Lines of Inquiry

Lines of Inquiry: Multi-disciplinary Methodologies in Drawing and Education is a collection of essays written by researchers, scholars, and artists from nine countries around the world.

The multi-disciplinary contributors include teachers, artists, architects, psychotherapists, museum educators and curators who bring their distinct positions and experiences of using drawing in collaboration with others, in classrooms, in the community, in private practice, and as researchers interpreting and analyzing the experiences of others.The collection is organized in a way that takes the reader through a journey of what drawing is and can be; whether that is through a mapping of one’s daily route, a marking of territory, an expression of an experience, a problem-solving equation of arrows and lines, a comic, or a concept of imagined lines that demarcate power. Some contributions speak to the embodiment that drawing allows, some to learning and knowledge construction, and some to an age-old way of communicating.

The international roster of contributors provides suggestions for developing new ways of knowing, for developing empathy toward things that may lie outside our own experiences, and for seeing alternative perspectives through drawing.

Tracey Bowen is a Professor, Teaching Stream Emerita in the Institute of Communication, Culture, Information, and Technology at the University of Toronto Mississauga. She is also a mixed media artist. Her research focuses on visual rhetoric, visual metaphor, and drawing as a research methodology and has been published in Visual Communication, Metaphor and Symbol, Studies in Art Education, Studies in Higher Education and Higher Education Research and Development.

Dr. Tessa Berg is an Associate Professor at Heriot Watt University in Scotland within the School of Mathematical and Computer Sciences. Her research interests are in information systems and socio-technical analysis with specific interest in using pictures and iconography to identify complex systems of human understanding. Dr Berg has a keen interest in collaborative methods of engagement and has helped pioneer a number of modern approaches to participatory methodologies such as Rich Picture analysis. Dr Berg has been involved in research and development projects across Europe, the Mediterranean, Africa and Asia.