Poetic Suturing: The Value of Communal Reflextion in Self-Study of Teaching Experiences

Abstract

ABSTRACT Situating this work within related scholarship on poetic self-study and a conceptual framework based on Karen Barad’s idea of suturing, we began with individual self-study through poetry, reflecting on our identities and earlier experiences as high school English teachers. As wec explored – increasingly connecting individual experiences with one another’s thoughts and memories – our work shifted, producing meanings that surpassed what was possible alone. By thinking and writing collaboratively, our poetic reflection produced reflextion, fundamentally shifting our self-examinations and re-framing our journeys by situating them in relation to one other. We call this experience, where collaborative poetic self-study produced us together-apart, poetic suturing. We share that work and its effects on examining ourselves and transforming our poetic and pedagogical reflections. Through showing the cuts and seams of our poetic suturing, we argue that poetic communal self-study extended reflection and engendered reflextion, which produced new ways of sharing and becoming, transforming us, personally and professionally, together-apart. This article offers an examination of reflexivity in-practice for other educators, illuminating what becomes possible when self-study becomes communal and reflection (as engagement with the self) becomes reflextion (as engagement with the self/ves in relation).