Arts-based Research in Education: Foundations for Practice

Session 1: Challenges to the definition and acceptance of arts-based inquiry as research

Chapter 1 | Arts-based research: Histories and new directions —Melisa Cahnmann-Taylor

This first session explores how the field of arts-based research came to be and describes the existing tensions and potential possibilities

What do the arts add to a researcher's project and to our general understanding of the topic under study? In other words, how are the arts used, by whom, for whom, for what purpose and to what possible ends?

Every research methodology is a way of seeing the world — and every way of seeing is a way of not seeing (Eisner, 2002)

Early Development

Major Contributions, "Blurred Genres"

Works in Progress, "Arts-based Research" is Born

For schematic purposes, we identity 2 major strands in contemporary arts-based research methodology: those that embrace hybrid forms of artistic and scientistic scholarship and those that produce art for scholarship's sake

Hybrid forms

Nielsen (2005) addresses three goals of scholARTistry:
(1) to make academic writing an area where virtuosity and clarity are valued
(2) to make educational research an area where the arts are legitimate inquiry
(3) to infuse scholarship with the spirit of creative connection

Goals of blurred genres:
(1) \
(2)
(3)

Art for scholarship's sake

It is defined as 'beyond hybridity in a place that plants itself more squarely in the realm of stand-alone artistry'. These scholARTists use their experiences during education fieldwork to create pieces of art that capture the essence of their findings in emotionally penetrating ways.

Problems and Difficulties

Without explicit training, there can be no critical community to establish what constitutes quality in arts-based research. To foster a tough critical community, more arts-based educational researchers need to share the techniques and easthetic sensibilities they use to prepare other researchers to understand, sensibly critique and further develop arts-based approaches to scholarship. Jane Piirto's critique to the question of quality in arts-based research: She distinguished arts-based exercises for personal creativity enhancement versus a higher level of scholartistry that requires extensive and disciplined trainingcvvv An important concern for arts-based researchers in education is how to make the process and products of scholARTistry valid and useful to other researchers, educators, politicians and others wishing to benefit from the outcomes of inquiry.

Future Directions and Possibilities

Future Directions
  1. Among the value arts-based inquiry can afford a researcher's own imaginative thinking is that of sharing the process and products of arts-based educational research with a much larger readership than that of a typical education study, with more immediate and lasting impact.
  2. Sharing a series of photographic images in the hallways of a college of education may disperse research findings to pre- and inservice teachers in more penetrating and immediate than any traditional text.
  3. Hybrid form nad art for scholarship's sake may be more likely to find venues outside the immediate academy.
Education researchers cannot lose by acquiring and applying techiniques employed by artists as well as scientists
  1. Assume an audience
  2. Draw on the arts to craft poetic discourse analysis or artful case studies
  3. Add more joy, meaning and impact to our work
Questions
1. What are your assumptions and expectation concerning arts-based research?
2. Explain your attraction to arts-based research. Trace your research lineage to this point in your life — in what ways have the arts been explicitly or implicitly present?
3. Cahnmann-Taylor distinguishes between hybrid forms and art for scholarship's sake. In what ways are these distinctions helpful? Are there types of scholARTists that defy these categories?
4. Have you had an aesthetic experience (e.g reading a novel, watching a play, etc) as a viewer, reader, or participant that has led to insight into a social or empirical problem or issue? How did that experience differ from a more traditional educational experience?
5. Interview several other researchers in your field of inquiry. In what ways, if at all, are the arts a part of their professional or personal life? Do they think there is anything artistic or craeative about their approach to the research process? In what ways do they identify as "scientists" or "artists"? Is creativity valuable to a researcher? Why or why not?
6. Create a piece of art that introduces where you place yourself on the continuum between "artists" and "scientists" and share the creation with others as a way to initiate dialogue

Chapter 2 | Persistent tensions in arts-based research —Elliot Eisner

Chapter 3 | How arts-based research can change minds —Tom Barone

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© Nguyen Doan Bao Ngoc, 2023