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ОглавлениеChapter summary
In this introductory chapter we invite you to consider the place of creative methods and methodologies in your approach to education research. You may be a teacher, pre-service teacher, teacher-researcher, artist-researcher, artist-teacher or someone who is looking to engage with research to support your role in formal or informal education and learning contexts. No matter what your background, everyone is creative and can engage with creative ways of doing research. Our focus is to introduce key ideas and concepts and to begin to connect with creative research methods that are influenced by arts-based research, digitally mediated research, mobile methods, place-based research and transformative research frameworks.
This chapter is a good place to begin if you want to gain an insight into and an overview of creative approaches in education. We then invite you to dig deeper into examples with our case studies and reflective questions to find out more as you progress through the book.
Introduction
This chapter introduces multiple approaches to creative research methods and their use in education research. Creativity and creative thinking will be explored in creative research as ways to help make new knowledge and to challenge assumptions and expectations of what creative research methods can do (Ellsworth, 2005; Gauntlett, 2007; Thomson and Hall, 2008; Barone and Eisner, 2012; Harris, 2014; Pauwels and Mannay, 2020). Creative methodologies in education research will be introduced. We invite you to read the chapters in order, or to jump in and out, reading back and forth, or to use a chapter as a touch point while working on your research project. The case studies are examples to help you think through key questions and responses in the developing and doing of research. The last chapter has four activities to help you develop, generate and reflect on your way of doing creative research. In each chapter we offer case studies that show how creative methods can work in practice; however, this does not mean all research projects have to work in these ways.
Within education research, different disciplinary approaches influence the ways in which creative research is practised (Cahnmann-Taylor and Siegesmund, 2008; Smith and Dean, 2009; Barrett and Bolt, 2010; O’Toole and Beckett, 2010; Thomson and Sefton-Green, 2011; Nelson, 2013; Naughton et al, 2018). This book includes arts-based research, digitally mediated research, mobile methods, place-based research and transformative research frameworks such as participatory, feminist and activist research. As evaluation research is a key topic in contemporary education disciplines, we discuss what creative research methods can do to help question assumptions and expectations. Creative research methodologies challenge what education research may look like: inquiry as emergent, as not having answers, as posing questions, as situated in place, spaces and time and as relational – with others, ourselves and the world and its matter and matterings. This research may pose more questions than it answers, but in doing so gives opportunities to activate actions and doings that may not have been given space in other types of research. In this way, the unexpected becomes a possibility and an opportunity.
In each of the chapters contained in this book, through the use of case studies we aim to introduce creative research methods for those who are unfamiliar with the topic. The field of creative research methods is continually developing and expanding, and is relevant for quantitative, qualitative and mixed-methods researchers in education and across disciplines. There are various different ways we can work as researchers – for example, through song, dance, theatre, movement, craft, sculpture, sketch, crochet, cartoon, poetry, writing, blogging, journalling or photography. These offer powerful ways to ignite and illuminate voice, participation and engagement across the various different stages of research design and dissemination.
This book does not cover all creative research methods and methodologies but, rather, highlights key research projects that illustrate the diversity of practices undertaken in this area. We do not revisit the basics of qualitative research methods, as there are many books on research methods in education and the social sciences. (If you are not aware of these we would suggest starting with Research Methods in Education by Cohen, Manion and Morrison, currently in its eighth edition.) Rather, we focus on research projects that use creative methodologies and methods, and explore these projects with innovation and creativity in mind. These projects may use creative methods in any or all of their design, context-setting, data-gathering, analysis, reporting, presentation, dissemination and implementation processes.
Creative research methodologies bring complexities to the surface with different questions and methods of analysing data, generating inquiries into the layers of context, ways of knowing, doing and being, feelings and expression of lived experiences, reflexivity and ethics. In each of the chapters we discuss the ethical implications, the roles of others and the researcher, within a framework of reflexivity. We offer case study examples of research in the extended field of education, from formal to informal educational settings and situated in communities and other places of learning. Our aim is to guide and facilitate you if you are accessing creative research methods for the first time and want an introduction to what might be possible in working creatively in education research. We also aim to offer education-focused information and support for more experienced users of creative research methods.
