CSSE-SCÉÉ: Theorizing Approaches to Fieldwork

Presented to the Canadian Society for the Study of Education Arts Interest Group. 

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Abstract: Fieldwork is an approach to qualitative and scientific research wherein one gains first-hand experience, knowledge, and data about the world by leaving the university to go out to the field. In social science research, fieldwork through embedding in place is often used in qualitative approaches like ethnography. This presentation examines how fieldwork can enhance place-based arts-based research and arts-based curriculum development, theorizing when artmaking can constitute fieldwork in its own right. Taking up conceptions of fieldwork from the social sciences which have used art as a metaphor for fieldwork methods, this project draws on traditions of place-based making and emergent frameworks of arts-based research to consider when directed artmaking can be a form of fieldwork. This presentation will draw on one co-author's doctoral dissertation, which used fieldwork for research-creation and curriculum development, and a one-year research project where three researchers are developing approaches to fieldwork. After providing a theoretical perspective for arts-based research as fieldwork, we will conclude with methodological approaches that artist-teachers and artist-researchers could take up in their practices.

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Presenters: David LeRue and Keyiana Marques