Doing arts-based master’s thesis supervision/writing in teacher education: A new materialist approach to supervision

Arts-Based Research Primer Rolling, J. H., Jr. (2013). Arts-Bosed Research Primer. New York, NY: Peter Lang. 174 pp.This clearly written primer is sure to be of great value to any art educator who teaches an introductory arts-based research methods course. James Haywood Rolling's book is compact and concisely written, neatly organized, and retails for $18.95 as a Peter Lang PRIMER edition. Helpfully, James Haywood Rolling clearly provides definitions for all key concepts and terms used in his pragmatic primer on arts-based research. Definitions are conveniently located in margins throughout book. Especially in first chapter, and to a lesser degree within entire primer, Rolling visually maps and diagrams approaches to arts-based education research he explicates.As one accustomed to deeply deconstructing deceptively simple-seeming subjects, I was at first suspicious of straightforward approach Rolling pursues. More comfortable luxuriating in contemplation of problems posed, interrogating and teasing out nuances of submerged meanings that may not at first be self-evidenced, straightforward, no-nonsense tack taken by Rolling took some time for this reviewer to get used to. It was only in a second reading of publication that I began to develop a deep respect for (at times too neat and tidily appearing) way Rolling approaches, maps, and diagrams subject while moving through those multiple theoretical approaches he prescribes novice researchers follow. Building on methodologically stable structures Rolling constructs, emerging scholars should be able to stretch them further, grounding their variations in contexts of their specific studies. James Haywood Rolling recognizes variabilities that arts-based research (ABR) approaches enable, even if he may fail to sufficiently remind readers that they should feel authorized to deviate from the-at first seemingly-prescriptive recipes Rolling offers for educators and student researchers to follow.In Chapter One, Rolling teases out those multiple paradigmatic structures and approaches to ABR, rendering each intelligible, and outlining those various approaches that arts-based education researchers have pursued in past. He appropriately acknowledges more than a dozen primary proponents of practice, while nearly as many additional theorists making contributions to ABR, while nodding toward other theorists' contributions to arts-based approaches to research. Unfortunately, several important ABR scholars fail to receive mention within text. Whether intentional or not, for this reviewer, such omissions confirm that there has been significant interest in method in late 20th and early 21st centuries-collectively affirming alternate ways of knowing within multiple arts has a great deal to offer research methodology and theoretical development.Importantly, Rolling dispel[s] notion that arts-based research is not research'' (p. 3) by distinguishing between scientific methods that guess what might happen given a controlled set of variables while undertaking a repeatable experiment aimed at producing evidence that proves researcher's hypothesis and arts-based approaches to knowledge creation that address... urgent about critical aspects of human experience and our varying life worlds... those... that can neither be measured with exactitude or generalized as universally applicable or meaningful in all context (p. 4). In Ways of Knowing World (Chapter One), he describes working paradigms for addressing social, behavioral, and educational research problems: qualitative descriptive domain, quantitative classificatory and statistical domain, and arts-based domain privileging hybrid empirical, interpretive and naturalistic theory-building practices described by Lincoln and Guba (1985) (p. 5). Rolling recognizes that arts-based research addresses questions differently than scientific research will allow (Leavy, 2009),''the latter being limited, given, the indices. …

As a doctoral student at Stanford in the 1970s, I was fortunate to be able to observe up close the beginnings of a radically new approach to the study of matters educational. This was the period in the career of my advisor and mentor, Professor Elliot Eisner, during which he was imagining a place for the arts within the fields of educational research and evaluation.Of course, within these olden, if not golden, days of educational research orthodoxy, any questioning of social science as the exclusive methodological wellspring was widely regarded as heretical. Nevertheless, no doubt encouraged by certain developments in the larger intellectual counterculture, Eisner managed to disrupt the prevailing monolithic mindset, successfully challenging the taken-for-granted notion that the scientific method provided the only useful avenue for enhancing educational policy and practice.Over time, Eisner has been joined in his efforts by increasing numbers of converts and disciples, including yours truly. Of course, the legitimacy of non-scientific approaches to educational research remains contested, with the nostalgic notion of a gold standard having been recently resurrected in the United States through policy initiatives at the level of the federal government. Nevertheless, it is primarily due to the groundbreaking work of Eisner that today's traditional methodologists in the academy find it more difficult to dismiss those of us who look to the arts for both a process of researching educational phenomena and a means for disclosing what we find.A presence within the educational research community has indeed been established-through conference sessions, journal articles and books, theses and dissertations, university courses, workshops and institutes, special interest groups, electronic listservs, websites, encyclopedia and handbook entries, newsletters, and so on. The literature that suggests rationales for, and addresses pertinent issues related to, artsbased research has burgeoned. An untold number of examples of artsbased research have found their way into print, and others have been read/displayed/performed at scholarly meetings and conferences. Entire journal issues have been devoted to the topic. And its thoughtful and provocative contents make this issue of Studies in Art Education among the most notable of them.Enclosed are essays by several important scholars who are currently working within (what is by now) the tradition of arts-based educational research. The first of these is Eisner himself, offering a brief, up-to-date commentary on the status and possible future of arts-based research. Five other essayists move to describe, endorse, reinscribe, challenge, and extend some of the premises and practices that have come to be associated with this approach.Indeed, these articles suggest a rich harvest from a methodological field first claimed, cultivated, and planted by Eisner so many decades ago. They reveal nothing less than a bumper crop of theoretical notions regarding arts-based inquiry and of actualizations of the approach in specific projects. While acknowledging Eisner's early spadework, these authors suggest expansions of the original boundaries of arts-based research, and even alterations-some slight, some more pronounced-of its identity. Indeed, a motif of sorts can be found in the (sometimes tacit) homage paid by one author after another to the legacy of Eisnerian-style arts-based research, even as they suggest alternate labels-aesthetically-based research, a/r/tography, arts-inspired research, arts practice as research-for what seem to be, in most cases, newly designated species within an established genus.Indeed, each of the approaches described and exemplified here distinguishes itself as an important addition to the earlier contributions of Eisner and other arts-based research pioneers. The ideas within the essay by Liora Bresler are perhaps most strongly reminiscent of that earlier literature. …

