Arts-Informed Inquiry in Teacher Education

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European Educational Research Journal Volume 7 Number 4 2008 www.wwwords.eu/EERJ

Arts-Informed Inquiry in Teacher Education: contesting the myths[1] ROBYN EWING & JOHN HUGHES Faculty of Education and Social Work, University of Sydney, Australia

ABSTRACT Arts-informed inquiry has attracted a great deal of controversy in recent times as it has gained popularity as an educational research methodology in teacher education. As with other innovative approaches and methodologies, there have been lively debates about its rigour, authenticity and appropriateness. This article suggests principles for its use in exploring relevant questions in teacher education research and examines some of the issues that have been used to challenge its integrity. Several recent teacher education research projects undertaken by staff and research higher degree graduates at the University of Sydney are discussed initially as exemplars and to provide a context for the discussion. The authors demonstrate how research using arts-informed inquiry contributes perspectives and understandings that are distinctive from other methodologies and so can offer new understandings about some of the liminal issues in teacher education.

Introduction Arts-informed inquiry encourages an artistic approach to research and views theory and practice holistically (Fish, 1998, p. 153). Alexander (2003, p. 3) conceives of the artistic approach as a form of naturalistic inquiry, which differs from phenomenological and ethnographic perspectives in that artists and art critics ‘not only describe what they experience; they create virtual experiences in language, space, time, or sound so that others can grasp what they perceive directly, through encountering a new work of art’. This article initially introduces some examples of current and recent arts-informed research in teacher professional learning to lead to a discussion of accepted principles used in this approach. It then provides a rationale for its appropriateness when investigating the complexity of teaching and learning, teacher identity or, as Conroy (2004) argues, the ‘liminal’ areas in teacher education. Some of the questions, limitations and challenges for teacher education researchers using artsinformed inquiry are discussed. Recent Examples of Arts-Informed Inquiry in Teacher Education Over the last decade in the Faculty of Education and Social Work at the University of Sydney, artsinformed inquiry has been used by a number of researchers to interpret educational experiences and improve professional practice in education. Some exemplars are briefly discussed below to contextualize the discussion about its usefulness in teacher education research. Constructing a Composite Fictional Narrative John Hughes (2003) constructed a composite narrative based on a range of secondary student teachers’ accounts of their pre-service experiences in learning to teach poetry and drama. The 512

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Arts-Informed Inquiry in Teacher Education students developed and performed enactments based on Shakespeare’s sonnets. They were then interviewed and surveyed about their perceptions of this activity in learning these components of the secondary English syllabus. From this data, Hughes developed a composite narrative through the eyes of a fictitious student, Megan. Megan narrated her ‘story’ to both represent the group’s experiences and to embody the effectiveness of this pedagogical approach. When submitted to a refereed journal, one reviewer of the article found the narrative Hughes had created so authentic that he demanded that ‘Megan’ be recognized as the co-author. Drama In 2001, Amy Mortimer (then aged in her twenties) developed a readers’ theatre from archived school material she had examined to recreate a pivotal meeting in the 1970s at Currambena, a wellknown progressive school in Sydney. She chose to represent her interview data in this way to reflect the multiple perspectives held by the different stakeholders about parental involvement in the alternative curriculum. In addition, she felt the readers’ theatre enabled contrasts and tensions to be constructed more effectively than would have been possible in a traditional academic report. She asked a range of past and current Currambena teachers and parents to verify her script as a valid representation of the archival material. One of her Honours thesis examiners questioned the use of a fictional reconstruction of this meeting. This led to a heated debate concerning notions of authenticity and verisimilitude in artsinformed inquiry, and proved to be a turning point in the history of the acceptance of this methodology in the Faculty of Education and Social Work at the University of Sydney. Part of the resolution of this occurred when another examiner, who coincidentally had been a teacher at the school and had attended the highly charged school meetings in the 1970s, confirmed that Mortimer’s reconstruction of the event was so authentic that it had been difficult for him to believe that she was too young to have been present at those meetings. In this study, the readers’ theatre script thus proved to be a highly effective way to draw out the issues and dilemmas that so preoccupied the alternative education movement at the time. Linden Wilkinson (2007) created a performance text using verbatim theatre techniques to explore the learning that happens through a traumatic event. The play evolved from the interweaving of personal narratives taken from victims of a 1999 Sydney rail disaster and the report from the first of three public inquiries into the event. This report identified the factors that caused the collision between a crowded commuter train and an almost stationary transcontinental train. From multiple perspectives, yet with shared motifs, the play tells the story of the day and the disillusionment with anticipated trauma support. It concludes with the participants’ slow but inspiring journeys towards healing. Residents in the area and victims of the accident communicated with the researcher to describe the powerful impact of retelling their own stories, as well as listening to those of others involved. Many reported that their involvement in the research and the viewing of the play had made an important contribution to their healing and learning processes. The play has now been performed several times in the local community as well as at several international conferences. Recently, the script was accepted as the basis for a movie. Collage In her recent doctorate, ‘Teaching Is My Art Now’, Denise Stanley (2008) used her own self-study and extensive interviews with four other early career visual arts teachers to develop both collages and a novelette. She examined their identities as both visual artists and emerging educators to extend our understandings about the experiences of early career visual arts teachers. Their journeys demonstrate, sometimes to their own astonishment, that teaching became the focus for their artistry. Their expertise as artists informed their understanding of the artistry of teaching. At the same time, her research has contributed to the wider body of knowledge about beginning teachers more generally. The novelette, for example, articulates their frustrations and anxieties when they could not teach within the visual arts discipline far more clearly and poignantly than recently published statistics on how many first-year teachers are expected to teach outside their area. It also illustrates some of the managerialism and lack of effective mentoring they experienced in schools, 513

