off the beaten track, a reflection on intention and unpredictability in arts ed research

7/31/2019 Off the Beaten Track, A Reflection on Intention and Unpredictability in Arts Ed Research

1/9

35

Date of submission: 05-05-10Date of acceptance: 24-09-10

Encounters on Education

Volume 11, Fall 2010 pp. 35-43

O the Beaten Track: A reection on intention

and unpredictability in arts education research

Por el Camino Menos Transitado: Reexiones

sobre la intencin y la difcultad de predecir en

la investigacin sobre educacin artstica

Hors des sentiers battus : Une rexion sur

lintention et limprvisibilit dans la recherche

en ducation artistique

Kathleen GallagherUniversity of Toronto, Canada

ABSTRACTThe coherence o a research program is oten betrayed by the unanticipated turns and detoursin arts research. The ollowing article refects upon the place o the unexpected in arts research,the alternative ways in which knowledge or ndings are oten constructed, and the complexity

o calibrating or measuring arts research or broader publics. UNESCOs road map is seen hereas a site or urther deliberation, a point in time and space that should engage arts communitiesin rousing dialogue locally and globally about the convergences and divergences o ourpractices and research paradigms.Key words: arts education; research paradigms; drama education; creativity; methodological innovation.

RESUMENEn la investigacin artstica, la coherencia de un programa de investigacin suele ser trai-cionada por las vueltas y desvos imprevistos del camino. El siguiente artculo es una refexinacerca del lugar de lo inesperado en la investigacin artstica, las maneras alternativas en las que

el conocimiento o los hallazgos a menudo se construyen y la complejidad que implica cali-brar o medir la investigacin en artes para pblicos ms amplios. Para ello, la hoja de ruta de laUNESCO es considerada como la instancia para una deliberacin ms extendida, un punto enel tiempo y en el espacio que debera involucrar a las comunidades artsticas en un apasionadodilogo, a nivel local y global, acerca de las convergencias y divergencias de nuestras prcticas ynuestros paradigmas en investigacin.


2/9

Descriptores: educacin artstica; paradigmas de la investigacin; educacin en drama; creatividad;innovacin metodolgica.

RSUM

La cohrence dun programme de recherche est souvent trompe par les tournants et lesdtours imprvus dans la recherche artistique, les aons direntes dans lesquelles les connais-sances ou les rsultats sont souvent ormuls et dans la complexit de ltalonnage ou de lamesure de la recherche artistique pour des publics plus larges. La carte de route de lUNESCOest perue ici comme un terrain pour poursuivre la rfexion, comme un point dans le tempset lespace qui devrait engager les communauts artistiques dans un dialogue passionn auniveau local comme au niveau global au sujet des convergences et des divergences de nospratiques et de nos paradigmes de rechercheMots cls : lducation aux arts ; un paradigme de recherche ; la pdagogie des arts dramatiques ; lacrativit ; linnovation en mthodologie.

A Road Map o Sorts

Academics like to talkabout aresearch program as though our research workis always a coherent proposition, a linear program with obvious beginnings andpredictable outcomes. I would venture a guess that many arts researchers began theircareers as teachers o the arts, or artists, or both. And these auspicious beginnings arelikely what drew them to research in the arts. So when I think now about navigatingthe UNESCO road map or arts education as the special issue o this journal prom-

ises to do, I look back on my last 20 years as an arts teacher and researcher and realizethat in this eclectic mix o experiences, I have been involved in a process o imaginingart as an entry point to a lie examined. The arts have been the navigational tools thathave, or me, raised questions o great importance in the eld o education broadlyspeaking.

A road map in research is a very useul concept. Roxana Ng and KiranMirchandani (2008) have recently used the concept o mapping as a conceptualand methodological tool to link lived experiences with institutional processes. This,too, is a useul idea or arts education research. How do we understand the relation-

ship between arts educators and the institutions in which they work? These research-ers use mapping as a point o entry into individual experience, but do so in order tokeep an analytical ocus on the interace between individual lives and institutionalrelations.

As long as our road map in arts education shows the contours o the landscape,the twists and turns and bends in the road, I can live with the metaphor. But i weare looking or the GPS system or arts education, the disembodied voice who willdirect us with great accuracy rom point A to point B, then I will betray my lie inthe arts. And so, the road map as metaphor or me must include the sight-seeing, the

bathroom breaks, the picnic on the side o the road, and the unanticipated in allrespects.

In this paper, I will navigate my way through a program o research in the arts.In it, the reader will nd a map o sorts, one that I hope clearly points to the ways inwhich the arts are harnessed to matters o social, academic, and artistic signicance.

