Becoming a bricoleur: constructing sculptures to explore complex and troublesome dimensions in educational research.

During a recent research project, it became apparent that the conventional taxonomic, textual and linguistic devices used to develop the narrative of a manuscript would not allow me to make sense, or tell the complex story, of my inquiry. I needed to employ multimodal approaches to grapple with the project related to artists who work in educational settings. One of the multimodal devices I engaged with during the inquiry involved making sculptures, and these visual forms emerged concurrently with the text. Adopting the notion of bricolage allowed me to weave a range of theoretical perspectives and various elements of arts-related research practices into my inquiry. In this article, I explore the methodological approach of constructing sculptures, along with constructing text as a dialogical mechanism, to clarify the in-betweens, multiplicities and inter-relational connections that emerged during the inquiry. In making the sculptures, they became plateaus to assist my thinking and dealing with the messiness that is involved in research. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]