Reflecting on reflection: Exploring the role of writing as part of practice-led research

Abstract

The phrase ‘writing up’ is often framed as the point where a research project is nearing its end, with only a summarizing thesis between a student and their completion. This text seeks to interrogate this dichotomy between research practice and writing. Instead, the text engenders reflective writing as a constant undercurrent of dialogue that continually shapes research through reflective thought. The text implements concepts from two key texts to meet these ends: Kamler and Thompson’s Helping Doctoral Students Write: Pedagogies for Supervision and Bolt and Barrett’s Practice as Research: Approaches to Creative Arts Enquiry. The first of the texts problematizes the notion of a formal ‘writing up’ stage often cited by students and supervisors in research study, arguing instead for a shift towards a more dynamic role for writing in research, or indeed writing as research. The second of the contributing texts presents Barbara Bolt’s notion of the ‘exegesis’ as ancillary to this thought – outlining written practice in arts research as an intrinsic, generative process, married to any practical outcome. Using the rhetoric outlined in these two references, this article then summarizes with an application of the notion of the ‘exegesis’ to an assortment of personal written texts, such as reflective journal entries and assessed written works across three years of postgraduate study. Herein lies the key claim of this article – that exegesis permeates every meaningful or developmental step of practice-led research, forming a crucial reciprocal relationship between visual and written work not unlike other hybridized methodologies outlined by authors such as Mieke Bal in her text, Travelling Concepts in the Humanities: A Rough Guide.