Robyn Ewing & John Hughes along with their desire to meet the needs and interests of their students despite these setbacks. In addition, Stanley’s public exhibitions of her collages have enabled a wider cross section of the community to understand the struggle visual arts teachers experience when the demands of teaching mean that their own art making must become secondary. Digital Storytelling McGeoch & Hughes (forthcoming) worked with tertiary students recently arrived in the country who were learning to speak English. She used digital story production to help them improve their English but also explored how such a technique developed their ability to tell their own stories and articulate their own identities. In addition, McGeoch examined whether this approach facilitated a growth in intercultural understanding. The examples above identify a number of the elements we assert are fundamental to and necessary for an arts-informed inquiry. The following section explores and explicates these essential elements. Defining Arts-Informed Inquiry 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. Several researchers have claimed that it is a direct descendant of narrative or storytelling (Connelly & Clandinin, 1990; Barone & Eisner, 1997) and educational criticism (Barone & Eisner, 1997). Both narrative and educational criticism have helped to legitimate arts-informed inquiry as a research approach in the field of education, sociology and social psychology (Cutcher, 2004, p. 44). This article focuses particularly on how arts-informed inquiry can advance our understandings of research issues in teacher education. Although there is no single accepted way to define arts-informed inquiry (Diamond & Mullen, 1999, p. 9), the following elements are widely accepted in the relevant literature: • • the use of expressive and/or contextualized and vernacular language as appropriate; • the promotion of empathy or engagement with the audience; • the presence of an aesthetic form or forms (literary, visual and/or performing) in data collection and/or analysis and/or representation and dissemination of the research findings; • the relationship between the research topic or issue and its form has integrity; • the opportunity to explore multiple perspectives around the research question(s) or dilemma(s); • reflexivity and the personal signature or presence of the researcher/writer, even though the researcher may not be the subject of the research. (adapted from Barone & Eisner, 1997, pp. 73-78 and Knowles & Cole, 2008a, pp. 61-62) These elements define an approach to research in which the assumptions about the nature of reality that is under investigation are substantially different from those assumed by traditional positivistic researchers (Smith, 2002). Because of this it is our belief that such research can deepen our understandings about some issues in teacher education. It has also the potential to further extend the boundaries of more established qualitative research traditions. As an emerging paradigm involving both the aesthetic and art making, arts-informed inquiry demands that teacher educators develop a robust understanding of the nature of art, both within the academy and outside. It cannot, by way of example, look for its theoretical underpinnings in claims such as Carey’s (2005, p. 29), which assert: ‘A work of art is anything that anyone has ever considered a work of art, though it may be a work of art only for that one person’. At the same time, we do not wish to suggest a romanticized aesthetic disconnected from everyday reality and life. The types of art objects generally recognized in art history, and therefore the aesthetic forms used in arts-based research include: novels, novellas, vignettes, fables, poetry, prose, plays, painting, collage, sculpture, quilting, batik, film, dance, movement, mime, music or video.

