O'Flanagan, Denise (2022) Stalking with World-Stories. An Arts based narrative inquiry into an Arts curriculum in a school library in the Junior Cycle school programme (JCSP) library project. PhD thesis, National University of Ireland Maynooth.

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Abstract

This thesis is an arts-based narrative inquiry into an arts curriculum in one of the thirty Junior Cycle School Programme (JCSP) Library Project school libraries. Inquiring into the library’s creative writing and visual arts initiative and into its senior writing club, it seeks to make visible how participants engaged together in these activities. The research also explores whether engagement in library-based activities might help students to develop the Junior Cycle key skills of Being literate, Being creative, Staying well and Communicating. In addition, the thesis highlights the fact that this library is one of fifty such school libraries promised to schools in designated disadvantaged schools. Situating it in a critical theory framework, throughout the research I drew on the writing of critical theorists such as Freire, Giroux and hooks among others. In doing so, I brought forward Biesta’s question (2013: 2): ‘What do we want education for?’ (Italics in original.) Clandinin (2007) reminds us that narrative inquiry requires us to be attentive to social, cultural and familial stories – our own and those of our participants. Thus I employed autoethnographic footholds throughout the research to reveal the roots of my social justice and political leanings and to story my development as a narrative inquirer. Four cameos and an intermezzo – stops on the landscape (Applebaum, 1995) - are woven into the thesis as windows into my thinking and to illustrate the impact the research has had on me. Drawing on Pelias, Spry and Pineau among others helped me to realise the possibility and power of incorporating performativity into research. The thesis is divided into five landscapes which document different stages in the research process as I world-travel (Lugones, 1987) to the academy and the research field. Situated within the landscapes are conversational spaces with my participants. As students discuss their experiences of the arts-based library curriculum they illustrate a pedagogy that is ‘a political and moral practice that provides the knowledge, skills, and social relations that enable students to explore the possibilities of what it means to be critical citizens while expanding and deepening their participation in the promise of a substantive democracy’ Giroux (2005: 155). In the thesis I discuss international and Irish research into libraries. However, in contrast to a range of international research that points to the benefits of school libraries, there is currently a dearth of such research in Ireland. In the light of the absence of reference to school libraries in recent Department of Education policy documents. I hope that this thesis may help to ameliorate this situation. By doing so and by asking why the fifty JCSP libraries promised under DEIS have not yet been delivered, it may open up spaces for ‘stories for otherwise’ (Caine et al. 2022: 140).

Item Type:	Thesis (PhD)
Keywords:	Stalking; World-Stories; Arts based narrative; inquiry; Arts curriculum; school library; Junior Cycle school programme; JCSP; library project;
Academic Unit:	Faculty of Social Sciences > Education
Item ID:	16542
Depositing User:	IR eTheses
Date Deposited:	20 Sep 2022 13:19
URI:
Use Licence:	This item is available under a Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial Share Alike Licence (CC BY-NC-SA). Details of this licence are available here

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