At the Threshold of Experience: Encountering New Art Teachers Through Research as Collage

In this article, I explore the possibilities and affordances of research as collage in order to draw out the complex relations always present—though not always recognized—in the events of research. Collage as a critical practice initially informed my approach to working with six early career art teachers in a research study that spanned a full school year. Later, analysis as collage altered my perception of my participants, my experiences in their schools, and their curricula and pedagogy—allowing me to encounter beginning art teachers anew. Yet, in the events that continue to unfold in the wake of the research, my understanding of research as collage continues to be remade. Collage, when understood within a philosophy of immanence, has the capacity to position research at the threshold of experience, thereby acknowledging the events of research as emergent within a field of relations far more vast than I first realized.