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Arts-Informed Inquiry in Teacher Education Using the Arts in Research A key question in the discussion of arts-informed inquiry is: How can the arts constitute research, which has historically been conceptualized as scientific in nature? Eisner’s (1996, p. 409) response is helpful: ‘I do not define research as a species of science, I define science as a species of research’. Both the arts and sciences entail methods of inquiry resulting in knowledge creation (Eisner, 1985). Arts-informed inquiry, however, rejects the notion of a single objective reality and asserts that there can be no separation between the knower and the known (Grumet, 1995; Barone & Eisner, 1997; Alexander, 2003) because all knowledge is dynamic and inherently subjective: Knowing, for example, takes on the attributes of a verb, that is, a process rather than an object or product that is fixed and definitively knowable. Mind, for us, is much more likely to be a fluid stream rather than a fixed rock. Our minds are always a work in progress. (Eisner, 2005, p. 20)

Perhaps this is of particular relevance for using arts-informed inquiry in teacher education research – in Palmer’s (1998, p. 2) words: ‘we teach who we are’. There is such a multiplicity of dimensions entailed in the deliberation about what and how we teach that cannot be disaggregated from the relationships we develop. The persons we have become or are in the process of becoming, the ‘virtual schoolbags’ (Thomson, 2002) which teachers, parents and students bring to the educational experience make such a disaggregation at best challenging. Using art to collect, analyze or represent data privileges our imaginations, allowing us to engage creatively in the richness of different art forms (Cutcher, 2004, p. 57) as we develop new understandings about who we are as teachers and learners. This is important for teacher education research given the importance of context and the lack of recipes to ensure quality teaching and learning occurs. In the words of Maxine Greene (1995, p. 19): [To] tap into imagination is to become able to break with what is supposedly fixed and finished, objectively and independently real. It is to see beyond what the imaginer has called normal or ‘common-sensible’ and to carve out new orders in experience.

Arts-informed inquiry acknowledges that what we need to know and how we present such knowledge cannot always be solely dictated by or expressed in the language of the academy or in numbers (Barone & Eisner, 1997; Cutcher, 2004). Arts-based representations in a thesis can transcend literal and linear interpretations. Indeed, they can sometimes speak ‘even beyond their maker’s means’ (Diamond & Mullen, 1999, p. 41). As Knowles & Cole (2008a, p. 57) observe: ‘the language of the academy and all that it symbolized fell short in its ability to capture and communicate the complexity of human experience in all its diversity’. Thus, as the philosopher Schopenhauer (1891) claimed, art provides a knowledge that can be intuitive and give direct access to metaphysical truths. Such assertions negate Carey’s (2005, p. 193) thesis that language is superior to other semiotic systems. The multifaceted nature of arts-informed inquiry can reveal a depth of understanding and communication arguably not possible through the use of one semiotic system alone. Perhaps language and some language forms in particular have too easily been perceived to be normative by the academy. We note, however, that despite asserting the superiority of literature, Carey (2005, p. 212) does acknowledge ‘the educational potential of other arts’. The employment of a multiplicity of artistic semiotic systems has significant implications for teacher education research, so that: The images and processes of artistic creation are always at least one step ahead of the reflecting mind. If we continue to follow the standard behavioural science methods of establishing what we plan to do before we do it, we undermine the power of our discipline to offer something distinctly new and useful to research. (McNiff, 1998, p. 27)

At the same time, it is clear that all arts-informed research incorporates some form of written text. We wonder whether the academy will ever accept a painting, play, performance or series of photos without a written thesis? Our Faculty has certainly not moved to this position at the time of writing this article. The art is not an end in itself – it forms an integral part of the research design or a tool in the inquiry process to collect and/or analyze and/or represent data. For example, Beth Shields’ (2001) triptych exploring her thesis that the quiet child in the classroom was not necessarily

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Robyn Ewing & John Hughes intellectually deficient was accompanied by a more traditional literature review and a justification for her inquiry. The Art/Inquiry Balance Arts-informed inquiry is therefore not to be conflated with ‘the arts’: there must be a critique, interpretation or interpretive understanding of the subject of one’s inquiry (Fish, 1998). ‘In other words, arts-informed inquiry goes beyond making art’ (Smith, 2002, p. 6). Questioning this, Sir Ken Robinson (2005) asked why Picasso could never receive a PhD whilst someone writing about his art could. At the moment, arts-informed inquiry cannot be Gesamtkunstwerk. However, we would argue that Wagner’s writing provides nineteenth-century foundations for later development in the theoretical rationale for arts-informed inquiry as a research tool. Just as there are aesthetic and sociocultural economic debates about what constitutes ‘high’ or ‘low’ art, so there is conjecture as to the extent to which a work involving arts-informed inquiry must display artistic merit. As Cutcher (2004, p. 47) explains: [E]xpressive research attempts need to be viewed as works of art, since they need to be portrayed with attention to a certain level of artistry. Yet they need to be approached and appreciated as a piece of research rather than works of art, and this can be a highly contentious issue for both the researchers and artists among us.

