A Conversation with Patricia Leavy

Dr. Patricia Leavy talks to us about the arts, critical thinking, keeping the spark of creativity, and staying the path of our own lives. She is known for her work in the areas of arts-based research methods, qualitative research design, and creativity. Patricia is an independent sociologist and bestselling author.

To cite this episode:
Persohn, L. (Host). (2021, Mar. 23). A conversation with Patricia Leavy. (Season 1, No. 19) [Audio podcast episode]. In Classroom Caffeine Podcast series. https://www.classroomcaffeine.com/guests. DOI: 10.5240/541F-8C56-2A26-B297-06D8-F

Connect with Classroom Caffeine at www.classroomcaffeine.com or on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter.

Transcript

Lindsay Persohn: 0:11

Education Research has a problem. The work of brilliant education researchers often doesn't reach the practice of brilliant teachers. Classroom caffeine is here to help. Each week, I invite a top education researcher to sit down and talk with teachers about what they have learned from years of study. This week, Dr. Patricia Leavy talks to us about the arts critical thinking, keeping the spark of creativity and staying the path of our own lives. She's known for her work in the areas of arts based research methods, qualitative research, design and creativity. Patricia is an independent sociologist, and best selling author. For more information about our guest, stay tuned to the end of this episode. So pour a cup of your favorite morning drink. And join me your host, Lindsay Persohn. For classroom caffeine research to energize your teaching practice. Patricia, thank you for joining me, welcome to the show.

Patricia Leavy: 1:20

Thank you so much for having me.

Lindsay Persohn: 1:21

From your own experiences and education. Will you share with us one or two moments that inform your thinking now?

