Analysis < > Affect: Arts Integration in Secondary Poetry Education

Kuvaus

This research delves into the intricate intertwinements between analytical and affective approaches within the context of arts-integrated poetry education. Several researchers have emphasized the importance of integrating analytical and affective approaches, recognizing them as integral components of literary reading that mutually support each other (e.g., Felski, 2008; Xerri, 2013). Despite the acknowledgment of this symbiotic relationship, there is a notable gap in empirical studies that explore how this integration manifests within a classroom context. Furthermore, researchers point out an ambiguity between text-oriented and reader-oriented literature instruction and the ways in which different frameworks of literary theory influence teachers’ instruction (e.g., Pieper, 2020). Addressing this ambiguity is crucial to exploring alternative approaches to teaching literature that allow students to immerse themselves in literature without abandoning an analytical focus. This necessitates an approach to literature teaching that combines the analytical and the affective, acknowledging both the aesthetics of the literary text and its potential to influence and engage the reader (Felski, 2008).

One pedagogical approach to combining analytical and affective approaches in poetry teaching is arts integration. Serving as a transdisciplinary teaching approach, arts integration provides innovative opportunities for teaching poetry in combination with other art forms, such as dance or photography. The goal is to attain equal emphasis on all included art forms or subjects (e.g., Sanz Camarero et al., 2023). Arts-based approaches to teaching poetry have been scarcely researched in secondary education, and scholars call for more research (see Jusslin & Höglund, 2021). Nevertheless, recent research in primary and secondary education implies that arts integrated literature teaching can have the potential to promote both analytical and affective approaches. Studies have indicated that working with art forms, such as dance and visual art, requires close reading of literary texts and enables the incorporation of students’ voices and experiences in the teaching (Curwood & Cowell, 2011; McCormick, 2011). Given these promising gains, arts integration might provide opportunities to focus simultaneously on analytical and affective approaches in secondary poetry education.

Against this backdrop and a genuine wondering about what happens when the art forms of dance and photography are integrated with poetry teaching, this study aims to explore what this integration produces in terms of the relationship and possible friction between analytical and affective approaches in poetry education—and arts education more broadly. This exploration builds on empirical material of teaching that integrated poetry with dance and photography in upper secondary education in Finland.

The study is theoretically grounded in postfoundational theories (Mazzei & Jackson, 2024). Postfoundational theories oppose binaries such as body/mind, human/nonhuman, matter/discourse, making the perspective of postfoundational theoretical approach relevant for exploring what is produced in the intertwinements of analytical and affective approaches during the arts-integrated poetry lessons. In this study, we explore how Deleuze and Guattari’s (1987/2013) concepts of smooth and striated spaces can offer opportunities to theoretically explore such intertwinements. Whereas an analytical approach to reading poetry can be understood as a striated space, which is bounded and guided by rules, (e.g., literary elements such as imagery and rhythm), an affective approach might signify the open and allowing perspective of a smooth space. Deleuze and Guattari (1987/2013) emphasize that these spaces exist only in mixture; a thought that might be productive for envisioning how the analytical and affective approaches to reading poetry might intertwine.

The study is methodologically grounded in post-qualitative inquiry (Jackson & Mazzei, 2023). Post-qualitative inquiry questions research as merely representational and the researcher as detached from the researched. Instead, it seeks to embrace the researchers’ and participants’ embodied engagements in the research process. In post-qualitative research, the research process does not necessarily start with predetermined, fixed research questions, but in curiosity (Lather & St. Pierre, 2013). This calls for an open approach to the research process, prioritizing theory and concepts over methods.

Consequently, the study analytically follows the approach of thinking with theory (Jackson & Mazzei, 2023) and employs the concept of data that glows (MacLure, 2013). Thinking with theory, as proposed by Jackson and Mazzei (2023), involves putting theories to work in empirical material rather than focusing on the interpretation of material through systemic coding or the identification of themes. In this study, we engage with the theoretical concepts of smooth and striated spaces, developed by Deleuze and Guattari (1987/2013).

The data for the study comprises video recordings of six lessons in an upper secondary literature classroom in Swedish-speaking Finland, as well as students' texts and researchers' embodied engagements. In the teaching, the researchers collaborated with a teacher in first language (L1) and literature education. During the lessons, the students worked with poems from the poetry collections “Strömsöborna” by Finnish poet Rosanna Fellman and "White Monkey" by the Finnish poet and author Adrian Perera (2017) through creative dance and visual work, specifically sketching and photography.

When approaching the data, we followed the analytical approach proposed by MacLure (2013) known as data that glows. According to MacLure, the researcher does not stand outside the data, ready to categorize and calibrate. Instead, the data might resonate with the researcher in an embodied manner, affecting the body and the mind. This resonant connection is what MacLure refers to as the “glow”. Consequently, data is not seen as an inert and indifferent mass waiting to be coded, but rather as something that has its own ways of making itself intelligible to us. In the still ongoing analysis, we analyze moments of glow in the data to explore relationships and frictions between analytical and affective approaches when poetry is taught together with dance and visual arts.

In the presentation, we will share the results and discuss the implications that this research might have for poetry teaching, specifically, and arts education more broadly. Focusing on both theory and practice, the study´s expected results aim to contribute knowledge about arts integration in poetry education. Specifically, it seeks to elaborate on how and if arts integration can offer support for the intricate intertwinements of analytical and affective aspects within literature teaching. While situated within a poetry educational context, the study also contributes to advancing the understanding of arts integration in secondary educational contexts more broadly. Current educational policies and scholarly initiatives (see e.g., Klausen & Mård, 2023) emphasize the importance of integrated education as a means to address the complex needs of contemporary education. In this context, considering arts integration as a crucial objective is essential. Additionally, the study contributes to the development of insights into how postfoundational theories and post-qualitative inquiry can be applied in literature education research, and arts educational research more broadly.

Aikajakso	30 elok. 2024
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Tapahtuman tyyppi	Konferenssi
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Tunnustuksen arvo	Kansainvälinen