Where research begins
In Margaret Somerville’s creative research publication, Water in a Dry Land (2013), she describes a moment in her drought-stricken garden looking for a suitable place to position a bore. The water dowser can feel underground water, and when Margaret holds the dowsing rods she too feels ‘a different image grows in my body of deep water flowing inside the earth’s surface’ (Somerville, 2013, p xviii). It is at that moment and place that she realises the beginnings of the idea for a creative research project about water in particular places and its Indigenous and non-Indigenous creative and cultural affordances in Australia. Water in a Dry Land is an example of cross-cultural creative research with Indigenous and non-Indigenous artists and researchers investigating and activating knowledge about water in Australia. In creative research, learning and teaching takes on different shapes than those found in schools and formal places of education; creativity prompts questions and allows a diversity of responses that encompass informal learning – for example, learning in gardens about water and your environment.
Education researchers can start with their physical context – within centres, schools or higher education, or informal learning environments such as museums, open spaces, art galleries, in the water, after-school dance and music classes – actually, anywhere where someone is learning or teaching. Observing and questioning particular habits and behaviours, considering how a practice is undertaken and what is happening is a way to start thinking about research and education (see, for example, Sinek, 2014). For some researchers, their inquiry is about exploration of a place, ideas, a practice or activity (Somerville, 2013; Mannay et al, 2017; Purcell, 2018; McPherson, 2019). Other researchers identify a gap in knowledge about a practice and describe this practice and its affordances and constraints (Cancienne and Snowber, 2003; Lemon, 2019) in order to understand the practice and its use. To explain a particular way of doing an activity can be a research aim (Morriss, 2016). For some researchers it is about making change in their communities (Smith, 2017; Levy et al, 2018) and activism (Perez, 2007; Ringrose and Renold, 2011); for others it is about evaluating practices (Thomson, 2012, 2017), or Indigenous ways of doing, knowing and being (Martin, 2003; Smith, 2017). Patricia Leavy (2017, p 54) states: ‘researchers initially come to a topic because of their personal interests, experiences and values, previous research experience, and/or opportunities in the form of funding or collaborations’.
Creativity, creative thinking and the researcher
Creativity, creative thinking and the researcher is an area of contested dialogues. The study of creativity is a large area that overflows into many disciplines. In this book we use case studies to highlight research projects that have wide-ranging notions of what creativity is and how the projects investigate creativity. We focus on creative methods that invite researchers and their participant collaborators to engage differently in research activities rather than in creativity as such. The following list is a starting point to think about what the notion of creativity is to you.
In education research, among other options, creativity may be considered:
•as possibility thinking (Craft, 2001);
•about art being unteachable (Elkins, 2001);
•a risk (Craft and Jeffrey, 2008);
•about making things (Gauntlett, 2011);
•about the role arts can play in education, questioning practices and reinventing pedagogies (Naughton and Cole, 2018).
We invite you to consider, in each of the case studies, how the researchers position creativity in their research.
Harris (2014) argues that discussion about creativity is ever present in education and encourages a move toward celebrating creativity for its generative value in schools. Biesta (2018) suggests that encountering the doing of art is about being in the world as dialogue, that we are always having a discussion, if you like, about what it means to be in education. Each of these views is epistemology – a way of knowing – that influences how research is thought about, enacted and contextualised. For further discussion of creativity and creative thinking see Chapter 5 of Kara (2020).
Methodology, theory and method
Creative research methodologies (sometimes called ‘paradigms’) offer us different approaches to methods. Our decisions about which methodologies to work with are informed by our epistemology, or theory about how we know things, and our ontology, or worldview. And although we mention these here, we suggest that they are areas for you to explore further, and to consider your position(s) around, as you think about your research design while working through the chapters in this book.
Creative research methodologies are about knowledge inquiries that are firmly situated in the social world. These methodologies use methods that recall and respond to creative practices in, for example, poetry, artmaking, performances of music, drama or dance; computer programming and writing algorithms; the use of social media; and combinations of such practices. These practices are embedded in the researcher’s epistemology and ontology as ways of knowing the world and being/doing in the world.
