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From Creative Resilience to Creative Resistance: Applying Arts-Based Participatory Methods to Engage Students in Undergraduate Research at an HSI
46 Plays11 months ago
In this special episode of Willing to Learn Dr. Ashley D. Domínguez, along with her colleagues at the University of Arizona College of Education, Dr. Regina Deil-Amen, and Dr. Julio Cammarota, present their ongoing project focused on the experiences of Puerto Rican undergraduate students in the wake of Hurricane Maria in 2017. They explain the use of 'participatory action research', where students themselves researched their own experiences, and elucidate some of the key issues raised during the project. Additionally, they showcase arts-based elicitation as a valuable emotional outlet and research tool. The discussion progresses towards a detailed look at 'problem tree' method, a notable tool that helped students visualize the multiple layers of issues they were dealing with - painting a vivid picture of intersecting systemic inequities, from colonization to economic and climate disasters.
Willing To Learn Resources:
- Instagram - Dr. Ashley D. Domínguez @ashddominguez
- Instagram - Willing To Learn @willingtolearnpodcast
- Email: [email protected]
- Produced by: Jeffrey Anthony
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Transcript
Introduction to the 2019 Project
00:00:21
Speaker
All right, so we're just gonna jump in. We wanna share with you
00:00:25
Speaker
So this is an ongoing project that we started in 2019. We've been back to the island to do this kind of work that we're doing. So we want this to be open if at any point you need some clarification for what we're talking about, just feel free to raise your hand and call out, and then we'll have some activities for you later on in the presentation. So I'll go ahead and introduce myself, then I'll have my other collaborators introduce themselves.
Regina Villaman's Journey
00:00:49
Speaker
I'm Regina Villaman. I'm currently the associate dean in the college.
00:00:53
Speaker
Um, I'm also a professor of higher education from ed policy studies and practice as well. And I got involved in this project. Well, I'll have to talk next. He begged and begged to go on a first trip. We had no funding, no funding, but I'm so happy that I decided to say yes. I know. Anyway, it was very reticent. But it's been one of the most rewarding experiences.
00:01:22
Speaker
in my career, so.
Julio Camarota's Collaboration
00:01:25
Speaker
Yes, I'm Julio Camarota. I'm a professor in teaching, learning, and social cultural studies. It's so good to see colleagues and students here. Thank you very much for showing up. This is work that we have been doing. I started working with the University of Puerto Rico in probably 2002. I started working with them.
00:01:49
Speaker
And I've been going on and off almost every summer, every other summer, something like that. I don't know what the exact pattern is, but every other summer since 2002. And yes, I begged Regina to come to Puerto Rico and be involved with this program, which we'll talk about later. But thank you very much for attending our talk. And hopefully we'll learn something about Puerto Rico and we'll learn something about Puerto Rico undergraduate students.
00:02:20
Speaker
I am assistant professor in the teaching, learning, and social college studies department here in the College of Education. I actually was a graduate student when this work first came to me. I was at Arizona State University. I had already reached out and was really interested in studying at the University of Minnesota. And at the time, I was really interested in exploring arts-based inquiry approaches. And he's like, it's so weird that he did a job to me.
00:02:49
Speaker
starting this project, you're in the corner with the diaspora, and you're interested in doing that same type of work, would you by chance be interested in co-authoring a introduction to our special issue? Again, as a graduate student, very little publication opportunities, very little research opportunities that are sometimes available, and so I just felt like
00:03:17
Speaker
This is a sign, this is a sign. And so they took me under their leadership and since then our relationships flourished and then as we were here later I was able to collaborate on the second iteration of the project where we visited in the past year. So excited to see all of your faces both new and familiar and look forward to sharing more about
00:03:40
Speaker
So let's start by explaining what cultural artifacts are.
Cultural Artifacts in Research
00:03:45
Speaker
And we use these cultural artifacts. Okay, so we use cultural artifacts as a way to bridge community and learn about the people that were in the room. So in this case, cultural artifacts were a team to express in the center of lived experiences as a legitimate starting point for our research.
00:04:02
Speaker
as a definition, culture artifacts of tangible objects, tools, or items that hold significance within a particular culture society, representing its values, beliefs, and historical experiences. They can range from ancient relics, artworks, and manuscripts to modern day items, such as photographs, clothing, or technological devices. So the cultural artifacts that I will be doing my introduction here today with is a pilon. It was a pilon.
00:04:32
Speaker
All right, so this is something that's very commonly in Puerto Rican households. This one in particular was passed down from Maya Vuela who lives in Rio Piedras, Puerto Rico today. Still cooking and determined to clean and cook and serve even though she's 85 years old and yeah, she's a fierce woman. So this particular you might see is could be used to make mofongo.
00:04:57
Speaker
which is a dish of plantain, garlic, and onion, and other proteins that you might include in it. But as you would imagine, it is a tool to mix things and put things together. And I think this particular artifacts very much represents my identity in the sense that I also come from a mixed identity. My father is Puerto Rican. My mother is Anglo-European, mostly Scottish descent. And so I grew up in an interracial home
00:05:28
Speaker
And again, a lot of us, especially who grew up in America, who have ties, especially in our immediate family to certain cultures, sometimes we find a sense of longing. A longing, maybe it's for language, maybe it's for food, maybe it's for the artwork or for the history or for some of the cultural customs that we may not always be able to embrace in our daily lives as we live here and navigate within the United States, be it second, third, fourth generation, right?
00:05:58
Speaker
And so I was very, you know, obviously this was something that was very special to me. It represents the food, it represents the culture. I hang it proudly in my kitchen for anybody who sees it because it represents a part of me. And I was looking a little bit more into this and I actually found that this particular device can be traced back to Egyptians and they would actually use it to make medicine. And that made me think about
00:06:27
Speaker
how food can be medicine, how culture is our medicine, how art is our medicine. And it is only a medicine for the mixing of different things, the mixing and the combining of different materials. And so that is what I bring to you today to share a little bit of who I am and who I aspire to be. So I will pass it off to Regina. All right. Thank you, Ashley.
