Visual duo-ethnography as a practice of care: exploring vulnerability, identity, and pedagogical becoming among immigrant art educators

This study examines visual duo-ethnography as a relational and care-oriented methodological practice in exploring immigrant art educators’ experiences of vulnerability, identity, and pedagogical becoming within cross-cultural contexts. Moving beyond adaptation-centered narratives that often frame immigrant educators through deficit or adjustment lenses, this study foregrounds in-betweenness, uncertainty, and relational negotiation as central to pedagogical life. Drawing on arts-based inquiry, collaborative artmaking, and dialogic reflection, the research positions visual practice as a mode of knowing that challenges dominant logocentric and individualistic approaches to qualitative research. The findings suggest that vulnerability emerges as a relational and epistemological condition rather than a deficit, while care operates as a methodological orientation shaping how knowledge is produced. By centering visual, embodied, and relational forms of inquiry, this study contributes to rethinking qualitative methodologies and offers alternative ways of understanding teaching, identity, and belonging within culturally and institutionally structured educational spaces.