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At the beginning of this process, I set my research questions. The first was:
‘What do Stage 1 Performance: Design and Practice students classify as ‘research’ at the beginning of their undergraduate degree?’
Even though I found a methodology that allowed everyone to speak, I found that the definitions of research that students gave were quite hegemonic. Most answers were similar and vague, backing up the secondary research I had done into the university as a hegemonic environment with hegemonic ideas of knowledge. This had been spoken about historically by bell hooks in Teaching to Transgress (1993), Christina Sharpe in Ordinary Notes (2023) and many other black feminist scholars in the period in between.
I also found out that students were ambivalent as to whether studying ‘art’ constitutes research – a useful but troubling finding in an art school, but one that made me feel sure this was a worthwhile Action Research Project. If students don’t see art as research, how will they ever get high grades, given research as a feature of many Learning Outcomes? And if future artists don’t see art as research how will they ever get funding for it from the university? The social and financial implications for this data are worrying.
‘How can student definitions of ‘research’ be expanded beyond limited Western, imperial definitions of ‘research’, through my own teaching interventions?’
From reviewing all the data and comparing it with the data I got before my intervention (what I call Point A) I can say that my interventions had a positive effect on expanding student definitions of research beyond the turnstiles of the university.
Several students went on self-organised research trips to help them with their final outcomes, to sites including archives, museums and nature. They also said they’d be likely to do this again. Most students expanded their definitions of research to include visual sources including art, film and lived experience outside the university.
In general, there is a greater diversity of definitions of research – showing a break down in any idea that there is a ‘correct’ definition that the university or school legitimises. Students are on a journey to now define research for themselves, beyond the Western imperial standard.
Finally students post-interventions, students are more emotional about research – using terms like ‘loved’, ‘goated’. Students came up to me in tutorials to say they really enjoyed the research trips and would there be any more. Students came up to me to say the research discussion was pointless. I don’t really mind whether the discussion of what research is is positive or negative, but the fact that students now appear to be more animated about what research should be, shows their critical and embodied awareness of research as a tool is heightened.
MOVING FORWARD
For me, this has been a useful exercise in refining the curriculum I’ve been developing for the students. Through the design of the new interventions and the data collection, I have been able to better understand the impact I’m having on students, and be more explicit in my pedagogical aim to challenge ‘intellectually elitist’ (hooks, 1993) notions of research.
One thing to note is that I didn’t bring in the students too much on my own decolonial and black feminist rationale for making the interventions. I held back on this because I didn’t want to influence the student answers too much at the stage of this Action Research Project, rather I wanted to gain understanding of early undergraduate perceptions of research.
That said, in future interactions with the same students at Stage 2, this rationale and political motivation for expanding definitions of research is something I do want to share. Perhaps it would lead to bolder experiments in research. Perhaps sharing the black feminist rationale for my research would have been inspiring for the students. I guess I too, like the students in my study, am still getting used to the fact that decolonial or black feminist approaches are really acceptable in the university, even as I am now in the position of the teacher.
Learning from this, in the Stage 2 unit I teach, Unit 6, I have already begun to be more transparent in this through getting students to read and discuss bell hooks’ ‘Engaged Pedagogy’ in class. This has led to a lively discussion and really helped shaped the classroom environment into one where students are more conscious of the bigger picture of university life: about how they learn and the political potential of education, as well as what they make for their particular projects.