Collage-making: a practice at the boundaries

This paper presents a methodological reflection on collage as both a research practice and a research strategy, using selected research conducted by the author in educational contexts to illustrate the nature of the relationship between the technique of collage and research. First, I investigate how collage production can become a research strategy, a technique for constructing and eliciting meanings held by the subject that would not be accessible by other means. At another level, this paper will analyze how collage-making, as a research practice, can transform research into a learning experience for participants. Collage is a technique based on a mixing of images, verbal text and other elements that starts with the analysis of an existing state of affairs, proceeds to deconstruct it, and finally to construct a new product juxtaposing different languages. In a certain sense, collage is a method of “disciplining” a story into a text through an interdisciplinary research process. For this reason, making a collage about one’s life story, engages the individual in a self-narrative process with the potential to enhance reflexivity. In sum, this study aims to explore, from a methodological point of view, how the use of different languages allowed by collage forces us to problematize the boundaries in research: between description and interpretation, between research and learning, between subjects, their stories and their sociocultural contexts. In light of the complexity of the topic, it is hoped that this paper will contribute to advancing understanding of the potential of narrative through different languages, in researching learning lives.