00:06:51
Speaker
And so we're introducing our cultural artifacts in an effort to model for you what we did with the students in the first days of class. And you'll see here, these are images of Hurricane Maria. So we came in with to the class asking students to bring cultural artifacts that that represent their lived experience with
00:07:11
Speaker
coping with the hurricane, other natural disasters, climate disaster, economic, poverty issues, et cetera, right? And so we focused the first set of the first visit that we did on the hurricane. So, so that's the reason why we go through this with you to demonstrate what this might mean for us as well. So for me, so I brought in for my cultural artifact, the very tasty
00:07:39
Speaker
And so that's something that my abuela had passed down this recipe, among others. So it's an example of my family. I'm also a multiracial background and the Puerto Rican side of my family came here back in 1917 when they first had come to the continental US because of laws of policy. And so we've been here for several generations. So in addition to this piece of culture,
00:08:04
Speaker
I also wanted to emphasize cultural loss, right? So as a result of being here for multiple generations and the experiences that they went through landing in New York City and Spanish Harlem. This is another artifact. It's a book by Kiara Alegría. And it talks about her experience being multiple generations out and growing up in Philly with her family. Then her mom was Puerto Rican as well. So.
00:08:29
Speaker
It's a Pulitzer prize winning book and something that I felt like I could, I could write parts of this book. So I very much related to it. And so these are my two political artifacts that I'll pass it on to. Okay. So does anyone know who this guy is? So I actually,
00:08:55
Speaker
I got this because another Puerto Rican professor, Luis Mol, told me where to buy it. It was actually at a Safeway, I think it's called, Safeway on the west side. He said, they're selling Roberto Clemente bobbleheads. I should have bought a whole bunch of them. I only bought one because I was on a lower salary level. So I only bought one. But every time I teach my social justice class elementary ed,
00:09:25
Speaker
I have them bring in artifacts. I do the same thing that we did in Puerto Rico and around identity. And I always bring in Roberto Clemente. Actually, this past time, I actually came in with Roberto Clemente jersey. So I didn't actually bring in Roberto. But Clemente is really important. If those of you who's Puerto Rican here?
00:09:48
Speaker
Yes, okay. Those of you who are Puerto Rican know that the significance of Roberto Clemente. He's like an icon in Puerto Rico. He's an icon because he's one of the first Afro Latino ballplayers to play in the major leagues, but also because he was a humanitarian, right? He died going to El Salvador to bring
00:10:12
Speaker
earthquake like materials and supplies, relief supplies for those that were suffering from an earthquake. He died in a plane crash. So just the fact that he's a super icon in terms of
00:10:27
Speaker
Puerto Rican identity, but also his humanitarian side, I'm able to really identify with him. I'm also mixed race Puerto Rican. I have a Puerto Rican mother and Italian father. My mother was born in Mayahuas, Puerto Rico, which is on the west coast near Rincon. And so if you go to Puerto Rico or
00:10:50
Speaker
you go to any store in Puerto Rico or just walk around Puerto Rico, you'll see this number 21 everywhere, literally 21. So this is significant in the sense that we are all three of us part of the Puerto Rican diaspora. Now we were engaged in this work, the most recent work starting in 2019.
Puerto Rico's Budget Crisis
00:11:15
Speaker
Post Hurricane Maria, Hurricane Maria was 2017, but there was a call from the University of Puerto Rico in Calle, and I'll get into explaining the University of Puerto Rico system in a little bit, but one of the campuses had a call for folks from the diaspora to come to Puerto Rico and provide research experience for their students.
00:11:38
Speaker
Now, the reason why this call went out, we have to start with La Junta, which is the local name for the board that was established through Promesa. A lot of people aren't unfamiliar with the whole relationship between the United States and Puerto Rico, but Promesa was, I believe was introduced by Obama in 2016.
00:12:04
Speaker
and then was passed. It was passed by the U.S. Congress and it's more or less a board.
00:12:12
Speaker
a fiscal management board that was dealing with the $72 billion budget crisis that Puerto Rico was going through. And I have to remember that this whole idea of US Congress controlling the economy and politics of Puerto Rico goes back all the way back to when originally when it was colonized by the United States in 1898.
00:12:38
Speaker
There were a series of congressional acts, the Four Acre Act in 1900 and the Jones Act of 1917, pretty much established the Puerto Rican government by proxy. So the real control of the government is the US Congress. So because they have this legitimacy to control the Puerto Rican economy,
00:13:05
Speaker
this oversight board was established in 2016. And the folks on this board are neoliberal, right? Meaning that they believe that the way that to deal with the budget cuts would be to cut public services. So the major public service that they cut was public education.
00:13:30
Speaker
All right, and I'll get into a little bit later. So as I said earlier that we were invited as a part of the diaspora to come to Puerto Rico to provide research experience for their undergraduate students. This was through the Antonia Pantoja program, research mentoring program. And Antonia Pantoja was a black queer Puerto Rican scholar, educator who was instrumental for the development of Puerto Rican life in New York, but also in Puerto Rico as well.
00:13:59
Speaker
You can move to the next. So the idea of this mentorship program was to encourage folks from the diaspora to come to Puerto Rico, provide research experience by setting up a research project, setting up a research project in Puerto Rico.
00:14:20
Speaker
mainly because one of the reasons why we were invited to go and to provide research experience was because in Calle, the campus of Calle, which is part of the system, public system, there is a requirement so that everyone before graduation needs research experience. And it was really difficult for them post-Hurricane Maria
00:14:46
Speaker
to get that research experience because multiple factors. People's left, faculty left, the severe budget cuts, the lack of time that a lot of the professors or faculty had to teach more classes, right? So there was limited time for them to establish research programs. So this was set up mainly because at this particular time,
00:15:14
Speaker
during the budget crisis and after Hurricane Maria, the United States, particularly institutions like our own, but I don't know if we did this here at the University of Arizona, but I think ASU did it. We can have one ASU. But they would recruit students who needed to finish their degree, recruit them to come to the United States.
