eBook
Available on Compatible NOOK devices, the free NOOK App and in My Digital Library.
Related collections and offers
Overview
This e-book edition features 61 full-color figures. (Figures will appear in black and white on black-and-white e-readers).
See also Dr. Leavy's authored book, Method Meets Art, Third Edition, an ideal course text that provides an accessible introduction to ABR.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781462531790 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Guilford Publications, Inc. |
| Publication date: | 08/21/2017 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 738 |
| Sales rank: | 835,269 |
| File size: | 15 MB |
| Note: | This product may take a few minutes to download. |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
CHAPTER 1
Introduction to Arts-Based Research
• Patricia Leavy
The universe is made of stories, not of atoms.
— Muriel Rukeyser
Art, at its best, has the potential to be both immediate and lasting. It's immediate insofar as it can grab hold of our attention, provoke us, or help to transport us. Our response may be visceral, emotional, and psychological, before it is intellectual. Art also has the capacity to make long- lasting, deep impressions. Recent research in neuroscience, on which I elaborate shortly, indicates that art may have unmatched potential to promote deep engagement, make lasting impressions, and therefore possesses unlimited potential to educate.
While the arts are worthy unto themselves, purely for the sake of artistic expression and cultural enrichment, they are also invaluable to research communities across the disciplines. How do researchers decide what to study? How do they determine the best course for doing so? How do they share what they have learned with others? With whom do they share? Art educator Elliot Eisner (1997, p. 8) noted that our "capacity to wonder is stimulated" by the tools and forms of expression with which we are familiar. He observed that we seek "what we know how to find" (p. 7). Sharlene Hesse-Biber and I (Hesse-Biber & Leavy, 2006, 2008) have suggested that researchers need to "come at things differently" in order to ask new questions or develop new insights. Researchers tapping into the power of the arts are doing so in order to create new ways to see, think, and communicate. Cumulatively, they have built a new field: arts-based research (ABR).
ABR exists at the intersection of art and science. Historically, art and science have been polarized, erroneously labeled as antithetical to each other. However, art and science bear intrinsic similarities in their attempts to explore, illuminate, and represent aspects of human life and the social and natural worlds of which we are a part (Leavy, 2009, 2015). ABR harnesses and melds the creative impulses and intents between artistic and scientific practice.
What Is ABR?
ABR is a transdisciplinary approach to knowledge building that combines the tenets of the creative arts in research contexts (Leavy, 2009, 2015; McNiff, 2014; Chapter 2, this volume). I have described ABR practices as methodological tools used by researchers across the disciplines during any or all phases of research, including problem generation, data or content generation, analysis, interpretation, and representation (Leavy, 2009, 2015). These tools adapt the tenets of the creative arts in order to address research questions holistically. This process of inquiry therefore involves researchers engaging in art making as a way of knowing (McNiff, 2014; Chapter 2, this volume). Inquiry practices are informed by the belief that the arts and humanities can facilitate social scientific goals (Jones, 2010). Arts-based practices may draw on any art form and representational forms that include but are not limited to literary forms (essays, short stories, novellas, novels, experimental writing, scripts, screenplays, poetry, parables); performative forms (music, songs, dance, creative movement, theatre); visual art (photography, drawing, painting, collage, installation art, three-dimensional (3-D) art, sculpture, comics, quilts, needlework); audiovisual forms (film, video); multimedia forms (graphic novels), and multimethod forms (combining two or more art forms).
It is important to note that while I use the term "arts-based research" to categorize the research activities I have outlined, there are numerous equally valid terms that practitioners use to describe artistic forms of research. Table 1.1 depicts many of the terms that appear in the literature.
