Abstract

My research takes place in the areas of art education and arts-based research. This inquiry is multivalent and expansive, and I see a direct connection between making, learning and teaching. Through the lens of art, teaching becomes part of this research. This dissertation is an invitation to educators, artist-practitioners, and people interested in working beyond collaboration in museums, higher ed, elementary schools, and family artist residencies. Part of an invitation is acknowledging a request to be with another, and in the fullest sense I understand an invitation as a request to be in collage with, or in resonance with another. By understanding invitation through collage, relationships and interactions become a calling across materials, calling to ideas, connecting and making webs from objects, to artists, or to moments in time. So in this way, all things fall into this method of collaging. Collage is also an active process of accumulation and constant re-evaluation. Extending this method to think about learning (institutions, relationships, power dynamics, participation) as material offers the chance to pause. Collage becomes a method that leads to co-constructed spaces that both critique and find generative expansions around, under and through learning institutions, sitting with the premise that learning is not a directional practice, but one of resonances. Learning is no longer a quid pro quo action, people can’t be commodities, and thinking about belonging, relationships and presence become more important than any outcome.

Keywords: collage, arts-based research, invitation, co-participation, resonance

How to Cite:

Abel, T., (2025) “look for pattern: collage as co-created pedagogical space, an introduction”, Marilyn Zurmuehlen Working Papers in Art Education 2025(1), 1-14. doi: https://doi.org/10.17077/2326-7070.33964