Patricia Leavy: 1:29

Yes, well, I should give you a little bit of background. So I grew up absolutely loving the arts and the arts were a very big part of my daily life. So I took ballet classes, went to the movies, went to theater, my mother and others, my family are painters, I was always very involved in creative writing and creative reading, which were my favorite activities when I was in school. So I just sort of love the arts my whole life, I actually started off in college as a theater arts major, and really intended to pursue a career in theater. And I took a sociology class by fluke as an elective my second semester, and actually wanted to take a psychology class, but it was filled up. And as a freshman, I couldn't get into the course. So my roommate said, take sociology. I had never heard of sociology. So I was like, What sociology so she made a joke that it was like psychology, but it was easier. And that's how a great to me because I was 18. And just for the record, I don't actually think it's easier. But at the time that was really appealing. So I signed up for a sociology course, I actually did not love that course. And the professor was not a good fit for me. And he was one of my lowest grades I ever got in school. And I was a really good student. But some of the concepts really appealed to me. So I thought I'd take another sociology course with a different professor. I did do that the next semester fell completely in love with sociology, I tried to do a double major of theater and sociology. But my school wouldn't allow it because the theater arts program required so many more credits than other degrees required because you had to work in the theater and lighting and costumes, and you just had to get all these hours in so it wasn't possible. So the bottom line is I changed my major to Sociology, I ended up transferring schools because I was no longer to school that made sense. I took about nine months off during that time when I was transferring, and I got jobs in two theaters in Boston, because the only thing that's actually qualified to do was work at theater, even though I was no longer pursuing that. So I worked in theater, you know, just like as a system kind of stuff, selling tickets, you know, making things for the party, you know, party supplies, all that sort of stuff. So just it was it was not a glamorous job. But I have these two jobs. And then I continued on in school and sociology, and I still finished my undergrad education in the four years I would have because I took double classes to sort of finish up and I went on to graduate school in sociology, and I never looked back. So the arts became something I did in my leisure time, as many people do something for the evenings, weekends, that sort of thing. And my day to day life, I was a sociologist. And I was really interested in particular in studying women's lives and women's experiences. So I did a lot of interview research, in depth interviews with women about gender identity, romantic relationships, peers, body image should have a range of topics. And over a period of years, I started, you know, publishing articles, and presenting my research at conferences, because that's what I was taught that you do. That's how academic research works. And to get to your question, at some point, early in my career, I had this epiphany moment and actually was like an epiphany moment I was sitting in my office as a professor working on my research, feeling frustrated, and all of a sudden I had this thought, does anybody read this stuff? And then it was followed up with a second thought. Is it any good anyway, but doesn't matter if they read it. And so I started doing some research. And I found out very quickly that No, in fact, nobody reads this stuff for the most part. You know, there are different statistics. But basically, it's like over 90% of journal articles in the social sciences and education, are not read by anyone, they have an audience of three to eight readers. So including the author of the article. So basically, no one, nobody's reading this stuff. And from my own perspective, I started to think you know, and a lot of it isn't very good. I include my own work in that I felt like I was learning really interesting things from the women I was speaking to. I was, you know, developing these cumulative insights. Based on years of this research, as well as my teaching experiences and things I learned from my students. I taught courses like the sociology of gender, sociology of popular culture, I taught a seminar on human sexuality. So many students also share their experiences inside and outside of class. So that coupled with what I was learning from my interview research, I really felt like was developing all of these insights that would be interesting to other women, women like those that I was interviewing would be interesting to people like my students. And I realized that the journal format, the conference format, was just never going to reach them, like they were never going to have access to this work. And literal access, they wouldn't have access, because journal articles only circulate in university libraries. They're completely inaccessible to the public, they're completely inaccessible to anyone outside of academia. On top of that, they're filled with jargon. They're written in these very sterile ways, I include my own work in that, and typically just not engaging ways like literary writing would be, for example. And so people either don't have access or can't read them, or don't read them. But the bottom line is that basically, nobody reads them. They're inaccessible to the public. And even within the Academy, like I said, 90% have about three to eight readers. So this idea that there's somehow like, widely read within the academy isn't true, either. And the same, of course, is true with conference presentations, where again, you're only speaking to your peers. And I do find it lovely to speak with my peers that I and I'm interested in what they're doing, I hope they're interested in what I'm doing. But I was interested in my work reaching broader audiences reaching women like those women I had interviewed. And that's when I discovered artsbased research. And when I say discovered, I by no means created it, it was created by other people, but I stumbled upon it. I have expertise in qualitative research and just general research design. And at the time, I was working on some book projects with a colleague of mine who had been a professor of mine in graduate school. And we were working on one project on what she called emergent research methods, which are basically innovative research methods, that was her term for innovative research methods. And so I started doing research and seeing if there was anything that would jump out at me from my own work. And that's when I discovered Arts based Research and Arts based Research basis, basically, is a set of methodological tools that adapt the tenants of the creative arts, in order to address research questions in engaged ways. And so you can adapt any art form of visual performative, literary, multimedia, whatever it might be, and you're using the arts in your inquiry and to represent your research. So because of my background in the arts, and my sort of lifetime love of the arts, this immediately resonated with me, I immediately saw the value in if you if you use the arts, to conduct your research, to share your research, you're going to open that research up to much wider audiences. And for that matter, if you bring the arts into your classroom, I was still a professor at the time, students are going to be able to engage in that work in much, much broader ways. And so this was really my big epiphany moment, where everything changed for me from that day on, I changed the way I did research. I started doing arts based research, I began doing poetic inquiry and sort of chopping my interviews up and transforming them into poems, which I am not a talented poet. Poetry is a craft I respect enormously. But I will say this My poor to mediocre poems, I still think were more engaging than the work I have been doing for years before that. So I eventually ended up turning to creative writing and writing fiction, which is something I've loved since childhood. And I wrote my first novel over 10 years ago called low fat love. And that was based on nearly a decade of interview research and teaching experience, I had sort of the cumulative insights about those experiences. And low fat love is by no means a great novel. It was my first attempt, I had no idea what I was doing. I considered a mediocre novel. But when it came out, it really struck a chord. It really resonated with people it was raw, it tapped into some very real things that people experience and actually use it in my own classes when I was teaching and the students reactions were so intense relative to anything I had ever brought in the class before. And again, I don't think it's particularly because that novel was so great. But I think the idea of using fiction, to get at the issues that we want to get out the concepts we want to get out in our classes, the theories we want to get at, for students to have something they can relate to that they can reflect on their own lives, they can reflect on the larger culture we live in. And so after the responses fell out, I was completely hooked. I've been writing novels and short stories based on my research ever since, and just sort of committed myself to doing arts based research.