Any research we conduct represents and enacts our theoretical positioning of ourselves. A theoretical perspective is important for research design and enactment, as it serves to organise our thoughts and ideas. And a part of this is making those thoughts and ideas clear to others. A theoretical framework, as Collins and Stockton (2018, p 2) remind us, is at the intersection of:
1.existing knowledge and previously formed ideas about complex phenomena,
2.the researcher’s epistemological dispositions, and
3.a lens and a methodically analytic approach.
Methodology encompasses both theory and methods in the ways we think through the research problem at hand and do the methods of the research. In research, methodologies and theories are used to describe the positioning of the research. Methodologies such as positivism arose in the early 1800s with the French philosopher Auguste Comte’s study of the phenomena of society (Babbie, 2015, p 34). In contemporary research, Leavy suggests six methodologies that are influenced by the researcher’s ontology and epistemology (Leavy, 2017, p 12). These include postpositivism, constructivist or interpretative, critical, transformative, pragmatic and arts-based/aesthetic intersubjective methodologies (Leavy, 2017).
Postpositivism, with its school of thought based in empiricism, suggests that knowledge is based in the lived experience. This worldview is based in rationalism and privileges a scientific method of testing, with an objective researcher at the centre of the research and with findings that are able to be replicated (Leavy, 2017; Babbie, 2015).
In education research, constructivist methodologies highlight ways in which people learn and construct their own knowledge and understanding of their world through and with their reflection on their experiences. As we interpret the world, we construct and reconstruct our understandings and make meaning with how we experience interactions with others, events and situations (Meltzoff and Cooper, 2018). In contrast, arts-based or aesthetic intersubjective methodologies value relational and embodied knowledge such as ‘sensory, emotional, perceptual, kinaesthetic, and imaginal knowledge’ (Leavy, 2017, p 14). Critical methodologies in education research cover theories to do with critique: postmodernisms, poststructuralisms, feminisms, critical race and queerness (Leavy, 2017). These methodologies of critique sometimes overlap with transformative concepts of critical theory, critical pedagogy and critical race theory. Whereas a pragmatism-based methodology can use whatever tools are needed in different contexts, it is action – what takes place – which is the focus (Leavy, 2017).
Indigenous research encompasses a diverse range of approaches and frameworks and pre-dates Euro-Western research by tens of thousands of years (Cram et al, 2013, p 11). It is a highly politicalised and contentious issue in many regions with a colonial settler or invasion history, such as Australia, New Zealand, Africa, Asia, the Americas and the Arctic. Many Indigenous methods and methodologies are holistic, community focused and relationship based and can be highly ethical. They are intimately linked with Indigenous ways of life, and – unlike Euro-Western methods – cannot be separated from their context (Kara, 2018, p 23). Therefore Indigenous knowledges should be sought and drawn on in any education research where Indigenous people or peoples are involved, ideally by including relevant Indigenous people as co-researchers or research advisors.
Thomson (2013a, para 9) positions ‘methodology to be theory’ and highlights the choices a researcher makes. Choices such as what, who and where to study; which research tradition to work within; what knowledges to draw on; what to include and exclude, foreground and background and the consequences of these decisions; what counts as data and why; relational and ethical concerns; how to represent the findings; and how to disseminate the research (Thomson, 2013a). O’Toole and Beckett (2010, p 81) remind us that there is a strong relationship between methodologies and methods, and when ‘mixing and matching’ research methods to consider ‘purpose, character and emphasis’. Working through these questions brings into focus how creative research methods and methodologies can be used in your project.
Methodology is a complex topic which we will unpack further in Chapter 2. As a brief summary for now: creative research methodologies can encompass particular ways of thinking about research and going about research in education. For all sorts of people – artists, teachers, researchers, artists working in education, teachers thinking through creative ways of working, educators exploring creative methods, or as someone new to creative methods bringing their lived experiences, background and discipline – creative methodologies offer different ways to explore the world. Further to arts education approaches, art as research (Nelson, 2013), or practice-led research and research-led practice (Cahnmann-Taylor and Siegesmund, 2008; Smith and Dean, 2009; Barrett and Bolt, 2010) may come from practitioner-or academic-led research. This research may be made from creative practice – in tangible and intangible forms – and reported using approaches varying from academic to artful.
