Arts-Based Inquiry in QI: Seven Years From Crisis to Guerrilla Warfare

Abstract

This commentary reconsiders emerging standards for evaluation of the field of practice of qualitative inquiry and arts-based approaches. Specifically, this is a review of the dialogue around issues of standards that has continued through the first seven volumes of Qualitative Inquiry (QI), from March 1995 through June 2001, and is inclusive of this special issue of QI devoted to arts-based inquiry. What has emerged in QI is an actionoriented worldview among qualitative researchers who value inquiry for its usefulness within the community where it originates. In this way, QI has contributed greatly to the construction of still emerging practices within a newly formed tradition of participatory, critical action research based on an ethics of human relationships. Arts-based inquiry is one aspect of this emerging tradition.The newly formed discourse community of arts-based researchers is the focus in this current theme-oriented issue of Qualitative Inquiry (QI). To this end, co-guest editors Carol Mullen and I have assembled manuscripts that provide both theoretical discussions about arts-based research methodologies and examples of arts-based inquiries. Our contributing authors are enthusiastic coparticipants in the QI call for reinterpretation of the methods and ethics of human social research. Mullen introduces this reflexive exhibit of art-as-research with an overview of three predominant themes in this current collection of manuscripts-quality-based criteria for arts-based research, performance in arts-based research, and cultural politics in arts-based research.In my review of emerging epistemological and methodological concerns about the use of arts in research, I reconsidered the same issues Mullen has highlighted-quality, performance, and cultural politics in arts-based inquiry-but in this instance, I review discussions of standards for nontraditional methods and experimental, arts-based manuscripts that have appeared in QI during its 7-year publication history. Within the framework of

Arts-Informed Inquiry in Teacher Education: Contesting the Myths

“…Another conception of arts-informed inquiry, however, involves art with a small 'a' in the sense that the art need not have the aesthetic quality of a piece that has been created for art's sake (Diamond & Mullen, 1999;Finley, 2003). Rather, it is sufficient that art making be used in the process of reflecting on one's development or in communicating new understandings, without it having to be a classic work.…”

“…Arts-informed inquiry is also known as arts-based research (Barone, 1997), arts-based inquiry (Finley, 2003) and arts-based educational research (Barone & Eisner, 1997;Diamond & Mullen, 1999). 'Arts-informed inquiry' has been used consistently through this article.…”

Exploring Risky Youth Experiences: Popular Theatre as a Participatory, Performative Research Method

“…Recently, the notion of performance (or performativity) has been taken up by qualitative social researchers as a form of critical pedagogy in doing arts-based inquiry (Finley, 2003), in the writing of performance texts (Denzin, 2003), and in critical arts education (Garoian, 1999). For Denzin, performance ethnography as praxis is "a way of acting on the world in order to change it" (p. 228).…”

“…Popular Theatre as a research method builds on qualitative methods, such as Clandinin and Connelly"s(2000) narrative inquiry, and alternative or arts-based ways of knowing and representing research (Diamond & Mullen, 1999;Eisner, 1997;Finley, 2003). A postmodern attitude toward "truth" and the production of knowledge has legitimized an abundance of alternative approaches to doing research and new forms of representing research in the social sciences 6 .…”

“Lock ‘Em Up . . .” but Where’s the Key? Transformative Drama with Incarcerated Youth

“…The arts-based methods (Barone & Eisner, 1997;Finley, 2003) provided opportunities for the youth to express their embodied and emotional as well as intellectual knowledge. The study drew on the tradition of critical pedagogy, based on the work of Freire (1970), focusing on the development of critical consciousness, the capacity to critically examine the world in order to transform it.…”