Preface Acknowledgments 1. What Is and What Is Not Arts Based Research? 2. Why Do Arts Based Research? Arts Based Research Example I: ?Notes From a Marine Biologist?s Daughter? 3. Yes, But Is It Research? 4. Who Can Do Arts Based Research? 5. Who Can Be the Audience for Arts Based Research? Arts Based Research Example II: ?Broken & Buried in Arkansas? 6. Can Arts Based Research Be Fictive? 7. How Might Arts Based Research Be Both Political and Ethical? Arts Based Research Example III: ?Ways of Being at Risk 8. What are Some Criteria for Assessing Arts Based Research? 9. Is There a Place for Theory in Arts Based Research? 10. What Are Some Fundamental Ideas from Arts Based Research? References Additional Readings Index About the Authors

The author of this essay comments upon the contents of the other articles in this issue of The Journal of Educational Research. He locates both similarities and differences within several dimensions of narrative research by the authors of these articles. These dimensions relate to: the definition(s) of narrative research, decisions about whose experiences are worthy of study by narrative researchers in the field of education, the manner in which narrative research may improve teaching and schooling, and the epistemological premises that support the purposes for engaging in narrative research. The author suggests that the differences-within-commonalities found in these articles reflect a healthy maturation of the field of narrative research.

In commenting on Coulter and Smith (2009) , the author explores issues related to the place of the political in education research and in literature, but especially in forms of narrative research that possess both scientific and literary dimensions. More specifically, the author examines four sets of issues related to the researching and writing of forms of narrative composition that exhibit an overtly progressivist orientation. These issues involve (a) the fundamental purposes for which the research is undertaken, (b) the role of opposing tropisms operating through textual design elements that tend to promote or discourage multiple perspectives, (c) ethical issues related to assumed privileges of authorship by the researcher, and (d) the political prerogatives and responsibilities of readers of literary forms of narrative research in education.

ABSTRACT The author of this essay comments upon the contents of the other articles in this issue of The Journal of Educational Research. He locates both similarities and differences within several dimensions of narrative research by the authors of these articles. These dimensions relate to: the definition(s) of narrative research, decisions about whose experiences are worthy of study by narrative researchers in the field of education, the manner in which narrative research may improve teaching and schooling, and the epistemological premises that support the purposes for engaging in narrative research. The author suggests that the differences-within-commonalities found in these articles reflect a healthy maturation of the field of narrative research. Keywords: narrative researchqualitative researchresearch methodsresearch purposes

The Australian Federal Government's call for another teacher education inquiry aims to investigate preservice teacher preparedness for teaching. Art education was selected for this study as the teaching of art education in primary schools occurs in less than ideal conditions and may often be avoided by generalist primary teachers (Russell-Bowie, 2002). Eighty- seven final-year preservice teachers were surveyed on their perceptions of their preparedness for teaching primary art education at the conclusion of their Bachelor of Education program. The 39 survey items were derived from the New South Wales' Creative Arts K-6 State Syllabus (Board of Studies, 2000) across four stage levels (i.e., early stage 1, stage 1, stage 2, and stage 3). Percentages and mean scale scores suggested that these final-year preservice teachers believed they were generally prepared to teach art education in primary schools as a result of a preservice teacher education visual arts unit. Nevertheless, more than 10% of preservice teachers indicated they could not agree or strongly agree that they could provide 20 of the 39 teaching practices advocated by the syllabus and 20% indicated this for 7 of the 39 teaching practices. Tertiary education institutions need to be proactive in responding to the challenge of determining preservice teachers' preparedness for teaching. Surveys linked to a state syllabus may assist

Narrative construction is an approach to social research in which data are configured into any of a variety of diachronic, or storied, formats. Having recently gained popularity, this approach is now in danger of marginalization (along with other qualitative and quantitative forms of social research) as a result of politically charged attempts to reinstitute a narrow methodological orthodoxy. In an attempt to prompt discussion about the future of this inquiry approach, the author asks questions that highlight recurring issues within ongoing conversations among educational researchers who advocate and/or engage in the construction of narratives. These questions relate to the political character of stories, fictionalization, audience, modalities of representation, quality control, research purpose, and strategies for maintaining and enlarging the space for narrative construction as a qualitative research approach within an era of political retrogression.