Lindsay Persohn: 10:31

Patricia, you say so many things that really resonate with me, because I also do qualitative research. It is also generally art spaced. Most recently, I did a curated exhibit of my findings and wrote about that methodology. But I think the other the other thing that I hear in what you're saying is this idea of following the path, right, it's, you know, you start out in one place, you say, Oh, this isn't quite right. So you switch gears a little bit. And I think that it's important for us to trust that path. And, and trust that it leads to positive things, because I think it can be very scary to change paths, you know, to change your major in college, or the way you approach your research, or for teachers the way they approach teaching. But, but whenever we say, Okay, what I'm doing, it doesn't feel quite right. It's just not a good fit. I'm going to try something new, you know, and you just, you stay the course. And you, you see how it goes. And you see where that path takes you. And I think that that is such a it's, it's reassuring, right? That, you know, we're all on this path. We're all on this journey to find, you know, who we are, what are our real questions, you know, what are we really talking about? And and how do we serve, serve the world in in the best fit kind of way possible?

Patricia Leavy: 11:56

I have to say, thank you so much for those comments. And I have to say, you know, I've been telling students, early career researchers, you know, people email me all the time to ask for different kinds of advice and that kind of thing. And what I always tell them is, you know, carve your own path, carve your own, that is always my advice, like, you know, if the path that you're on the traditional path, whatever it might be, whether it's in your teaching your research or student experience, if that is not working for you carve your own path, because the truth is that all of these other methods and tools and teaching techniques, we've learned people created those things, too. So you can create new things as well. And you're just as entitled to do that, as anyone else, you're just as capable of doing that as anyone else. And I also agree with you so much that if it doesn't feel right, even if it just feels a little off, then you're never going to do your best work, you're never going to feel your best, you're never going to feel like you're living, you're truly living your purpose in your place of work. Because it those things need to align, you need to do work that truly aligns with your vision, which is always developing, I mean, mind changes all the time, it continues to grow and evolve, but you feel that your gut like you feel like you're doing work that, you know, like I always say, if it engages you, it will engage others, if it doesn't really engage you. Or if you're just trying to make it work, that doesn't feel quite right. It's not gonna actually do great things in a world anyway. So you're putting a lot of effort into something that has a very low probability of success, because the thing that that engage others the most are the things that engage us the most. So we'd have to touch you, it has to be intellectually interesting to you, it has to touch your heart, it has to engage you, if it's doing those things, then you can bet you will do that for other people, whether that's a small group of other people or large audience, which also is irrelevant. I mean, that the idea is really to touch people with your work. And sometimes you can touch just a small number of people, but you touch them very deeply. But again, if you're doing work that doesn't feel authentically right to you, in your core is very unlikely that it's going to take you to that place. And I say that from experience. I did a lot of work in earnest worked hard for many years, and did not produce anything that ended up to be meaningful to me or to anyone else. And it's because I was trying to, you know, it's like putting a square peg in a round hole, like it's just not gonna work.

Lindsay Persohn: 14:15

You may have reached the three to eight people with that publication. But But you're right, you know, I think about that also. And that's one reason why why I do this show is because I want to open the world of education research, to the folks who don't have access to journal articles don't have the time to sift through them or, you know, the attention to figure out you know, what is the thing actually trying to tell me because we know that research articles speak in a very different kind of language, then then we generally use which is why I love the conversational nature of podcasts to share these brilliant ideas from the work of education researchers. So with that said, Patricia, what would you like teachers to know about your research?

