Currere as Contemporary Art: Creative Research Methods for Teacher Self-Reflection

Kimberley Noel D'Adamo, University of Nebraska-Lincoln

Copyright 2024, Kimberley Noel D'Adamo. Used by permission

Abstract

Many educators are committed to democratic education. However, educational models often emphasize compliance and conformity. Practitioners who have experienced hierarchical learning structures may unconsciously replicate these norms in their own teaching methods. Through honest reflection, teachers can reckon with their formative experiences and use the resulting insights to transcend ingrained behaviors or educational models that stifle liberatory teaching. Self-knowledge helps teachers create more flexible, humanized spaces that effectively serve a diversity of cognitive learning styles and student voices. The question arises: How can we support practitioners in engaging in honest self-reflection to develop liberatory practices? What tools do teachers need to facilitate productive introspection? William Pinar’s currere process offers educators such supports. Currere scaffolds a transformative journey, enabling teachers to explore their educational past, interpret it in their current context, and use those personal and pedagogical insights to envision alternative educational futures. As a contemporary artist, I fused arts-based research methods with currere stages to unpack my own formative years of schooling. Playing with new approaches to art, I wove together Olivia Gude’s & Julia Marshall’s creative strategies, Lois Hetland’s creative dispositions as processes of understanding, and Jorge Lucero’s permissions of conceptual art. I analytically and poetically explored how my life experiences, cognition, art-making and teaching intertwine. Combining currere and creative research methods made the reflective process more accessible and expressive, offering beautiful tools to capture complex, often inexpressible personal and professional growth. Currere as Contemporary Art offers an experience of liberatory learning, a new art form, and methods of arts-based research, inter-woven through an innovative process for rigorous pedagogical learning.