Chapter 6: Matryoshka (Nesting) Dolls: A New Canvas for Visualizing Educational Biographies

Visual and image-based methodologies are becoming increasingly important for those wishing to advance educational research projects focused on the complexities of identity construction including innovative ways to construct educational biographies (Mulvihill & Swaminathan, 2017, 2020). Critical pedagogy (Kincheloe, 2008) and self-authorship (Baxter Magolda, 2007, 2008) are concepts that have centered life-writing practices, including educational biography, essential for undergraduate students’ growth by way of intentional reflection often guided by provocative questions. Within this chapter, an arts-based, educational research qualitative study is briefly described where Matryoshka (nesting) doll canvases were used as a visual and image-based data generation method spurring on such provocative questioning. The study was focused on understanding identity construction of undergraduate humanities majors and employed a gender analysis. The use of the Matryoshka data elicitation method proved to be successful in prompting rich, detailed thoughts from this group of students from the Midwest as it prompted them to think deeply, critically, and creatively about their learning experiences and provided a way for them to narrate their educational biographies.