Patricia Leavy: 15:05

I guess I would say two things. I mean, one thing I would just talk about arts based research in general, it's not about my work, per se, just there's great value, I think, in doing arts based research and and bringing it into the classroom. And, you know, look, I believe in art for art's sake. And so I believe in art, education, and art, education is important for its own sake. But what I'm really talking about here is arts integration. And that's using the arts to teach other subject matter using the arts to learn about other subject matter, using the arts to share what we've learned about other subject matter. So that's really one of the messages I would want to deliver is that I think there's just enormous value in arts based research. And sometimes people call it different things, you know, art as inquiry, or there's a sort of a whole host of terms that people use, I don't care what term people use. That's another thing, only academics care about that. And I never really have, I use the term arts based research just because it's a popular term. And so people tend to know what it is if they're in the academy. But but it doesn't matter, the term doesn't matter. The idea is using arts as inquiry using Arts in the classroom. And so what I really do is encourage people who are listening, if they don't know about arts based research, to learn about arts based research, if they're students to look at arts based research as another set of research tools that would be possible for them to conduct research, whether it's for those master's thesis or dissertation or early in their career, or later in their career if they want to make a shift. But to look into that, and I would consider, I would ask teachers to consider, you know, thinking about arts integration, regardless of the subject they're teaching. And I will say one thing we know from a lot of the research is that doing things that integrate the arts in the classroom, it doesn't harm any students, and there are some for whom it benefits them enormously. So you take nothing away from other students by bringing the arts in to teach other subject matter. And for those students who might not be reached in a more traditional way, you can do enormous good for that. And I think that we know this in a lot of ways. I mean, there's a reason that so many teachers will use a historical novel, for example, when they're teaching about a difficult subject, like the Holocaust or another genocide, there's a reason that professors or teachers will bring films into classrooms to do all of this. And so, you know, I would just really encourage people to think about the way they can use the arts in their research or teaching. And then in terms of my own work, you know, all of my novels are written with two audiences in mind, they're written for general readers, because I want anybody on an airplane or on a beach, you know, not in a pandemic world. But when those things are possible. We're just sitting on their own couch or in their own comfy chair in their home, to be able to pick up my work and read it and enjoy it. My mother has a high school education, she's an immigrant to the United States. So English is not her first language, I have a PhD. So and I was born in the United States. So we have very different language and educational backgrounds. And I want the same information to be available to her that is available to me if she's interested in it, and that becomes her choice. And that's everybody's choice. But that is my goal. When I write my novels that anybody who wants to read it can read it any age, gender, background, it doesn't matter, you don't need any education to read them. On the same token, I also write them with college students in mind. And to some extent, high school students as well, depending on which of the books but I write them. I write them with the intent that they can be adopted into courses and use in classrooms to teach a range of subject matters so that students have something that is more engaging that they want to talk about, that they can reflect on. So they can use it to reflect on their own lives. And they can use it to reflect on larger societal issues and the larger culture we live in. So I have all different novels on different subjects. But just to give you a couple examples of the kinds of subjects that I've chosen to write about, most recently, I wrote a novel called shooting stars, which is my personal favorite, and I loved it so much that it became a cereal. The second book is called Twinkle, and there are five in total, but the first one is called shooting stars. But the whole book is really about love and healing. So healing from past trauma, including childhood abuse, sexual abuse, major, major things, challenges that people confront in their lives, sexual assault, grief, those kinds of things, different forms of violence. So despite how the sounds it's actually like a fun pitch. I mean, it's meant to be light, and it's meant to be escapism in some ways, but it also delves really deep into these real issues. What does healing look like over the life course? When you've dealt with trauma when you've dealt with abuse when you're recovering? What does it mean to be the friend or lover or spouse of someone who Has his lifelong recovery process? What does that look like? What is it? What does that healing process look like? What does love look like in action for someone who's been through trauma, all