Encounters/Encuentros/Rencontres36


3/9

For me, it begins with a ruitul rethinking o the notion o objectives in arts re-search, wherein the question becomes: What do we fnd when were looking or some-thing else?I would like to trouble the idea o objectives in arts research in order to ask

questions o the methods we deploy and the ways in which the unpredictable takeshold o our research projects.

Where might research take us?

Over the course o my research career, I have worked on several dierent kinds oarts studies. I the UNESCO Road Mapwas drawn up in order, in part, to advo-cate the importance and essential role o arts education (see http://portal.unesco.org/culture/en/ev.php-URL_ID=39546&URL_DO=DO_TOPIC&URL_

SECTION=201.html) then the ollowing map o my years in research is thebest navigational tool I have to speak to a basic concept in the initial UNESCORoad Map. I am speaking here o the goal to: Uphold the Human Right toEducation and Cultural Participation (see http://portal.unesco.org/culture/en/fles/40000/12581058115Road_Map_or_Arts_Education.pd/Road%2BMap%2Bor%2BArts%2BEducation.pd). That an organization called The UnitedNations Educational, Scientifc, and Cultural Organization led the charge on thisambitious project is no small indication o the reach o arts education, its cultural,educational, and scientifc worth.

The studies I have spent my time with over these last 20 years can be looselydescribed as:

a teacher-researcher study o secondary school drama and adolescent girls;i)an action research study o transorming the teaching o social studies throughii)drama;an ethnographic study o secondary drama classrooms in New York andiii)Toronto;a mixed methods study o a touring play to elementary schools across theiv)province o Ontario in Canada;

a lie history study o drama and pedagogy in an urban school; andv)a multi-site hypermedia ethnographic study o drama learning in Toronto,vi)Taipei, New York City, and Lucknow, India.

The point o this paper is not to share the ndings rom these studies, interestingthough they are, but I would like instead to use them as illustrations o how researchsets us on a course, much like a good road map should. And in my own case, this mapundamentally asked howperormancebecomes a site o invention, which breaks openthe purposes o and audiences or educational research in the arts. One small but not

insignicant point that might be gleaned rom this range o studies is how knowledgecreation in arts education straddles the worlds o intention and unpredictability. Andat the centre o these studies lies a methodological orientation I have recently come toarticulate as a collaborative problem-posing ethnography (Gallagher, 2007). I cameto this methodological discovery through thinking seriously about James Baldwins

37Navigating the UNESCO Road Map for Arts Education: Current directions in research and best practice


4/9

claim that the purpose o art is to lay bare the questions, which have been hidden bythe answers (in Lerman & Borstel, 2003, p.8).

Surely i this is the purpose o art, then the purpose o research in the arts is to leave

onesel open to the questions that are discovered in the course o asking other ques-tions we think we are there to learn about. Lest this sound like an academic game othe never-ending question and the amiliar retreat rom answers, let me be clear thatanswers are not always the most important things about asking questions. Sometimesasking questions, the very act o asking them, puts assumptions on the table, sets up adialectical possibility, and generates much needed dialogue and refnement o think-ing. It might also open us up to answers that are looking or the right questions to beasked o them. It strikes me that art, as a product or a learning tool or an experienceor a subject o research, almost always draws us towards questions o choice and inten-

tionality as well as, paradoxically, questions o improvisation and imagination.Here are, in brie, some examples o my learning what I was not there to learn or,

learning rom the unexpected. In the course o these studies, while I was researchingtheatre-making and theatre teaching in school contexts, I learned:

how much the social identities o young people matter in works o art andi)relationships o art-making;that being engaged in learning does not make you perorm better on a test i aii)test disrespects the process o how the learning happened;that post 9-11 theatre-making in large North American city classrooms was partiii)

o both a complicity with, and a resistance to, popular cultural notions o urbanyouth;that sometimes the very best a touring theatre play can do in a school is alteriv)orms o dialogue and thereore social relations between teachers and students;that a teachers idea about the community she works in signicantly changes thev)kind o art-making she engages students in;

And nally, in my current study, I have already learned, two years in, when I was notlooking,

that perormance is intimately tied to eelings o melancholia andvi) disappointment in arts teachers.1

All when I was not looking, I learned these things.

