Art‐Based Action Research for Art Education in the North

Abstract

This article introduces the art‐based action research (ABAR) methodology as part of the international discussion of art‐based educational research (ABER). The participatory and dialogical approach of ABAR was inspired by a consideration of the pressure for change in art education stemming from the practices of relational and dialogical contemporary art. The need for ABAR as a tool of culturally decolonising, sustainable art education research was identified in multidisciplinary collaboration with the University of Lapland's (UoL) northern and circumpolar network. The methodology was developed collaboratively by a group of art educators and researchers at UoL to support the artist/teacher/researcher with professional skills for seeking solutions to recognised problems and to promote future actions and aspirations in the changing North and Arctic. This article describes how ABAR has been used in school projects, in doctoral theses and finally in a development project with an impact on regional development in the North. These examples show how art education developed through the ABAR method has supported decolonisation, revitalisation and cultural sustainability in schools, communities and businesses.

Estrategias utilizadas en la investigación educativa sustentada por técnicas artísticas

“…En la transferencia de conocimiento son las exposiciones en espacios educativos las que representan cierta notoriedad (13.21%). Además, entre éstos, se ha detectado una mayor preponderancia de los espacios universitarios (Bolden, 2017;Clarke y Bautista, 2017;Davidson, 2012;Hoekstra, 2019;Jokela, 2019;Kaplan, 2020;May, et al, 2014;Sweet et al, 2020). Un ejemplo, es la exposición realizada en una facultad de trabajo social:…”

Arts-Based Action Research on Enhancing Children’s Creativity Through Affect Within Participatory Performance Art and Performance Pedagogy

“…In the project the "Nomadic Radical Academy 2019", ABAR (Jokela, 2019;Jokela & Huhmarniemi, 2018) was used to trace the changes in the participating children's creative interactions with each other and with the performance site. ABAR builds on arts-based research (ABR) (Leavy, 2018) and action research; the action research element consists of a series of cycles (Arslan-Ari et al, 2021).…”

“…ABAR takes an exploratory and developmental approach that facilitated cycles of research, in the case of the "Nomadic Radical Academy", from the idea of the pilot project to the artifacts of the performance and the evaluation (Jokela, 2019). A cyclic view of research allows for the possibility of reshaping the research approach, evaluating and developing the research objectives in the process (Jokela, 2019); for example, the study of the "Nomadic Radical Academy" consisted of three cycles: the first cycle focused on research regarding network-building strategies during performance pedagogy projects with children (Griniuk, 2021); the second cycle focused on children's interactive design within art; and the third cycle focused on the performance aims of the article, particularly on how to enhance children's creativity through participatory performance. Knowledge is gained through pilot projects (in this case, during the "Nomadic Radical Academy"), and ABAR facilitated an exploratory approach to the study using data gathered through affective ethnography.…”

Who is it for? Art and social practice in a time of slow burn crisis

“…It can be more radical, taking into account a variety of theories, ranging from border pedagogy (Giroux, 1991) to critical pedagogy (Freire, 2005), or sociological theories relating to indigenous knowledge and cognitive justice (Santos, 2014). We can deepen our research approaches by exploring methodologies such as arts-based action research (Jokela, 2019).…”