Some authors are quick to point to subtle differences between these terms (Chilton & Leavy, 2014; Leavy, 2015). While these assertions are sound, the attempt to continually label this work has created confusion, difficulty synthesizing the work being done, and has posed challenges to graduate students seeking to legitimate their thesis work (Chilton & Leavy, 2014; Finley, 2011; Leavy, 2015; Ledger & Edwards, 2011; McNiff, 2011; Sinner, Leggo, Irwin, Gouzouasis, & Grauer, 2006). Therefore, I adopt the popular term "arts-based research." My intention is to use this term to describe an umbrella category that encompasses all artistic approaches to research. Some other terms are noted throughout this handbook, including chapters in Part I devoted to "a/r/tography" and "performative social science," which have strong research communities within the larger ABR community.
There is also some debate in the research community as to whether ABR is a paradigm. Some suggest that ABR is a methodological field within the qualitative paradigm, and others assert that it is its own paradigm. As I explained in the second edition of my book Method Meets Art: Arts-Based Research Practice (Leavy, 2015), I have come to understand ABR as a paradigm. In support of this claim, Gioia Chilton and I have written (Chilton & Leavy, 2014) that ABR requires a novel worldview and covers expansive terrain. James Haywood Rolling (2013) and Nancy Gerber and colleagues (2012) also assert that ABR is a paradigm. Lorri Neilsen (2004) implicitly distinguishes ABR from qualitative inquiry by suggesting that ABR uses a "groundless theory" approach, in contrast to the "grounded theory" approach on which some qualitative research relies.
While the next chapter is devoted to ABR philosophy, it is important to explain briefly how we might conceptualize this paradigm. Epistemologically, ABR assumes the arts can create and convey meaning (Barone & Eisner, 2012). ABR is based on aesthetic knowing or, as Nielsen (2004) suggests, "aesthetic work." With respect to the aesthetics or "beauty" of the research product itself, the beauty elicited by ABR is explicitly linked to how it fosters reflexivity and empathy in the consumer (and researcher) (Dunlop, 2001). Aesthetics are linked to advancing care and compassion (McIntyre, 2004). ABR is grounded in a philosophy that Gerber and colleagues (2012, p. 41) suggest:
• Recognizes art has been able to convey truth(s) or bring about awareness (both knowledge of the self and of others).
• Recognizes the use of the arts is critical in achieving self–other knowledge.
• Values preverbal ways of knowing.
• Includes multiple ways of knowing, such as sensory, kinesthetic, and imaginary knowing.
The philosophical beliefs form an "aesthetic intersubjective paradigm" (Chilton, Gerber, & Scotti, 2015). Aesthetics draw on sensory, emotional, perceptual, kinesthetic, embodied, and imaginal ways of knowing (Chilton et al., 2015; Cooper, Lamarque, & Sartwell, 1997; Dewey, 1934; Harris- Williams, 2010; Langer, 1953; Whitfield, 2005). ABR philosophy is also strongly influenced by philosophical understandings of "the body" and, specifically, advances in embodiment theory and phenomenology. "Inter-subjectivity" refers to the relational quality of arts as knowing, as we make meanings with others, and with nature (Conrad & Beck, 2015).
A Brief Historical Overview of ABR
The term "arts-based research" was coined by Eisner in the early 1990s, and has since developed into a major methodological genre. However, larger shifts occurring in prior decades set the stage for ABR. Specifically, the development of creative arts therapies, advances in the study of arts and learning (especially in neuroscience), and developments in qualitative research have all influenced the emergence of ABR at this historical moment.
Creative Arts Therapy
While the idea of harnessing the healing and therapeutic power of the arts is an old one, the development of art therapy as a field is significant. Creative arts therapy is a hybrid discipline primarily grounded in the fields of psychology and the arts (Vick, 2012). The field emerged from the 1940s to 1970s (Vick, 2012), with major growth in the 1960s and 1970s (McNiff, 2005). Margaret Naumburg is considered the "mother of art therapy" in North America and in 1961 Elinor Ulman founded the first art therapy journal, the Bulletin of Art Therapy (Vick, 2012). From the 1970s to the 1990s a major shift occurred in the academy, with researchers turning to arts-based practices (Sinner et al., 2006). Shaun McNiff, a contributor to this handbook and the pioneer who wrote the first book expressly about ABR in 1998, suggests that the field of creative arts therapy paved the way for ABR by showing that art and science can be successfully merged in inquiry processes. Noted creative arts therapist Cathy Malchiodi, a contributor to this handbook, has also been a leading champion for ABR, building bridges between fields for decades.
