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and derivative from This article represents a paradigm analysis of the characteristics of
an artist/researcher's arts-based research (ABR) in an effort to reconceptualizethe potential
. . of arts-based practices in generating new curriculum approaches
practice or arts praxIs for general education practice and the development of the learner.
Arts-based theoretical models-or art for scholarship's sake-are
inquiry models; characteristically poststructural, prestructural, performative,
they are capable of pluralistic, proliferative, and postparadigmatic, offering the promise
of divergent pedagogical pathways worthy of new exploration.
yielding outcomes
taking researchers
in directions the
.
SCIences cannot go. "
In a 2007 graduate art education special topics Since the influential publication of Ralph Tyler's
course, student researchers in art education under- (1949) Basic Principles of Curriculum and Instruction,
took with me to expand upon the thesis that the the design of educational curriculum has tradi-
"theoretical scope of studio art practice" can have tionally been approached as a scientifically-based
a transformative effect on educational research endeavor guided by hypotheses and proof-of-
outcomes (Sullivan, 2006, p. 22). We began by theory principles with the student as the object of
examining the larger premise that an arts-based study. The four questions 1 of the Tylerian rationale
research paradigm works to disrupt the para- have become a metanarrative so consciously or
unconsciously embedded, it has been "codified as
digms governing qualitative and/or quantitative
the goals and objectives, lesson plans, scope and
research methods. Teaching an arts-based research
sequence guides, and mastery of learning evalu-
methods course served as the point of departure
ations" throughout education practice (Slattery,
1995, p. 47). Curriculum theorist Patrick Slattery
(1995) suggests that educational theorizers have
"There is no one set of criteria for judging yet to fully explore the reconceptualization of cur-
riculum through arts-based educational research.
the artistic quality of a work of arts-based This article represents an initial effort to charac-
terize an arts-based research paradigm that also
research just as there is no one paradigm serves to reconceptualize curriculum as "ongoing, if
complicated conversation" more compatible to life
for the beauty of a work of art; for some, and the constitution of knowledge in a postmod-
ern society with a messy plurality of inaugurations
and transactions of meaning (Pinar, 2004, p. 188).
the beauty of a work of art is in the
Headwaters
aesthetics of its forms and the mastery Arts-based research methods and outcomes
find their sources in diverse arts practices. As such, I
of its techniques, for others, it is in the disagree with Elliot Eisner's (2008) characterization
of arts-based research as a "soft-form" of qualita-
authenticity and expressiveness of voice, tive research (p. 19). The tendency to emphasize
form over process or to conflate the two such that
and for still others, in the incisiveness of "aesthetic considerations ...trump epistemological
ones" (Eisner, 2008, p. 25), is a mischaracterization
its social critique." that stems from an empirical-analytic paradigm
ably address enduring and unsolved problems in know it when we see it. I will make the following
education, such as what Karen Lee Carroll (1997) ontological arguments about arts practices at the
describes as the persistent "need to secure a posi- intersection of arts-based inquiry models:
tion for the arts in the schools" (p. 174). Arts-based research is poststructural (Barone,
2008).
Arts Practice as Methodology
Arts-based research is prestructural and
In his explanation of qualitative and quan- experiential (Behar, 2008; Leggo, 2008).
titative research paradigms, John W. Creswell
Arts-based research is performative and
(1994) distinguishes between a research method
improvisational (Sanders, 2006).
as the means for "data collection and analysis;
Arts-based research is pluralistic (Olomo &
and research methodology "as the entire research
Jones, 2008).
process from problem identification to data analy-
Arts-based research is proliferative and iterative
sis" (p. xvii). Researchers have documented strong
(Bickel,2008).
linkages between arts-based research methodol-
ogy and poststructural methodologies. Patrick Arts-based research is postparadigmatic
Slattery (2001) writes of "exploring poststructural (Carroll, 1997; Pearse, 1992).
EN DNOTE
1These four questions are: 1) What educational purposes should the school seek to attain?, 2) How can learn-
ing experiences be selected which are likely to be useful in attaining these objectives?, 3) How can learning
experiences be organized for effective instruction?, and 4) How can the effectiveness of learning experiences
be evaluated? (Tyler, 1949, pp. v-vi).