Arts-Based Research in Education

Foundations for Practice

Melisa Cahnmann-Taylor, Richard Siegesmund, Melisa Cahnmann-Taylor, Richard Siegesmund

• Editorial: Routledge
• Año: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781315305059
• Edición: 2
• Categoría: Education
• Categoría: Research in Education

Presenting readers with definitions and examples of arts-based educational research, this text identifies tensions, questions, and models in the field and provides guidance for both beginning and more experienced practice. As arts-based research grows in prominence and popularity across education and the social sciences, the barriers between empirical, institutional, and artistic research diminish and new opportunities emerge for discussion, consideration, and reflection. This book responds to an ever increasing, global need to understand and navigate this evolving domain of research. Featuring a diverse range of contributors, this text weaves together critical essays about arts-based research in the literary, visual, and performing arts with examples of excellence in theory and practice.

New to the Second Edition:

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• Additional focus on the historical and theoretical foundations of arts-based educational research to guide readers through development of the field since its inception.

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• New voices and chapters on a variety of artistic genres, including established and emerging social science researchers and artists who act, sing, draw, and narrate findings.

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• Extends and refines the concept of scholartistry, introduced in the first edition, to interrogate excellence in educational inquiry and artistic processes and products.

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• Integrates and applies theoretical frameworks such as sociocultural theory, new materialsm, and critical pedagogy to create interdisciplinary connections.

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• Expanded toolkit for scholartists to inspire creativity, questioning, and risk-taking in research and the arts.

Chapter 1

Introduction

Melisa Cahnmann-Taylor and Richard Siegesmund

Since the first edition of Arts-Based Research (ABR) in Education (2008), there has been continued and growing interest in pursuing alternative forms of data representation, including poetry, story, theatre, and visual image as means to increase attention to complexity, feeling, and new ways of seeing. Outside of education, ABR proliferates in numerous social science fields, attracting those more and less experienced both in the arts and the social sciences who raise new, interdisciplinary questions for the field. As an indication of ABR expansion, numerous organizations and conferences have emerged: the Center for Imaginative Ethnography, The International Conference and Society on Artistic Research, and Arts.Creativity.Education Research Group are just a few that have appeared over the last decade. Conferences, blogs, MOOKS, performances, textbooks, and journal articles appear widely and in a variety of social science organizations. Today, there are two Special Interest Groups (SIGs) of the American Educational Research Association that specifically focus on ABR, with other SIGs and divisions presenting ABR papers. This institutional support demonstrates the proliferation of interests within the social sciences. This is further confirmed by the increasing number of book series on the topic of ABR that have been launched by publishers including Springer, Palgrave, Leftcoast Press (now merged with Routledge), and Sense Publications. With this much growth, a second edition introducing readers to additional voices and perspectives in the ABR field seemed in order.

But, what do we call this field, as it takes place in education as well as numerous other disciplines where the study of social life takes place, where multiple names and titles for this type of research have arisen? Some labels emphasize “art” (e.g., Arts-Based Research (ABR), Art-Based Educational Research (ABER), Scholartistry, and Arts-Informed Research) to include all creativity (e.g., dance, music, visual art, poetry). Others are more particular to the autonomous fields of arts production, e.g., Artistic Research, where Socially Engaged Practice is generating its own literature and methods. As with qualitative methods in general, some find inquiry to be a more appropriate word than research. In addition, specific arts disciplines have been adapted, such as visual sociology, ethnographic performance, or poetic anthropology. While we often refer to the work presented here as ABR, we embrace these new references to expand how we conceptualize the field. As professors of education, we specifically address ABR’s relevance for a wide range of educational concerns that include early childhood and K-16+ education, adult education, medical practice, and other nonschool fields.

Increasingly, scholars feel compelled to take on arts-based methods rather than follow the directives of institutional bureaucracies that define the parameters of how research or art should or should not be conducted. Although some academic circles still view ABR skeptically, ABR is the logical continuation of the shift to qualitative inquiry in the social sciences that began half a century ago. Furthermore, no longer are the social sciences that sole reserve of individuals who employ skills in quantitative analysis or those employing qualitative skills emulating hard science paradigms. New scholars entering the social sciences, many of whom now possess extensive previous training in the arts, accelerate this change.