This UNITWIN chapter is a proposition, a proposition to intervene in arts educational research in initial teacher education. UNITWIN as a network of arts-based educators and researchers has a role to play in asking how we can (re)consider ways in which we research, teach research and facilitate research activities in initial teacher education across the arts. The chapter is the next in considerations that studioFive at the Melbourne Graduate School of Education has to offer to initial (graduate) teacher education, visual arts and design educator professional learning communities, and research methodologies for arts education research in transformative cultures as an Observatory of Arts Education. Storying (post-)qualitative inquiries, methods and pedagogies in|for|as arts-based educational research is explored through the Master of Teaching practice research SPACE Capstone subject: Arts Integrations in S.P.A.C.E that was co-designed with Professor Susan Wright in 2016.

@contents: Selected Contents: CONTENTS PREFACE ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS MEET THE EDITORS PART 1 CHALLENGES TO THE DEFINITION AND ACCEPTANCE OF ARTS-BASED INQUIRY AS RESEARCH CHAPTER 1 Arts-based Research in Education: Histories and New Directions Melisa Cahnmann-Taylor Questions CHAPTER 2 Persistent Tensions in Arts-Based Research, Elliot Eisner End of Chapter Questions CHAPTER 3 How Arts-based Research Can Change Minds, Tom Barone Questions PART 2 TO DWELL IN POSSIBILITY: POETRY AND EDUCATIONAL INQUIRY CHAPTER 4 Between Poetry and Anthropology: Searching for Languages of Home, Ruth Behar Questions CHAPTER 5 Ethographic Poetry, Adrie Kusserow Lost Boy Questions CHAPTER 6 Understanding and Writing the World, Kristina Lyons Upon Traveling to Nosara Questions CHAPTER 7 Voices Lost and Found: Using Found Poetry in Qualitative Research, Kakali Bhattacharya The Small Small Things Questions CHAPTER 8 The Ecology of Personal and Professional Experience: A Poet's View, Carl Leggo Scratch in My Throat Rhizome Ecology Questions PART 3 MORE THAN WORDS CAN SAY: RESEARCHING THE VISUAL CHAPTER 9 A/r/tography as Practice-Based Research, Rita L. Irwin & Stephanie Springgay Questions CHAPTER 10 Who will read this body?: An A/r/tographic Statement, Barbara Bickel Questions CHAPTER 11 Nurse-in: Breastfeeding and a/r/tographical research, Stephanie Springgay Questions CHAPTER 12 Notes from a Cuban Diary: We Believe in Our History. An Inquiry into the 1961 Literacy Campaign using Photographic Representation, Joanne C. Elvy Questions PART 4 Performance Inquiry, Ethnodrama & Ethnofiction: Real Life with the Boring Parts Taken Out CHAPTER 13 Hearing Jesusa's Laugh, Terry Jenoure Questions CHAPTER 14 Queering Identity(ies) & Fiction Writing in Qualitative Research, Douglas Gosse Jackytar Excerpt: Chapter 3 Questions CHAPTER 15 sista docta, REDUX, Joni L. Jones/Omi Osun Olomo Questions CHAPTER 16 Troubling Certainty: Readers' Theatre in Music Education Research, Kathryn Roulston, Roy Legette, Monica DeLoach & Celeste Buckhalter A readers' rondo: The challenges of teacher-research Questions CHAPTER 17 The Drama and Poetry of Qualitative Method, Johnny Saldana, A Selection from Finding My Place: The Brad Trilogy Questions CONCLUSION CHAPTER 18 The Tensions of Arts-based Research in Education Reconsidered: The Promise for Practice, Richard Siegesmund & Melisa Cahnmann-Taylor Questions