those kinds of things. So I took the genre of really like a love story or a romance novel, although there, there's no wild sex scenes. It's not one of those. There's no, you know, long haired person on the cover. There's nothing like that. But I took the sort of genre what a romance novel might be, and I took these real subjects and put it into that kind of a story. So shooting stars would be one example for a different kind of example, my novel Spark, which has been used in college and high school classes. spark was a different project, I wanted to write a novel that looked at critical thinking, problem solving, problem solving across differences, collaboration across differences. And the research process itself. I wanted to demystify what the research process itself is. And so I guess I'm a little bit out there, because I don't think a lot of people would have the idea if they wanted to write about problem solving, in the research process to write a novel. But that's my approach. So I wrote a novel called Spark. And I really love this one, too. It's very different than the last one I described. It's sort of an adventure, and it's meant to be inspirational. But it takes place in Iceland, there's a sociology professor Payton, she is not me because I get this question a lot. But she is modeled after me in some ways. I mean, she's, she's, you know, a white female sociology professor. She works at a liberal arts school in New England. She has like an ideal like life in certain ways. But she's become completely disenchanted like you see her in the opening, like at a department meeting with her eyes glazed over. And you know, they're talking about student apathy. And she just, you know, that the whole any any teacher professor, as I've been told, I've received hundreds and hundreds, if not 1000s of emails from students, and professors and teachers about this book that they can all relate in some way to payton so and she she's also person who has anxiety, so she feels uncomfortable in big groups, and she doesn't always assert herself well. And she gets this invitation one day to participate in a week long seminar in Iceland. And the whole thing is going to be paid for all expenses paid at the at this institute. It sounds it's the whole thing is like a little bit cryptic, but a little bit exciting. And it is actually based on something that happened to me, I was invited to speak at the Salzburg global seminar in Austria, which is where I got the idea for this novel Spark. And I was one of 50 people curated for the event, we stayed in a castle like a bonafide castle, the whole thing was paid for. And we spent the week talking about our topic was neuroscience art, which is not what happens in Spark. But the point is, we spent this week in this castle in this extraordinary circumstance with different thinkers and leaders from all over the world curated for this one event talking about ideas, basically. So when spark Payton is invited to this mythical place in Iceland, and she is one of 49 people, she's put in a group of seven people. There's a farmer there are two neuroscientists. There's a dancer, there's a visual artist. There's the philosopher, and there's her and they are given this one very obtuse question. And they have the week to answer the question, and she is the one responsible for writing the final report at the week. So you see this whole process of them in this castle, this group of their misfits, in a way they come from different disciplines, different backgrounds, one of them's not academic at all, some of them are artists, some of them are super academic, and they have to problem solve, and they have to do with a question that makes absolutely no sense to them. And so they're in this you know, mythical castle kind of place exploring this question their their day and night, they also go on excursions, Iceland, I've been to Iceland many times really beautiful nature there. So I said it in the nature, which they could then use sort of as metaphors to talk about the question they have to solve. But anyway, this whole novel Spark, I won't give away the answer, obviously. But on the last page, you find out the answer to the question. So it's meant to keep readers wanting to read it. But if the whole thing is an exploration of critical thinking, problem solving the research process itself, what does all of that look like? So these are just two examples, I novels about all different kinds of things. My novel film has undertones of the me too movement, and it sort of looks at the experience of women trying to pursue their dreams, in the context of sexual harassment and inequality and all that sort of stuff. And that was loosely based on interview research I conducted over many years. And there are many other examples, but I just wanted to be sort of a flavor. So again, really answer your question. I mean, what I want people to know about my research, I want people to look into arts based research, arts integration, bringing the arts into their classroom doesn't have to be my work by any stretch of the imagination, but just how does this fit in the research or teaching agenda? And then in terms of my own work, you know, for people who are interested Did and reading fiction that has substance, whether it's bringing it into the classroom, or just reading it on their own I, I've written my work with these audiences in mind hoping that it would be enjoyed and embraced in these different kinds of ways.