Arts and Learning
Advances in our understanding of how the arts can impact learning, and make deep impressions, have also been pivotal. George Lakoff and Mark Johnson (1980) suggest that metaphor is not characteristic of language alone, but it is pervasive in human thought and action. Mark Turner (1996) argued that the common perception that the everyday mind is nonliterary and that the literary mind is optional is untrue. He suggests that "the literary mind is the fundamental mind" and observed, "Story is a basic principle of mind" (p. v). We need not rely on philosophy, as there is increasing "hard science" in support of the unique impact art has on our brains.
The growing body of scholarship on the relationship between neuroscience and literature, often dubbed "literary neuroscience," has implications for why fiction might be a particularly effective pedagogical tool. Natalie Phillips has studied how reading affects the brain and why people often describe their experience of reading fiction as one of immersion (Thompson & Vedantam, 2012). She and her team turned to the fiction of Jane Austen and measured brain activity as research participants engaged in close versus casual reading of an Austen novel. They found that the whole brain appears to be transformed as people engage in close readings of fiction. Moreover, there appear to be global activations across a number of different regions of the brain, including some unexpected areas, such as those that are involved in movement and touch. In the experiment, it was as if "readers were physically placing themselves within the story as they analyzed it" (Thompson & Vendantam, 2012). Research in this area is taking off. For another example, Gregory Berns led a team of researchers in a study published in Brain Connectivity that suggests there is heightened connectivity in our brains for days after reading a novel (Berns, Blaine, Prietula, & Pye, 2013).
In February 2015 I was one of 50 participants worldwide who were invited to the Salzburg Global Seminar in Austria. The title of the 5-day seminar was "The Neuroscience of Art: What are the Sources of Creativity and Innovation?" The majority of the participants were either world-class neuroscientists studying creativity or accomplished artists. It was an extraordinary experience, during which I learned that there is extensive, funded research being conducted on how our brains function while we are engaging in creative practices such as art making, comparisons in brain activity during art making between novices and accomplished artists, and how our brains are affected as we consume art. It is clear to me that (1) research in this area is taking off, and (2) our brains respond in critical ways as we engage in art making, as we enter "flow" states of creativity, and as we consume art.
The history of neuroscience itself is intertwined with fiction. Silas Weir Mitchell (1824–1914), the founder of American neurology (Todman, 2007), was also a fiction writer who published 19 novels, seven poetry books, and many short stories. Many of his works of fiction were inextricably bound to patient observations made during his clinical practice and centered on topics dealing with psychological and physiological crises. Charlotte Perkins Gilman's famous short story "The Yellow Wallpaper" (1892) is used in some neurology and neuroscience programs to this day in order to illustrate concepts in mental illness and doctor–patient relationships with respect to sociohistorical and cultural understandings of gender (Todman, 2007).
There is also an important relationship between art therapy and neuroscience (Franklin, 2010; Hass-Cohen, Kaplan, & Carr, 2008; Malchiodi, 2012) that further suggests great potential for ABR and engagement. Historically, scientists posited that the two hemispheres of the brain have different functions: the right holds creativity and intuition, and the left, logical thought and language (Malchiodi, 2012). However, the left hemisphere of the brain is involved in art making and, indeed, both hemispheres are necessary for artistic expression (Gardner, 1984; Malchiodi, 2012; Ramachandran, 1999, 2005). A study by Rebecca Chamberlain, Ian Christopher McManus, Nicola Brunswick, and Ryota Kanai in the journal NeuroImage (2014) debunks right-brain and left-brain thinking to argue that those with visual artistic talent or those who identify as visual artists have increased amounts of gray and white matter on both sides of the brain. There is an emerging field called neuroaesthetics that considers how our brains make sense of visual art. Nobel laureate Eric Kandel (2012) explains that visual art activates many distinct and at times conflicting emotional signals in the brain, which in turn causes deep memories.
