Louise Foott

Drawing conversations: Artistic practice, not knowing and meaning-making

Educational research increasingly recognises learning as an embodied, affective, and relational process, challenging models that privilege certainty, verbalisation, and cognitive mastery. Insights from neuroscience and arts-based research suggest that cognition and emotion are inseparable and emerge through bodily experience (Barrett, 2016; Immordino-Yang & Gotlieb, 2017; Leavy, 2017). Educational systems, shaped by a historical emphasis on fixed knowledge and measurable outcomes, have been slow to adapt. Consequently, the value of not knowing remains under-theorised, despite its central role in creativity, wellbeing, and deep learning.

This ongoing research explores artistic practice as a form of educational inquiry, examining how drawing can function as an embodied pedagogical space where researchers and educators can inhabit uncertainty. The study investigates how creative processes support pre-verbal, sensory, and emotional ways of knowing, and how embracing not knowing may contribute to inclusive knowledge-making and flourishing.

An auto-ethnographic, arts-based methodology is employed. The researcher engages in a reflexive drawing practice, documented through filmed sessions, with drawings serving as sites of embodied inquiry. Drawing enables thinking to unfold through gesture, movement, materiality, and metaphor, without predetermined outcomes. Responsive soundscapes composed by the researcher’s son extend the inquiry into a relational, multi-sensory learning dialogue.

Drawing creates an ‘in-between’ learning space where ideas can remain suspended, supporting embodied reflection and intuitive sense-making. Not knowing emerges as a pedagogically valuable condition, fostering curiosity, emotional engagement, and deeper meaning-making. The research positions artistic practice as a valuable educational methodology that facilitates uncertainty, engaging curiosity and embodied inquiry to support human flourishing.