In the first edition, Behar (2008) addressed how, previously, scholars who were artists felt the need to separate these two worlds, distinguishing scholarly practice from artistic engagement. The last ten years have seen this artificial wall collapse as young and veteran scholars fearlessly explore academic and artistic border crossing. Today, young scholars entering the field may not even be aware that such a wall once existed. As a result, new scholars with artistic leanings are uninhibited as they break old taboos, blending and juxtaposing these two realms of social science and art into new fluctuating, contiguous relationships. Inspired by the methodologies of both the social sciences and the arts, these scholars invent a variety of innovative apparatuses that bring continually reassembling and mutating forms into appearance. These tools for producing visibility allow scholars to inscribe ideas. In turn, these new inscriptions open fresh discussions and yet other forms of inscription that allow innovative possibilities to enter our ever-expanding conceptual frameworks. In short, ABR enriches our understanding and deepens our ability to productively, ethically, and holistically navigate through the world.

Despite these advances, ABR is still far from conventional, especially in the United States. With the recent “What Works Clearinghouse” (WWC) guidelines, federal funding agencies continue to strictly define “credible and reliable evidence” for educational decision-making (Institute of Education Sciences, n.d.). Arts-based rendering of learning, which may include narratives, poetry, or performance, will never meet WWC criteria, and thus ABR will not be recognized by United States government funding agencies or publications that adhere to their strict definitions of “evidence” in the social sciences.

Nonetheless, ABR is finding acceptance worldwide, and many arts-based scholars are receiving substantial research support in terms of publication outlets, funding, tenure-line positions, and audience. A recent review of the Canadian Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council search engine for “arts-based research” yielded a list of 45 multiyear funded projects since 2009. The publishing house for Australian Qualitative Research has an entire journal, “Creative Approaches to Research,” dedicated to mergers between artistic and scientific scholarship. Even in the United States, both editors of this text have turned to alternative US funding agencies for ABR project support, such as the US Fulbright commission and the National Endowment for the Arts. In sum, while many detractors and critics question the pairing of “art” and “research,” there is also increasing global activity where the creative turn is thriving. We have personally contributed to these international conversations and interest in other nations. We selected some of the scholars whom we have met through these experiences in this edition, and yet space and design limitations do not allow us to include all the many thrilling creative scholars producing high-quality ABR around the world. We hope this book contributes to a virtual space to meet, discuss, and challenge one another as we continue to build the field.

The second major trend over the past decade that has brought ABR increasing attention comes not from the social sciences, but from the fine arts. Parallel to the emergence of ABR within the social sciences, the fine arts have also increasingly sought to define their practice as research. This has produced a new—and often competitive—literature to social science-oriented ABR (jagodzinski¹ & Wallin, 2013; O’Donoghue, 2009; Sullivan, 2010). While there is a long tradition of conceptualizing fine arts practice as research, a more insidious propulsion, currently driven by neoliberal forces within the European Union, has led to the consolidation of previously stand-alone national art schools into research universities. This has produced, by political necessity, the recasting of arts practice as research and brought fine arts practice directly into competition with the social sciences for research funding. Concurrent with this, the European Union Bologna Accords calls for the PhD in Studio Practice as the terminal degree for artists who seek to hold positions in higher education. This supplants the current acceptance of the Masters of Fine Arts (MFA) as the terminal degree in studio practice. Conferences such as the annual Iberian conferences (2013–2015) on Arts-Based and Artistic Research demonstrate the growing sense of urgency to define issues and sort these two competing paradigms in order to see where they are mutually inclusive and where they pursue different agendas. A positive outcome of this recasting of the arts in competition with social-science research is the recognition that artists always include empiricism in their work from the study of color, line, chord, and choreography to the study of history, literature, psychology, and education.

