CHAPTER 3: DEVELOPING THE TOOLS AS A MASTER CARVER
3.5 ENTERING THE FIELD: GENERATION OF FIELD TEXTS ON
3.5.3 Collage inquiry
Collage has been defined as the method of cutting and pasting found pictures and image fragments, either natural or from print/magazines, onto flat surfaces (Butler-Kisber, 2008). Collage, according to Robertson (2002) “reflects the very way we experience the world with objects given meaning not from something within themselves, but rather through the way we perceive they stand in relationship to one another” (Robertson, 2002, p. 2). Using collage helps to push the boundaries of understanding, tapping into memories that lie hidden (Butler-Kisber, 2008). By merging collage making with written and/or oral methods of expression, the participant is engaged in vivid perceptions and memories. It also entails giving rich descriptions concerning the multiple voices of the social and the private self that continuously dialogue below the level of awareness (Van Schalkwyk, 2010).
In this study, consideration of the participants’ identities and reflections on their personal and professional experiences as teachers required a journey into their childhood. They were called upon to reflect on early life experiences within their homes, families and communities; their school education and university experiences; and their journey to becoming teachers. Some experiences recede and are forgotten, and collage can bring
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those memories to the fore by retrieving, discovering and making various precise facets of the unconscious, embodied knowledge known (Leitch, 2006). Additionally, using collage as a creative arts method can help teachers to understand themselves better and stimulate their teaching (Newton & Plummer, 2009).
The participants in this study taught in varying contexts and also had diverse subjective experiences that had been influenced by their past and their present circumstances and relationships. Collage assisted in making visible these “hidden” experiences, and helped with gleaning the participants’ deeper hidden motives in the pictures, words, and photos they selected to compile the collage. Through interviews and collage inquiry I was able to get an insider account of my participants’ experiences. The experiences that were being narrated were those incidents that the participants could remember. Collage was thereafter used to trigger memories.
The words of Creswell (2003), therefore, need to be considered — that there are manifold realities, and different ways of understanding these realities. Collage inquiry afforded me as a researcher the opportunity to work in a non-linear and insightful manner by placing image fragments that disclose unconscious connections and new understandings (Davis, 2008). In reflecting on the quintile ranking of schools and the teachers’ experiences, the collage assisted in providing an opportunity for the teachers to engage in answering the critical questions in a radically different way as compared with the face-to-face interviews. The collage compiled offered the teachers a powerful means of examining and expressing the political, economic, socio-cultural and historical complexities associated with teaching within specific school quintiles (Greenwood, 2012).
I employed the following steps in compiling the collage with all my participants. My participants were provided with magazines, scissors, glue, pens and chart paper.
Participants also brought in photographs that they wanted to use in their collage. I also requested that if they were going to use any personal items in the collage, they needed to make copies, as the completed collage would be kept by me as evidence. The following instruction was given to all my participants: “Make a collage that represents experiences and happenings in your life. These experiences can be both past and present”. The reason for this instruction was that all my participants were shaped by their past and present experiences. The space allotted to them by their race, class and gender shaped their experiences in life and society. Their experiences as Black and Indian South Africans
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were markedly different from those of White South Africans. The schools they attended as learners, and the particular school quintile that they serve in as teachers, also determined their experiences as teachers.
After the collage was completed, I allowed my participants some time to reflect on the finished collage. I then asked them to tell me the story behind the pictures, words, and photographs. During these moments my participants shared their stories, but it was also a time for an emotional recollection of the life they had lived. Most of them recounted that the process of creating the collage had helped them to remember incidents that they had forgotten about. At times the conversation became emotional as they reflected on their personal and professional lives. Each of my participant’s stories also brought to the fore the joys and pain of being a teacher. Their pain at times felt like salt on an open wound. They reflected on their personal and professional lives as people who had experienced apartheid at its worst. These teachers experienced deprivation as children and some as adults. They were schooled to believe that they were second-class citizens in the land of their birth. Some had come to see their lot in life, and the fact that they were marginalised merely because of their race, class or gender, as normal. These experiences were not easy, and many were scarred by the belief that they were inferior and therefore did not deserve the best. Recalling such memories could not have been easy. It could not have been easy to understand why the schools that they taught at were significantly worse off than schools located in other well-off areas. It could not have been easy to understand why they felt overwhelmed as teachers at their particular schools in the present South African context, where equality had been promised to all after the dismantling of apartheid.
Their pain and despondency around teaching within such trying contexts was evident.
They verbalised their frustration about the lack of necessary infrastructure, about having to engage in constant fundraising, and about dealing with the demands that the CAPS curriculum place on teachers, amongst other issues. These dilemmas at times drowned out their joy. Words such as “escape from this blocked up feeling” (Bianca), “when will you start saving” (Shamilla), “making hard choices” (Bernell), “mad about CAPS”
(Happy) and “justice” (Solomon) spoke to their turbulent lives as teachers in the ever- changing educational landscape. Despite these moments of feeling low, the entire exercise was nonetheless a liberating experience for my participants. The collage pictures
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acted as a supportive structure for them to draw out more detailed stories, and added to the data obtained from the in-depth interviews. The collages became a vehicle to deepen their understanding of their contexts and subjective experiences (Hamilton & Pinnegar, 2009), and provided an opportunity to create an “internalised portrait” of the world, centred on their experience (Davis & Butler-Kisber, 1999).