Example Studies

Following are two example studies that illustrate issues with which arts-based researchers contend. The first is an arts-based construction, and the second is a piece of aesthetic social criticism.

Study 1: Boundary Bay: A Novel (Dunlop, 1999)

The dissertation that is discussed in the following paragraphs represents an example of literary arts–based research that explores issues of educational self-development inspired by interviews with secondary school educators, doctoral students, and university instructors. Such issues include the nature of teachers' lives, literary and artistic production, and the ways that social institutions affect women teachers' intellectual and creative lives. As a novel, Dunlop's research shows rather than tells about these issues in storied form, placing the epistemology of the ways lives are storied at the center of inquiry. The choice of the word boundary in the title suggests Dunlop's emphasis on calling attention to and blurring genre boundaries, such as by highlighting the ways disciplines, types of texts, and the lives of the researcher, subjects, and audiences are interrelated rather than separate and distinct.

Forms and Functions of the Study

Dunlop suggests that her novel is itself an act of inquiry, by which readers can extend their experiences through the perspectives of the characters, thus becoming more critical of the issues themselves. She positions her writing in relation to the genre of the educational development or self-formation novel (in German, the Bildungsroman), which explores the formative development of an individual within the context of sociocultural expectations and institutions. This genre, she suggests, has a pedagogical intent of raising questions in the reader about the origins of one's identity and purposes of personal growth in one's apprenticeship and in overall life meaning.

Social and Aesthetic Questions in the Study

The main character of Dunlop's novel is Evelyn, a new tenure-track professor in the English education department. She is recently divorced, a mentor to a new graduate student named Grace, and a teacher of literature. In one passage, Evelyn lectures about the literature of education and self-development to her graduate class, her public voice in lecture contrasting starkly with her interior voice:

In this passage, Dunlop uses the aesthetic tools of fiction (such as the shift in character perspective or voice) to explore issues of gender in the discipline of fiction writing and in the social sphere of the academy. Dunlop juxtaposes her character's vocal tone, word choice, and sentence structure when speaking publicly to a group of students and introspectively to the audience of only herself. This tension raises questions about how fiction's assumption of a male reader's experiences might affect various readers. It also raises questions about gendered discourse in the academy.

Implications for Arts-Based Research

Dunlop's novel positions itself as an epistemological departure from the traditional purposes of educational research through its pursuit of meaning over certainty, and its storied, aesthetic structure over paradigmatic text (it shows rather than tells). Further, it problematizes the ways that genres of research documentation affect the knowledge that audiences construct about issues of schooling. In particular, the research suggests the importance of increased interdisciplinary relationships in teacher education and more analysis of the gendered experiences of teachers and teacher educators through storied forms. This example also asks that serious attention be paid to the power of the novel (or other fictional genres) as a research genre that uniquely addresses issues of self-development through the form and function of the fiction itself. Dunlop's research methodology also raises questions about educational research from an aesthetic perspective. What does it mean, for example, to select stories to tell based on what moves you as a fiction writer?

Study 2: Evidence of Utopianizing Toward Social Justice in Young People's Community-Based Art Works (Chappell, 2009)

The dissertation discussed here represents an example of arts/educational criticism, a form of arts-based research that explores the aesthetic qualities and social content of young people's art works. Chappell selected art works from community-based organizations across the United States in which young people between thirteen and twenty-three years of age participated from 2001 to 2008. The study asked: What are young people's concerns for the world as expressed in and through their art works? What are their visions for better worlds, as they relate to their expressed concerns? What aesthetic tools and languages do young people use in their process of expressing concerns and visions? Drawing from E. P. Thompson's idea (1977) that art works educate desire, Chappell analyzed the ways that these art works might teach audiences alternative ways of thinking about and changing the world because of the ways that the art works prompt caring and action.

