This paper is a methodological discussion regarding doing Poetic Transcription jointly with the research participants to create data. Within the frame of a larger research project centred on Early Career Academics experiences of teaching in Higher Education, learning for their role and learning to teach, this paper explores the conversations had with all 11 UK participants regarding the use of Joint Poetic Transcription to produce the data for the research project.

Early Career Academics (ECAs) often step into Higher Education Institution (HEI) teaching roles without the necessary pedagogical know-how (Emmioğlu, et al., 2017; Salimzadeh et al., 2017), adding to their already extensive list of challenges (Hollywood et al., 2020; Nästesjö, 2020). This situation raises questions about how academics in higher education navigate their experiences of teaching. The main project behind this paper aims to illuminate the learning journey of ECAs experiencing teaching in a UK University. On top of that, it advocates for Art-based Research via Poetic Transcription to research and reflect on this process, as it has gained some attention for researching experiences (Sánchez, 2023).

Art-based research understands research as a dynamic interplay among various elements and actors and acknowledges the role of methods in not just describing but actively shaping our understanding of reality (Law, 2004). Thus, research becomes a creative craft, itself producing an experience (Clough, 2009). For the main project, Art-based Research was deemed good to provide answers to its questions, using poetry as a means of expression that offers rich, complex avenues to create meaning (Leggo, 2018). Thus, within the broad research field of Poetic Inquiry, Poetic Transcription was selected as the appropriate approach (Faulkner, 2019; Vincent, 2018; Glesne, 1997). Typically, it involves interviewing participants, transcribing the conversations, and creating poems based on these transcripts (Loads et al., 2019; Burdick, 2011). For the project, and following the constructed, relational and collective understanding of both research and experience (Sánchez, 2023), participant collaboration was added to the process, thus creating Joint Poetic Transcription.

Recognizing research as a creative craft, Joint Poetic Transcription involves participant collaboration in creating poems as data. This collaborative poetic process surpasses the prior by actively involving participants in the creation of poetry: they became co-creators of the poems by crafting the poem alongside the research team. In a nutshell, the transcription is shared, and both produce meaning together through poetry. Parts of the transcript verbatim are intertwined with arising ideas, woven into poems using poetic license. As a joint constructive process, this approach seeks to redefine research as an experiential, participatory and productive journey.

This transformative, participatory process redefines research as experiential and productive, and thus some challenges arise. Specifically responding to the literature regarding the quality of this methodology, this paper argues that engaging participants in crafting poems would offer a unique avenue for learning from their experiences and thus provide a way to argue for the value of said method.

Specifically in Poetic Inquiry, some emphasize the importance of engaging with the craft itself as a marker of quality, like in Leavy's focus on authenticity and resonance (2017). Faulkner's proposed criteria for assessing quality involve methodological, artistic, and technical elements, encompassing rigor, impact, and the development of craft within the research process (Faulkner, 2016).

In this paper, one of the signs of quality suggested by Faulkner (2016) is explored: Participant Response. The aim of the present paper is to explore the merits and quality of the method directly with the participants. Through Participant Response, a way of evaluating if the methodology was well executed in its transformative and learning character could be provided.

It is argued that poems need to promote thinking and reflection for those that craft them to have value (Tian, 2023); thus, being a good tool for learning is identified as something worth looking into for addressing the success of the project. In the present paper, the informal insights by Burdick (2011) where participants’ analysis of the poems and reflection on the process were collected, were turned into a formal research process. To do so, follow-up conversations were scheduled with each research participant after crafting the poems to provide insight into this matter. This process was added as part of the main research procedure after the poems were crafted, with a meeting that was held no sooner than two weeks after having created the poems. The meetings were held to discuss both the poem itself and the process of making it. The guiding points for the conversation were: - When you think back on the poem, do you recognize yourself in the poem? - Do you think that your colleagues would recognize you – the author? - Do you think that your colleagues would recognize them in the poem? - Has the process of creating a poem or the poem itself helped you think about your experience in a way that you haven’t before? - Has the process of creating a poem or the poem itself helped you think learn from your experience? - How did feel during the process – the interview, poem creation, this moment, etc… The discussions in such meetings were recorded, transcribed, and analysed following a Thematic Analysis to identify overarching emergent themes/ideas across the multiple experiences.

According to Sánchez (2023), through the method, research produces its object. On to of that, the author argues for art as a way to appropriate the object of research by re-creating the experience of it through the artistic production. With the research process, the researcher, participants and methodology would be part of a creative process that produces the experience under research. Taking this alongside concepts like perezhivanie by Vygotski (1994) would lead to think that the process of producing a reproducing an experience with the participants would lead them to work-through it and thus learn from the work done. In accordance with this, the preliminary Thematic Analysis shows that, overall, participants see the process of Joint Poetic Transcription as a safe space to work-through their past experiences and create new meaning regarding their role as teachers and academics, and the poem themselves as means to promote thinking and learning about the early academic career and teaching. This methodological discussion shines a light into some relevant elements to consider in research. By structuring a safe space and method where participants work to create distilled data makes the process not only more engaging for them but also more useful, as they can create something for themselves and others to reflect upon and learn from. By acknowledging and fostering the potentially transformative process of working through experiences through the method, researching learning experiences through Art-based Research can gain an extra edge on the field, as it would prove not only to be beneficial for creating new knowledge, but also to be beneficial for the participants as they would also be transformed for the better thanks to their participation and work.

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