53
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Research article / 2025, Vol. 16, No. 1, pages 53 - 69
El método Taller Artístico de Discusión para investigar la
experiencia de artistas-docentes en la era postcualitativa
Author:
Rosario García Huidobro
Universidad de Los Lagos, Chile
Corresponding author:
Rosario García Huidobro rosarioghm@gmail.com
Receipt: 31 - December - 2024
Approval: 19 - February - 2025
Online publication: 30 - June - 2025
How to cite this article:: Huidobro Munita, R.G. (2025). The Art Workshop of Discussion Method to Investigate the Experience of Artist-Teachers in the Post Qualitative Era. Maskana, 16(1), 53-69. https://doi.org/10.18537/ mskn.16.01.04
doi: 10.18537/mskn.16.01.04
© Author(s) 2025. Attribution-NonCommercial- ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0)
The Art Workshop of Discussion Method to Investigate the Experience of Artist-Teachers in the Post Qualitative Era
El método Taller Artístico de Discusión para investigar la experiencia de artistas-docentes en la era postcualitativa
This article introduces the Art Workshop of Discussion (AWD) as a post-qualitative method to explore the subjectivities and identities of artist-teachers in the Los Lagos Region, Chile. The method integrates arts-based research strategies, specifically social cartography, and was implemented in two sessions. The first session employed discussion groups to establish networks and gather discursive inputs, and the second focused on social cartography, enabling participants to reflect and creatively express their artistic-teaching trajectories. Results emphasize how AWD fosters collective dialogue and artistic introspection, offering new ways to understand teaching and artistic practices in specific social and cultural contexts. The conclusions highlight AWD’s transformative potential to promote critical reflection, peer connection, and collective knowledge generation through artistic action.
Este artículo presenta el Taller Artístico de Discusión (TAD) como un método postcualitativo para explorar las subjetividades e identidades de artistas-docentes en la Región de Los Lagos, Chile. El método integra estrategias de investigación basadas en las artes, específicamente la cartografía social, y se desarrolló en dos encuentros. El primer encuentro empleó grupos de discusión para establecer redes y obtener insumos discursivos. El segundo, centrado en la cartografía social, permitió a los participantes reflexionar y expresar sus trayectorias artísticas-docentes de forma creativa. Los resultados destacan cómo el TAD fomenta el diálogo colectivo y la introspección artística, facilitando nuevas formas de comprender las prácticas docentes y artísticas en contextos sociales y culturales específicos. Las conclusiones subrayan el potencial transformador del TAD para promover la reflexión crítica, la conexión entre pares y la generación de saberes colectivos desde la acción artística.
Palabras clave: taller artístico de discusión, metodologías postcualitativas, artista-docente, cartografía social, subjetividad.
Rosario García Huidobro
Introduction
The problem of this study focuses on the fields of arts education and teacher professional development to understand how people who teach arts in Chile are building their teaching subjectivity in educational contexts where the institutional framework marginalizes the arts within the curriculum (Del Valle & Rojas, 2020). This difficulty shows that art teachers build their knowledge and experiences from experiences of tension, conflicts, and resilience as part of their teaching experiences and educational strategies (García-Huidobro, 2018; García-Huidobro & Viveros-Reyes, 2023)
The field of teachers’ continuous professional development has been widely studied in Chile (Ávalos et al., 2010; Carrasco-Aguilar et al., 2023), and a multiplicity of studies have sought to understand and accompany teachers’ subjectivities. In the field of arts education, fewer Chilean studies have focused on knowing the professional identities of this teaching group (Quintana-Figueroa & Pizarro Vocar, 2020; Montenegro & García-Huidobro, 2021) because it is an invisible area of the school curriculum, which has been built based on scarce resources, lack of adequate infrastructure and with several hours that does not allow developing permanent creative processes with the students. These difficulties, typical of arts education, have led to various discomforts on the part of the teaching staff in Chile (Llona, 2011).