00:15:42
Speaker
So this was this the Antonia Pantoja program was in response to that to make sure that Puerto Rican stay in Puerto Rico have their research experience and be able to finish their degree in Puerto Rico. So who established this program? It was the
00:16:01
Speaker
Instituto de Investigaciones Inter Disciplinaria. You like my Spanish? My Spanish is terrible. This was established in 2000. And I started working with them in 2002. So this is an institute that is really central to the research mission of the University of Puerto Rico in Calle. So I have a little note here. I'll read it to you. The vast majority of UPR Calle students, 61% come from public schools.
00:16:30
Speaker
and 71% are Pell Grant recipients. The student body is 99% Hispanic and 65% female with a five-year average time to degree. In the fall of 2017 and 18, enrollment consisted of 3,497 undergraduate students, of which 686 were first-time degree-seeking students. Degree retention, 86%
00:16:58
Speaker
2016, 2017, graduation rates between 45% and 49 are among the highest within the UPR system. So those numbers seem a little bit low, but they're good in comparison to the other campuses throughout the system. So next slide. So that's the beautiful campus, right? The Puerto Rico system
00:17:24
Speaker
which I'll get into in a little bit, consist of, these are, those are the, there are 11 campuses and there are eight undergraduate campuses. The main campus is Rio Piedra. Boston, you went to Rio Piedra, right? Yes. So that's like the flagship university that does undergraduate and graduate work. But you have to keep in mind that
00:17:54
Speaker
When the junta started cutting budgets and cutting the Puerto Rican public education system, there was no other government agency funding has been cut as much as the budget of University of Puerto Rico. UPR's general fund allocation has been reduced from 911 million
00:18:19
Speaker
in fiscal year 2017 to 466 million.
Post-Hurricane Maria Research
00:18:25
Speaker
So that's almost like 48% reduction. That's huge. I don't know how they survived, to be honest with you. I don't know how they survived
00:18:39
Speaker
that there has been talk recently about closing some of the campuses, and I'm sure that some of the campuses have been closed. I don't, you know, they're all open. Yeah, so not replacing the professors is part of the reason that left the gap in students' research training. Right. Undergraduates, especially those seeking graduate education. Yeah. So that's the context that we were working in, that we were invited to participate as Puerto Ricans to come and help the public education system. Okay. So,
00:19:09
Speaker
You know, with my background in participatory action research, we decided to do a PAR project in Puerto Rico. Now, we're back and forth. We've had a discussion, and maybe this is something that you can help us settle. But we started calling it undergraduate participatory action research because we were working with undergraduates as opposed to youth. But to me, the students still seem young. So I still think they're young.
00:19:37
Speaker
They still seem like youth. And we would say that to them and they would agree that they were youth. So a part of our approach is self-reflexive student. This is why we did the artifacts.
00:19:50
Speaker
It's, our process is a lot about identity. You reflect on your own identity, your own experiences. And this particular project that we started in 2019 was a project where we wanted to understand their experiences after Hurricane Maria. So those of you who are familiar with participatory action research, and I see a couple of my students from my course I'm teaching now on participatory action research, but it's
00:20:19
Speaker
The researcher and the research are one and the same thing. So we have the students, the undergraduate students, research their own experiences dealing with Hurricane Maria, post Hurricane Maria. This is also applied knowledge. We draw from this idea of funds of knowledge for social justice, taking
00:20:40
Speaker
Well, this is something that I wrote with Louis Small, this whole idea of cultivating funds of knowledge instead of drawing the already existing funds of knowledge, creating new knowledge, like young people creating new knowledge that can be applied for social justice. And also this idea of creative resistance. We used a lot of creative tools, but tools that can deal with certain problems creatively, like through art, through poetry,
00:21:08
Speaker
through spoken word, through music, videos. But we put this idea of resistance along with creativity because we realized the students were resisting the colonization that was happening in Puerto Rico. But we call it creative resistance because they were moving beyond just responding.
00:21:34
Speaker
They were coming up with alternative ways of living, alternative experiences. So that's why we call it creative resistance. And then finally, this model of history action research is modeled after my class that a couple of my students, as I said, are here from this class. So this idea of history action research
00:21:58
Speaker
in schools and communities, which is the class I'm teaching, which is TLS, a plug for TLS 4.18, 5.18. So there we go. All right. And one thing we want you all to think about as we go through our process is expanding this type of class in TLS where we do just straight action research into Gen Ed spaces, right, to serve other majors, perhaps, right, so all those kinds of things as we move through, please keep that in mind.
