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Table 1: Aesthetic and metaphorical inquiry
Aesthetic Inquiry Metaphorical Inquiry
Restating the
problem Briefly describe your
problem to the group Briefly describe your problem to the group Landing Short guided relaxation Short guided relaxation Preparation Describe the sensory part of
the experience triggered by Non-‐stop writing Describe the sensory part of
the experience triggered by
scheme Find words that rhyme with the selected words and have Write poem Write a poem that evokes
the same sensory qualities as the experience of the problem does
Write a poem that describes the problem in terms of the metaphorical domain Create drawing
and take pictures Create a drawing and take pictures of objects that
Presentations Present poem, drawing, and photographs for the group and talk about what you find most interesting when you look at your own works.
Methodology 71 3.2.8. Selection of art-‐based media
As mentioned, the art-‐based media I chose to work with were poetry, art photography, and abstract drawing. I chose these media because I wanted art-‐based media which the managers would feel
as safe as possible working with. For many people it can be scary to feel incompetent. I therefore chose media where I could assume that the participants already had some basic skills that
allowed them to feel competent in the creation process. For example, even if they had never written poetry, they still have skills in using language; and even if they had never taken art photography or made abstract drawings, they still knew how to use a camera and a pencil. By contrast, if I had chosen to work in media such as music or sculptures, a similar level of basic skill could not be expected. Furthermore, the process of presenting poetry, photography, and abstract drawing require a minimum of skills. Reading a poem or showing a photograph or a drawing takes less specialised skills than for example performing a piece of music, or performing a theatre or a dance piece.
3.2.9. Documenting the learning process
I am interested in exploring the learning processes facilitated by AI and MI through the particular theoretical lens of cognitive metaphor theory and simulation theory. I used semi-‐structured interviews to explore possible changes in the sensory and motor experience managers reactivate to represent a problem, and in how managers engage with this problem.
In a pilot study, I tested two other methods to evoke the information I needed besides interviews, namely, property generation (Wiemer-‐Hastings & Xu, 2005) and repertory grid (Kelly, 1963).
However, I found that only the interviews were sufficiently flexible to capture the highly individual and often quite subtle changes in the simulations managers used to represent their problem, and in the way they could imagine engaging with it. Whereas the other methods did indicate when something changed, it was very difficult to know what had changed and what that meant. However, I also found that both property generation and repertory grid could be used as
‘exercises’ within the interview, as both surfaced rich material into which I could ask further questions.
It is important here to mention, that participants would learn a lot about their problem, simply by going through the interview process. Thus, I could not say that the interviews gave me a static picture of simulations and ways of engaging used by the participants at a given moment in time.
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Rather, they gave me information about what managers were able to learn when speaking about their problem. In other words, I explored through the interviews, what kind of insights the managers were able to gain before and after the interventions when being interviewed about their problem.
I, therefore, chose to use semi-‐structured interview combined with modified versions of these methods to explore the kind of changes I’m interested in. I will describe this below.
3.2.10. Documenting interviews
One can document interviews through audio or video recordings or through notes taken during or after the interview (Kvale, 1997, p. 161). I chose to use audio recordings of interviews and the
presentations of art-‐work during the interventions. I used a Zoom H4 MP3 recorder. I chose not to use video recording, even though gestures and facial expression could directly show what motor experience is reactivated when speaking about the problem. To capture movements that seemed particularly important indications of how participants represented their problems, I simply mentioned these in the conversation. In this way, their presence was recorded on the audio and the participants had the opportunity to comment on my interpretation that these movements were relevant. Furthermore, I took notes after each interview in which I included my visual and energetic experience of the interviewee whenever I found this relevant.
Granted that video recordings would have enabled me to notice changes in the motor patterns when the participants spoke of their problem, I did not notice during the interviews. I estimated that what this could add to the analysis would not match the additional time I would have had to use analysing the video material. The added value/time ratio would be too small. Due to my research design, I collected a very extensive body of data (90 one-‐hour interviews corresponds to over 2500 pages of transcripts). To avoid the risk of creating a superficial analysis, it is important to select and focus on analysing the data with the highest density of information relevant to my research question (Kvale, 1997, p. 178). For these reasons, I chose audio recordings.
3.2.11. Interviews as a way to explore changes in simulations and actions Kvale (1997, p. 178) writes: “The ideal interview is – to bring things to a head – already analysed when the recorder is turned off”. By this he means that the interviewer must have a clear view of what
topic the interview needs to illuminate. This allows the interviewer to interpret what the
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