Bringing some creativity into research

Hi Friend,
Yeah, you got your post in ahead of me this week!  I was away with my dear, sweet daughter yesterday afternoon after work to her first gymnastics competition so mother had to take a front seat to student.

You always tie in your learning in such a thorough way and when I read your posts I feel like I am part of your discussion group.  Thanks for being so detailed and really helping me understand your thinking.  I am wondering if we read the same article?  My group had two articles this week because several classmates found our first article "Arts-informed Research" by Cole and Knowles to be a bit heavy.  I quite liked it and realized that J. Gary Knowles the co-author, was one of my practicum supervisors when I was doing my B Ed at MSVU.  Really made me think that the world is indeed a small place.

Dr. Cranton decided to post a second article, of which she co-authored, entitled "Mentoring arts-based research: a tale of two professors" because she wanted to give us a more practical explanation of arts based research.  I really enjoyed this article because it was in a dialogue format and gave me excellent insight into this relatively new research field.  While you read and were engaged in the discussion of Alzheimer's because of your very personal connection to it, I liked how Dr. Cranton and Dr. Lawrence made the reader see that arts-based research is scholarly and can bring about cultural change.  The examples of research dissertations woven with a connection to the arts is what appealed to me this week.

While I don't claim to be artistic, I do love the visual arts and see this research as very intriguing.  When I was meeting with Dr. Whitty today at UNB I saw a poster on her office door showing the work of a student who is presenting arts-based research and is having his work shown at the gallery downtown.  I will have to get his name from her because I forget it.  It seems like the doors to my educational world are constantly being opened all around me.  The more I read and discuss, the more I learn and connect to!  This is what makes our jobs so draining, yet so invigorating at the same time.

To think that you can present academic research in the form of photos, poetry, drama, and artwork entices me.  I keep trying to decide if my idea of "wondering" in math would be in some way considered arts-based research because of the visual representations I have from students?  Sometimes I think I should be doing a thesis yet, know that I could not take this on at this stage of my degree.  Perhaps at some point I will take some extra courses...

Thanks for broadening my scope of learning today with your post and while we are just weeks away from finishing I am sad to think we will not be chatting in this format for much longer:(

Enjoy the rest of your weekend,
Sheila