Daniel J. Levitin (2007, 2008) has been at the forefront of studying the cognitive neuroscience of music. His popular work combines psychology (including evolutionary psychology), music, and neuroscience in order to look at the evolution of music and the human brain. He writes, "Music, I argue, is not simply a distraction or pastime, but a core element of our identity as a species" (2009, p. 3). Like those exploring creative arts therapies and neuroscience, Levitin (2007) notes that music is distributed throughout the brain, in both hemispheres. Levitin (2007, 2008) suggests that music is, in essence, hardwired in our brains. He even points to patients with brain damage who can no longer read a newspaper but can still read music.
Qualitative Research
Over the past few decades, developments in the practice of qualitative research have also led many social researchers to explore ABR. This can be attributed to factors, including the narrative turn, the emergence and growth of creative nonfiction inside and outside of the academy, and researchers with arts backgrounds leading the charge in delineating the synergies between artistic and qualitative practice.
Arthur Bochner and Nicholas Riggs (2014) have documented a surge in narrative inquiry across different disciplines in the 1980s through the end of the 20th century. By the start of the 21st century the "narrative turn" had occurred (Bochner & Riggs, 2014; Denzin & Lincoln, 2000). Narrative researchers attempt to avoid the objectification of research participants and aim to preserve the complexity of human experience (Josselson, 2006). The rise in autobiographical data (and emergence of autoethnography) has greatly influenced the turn to narrative or critical storytelling.
The emergence and proliferation of creative nonfiction approaches to news reporting, and later academic reporting, is also part of the context for both the narrative turn and the emergence of ABR more broadly. Creative nonfiction arose in the 1960s and 1970s to make research reports more engaging while remaining truthful (Caulley, 2008; Goodall, 2008). Journalists and other writers developed ways to use literary tools to strengthen their reporting. Lee Gutkind (2012), founder of Creative Nonfiction magazine, proclaims creative nonfiction to be the fastest growing genre in publishing, and says that, at its core, the genre promotes "true stories well told" (p. 6).
Artists turned qualitative researchers and researchers with art backgrounds have also propelled ABR forward. For example, art educators Elliot Eisner and Tom Barone each brought their experience in painting to bear on inquiry processes. Joe Norris and Johnny Saldaña have each brought their theatre arts backgrounds to bear in the qualitative community. What these artist-scholars (or "artist-scientists" in Valerie Janesick's [2001] terminology) and many others have ultimately done is flesh out the synergies between qualitative and artistic practice. They have shown how qualitative and artistic practices are not as disparate as some may think, and how they can be used in service of each other. Both practices can be viewed as crafts (Leavy, 2009, 2015). The researcher is the instrument in qualitative research as in artistic practice (Janesick, 2001). Moreover, both practices are holistic and dynamic, involving reflection, description, problem formulation and problem solving, and the ability to tap into, identify, and explain the role of intuition and creativity in the research process (Leavy, 2009, 2015).
(Continues…)
Excerpted from "Handbook of Arts-Based Research"
by .
Copyright © 2018 The Guilford Press.
