Researching education through embodied knowledge: MA students' practice-based dissertations

This paper argues for the potential of visual arts practice as a way to research educational phenomena within the field of art education. Drawing on aesthetic and semiotic theory an attempt is made to provide a framework for understanding how embodied and metaphoric action can help interpret education in practice. An examination of two installations by students following an MA in Art and Design in Education demonstrates how embodied practices (here, making in art, craft and design) can be reconfigured as a mode of enquiry into education. Specifically the argument centres on the ways students explore their situated, pedagogic practices by deploying interdisciplinary, multimodal strategies for representation, analysis, interpretation and metaphoric equivalence, a process that complements social scientific methods.