Form and Functions of the Study

In educational criticism, Eisner (2002) suggests that the critic chooses “the difficult task of rendering [some] essential ineffable qualities constituting works of art into a language that will help others perceive the works more deeply” (p. 213). Eisner responds to traditional conceptions of the critic as monologic, a person who functions to deliver singular, truthful, and accurate interpretations of aesthetic experiences in order to reeducate the public about works of art through the critic's personal viewpoint and language. Chappell joins Eisner and others (see, for example, Oliva, 2000) in asking the critic to build a transactive space through research so that multiple audiences can participate in the readings, reexperiencing the art works anew for themselves and contributing other readings to the conversation.

Eisner suggests that the critic “requires an ability not only to perceive the subtle particulars of educational life but also to recognize the ways those particulars form a part of a structure within the classroom” (Eisner, 2002, p. 217), or, in the case of this research, within works of art. He outlines four aspects of educational criticism: descriptive, interpretive, evaluative, and thematic. In this research Chappell addresses these aspects of educational criticism, weaving description of the art works with her interpretation of their meaning. The study constructs vicarious experiences of the art works for the reader, works to understand the meanings of art works and their social and aesthetic significance, and evaluates the art works for their facility to construct desire for social change.

Social and Aesthetic Questions in the Study

The study found that many young people's art works emphasized concerns with inclusion and exclusion, particularly marginalizations that affect their personal group memberships, access to resources, and equitable treatment. Their active political positions, beliefs, and experiences speak back to the public's imaginary, conceptualizing urban youth as hopeful of change and willing to participate in bringing it about. Aesthetic characteristics in the art works raise such social questions through the tools of the art forms themselves.

For example, hip hop artists from Youth Movement Records, an organization in Oakland, California, use emotion to compel audiences to reconsider the experiences of urban youth in the title song from their album Change the Nation. Youth artist Chuck Webster (2006) uses tone and word choice to compel a desire for restoration of social ills: “This the land of milk & honey / the land of spliffs and money / they aint wanting to change, clap pistols while tears runnin / yeah my house got busted at, better days id love that.” The song engages an affective, relational aesthetic to carry the listener through the personal and political. Both desperate pain and desire are located in the forward momentum of the song and the intensity of Webster's views: “it would be worldwide the peace that I would provide/ who better than I—I seen hell with these eyes.”

He uses metaphor to imagine better worlds, constructing images steeped in emotion. He places the capital of this new world on “top of Mount Zion,” a reference to the area of Old Jerusalem in Israel. Mount Zion is a synecdoche, or a single aspect of a whole that comes to represent that whole. It becomes a symbol for the kind of world that Webster hopes for, a vision that stands in stark contrast to the “hell” he has seen with these eyes. But this place of hope and change seems almost out of reach, as it does not resemble the current nation, one that he wants to kiss goodbye. The kiss smack sound that he includes at the end of the verse echoes, even invokes sadness or dismay. Yet it is an unexpected personal touch, adding humor to the prospect of change. The kiss also passes the song over to the chorus, a call-and-response of multiple singers echoing each other's line: “If I could change the nation … If we could change the nation.” Aesthetically and ethically, this polyvocal call-and-response builds a sense of collective desire that social change needs multiple voices and collaborative effort. It raises such questions as Who will change the nation? Who cares about its change? What role or roles do these young people want to take on themselves? How should we as various audience members be involved?

Implications for Arts-Based Research

This study is a form of arts-based research that engages in analytical discussion of art works while paying particular attention to the art forms themselves. As a piece of criticism, it raises questions about the role of the critic in social research, such as, What happens when discussion requires a movement away from the medium of the art work (such as from musical to written form)? and What is lost in that translation? This loss includes the limitation of using one language to describe the product of another language (such as using text to describe music, when the reader cannot hear the rhythms, mood, tempo, and so on of the song). This study also asks audiences to reexperience their values and beliefs about young people in different communities through taking on new perspectives offered aesthetically by viewing the art works in the context of critical research.