00:22:24
Speaker
And I just wanted to highlight, this is a model that we put forth in our introduction special issue called the Ark of Translation, just to highlight the process of creative resistance and using the metaphor of an Ark of a rainbow to show and illustrate some of these creative processes that young people engage in. And obviously not to romanticize the rainbow, because rainbows obviously have very much a positive connotation, but at the same time, a rainbow is
00:22:54
Speaker
after storm, after rain, after turbulence, which is depicted here by new impressions, a civic instructional, and equities of thundercloud, lightning, and rain. However, we were able to incorporate different processes actually pulled from another model of principles. I think you're Camaro Dada and I got that all in 2012. And then also Rodriguez and Brown, 2009 guiding principles of participatory action research. So you're on the first start in this cosmology,
00:23:25
Speaker
creative practices situated in critical and free-based participatory power within. This moves forward to a process of moving forward to rehearsals for future action. It's drawn from a squad, moving forward to cultural action, and then leading to transformational change. That transformation sometimes manifesting in external ways, and then also internal ways, which are depicted doing flowers. The arrows are obviously bi-directional, showing that this is an iterative process that
00:23:54
Speaker
There is no linear process in participatory action research. There is no step by step. This is not a recipe. That's why you often find that all studies are shown in such various competing ways at times. However, through this type of work, there are opportunities to foster identity, critical consciousness, leadership in academic learning with young people. And then also through their research, through their advocacy, there are opportunities for structure change, policy practice change,
00:24:23
Speaker
the building of relationships, as well as civic engagement. All right, thanks, Ashley. And remember, the idea behind this process is that we're utilizing a creative expression of your own experience and identity as a legitimate starting place for thinking about how to go about research as an undergraduate, right, to center your own experience. So I'll start and go through my colleagues and we'll jump in. Our process in June 2019,
00:24:51
Speaker
was to have students focus on their families and communities and surviving the disasters of both climate and colonization, right? Because they both go hand in hand and it's continued to be, our perception is that it continues to be a colonized space. So we were the three instructors at the time, a colleague. You got to say nothing about our hair, sorry. Our colleagues.
00:25:16
Speaker
was there in 2019. Ashley had not joined us yet. So we were teaching a research methods class to students in multiple majors, from sociology to STEM fields to humanities, right? And so we used the PAR model as centering them and trying to move them from that place of their own experience to getting a group causes for their experiences of themselves, their communities, their families.
00:25:43
Speaker
So they started with the cultural artifacts and we had designed the course around the concept of resilience. And if any of you are interested in more about what we did and the model that Ashley described on our website, creativeresistance.arizona.edu, we have all the work that was published from this first visit and the model as well, right? So the students presented their cultural artifacts and they came in with poems with journaling they had done during the hurricane and its aftermath.
00:26:11
Speaker
paintings, photographs, social media memes, videos, handmade jewelry, and we'll get into this soda bottle planter idea that we'll center initially, right? And so this is one of our students, and she brought in these soda bottle planters that they had made. So her presentation was about this idea of how long the aftermath was, how long they had to sit and wait while there was no electricity.
00:26:38
Speaker
where days became weeks and weeks became months and months became half the year for some, a full year for some without electricity, right? So she was in charge of the little ones, right? So she was in charge of keeping the little ones occupied. And what she did was she was utilizing two liter soda bottles, right, to create from objects they could find and paint and whatnot, to help them create these planters and
00:27:04
Speaker
It was beautiful how she explained it because eventually so much time had gone by that they started to replant from the devastation, right? Replant seed. So the younger kids would be part of revitalizing because if you saw the picture that we showed, it's such a lush island and all of a sudden it was just completely decimated, fraying the leaves, no plants, flowers, anything that was around, right? So this was the cultural artifact that she brought in and talked about the trauma of living day after day.
00:27:33
Speaker
And as a young person herself, also having to care for the younger siblings in the community. One student, I'll just quickly go through some of these. Another student made jewelry, homemade jewelry with her, while at during the time. And then eventually started selling it for a small amount of money, right? Because then they had to start repairing their own homes, their own community spaces, right? And so she was engaged in that kind of work. Others brought in meaningful movies.
00:28:02
Speaker
This is a social media meme where people started getting on social media once they had access to share their experiences, right? So this is a really telling graphic of the flag of Puerto Rico being ripped apart and their attempt to sew it back together when it was going red. During these times, there was a lot of students also wrote their own poems. There's a lot of crying, a lot of expression, a lot of kind of group together. The students were comforting each other. This particular student,
00:28:29
Speaker
had a whole set of journals that every single day to preserve her mental health, she wrote in the journal. She tracked the phases of the moon. She did all kinds of things just to keep track of the dates, right? And to keep track of where she was mentally and what she was experiencing. So she came in and showed the drawings, the writings of all these days. And you can see how the first few days they ended up turning into day 57, day 68, or day 80.
00:28:57
Speaker
for law, for herself, for studying, drawings, et cetera. So these are the kinds of things that students brought in. They were very much then engaged, right? And how do we think about this? And many of them actually shared that this was the first time in a space where they actually were able to talk about it. Because people were so much focused on survival that they didn't have the space to share. Like many of them obviously lost family members. And they lost family members who had evacuated and left and never came back. They were here two years later and they haven't seen their uncle or their sister or even their parents.
00:29:27
Speaker
in years. I just wanted to show this because this is a student who, I always cry when I think about this, but his friend's birthday was coming up, right? So it was a few days in, I think about a week or two in, and they knew his birthday was coming up, but they didn't know he was alive or dead. So he and his friends took a two mile walk to go find out if he was alive. They were happy to see that they were alive even though their home had been destroyed and they didn't have any electricity.
00:29:57
Speaker
So they were here lighting a single candle on a cupcake. And he talked about how just being able to celebrate that was such a change from the day-to-day that they had been going through with the hurricane. And then I thought this was funny, because then he said, then we all played Monopoly. And I was like, oh, I'm going to play Monopoly. I was like, well, this is bad. And we were like, we'll get into that later.
00:30:23
Speaker
This one particular student, I'll just briefly say that she ended up being one of our public students. She ended up turning this experience into activism. She was very much active throughout the next couple of years of her undergraduate career in the movies that were happening. I'll say once we left in June, you'll know that the whole island went into a resistance moment and we say that was a bit of a mess. So all that happened is why, right? So she was really devastated by what I talked to you about is like the sort of how different the scenery looked
00:30:53
Speaker
and how depressing it was. So she used her skills and art to draw for us, her feelings about that imagery, right? The grayness, the lack of vegetation. So during the time Google kept working with the students throughout the course of the next year, we were able to present at a conference the following November and she presented her artwork. And what she did at that time was she presented a renewed image of
00:31:21
Speaker
what the campus then looked like after those number of years and representation of her artwork again, like being in a better space, right? So she was still keeping that creative theme. Even years later, even as she was applying to grad school and writing up these academic articles, and she talked about her and the other student who presented with us talked about how nourishing that kind of involvement in art had been throughout the whole time.
