Introduction

Abstract

AbstractCOVID-19 has limited daily in-person interactions around the world. Not seeing friends, family outside their immediate households, community members, and peers led many to feel alone and isolated. As educators, researchers, artists, and caregivers, who were used to making in-person connections and co-creating knowledge through arts-based educational research (ABER) practices, the authors also felt loss, isolation, and fear of the unknown. They wondered individually and collectively how to support their students, families, community members, colleagues, and each other without being physically together. The foundations of ABER framed their exchanges as they discussed and reimagined how to make new connections while maintaining old ones. They relied on ABER as a research approach that combines art-making, an artful ethos, and a focus on how connecting the arts to pedagogical outcomes can be used to represent, connect, reflect on, and nuance the ways we live as individuals and members of diverse communities, teach and become in community with students, colleagues, and selves.KeywordsArts-based educational researchConnectionsTeaching and learningPedagogyCOVID