Finally, a third factor in this climate of change is the relentless improvement of digital technology that has put sophisticated recording devices into the hands of a much wider range of users. Professional artistic equipment and software for photo capture and manipulation, video recording and editing, or sound mixing—that only a few years ago would have cost thousands of dollars and thus only be readily available to professionals—is now accessible through a standard cell phone and free, open-source applications. Additionally, “low-residency,” online, and a proliferation of local creative arts-training programs provide greater access and flexibility to artistic study. Thus, arts-interested social science scholars have the power to explore and experiment in the arts on levels of sophistication never before possible. Not surprisingly, amateurs have rapidly begun to experiment with these new tools and resources, seeking to improve their artistic abilities. Graduate programs focused on the preparation of social science researchers need to adapt to this new demand for creative skills training.

Concurrent with digital expansion, there has been a growing acceptance of research teams to tackle problems. The romantic view in popular cinema of an Indiana Jones scholar or Jaime Escalante as a Stand and Deliver educator who is an inexorably independent polymath is giving way to the realization that no one person does everything well, and ABR demands interdisciplinary training and collaborative efforts.

These conflicting forces generate a confusing vortex of what ABR is and might be. Our purpose is not to survey the entire ABR terrain—this would be an impossible task. Rather, we focus on select examples of critical arts-based scholarship and research—that which we feel best exemplifies variety and quality, demonstrating deep knowledge and skill within an art form for the purpose of illuminating educational issues. Therefore, we return to a term first offered by Neilsen (1998) that guided the first edition: scholartistry. Scholartistry, as we develop it, brings a deep knowledge of both scholarship in education as well as of the art practice to strive for both scholarly and artistic excellence. The arts develop qualitative reasoning—a capacity of thought that Dewey (1934/1989) claimed was distinct from symbolic reasoning. Scholartists do more than evoke qualitative reasoning; they skillfully navigate it. In the first edition, we chose to capitalize the ART (scholARTistry) in part to better articulate the unexpected and provocative blending of words. Here, in the second edition, we simply write the word in lowercase, as it is now commonly recognized in the ABR literature.

In this book, we use ABR interchangeably with scholartistry, for both terms reflect the generative power of the arts to invigorate social science inquiry and social science to propel the arts. In their presentation of complexity, scholartists in this edition suggest that the purpose of inquiry is to become more reflective on the magnitude of entanglement in which we operate. Therefore, we reject, as well, the illusion of an outwardly appealing aesthetic form that cleverly insinuates a false sense of resolution and satisfaction. We believe scholartistry effectively captures this restless project of probing to ever-new discovery. This work does not place scholartistry or ABR as outside social science critique. Rather, this creative work belongs within the parameters and conventions of social science where it serves to expand the field.

Our focus on scholartistry separates us from visual social science methodologies such as Photovoice or Photo Elicitation. We approach the arts as more generative and searching. In particular, the arts are more than capturing and rearranging semiotic symbols and signs. What we seek is a visceral encounter with raw materiality. Scholartists do not only record data; they also make it. Furthermore, our approach separates us from ABR methodologies that insist on the 18th century concept of the autonomy of art: that art must be totally independent and not subject to the constraints of social science, such as institutional review boards that govern the ethical conduct of research. As the name scholartistry suggests, our view of ABR is deeply integrative. ABR that seeks to locate itself within the social sciences needs to adhere to the ethical principles for work with human subjects. In our view, to support the robust development of scholartistry, scholars would perhaps be better located within social science departments and working within these constraints rather than accepting the unfettered aesthetic independence within arts colleges. As contributor Jorge Lucero refrains, “for art’s sake, stop making art.” Artists and social scientists have much to learn from one another; collaboration and hybridity are key.

Scholartistry promotes a direct, embodied engagement with the sensory qualities of the world. The arts promote shedding our conventional categorical labeling and experiencing the smells, feelings, sounds, and sites of the world afresh. We feel our researcher-teacher-student bodies moving through space. It is a full attentiveness to the movement that counts, not our efficiency in reaching a predetermined destination. As Dewey (1934/1989) noted, these movements through space evoke resistance, throw us out of balance. It is precisely our struggles to regain balance—to make sense—that propel us into inquiry. Scholartists frame or recognize such moments in a deliberative, reflexive process. How the scholartist reshapes thinking through direct materiality is an important criterion assessing a piece of research.