00:31:44
Speaker
Okay, so this is just letting you know that in addition to the methods we spoke about, our colleague Gina Perez had infused feminist ethnographic work with the students into our coursework, right? So this is where in particular Afro Puerto Rican women and the ideas behind how you do research, how you do research collectively, how you make it relevant to your lived experience, et cetera, right? So we were doing this kind of infusion as well.
00:32:13
Speaker
Okay. So we also, so we have the students going out practicing field work, right? Doing interviews, doing observations about their chosen topics as they developed. We borrowed from indigenous methods, sharing circles. So bringing the students together, you'll see I'm in none of the pictures, but we have students in sharing circles borrowing from some of the work of our colleagues here at the, in our college to it's a, it's an indigenous method.
00:32:41
Speaker
of doing focus groups, right, that really begins with and values the students' experience, and they drive the sharing circle more than the new students' practice, right? And so that was really, we found that really fruitful in talking through how they were making sense of their field observations and the interviews that they were doing. This is a little bit of a collect. Can I ask you again? Yeah, go ahead. Now, how many of the students in the work that they're talking about were beginning to center and settle a tremendous amount of student accuracy
00:33:11
Speaker
surrounding just what we started out with. This is neoliberal continuation, colonization, and mortgaging, or just looking at something in the nation in 2021. Obviously, much of it is trying to survive.
00:33:40
Speaker
of these stories, if you have one story. Yeah, I have a very good question. Actually, can we go to the end? Yeah, so you'll notice throughout this presentation, we started with resiliency, right? We ended up with resistance, right? And that was part of the reason is we were introducing that concept and not using that term. But as students learn more about the socio-political and socio-economic larger and broader context, which by the way, they were very much socialized about individualism, how
00:34:07
Speaker
that the Puerto Rican people are in terms of not being able to pull themselves up by the corrupt government, like a lot of negativity, but not that kind of broader historical perspective. So the more they learned about it, there were, I would say two of the original 12 students became highly radicalized, like the one I showed you, and were very much involved. There was a third one who was involved with the researcher, and one of our publications is about the protests, and they were actually looking at the graffiti. They did not analyze the graffiti.
00:34:35
Speaker
During the protests, right? So they were very much more aware all of them I think increased their level of consciousness around those things and so So they did some of them didn't have spaces some of them didn't but if they didn't they were more aware and that narrative changed for many of them and for many of them it was a very healing change because
00:34:58
Speaker
They just were suffering and they had a lot of self-blame happening. They had seen a lot of kind of finger pointing, a lot of individualism in terms of ideology. And so this gave them a way to better understand what's happening to us and connect that to the broader issues. And that's why I'll say that in the second iteration, the students that we worked with decided along with us that they wanted to focus on their college halfway trajectory because they had seen this disinvestment continue
00:35:28
Speaker
in public education. One of them is very much involved in fighting and resisting on campus. They had boycotts, they had shutdowns and all that kind of thing. The time we were doing this, and particularly the time after the hurricane, this idea of resiliency was really powerful for Puerto Ricans.
From Resilience to Resistance
00:35:51
Speaker
But certain scholars and Puerto Rican scholars who were critiquing
00:35:59
Speaker
this whole idea of a resilient Puerto Rico, because it fits in neoliberal logic, right? Because they want Puerto Ricans to be resilient, so that government doesn't have to have any role, right? Does everyone see that? So Puerto Rican scholars clued us into the fact that we should be talking about resistance, and Puerto Ricans were talking about resistance. They created a new flag, a Puerto Rican flag. I don't know if you've ever seen it. I should have worn it. It's black and white, right? It's all in black and white, and that's a resistance flag.
00:36:29
Speaker
So that which came after the. And I'll add that we covered topics in class that related to I'll show you here also gentrification, right? Because a lot of the laws and policies have incentivized gentrification on the island and people coming from outside the island and opening up businesses and that sort of thing to boost the economy, but not allowing for the same opportunities for those who are indigenous to the island. Right. So so this is the process that the students went through.
00:36:57
Speaker
talking about Puerto Rico rise up, but then this idea of considering is Puerto Rico for sale, right? And then this idea that they love the island, right? I feel like many of them had this like love-hate relationship initially because they couldn't reconcile all the sort of negative messaging that they had received, especially those I'll say that were in private education who were more like higher socioeconomic status. We had about three of those students.
00:37:24
Speaker
Talked about this initially, then they moved to this idea of homelessness and impotence, because they talked through this idea that the government that the lack of adequate response to the hurricane itself, right, had taken so long, had never materialized. And then they moved to this renewed hope for collective resistance and grassroots self-sufficiency. And part of the reasons why these are some of the things that they considered that we were presenting to them, right, the larger, especially
00:37:53
Speaker
political context and socioeconomic context. And so we had an exercise on gentrification. So this is the students presenting their images. We got them together and had them draw out images of what they felt was happening in terms of that gentrification process that we had just exposed them to. So this was a very, very popular image in the island during that time. Students were drawing things like this, like stepping on the US. That's the US flag there.
00:38:22
Speaker
stepping on those on the island. They were talking about being out erased, like erasing what had previously existed in my building anew as part of the sort of wealth that was brought to the island with the gentrification. So how do they move to this sense of resistance and a more positive idea about how to move forward and more of an activist approach? So they talked a lot about the main crisis for them
00:38:50
Speaker
was not so much the hurricane itself, which was horrible, but the aftermath, right? So this idea kept coming up over and over with the exercises we were doing about living the same day over and over again with no apparent systematic help and really no end in sight, not even knowing when it was going to end, right? And so we had them share words in groups, right? And so these are the kinds of words that they initially started with in the first week or two of class. So impotence,
00:39:19
Speaker
torn apart, frustration, the feelings that they're disposable, they've been abandoned, how dehumanizing it is, and how prioritized those kinds of things. And so we ended up taking them on a trip to a place called Casa Puebla. And we recognized how much this trip facilitated a shift in their mindset, right? And so it was a turning point at the back. And so this is a place up in the mountains. Is it Cagua? Is it Cagua? No, it's Juntas Mountains. Okay, the Juntas Mountains.
