Collaboratively Stepping Back as a Method in an Arts-Inspired Self-Study to Move Forward in Professional Learning for Social Change

We are a team of two South African teacher educator researchers at a higher education institution in the province of KwaZulu-Natal. Each of us has distinct research niches, and stem from different racial and cultural backgrounds. Our common interest in and commitment to social change through education led to this collaboration where we explored ways of extending the learning we had acquired whilst completing our doctoral research projects. In our doctoral projects we focused on teaching, learning, and our professional responsibilities as South African educators in the HIV and AIDS context to facilitate social change in education. For our current study we asked the question: “What professional learning in the HIV and AIDS context can we (re)construct by stepping back and co-reflecting using arts-inspired approaches?” We used the following data sources: (1) self-chosen exemplars from each researcher’s completed doctoral projects; (2) e-mailed communications as to why we selected the particular exemplars to enhance our professional re-learning in the HIV and AIDS context; (3) individually selected artefacts used as metaphors to explore our research question; and (4) transcriptions of Zoom dialogic meetings where we probed our metaphors and found poems. Our analysis commenced with individually composed found poems using our data sources. These poems were used for poetic interrogation using a co-created Red Ribbon silhouette found poem. Combining all these arts-inspired methods and through co-reflection we could step back and look forward to answer our research question.