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Contemplation, Artful Writing: Research With Internationally Educated Female Teachers

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Abstract

In this article, I experiment with artful writing as a means of contemplating research with internationally educated female teachers. In doing so, I sit with, listen to, write from particular moments of the research process. I also compose found poems from words and phrases in the transcripts. My intention is to dwell with particular artifacts, rather than analyze or interpret them according to a theoretical framework. In this work, I consider Deleuze and Guattari’s writing about art and also Shambhala/Buddhist Chögyam Trungpa’s teachings about Dharma art—all of whom contend that art is a form of bodily attunement to and awareness of the physical world through perception, the senses, sensation rather than a means of expressing the self and/or representing something. In a broad sense, I am interested in how the practice of contemplation through artful writing might inform, transform the research process.

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