Sensory Arts-Based Storytelling as Critical Reflection: Tales From an Online Graduate Social Work Classroom

Drawing upon Heron and Reason’s (1997) participatory inquiry paradigm and extended epistemology, this article explores how six Master of Social Work (MSW) students engaged in sensory arts-based critical reflection concerning their social location, identities, social justice, and social policy. We share our process for creating sensory arts-based stories, the stories themselves, and pedagogical reflections. We elucidate how sensory arts-based storytelling allows learners to draw upon their strengths, unique perspectives, and experiences in the world, generating transformative understandings of social justice. Sensory arts-based storytelling holds potential as an interdisciplinary mode of critical reflection, generating inclusive learning environments oriented towards social change.

Participatory Action Research in Adult Education

Participatory action research (PAR) is an embodied form of inquiry that engages those most affected by an issue or problem in creating knowledge and developing solutions. PAR epistemology intersects with a critical approach to adult education in its belief that programs, methods, and content must be relevant to learner needs and challenges and ought to lead to greater social justice. The purpose of this chapter is to offer a review of three critical, participatory inquiry methods that are connected to the ontological and epistemological anchors of PAR. The authors present readers with a useful description of how to enact these onto-epistemological anchors through these methods in diverse contexts. They conclude that these methods have great potential for critical educators to live out their own onto-epistemological commitments, better understand and meet learner needs, and facilitate positive social change.

Virtual Photovoice: Methodological Lessons and Cautions

Photovoice is a type of participatory inquiry, which is a methodological and onto-epistemological stance that seeks to emancipate marginalized individuals, confront inequity, and work for social transformation. Photovoice incorporates Paulo Freire’s problem-posing education, documentary photography techniques, and feminist thought as an approach for community members to identify shared concerns and construct collective knowledge. It also seeks to challenge unequal power relations by disrupting hegemonic structures in the production of knowledge and policy, as photographs and accompanying descriptions can communicate powerfully about community needs and demands for change. University-based researchers or practitioners facilitate this communication by bringing community perspectives to the attention of government officials and others in positions of power. In this paper, we describe how we adapted this approach for virtual use during the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic. We offer examples of two projects that engaged photovoice in virtual spaces: Courageous Conversations, a youth participatory action research project which Meagan conducts with youth in the United States, and Melissa’s dissertation, conducted with Syrian students who are refugees enrolled in higher education in Turkey. Through these examples we draw out methodological lessons learned as well as challenges of conducting photovoice in virtual spaces. We conclude that whether researchers and practitioners use photovoice as a method in virtual or face-to-face settings, we must remember the emancipatory goals of participatory inquiry, always relying upon and anchoring our methodological decisions in the ontologies and epistemologies of genuine participation that undergird photovoice.

Participatory Action Research as/in Adult Education

Participatory action research (PAR) is an embodied form of inquiry that engages those most affected by an issue or problem in creating knowledge and developing solutions. PAR epistemology intersects with the critical approach to adult education, particularly the belief that programs, methods, and content must be relevant to learner needs and challenges and ought to lead to greater social justice. The purpose of this paper is to offer a review of three critical, participatory inquiry methods that are anchored in three concepts foundational to PAR and to present readers with a useful description of how to implement these methods in diverse contexts.

Empowerment or exposure? Ethical dilemmas of visual methods with vulnerable migrants

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to present a typology of the treatment of ethical issues in recent studies using visual participatory methods with immigrants and refugees and provide insights for researchers into how these issues can be more adequately addressed.Design/methodology/approachThe paper presents the results of a scoping study as a typology of ethical considerations, from standard IRB approval to complete ethical guidelines/frameworks for research with refugee/migrant populations.FindingsThe review reveals that there is a broad spectrum of ethical considerations in the use of visual participatory methods with migrants, with the majority only giving cursory or minimal attention to the particular vulnerabilities of these populations.Originality/valueThis paper encourages university-based researchers conducting participatory inquiry with migrant populations to engage in deeper critical reflection on the ethical implications of these methods in keeping with PAR's ethico-onto-epistemological roots, to make intentional methodological choices that are congruent with those roots and to be explicit in their description of how they did this as they disseminate their work.

Inquiry-Based Education: Innovation in Participatory Inquiry Paradigm

Inquiry-based learning is fundamental for the development of higher order thinking skills that guides learners to inquire meaningful questions that led to relevant answers, therefore awaken learners’ curiosity and wonder. Re-cent ameliorations in technology have captivated the enthusiasm of both educators and researchers to develop inquiry-based classroom activities that emphasize the application of educational technology in the domain of school science education. Thus, we have designed a learning application “AIBASE”, which assists primary school students in generating hypotheses during Science experiments. The instructional framework was used to scru-tinize the effectiveness of using “AIBASE” in aiding the learning process. The results implied improvements in students’ performance level. In addi-tion, this paper also highlights the main criteria for inquiry-based learning.

Implementing PAR in a Thai community development context

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to present an account of a PAR project in a Thai community and to discuss the methodological implications of implementing a culturally responsive approach.Design/methodology/approachThe paper draws on the frameworks for PAR conducted as a community development project with rural Thai communities.FindingsThe paper reviews the use of a PAR approach as a culturally responsive approach and presents an experience of culturally situated research practice.Originality/valueThis paper encourages researchers conducting participatory inquiry to engage in deeper critical reflection on the implications of these methods in keeping with PAR's critical ontological, epistemological and axiological orientation.

Analogical and Metaphorical Thinking, Storytelling, and Entrepreneurial Identity and Narrative Development: A Visual Art-Based Learning Innovation

This article describes a novel visual art-based exercise (VAE) that was developed and conducted as part of an introductory-level, project-based entrepreneurial leadership course. The VAE engages students in reflective explorations of paintings and analogical and metaphorical thinking and analysis in support of two learning outcomes. The first outcome is for students to gain greater awareness of their emergent entrepreneurial identities. The second outcome is for students to enhance their capacities to effectively integrate analogies and metaphors with entrepreneurial narratives. Participatory inquiry guides the structure and delivery of the VAE with its application being focused on opportunity identification and conceptualization, solution development, and entrepreneurial narrative development and delivery. The three stages of the exercise (i.e., Staging, Transfer, and Integration) are described in detail, and its effectiveness is qualitatively assessed specific to the intended outcomes in order to facilitate and support adoption.