ARTiculating currere: Arts-based methods and methodology to facilitate and understand biographic situations
PDF

Keywords

Currere
composition
arts-based inquiry
arts-based research

How to Cite

Hash, P. (2025). ARTiculating currere: Arts-based methods and methodology to facilitate and understand biographic situations. Currere and Praxis, 2(2), 107–125. https://doi.org/10.70116/30654572110

Abstract

This article explores how an instructor of undergraduate writing courses within a public university used arts-based writing assignments to facilitate the currere process. Throughout the semester, students were asked to complete artistic representations of writing prompts to pair with their assignments. Students completed narrative, analytic, and research-based writing assignments with artistic components. The art-making invited students to include biographical elements of their identities into their compositions, which enabled them to engage with the currere process. Additionally, the instructor’s own knowledge of currere made it possible for her to understand her students’ depth of educational experiences within her curriculum. Through practitioner action research that closely followed voluntary student participants over a semester, this article explores connections between art-making and currere as well as ways the process of currere can function as a curricular method within the undergraduate writing classroom.

https://doi.org/10.70116/30654572110
PDF

References

Barbezat, D., & Bush, M. (2014). Contemplative practices in higher education: Powerful methods to transform teaching and learning. Jossey-Bass.

Barone, T., & Eisner, E. W. (2011). Arts based research. Sage.

Berthoff, A. E. (Ed.). (1984). Reclaiming the imagination: Philosophical perspectives for writers and teachers of writing. Boynton/Cook Publishers.

Dewey, J. (2005). Art as experience. Penguin Group. (Original work published 1934)

Doll, M. A. (2017). The mythopoetics of currere: Memories, dreams and literary texts as teaching avenues to self-study. Routledge.

Eisner, E. (2008). Persistent tensions in arts-based research. In M. Cahnmann-Taylor & R. Siegesmund (Eds.), Arts-based research in education: Foundations for practice (pp. 16–27). Routledge.

Greene, M. (2001). Variations on a blue guitar: The Lincoln Center Institute lectures on aesthetic education. Teachers College Press.

Irwin, R. (2006). Walking to create an aesthetic and spiritual currere. Visual Arts Research, 32(1), 75–82.

Leavy, P. (2018). Introduction to arts-based research. In P. Leavy (Ed.), Handbook of arts-based research (pp. 3–21). The Guilford Press.

McDermott, M. (2008). Created worlds and crumbled universes. In J. G. Knowles, S. Promislow, & A. L. Cole (Eds.), Creating scholartistry: Imagining the arts-informed thesis or dissertation (pp. 135–150). Backalong Books.

McNulty, M. (2018). Blood’s will: Speculative fiction, existence, and the inquiry of currere. Peter Lang.

Pinar, W. F. (1991). The white cockatoo: Images of abstract expressionism in curriculum theory. In G. Willis & W. H. Schubert (Eds.), Reflections from the heart of educational inquiry: Understanding curriculum and teaching through the arts (pp. 245–249). State University of New York Press.

Pinar, W. F. (2004). What is curriculum theory? Erlbaum Associates.

Pinar, W. F. (2011). The character of curriculum studies: Bildung, currere, and the recurring question of the subject. Palgrave Macmillan.

Pring, R. (2015). Philosophy of educational research (3rd ed.). Bloomsbury Academic.

Siegesmund, R., & Cahnmann-Taylor, M. (2008). The tensions of arts-based research in education reconsidered: The promise for practice. In M. Cahnmann-Taylor & R. Siegesmund (Eds.), Arts-based research in education: Foundations for practice (pp. 233–246). Routledge.

Weber, S. (2008). Visual images in research. In J. G. Knowles & A. L. Cole (Eds.), Handbook of the arts in qualitative research: Perspectives, methodologies, examples, and issues (pp. 3–12). Sage.

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Copyright (c) 2025 Symphony

Downloads

Download data is not yet available.