Having fun seriously matters: A visual arts-based narrative of methodological inventiveness

Abstract

My purpose in this article is to explore what methodological inventiveness has made possible for me as a self-reflexive researcher. As South African educational researchers, we need to consider how a better understanding of our own experiences, identities, and subjectivities correspond with a context of rapid change, transformation, and decolonisation. Within this understanding it is useful to think of methodological inventiveness as a form of post qualitative inquiry that embraces the possibilities of different educational methodologies to open up and resist pre-determined and formulaic ways of doing and knowing. Through a playful engagement with the children's book Zog (Donaldson & Scheffler, 2010) I create an arts-based narrative to show how my journey of becoming an educational researcher unfolds. I use playfulness and joy to show how methodological inventiveness makes it possible for me, as a self-reflexive researcher, to engage with fluid and complex identities and contextual realities.