In a debate more than a decade ago as to whether a novel could count as a dissertation in education, Eisner pointed out that he was looking for a substantive side that addressed educational matters of significance and literary quality itself (Barone & Eisner, 1997, p. 82). The novel, in this case, was a representation of the researcher’s findings about an issue in education and illustrated the most common way in which this form of inquiry can be employed: as a product of research and as art with a capital ‘A’ (Barone, 1997; Kilbourn, 1999; Cutcher, 2004). 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. This kind of art is more akin to expressive construction. So it is that within this conception of arts-informed inquiry the researcher need not call herself or himself an artist. Thus: The issue of researcher identity is different for those of us who, before engaging in arts-informed inquiry did not identify ourselves as artists ... I’m not asking you to start calling yourself an artist. I am suggesting, though, that as researchers, we are all, each and every one of us, regardless of our relationship to the arts, capable of infusing our work with artful qualities. (McIntyre, 2000, pp. 179-180)

Such a conceptualization enables novice artists as well as experienced artists to engage in artsinformed inquiry. Spontaneous and intuitive work can have a power and authenticity of its own (Weber & Mitchell, 2004, p. 1028). Rationale for Using Arts-Informed Inquiry Advocates of such inquiry are the first to acknowledge that this approach is not appropriate for every research question (Eisner, 1996; Smith, 2002). As Eisner (1996, p. 403) argues: If I’m interested in knowing how people vote or are likely to vote in an election, or what the political dispositions of particular groups of teachers are, I don’t need a novel. It would be an inefficient way to find out what I wanted to know, given that kind of question.

In the context of teacher education, however, it has been claimed that there is no better way to study the artistry of teaching than through artistic modes of knowing (Cole & Knowles, 2000, p. 80). Arts-informed inquiry encourages reflexivity. It has the capacity to promote artistic selfexpression that can enable more delicate and nuanced self-examination and vulnerability. Yet, paradoxically, such acts also force us to take a step back and look at ourselves from the multiple 516

Arts-Informed Inquiry in Teacher Education perspectives provided by the medium itself, increasing the potential for a deeper self-analysis (Weber & Mitchell, 2004, p. 984). Christine Hatton (2005) for example, developed a play as part of her analysis of the plays she and her female drama students had created to share their own and their mothers’ education stories. The narrator’s monologues represent her inner conversations about what she was learning about herself as a teacher as well as a director as she guided her students. Perhaps, because of this powerful potential for reflection, arts-informed inquiry has been widely used in conjunction with self-study in teacher and teacher education research, and also in other professional practice settings (see, for example, Stanley, 2008; Yoo, 2008). This kind of selfstudy using narrative has led to claims that such research is narcissistic. We would argue, however, that auto-ethnography coupled with arts-informed inquiry can drive new learning about self for others as well as for the researcher (Ewing & Smith, 2004). For example, Joanne Yoo’s (2008) stories of her interactions with her students, other lecturers and her faculty managers in a Korean university enhanced her own understandings of the issues she faced as a new academic. They have also enabled other early career teacher educators to focus on their interactions with ‘the other’ in academic settings. In their teacher education units of study for final-year pre-service primary teachers at the University of Sydney, Ewing & Gibson (2007) drew on McDermott’s (2005) research about collage alongside metaphor (Ortony, 1975) when they asked pre-service teachers to choose a metaphor and create a collage relating their own personal lives to their emerging teacher identity. In their subsequent interviews with these teachers after graduation, it was clear that the collage work had facilitated their student teachers’ ability to examine the ‘shifting relationships between self, community, power, language, social equality and educational practices, unhinging linear frames of thinking and dominant ideologies and practices that often go unchallenged in the classroom’ (McDermott, 2005, p. 49). These early career teachers shared stories of how their collage-making experiences had impacted on the kinds of learning experiences they tried to create for their primary students. Similarly, Stanley’s (2008) collages of early career visual artists encapsulated how the centrality of the visual arts in their lives impacted on the kind of teachers they were becoming, and the implications for their current and future students. Rethinking Validity, Reliability and Generalizability Arts-informed inquiry embraces subjectivity and questions notions of objectivity and absolute truth. Thus, the terms ‘reliability’, ‘validity’ and ‘generalizability’ are generally inappropriate. Artsinformed inquiries can be characterized by the creation of alternative or virtual realities, which may be non-fictional (based on something that actually happened; see Barone, 1997; Anderson, 2002; Bettio, 2002; Cutcher, 2004) or fictional (based on something that never happened at all; see Kilbourn, 1999). The latter are the most contentious (Phillips, 1995; Eisner, 1996) as they flout traditional ideas of reliability and what is ‘true’. In any case: to ask about the ‘accuracy’ or ‘reliability’ of this sort of presentation of data is to ask the wrong sort of question. It is like asking about the accuracy or reliability of Mozart’s Requiem or of the Mona Lisa. What we want to know of the critics’ grasp of reality is whether it ‘rings true’, whether it captures the ‘dynamic form’ of something present in the experience of the whole. (Alexander, 2003, p. 12)