So I pay attention to the unintentional in research because like art-making, nothing isinsignicant even it i is bad, and it almost always claries something or oers a newway o seeing an old problem. These unintentional discoveries may even make centralthe real impact or eect o the arts that sometimes gets relegated to the margins. Andby real here, I mean nothing less than: Art as an entry to a lie examined. 2

The Scientifc Method

Since antiquity, there has been what we might call an articial biurcation o art andscience. One o the things we have inherited rom the Scientic Method is a belie in



5/9

the relationship between analytical distance and truth. We live in a political, cultural,and educational climate that clearly privileges the scientic, presumed to be theobjective and the distanced. But in the arts, we understand that research might well

be conceived as a series o moments, perormances, creative encounters, and temporalrelationships that can never be repeated, can seldom be generalized, are up close andpersonal, and NOT a series o value-ree and distanced observations.3

In Irish playwright Brian Friels (1999) view:

The arts grow and wither and expand and contract erratically and sporadically.Like beachcombers or Irish tinkers they live precariously, existing rom ideato idea, rom theory to theory, rom experiment to experiment. They do owe

something to the tradition in which they grow; and they bear some relation-ship to current economic and political trends. But they are what they are atany given time and in any given place because o the condition and climate othought that prevail at that time and in that place. And i the condition andclimate are not right, the arts lit their tents and drit o to a new place.

Flux is their only constant; the crossroads their only home; impermanencetheir only yardstick. Once they realize that they have been so long in one sitethat they have come to be looked on as a distinct movement, that city hall is

thinking o extending the city boundaries so that they can be absorbed into acomortable community, they take right, attack the movement the apparentpermanence that they themselves have created, reject the oer o hospitality,and move to a new location. This is the only pattern o their existence: the per-sistence o the search; the discovery o a new concept; the analysis, exploration,exposition o that concept; the preaching o that gospel to reluctant ears; andthen, when the rst converts are made, the inevitable disillusion and dissatis-action because the theory is already out o date or was simply a alse dawn.And then the moving on; the continuing o the search; the fux. Impermanence

is the only constant (p. 16).

The research encounter in the arts is an uncertain and variable thing. The more wecan tie this power o the ephemeral and the feeting to our road maps in teachingand research, the closer to home we will be. But this is, o course, an uneasy t withthe Oxord English Dictionarys denition o research: Systematic investigation intoand study o materials and sources, in order to establish acts and reach new conclusions. I am not sure how many acts I have established over the last 20 years, but what thisdenition leaves out is as important as what it says, the questions it begs: Do we cre-

ate new knowledge: or its own sake?; in context?;ora particular context?; or socialreorm?; to advance an art orm, or aesthetic understanding, or some combinationo the above?



6/9

Driven by Creativity (but how do we measure it?)

The UNESCO Road Mapuseully argues that we make art or all o these reasons and

we thereore need specialist and generalist teachers to work in all o these interestingways. I could not agree more. It also highlights another relatively uncontested viewin arts research circles:

The assumption is that Arts Education is one o the best media or nurturingcreativity (when the methods o teaching and learning support it), but themechanisms or this are not well documented and the argument is thereorenot well received by policy makers. Further research into this area is thereoreneeded (p. 12 UNESCO Road Map).

I we agree that creativity can be nurtured by the arts, then it must be creativity in allits orms. And that means a prolieration o research methodologies, not a narrow-ing o our ways o seeing, critiquing, and communicating. We cannot simply takeuncritically the pervasive discourse o the creative economy or the creative class.Our road map must also emphatically put orward other ideas, politically and sociallyengaged ideas, about creativity. Then, and only then, can we claim that an educationin the arts is one o the best media or nurturing creativity.

The causes, the document goes on to outline, or our altering infuence in policy

realms, can be explained by the act that in many countries this evidence is scarce,anecdotal and dicult to access (p.12). The road map then recommends the circu-lation o best practice case studies. But what I might propose as a more promisingresponse than the call or best-practice research, a discourse in evidence throughoutthe document, is or arts researchers and educators, generally, to develop an inquiry-based approach to teaching and learning in the arts. Rather than circulating bestpractice research that is context-specic, I would suggest that creating an interna-tional culture o inquiry in the arts might better serve, in the long run, those whospend their lives in the arts and wish to communicate the worth o these activities to

those who do not (i.e., policy-makers, administrators, or any others who attempt tounderstand the value o the arts without the benet o having experienced them). Aninquiry-based approach to arts education means that all questions are on the table.The very things we take as givens, our most undamental assumptions, in the mak-ing o art and the teaching about it, are open to scrutiny. Such a stance would moreexplicitly support the work o critical arts researchers and practitioners. These are thearts and cultural workers in our arts communities who resist dominant discoursesin arts agendas, like the current neo-liberal discourses o the creative class, as oneexample. This would also leave room or arts pedagogies that challenge the notion o

arts students as consumers o cultural commodities. Without this, our advocacy e-orts are doomed to replicate the same stories about the arts, with claims that are nearimpossible to prove. Advocacy is important, to be sure, but it must also be unleashedrom research projects so that our research ndings and our advocacy eorts can eachbecome available to new conceptions and innovative platorms.



