Löytönen, Teija

Senior Researcher

Aalto University, Dept of Art, School of Art and Design & Post-doctoral Researcher, Theatre Academy, Performing Arts Research Centre

Title of my research: University Pedagogy in Art and Design

My research interest more largely: Collaborative Inquiry into the Practices of Teaching and Learning in the Context of a Art and Design University

Collaborative inquiry is a process by which colleagues gather in groups to pursue, over time, the questions about teaching and learning that the group members identify as interesting or important in relation to their practice.

The aim of my research is to facilitate and enhance learning within and among the different academic communities in the School of Art and Design through collaborative inquiry. In addition, the aim is to construct meaningful knowledge for the teachers as well as for the wider academic community about the practices of teaching and learning. Teachers form different collegial groups which develop their understanding of an issue through e.g. framing questions, sharing perspectives as well as reflecting on their practices. Through collaborative inquiry teachers make sense of their experiences, learn from those experiences and draw upon the perspectives of colleagues to enhance their understanding of teaching and students’ learning.

In practice collaborative inquiry means that the participating teachers are allowed the time and place to collaboratively inquire into their teaching practice. The idea is not to foster any changes through specific interventions and predictable outcomes. Instead the aim is to enable dialogue among various groups to collaboratively reflect on and converse about their professional practice making it possible to de- and reconstruct the teaching profession. The groups plan their activity independently. So the collaborative inquiry is facilitated by the participants themselves and evolves through the project.

The framework for the research project is made up of joint seminars where all the participants meet and discuss the topical issues of the project. The experiences and knowledge created by the collaborative inquiry are introduced and discussed with the wider academia in pedagogical conferences.

At best collaborative inquiry is a process of learning not only about one’s own teaching practices but also about the cultural undercurrents within the present-day academia.

The researcher (i.e. I) is the initiator and recourse for the collegial groups in inquiring into their practices. Beside this the researcher constructs research knowledge by exploring e.g. the following research questions:

How do the participants construct meaning (knowledge) about their professional practice?

What are the elements of teaching and learning in the higher education within School of Art and Design as explored by the collegial groups?

What kinds of meanings do the participants give to the collaborative inquiry into their practice?

These questions will be answered through, among others, ethnographic fieldwork, interviews and observations.

An important starting point for this proposed project is to acknowledge the different forms of knowledge, both in terms of inquiry process and outcome. Briefly this refers to knowing that is not only propositional (knowing that) and technical or tacit (knowing how) but also experiential knowing, knowing-in-relationships as well as knowing in and through the arts. As important is also the construction of research knowledge in collaboration with the participants. So instead of doing research on or about the aforementioned questions the research will be conducted in collaboration with the participants by inviting them to jointly explore the research issues.

Other activities of possible interest to other CAVIC members

Beside a researcher I am also a process consultant and work supervisor. Most of my consultation processes during the last 15 years have been carried out in the field of art and art education. What I find the most interesting in these processes is the joint exploration of the everyday life of artists and art educators. The everyday life is often the routine act of conducting one’s day to day existence without making it an object of conscious attention or reflection. Thus the everyday is often synonymous with a non-intellectual and even impoverished relationship to the world. However, by scrutinising or bracketing the everyday phenomena we can jointly break the spell of the habitual, the ordinary and the daily. In this way we can adopt a critical, self-reflective attitude towards different aspects of everyday life by which new perspectives and insights on the mundane practices and commonsense assumptions might be possible.