What happens when we use artful methods to turn our gaze onto the autobiographic self of the graduate supervisor? How do pathways of self-inquiry change? And for whom? What self-knowledge do those paths engender? In my arts-based research scholarship, I have examined how visual and literary art forms open up imaginative spaces for self-reflexivity and complex ways of thinking and being.1 Art-making can serve as imaginative entry points to awaken creative, materially situated, and practical modes for researching supervision pedagogy in higher education. Visual modes like drawing, painting, sculpture, and collage can employ the powers of creativity to know the self in surprising ways.2 According to Pahl, Roswell, Bartlett, and Vasudevan3 (2010), the visual offers space where personal, untold stories can be experienced and expressed materially and practically—and space for “unknowing,”4 taken-for-granted notions of the supervisor self. As South Africans, we can use visual modes as...
University of California Press