I write this review as a recommendation for potential readers: those who are new to and veterans with respect to arts-based research. Arts-Based Research in Education: Foundations for Practice is edited by Melisa Cahnmann-Taylor and Richard Siegesmund, with contributions from 22 authors and a cover artist. In addition to providing some information from a usual structure around contents, central themes and concepts, intended audience, genres of writing styles, strengths and weaknesses, and uniquenesses, I primarily focus on the content of the chapter entitled “Four guiding principles for arts-based research practice” which I found extraordinarily significant in the second edition of this book and most meaningful for those planning their arts-based research projects.

National Art Education Association (NAEA) presentations on Arts-Based Educational Research (ABER) have been few and far between the past few years. Twelve ABER related presentations were included during the 2006 convention in Chicago. Yet the American Educational Research Association (AERA) has housed an ABER special interest group for 11 years. Many scholars from colleges of education and departments of curriculum and instruction, especially in Canada, Australia, and the United Kingdom, have enthusiastically explored the potential of Arts-Based Educational Research for innovation and meaningful, reflexive artistic research and teaching rigor. Historically, the preponderance of art education departments in the U.S. higher education system, except for a few innovative scholars, have resisted this innovative methodology or, at the very least, have treated it and its practitioners with harsh skepticism.As the publication of this special issue of Studies in Art Education attests, arts-based educational research is now beginning to be considered more seriously in university art education departments in the United States. Following such a challenging start, however, we wonder where we really are in this conversation as a national field. After a decade of exploration, collaboration and publication surrounding various approaches to ABER, such as artistic inquiry, arts-informed research, arts-based educational research and a/r/tography, committed scholars (nationally and internationally) are now delving further into examining these methodologies for a clearer identification of theoretical perspectives, while also comparing and contrasting the defining characteristics of each approach (i.e. Irwin & de Cosson, 2004; Keys, 2003; Kiljunen & Hannula, 2002; Neilsen, Cole & Knowles, 2001; Knowles, Neilsen, Cole & Luciani, 2004; Springgay, 2004; Sullivan, 2004; Suominen, 2003). These scholars continue to act as formative pioneers in the ABER movement while the broader field of education continues to resist Arts-Based Education Research, plaguing these ground-breaking scholars with charges of flagrant narcissism, fears of questionable artistic quality, and accusations of invalidity and irresponsibility.Speaking from Experience: Historical WarningsAnniina (AS), Kathleen (KK): As a word of warning for the young, passionate, idealistic scholars, a full professor shared a story about entering the academy in a department of art education. The professor was strongly advised to stop making art by a senior faculty member in the department. Relegating any and all related manifestations to a hobby status was the advice provided, along with the warning that art production would cause her scholarship to be taken far less seriously. Clearly missed by the senior professor, were the integral ties between art-creation and the viable processes of arts inquiry.Nearly 20 years later, that early rejection of artistic production compared to the now evolving ABER methods, absurdly suggests to us a denial of visual art creation as a vivid and valid learning modality for arts educators and likewise our students. Isn't this the essential claim of our field? Do we not try to provide through extensive evidence and example that art practice and contemplation are an extremely rich learning endeavor for all students? Interestingly, it is (has been) acceptable for art education academics to take on research interest areas in art history, aesthetics and criticism-and publish or present accordingly. Why then is the role of art educator as artist so historically and currently contested within the field of art education? What fears or threats are associated with the concept of art educator as artist? How can such a modernist view of research and art education ever support ABER? Why is the symbiotic relationship of artistic practice and art education research so difficult for others to accept?Adversarial ProtectionCombined with the warning from our shared advisor as we, the authors, were finishing our doctoral research, was her emphatic and firm, yet cautious, support strengthened three-fold by the additional support (protection) from our art education committee members. …

What is the difference between research that uses art, research about art, and research through art? Is arts-based educational research (ABER) a method or medium? What does arts-based research look like? How is it used and evaluated? Editors Cahnmann-Taylor and Siegesmund recruited an arresting array of contributors: paradigmatic pioneers, noted artist-scholars, as well as newcomers to the field. This volume condenses the history, unique features, social contributions, and controversy into a readable, scholarly, and practical text. Each artist-researcher develops a chapter comprised of multiple elements: biography, explanation of intent, critique, photos and open-ended questions. True to ABER epistemology, these contributors cultivate more questions than answers.