Having used painting, print making and collage, as well as poetry and narrative in researching her identity as a second-generation Hungarian immigrant educated in Australia, Alexandra Cutcher (2004, p. 9) argues that: There will never be an absolutely true representation of a life or an experience. Thus the authenticity of meaning is what I strive for, that I have the essence of what has been shared and captured. (Our emphasis)

Similarly, Eisner (1996, p. 403) asserts that it is sufficient if the work is ‘true to life’. He qualifies this in terms of what he calls ‘referential adequacy’ – that is to say, if you went out to look at such places, whether you would see what in fact the person has described as existing there. This notion 517

Robyn Ewing & John Hughes of adequacy also extends to whether the work generates new insights (Eisner, 1996) and ‘captures some dimension of the work in question, allowing us to see it afresh’ (Alexander, 2003, p. 13). And, in terms of how a work relates to the wider world of professional practice, there is a need to replace reliability with ‘relatability’ (Smith, 2002, p. 11), in which the realism of a work may be indicated by the extent to which the findings resonate with and echo the experiences of the reader, causing what Fish (1998, p. 252) has called a ‘shiver of recognition’. There are, therefore, multiple perspectives about and interpretations of what ‘truth’ is and what is ‘true to life’, and the use of terms such as ‘resonance’ and ‘recognition’ may therefore be more useful. Given that the aim of most research in teacher education is to further pedagogical understandings and to improve educational practice to enhance student learning, validity, in its broader sense, is related to whether research fulfils these aims (Barone & Eisner, 1997, p. 85). In his paper on tensions in arts-based research, Eisner (2005, p. 17) notes that novelty and creativity alone are unlikely to garner much respect in teacher education or in the research community more generally. Utility is paramount. Eisner measures validity by the extent to which the research is acknowledged by a competent and critical community (Eisner, 1996; Barone & Eisner, 1997; Fish, 1998). In self-study, which as argued above often uses arts-informed approaches, validity is reconceptualized as ‘trustworthiness’ or ‘verisimilitude’ and is essentially provisional until tested over time (Mishler, 1990, pp. 419-437). One way to improve trustworthiness is to ‘crystallize’ (Richardson, 1994, pp. 935-936) the data by obtaining multiple perspectives on the event being researched. Eisner (2005, p. 18) also refers to the manner in which these pieces of evidence validate each other and link together to create a whole as ‘structural corroboration’. At the same time, they can illuminate flaws and weaknesses (O’Toole, 2006). Arts-informed research in education can also illuminate fresh approaches to the debate over ‘particularity’ and ‘generalizability’. In teacher education research, the absence of comparable sets of conditions and the impossibility of replication makes conventional generalization difficult, if not impossible. While arts-informed research is particular in nature, themes usually emerge that may pertain to more than the case itself. The findings build schemas, placing the reader in a position to extrapolate from them and redeploy them in other situations with similar features because what artistically crafted work does is to ‘create a paradox of revealing what is universal by examining what is particular’ (Eisner, 1996, p. 3). This is certainly true of the large body of early career teacher narratives that has developed as a result of a number of international teacher education research projects focused on their concerns and experiences (see, for example, Anderson, 2002; Ewing & Manuel, 2005; Knowles & Cole, 2008b; Yoo, 2008). While all are written idiosyncratically and in specific national education contexts, they certainly help employers, policy makers, mentors and other teachers in such a diverse range of contexts understand the issues facing beginning teachers, especially that of teacher attrition, in a much deeper way than is possible through self-report surveys or resignation statistics. The narratives demonstrate the complex relationships between beginning teachers’ aspirations, expectations and actual experiences. They have helped teacher educators, educational planners and administrators, and early career teachers to develop a richer understanding of the importance of mentoring. Two of the teachers involved in Anderson’s (2002) study later noted the value of this research process in illuminating their understanding of their own educational practice. Limitations, Challenges, Questions The following questions are adapted from a colloquium on arts-informed inquiry held at the University of Sydney in November 2002. They point us towards some important potential caveats and limitations for arts-informed inquiry. At the same time, they present a range of challenges for our own research in teacher education as well as for our role supervising research students. The first question relates to whether we are working towards a new paradigm. Perhaps, as mentioned above, we are pushing or extending the boundaries of more established interpretive paradigms rather than establishing a new one. Whether arts-informed inquiry represents or does not represent a new paradigm is not important. The acknowledgement of the legitimacy, integrity and rigour of such inquiry alongside more traditional approaches to research is a more critical 518