7/9

Unrest in the domain o assessment or evaluation o creativity is a clear sign othe puzzlement most researchers and practitioners eel about what to count as cre-ative and how to account or it. There is, at least in drama education where I spend

most o my time, a urther conceptual dilemma related to the kind o research oncreativity that occurs and its relatively poor currency in larger public arenas. Whilesome large-scale arts studies have included measures or drama and produced someinteresting ndings, those inside the eld o drama itsel, have paid scant attentionto its relationship to questions o creativity more generally.4 These are large questionsand unwieldy that demand sophisticated methodological intervention.

The UNESCO Road Mapalso helps us see how the age-old debate about extrin-sic versus intrinsic value in arts education thwarts progress in the area o researchand assessment. There are, however, understandable reasons or these challenges and

detours. In the case o drama, or instance, as a eld it has had a rather ambivalentrelationship to developmental psychology precisely because it desires to be valuedor its intrinsic and cultural validity and not only or its instrumentality. In drama,children are both the creators and the created. Pragmatically speaking, then, it is verydicult to evaluate/measure/judge/research creativity when the unit o measurementis the children, not a painting, a composition, or a perormance. And I mean herethe study o children caught up in their engagement with the arts, not measured ac-cording to an accepted set o developmental claims. Furthermore, creativity in thedrama classroom arises rom complex social processes rather than moments o indi-

vidual genius. These complex social processes make research (which question to ask,o whom, when and where) a much more complex undertaking. I know much lessabout the other arts disciplines, but I do know that a resistance to developmentalistormulations has a long and important history in all o them. Our ocial documents,such as the UNESCO Road Map, should also pay attention to these alternative voicesbecause they oten articulate the signicant orms o arts engagement that cannot becaptured by stages, ages, and other theories o development.

With a tenuous road map at best, in the world o sustained improvisation or processdrama,5 creativity is experienced in the moment; it is seldom entirely pre-determined.

In short, many in the feld might agree that we engage dramatically through our imagi-nation; an accurate measure o the imagination, however, is beyond our reach. Dramaexperiences may also vary considerably rom child to child and may occur in the unan-ticipated moments o a given lesson. Furthermore, student engagement in whole groupdrama activities is both a collective and a deeply individual experience. The measure othis kind o layered engagement, then, becomes a very imprecise art orm itsel.

As a drama researcher, I have ultimately come to understand that there will alwaysbe trouble in the quest to evaluate how creativity maniests itsel in drama classroomsand how we might best study it and then translate i or wider publics. The process/

product or script/improvisation debates are not simply a question o preerence orhabit. What we value in our pedagogy, the premium placed on skill acquisition orspontaneity continues to deeply divide the work. In both rameworks, however, thebuilding o collective narratives is a complex undertaking in drama classrooms, asevidenced in both the practices we engage in and the eclectic ruits o our labour.



8/9

A Road Map Revisited

As it nears its conclusion, the UNESCO Road Mapcalls or a research Clearinghouse

or Observatory (p. 13) and in my view such a clearinghouse should be multi-lingual.With translation sotware, this could be relatively easily accomplished. The idea oa Clearinghouse is a superb one and could go a long way towards democratizingknowledge about the arts, making it accessible or multiple audiences, including re-searchers disparately situated. But what this also points to is the need or more atten-tion to be paid to the dangers o homogenizing cultural dierences in arts practicesand discourses. Our eorts to speak a common language or standardize how it is wecommunicate with one another must also deend against a propensity to confate orsettle dierences be they cultural, artistic, or political. At present, a airly Eurocentric

perspective reigns, but such a document would be well served by also openly signal-ing the tensions between cultural givens, the contested denitions o creativity, andthe multiplicity o practices around the globe.

