ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the use of creative methods – print or audio-visual, including film, song, dramatic production – to draw out aspects of the lived experience of students, educators and researchers in a ‘third space’, a strategic intersection of educational research, practice and method. Such research elicits rich ‘textual’ data, including images, sounds, narrative, storytelling and metaphor. The author examines his involvement in several projects of this kind which challenge conventional ideas about research design and data collection. The chapter makes three claims: that social-science research is richer when we get up close and personal to people’s life narratives; that creative methods work well for this, better than other approaches, and usefully bring ethical tensions to the surface; and that everything is mediated – we are texts, so research and researchers need to ‘do text’. The chapter argues that such ways enable us to be more agentive, participative and expansive in our research, so that ultimately we can understand education better.