Arts-Informed Inquiry in Teacher Education issue. We are providing evidence that using the arts to gather data or to analyze it or to represent it can add a new dimension to our understanding of some issues in teacher education – in particular those that focus on the human aspect of learning to teach or understanding what it means to be a teacher, or on improving teaching and learning experiences or processes. Secondly, when is it most appropriate to employ arts-informed inquiry? The range of exemplars that have been provided in this article suggest that arts-based research is of most value when it explores, analyses or represents individuals’ experiences, perspectives or understandings about complex or ambiguous phenomena, issues or concepts. Conroy’s (2004, p. 54) concept of ‘the liminal’ is very helpful here – the spaces and places ‘where disparate cultures, ideologies and frameworks may meet’. As mentioned above, issues concerned with becoming or being a teacher or learner, learning, learning to teach, teacher thinking, teacher education and schooling offer particularly fertile territory for the use of arts-informed methodologies. This is important at this time in our post-industrial age, given the current neo-liberal influences in many Western countries which persist in defining teachers and teaching using narrow, technical and reductive constructions. As Conroy (2004, p. 121) argues so eloquently: ‘both schools and teachers are embodiments of contradictory and ambiguous attitudes’. Providing ways to articulate these different voices is imperative, as is finding ways for the wider community to appreciate these complexities. There is a third question which arises about what criteria should be used to judge effective arts-informed inquiry and who should stand in judgement. The elements suggested earlier in this article can be used to make judgements about the effectiveness of research using the arts. While, of course, those in the academy will still need to ensure that the research meets the institutional criteria, we have also suggested that it needs to be examined by a more inclusive audience. Because of the qualities manifested through using art forms, many of the representations can be interrogated by members of the education profession and, indeed, by parents and school communities. Further, we would suggest that the community more generally should be able to interrogate such representations. The question then arises as to whether the products of such research differ from art making in the same way as any questions about rigour in any kind of research process. Research is about systematic inquiry and needs to be demonstrated by an emphasis on formal or systematic revisiting, re-questioning, rewriting, re-imaging and rethinking (Weber & Mitchell, 2002) and by making all the steps of the research process transparent to the reader and observer (LaBoskey, 2004, p. 853). As Berliner (2001, p. ix) argues in the preface of Tom Barone’s Touching Eternity, any researcher has an obligation to provide strong warrants. It is necessary to apply the discipline, rigour and intelligence that we commonly associate with ‘science’ to the process of aesthetic inquiry (McNiff, 1998, p. 15). Some argue that aesthetic inquiry is inherently characterized by such qualities, in that both art and research require skill, insight, persistence and rigour (Grumet, 1995; Cutcher, 2004). Whether research is ‘soft’ or not does not depend on the methodology chosen. Rather, the level of rigour with which the methodology is employed is critical. Using statistical and quantitative methods or more traditional qualitative methods does not, in itself, guarantee that the research is not ‘soft’. We have suggested that self-study and reflective practice and praxis can be of benefit beyond the individual who has engaged in such tasks. It is our view that representations using an art form or a variety of art forms may, in fact, help a researcher to better represent the experiences of others. Conclusion In discussing narrative inquiry, Louden & Wallace (2001) suggest that adequacy of representation of the research data may be an issue. We have shown that narrative and other artistic texts may, in fact, help readers/viewers/listeners explore how the researcher has constructed the meanings from the data presented. Representation through an art form may, in fact, give voice and legitimacy in a way not previously possible in more formal and conventional academic genres because some of our saturated consciousness (Apple, 1990, p. 5) is bypassed. Such representations also have the potential to reach audiences much wider than the academy. Whatever kind of text researchers

