborative inquiry group to those who read this research. By presenting this data, I am also re-presenting the experiences of the group members. Even when I present sections of a transcript, by having decided that a specific section was dramatic and story-worthy, I have not presented the experience, but rather, ?representations of those events and experiences through narrative form? (Swidler, 2001, p. 120). I have constructed the term ?re/presenting? to represent the interactive nature of the data presentation proces and to describe my consistent movement betwen my roles as participant, facilitator, and researcher. I more fully explore these roles in the last section of Chapter 4. Conclusion At the beginning of the chapter, I presented Helen Frankenthaler?s observation that in working with new materials, artists confront wonderful puzzles and problems. I have experienced both puzzles and problems throughout this research project, which were sometimes wonderful and always motivating. Like an artist working with new materials, I recognized that my end product was the result of a dynamic interaction of my hand, the surface of the research, and tools of inquiry. I have atempted to demonstrate how this dynamic interaction was also present in my research. I present the results of this dynamic interaction in the chapters that follow. !'(#! Chapter 4: Mapping the Chalenges In this chapter, I present and interpret data in ways that are inspired by a number of cartographical proceses. The proceses of traditional cartography commence in a literal, physical map that is the result of a cartographer?s efort to portray something acurately. However, my cartography is metaphorical, and focuses on the proceses of map-making rather than the creation and presentation of a final static map. Thus, this chapter does not result in a literal, visual map. Instead, I use the language of maps and include visual elements in order to make data and my interpretation of them visible to myself and my readers, which reflects the proces of map-making in its broadest sense. Furthermore, while my research aims to iluminate art educators? experience within a colaborative inquiry group, I do not purport that my portrayal of this experience has (or intends to have) the objective acuracy expected of a literal map. Instead, my metaphorical use of cartographic proceses follows a rich history of artists who engage in the proces of mapping to ?chart emotional, interpersonal, or imaginary territories? (Dignazio, 2009, p. 192). Charting such territories not only involved personal negotiations of perspective, but also made visible the ways that the other teachers in this study were engaged in a series of chalenges and negotiations. Thus, I have chosen to organize my re/presentation of our experiences in this chapter by describing four chalenges that reveal the relationships betwen the data and my original research questions. The Challenge of Labels ?Regular teachers, or art teachers?? (Lisa, personal communication, November 13, 2009). !'($! ?We are al art people? (Veronica, personal communication, May 14, 2010). Cartographers use labels to identify relevant features and to communicate information about them to the map reader. The labels used in literal map-making of geographical spaces often identify items such as states, rivers, and famous landmarks by using their commonly acepted names. However, a relatively new form of cartography known as critical cartography chalenges map-making (and thus the proces of labeling inherent) as an apolitical and value-free activity. Critical cartographers analyze atributes of map-making that map readers might otherwise take for granted in order to raise awarenes of inequalities and other geopolitical realities (Wood, Fels, & Krygier, 2010). I found that my own proces of exploring the research question, ?In what ways do the participants view this experience as related and/or unrelated to their content area?? led me to (re)consider the label ?art teacher.? This chapter, insofar as it criticaly examines the asumptions inherent in the term ?art teacher,? resembles critical cartography. Each of the teachers in this study self-identified as visual art teachers on their initial applications to participate in ArtsEdPD, and the collaborative inquiry group of which we were a part included teachers al wearing the label ?art teacher.? As emphasized in Chapter 2, art teachers in previous studies voiced their disatisfaction with interdisciplinary and school-based collaborative groups and expresed a desire for profesional development opportunities in which they could work alongside other art teachers (Curry, 2008). The desire for such opportunities asumes that art educators have unique interests that content-specific profesional development situations might beter !'(%! addres. Jackie, the teacher in our group with the most years of experience, expresed her appreciation for this profesional development opportunity by saying, With us coming from where we come from, no mater what kind of school you are in, how many people talk our language? To sit a day to talk with people who talk our language, so to speak, is such a treat. This is such a special occasion. (personal communication, September 25, 2009) Jackie?s statement captured both her appreciation for this experience and an asumption that we had things in common simply because we were al art teachers. Regardles of the commonalities shared and expresed by teachers in the group, the term ?art educator? as a label with ?acompanying qualities asumed to be part of that construct? potentialy minimizes the complex identities and diversities that were present within the group (Smith, 1999, p. 131). In addition, the label ?art teacher? was only one of many labels worn by each member of the group. Understanding our complex art teacher identity, especialy given the fact that it was only one of a number of identities of each member of our group, required me to consider both similarities and diferences. As Smith (1999) aserted, On the one hand, identity means samenes, as in the word identical, and involves the perception of common qualities?[and] emerges out of an identification with others in [a] group. This requires the foregrounding of one aspect of identity and a backgrounding of others in an emphasis on what is shared with others in that group. On the other hand, identity requires a perception of diference from others in order for the recognition of samenes to come into play (p. 75). !')&! Because understanding samenes (i.e., ?art teacher?) is dependent on also recognizing that which is diferent from that role and/or identity, I began to create memos atending to the diversities present within our group. After the first meting, I noted: ? Jenni was the only group member currently teaching high school; ? I was the only member not currently teaching in a K-12 context; ? Jenni was single while the rest of us were in a long-term relationship; ? Dominick was the only male group member of our group; ? Jenni, Lisa, and I did not have children; Veronica, Keara, Dominick, Bonnie, and Jackie did. 11 Based on my own initial observations of our group?s diversity as wel as my desire to act as a critical cartographer, I asked participants in individual interviews about the ways in which they viewed our group as diverse. The teachers identified their age, years of experience, age of their students, salaries, amount and type of supplies, approach to teaching and comfort with technology as diversities present within our group. Although each teacher identified ways in which our group was diverse when asked, I began to se ways that they were atempting to forefront the group?s commonalities and minimize the diversities within the group. In the following conversation, Dominick suggests that the diferences within the group were ?minor:? Leslie: Are there other things that, as we sit around the table, that maybe you don?t have in common with some people within the group? Dominick: hmm? !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! '' !-!./012!2134567819!0:/0!-!:/9!4;<12=19!/!6>?;12!4@!40:12!<7?7./2707191!76!0:1! .7<0A!B42!76<0/631C!D1!D121!/..!E:701C!/..!?79.1,3./<21!04!763.>91!0:1<1!<7?7./27071?H0746!0:/0!D1!<:/219!40:12!7916070713:!//.070GC!91?46<02/015.1!04!1?H.4G!0:1!327073/.!.165:0!04!;2765!04!0:7?;12!4@!:4>29160!21317=130746!91H169?;12!4@!1.13019!/20! 3./<<19G!04L!H./31C!<0>91607219!/0!.1/<0!461!@761!/2091?;12!4@!97<37H.7612<1/.!/20