00:39:47
Speaker
So we had to drive up in this, oh my God, it was so scary, in this van, this tiny road, and we made it to the top. And we had found out about this from the Institute of Directors, but these students had never heard of this place, right? Turns out this place was, they were already self-sustaining through, they were basically providing their own energy through solar. They had a coffee economy going for themselves, selling coffee. They were learning how to farm sustainably. So the idea is that,
00:40:17
Speaker
Through colonization, the island of Puerto Rico has become so dependent and their economy is economy of dependence, right? So this was an effort to be self-sustaining, right? A very small effort, yet they were very instrumental in the first few days after the hurricane. They were providing, they were providing energy to as many spaces as they could. So since then, they've grown a bit and have different locations, but for the students, it was just an awakening for them.
00:40:44
Speaker
So this is just some, what we did was have them do a field note afterwards and do it in the form of a poem, right? And so this is just some of the words of the students where they say, we learned a little bit more in Puerto Rico, a place that encourages us to fight for our island. And that word is highlighted because these are the kinds of words we've been starting hearing. Pueblo also does, they have collaborations with some UC, some universities in the UC system,
00:41:11
Speaker
learning about energy, some STEM, environmental issues, right? So they're doing a lot of kind of learning in the same time they're doing, they're doing this work and self-sustaining. So this transformed their sort of engagement with their own resilience in, into this idea of resistance, right? And so students move from survival to toward more of a realization that this is an ongoing, regardless of the hurricane, which is horrible. It's an ongoing catastrophe, an economic one, right?
00:41:38
Speaker
whenever there's a climate crisis, it's going to be realized through the way the government and economy is operating, right? So they learn more about infrastructure and how that can cause without support of that infrastructure, devastation can happen. So they started using more of these words in the sharing circles, like love, resistance, struggle, unity, this imagery of joining hands, working together and more hope, right? So we saw this transformation through the one a little over a month that we were working with them.
00:42:07
Speaker
This is one example of a student. This, a decima is a lyrical tradition in Puerto Rico, and she decided to utilize this format for her field mode, right? And so I'll just give you a sense of what she wrote and notice how she's talking about the heart, how they fight together with culture and education, but they were very, they gave a presentation to the students, right? So this idea of incorporating culture was part of the way they got buy-in from people in the community.
00:42:34
Speaker
which at first was difficult. So they also were using a cultural arts-based, music-based way, an entree into being part of this. So, and of course, this is probably something you'd be interested in. So they talk about how they defeated the whole, they cultivated hope with music and dance, they take care of the land I love. So this idea of like feeling more free to say, I do love
00:42:56
Speaker
this place and how do I think about it started to come. So they talked a lot about the community coming together, multi-generational. They destroy the uneducated. So, so this realization of like, this is an education I never received in the formal school system. So they referenced achieving government with sincere message of coffee books, artisans, all done with your hands. They take care of the land I love. Right. So just one example. So eventually.
00:43:22
Speaker
We divided the students into four groups and they developed their own original research question and project and about the experiences of themselves and their community members. So we talked about how to do research design, set that up. And these are the projects that we ended up working with them on and eventually publishing in the special issue of international journal of qualitative research and education. So the student Jenna Sarat was interested in psychology and going on to a psychology degree
00:43:52
Speaker
So she and her group, she was the only one who's left after a year and a half of working on this kind of an academic pursuit, but psychological effects before, during and after the hurricane, decided to have mental health, being a stigma, those kinds of things. Adriana worked on political participation. She was the one that became more of an activist. Governor Dejanara worked on the influence of government negligence in terms of hospitals, clinics, and pharmacies. She was interested in going into a health career, obviously. And so art as resistance,
00:44:22
Speaker
migration and culture. So these students were the ones who had observed and attended all the protests and analyzed the art that was used in protest. This is all on the website. This was our, we worked jointly with the Adelis, one of the students, to present our process. So this particular article talks about how we did this process, right? Cultivating hope through creative existence. So all of these are not published in this special issue. Okay. So the 2023 project we added Dr.
00:44:52
Speaker
And so that was when, after that whole experience, we decided let's intentionally add in the art, right? So having Ashley part of this really accelerated that for us, and she helps to think through how do we infuse it with art. So this is us, this is all of us with Ashley and Larry. Okay, so this particular year we focused on students surviving the challenges of college going, but again, emphasizing that context of economic disinvestment in the university system,
00:45:21
Speaker
and this idea of disaster capitalism, which several scholars in Puerto Rico had written about that,
Arts-Based Research
00:45:27
Speaker
right? And so they had influenced us, and we were passing that on to the students. So I don't know if, Ashley, you want to talk about arts-based elicitation? Yeah, so generally speaking, arts-based elicitation is a way of taking art and using it to elicit the support of this content. However, arts-based elicitation doesn't necessarily just have to be with disciplines. It can also be used on behalf of the researcher. And essentially, our goals
00:45:51
Speaker
is as we were working with this second group, is how can we pair arts-based inquiry approaches at every stage of the process, be it from the development of research questions to the elicitation or generation of data, potential topics, the ways that us as researchers could document our experiences and reflect on them, also using art as an analytical tool to assess the data
00:46:20
Speaker
to evaluate the data. And then also to think about ways that we can use R2 to represent the data and then eventually present the data. So again, multiple different stages and there's so many opportunities for you to use R2 into that research process. Some people only choose one or two or three different areas. Some people try to infuse R at every stage of the process. And that is very unique to the researcher, to the participants and to the wider goals of the study.