Contributors to this edition demonstrate how a rigorous practice of inquiry in and through the arts can illuminate issues of education. From deeply experienced to the very novice, from East to West, we are revitalized by the many diversities in thinking and body represented in this book, building upon and extending conversations that began in the first edition.

Contributors to the Second Edition

Our selected contributors illustrate unique aspects of scholartistry within the discipline of education. We sought representations from a variety of artistic genres and different theoretical foundations that retained clarity of “translation” to social scientific audiences (see Chapter 21). Finally, we sought scholars who continually challenge themselves to refine our definitions of what we feel ABR, particularly as it is applied within the field of education, is, what it is not, and what, with close attention and debate, it might become. Those who pursue ABR must continue to ask and answer challenging and provocative questions regarding theories, research methods, artistic craft, and applications to education.

Making Theoretical Foundations, a Question of Diversity

Readers of this edition may ask what historical and developing theoretical frameworks underlie an ABR approach to empirical inquiry. This edition provides rich and varied answers to this question. Brooke Hofsess cites recent developments in New Materialisms, and Jerry Rosiek points to the American Pragmatist underpinnings of post-qualitative research. Natalie LeBlanc grounds her work in phenomenology. Nick Sousanis engages in educational philosophy and visual thinking; Sik-Ying, Hoi-Yan and Sui-Ting are grounded in critical pedagogy, and Yohan Hwang turns toward sociocultural theory. Creative theoretical considerations appear where John Borstel, Kathleen McGovern, Donald Blumenfeld-Jones, and Charles Garoian turn toward artists themselves such as Liz Lerman (dance), Constantin Stanislavski (acting), Bertolt Brecht (theatre), and Allan Kaprow (visual art) for theoretical framing. In these creative theoretical turns, many contributors, including Melisa Cahnmann-Taylor, propose new frameworks as principles to guide ABR theory and practice. We can see from these varied foundations that arts-based researchers use different lenses to view and discuss their scholartistry as related to the processes and products of teaching and learning. Theoretical foundations may be many, but all contributors share a common framework in the creative arts, one in which r...

Índice

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• Acknowledgments
• About the Editors
• About the Contributors
• 1 Introduction
• 2 Celebrating Monkey Business in Art Education and Research
• 3 Putting Critical Public Pedagogy into Practice: Reorienting the Career Path of the Teacher-Artist-Scholar
• 4 Art, Agency, and Inquiry: Making Connections between New Materialism and Contemporary Pragmatism in Arts-Based Research
• 5 Wild Imagination, Radical Imagination, Politics, and the Practice of Arts-Based Educational Research (ABER) and Scholartistry
• 6 Being Pregnant as an International PhD Student: A Poetic Autoethnography
• 7 What Is an Artist-Teacher When Teaching Second Languages?
• 8 Ethnographic Activist Middle Grades Fiction: Reflections on Researching and Writing Dear Mrs. Naidu
• 9 Misperformance Ethnography
• 10 Songwriting as Ethnographic Practice: How Stories Humanize
• 11 The End Run: Art and the Heart of the Matter
• 12 Expanding Paradigms: Art as Performance and Performance as Communication in Politically Turbulent Times
• 13 HAPPENINGS: Allan Kaprow’s Experimental, Inquiry-Based Art Education
• 14 Turning Towards: Materializing New Possibilities through Curating
• 15 The Abandoned School as an Anomalous Place of Learning: A Practice-led Approach to Doctoral Research
• 16 Thinking in Comics: An Emerging Process
• 17 For Art’s Sake, Stop Making Art
• 18 Finding the Progress in Work-in-Progress: Liz Lerman’s Critical Response Process in Arts-Based Research
• 19 A Researcher Prepares: The Art of Acting for the Qualitative Researcher
• 20 Learning to Perceive: Teaching Scholartistry
• 21 Four Guiding Principles for Arts-Based Research Practice
• Index