This article aims to address a number of interrelated issues concerning criteria for arts-based research. We start by responding to current discussions and debates over criteria, with a tacit goal of redefining the nature and goal of emerging visions of doing qualitative-oriented research. After reviewing some emerging frameworks for judging qualitative-oriented research and arts-based studies, we explore the prospect of integrating poetic elements into visual inquiry. This feeds into our suggestion of poetic-visual inquiry as a form of arts-based research, which we elaborate through three existing studies. In relation to this, we raise tension and care as two keys for thinking through researchers’ consciousness when carrying out arts-based research.

This transdisciplinary, international collection is situated within a genealogy of experimental walking practices in the arts, arts-based research, and emergent walking practices in education. It brings together emerging cartographies of relation amongst walking practices ranging across arts-based, ecological, activist, decolonising, queer, critical and posthumanist modes of inquiry. Its particular investment is in the proliferation of artful modes of inquiry that open up speculative practices and concepts of walking as an orientation for pedagogy, inquiry, and the everyday, resisting the gaze of privilege and the relentless commodification of human and nonhuman life processes. This is important work for the burgeoning demand for creative methodologies in the social sciences, and more specifically, for arts-based educational research [ABER], which is pushing creative methods of inquiry into zones of contact previously siloed by disciplinary boundaries.

Arts-based research (AbR) is a cross-disciplinary “set of methodological tools” (p. ix) utilizing the principles of the creative arts, that can be applied to all aspects of social research from cultivating data, to analysis. Patricia Leavy’s (2015) Method Meets Art: Arts-based Research Practice (MMA) is an in-depth exploration of AbR practices. Why is arts-based research important to action research practitioners? Perhaps it is the profound and untapped potential artistic practices can offer to further human knowledge, understanding, and problem solving through the inductive arts-based action research approach. Not only for artists, Leavy presents an argument that AbR offers rich new approaches and practices beneficial to all researchers.

Two higher education faculty within a public university come together during the global pandemic to create art as a way to make connections. Their shared interest in arts-based pedagogy and inquiry led to engaging in arts-based research throughout a semester, beginning with visual depictions of teaching during the pandemic and transitioning to artistic responses of each other’s work. The authors both explore multiple methods of art making, including drawing, using digital tools, and poetic inquiry. Their methods of artistically creating and responding to data led them to understandings of their experiences trying to sustain creative teaching methods during the pandemic as well as ways to make and sustain collegial connections despite physical distance.KeywordsArts-based researchHigher educationArts-based inquiryMultimodalityPandemic

In this article I discuss the nature of arts-based research. Based on what relevant research says, I acknowledge that this research approach is built on different assumptions and seeks to enhance people critical consciousness. Three arts-based research projects were reviewed. Findings indicate how artsbased research helps individuals understand their realities and move towards desired change.

Highlighting mentoring roles while relaying accounts of arts-based educational research (ABER) practice, we present a personal and conceptual narrative of emergent epistemological and pedagogical understandings encountered during dissertation journeys. Juxtaposing narratives with dialogue, we share postresearch reflexive work, and present a praxis-oriented discussion of ABER. We discuss implications for art education pedagogy, research, and leadership in the context of professional and personal development fostered through mentorship during this transformative ABER experience.

ABSTRACTAs place is intimately tied to students' lived experiences, investigations into place can illuminate knowledge of students, schools, and communities and serve as inspiration for future place-based curricular endeavors. This study, through a dual-layered, arts-based educational research (ABER) design, offered student teachers the opportunity to conduct firsthand, sensory investigations into place, the spaces of their larger teaching context, and allowed their instructor to examine their learning of place and consider implications for the practice of teacher education. Through psychogeographically wandering and mapping their school zones, student teachers developed understandings of the physical landscape, mental conceptions of place, and fledgling critical geographies. These critical geographies represented mergers of place, student lived experience, and critical pedagogy as student teachers began to reconceptualize their teaching practice in terms of place. Through the act of sculpturally and metaphorically mapping student teachers' explorations, the instructor identified levels of student teachers' sense of place, noted the vital role of their critical geographies, and considered how her future teaching practice might support further development of these critical geographies. This study suggests a second layer of ABER can be generative as it has the potential to stimulate critical reflections on pre-service teachers' learning and offer insight into the process of engaging pre-service teachers in research.

This chapter, written creatively as a scripted conversation between a professor and a doctoral student, asks how researchers might study music-making in a plethora of community music settings using arts-based methods. On the surface, arts-based educational research (ABER), art-based research (ABR), creative analytical practices (CAP), and arts inquiry (AI), may seem one and the same, but there are distinctive historical and theoretical nuances between them. We crafted this composition in a reflexive manner with theory and research embedded in the scripted conversation to explore these nuances. We point towards the conclusion that music communities, where participants are actively engaged, are well suited to inquiry through methods that include creative ways of representing and understanding both music and learning. In a conversational way, we explore distinctions, contexts, possibilities, problems, and the power of engaging arts-based research in the study of community music-making.