Visualizing data to explore the affective and human dimensions of education research

Abstract

Certain methodological innovations in education research have aimed to understand and represent the complexities of lived experiences. With rapid advances in digital technologies, new research possibilities have emerged. However, the digitalization of research brings tensions: while data-driven methods offer powerful analytical capabilities, there is a risk of overlooking nuanced affective dimensions fundamental to human experiences, often obscured in standardized educational discourse. In this article, we discuss how an interdisciplinary team leveraged digital platforms and distinct disciplinary perspectives to develop multimodal data formats to consider both cognitive and emotional dimensions of teacher educators’ experiences. Departing from text-based norms, our iterative visualizations of text and image data amplified and foregrounded affective, humane aspects. Our fusion of arts-based and data science approaches allowed us to move beyond established thinking, generating visualizations through exploratory and explanatory lenses tailored for diverse purposes and audiences–an approach potentially beneficial across research fields. We argue that through our interdisciplinary synthesis of methodological traditions, our approach offers possibilities to bring data to life, while extending how we as researchers inquire, analyse, and represent the elusiveness of lived experiences in our increasingly complex world.