Master Class with ACE colleagues & HDR students:
An introduction to Arts-Based Educational Research (ABER) 

Facilitated by Rita Irwin, Michelle Ludecke and Geraldine Burke 

Friday 1 November, 10:00 -12:00 noon, Monash Clayton campus & Online via zoom (limited to 20 on campus and 20 online)

Building on the notion of travelling concepts as method, Rita Irwin, Michelle Ludecke and Geraldine Burke will collaboratively offer a masterclass - an infusion of creative approaches to living inquiry across the arts, while also examining the potential for a range of research methods and methodologies to advance arts education. Participants in this graduate-accredited masterclass will be introduced to a/r/tography (Irwin), Performed Research (Ludecke) and Participatory Arts-based Research (Burke) while conceptualising their own ABER research project or ways to communicate findings through the arts.

Graduate Research accredited hours: 2 hours

In this 2-hour workshop you will hear from Faculty arts-based educational researchers, in association with ACE (Arts, Creativity, Education) Faculty Research and Scholarship Group who will present an introduction to Arts-Based Educational Research (ABER) methods.

In the first hour, you will be introduced to approaches to ABER including the arts methodologies of:

• A/r/tography which explores the intersecting roles of artist, researcher and teacher identities through arts and text-based research, as shared through the work of the Dean’s Distinguished Research Fellow, Rita Irwin;

• Performed research which is located under the umbrella term of arts-based research, and includes performance ethnography, ethnodrama, verbatim theatre, Forum theatre and Michelle’s unique method of scripting as analysis, through the work of Faculty of Education academic Michelle Ludecke; and

• Participatory arts-based research which utilises collaborative artmaking as participatory action; and practice-based educational research through making original artefacts to gain new knowledge about practice and education; as shared through the work of Geraldine Burke (Faculty of Education)
  
  

ABER aims to understand education through arts-based concepts, techniques and practices. Researchers use a variety of arts-based methodologies to undertake their research and/or communicate their understanding through arts-based approaches including autobiography, narrative, poetry, visual and performing arts.

In the second hour (includes a short break) participants will then have the opportunity to work in small groups under the guidance of the presenters to develop their own ABER ‘elevator pitch’ for their research project. This will be followed by sharing each participant’s elevator pitch with the group and receive feedback from the three presenters on how to develop their ABER further.

Learning outcomes: 

1. Understand a variety of approaches to ABER

2.  Conceptualise their own approach to ABER

3.  Share ideas with other workshop participants and integrate feedback into their ABER design

4.  Consider how an ABER approach might assist graduate students in undertaking research and/or communicating findings.