At the time of initiating this research, in 2018, the Los Lagos Region only had one diagnostic study on the state of arts education in that locality (Errázuriz et al., 2014), which shows the lack of theoretical and practical corpus that investigates the subjectivities of artist-teachers in this region. Therefore, this study was presented as an opportunity to learn first-hand about the experiences, progress, and difficulties of those who teach the arts, considering this body of experiences part of their teaching subjectivity. At the same time, and understanding the lack of studies and systematization of experiences in this
area, the study was presented as an opportunity to accompany artist-teacher experiences and generate connections between teachers. That is why the study reported here gave great relevance to the methodological aspects since it considered the process of collecting information also as a space for accompaniment and a strategy to strengthen the dialogue and the relationship between art teachers (Onsés & Hernández, 2017).
Given the relevance of the Artistic Reflection Workshop (TAD) technique in this study, this article focuses on sharing and highlighting the methodological aspects of the research entitled Professional Identities of artists-teachers in the Los Lagos Region: Transformations of the Social in Cultural Commitment, developed in southern Chile, under the Regular Internal competition of the Universidad de Los Lagos.
The main objective of this study was to understand how the identities and subjectivities of visual arts teachers influence social and cultural development in the Los Lagos region of Chile. From this central question, four specific objectives were proposed:
(1) to identify key elements in the formation and trajectory of the teachers, (2) to analyze the conflicts and needs they face, (3) to explore the link between their artistic-educational projects and local needs, and (4) to describe the characteristics of their pedagogical and artistic practices.
The study combined a mixed methodological approach. The first stage was quantitative and then qualitative, for which conversation sessions were designed through artistic creation to generate dialogue and exchange of experiences among teachers. The latter seems fundamental to us and is what is problematized in the article since, in this study, we have understood the subjectivity of artist-teachers as such:
A complex knot with multiple historical, political, economic, symbolic, psychic, and sexual inscriptions, which are re-inscribed in their diverse contexts of artistic and
pedagogical action in the region. It is about thinking a subjectivity that occurs in the situated and rooted action of being, reviewing who we are and where we want to go because it is precisely in these actions and situations where the modes of subjectivity proper to the artist-teachers unfold (García-Huidobro & Ferrada, 2020, p.15).
Based on these reflections, the Artistic Discussion Workshop (TAD) method was devised as the most suitable way to inquire about the subjectivities of teachers in the arts since the technique allows us to demonstrate a crossover between methodological forms with the epistemology and ontology of teaching artists (García-Huidobro et al., 2020). This collection method allows us to cross artistic experiences with characteristics of focus groups, such as sharing and reflection (García-Huidobro, 2016). The TADs were created as a method that investigates experiences based on the space of creation and encounter of knowledge, and they are based on three fundamental premises. The first refers to incorporating collective artistic exercises to collect information. This is given that artistic practice for those who teach arts is relevant in and for the construction of their teaching subjectivity (García-Huidobro & Ferrada, 2020). Secondly, given that creating spaces for dialogue and conversation among art teachers is a strategy that strengthens the professional development and isolation of those who teach this discipline (Hernández-Hernández, 2014). Thirdly, given that methodology cannot be reduced to the use of techniques or methods for those who do research, it must refer to the production of knowledge that arises from embodied experiences and from a given context, two variables that are fundamental to inquire into professional subjectivity.
We consider that this proposed method draws on post-qualitative and post-materialist methodologies (St. Pierre, 2014; Lather & St. Pierre, 2013; Correa Gorospe, Aberasturi Apraiz, and Gutiérrez-Cabello, 2020) since they are ways of collecting information and promoting
knowledge that give greater relevance to action, to the participatory and subjective, by placing the lived artistic experience above knowledge.
TADs are a strategy that promotes the researcher’s experimentation (St. Pierre, 2018), where there is no place for data control. However, it is a way that places the artistic action process of the participants as a way to generate valid knowledge for the study. In addition, it allows us to know reality and a phenomenon that transcends words and writing and reveals aspects that, from other collection methods, it is impossible to account for (Hernández-Hernández, 2008).
The ideas of this method that we propose are nourished by what Patti Lather and Elizabeth A. St. Pierre (2013, p. 365) have called “methodologies that go being” since, in TAD, it is not possible to control the creative process or the artistic results that emerge. Therefore, those who investigate through this method must be flexible and open to novelty as a possibility of new knowledge. From this proposal, we intend to show the need for new methods in the social sciences, which move away from traditional modes to problematize aspects that transcend the reflexive turn and are linked to action, artistic experimentation, and affect as knowledge. In this regard, Marcus (2009) proposed the idea of metamethod as a way of reconceptualizing conventional research practices that point towards experimentation. These post-qualitative methodologies, guided by the Deleuzian idea, are built from a relational basis and give life to the data from other places, senses, and sensibilities.