This study focused on a model of professional development designed to support and encourage arts educators to increase their understanding of student learning in the arts, broaden their knowledge of the Visual and Performing Arts Standards, build upon their repertoire of teaching methods and assessment strategies, and improve leadership skills. Data included 300 hours of observation, focus group and individual interviews, written responses to reflective prompts, unit plans, video and audio tapes, and samples of student work collected over a two year period. Findings indicated that working collaboratively, focusing on student learning, and identifying and planning curriculum around issues central to the discipline positively impacted teachers work. The issue of time constraints was consistently identified as a barrier to professional growth.

In medieval times, an interlude often meant a light-hearted moment between the main acts of a serious play. But I find myself using this brief space to reflect on weighty matters, on large, enduring issues surrounding the role of the teacher in the co-creation of the arts curriculum, and the place of the school arts curriculum in the lives of students. The issues arise out of memories of contrasting incidents involving two of my own elementary school teachers, neither an arts specialist. In the beginning there was Light and she was named Ms. Eddy. Ms. Eddy was my only teacher for second and third grades. On one fine day, she and I finally declared as finished a story that had been long in the co-construction. The month was surely October, the story was about Halloween, its protagonist a tragically opaque ghost. With my teacher’s patient assistance, I had arrived at a final version over the course of several drafts. And now I was being privileged mightily, selected to travel down the hall and read the story aloud in the other third grade classrooms. The pride and exhilaration that I felt upon the return to my homeroom, like the smile of Ms. Eddy, survives within me decades later, even as I complete my reconstruction of the very paragraph you have just read. My sixth grade teacher never wore a halo. The events one day in Ms. Rose’s classroom at McDonogh #39 Elementary School might serve to represent the sense of malaise and drudgery that I still associate with that entire school year. On one New Orleans afternoon, near two o’clock on a Friday in the winter of 1956, Ms. Rose distributed to each student a chalk pencil and drawing paper. She then tacked to the border above the blackboard an outlined drawing of a penguin and announced the challenge: a kind of “draw me” contest in which those few students (how many I cannot recall) who most precisely replicated the drawing would receive an A for the exercise. Ms. Rose, withdrawing to her desk to mark some arithmetic papers, called this activity “making art.” But even then (I do believe), I had other names for it. The notion of the teacher as a bridge between the private home of the child and the public domain of the curriculum has, we know, a long and venerable history, dating back, in Western culture, at least to the pedagogues of ancient Greece. Much later it

Many anthropologists have turned to creative writing as they struggle to represent experiences/encounters with other cultures. Study abroad students, while not necessarily anthropologists-in-the-making, are also representers (and representees) of exotic cultures while abroad. This paper explores creative writing as a strategy to help study abroad students engage questions about cultural representation, reflexivity and identity while immersed in the other culture. It examines a semester-long pilot project in which both students and the author explored poetry as a means to reflect upon and represent experiences with the Other in Central Mexico. It suggests that creative writing as an arts-based method of qualitative inquiry, while not a panacea for the representation crisis, provides students and researchers a powerful way to reflect upon cross-cultural experiences and offers many directions for further research.

This study explores pre-primary children's responses to contemporary art exhibits in a museum setting, the role of previous artistic experiences, and the impact of the art museum visit on children's responses to artworks and making art during classroom practice. The sample included 32 children (16 boys and 16 girls) randomly selected from two classrooms in two nursery public schools in Nicosia, Cyprus. In addition to open-ended interviews, classroom observation notes, and videotape analysis procedures, the artworks of children were used to find out the influences of the visit to the art museum. The findings suggest that children's contact with a range of art forms including contemporary art exhibits in a museum setting is an important part of their educational experiences if appropriate approaches and methods are used.