Contemplation, Artful Writing: Research With Internationally Educated Female Teachers

In this article, the author experiments with artful writing as a means of contemplating research with internationally educated female teachers. In doing so, she sits with, listens to, writes from particular moments of the research process. The author also composes found poems from words and phrases in the transcripts. Her intention is to dwell with particular artifacts, rather than analyze or interpret them according to a theoretical framework. In this work, she considers Deleuze and Guattari's writing about art and also Shambhala/Buddhist Chogyam Trungpa's teachings about Dharma art-all of whom contend that art is a form of bodily attunement to and awareness of the physical world through perception, the senses, sensation rather than a means of expressing the self and/or representing something. In a broad sense, the author is interested in how the practice of contemplation through artful writing might inform, transform the research process.