00:46:50
Speaker
So we draw on Tom LaRone's conceptualization of seven features of arts-based research and education. And in the middle, you'll see these were seven different qualities and characteristics, rather affordances that you get from infusing art into educational research, being one that it fosters a virtual reality, a way to think beyond what is real and what you can see
00:47:17
Speaker
that it opens for a big ambiguity and it embraces it, rather than having fixed responses that you appreciate and the nuance and revel in it. Using expressive language, not necessarily having to only rely on academic forms of knowledge, but rather other ways like poetry. Or contextual vernacular law of knowledge. Again, using Spanish or using common terms that are unique to that certain population.
00:47:47
Speaker
Empathy, obviously we've seen that it very much fostered empathy in the way that people connected. And maybe perhaps even the way that you've been able to connect to some of the stories and the illustrations that have been presented here today. Six, personal signature, in that using art space approaches in our research allows for the researcher and our co-researchers to have almost a personal stamp, allowing to have an extra layer of creativity
00:48:17
Speaker
and to curate it in a way that feels more personal and close than what sometimes is common in traditional research. And then lastly, aesthetics more, in that it is embraced to show that creativity and that it can be presented in unique, novel ways beyond just a peer review, a journal article, or book chapter, which are also appropriate ways of dispersing knowledge, but it's not the only one that disperses knowledge.
00:48:46
Speaker
And so these were two images here. I don't know if you want us to talk about them in particular. Yeah. So as Ashley was saying, this unique arts-based approach can happen at data collection. Some of you are familiar with photo volumes or photo elicitation, but then what Ashley talked to class is that you can use creativity throughout, not just at the data collection stage, but when you're analyzing, when you're presenting it, when you're disseminating. So this was an exercise since they wanted to focus on their college pathway. We asked them to draw.
00:49:15
Speaker
a representation of their college pathway, a meaningful representation. So this student, you can see the tear there, a lot of noise coming in, but this idea of having to make a choice, right? So she was emphasizing that. This student was saying two sides of herself. This side is like dropout, wordless, depressed, like the sort of negative aspects of her experience, and then the sort of positive aspects. And here she has positive words that
00:49:42
Speaker
her support system was what is given her, right? So this idea of having a dual nature around college going. And I want to add, what's interesting that from a research perspective is that you see such a division in splitness that they're experiencing, right? So that's a theme that immediately emerges from the data. We get it from the visual representation that maybe not always is expressed in words. Right. So having them draw it first and then having them explain
00:50:08
Speaker
really just elevated their level in terms of being able to understand them and then being able to express themselves. Okay, so we'll talk about the tree exercise that he uses in Y-par and how we use that in our U-par class. So the tree exercise, it's a problem tree, right? It's a sort of artistic representation of a tree. You use the different parts of the tree to have a discussion around a problem. So the trunk,
00:50:37
Speaker
you would write the problem, whatever the problem is, whether it's colonization, whether it's neoliberalism, whatever the problem that you're dealing with. The branches or the branches and leaves would be symptoms, not symptoms of the problem. The reason why you want the students to think about symptoms is because in many cases, students often do causes of symptoms, so they need to have a conversation. What are some of the symptoms of colonization, whether that's autonomy,
00:51:05
Speaker
whether that could be lack of representation, those are the kinds of things that could be symptoms of a particular problem. Now, the eventual goal is to have the students draw out the roots and talk about what are the root causes of it. The reason why we wanna have the students draw out the root causes is because that's where we want to focus on in terms of their project.
00:51:33
Speaker
So, for example, root causes of colonization, could be capitalism, could be multiple things. So then once you have the tree filled out in terms of the branches, the problem and the root causes, you then write out a question that you would want to answer in terms of research
00:52:04
Speaker
would include both the problem and the root causes, right? The symptoms, we're not too worried about that. We're not too worried about the root causes of the problem. So this is an example of one of the, where are the roots of? Thank you. They didn't get to you. So the problem here is neglect, teaching, and pedagogy.
00:52:33
Speaker
Right. So at that, at this time during when we were doing this project, which was over a, over a year ago, was it, it was at the summer, earlier this year, during the summer, one of the problems that they were having at the university was neglect around really implementing pedagogy that is engaging. So that really wasn't happening at their, not so much at their university. So this is their problem tree.
00:53:01
Speaker
So they looked at school symptoms of neglect would be school closures, college dropout, student lowest seen, poor student learning and preparation. And so these are the root causes, UPR system, the departmental differences, lack of job security. So quite a few of the professors lack that sort of job security that we tend to have sometimes.
00:53:31
Speaker
Can you read it? Can you read this? Yeah, you get the idea. So I guess we want them, we want you to engage in this process right now. Well, in a minute. So you can start doodling if you want, but we just wanted to give you a chance to use markers. But if you wanted to draw out your tree, it will have people in the Zoom break out rooms in a minute.
00:53:57
Speaker
to draw out this tree and think about it. But I wanted to take you through a little bit more of the field trip we did this time around, which was to the main campus of the university. Some of the students haven't been there, right? So we drove them out in a van. And so this is us. And it was a bunch. The building, the architecture is much more prominent on this campus. But what we did was we took them to this library archive that none of them knew about. And it was about the history of the island from colonization on, right? So they had preserved.
00:54:27
Speaker
old book and they spoke to them about the history and what that meant and the sort of the heyday of the university and then this sort of current decline, right? And this idea that they are preserving it and doing everything they can to preserve the valuable history. But the students were astonished they had that known about this, right? They hadn't had that opportunity. Calle is out more in the rural region, right? It's a higher poverty region. So then we have to do a field note again. So this is just an example of one of the students what she wrote here.