Lindsay Persohn: 25:15

Words that keep coming to mind as you're describing these novels, of course, critical thinking. But I think also the word I keep coming back to is curiosity, and really remaining curious about the world. And I think in so many ways, that's one of the many beautiful things that arts does for us, is it keeps us engaged with our own environment, it keeps us asking questions and pursuing new answers, even to old questions or new answers to new questions. And it sounds like spark in particular, might offer a bit of inspiration for any teacher who's feeling a little bit confined or a little bit, you know, kind of bummed about the way things are going. Because I get thinking about critical thinking and thinking about pursuing broad questions in really interesting ways. I think that that's sort of where schools, that's where we could could maybe pick up pace a little bit in schools is to reinvigorate around this idea of curiosity and what it means to engage in our environment and to to look for answers, sometimes even just to look for the questions, I think is, is the way to go.

Patricia Leavy: 26:28

Yeah, and to and to be creative in different ways. But when I say creative, people automatically think art and that's not what I mean, at all, there's, you can be creative in all different areas of life and in your thinking in all different areas. And I do have to tell you, I've been very, very flattered when spark came out from the notes and emails I've received from teachers and professors who have seen a bit of themselves in it, or have felt inspired by it, or have felt like they're going to do something different in their classroom or in their research, because they read it. And I mean, that that absolutely completely fills my heart. And you know, you never know, I will say of every every novel I've ever written, that was the one I was least confident would work out. Meaning I honestly didn't even know if I'd finish it. And I would truly and all the others, I've sort of felt confident, for better or worse, the workout doesn't mean I've always thought this would be the best thing I'll ever do. But I've always sort of felt like I'll be able to do it. But with this one, I did feel like it was a challenging idea to write about in fiction. And even though I had sort of the Hulk in a way of doing it, I didn't know if it was going to work out at all. So it was like I was my fingers are crossed the whole time I was writing it and, and I am very proud of the way it came out. And teachers and professors and students have been very gracious about it. But my hope really was to write something that would be inspiring, you know, just this, this idea that there is this sort of Spark, that is in all of us the spark of curiosity, as you said, and that we have to nurture that spark, and sometimes the day to day of academic life of research life of all of that it can sort of dull that flame. But we it's still there, there is still a spark of it there. And we can still nurture that. And so that's one of the things that I really wanted to hopefully inspire in others if they choose to read the book. And, and even if they don't just in listening to this or having conversation about it, it's just to remember that that spark is still there. And sometimes it might not burn as bright. And certainly this last year has been enormously challenging, especially for educators. So So of course, you know, you sort of your flame my dull a little bit, but it's still there. It's still there and curiosity, imagination and creativity are the Pathways Forward to get it burning bright again.

Lindsay Persohn: 28:46

I couldn't I couldn't agree more honestly, Patricia, because I think that I felt that throughout the course of my career. You know, I think we get into education because we're excited about learning new things. We're excited about asking difficult questions and pursuing possible responses to those questions. I won't say the answer but possible responses to those questions. But that you know, that then you feel the weight of the world, right, you feel the the weight of the expectations, other people's expectations, and I think we end up feeling pulled in so many different directions. So returning to that spark returning to that curiosity returning to those, those burning questions, forgive the pun, I think are just it's it's so important for us to find that again. And certainly curiosity, creativity, the arts, whether it's visual arts theater, you know, I think that it's just so important for us to find those ways that reinvigorate us so that we're we're ready to present the same positive and, and curious nature, whether it's the 20th year of working with students or your first You know, I think we just have to continually renew that.

Patricia Leavy: 30:02

Absolutely. I mean, it's like anything else, you have to work on it. And you know, I mean, it's like, it's like a relationship or relationship is not going to be the same in the beginning as it is five years out as it is 20 years out. And so you do go through different seasons as an educator, as a researcher, but you have to remember why we're there in the first place, you have to be willing to change course, if the course you're on is not working, if the traditional path doesn't work, carve your own path, find things you're curious about. And you know, the questions are always more important than the answers. It's all a process of discovery. I mean, people ask me all the time of similarity between writing fiction and research, because a lot of people don't understand. They're actually extremely similar. They're both the process of discovery. They're both a process where you actually don't know what's going to happen. If you knew what was going to happen, there'd be no point in doing either though, my character surprised me every single day, just like, you know, the people I interviewed in my research surprised me all the time, or the cumulative insights that develop out of them surprise me, because I knew the answers, I wouldn't be doing the research. And in the end, I still don't know the answers, per se, I've just gotten further in the journey and the journey of discovery, the journey of learning. So it's really important to you know, be kind to yourself, remember that there are seasons, I mean, there are seasons to a career as again, as a researcher, educator. And so I do think that it is normal that you don't always have that same level of a spark. But I also think it's important to go back and ask why and to nourish it, and to do what you can to nurture it and develop it. Because that will feed you it will feed your research, it will feed your students. Absolutely.

Lindsay Persohn: 31:37

And I think we've touched on a few messages for teachers so far. But I want to give you a chance to respond to this third question. Maybe more directly, given the challenges of today's educational climate? What message do you want teachers to hear?