From these ideas, we situate TAD as a post- qualitative method that seeks to be a group interview space from elements of Arts-Based Research (Barone & Eisner, 2006; Hernández- Hernández, 2008; Marín-Viadel, 2011); to account for how artistic practice can be used as a strategy that allows us to organize, give coherence and new social meanings to the subjectivity of artist-teachers.
Rosario García Huidobro
Materials and methods
The research has an emergent design and has used a mixed empirical methodology, which in its first phase was quantitative and in the second qualitative, to respond to the various specific objectives of this study. We will explain the first quantitative phase and then focus on the qualitative phase since it is the heart of this article.
In the first quantitative stage, we responded to the first specific objective of the study, which sought to identify key elements in the formation and trajectory of art teachers. To this end, five dimensions were used to construct variables and value scales in relation to their artistic and teaching experiences. The dimensions covered in the first part of the study were considered as those aspects that influence the identity formation of the artist-teachers and allowed to give order and sense to the collection instrument. The dimensions selected can be seen in Figure 1, which were: (i) training and professional career,
(ii) characteristics of the artistic practice, (iii) conflicts of the artistic-teaching practice, (iv) needs of the artistic-teaching practice and finally,
(v) contributions to the cultural development of the region.
Figure 1: Dimensions affecting the shaping of artist-teacher
identities (2018).
Source: Own elaboration.
Based on these dimensions, a virtual survey was created in Google Forms, and it was decided not to send it to a probabilistic sample but by convenience. It was sent, through various databases and media, to all visual arts teachers in the Los Lagos region of Chile. The instrument remained open during the first two weeks of December 2018 and was answered by 97 art teachers 50% Llanquihue province, 36.6% Chiloé province, 11.2% Osorno province, and 2.2% Palena province), constituting a non-probabilistic sample, given the operational difficulties that meant that a certain percentage for each province would respond to the survey, especially considering the high percentage of rurality of the region and difficulties for technological access. The collection instrument consisted of 21 questions with open, multiple, and selective answers, which were organized according to the five dimensions of the teaching subjectivity of art teachers. Once the instrument was constructed, it was validated by two experts in national art education. Subsequently, the information obtained was analyzed using the SPSS statistical analysis program, which allowed us to generate a matrix of data, crosstabs, and variables between dimensions. After making the matrix, we developed an exploratory interpretation based on the descriptive analysis of each variable and statistic. This gave us a better understanding of the phenomenon studied (García-Huidobro & Ferrada, 2020) and, among its results, helped us to generate new questions to guide the second stage.
The second phase of the collection was qualitative and sought to understand the following specific objectives: to analyze the conflicts and needs faced by artist-teachers, explore the link between their artistic-educational projects, and describe the characteristics of their pedagogical and artistic practices.
This phase was conceived as a space for the research group to collect the necessary information to meet its objectives and as a meeting place for artistic
subjectivities and teachers, where participants could meet, dialogue, and learn to rethink their practices. To this end, we conducted two days of discussion groups, each with a different objective, but both took post-qualitative elements, such as agency, experimentation, and creation, as elements of meaning to build knowledge (St. Pierre, 2018; Correa Gorospe, Aberasturi Apraiz and Gutiérrez-Cabello, 2020).
The first day was attended by a representative sample of 28 arts teachers from the region who had participated in the survey. This group of teachers was divided into four groups to dialogue and discuss some questions that arose from the survey results and that the group of researchers considered relevant to deepen to respond to the study’s objectives. Some of these were: In what way and how are my classes or teaching experiences part of my artistic production? Why do I consider it relevant (or not) to link my artistic work with my experiences as a teacher? What does it contribute to me to make these crossings? To what extent and how does my artistic-pedagogical practice contribute to the culture and the Lakes Region?
After the discussion groups, a workshop was held for all attendees. In it, they were given ideas and tools to develop artistic and educational projects, with the aim of solving some of the problems expressed in the survey responses.