Imagination in research
Imagination is key in all research when we ask the question ‘What is possible?’. This is not a new idea. Imagination has been described as a central plank of the craft of research (Mills, 1959, pp 211–12) and as a ‘primary tool’ for research (Rapport, 2004, p 102). When we imagine what approaches can be used in research, we examine our contexts, our interests and our passions in different ways and from different perspectives (Lapum et al, 2012, p 103). When we ask the question ‘What can this methodology do?’ we are thinking through the ways we are ‘in’ the world and about what different approaches, understandings and tools offer to us as researchers. When we consider our research ideas, we reflect on how our way of thinking through the research tradition is influencing the ‘what, how, why, when and why now?’ of our work.
Research in education is usually a social endeavour. Researchers work with others, as research participants, as collaborators and as research partners. Each of these terms denotes an approach that is influenced by a methodology and one or more theories. In the case studies in this book, different approaches are taken. For example, in Coleman’s case study in Chapter 4 there are artist co-participants: artists who are named and identified in the research with links to their artist websites (Coleman, 2018). In the case studies of LEGO® and sandboxing featured in Chapter 5, the researchers work with participants, but participants’ data is anonymised and they are not identified in research outputs. And in Chapter 3, Hall (2019) and her work with poetry invites participants to respond to others’ texts through written and spoken words, igniting a bouncing-off of narrative layers that enacts an embodied response to creating and responding to data. In each of these research processes the terms and actions used signal different approaches to relations, relationships and connections between researcher and who and what is being researched.
Others in the research may include research managers and leaders, funders of research and research supervisors. Each of these specialised roles can add to the contextual complexity of the research in hand. Research managers and leaders may have particular agendas to uphold around the kinds of research undertaken; control of the funds available to researchers; and institutional values of research behaviours. Funders of research similarly may have agendas relating to the fit of the research with their needs and values. Academic supervisors may work with particular research conventions. Researchers negotiate these relationships as part of their research work and those connections will shape their approach to creative research methodologies and methods.
Reflexivity and reflection in creative research methodologies may take on different approaches. Reflection as an autoethnographic approach can be questioned and criticised, as it centres the researcher. In this approach, it is difficult for the researcher alone to take the in-between space of the self and other, and to figure out and explain how subjectivities are constituted. In Water in a Dry Land, Somerville writes of her approach to reflexivity,
acknowledging, interrogating, and disrupting the presence of the researcher ‘I’. Enduring questions for researcher reflexivity are: Where am I in this research and how do my actions as a researcher shape the knowledge made possible through this research and its representations? (Somerville, 2013, p 11)
Somerville further states her context to clarify her background and interests in doing this research. This suggests that the use of reflexivity has pushed her to examine new possibilities for developing research that stretches how we think about place and country, through visual and spatial means. Some suggest that reflexivity has as much use for quantitative as for qualitative researchers (Shimp, 2007, p 150), and, by extension, this also applies to mixed-methods researchers.
Evaluation research in education
In the education context, evaluation research is usually thought of as assessment of the effectiveness of an intervention or programme. However, evaluation in research can include both effect as a measurement and affect as emotion. Evaluation can be scientific, with findings showing particular results leading to ideas about improvements or strengths or lack. Evaluation can also be approached as thoughtful and detailed representations of what the data has shown. Understanding what your data can do in evaluation is an important part of planning your research.
As such, the research can share voice, represent and be a creative outcome as part of process and/or output. Evaluation could also be a product from the evaluative process through, for example, the production of an evaluative artwork which is then used as data and presented in an evaluation report. This kind of approach can be very different from an interview transcript with coded themes or a bar graph showing a particular response to a question. Evaluative research in education invites you to think about your role as a researcher, and to consider the aim, audience and the appropriateness of what you plan to generate.
