School Wellness Action Research: from an Arts-Based Transformative Activist Stance
Date
2021-01-16
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Abstract
This study explored educational change that privileges teachers to be co-authors and drivers of school wellness action activated through an arts-based focus on hopeful futures. The SARS-CoV-2 global pandemic added school lockdowns to the context resulting in modifications to the study, primarily the exclusion of student voice and face-to-face participation. Eight participants engaged in discussion and field-testing of virtual arts-lab activities aimed at enhancing school wellness rooted in their realities as educators. Two phases of an arts-based participatory approach to action research generated creative data. Data collection included educator and researcher reflections, arts-lab observations, and my descriptions of participant-created artwork. The results provided the basis for an arts-lab toolkit for educators and an animated video story for the broader community. This participatory arts-based approach to action research was grounded in an arts-lab created from a transformative activist stance (Stetsenko, 2017). It offered opportunities for participants to affirm their control and participation in action critical for change. Second, the arts-lab tool offers participants a means to actively engage in characterizing and exploring their personal values as opportunities for school wellness improvement. Educators endorsed a four-part arts-lab where art-pieces created at every session portray ideas and provide a centrepiece for deepened conversation. Third, arts processes provide opportunities to enable agentive creativity for artists while offering contributions to the school community-in-the-making that encourage connections between the art, the artists, and the audience. The collective development of an arts-lab encourages participants to contribute artifacts to the broader community’s conversation as artists and activists.
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junior high school, high school, middle school, wellness, well-being, arts-based, action research, change-lab, social innovation lab, participatory, Transformative Activist Stance
Citation
Munroe, K. (2021). School Wellness Action Research: from an Arts-Based Transformative Activist Stance (Doctoral thesis, University of Calgary, Calgary, Canada). Retrieved from https://prism.ucalgary.ca.