Weeks after this first qualitative meeting, a second day was held, which we called the Artistic Discussion Workshop (ADD). The TADs take elements from the Arts-Based Research design since it is a methodology that uses artistic means (visual, literary, performative) to unveil and take data that are not possible to capture in any other way (Barone & Eisner, 2006; Hernández-Hernández, 2008; Marín-Viadel, 2011). It seemed relevant to us to seek a more dialogic, immersive, and creative methodology, where artistic tools were fused with qualitative strategies (Marín-Viadel & Roldán, 2019), which would allow participants to reflect on their perception of the contribution of the arts and pedagogy, emphasizing their roles and contributions.
The TADs were attended by 22 artist-teachers from the region (mostly the same ones who attended the first one). In this instance, the exercise of pedagogical social mapping was developed as an artistic strategy to trace and explore each artist-teacher’s experience. At the same time, this strategy was intended to help trigger a reflective dialogue among the participants (García- Huidobro, 2016) to talk about their experiences as artist-teachers and deepen some aspects discussed on the first day.
The first and second-day dialogues were recorded, transcribed, and analyzed. For this last process, a thematic and narrative analysis was carried out, from which their oral narratives were codified based on the themes that were worked on in the TAD. These codifications were reorganized and provided broader categories that were later theorized and that account for the subjectivities of the artist-teachers of the Los Lagos Region (García-Huidobro & Viveros, 2023).
In the following sections, we will delve into the Artistic Discussion Workshop (ADW) method and the cartographic strategy since we value how this innovative, post-qualitative, alternative way of collecting information provides new ways of understanding social reality and experience through the arts. In addition, it is situated in a creative, pedagogical, innovative, and reflexive way that allows us to rethink the experience of artist-teachers to promote subjectivity.
The Artistic Discussion Workshops (TAD) methodology was developed in phases that articulated the artistic, dialogic, and reflective through visual tools. The four phases are described below:
The workshop’s objectives, the key concepts to be worked on, and the necessary materials were defined. A sample of participants was selected, and activities were designed to include pedagogical social mapping to promote introspection and collective dialogue. About the key concepts,
eight fundamental concepts were introduced (Desires, Obstacles, Culture, Teaching, Lakes Region, Artistic Creation, Objects/Materiality, and Subjects) that were previously identified as significant for the construction of subjectivities in the artist-teachers. This conceptual framework provided a starting point for the creative and analytical activities.
During the workshop, the research team explained the mapping’s objective and the eight concepts and invited the participants to start working together. Participants made personal cartographies in a collaborative environment using visual and symbolic materials. This phase included moments of individual and group reflection, where the construction of visual narratives representing their experiences as artist-teachers was promoted.
At the end of the creative process, each participant presented and discussed his or her map in a collaborative environment. A space for critical dialogue was facilitated in which participants shared their trajectories and connected their
experiences with their peers. This phase allowed for a collective understanding of the subjectivities and challenges faced.
Rosario García Huidobro
The research team coded and analyzed, using Atlas.ti, the visuality, and conceptualization of each participant’s mapping, personal narratives, and peer dialogue. This allowed the identification of emerging categories such as resilience, difficulty, desire, and culture, which were subsequently theorized (García-Huidobro and Viveros, 2023).
The coding was thematic, as the concepts emerging from the cartographies were grouped into categories that reflected the concerns and meanings shared by the participants. The frequency and position of the concepts in the visual and oral narratives of each artist-teacher were evaluated. Subsequently, a stage of conceptual interrelation was followed, where it was investigated how the concepts dialogued with each other, allowing us to understand the subjective displacements and the rhizomatic articulation between difficulties, desires, and culture as part of the most relevant findings.
Results and discussion
This section will describe two processes: an account of how TADs were developed and a theoretical discussion that analyzes the development of this technique, with its contributions and challenges.
We will relate the experience of the Artistic Discussion Workshop as an innovative method that allows mapping, from the individual and the collective, the experience of artist-teacher subjectivity. In the study’s first phase, a survey was applied to 97 art teachers. From its analysis,
the research team identified eight key concepts they wanted to work on in the TAD through mapping. This artistic strategy was used so that the participants could relate their experience in a different way and, at the same time, help the research group to think about how the meaning of these concepts is shaping the subjectivity of the participants (García-Huidobro & Hoecker, 2022).
