Course Description: 

Arts-based research (ABR) is an approach to research that has become more recognized in recent years. Particularly used in the social sciences, arts-based research focuses on a “systematic use of the artistic process…as a primary way of understanding and examining experience…” (McNiff, 2008, p.29) otherwise inaccessible through more traditional forms of knowledge and methods of investigation. In an uncertain world that demands alternative modes of research, ABR can offer a strategy for the study of complex human and social phenomena that reside on the periphery of consciousness and cannot be understood or investigated using typical linear and causal research methods. Such phenomena pervade and effect practice in the social and health sciences in our everyday interactions with patients, clients, students and colleagues thus warranting study. 

Despite the increasing visibility and viability of arts-based research generated from multiple disciplines in the health and social sciences and beyond, paradigms that assign value only to measurable, generalizable, and statistically valid ways of thinking, knowing, and investigating, continue to dominate in western culture. This hegemonic worldview has precluded the legitimization of ABR. However, this restrictive hegemony also offers an opportunity to challenge this perspective by constructing a strategy to train arts-based researchers who are able to engage the dialectic between the singular rigor from the scientific community with the openness, uncertainty, and creativity in the artistic inquiry process of research. In this global classroom we will explore issues related to the marginalization of ABR by developing strong global partnerships, presence, and research collaborations. We propose that through the strength and breadth of these collaborations we can begin to build a strategic plan to identify and educate stakeholders, generate new research, and develop methods of dissemination on a global scale. 

We have created a new course for doctoral students and interested faculty in which is partnering with the University of Milano-Bicocca, the University of Leuven, and Florida State University to explore: (a) the various definitions of arts-based research in the US and Europe; (b) the philosophical, theoretical, and methodological approaches to ABR across multiple disciplines in the social sciences, education and healthcare; (c) the social and cultural influences impacting the advancement of ABR; (d) a global research agenda specific to ABR; and, (e) the strategies for addressing the advancement of ABR on a global scale. In order to accomplish these goals, we will use a hybrid pedagogical approach integrating technology to conduct distance videoconference classes in which faculty and students will meet to study the current status, trends, approaches, and social and cultural positioning for arts-based research. 

Course Purpose within Program of Study / Course Overview 

Elective: This is an elective course for doctoral students of any discipline who are interested in learning about arts-informed and arts-based research. Arts-informed and arts-based research can be used as a primary or complementary form of research and can be situated within and across multiple paradigms, disciplines, and methodologies. 

Class Structure: 

1. Readings, Discussion and Reflections: (60 minutes) Each class will begin with students reviewing and reflecting upon their journals and the assigned readings as relative to their emerging collaborative research project. Review of assignments. 

2. Arts-Based Research Workshop: (60 minutes) Students will breakout into their research teams or dyads and devote the majority of the class working on their arts-based research project. Each class will introduce a new phase of the project and be accompanied by different questions or critical issues for examination relative to arts-based research and the advancement of their projects. Students can work separately or together during this breakout time but must agree on a focus of their collaborative work, document their process photographically and textually, and create a report on their process and progress. 

3. Discussion: (45 minutes) The whole group will reconvene to hear reports of the breakout group progress, questions, challenges, and goals moving forward. 

4. Reflection and Journal Writing: (15 minutes) Each student will complete the class by writing or recording in their journal about the progress of their arts-based research project, the learning from the day’s class, new questions or insights, goals for the next class, what they have learned so far that is applicable to their own PhD research.