Arts-based Educational Research Narratives of Academic Identities : Perspectives from Higher Education

This book delves into the complexities of being and becoming an academic in higher education. Inspired by the arts, the book introduces new voices and insights to scholarly discussions about what constitutes data and analysis in higher education research. It demonstrates ABER’s ability to shape and critique academic identity narratives in response to pressing problems and dilemmas in higher education.

The book includes exemplars from studies conducted primarily in South African contexts and led by South African researchers. It explores diverse modes, including collage, digital artwork, letter writing, metaphor, creative nonfiction, and theatre-making. Contributions from expert scholars in Canada and the USA supplement this research and show how it has been enriched by critical transcontinental conversations. The authors offer new perspectives on the entwined and complex relationship between the ABER, narratives, and identities.

Inbanathan Naicker is an associate professor and NRF-rated researcher in educational leadership at the University of KwaZulu-Natal. His research interests include leadership and context, self-reflexive methodologies in educational leadership research, and arts-based methods in educational leadership research. 

Daisy Pillay is a professor in the School of Education at the University of KwaZulu-Natal. Her scholarship is in teacher identity and teachers’ lives within the broader field of teacher development studies. She draws on an array of self-reflexive methodologies―narrative inquiry, autoethnography, memory work, life writing, and self-study research―to study and theorise stories of self as an ongoing complex entanglement in and through which personal-social–professional learning and change are made possible. Her scholarship in arts-based research has opened up rich pathways for transdisciplinary work and connections nationally and internationally to deepen and extend her interest in the aesthetic–ethic entanglements of self and its moral imperative.

Kathleen Pithouse-Morgan is a professor in the School of Education at the University of KwaZulu-Natal. Her scholarship is in professional learning, focusing on better understanding and supporting teachers as self-directed and self-developing learners. Through the self-reflexive methodologies of self-study research, narrative inquiry, and autoethnography, her work documents and theorises how teachers can gain vital insights into their professional selves and practices―with critical implications for personal–professional growth and social transformation. Kathleen collaborates across contexts and continents to study methodological inventiveness in professional learning research using creative and transdisciplinary approaches. Her innovative conceptualisation of poetic professional learning is a noteworthy arts-inspired research outcome. 

Lungile Masinga is a senior lecturer in curriculum and education studies and has also worked in the gender and education discipline at the University of KwaZulu-Natal. Her academic work focuses on gender and sexuality education. Methodologically, her work has contributed to the scholarship on collaborative memory work, oral storytelling with teachers, and self-study research inquiry. She is also a member of the South African Educational Research Association’s Self-Reflexive Methodologies Special Interest Group.

Theresa Chisanga is an associate professor at Walter Sisulu University. She studied linguistics and specialised in English language studies. She has been involved in self-reflexive and related qualitative educational research methodologies for some time and has many publications based on these. She is interested in broadening the research spaces to include those that touch, and those likely to be excluded by, the very nature of the more traditional approaches. The aim is always to reflect and improve on how we engage with all around us to maximise impact for a more cohesive society. 

Anita Hiralaal is a lecturer in accounting at the School of Education, Durban University of Technology. She has a doctorate in teacher development studies from the University of KwaZulu-Natal. Anita has been involved in teacher education for many years and enjoys teaching accounting. As part of her doctoral studies, she adopted an arts-based self-study methodological approach and used many arts-based research approaches in her study. This prompted her to incorporate the arts into her accounting pedagogy teaching, with excellent results.