A group of 22 artist-teachers representing the various communes that make up the Los Lagos Region gathered in Puerto Montt.
Inspired by the steps proposed by Barragán and Amador (2014) and Risler and Ares (2013, 2014), participants were invited to carry out a cartographic work. Although three types of maps can be identified, for this TAD, we proposed to work on the temporal-social type of map in order to focus on how teachers recognized certain elements as events in their artistic and pedagogical experiences. In this sense, the objective of the artistic workshop was that each participant could put together a visual and discursive journey of his or her experience as an artist-teacher based on certain concepts provided
Given the number of participants in the TAD, two working rooms were set up. In each of them, tables were joined together and covered with white flip chart paper, simulating a large canvas. Pencils, colored cards, wool, scissors, glue, and other materials were placed on this paper. Of all this, the colored cards were key, since on each of these were written the concepts/elements that would help give meaning to the cartographies and act as triggers for their experiences.
Upon arrival of the group of participants, the research’s objective was explained to them, and each person was invited to make an individual mapping based on the eight key concepts (Figure 2). The research group had previously studied
these concepts as elements that influence and affect the construction of subjectivity of artist-teachers. Therefore, the objective was for each participant to give temporal-social and subjective meaning to these concepts in their own experience, given that their visual and oral account would help to understand how each one moves and transits in their spaces as artist-teachers. The key concepts provided were Desires, Objects/materiality, Obstacles, Teaching, Subjects, Artistic Creation, Lakes Region, and Culture.
The group was randomly divided into two rooms, and the researchers ensured that men and women worked in both groups. A researcher coordinated each of the work tables, and an assistant noted relevant aspects and made the audiovisual record.
Upon arriving at the rooms where the material was located, each participant sat around the table. A brief personal introduction was generated at that moment, an essential element for building trust. The methodology to be developed was explained and, as proposed by Risler and Ares for the development of the cartographies, they were encouraged “to create their forms of representation, either through images, icons, drawings, texts, vignettes and any other resource that would allow them to communicate and disseminate meanings and senses” (Risler & Ares, 2013, p. 14).
Figure 2: Photographs presentation of the TAD experience, artist-teachers get to know the working materials (2018).
Source: Own elaboration.
Rosario García Huidobro
For this purpose, each participant had a set of eight cards, each with the basic concepts written on one side. Each one had to express on the back side what his or her reflection was and his or her personal experience regarding how that concept was present in his or her teaching subjectivity. Then, they had to place their cards on the canvas (standard table) in a meaningful order. With the available wool, each had to link their cards to trace their trajectory, which they would relate to the rest of the group at the end of the experience.
In both groups, there was an atmosphere of work at the beginning, typical of a teacher who is pushed to reflect on his or her professional and, therefore, personal practices and experiences. In both groups the participants spent a long time, approximately 50 minutes writing in notebooks, making sketches, many sighs, hands resting on the head in reflection (hands on the forehead, chin, covering the mouth, holding the head), and then writing (Figure 3).
Figure 3: Development of the TAD. Participants reflected on the concepts delivered to perform the mapping (2018).
Source: Own elaboration.
The length of the writing on the cards was dissimilar; some wrote only concepts extracted from their notes, and others extended the length and breadth of the card.
The use of the canvas was developed gradually; some of them watched how the first ones did it, which gave them the confidence to arrange their work. Once the cards were laid out, each one
marked his or her line on the same plane, which meant that, in some situations, some paths and concepts crossed or interrupted those of others. In some cases, the traces were linear, circular, and zigzagging. In one of the groups, the trajectory even required rising from the two-dimensional canvas, as seen in Figure 4. However, all the cartographies alluded to what Guattari (1996) has called epistemological territory or existential territories since they all showed a displacement between multiple life experiences.
Figure 4: : Development of the TAD. Participants performing the paths of their mappings (2018).
Source: Own elaboration.
