Arts Based Methods For Research With Children

This book offers a practical, methodological guide to conducting arts-based research with children by drawing on five years of the authors’ experience carrying out arts-based research with children in Australia and the UK. Based on the Australian Research Council-funded Interfaith Childhoods project, the authors describe methods of engaging communities and making data with children that foreground children’s experiences and worldviews through making, being with, and viewing art. Framing these methods of doing, seeing, being, and believing through art as modes of understanding children’s strategies for negotiating personal identities and values, this book explores the value of arts-based research as a means of obtaining complex information about children’s life worlds that can be difficult to express verbally.

Creative research methods can help to answer complex contemporary questions which are hard to answer using conventional methods alone. Creative methods can also be more ethical, helping researchers to address social injustice. This bestselling book, now in its second edition, is the first to identify and examine the five areas of creative research methods: • arts-based research • embodied research • research using technology • multi-modal research • transformative research frameworks. Written in an accessible, practical and jargon-free style, with reflective questions, boxed text and a companion website to guide student learning, it offers numerous examples of creative methods in practice from around the world. This new edition includes a wealth of new material, with five extra chapters and over 200 new references. Spanning the gulf between academia and practice, this useful book will inform and inspire researchers by showing readers why, when, and how to use creative methods in their research. Creative Research Methods has been cited over 500 times.

This book considers the practical challenges likely to be faced when conducting research in the reality of busy educational contexts. It presents an understanding of the perceived efficacy and accessibility of creative research approaches from the perspective of participants as well as the researcher. The book addresses key concerns in research that seeks to understand children’s experiences in terms of creativity in thinking, methods and analysis, the school setting as a socially constructed environment, and power relations in experience and data production. Written in an accessible style that provides a representation of the evolution of arts-based research methods, it includes illustrative case studies, practical suggestions and guidance on further reading. This book will assist higher education researchers seeking to represent subjective experience and empower participants in the creative research process. This book will be vital reading for researchers completing projects within primary and secondary school settings, as well as those involved in teaching and studying at postgraduate level within MA Education programmes. It will also be of interest to students of research methods at undergraduate level.

Designed to be used as both a class text and a resource for researchers and practitioners, Arts Based Research provides a framework for those who seek to broaden the domain of qualitative inquiry in the social sciences by incorporating the arts as forms that represent human knowing.

Drawn from a decade of refugee studies, this book offers a wealth of insights on arts-based methodologies. It explores exciting new prospects for participatory and culturally safe research, and will be a reference resource for researchers of all levels and community practitioners. The book tackles questions of meaningful research practice: How do people with lived experiences of forced migration—Knowledge Holders—lead the way? Can arts-based methods bring about policy and social change? And what of ethical issues? By reflecting on the strengths and limitations of four research methods (digital storytelling, photography, community music, and participatory video), readers are invited to craft their own approach to arts-based projects.

This volume focuses on using visual research methods with children and young people. Featuring insights from academic experts and established professionals from visual industries, it explores a range of issues from visual ethics to children's interaction with place.

This book outlines the principles and practices of arts-related inquiry and provides both suggestions about conducting research in the field as well as case study examples. The ideas presented here have emerged from the authors’ own experiences of undertaking arts-related research and the challenges of implementing these approaches. The book therefore draws on personal research, practice and experience to address the concerns academics increasingly appear to be voicing about developing the scholarship and practice of arts-related research. There is a need for greater attention to, and clarity on, issues of theoretical positioning, methodology and methods when conducting robust and reputable arts-related research, which this book provides.

′This text will be of great use to postgraduate researchers in education, social work and nursing, and any practitioner involved in carrying out research with children and young people′ - CPD Update ′[T]here is a sense of newness and innovation about the book, whereby the reader is treated to insight into the life and work of collaborators who wrote each case study....[T]he book is highly accessible for students at graduate and undergraduate level, for example BA (Hons) Early Childhood Studies students′ - ESCalate Researching with Children and Young People covers every stage of the process of doing a research project, from research design and data collection, through to analysis and writing up. The book is divided into three sections, in which the authors cover: - Introducing research and consultation with children and young people - Collecting and analysing data - Whole-project issues. Each chapter includes activities, discussion questions, tips and extended case studies to help the reader to engage with the material and investigate the practical implications. This text will be of great use to postgraduate researchers in education, social work and nursing, and any practitioner involved in carrying out research with children and young people.