Arts-based educational research: thinking teacher education as an aesthetic experience

Abstract

The author describes in this article two studies conducted with teachers, in which art objects are used as devices to trigger shared reflection. Theoretically grounded in a novel modality of qualitative investigation in the field of Education - Arts-based Educational Research (ABER), the text discusses peculiarities of the working and role of this research mode in teacher professional development, the different natures of the two art objects employed (photography and theater), and points to the two main tendencies within this research mode - the tendency of meaning production, in which the teacher educator and the participants in the research share and build meanings by coming in contact with an art object previously prepared by a professional artist; and the representationist tendency, in which participating teachers and educators construct, individually or in shared fashion, a certain art object that reflects and expresses their representations of the world of teaching. Lastly, the article suggests that ABER, apart from establishing contexts of reflection in which students and teachers have the opportunity to unfold the aesthetic experience, institutes alternative relationships of the participants with the pedagogical knowledge and practice, revealing its social import and its renewing force.