The group was invited to share their creation experiences at the end of the personal cartographic work. At that point, we moved on to the second part of the TAD, where the space for listening, critical reflection, and dialogue, typical of discussion groups, was promoted. On this experience, we rely on Risler and Ares (2013, 2014), who express that the construction of a map allows, through graphic and visual support, the approach of subjective elements present in a collective. It is a collective strategy of Resistance that helps to elaborate narratives around the reflection of themes, in which a democratic space for participation and representation of diverse personal, socio-cultural, and political positions is ensured. The product can be built individually or in groups, but the final result is always collective; we do not look at the parts but the whole, from the explicit content to the aesthetics of the union of the elements. This allows us to generate dialogue, reflection, and visibility of what is often challenging to bring to light or is unknown about oneself.
In this sense, we highlight the ideas proposed by Risler and Ares (2013, 2014) since the visual result, that is, the set of cartographies that shared the same plane reaffirmed the crossing of oral narratives of the participants. Even though the narratives reflected individual trajectories, they became collective as they intertwined. By telling aloud how each artist-teacher linked these concepts in his/her artistic-teaching experience
(Figure 5), the research group could learn in- depth what each concept meant in the trajectory for the participants and the common points among them. This generated a link between artists and teachers, who could identify aspects of their trajectory in each other’s process. Likewise, sharing their cartographies allowed them to give voice and word to their subjectivities, but from the collective, which speaks of a construction of meanings and knowledge arising from a shared personal and social space (Tardiff, 2004).
Next, we will explain the use of social mapping as an artistic experience that, from Arts-Based Research, proposes new ways of generating and giving meaning to knowledge, especially for the research process in the areas of teacher training and professional development (Correa Gorospe, Jiménez de Aberasturi & Gutiérrez-Cabello, 2020). For Barragán (2016), society requires generating new forms of social research that allow inquiring into people’s subjectivity; this author defines mapping in social and pedagogical research as:
A research and accompaniment in which
collective action participants are led to
Figure 5: : Development of the TAD. Participants recount the meaning of their cartographies and links to their artist-teacher experience (2018).Source: Own elaboration.
reflect on their practices and understandings of a common problem, creating a map (cartography) in which the problems that occur in that territory become evident (Barragán, 2016, p. 256).
From here, we understand that it is fundamental to consider mapping as a post-qualitative and materialistic strategy. This strategy allows us to approach the reality of social sciences and education from the place of reflection, transformation, affect, and other sensibilities.
On this idea, Rey and Granese (2019) point out that the studies of Deleuze and Guattari (2002) regarding the identification of the rhizome concept are key to giving epistemological support to this technique (and also to the post-qualitative theories), becoming the rhizome in the trace that
manages to base the map or the mapping process. We can point out that the cartographies made by the participants allude to the rhizome since they give a collective meaning to the elements that compose it and define a collective symbolic territory, which, as we will see below, is far from being limited only by geographical boundaries.
The poet Néstor Perlongher (1996) uses cartography and defines it as “an intensification of the flows of life and not as a simple investigation external to events” (Rey & Granese, 2019, p. 287). This accounts for how collaborative and rhizomatic cartographies allow us to account for joint subjectivities
Developing cartographies as a data collection strategy in the TAD of this research led us to the notion of epistemological territory or existential
territories, where Guattari (1996) manages to identify them as a non-geographical space in which the map to be made is located. These maps allow the abstraction and resignification of the experiences of those who participate in the dialogue. The map, on the other hand, is the graphic representation of the tensions, the abstractions, in which the personal account intersects with the account of others, enriching the theme, visualizing individual and collective actions to confront the theme that led the reflection and/or the dialogue.
León and Vargas (2015) propose something similar, considering that Deleuze and Guattari’s contribution (2002) redefines cartography as a creative practice of Resistance nourished by the experience of individuals who collectively constitute it.
This collective construction, in a way, deconstructs the relationship between the product -the research- and the academy since the research topics are simply a framework on which the life experience of the participating subjects is situated, being this experience the reality that must be analyzed. Regarding this, Díez and Chanampa (2016) point out that “what the cartographic method seeks is to speak in conjunction with the experience of reality and not about reality” (Díez & Chanampa, 2016, p.87).