This book includes a range of research approaches that can be used in evaluation research in education. In Pat Thomson’s research of professional learning for teachers, gallery educators and artists at the Tate Gallery in London, England, the regular professional development programme by gallery educators is consistently evaluated using conventional methods (Thomson, 2014a). However, for the Tate’s Summer School, the researchers offered an alternative approach to evaluation using artistic processes. This approach focused on the possibilities of the available opportunities:
•to work with practising contemporary artists;
•to investigate performance art approaches and historical background;
•to experience the Tate as both an exhibition and performance space;
•to participate in artists’ practice and work; and
•to experiment with artists’ practice and work. (Thomson, 2014a)
The researchers comment: ‘This was however a first step towards building an alternative inquiry-based approach to the more usual evaluation “types”. We were convinced by this trial that a focus on “what’s going on here” via the notion of affordances – what was on offer, what was taken up, by whom, how and when and in what context – was worth pursuing further’ (Thomson, 2014a, para 73).
Ethical researching
A university ethics form can seem daunting: pages and pages of questions to answer.
We like to consider ‘doing ethics’ as a creative action to affirm and reaffirm your research designs, aims and purpose. Formal research ethics processes can confirm and strengthen the design of the research, so that it makes sense and proceeds in a way that is considered ethical by your ethics committee. Each of the questions asked makes you consider how your research project will work, what will happen and what people will do in your project. It will ask what kind of data you will gather. How will you generate data and how will you store it safely? Data in creative methods can be visual, sound, text, conversations (which may be online), songs, dances, meditations, to name just a few types. Data can be developed from an encounter or intervention, a material or process. How will you inform others of what you will be doing? Whose permission will you need in order to contact participants or collaborators? How will you release the findings? And so on – the list is extensive. The ethics application gives order to this list and can aid your thinking through an institutional ethics frame.
However, ethics applications often ask quite a limited set of questions. They do not always ask about how you will analyse data, or how you will disseminate your findings, or how you will safeguard your own well-being. In this book we will encourage you to go further, to think and act ethically throughout your education research work. Acting and thinking ethically is about considering who, how and what your research project will affect – you included. It is about considering beneficence – who benefits from your research. It is about honouring the project, participants, process and yourself in the making of research. It is thinking about power, and how power is used and taken through the research process. It is about what voices are heard and amplified, and what and who gets ignored, unseen or unconsidered. It is thinking about a research question or a response with an embodied wholeness as the research project consumes your time and efforts.
Different communities may have different views and beliefs about the value of ethics. Your job as a researcher is to mediate the space between your project and its fit within an ethical framework. This fit includes your ethics, and the stakeholders in the project, the institutions you are connected with, the researched institutions, peoples, problem, situations, behaviours and attitudes you are investigating.
In Australia, when working with First Nations people and cultures, researchers adhere to a number of ethical guidelines. These include government guidelines developed for research with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander individuals, communities and cultures; the Australia Council for the Arts guidelines for working with Indigenous art; and the National Association for the Visual Arts ethical pay rates for artists. The research guidelines highlight six core values: spirit and integrity, cultural continuity, equity, reciprocity, respect and responsibility (National Health and Medical Research Council, 2018). These extend the National Statement on Ethical Conduct of Research (2018), which applies research merit and integrity, justice, beneficence and respect as a set of deliberations in context, with judgement and considerable thoughtfulness to values and principles of the individual researcher towards others, communities and institutions. There are also guidelines for research work with First Nations and Indigenous peoples in some other countries such as Canada and New Zealand. And some Indigenous peoples around the world have begun to produce their own guidelines which any researcher will have to follow if they want to work with people from that community (Patterson et al, 2006, pp 53–4; Gray et al, 2017, pp 24–5; Nordling, 2017).