A road map is an excellent place to begin. It tells us the world is ultimately acoherent place, destinations are accessible, but, there are rivers to cross, bridges tobuild, boundaries to understand; there will be unanticipated journeys and that is agood thing. Let us continue to pay attention to the unanticipated, the unexpectedand improvised o arts experiences that cannot so easily be calibrated and measured,alongside what is arguably an evolving and prooundly diverse and interesting under-

standing o research in arts education. It is easy to make claims in arts education butin tying arts practices too closely to outcomes or behaviours, be they emotional intel-ligence, or creative, adaptable thinking, we may also lose our capacity to criticallychallenge prevailing discourses or, even worse, oreclose our capacity to innovate. Theclaims are tempting, though, because the arts are most oten in a position o deense,which makes it easy to all into the trap o overstating them. As ever, the question is:who is our audience? Who are we trying to teach or persuade? Whose interests are weprivileging? And the answers will vary wildly across arts communities. We need a roadmap that acknowledges our dierent audiences and political commitments.

In arts research, the qualitative researcher is asked to go visiting, to consider eventsrom unamiliar standpoints. Hannah Arendt (1982) coined this useul concept ovisiting, and with its drive towards imaginative judgment, she suggests that suchvisiting should distance us rom the amiliar and bring us to new standpoints thatare unamiliar. Here I nd mysel once again at the unexpected, or the unanticipatedin arts research. In this, I nd a key to deeper and more theoretical understandingso the stories we generate and rely so heavily upon in arts research. Standing backrom the obvious, we might see whether new categories o analysis become possible.And then, we arrive somewhere else. Unknown at the outset perhaps, unanticipated

even, but well worth the trouble. I am grateul or the dialogue that the UNESCORoad Mapmust now generate and look orward to where practitioners, artists, andresearchers will take it.



9/9

Notes

1. For a developed argument o this premise, please see Gallagher, K., Freeman, B.,& Wessels, A. (2009). It could have been so much better: the aesthetic and social work

o theatre. Research in Drama Education: The Journal of Applied Theatre and Performance,15(1), 5-27.

2. I was listening to Linda Nathan rom the Boston Arts Academy a ew monthsago at the Ontario Institute or Studies in Education. Our Centre or Urban Schoolinghad invited her to come and talk about her work in the arts as a principal o high schoolstudents in Boston. One o the things she said was that art was an entry point to lie.I liked it. But it also made me think about the point o the research I do. Hence, theconcept:Art as an entry point to a life examined. Thank you Linda Nathan.

3. For an expansion o these ideas, please see the ollowing chapter: Gallagher, K.(2008). The art o methodology. The methodological dilemma: Creative, collaborative and

critical approaches to qualitative research. K. Gallagher (Ed.). pp. 67-81. London and NewYork: Routledge.

4. For a deeper analysis o this phenomenon in the feld o drama education, pleasesee Gallagher, K. (2007). Conceptions o creativity in drama education. In Internationalhandbook of research in arts education. pp. 1229-1240. L. Bresler (Ed.). New York, NY:Springer Publishing.

5. Process drama is a general term used to describe a method o drama instructionin which, typically, the teacher and the whole class enter into an imaginary context, otenbased on source material gathered by the teacher or students. The goal is to investigate anyo a number o possible themes through sustained improvisation, during which students

and teacher might take on a variety o roles and relationships through various theatricalconventions.

References

Arendt, H. (1982). Lectures on Kants political philosophy. R. Beiner (Ed.). Chicago, IL:University o Chicago Press.

Friel, B. (1999). Brian Friel: Essays, diaries, interviews: 19641999. C. Murray (Ed.). NewYork, NY: Faber &Faber.

Gallagher, K. (2007). The theatre o urban: Youth and schooling in dangerous times. Toronto,London, Bualo: University o Toronto Press.

Gallagher, K. (2007). Conceptions o creativity in drama education. In Internationalhandbook o research in arts education. pp. 1229-1240. L. Bresler (Ed.).New York, NY:Springer Publishing.

Gallagher, K. (Ed.). (2008). The methodological dilemma: Creative, critical and collaborativeapproaches to qualitative research. New York and London: RoutledgeFalmer.

Gallagher, K., Freeman, B., & Wessels, A. (2010). It could have been so much better: theaesthetic and social work o theatre. Research in Drama Education: The Journal o AppliedTheatre and Perormance, 15(1), 5-27.

Lerman, L. & Borstel, J. (2003). Critical response process. Takoma Park, MD: Liz LermanDance Exchange.Ng, R. & Mirchandani, K. (2008). Linking global trends and local lives: Mapping the

methodological dilemmas. In K. Gallagher (Ed.). The methodological dilemma:Creative, critical, and collaborative approaches to qualitative research. pp. 34-45. London:Routledge.


off the beaten track, a reflection on intention and unpredictability in arts ed research

Documents