Texas Trends in Art Education, 2010 Page: 26

                                
Sut heriin  /  Counts  Acting  Out

We utilized a/r/tography in the con-
Methodology            struction of this study as a means of
engaging hypertext as a form of art
production, research, and teaching. We both understand the
hypertexts to be a form of interactive collage that allows for
performance. According to Irwin (2004), a/r/tography is a self-
study of one's own practices as an (a/) artist, (/r/) researcher,
and (t) teacher in order to gain a more holistic study of art edu-
cation theory and practice. From our experience, a/r/tography,
as a methodology, has a much broader application in educa-
tional research and should not be confined to art education
alone, nor to art in the form of an object. The creative construc-
tion of a hypertext, either as an individual creation or as a class-
room collaboration, produces a situation in which interpretation
becomes both an art process and a product. A/r/tograpy's differ-
ence lies in the construction of the teacher's identity as artist,
researcher, and teacher. It takes the idea of teacher as re-
searcher, as derived from action research, and adds the third
layer of artist or creator. In this study, hypertexts" are enacted
as performances of text, and the study focuses on the three
kinds of thought discussed by Aristotle-"knowing (theoria),
doing (praxis), and making (poesis)" (Irwin, 2004, p.27). A/r/
tography allows the teacher to study his/her practices as he/she
engages with his/her students in knowing, doing, and making
within the three areas of artist, researcher, and teacher. We are
not concerned with categorization, but with the fluidity of move-
ment between the three liminal spaces or the in/between (Irwin,
Springgay, & Kind, 2005). Irwin (2004) describes a/r/tography as
metissage or a language of the borderlands. It is a language that
is about both convergence and divergence, and only through the
understanding and comparison of both can realization of the
complex relationships of artist/researcher/teacher be under-
stood. The three roles overlap through the process of conduc-
tion, the appropriation of texts and images (Ulmer, 2003). Con-
duction in the classroom requires "designing" the learning envi-
ronment in such a way that it becomes modular, capable of con-
figuration and reconfiguration by those who inhabit it. As images
and (con)textual interpretations are delineated through the pro-
duction of hypertext maps in this study, roles overlap, allowing
student to become teacher and teacher to become student as co
-researchers (Ulmer, 1994).
This study employs hypermedia as a method of promoting
teaching and learning in the classroom. Instead of looking at
interpretation from the binary of right or wrong, the complexity
of interpretation is emphasized, allowing for multiple associa-
tions to a given text or image. Hypermedia and hypertexts, as
software applications, require a POET, a Point Of Entry Text.
Ultimately, there is logic in hypertext and hypermedia that is
formed through mythopoetic bricolage. Bricolage is the process
of being artistically creative with the materials one has at hand.
It is the process of creating a complex image of practice rather
than a one-dimensional description. Several POET(ic) metaphors
frame the process of bricolage. The first four are proposed by
Berry and Kincheloe (2004), and the fifth is an addendum made
by our own interpretation of the other four.

Trees and forest
Overhead Transparency
Hypertext
DVD (Berry & Kincheloe, 2004, p. 108)
Wiki
The metaphors of trees and forest, overhead transparen-
cies, hypertext, DVDs, and wikis all function through the process
of layering. Meaning is accumulated over time and through in-
teraction with a text or texts. These metaphors give a reader an
understanding of the part in relation to the whole. For instance,
the trees and forest produce connections to individual trees
along with the assemblage of trees or the forest. If we equate
the tree with an individual text and the forest with culture as a
whole, we can begin to formulate an understanding of the recip-
rocal relationship between art and culture. The DVD and the
overhead transparency illustrate the layering involved with rep-
resentation. The DVD has layers of menus while the overhead
transparency can be layered in such a way that each layer is
both visible and obscured. The part creates the whole and the
whole creates the part just as art creates culture and culture
creates art. Art is never separate from culture; it consists of mul-
tilayered, interconnected levels of association. In the tree and
forest metaphor the tree could be cut down and transformed
into tooth picks, a chair, a table, or a doorstop and still remain
part of the forest. Its history ties it to the forest in much the
same way that an artwork is tied to culture. Although time is
important to this understanding, it is no longer perceived as lin-
ear. The point of entry is a default location rather than a location
of original meaning. The metaphor of the POET has no deline-
ated "beginning, middle, or end" (Berry & Kincheloe, 2004,
p.108); history is no longer about linear time but about accumu-
lation. The reader applies layers of meaning to the text through
interaction with both historical and contemporary contexts. Lay-
ers of meaning are added to the original text as a means of
building discourse. The concept of "original" text is not de-
stroyed, only augmented (Sutherlin, 2010).
Traditional and non-traditional methods in education-Amy
My first classroom teaching assignment was as a ninth
grade teacher. As I walked through the door of my classroom in
Chicopee, Massachusetts, a sense of nostalgia washed over me.
The podium, chalkboard, overhead projector, screen, and
stool-all of these objects were familiar, and I understood their
function. The connection I felt to these objects stemmed from
my play as a child in my mother's high school classroom as well
as my own role as a student. I can remember sitting behind her
podium and enunciating the following words, "Today class we
will be doing X." Even though that classroom was an environ-
ment very different from the one I know today. There is always a
tendency to teach how we were taught. For me, this involved a
form of acting similar to a traditional stage play. While there
were occasional interactions with the "audience," the focus was
on me, the actor. In this model of teaching, the teacher pre-
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