Excerpted by permission of The Guilford Press.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
Table of Contents
I. The Field1. Introduction to Arts-Based Research, Patricia Leavy
2. Philosophical and Practical Foundations of Artistic Inquiry: Creating Paradigms, Methods, and Presentations Based in Art, Shaun McNiff
3. A/r/tography as Living Inquiry, Rita Irwin, Natalie LeBlanc, Jee Yeon Ryu, & George Belliveau
4. The Performative Movement in Social Science, Kenneth J. Gergen & Mary M. Gergen
5. Creative Arts Therapies and Arts-Based Research, Cathy A. Malchiodi
6. Creativity and Imagination: Research as World Making!, Celiane Camargo-Borges
7. Arts-Based Research Traditions and Orientations in Europe: Perspectives from Finland and Spain, Anniina Suominen, Mira Kallio-Tabin, & Fernando Hernández-Hernández
II. Literary Genres
8. Narrative Inquiry, Mark Freeman
9. The Art of Autoethnography, Tony E. Adams & Stacy Holman Jones
10. Long Story Short: Encounters with Creative Nonfiction as Methodological Provocation, Anita Sinner, Erika Hasebe-Ludt, & Carl Leggo
11. Fiction-Based Research, Patricia Leavy
12. Poetic Inquiry: Poetry as/in/for Social Research, Sandra L. Faulkner
III. Performance Genres
13. A/r/tographic Inquiry in a New Totality: The Rationality of Music and Poetry, Peter Gouzouasis
14. Living, Moving, and Dancing: Embodied Ways of Inquiry, Celeste Snowber
15. Ethnodrama and Ethnotheatre, Joe Salvatore
16. Reflections on the Techniques and Tones of Playbuilding by a Director/Actor/Researcher/Teacher, Joe Norris
IV. Visual Arts
17. Arts-Based Visual Research, Gunilla Holm, Fritjof Sahlström, & Harriet Zilliacus
18. Drawing and Painting Research, Barbara J. Fish
19. Collage as Arts-Based Research, Victoria Scotti & Gioia Chilton
20. Installation Art: The Voyage Never Ends, Jennifer L. Lapum
21. How to Draw Comics the Scholarly Way: Creating Comics-Based Research in the Academy, Paul Kuttner, Nick Sousanis, & Marcus B. Weaver-Hightower
V. Audiovisual Arts
22. Film as Research/Research as Film, Trevor Hearing & Kip Jones
23. Ethnocinema and Video-Based Research, Anne Harris
VI. Mixed Method and Team Approaches
24. Sea Monsters Conquer the Beaches: Community Art as an Educational Resource—a Marine Debris Project, Karin Stoll, Wenche Sørmo, & Mette Gårdvik
25. Multimethod Arts-Based Research, Susan Finley
VII. Arts-Based Research within Disciplines or Area Studies
26. Arts-Based Research in Education, James Haywood Rolling, Jr.
27. An Overview of Arts-Based Research in Sociology, Anthropology, and Psychology, Jessica Smartt Gullion & Lisa Schäfer
28. Deepening the Mystery of Arts-Based Research in the Health Sciences, Jennifer L. Lapum
29. Arts-Based Research in the Natural Sciences, Rebecca Kamen
30. Learning from Aesthetics: Unleashing Untapped Potential in Business, Keiko Krahnke & Donald Gudmundson
VIII. Additional Considerations
31. Criteria for Evaluating Arts-Based Research, Patricia Leavy
32. Translation in Arts-Based Research, Nancy Gerber & Katherine Myers-Coffman
33. Arts-Based Writing: The Performance of Our Lives, Candace Jesse Stout & Vittoria S. Daiello
34. Art, Agency, and Ethics in Research: How the New Materialisms Will Require and Transform Arts-Based Research, Jerry Rosiek
35. Aesthetic-Based Research as Pedagogy: The Interplay of Knowing and Unknowing toward Expanded Seeing, Liora Bresler
36. The Pragmatics of Publishing the Experimental Text, Norman K. Denzin
37. Going Public: The Reach and Impact of Ethnographic Research, Phillip Vannini & Sarah Abbott
Conclusion: On Realizing the Promise of Arts-Based Research, Patricia Leavy
Interviews
Qualitative researchers interested in using arts-based methods in their work; graduate students and instructors in education, sociology, psychology, creative arts therapies, communications, nursing, social work, and fine arts. Will serve as a reference or core book in such courses as Arts-Based Research, Interpretive Inquiry, Narrative Inquiry, Art Education, Advanced Qualitative Research, and Creative Arts Therapy.