A Dialogue in Words and Images between Two Artists Doing Arts-Based Educational Research

Over ten years ago, Tom Barone and Elliot Eisner (1997) described seven features of existing artistic approaches to educational inquiry. Their chapter dealt primarily with written, prosaic forms of Arts-Based Educational Research, or ABER, particularly educational criticism and narrative storytelling. In their concluding section, Barone and Eisner recognize the limitless possibilities of utilizing non-linguistic forms of representation to conduct ABER. It is the thesis of our paper that such forms might be considered Research-Based Art (RBA), given the shift in emphasis from linguistic to non-linguistic ways of representing what it is that we come to know about our world. While ABER is considerably broad, we seek to apply as specifically as possible Barone and Eisnerʹs categorical structure to our own RBA. We do so by defining RBA, reconceptualizing Barone and Eisnerʹs seven features as they pertain to RBA, and providing excerpts of our own dialog in applying the seven features to a specific aspect of Jamieʹs doctoral dissertation. Specifically, we discuss how our understanding and use of RBA compares and contrasts with Barone and Eisnerʹs seven features of ABER.