With foreword by Kenneth J. Gergen and Mary M. Gergen.
Creative research methods can help to answer complex contemporary questions, which are hard to answer using traditional methods alone. Creative methods can also be more ethical, helping researchers to address social injustice.
This accessible book is the first to identify and examine the four areas of creative research methods: arts-based research, research using technology, mixed-method research and transformative research frameworks. Written in a practical and jargon-free style, with over 100 boxed examples, it offers numerous examples of creative methods in practice, from the social sciences, arts, and humanities around the world. Spanning the gulf between academia and practice, this useful book will inform and inspire researchers by showing readers why, when, and how to use creative methods in their research.
Creative research methods can help to answer complex contemporary questions which are hard to answer using conventional methods alone. Creative methods can also be more ethical, helping researchers to address social injustice.
This bestselling book, now in its second edition, is the first to identify and examine the five areas of creative research methods:
• arts-based research
• embodied research
• research using technology
• multi-modal research
• transformative research frameworks.
Written in an accessible, practical and jargon-free style, with reflective questions, boxed text and a companion website to guide student learning, it offers numerous examples of creative methods in practice from around the world. This new edition includes a wealth of new material, with five extra chapters and over 200 new references. Spanning the gulf between academia and practice, this useful book will inform and inspire researchers by showing readers why, when, and how to use creative methods in their research.
This chapter focuses on how autoethnographic playwriting and performance can be used as research pursuits in social work. It lays out (1) a rationale for using playwriting and performance as a research method to engage in self-healing and to advance social change; (2) a case study including theoretical approach, research procedures, and dissemination; and (3) a discussion for future social work research and practice. Autoethnographic playwriting and performance provides a tool that researchers can use to explore the experiences of research participants.
different way from Arianne Reis. Barbour writes, ‘My aim in dancing is to embody through autoethnographic performance that which I am unable to write on the page. The aim in this article is to playfully represent my embodied methodologies and some of my “findings” through creative writing and images of performance’ (Barbour 2012: 67). Her article includes six ‘images’ or photographs, each more or less blurred, presumably to convey a sense of movement. Barbour is trying to do something extremely difficult: to convey aspects of the experience of dance in writing. I
nature of her participants’ experiences. Taken in total, Reis’s aim was to ‘add layers of meanings and emotions’ to the written narrative she had produced (Reis 2011: 15). As stated in Chapter Seven, Karen Barbour is an autoethnographer and a contemporary dancer. She too used photographs in the presentation of her research, but in a very different way from Arianne Reis. Barbour writes: ‘My aim in dancing is to embody through autoethnographic performance that which I am unable to write on the page. The aim in this article is to playfully represent my embodied