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Robyn Ewing & John Hughes produce, it is important that they are transparent in their discussions about how they have been produced. Surely this holds true for more traditional academic texts, too? The arts and their forms are as ancient as human existence, yet the emergence of artistic paradigms and their use in educational inquiry has been relatively recent. It remains controversial in the academy as to whether arts-informed inquiry constitutes ‘real’ research. Notwithstanding these struggles, it has been embraced by a growing number of scholars to answer important and complex professional and personal research questions in teacher education. It provides tools to probe some already established understandings to gain more insights or to examine issues and dilemmas from different perspectives. Arts-informed inquiry is art pursued for inquiry’s sake and not for art’s own sake. This kind of inquiry is not appropriate for all research questions in teacher education. But such approaches have the potential to create new epiphanies for the reader/viewer/listener (Diamond & Mullen, 1999; Ewing & Smith, 2004) or to explore the liminal spaces (Conroy, 2004) in the life of the teacher (as both learner and practitioner, person and professional) in ways that some traditional research approaches cannot access. Such approaches allow us to feel or explore issues and relationships that are sometimes ambiguous or contradictory but nevertheless embedded in who we are as teachers and learners. We must make an effort to understand who we are and how we learn in order to move forward in our endeavours to improve learning for our students. Acknowledgement The authors wish to acknowledge the contribution of Associate Professor David Smith to their thinking and understanding of arts-informed inquiry. Note [1] An earlier version of this article was presented at the Sixth World Congress of International Drama/Theatre and Education Association (IDEA 2007), Hong Kong, July 2007. References Alexander, H. (2003) Aesthetic Inquiry in Education: community, transcendence, and the meaning of pedagogy, Journal of Aesthetic Education, 37(2), 1-17. http://dx.doi.org/10.1353/jae.2003.0010 Anderson, M. (2002) Journeys in Teacher Professional Development: narratives of four drama educators. Unpublished PhD thesis, University of Sydney. Apple, M. (1990) Ideology and Curriculum. London: Routledge. Barone, T. (1997) Ways of Being at Risk: the case of Billy Charles Barnett, in R.M. Jaegar (Ed.) Complementary Methods for Research in Education, 2nd edn, pp. 105-116. Washington, DC: American Educational Research Association. Barone, T. & Eisner, E. (1997) Arts-based Educational Research, in R.M. Jaeger (Ed.) Complementary Methods for Research in Education, 2nd edn, pp. 73-103. Washington, DC: American Educational Research Association. Berliner, D.C. (2001) Preface, in T. Barone, Touching Eternity: the enduring outcomes of teaching. New York: Teachers College Press. Bettio, C. (2002) Quilting the Layers. Unpublished Master of Teaching thesis, University of Sydney. Carey, J. (2005) What Good Are the Arts? London: Faber & Faber. Cole, A. & Knowles, G. (2000) Researching Teaching: exploring teacher development through reflexive inquiry. Boston: Allyn & Bacon. Connelly, M. & Clandinin, J. (1990) Stories of Experience and Narrative Inquiry, Educational Researcher, 19(5), 2-14. Conroy, J. (2004) Betwixt and Between: the liminal imagination, education and democracy. New York: Peter Lang. Cutcher, A. (2004) The Hungarian in Australia: a portfolio of belongings. Unpublished PhD thesis, University of Sydney. Diamond, C.T.P. & Mullen, C.A. (1999) The Postmodern Educator: arts-based inquiries and teacher development. New York: Peter Lang.

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ROBYN EWING is Acting Dean and JOHN HUGHES is Associate Dean (Development) at the Faculty of Education and Social Work, University of Sydney, Australia. Their research interests include teacher education, drama in education and arts-informed inquiry in educational research. Correspondence: Robyn Ewing, Faculty of Education and Social Work, University of Sydney, Sydney, NSW 2006, Australia ([email protected]).

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