On the other hand, Barragán and Amador (2014) introduce pedagogical social cartography, referring to the use of the cartographic technique for research and interventions that address the educational environment, its actors, and interactions. They describe that this method requires propitious times and spaces to generate reflection and the appropriate materials for the group to work with. To the above-mentioned by the authors mentioned here they add the following:
A social-pedagogical mapping should prioritize collective reflections, go through the territories where events take place, recognize needs and absences, and make visible the knowledge and opportunities for transformation offered by its social actors. (Barragán and Amador, 2014, p.136).
It is necessary to highlight what Díez and Chanampa (2016) value: the fact that, through this method, a relationship is established between the researcher and the study participants. An experience is shared where the participants cease to be objects of observation since they become actors of knowledge. In addition, sharing the mapping experience generates familiar places for dialogue and reflection between researchers and participants.
The cartographies produced in the framework of the Artistic Discussion Workshop (TAD) allow us to explore the subjectivities of artist-teachers in depth since they operate as visual and symbolic representations of their personal and professional trajectories. Through the strokes, colors, icons, and spatial arrangements, participants narrate and reconfigure their experiences, tensions, and aspirations. This creative process is aligned with Deleuze and Guattari’s (2004) rhizomatic perspective, where knowledge is constructed in a web of multiple relationships without a fixed center, allowing constant displacements between the personal and the collective.
The visuality of cartographies becomes a key tool for constructing subjectivities since it allows art teachers to dynamically represent the crossings between fundamental concepts such as culture, desire, obstacles, and teaching. According to Risler and Ares (2013), social maps organize information and act as resistance devices by making visible experiences and meanings that, in traditional educational contexts, are usually made invisible. In the case of TAD, teachers capture their trajectories through linear, circular, or rhizomatic visual trajectories, which reflect how they perceive their professional trajectories, achievements, difficulties, and resilience processes.
This graphic representation allows the emergence of complex subjectivities, understood as narratives in constant movement, configured by multiple historical, social, and cultural inscriptions (García-Huidobro, 2016). The arrangement of key concepts in the cartographies’ visual space
Rosario García Huidobro
Table 1: Elements or steps to be considered for mapping development (2018).
Source: Own elaboration.
Social Cartography
(Risler and Ares, 2013, pp.16-18)
Social Pedagogical Cartography (Barragán and
Amador, 2014, pp.137-139)
Workshop preparation
Presentation of the work to be developed
Selecting the type of problem
Selecting the map type
Motivation of the participants
Group work
Sharing
The researcher seeks consensus on the final product
through various methodologies.
Working groups
Convention agreement
Making the map
Map explanation
Transformation agreements
Analysis of maps and cartography report (researcher’s work)
allows self-exploration and a process of collective dialogue in which individual experiences are re-signified in the group context. Díez and Chanampa (2016) state that cartographic methods promote participatory knowledge, where the actors generate shared knowledge from their lived experiences.
In addition, using visual elements in the artistic process allows the expression of what Hernández- Hernández (2008) calls affective knowledge, which cannot be fully captured through verbal language. Cartographies, by combining graphic and narrative elements, give rise to new forms of signification, where visuality acts as epistemological mediation. This approach strengthens the professional agency of those who teach the arts by allowing them to articulate their identities in terms of their own experiences and their pedagogical and artistic aspirations.
Visual traces, artist-teachers can express and re-signify their experiences, challenging the normative structures that traditionally make artistic knowledge invisible in the educational environment. This methodology promotes critical
reflection and strengthens the connection between peers, generating a relational and transformative learning space. Thus, TAD contributes to the construction of situated teaching subjectivities, capable of facing the challenges of the educational system from a position of agency, creativity, and resilience (Guattari, 1996; St. Pierre, 2018).
One of the most relevant results of the TAD identifies that art teachers face the challenges of educational practice from a resilient perspective (García-Huidobro & Viveros, 2023). Four main categories were identified through the analysis of experiences collected in the TADs: culture, difficulties, desires, and teaching the arts as a resilient act. These categories illustrate how the subjectivities of the participants are constructed in a constant dialogue between the personal and the collective, addressing the tensions of their teaching and artistic work to transform them into tools for cultural and social impact. This approach reinforces the importance of TAD as a space that fosters critical reflection, collective learning, and the capacity for collective agency in the face of adverse contexts that place arts education in a complex scenario (Del Valle & Rojas, 2020).
