Investigating the methods: Using Diagrams
As a practitioner and researcher in this process, I plan to investigate the best methods to use. I’m trying to think about how I can construct a research project creatively and for it to be more participatory, for example when I’m framing my question, and how to structure that process. By looking at a range of approaches and choosing the most efficient technique, this should enable me to delve as deeply as I can into my question within the time-constraints and on a small scale – although it feels fairly large-scale at the moment!
I intend to improve my offer as teacher/educator and to better understand how my students apply the concept of having a comfort zone to their making process. I’m hoping to be able to see this process holistically (a quote from Jo Howcroft, a PGCert Peer) and to be aware of how my practice informs my research. I aim for this process to go both ways so that my findings and the research-process then inform my practice as suggested by Jean McNiff (McNiff, J. 2015) who also states that: ‘The ‘meaning’ (your research question) has for you emerges as you do the research and explain what you are doing and why you are doing it’.
I found many images of comfort zones on the web and then thought to ask participants to draw a view of theirs as a way of initiating conversation about how a comfort zone feels.
Encouraged by my tutor’s positive response to this idea and her book suggestion: ‘Making sense of place: exploring creative and (inter)active research methods with young people’ (Trell, E. & Van Hoven, B. 2010), I asked participants to draw their impression of their comfort zone.
According to Trell & Van Hoven, a conventional interview technique may not sufficiently reveal the ‘layers of place’ associated with an imagined concept. Making the imaginary accessible for others through attempting to describe it with words, might not be as effective. Trell & Van Hoven cite research by Cele (Cele, S. 2006) who used walks, drawing and photography (in addition to interviewing) for exploring the daily (real) places of children.
Enabling children to create drawings and to interact with each other, the researcher, and place itself, provided possibilities for communicating a range of aspects of ‘place’. This helps the researcher to read the imagery and get a more tangible sense of what it signifies to participants.
Although the Tell & Van Hoven material relates to ‘geographical research’ described as ‘Making sense of place’ I feel that it resonates with asking the participants of my study to describe and then draw their comfort zones.
According to Trell and Van Hoven’s research: ‘mental maps provide an overview of places, objects or activities relative to each other. They can also be used to make an assessment about the relative importance of places for an individual. Whereas mental maps as such may provide enough information for a psychologist to analyse additional meanings conveyed by the use of shape and colour included in each map, for geographers interested in the meanings of places, additional information is necessary. Hence, explanations by the ‘author’ of the map are essential.
To quote LA Paul: ‘This brings out another, somewhat less familiar fact about the relationship between knowledge and experience: just as knowledge about the experience of one individual can be inaccessible to another individual, what you can know about yourself at one time can be inaccessible to you at another time.‘(Paul, L.A. 2004) I’ve chosen this quote to illustrate that it’s impossible to know another person’s experience, which is what research attempts to do! This perception might change..
I want to ask people to draw their comfort zones and interpret them so that these can be a key to explaining how it features in their creative practice, or what it might look like to be learning a new skill. This could result in abstract images, or figurative ones and I’ve emphasised that this is completely up to them. I’m not asking them to do this in my interview and visualise their comfort zone on the spot rather than have time to prepare or look on the web for inspiration where there are many examples.
According to Tina Cook, in her article ‘The Purpose of Mess in Action Research’: David Hockney (artist), when addressing the problem of depicting both what he could see and what the viewer could see, employed the use of a collage of multiple view points to ‘break down the wall between the viewer and the view’ (Hockney, 1998:60). This way of presenting visual information allowed more to be seen, from a number of perspectives, and enabled viewers to engage with the sweep of the artists gaze (Hockney, 1982). When multi-faceted reflections on practice are brought together in one space, this too can provide opportunities for new ways of seeing, thinking, and theorising.
I would value being able to see the participants reflections from a number of perspectives as Hockney describes. I hope that visualising their comfort zones will add a different angle to my research.
Early findings from my research using participants’ drawings of their comfort zone as a prompt was really successful and helped to unpack their interpretations of what could be seen as an abstract idea. They could verbalise something strongly held in their imaginations, but obviously not visible to me. I could get a better sense of how this manifested for them.
Whilst talking about what made them feel the most comfortable and stable, several participants described ‘place’ as being important to them, to feel comfortable enough to begin to work on their art practice. Six of the of the thirteen participants talked of having a strong visual image of what they wanted to make. There was also much discussion of geographical metaphors such as ‘diving off a mountain’ when leaving the comfort zone, or ‘being in a valley of indecision’ or ‘having a path to follow’.
To my mind, trying to make sense of someone else’s imagery is echoed in this text ‘Embodiment in Metaphorical Imagination’ (Gibbs Jr, W. 2005) ‘We may refer to the scenes we construct as we read a novel, recall images or past life experiences, or experience strong emotions rising into consciousness. But human imagination is also an unconscious process that uses metaphor to map aspects of long-term memory onto immediate experience.
I like the idea here of using metaphors to map the intangible, to manifest what is hidden and gain a new understanding of it, in the telling/describing of it. This is an amazing book (Gibbs Jr,W. 20005) which explores the use of metaphorical language and I love how that ties in with human experience of natural markers in the real world.
I now present detailed examples of how image schemas, and the conceptual metaphors they give rise to, underline several kinds of abstract ideas and concepts. This work is based on systematic analyses of linguistic expressions referring to different conceptual domains. Most generally, the evidence discussed here supports the idea that people use their understanding of different embodied activities to imaginatively structure more abstract ideas and events.
Embodiment in Metaphorical Imagination, Gibbs Jr, W. Grounding Cognition, the role of perception and action in Memory, Language and Thinking, Cambridge University Press. 2005 Pecher, D. & Zwaan, R.A.