In Margaret Somerville’s project mentioned at the start of this chapter, she writes of talking to Ngemba custodian Brad Steadman about the ancient fish traps on the river at Brewarrina near Narran Lake, the largest freshwater lake in New South Wales, Australia. He talks with Somerville at length about the Ngemba fish traps, but when Somerville moves to talk about Narran Lake, Steadman states,
he cannot speak for the Narran Lake, there are old people in Walgett who can take me [Somerville] out there and know its stories. They speak a different language and they know different stories. They also know stories of the fish traps but cannot speak for the fish traps. (Somerville, 2013, p 42)
Ethics involves listening and learning about what stories are tellable, who is responsible for speaking these stories and who is telling them. In each of the chapters in this book we invite you to read and learn from each case study and from the sections on ethics. We further invite you to acknowledge that ethics and ethical practice need to be considered, reconsidered and negotiated at all stages of the research, from design to data gathering to analysis, reporting, dissemination and implementation.
Synopsis of each chapter
Each chapter of this book investigates particular research actions through a close study of a variety of case studies so that you can follow the references for more details. The book has been organised to take you through the stages of a research project, and we encourage this way of engaging with the text. As you become more comfortable, or if you are experienced in some areas, you are also encouraged to read lightly and move on to the next area, or jump to where you need to go to in order to progress your research project.
Chapter 2 is concerned with research design. It offers advice about how to design creative education research, how to think about developing a research study to meet its aims and objectives and how to generate research questions. This chapter will be an effective resource for designing good-quality research.
Chapter 3 focuses on context setting. It approaches the context of research and looks at different ways in which the researcher works with creative methods and positions self and others. The chapter shares ways to approach working in and establishing the context in educational spaces, and it is essential reading to prepare for data gathering.
Chapters 4 and 5 are both concerned with creative methods of data gathering. Chapter 4 focuses on studies involving children and young people, while Chapter 5 focuses on research with adult participants. Both chapters discuss the opportunities and limitations of a wide range of creative data-generation techniques and the associated ethical considerations. These two chapters provide an accessible but comprehensive overview of the field that can support readers to introduce creative approaches to gathering data for their own work, and to be more confident in this part of the ‘doing’ of creative education research.
Chapter 6 outlines good practice in data analysis and introduces a range of creative methods of analysing data. It offers an effective foundation for readers thinking through how to work with and analyse research data creatively, effectively and ethically.
Chapter 7 directs your attention to positioning research reporting as creative communication with your research audience. The chapter covers issues such as using plain language, editing your report and seeking reviewers’ feedback to help you to articulate your research. It showcases examples using poetic forms, graphic novels and technology such as blogging, video, podcasts and animation.
Chapter 8 covers the presentation of research in ways that diverge from the conventional conference or meeting presentation. This chapter includes case studies with data from participants using expanded notions of texts, such as screenplays and using video, digital storytelling and whiteboard animation techniques.
Chapter 9 is about what happens next in terms of creative ways of disseminating the messages from research to diverse audiences using multimodal techniques. Chapters 7, 8 and 9 combined provide the reader with a wide range of innovative practices to record, share and communicate research findings. These techniques can help to increase audience engagement and therefore increase the potential to achieve impact and positive change.
The concluding chapter reflects on lessons learned and further opportunities for, and challenges to, working with creative techniques in the field of education, both as a research tool and as a pedagogic approach to learning and development. There are prompts to generatively activate your thinking about your research focus and passion. The specific focus is on activities to support you in making progress with your thinking and research design skills, and to explore the ideas that have resonated with you.
Conclusion
As this book takes you through a cycle of research processes, it connects the thinking and doing of methods and theory. Thinking and doing are two of the main reflective and reflexive actions you need to do as a researcher. How do you position yourself and your project in its design and context? How do you gather data and analyse all of your work and processes? These thinkings and doings ultimately affect how you present and report on your work. Making research and developing viable connections are creative acts. Making visible your processes in your research projects develops your – and others’ – understanding of how research operates and matters. Taking responsibility for your project and how it progresses is a part of developing and maintaining your skills as a creative researcher. This book is a starting point – dive into the case studies, follow and extend others’ research tracks and make new ways of seeing, feeling and experiencing research.
CHAPTER DISCUSSION QUESTIONS
1.How do you identify where you will position yourself in your research?
2.What, for you, is the ‘why’ of working with creative methods?
3.How could creative methods support you in connecting with your research topic or question?
4.How can working with creative methods assist you in working with your research project?
5.How could working with creative methods help you to communicate outcomes of the research?
