MURAL - Maynooth University Research Archive Library



    Colouring Outside the Lines Pedagogical Illuminations from an A/R/Tographic life Exploring Art Making and Art Pedagogy as Important Sites of Learning for Adults


    Bennett, Alice (2025) Colouring Outside the Lines Pedagogical Illuminations from an A/R/Tographic life Exploring Art Making and Art Pedagogy as Important Sites of Learning for Adults. PhD thesis, National University of Ireland Maynooth.

    [thumbnail of Volume 1 - Colouring Outside the Lines]
    Preview
    Text (Volume 1 - Colouring Outside the Lines)
    Available under License Creative Commons Attribution Non-commercial Share Alike.

    Download (15MB) | Preview
    [thumbnail of Volume 2 - Colouring Outside the Lines]
    Preview
    Text (Volume 2 - Colouring Outside the Lines)
    Available under License Creative Commons Attribution Non-commercial Share Alike.

    Download (13MB) | Preview

    Abstract

    Adult learners can find themselves marginalised in formal educational settings due to assumptions about their perceived limitations, as if their capacity for growth is fixed or has already ended. It is, I propose, not the individual that is limited, but the pedagogical space they find themselves in, which offers no room for growth. Adopting an a/r/tographic identity - Artist, Researcher, and Teacher, I position my personal and professional life as a lens through which to examine the pedagogical potential of Art as process. I revisit both formative and recent life experiences through creative acts of making ‘artefacts’ to illuminate the knowledge we can gain by attending to art practices. I explore processes that help adults challenge limiting beliefs that they may have accepted as truth about themselves. For this exploration, I enter into a journey of methodological discovery, embracing an arts-based heuristic attitude (Moustakas, 1974, 1990; Sultan, 2018). I begin by using painting, drawing, stitch, and poetry as well as evocative autoethnographic writing (Bochner & Ellis, 2016) and life history (Randall, 2013) in relationship with others. This unfolding methodology emerges, develops, and finally establishes itself as a congruent life practice of A/R/Tography. These Research/Art-making processes offer pathways towards enhancing our capacity to engage with essential ongoing life learning themes. I identify these themes as resistance, resilience, recognition, resonance, reclamation, and repair, and suggest that attention to these will help an adult learner to flourish. This thesis offers artmaking and art pedagogy as a powerful invitation for adults to recognise that it is always possible to know more, to learn, to become more, and to flourish. It asks that we, as adult educators, researchers, and learners, recognise how important it is to consider ourselves and each other as learners throughout our lifetime. Art making and art pedagogy offer possibilities for reimagining pedagogical approaches within the broader field of adult education.
    Item Type: Thesis (PhD)
    Keywords: Art Pedagogy; Art Practice as Research; Evocative Autoethnography; A/r/tography; Heuristic Inquiry; Life-Long Learning; Pedagogical Illuminations; art making; learning for adults;
    Academic Unit: Faculty of Social Sciences > Adult and Community Education
    Item ID: 21955
    Depositing User: IR eTheses
    Date Deposited: 06 Oct 2026 10:50
    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

    Downloads

    Downloads per month over past year

    Origin of downloads

    Repository Staff Only (login required)

    Item control page
    Item control page