00:54:57
Speaker
short story piece about her visit. Another decided to do a drawing. This actually produced this drawing, very impressive. I guess we attracted all these artists, right? And the students were just crying and they were so supportive of each other because it was just so meaningful for them to learn about this history that no one had taught them before and applying it to their own experiences and the research that they were doing. So this is an image that one of them took during the trip. So she handed that in as her
00:55:25
Speaker
artifact or her field note, her expression of the visit. So the writing that you saw before, she ended with this question, if there's so much history of greatness and success, why are they dismantled in UVR, right? And so the students were crying reading it. They were just very upset about the fact that this infrastructure was being dismantled before their eyes. So now what we'll have you do is the problem trees. So if, Andy, if you can break this,
00:55:52
Speaker
in the Zoom up, for people who are left into about groups of four or so, so we have about 17 left in it. The Zoom, just talk through what your problem treatment looked like in your group. So these are some guiding questions, I'm not sure what this is. The idea is to have a discussion. Yeah, it's more so to have a discussion. Feel free to do the art while you're... This is a very popular education kind of mode of thinking, in a sense that the real learning happens in the discussion. I can't get at it.
00:56:24
Speaker
differentiation between root causes. So you can choose whatever problems you want. We highly recommend that you choose a problem that deals with the issue. Right. So if you can see part of your questions here are. But essentially, yeah, essentially the first one is what problem have you experienced in higher education? And then so for instance, that could be the center of your tree. Right. And then you can brainstorm what are some of these root causes that
00:56:54
Speaker
contributes to why this problem exists. And then you can later think, well, what are the effects of this problem? Who is affected? What practices or policies happen as a result of this problem? So again, we're taking that problem and we're sandwiching it between cause and effects. So go ahead and chat and walk around.
00:57:22
Speaker
Those on Zoom aren't getting jam boards.
00:57:44
Speaker
It's so awkward that it's on the screen. I tried to click it, but it wouldn't let me click it.
00:58:08
Speaker
I think it's nice to know what's going on. Thank you. That's good. That was nice. Yes. So, if you guys have any questions, let me know. I know that. Thank you.
00:58:37
Speaker
Oh, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no,
00:59:31
Speaker
Okay. So you can see how this can be a finger tool as well as
00:59:37
Speaker
a way for you to think about, how do I present an abstract concept like this to my students? How can I utilize this as a way to get them thinking about these kinds of concepts? Let's get to our volunteers. Do we have another volunteer that you want to share? Thank you. So Nina had talked about underserved students and their retention at the institution.
01:00:07
Speaker
We said, because students are underserved at the institution and which often can relate to underperformance, maybe then switching to a more of an easier major and starting a stigma, but also students feel that they're not good enough to handle college. And we talked about some root causes could be the underfunding of some school systems and the college preparation does not equal across the board in what we believe to college school. And that can oftentimes be a root cause of glamorizing higher education
01:00:37
Speaker
and prioritizing the pathway to college, as well as some gen ed courses being known as almost speed-out courses, who are too challenging, where it's been to challenge the students versus help navigate their first and second year. But also, policy and the stress of just making sure that everything is checked off the institution, make sure that you can have an education. And we will end with that. Well, yeah, they have my conversation up in addition to completion. Right, OK.
01:01:07
Speaker
Right. As a root cause. Something from considering. You're considering to work out your data. Okay. I want to go ahead and share that. Group three from the Zoom, who actually talked about the problem of a lack of value of people's diverse identities. Right. So they put that as a problem. And then I think that was, oh, I already
01:01:35
Speaker
And then they put, as the symptoms, racism, resource inequities. Oh, I see. So their question is, why do higher ed institutions continue to foster whiteness? So I think actually the roots were lack of value and identities. And so they had a similar issue that they tackled in the Jamboard. Anyone else in the room want to share? Snaps for those on Zoom. Snaps for those on Zoom. Mars has been into the past two, and one of the overarching
01:02:13
Speaker
But then we also said, well, this is also a repression, a form of oppression. So the effect of oppression, the middle of the tree was power, and the bottom of the tree had something to do with it. What do we see in our next question? Yeah, the problem is
01:02:29
Speaker
part of the problem is mechanics can express themselves to lack the power to speak on these issues if it doesn't. And then the contexts are deep to political, historical, globalization, power, but also things related to the posture and the capacity to engage these issues makes you just able to feel like you can talk about. So, but we didn't come up with a question. And actually I had a question about
01:02:58
Speaker
Just focusing on the root cause of the problem. Does asking a question about the root cause of the problem too big? Like, is it too big? So if you're like, if the root cause of the problem is like power, right? Right. Well, let, when we'd ask them to then delineate how is power exercise through who, through what? Okay. But I don't think it's anything too big. You're getting at the multiple layers of root causes. Right.
01:03:27
Speaker
So it's a nice metaphor for considering that, right? When you think about it, maybe these problems that have emerged, right? And yet, can you, like, think of power in different kind of terms? You might think of it as policy power. Policy is power. Identity is power. So asking four questions to, yeah, to delineate exactly what to do. Yeah. It's just, it's really, the tree is a tool to,
01:03:54
Speaker
helps to envision that, those roots. Well, because in my experience with young people, when you ask them, in fire studies, when you ask them, well, what do you want to change in the world? They're like, racism, poverty. It's a huge topic. Yeah, that's good. Exactly. So the roots, they're starting with the roots. Right. They are starting with the roots, right? Yeah. They had to create an actual project. Right. So what problems brings from those
01:04:24
Speaker
what individual problems. And I'll also add through use of storytelling and specifically students being able to reflect and think on what have I experienced? What am I seeing firsthand? Not only with myself or with my peers or with my relationships and sometimes being able to be that specific and contextualize it to the experience that they have gone through firsthand can help narrow down that research topic and open questions.
01:04:50
Speaker
So if we're in this case, it's not power, not just racism, but maybe it's racism within the context of higher ed, right? And then they can start to be more specific. We only have about five minutes left. So we have here for you some ideas about classroom activities, and we'll share that with you.