Arts-Based Research in Education

Presenting readers with definitions and examples of arts-based educational research, this text identifies tensions, questions, and models in the field and provides guidance for both beginning and more experienced practices.

As arts-based research grows in prominence and popularity, the barriers between empirical, institutional, and artistic research diminish, leading to an ever-increasing, global need to understand and navigate this evolving domain of research. Featuring contributions from a diverse range of leading scholartists in the field, this text weaves together critical essays about arts-based research in the literary, visual, and performing arts with examples of excellence in theory and practice. These essays introduce the theory and practice of arts-based research taking place in sites of teaching and learning. The third edition draws together all contributors from the previous editions, with revised reflective essays, new examples, and updates that bring these ground-breaking works up to date with current developments over the past decade of increased arts-based educational research activity in this rapidly expanding field.

This book is ideal for pre-service and in-service art educators. It can be utilized in art education teacher certification courses that focus on methods, or as a component of a larger foundations course on qualitative inquiry.

Author Biography

Melisa Cahnmann, Meigs Professor of Language and Literacy Education at the University of Georgia, has authored many books on arts-based research and pedagogy, including The Creative Ethnographer’s Notebook. Recipient of a Fulbright Scholar Ambassadorship, the Meigs Distinguished Teaching Professorship, and the Beckman for Professors Who Inspire, she lives in Athens, GA, with her husband and two children.

Richard Siegesmund is Professor Emeritus of Art and Design Education at Northern Illinois University. His recent books include Visual methods of inquiry: Images as research, and he has regularly presented workshops on visual methods at the annual conference of the International Congress for Qualitative Inquiry. A recipient of two Fulbright awards in visual methodology, he and his wife now live in Switzerland dividing time between Zürich and the Upper Engadin.