Conclusions
This article has exposed the Artistic Discussion Workshop (ADW) as an innovative post-qualitative methodology to explore the subjectivities and identities of artist-teachers, addressing complex dimensions of their professional experience. From the results, it is possible to synthesize a series of key findings and significant contributions of the method, both to the field of educational research and to the professional development of teachers in artistic contexts. We will summarize the main contributions of TAD; they are articulated in five fundamental aspects:
The first is how this method contributes to constructing relational and situated subjectivities. The process of artistic creation during the TAD allowed participants to map their personal and professional trajectories through meaningful concepts such as culture, obstacles, desires, and teaching. These mappings function as visual narratives that reveal how artist-teachers construct and reconstruct themselves in a rhizomatic environment, where individual experience takes on new meaning as it is contrasted and re-signified in a collective space. This approach is linked to Deleuze and Guattari’s (2004) rhizome theory, which postulates a non-linear understanding of knowledge based on multiple connections and meanings. The collective experience also promoted mutual recognition that strengthened the participants’ professional identity by reflecting the interdependence of their experiences.
Secondly, TAD promotes spaces of Resistance, agency, and professional empowerment. TAD, a strategy combining artistic creation with critical reflection, becomes a space for Resistance in the face of institutional conditions that have traditionally marginalized the arts in the school curriculum (Del Valle & Rojas, 2020). During the workshops, teachers expressed the importance of having spaces where their experiences could be shared and validated, allowing a revaluation of their professional role. This collective validation process strengthens what St. Pierre (2018) describes as the capacity for agency, where
participants reflect on their working and cultural conditions and find symbolic and emotional tools to generate transformations in their practices. Thus, the TAD operates not only as a method of information gathering but also as an experience of professional self-affirmation.
Thirdly, the contribution of TAD becomes a methodological innovation and a deepening of educational reflection. Unlike other research methods, such as structured interviews or questionnaires, TAD allows access to affective, symbolic, and sensory dimensions that do not always emerge in conventional methodologies. The social mapping used in the workshop allowed teachers to relate their experiences and represent them visually, generating new meanings in the creative process. This approach is consistent with arts-based research proposals (Barone & Eisner, 2006; Hernández-Hernández, 2014), where the act of creating becomes a way to build knowledge and re-signify experiences. Participants highlighted how this exercise allowed them to remember and reorganize their perceptions about the challenges and achievements in their teaching careers. In addition, the dialogic dynamics of the workshop, which promoted active listening and joint reflection, facilitated relational learning that reinforced the idea that teacher subjectivity is configured in interaction with others (Tardif, 2004).
A new aspect we emphasize about TAD is its contribution to teachers’professional development and continuous critical training. TAD proved to be a useful tool to accompany introspection, allowing teachers to identify and redefine fundamental aspects of their artistic and pedagogical practice. The critical reflection that emerges from these instances is key to professional development, as it allows for recognizing action patterns, recurrent tensions, and possibilities for transformation in daily work. From this perspective, the method contributes to strengthening the role of teachers as “transformative intellectuals” (Giroux, 1990), capable of critically analyzing their working
conditions and generating educational practices that are more conscious and committed to their social and cultural environment.
Finally, TAD contributes to reconfiguring artistic
practice as an educational strategy.
A central aspect of this method is the capacity of artistic practice to act as an epistemological mediation, which implies that the creative process transcends its aesthetic function and becomes a knowledge device. Participants could negotiate their subjectivities through creation, opening new spaces of meaning that challenged established norms. According to Gergen (1996), this process
of creation is essential for the development of agency since it allows the subject not only to be a spectator of his or her reality but to transform it from an active and reflective position.
Rosario García Huidobro
Finally, TAD has not only contributed to developing new methodological frameworks for research in art education but has also shown how collective creation and critical reflection can strengthen the subjectivity and professional agency of artist-teachers. This methodological approach is a relevant contribution for those seeking to promote critical, collaborative, and transformative learning spaces, both in educational contexts and in post-qualitative research.
Acknowledgments
The study was funded through the Internal Competition for Regular Scientific and Technological Research 2018, Universidad de los
Lagos, Chile, and we gratefully acknowledge its contribution.
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