A collaborative exploration of pedagogical refrain within science education

Abstract

As a science educator becoming an educational researcher, I share this personal narrative hoping to encourage a deepened awareness about everyday experiences and how my integrating of memory and imagination helped me to explore disregarded complexities of life-living. Such intensified awareness could subtly influence the field of science education and remains a topic for future exploration. In this study, characterised as a post qualitative inquiry and a creative experiment folding interchangeable beginnings and endings, I have chosen the concept of refrain to help me understand how I put memory and imagination together during my lived interactions with humans and the more-than-human. Early in my childhood, I discovered that my perception of human and more-than-human relationships differed from that of others and during this study I enhanced my understanding of such relationships by engaging with artistic materials.

During this inquiry I have followed William Pinar's interpretation of 𝘤𝘶𝘳𝘳𝘦𝘳𝘦 to narrate my educational journey, highlighting how my curiosity led me to pursue the study of sciences. Throughout various stages of 𝘤𝘶𝘳𝘳𝘦𝘳𝘦 I moved from a quantitative perspective in the sciences to creatively experiment with interchangeable beginnings and endings during art making. Over decades, I delved into conscious modes of knowing and became deeply immersed in Western epistemology. However, I faced increasing frustration in my attempts to convey my perceptions about the complexities of human and more-than-human relationships to others. During my PhD journey, I discovered the transformative potential of artistic expression, specifically through mediums such as drawing, drumming, painting, and poetry. By responding to personal multifaceted, sensory perceptions through artistic means, I experienced a co-existence of actual and virtual encounters and theory collapsed into practice for me.

My 𝘵𝘩𝘪𝘯𝘬𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘸𝘪𝘵𝘩 refrain allowed me to figure out my recurrent inclination to imaginatively undertake unfamiliar tasks and grapple with the challenge of communicating my actions and insights to others. Metaphorically speaking, it felt as though I was weaving a tapestry from behind, resulting in a somewhat chaotic process. However, through collaboration with others and further engagement with artistic practices during this study, I gradually realised that by concurrently performing familiar tasks alongside unfamiliar ones, I could metaphorically, flip the canvas and work on the forefront as well. Thus, my understanding of the transversal connections among information deepened, and likewise, my interaction with artistic materials provided me with the conditions to establish such connections. Consequently, I recognised that, through attentive interaction with artistic materials, educators and educational researchers in science education may attend to disregarded complexities during ordinary life-living and possibly, by way of integrating memory and imagination, acknowledge pedagogical refrains informing their becoming.