Abstract

This workshop proposal is situated within the field of Research on Arts Education and emerges from a practice-based inquiry developed in the context of a doctoral programme in Arts Education. The question ‘Para quê?’ is deliberately kept in Portuguese. Instead of being translated literally by the English word “why”, it can be understood here as ‘for what purpose’: a question of orientation, implication and positioning, which highlights the ethical and political dimensions of research practice.

Para Quê? was collaboratively conceived and facilitated by the authors of this proposal, following a shared encounter with the art thinking framework by Maria Acaso. The encounter functioned as a critical and experiential catalyst, provoking a repositioning within our individual research trajectories and an increased awareness of how modes of thinking, researching and operating in education are collectively constructed.

This repositioning foregrounded recurring yet often implicit questions in educational research and practice: What for? What? And How? What for we do what we do? What we choose to do? And how do we choose certain approaches, languages or methodologies? 

In contemporary educational contexts increasingly shaped by instrumental logics, predefined outcomes and evaluation-driven agendas, these questions tends to be prematurely answered, narrowed, or bypassed altogether. Para Quê? proposes to reclaim a space for collective thinking as an open, generative and pedagogical gesture.

Research questions

The workshop is guided by the following research-oriented questions:

• In what ways can artistic and art-educational practices create conditions to suspend habitual research discourses and reopen questions of purpose?

• How can these questions What for? What? And How? operate as a collective, situated and embodied practice within Arts Education research?
  

• How might collective questioning function as a form of repositioning for researchers, educators and practitioners working in diverse educational contexts?
  

The workshop treats questioning itself as a mode of inquiry aligned with practice-based, arts-informed and reflexive research traditions.

Objectives

The objectives of the workshop are:

1. To create a participatory space in which questioning educational purposes becomes a shared artistic-pedagogical experience.
   

2. To explore writing, association and collective dialogue as research practices within Arts Education.
   

3. To offer participants a simple and adaptable questioning device that can be re-situated within their own research or educational contexts.
   

To contribute to discussions within Arts Education on reflexivity, positioning and the epistemic role of artistic practices in educational research.

Conceptual and theoretical framework

Conceptually, Para Quê? draws on intersections between Arts Education research, practice-based inquiry and critical pedagogies that foreground reflexivity, situated knowledge and relational processes. The workshop is informed by art thinking as a framework that values uncertainty, experimentation and the productive role of questions, while deliberately resisting its translation into a prescriptive or instrumental methodology.

The proposal aligns with perspectives that understand artistic practice not as an illustrative tool but as a mode of knowledge production capable of unsettling dominant epistemologies in education. Questioning is approached as an artistic-research gesture that activates thinking through doing, sensing and relating.

The workshop adopts a qualitative, practice-based and arts-informed methodological approach. It is structured as a participatory experience in which artistic and pedagogical practices function simultaneously as methods of inquiry and modes of knowledge production. The primary research instrument consists of a set of open-ended question cards centred on the questions What for? What? And How?. These cards are conceived as generative devices that invite multiple interpretations and positions. The questions address purposes, motivations and assumptions underlying participants’ research or educational practices, while remaining sufficiently open to be re-situated across different contexts. The workshop unfolds over a 90-minute session and is organised into three interconnected moments. In the first moment, participants engage individually in short writing exercises in response to selected question cards. Writing is approached as a reflective and exploratory practice, allowing participants to articulate provisional thoughts, doubts and intuitions without the pressure of coherence or justification. In the second stage, individual written responses are brought together for a collective conversation structured as an associative process, allowing for the construction of a rhizomatic constellation. In this way, participants are invited to articulate resonances, divergences, and tensions between the different responses. This associative dialogue brings relational thinking to the fore and highlights how meanings are constructed collectively through interaction. The final moment of the workshop consists of a shared reflection (approximately 20–30 minutes), in which participants collectively consider how the experience of questioning purposes may impact their research positions, pedagogical decisions and professional practices. This reflection is intended as a space to acknowledge shifts in perception, attention and positioning. Throughout the workshop, facilitation focuses on creating conditions for attentive listening, openness and mutual respect, supporting the emergence of a temporary collective inquiry grounded in Arts Education research practices.

PARA QUÊ? offers a structured yet open methodological proposal that supports researchers in Art Education to question, articulate, and reposition the purposes of their research. By foregrounding the questions of What for? What? And How?, as central concerns, the workshop contributes to a deeper awareness of the ethical, political, and epistemological dimensions that shape research practices. The proposal highlights the potential of collective and reflective exercises to counteract the isolation often experienced in doctoral and early-career research. By creating a shared space for dialogue and speculation, the workshop fosters a sense of relationality and mutual attentiveness, without aiming for consensus or homogenization of approaches. Importantly, the workshop presents a flexible framework that can be adapted to different contexts, research stages, and institutional settings. Its value lies in encouraging researchers to pause, reflect, and re-engage with the questions that sustain their work, particularly in moments of uncertainty or methodological tension. In the context of ECER, and within Network 29, PARA QUÊ? workshop contributes to ongoing discussions about research-formation, artistic research, and qualitative inquiry in education. It proposes a modest yet rigorous intervention that supports researchers in inhabiting their research questions more consciously, reinforcing the role of reflexivity, care, and positioning in Art Education research.

Acaso, M. (2017). Art thinking: Cómo el arte puede transformar la educación. Paidós. Atkinson, D. (2015). The adventure of pedagogy, learning and the not-known. Subjectivity, 8(1), 43–56. https://doi.org/10.1057/sub.2014.22 Hernández-Hernández, F., & Onsès Segarra, J. (2024). La investigación basada en las artes: Hacer visibles aspectos de la vida del aula y de la escuela que de otra forma se mantendrían invisibles. Em S. B. B. D. Silva, J. M. Sancho-Gil, & F. Hernández-Hernández (Eds.), Docentes pesquisadores (pp. 241–258). EDUFBA. https://doi.org/10.7476/9786556308821.0016 Ørngreen, R., & Levinsen, K. T. (2017). Workshops as a research methodology. Electronic Journal of E-learning, 15(1), 70-81.