Patricia Leavy: 31:53

Well, first of all, I would just say thank you. I mean, it's a really difficult time to be an educator. And it's been a difficult time before this past year. And when you look at the challenges of the pandemic, I think it's an extraordinarily difficult time. So truly, the first thing I would say at all educators just is Thank you, because you do an essential service for all of us, you make the world better. And I appreciate that very much. So thank you, I would also say, you know, you have to nurture your own spark in ways that you're able to, and that will ebb and flow. I mean, right now, for a lot of educators, they're just figuring out how to do online teaching or hybrid teaching, do things that are safe or conduct research in a world where it's difficult to go out and conduct research, the way we used to all of that sort of stuff. So it's not always the right time to bring something new into a classroom when you have these other existing struggles and challenges going on. But when it is the right time, really think about, you know, what would you enjoy teaching in your classroom, for example, you know, is there a novel you love that you think your students could relate to topics in the course that you would love to bring in? Is there a community based project that you would love to see happen, that you think you could engage your students in? Is there an art project they can do to express something that they've learned in the class as opposed to a formal paper or formal presentation in the traditional sort of sense, all of these different kinds of things, these are just examples. But the idea is, if there are things that you think would be engaging, and you would enjoy to bring into the classroom, whether that's a kindergarten classroom or a graduate level classroom, it's likely those are the things that will engage your students as well. And so I would also just sort of end by, you know, using the word permission, give yourself permission to experiment and play and be creative. That's part of why you became an educator in the first place. If you're a researcher, it's absolutely part of if not the reason you became a researcher. So give yourself permission to be creative, and to bring new things to your students, new things into your research, and just to try things out, and maybe it won't work for you. So for example, maybe you'll try Arts based Research, which is something that's worked really well for me and that I enjoy. Maybe you'll try it and realize that's not your path. That's okay. Because that experience will help lead you to whatever the next thing is. I mean, that's how teaching works. And that's how research works. That one idea leads you to the next. I'm often asked like, how I write so much, how do I do so much research? And it's really as simple answer is that each project leads me to something else I'm curious about or interested in or my imagination starts thinking about, and it will be the same for you. So I would say thank you and be kind to yourself and give yourself permission to be creative.

Lindsay Persohn: 34:47

What a great message. So Patricia, I've so enjoyed talking with you today. And thank you for your time and thank you for your contributions to education and the world. Arts based Research.

Patricia Leavy: 35:01

Thank you so much. I've so enjoyed this as well. And I really appreciate you doing this podcast and sharing these kinds of things with others. So, thank you so much for all of your work.

Lindsay Persohn: 35:10

Thank you. Dr. Patricia levy is an independent sociologist and best selling author. She's known for her work in the areas of arts based research methods, qualitative research, design and creativity. She has published over 30 books earning commercial and critical success in both nonfiction and fiction, and her work has been translated into many languages. Among her publications, She's the author of the landmark text method meets art arts based research practice now in its third edition, and research, design, quantitative qualitative and mixed methods arts based and community based participatory approaches. She's serious creator and editor for 10 books series with Oxford University Press, gulliford press and Braille sense including the groundbreaking social fictions series. She's also co founder and co editor in chief of art research International, a transdisciplinary journal. She's received numerous accolades for her books. Recently, her novel film, won the 2020 American fiction award for inspirational fiction. Her novel spark won the 2019 American fiction award for inspirational fiction, and the 2019 living now Book Award for adventure fiction, and her Handbook of arts based research won the 2018 USA best Book Award for Best academic book. She's received career awards from the New England Sociological Association, the American creativity Association, the American Educational Research Association, the International Congress of qualitative inquiry, and the National Art Education Association. In 2018, she was honored by the National Women's Hall of Fame, and SUNY New Paltz established the Patricia levy award for art and social justice. You can find Patricia online at www dot Patricia levy.com. That's www.patricialeavy.com. For the good of all students, good research should inform good practice and vice versa. listeners are invited to respond to our guests. Learn more about our guests research, and suggest a topic for an upcoming episode through this podcast website at classroom caffeine.com. If you've learned something today, or just enjoyed listening, please subscribe to this podcast. I raise my mug to you teachers. Thanks for joining me