Symbolic Self-curation: A Reflexive Activity for Practice, Life and Scholarship

This article explores symbolic self-curation as reflection, and its application in professional practice and research into professional practice. Symbolic self-curation is framed as a way of developing praxis fit for complexity, inspired by Sch n's (1987) rendering of practice as artistry; Bleakley's (1999) holistic reflexivity; Higgs and Tichen's (2001) exploration of professional practice development as knowing, doing, being and becoming; and van Schaik's (2005) development of self-curation as pedagogy and research. Despite the announcement of Denzin and Lincoln's (2000) 'seventh moment' in research, the status of research that investigates issues of professional practice in situ remains ambivalent in universities (McWilliam 2004). Candidates who bring significant practice issues into the research space are often asked to simplify their research questions and create texts that are verbal, linear and limited in their capacity to represent and explore their lived experience of complex practice. Many researchers are taking up the challenge, however, of developing new texts that can hold the complexity of professional and life practice (O'Neill 2002). Symbolic self-curation is a form of reflexive practice intended to add to those efforts. Its key elements are the gathering and arrangement of 'apt', often non-verbal symbols to represent our 'not-knowing' as well as our 'knowing'; creating for those involved new experiences of respectful and robust dialogue with others (in person and through literature); testing of the insights gained by immersion in action of some kind; and construction of an exegesis. Self-curation not only involves the self-curating practice but eventually the curation of the self as practitioner, encouraging a 'gathering' of the self and meta-reflection on that self in ways that are reflexive. This article also offers a theoretical analysis of the elements of self-curation, which might have the further value of explaining what is going on more generally when alternative texts and sites are employed in research. It is hoped that it will be useful to other scholars who are seeking to describe, explain, and 'justify' their use of alternative texts.