Creative Research Methods in Education

Principles and Practices

Kara, Helen, Lemon, Narelle

• Publisher: Policy Press
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781447357087
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Research in Education

Co-authored by an international team of experts across disciplines, this important book is one of the first to demonstrate the enormous benefit creative methods offer for education research. You do not have to be an artist to be creative, and the book encourages students, researchers and practitioners to discover and consider new ways to explore the field of education. It illustrates how using creative methods, such as poetic inquiry, comics, theatre and animation, can support learning and illuminate participation and engagement. Bridging academia and practice, the book offers: • practical advice and tips on how to use creative methods in education research; • numerous case studies from around the world providing real-life examples of creative research methods in education practice; • reflective discussion questions to support learning.

1

Introduction

Chapter 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...