NW 29: Transdisciplinarity among arts: sharing projects in which artistic disciplines are entangled

Network
NW 29 Research on Arts Education

Title
Transdisciplinarity among arts: sharing projects in which artistic disciplines are entangled

Abstract
In relation to the general theme of the conference “The Value of Diversity in Education and Educational Research” EERA NW 29 invites to share and reflect on the ways in which transdisciplinarity in arts and educational research is contributing to make diversity visible in education, as well as provide insights to elaborate inclusive educational policy measures, practices and conceptions.

The call is especially addressed to promote the organisation of collaborative sessions with the contribution of researchers from various European countries in the form of symposia, research workshops, and round tables on this topic.

The Call
The concept of diversity, in all its manifestations, is at the heart of the work of EERA. On the other hand, transdisciplinarity in research is increasingly being recommended by the European Commission.

Meeting diversity is a pressing challenge of our kaleidoscopical societies nowadays, which requests diversity-conscious approaches focusing on personal, educational, and artistic levels (Keuchel & Rousseau, 2019). Likewise, Arts-based Research emphasizes the diversity of perspectives on knowledge, but also and foremost, the added value of its methods, even in fields outside the Arts.

Kagan (2017) talks about cisdisciplinarity to refer to the trend in research to split knowledge into disciplines, in the belief of completeness and self-sufficiency of each one of them, “ignoring that a discipline can merely contribute a fragmentary and situated knowledge on one dimension of reality” (p. 157). As an alternative to this, many researchers are working in a transdisciplinary way.

 According to Pohl and Hirsch-Hadorn (2007), transdisciplinary research ... integrates a variety of disciplines and actors from public agencies, civil society and the private sector, in order to identify and analyse problems with the aim of developing knowledge and practices that promote what is perceived to be the common good (p. 16).

Working in a transdisciplinary research environment allows a more transversal and inclusive participation of the different social collectives. In this line, Marshall (2014) states that “transdisciplinarity . . . connotes a practice or domain that rises above disciplines and dissolves their boundaries to create a new social and cognitive space” (p. 106). This is being more evident on one hand, in contemporary art, in which artists work in collaboration with other professionals or include other perspectives in their work. And, on the other hand, some scholars and artists work with art as political and as a way to foster a critical perspective of reality.

Consequently, this call looks for papers that present different approaches, methods and outcomes that have been developed in educational contexts around the globe that connect transdisciplinarity with diversity.

 Our aim is to create a critical mass and reflect on the outcomes of working in transdisciplinarity as a place of research in diversity contexts. To do so, we invite authors to submit their contributions under the following topics:

• Research projects in which transdisciplinarity fosters an ontological, epistemological and/or methodological turn in educational and artistic practices.
• Transdisciplinary research proposals that provide other ways to inhabit art*educational spaces in contexts of diversity.
• Research that challenges art*educational institutions to think about how their curriculum is conceived in transdisciplinarity and diversity.
• Proposals based on transdisciplinarity and diversity in an expanded way.

In summary, there is an interest to reflect about practices and research that have moved into a position that forces us to rethink and reconfigure principles, methodologies and epistemologies. We call for papers that invite institutions and organizations to think beyond the established, challenging the normative powers that underlie knowledge, and to explore the potentialities and mutual enrichment of transdisciplinarity in terms of inclusion.

Contact Person(s)
Judit Onsès : jonses.edu(at)gmail.com

References
Dieleman, Hans, Nicolescu, Basarab & Ertas, Atila (Eds.). (2017). Transdisciplinary & Interdisciplinary Education and Research. TheATLAS.

Kagan, Sacha. (2017). Artful Sustainability: Queer-Convivialist Life-Art and the Artistic Turn in Sustainability Research. Transdisciplinary Journal of Engineering & Science, 8, 151- 168. http://doi.org/10.22545/2017/00092 

Marshall, Julia. (2014). Transdisciplinarity and Art Integration: Toward a New Understanding of Art-Based Learning across the Curriculum. Studies in Art Education, 55(2), 104-127. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00393541.2014.11518922  

Pohl, Christian and Hirsch Hadorn, Gertrude. (2007). Principles for Designing Transdisciplinary Research (Anne B. Zimmermann Trans.). http://doi.org/10.14512/9783962388638

Van Baleen, Wander M., De Groot, Tamara & Noordegraaf-Eelens, Liesbeth (2021). Higher education, the arts, and transdisciplinarity: A systematic review of the literature. Research in Education, 111(1), 24–45.