Expanding and sustaining arts-based educational research as practitioner inquiry

ABSTRACT

As practitioner inquiry is now established as a widely-recognized research tradition and flourishing movement for educational change, we might consider ways that practitioner inquiry could be conceptualized and executed to broaden implementation, deepen understanding, and sustain inquiry within teacher education. Arts-based research may be an ideal methodology for the extension and sustainment of such inquiry as its visual, performative orientation lends itself to participant engagement and provides access in the representation and dissemination of results. This article will put forth models for advancing arts-based practitioner inquiry within the field of teacher education, by drawing from multiple cycles of a dual-layered, ABER study. This vision of arts-based practitioner inquiry is that of inclusion, increasing the number of those who conduct and interact with research; collaboration, blurring boundaries between the inquiries of teacher educators and pre-service teachers; accessibility, tapping into the power of the arts to engage and communicate in ways that scientific language cannot; and continued engagement, using learning from one cycle to inform inquiry in the next.

KEYWORDS:

• Practitioner inquiry
• teacher education
• arts-based research
• arts-based educational research
• place
• art education

Acknowledgments

I would like to thank Susan M. Gagliardi for her comments on an early version of the manuscript.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Correction Statement

This article has been republished with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Notes

1. In discussing the potential of ABER for expanding engagement in practitioner inquiry by offering greater inclusivity, I recognize that, from a postcolonial standpoint, the concept of art as accessible and inclusive can be problematic. Explicit and tacit forms of cultural exclusion have operated historically in Western art, as non-Western cultural groups and marginalized groups within Western society have been generally excluded from the Western canon and formalist definitions of art reinforce ‘problematic understanding[s] of normativity’ (Crowther 2003, 122). However, from an evolutionary standpoint, I also recognize art’s persistence in human societies, its ability to facilitate emotional and transformational experiences, and its potential for promoting social cohesion (Dissanyake 1992). These capacities are the ones to which I am referring in this discussion of inclusivity and broader engagement with arts-based practitioner inquiry.