Presenting a paper: Peirce’s triadic diagramme as analytical framework for cognition and research in education: thinking with “inquiry graphics” 

In this paper, I’ll introduce inquiry graphics. Graphics is the term here used to represent a range of external representations that leave a trace on a surface or screen. These could be for example graffiti, murals, illustrations, words, or digital media representations (videos, VLE designs and so on). Inquiry graphics are compound signs consisting of external representations  and abstract disciplinary concepts/research themes/topics, used for inquiry purposes in interdisciplinary and educational pedagogy and research, following Peirce’s diagrammatic sign triad. I provide my interpretation with three nodes acting as the anchor for analysis, each having an interpretative value with different analytical roles, mindful of the original interpretation.

This is in response to teaching and research across disciplines abounding with abstract concepts that have been traditionally viewed as “higher” level knowledge, namely in the form of abstract and symbolical texts. This approach has constantly privileged logocentric and glottocentric approaches to knowledge development and creation, seeing the embodied of physical representation and the character and interpretation of ti as disconnected from higher level cognition. Inquiry graphics were developed to challenge such views and persistent dichotomies of mind-body-nature, material-social, concrete-abstract, or individual-collective. 

Within an inquiry graphics, the embodied representation acts as the material/concrete/bodily link to abstractions. It particularly challenges the notion of practice and understanding of cognition in terms of an iconless concept.  Inquiry graphics signs bring together concreteness (of representational signs) with abstraction (of concepts) to explore existing and open up new pathways of creative insights. They support cognition via learners’ or research participants’ creative exploration, provision of representational modes and reflection on inquiry graphics as unique interdisciplinary embodiment-concept entities. I would here provide examples focusing on photographs within inquiry graphics signs.