ABSTRACT
This chapter starts with a quick review of the importance of the arts in human history. In the 18th century, the Enlightenment guided scientists towards a reason-based research paradigm. Consequently, language has come to be viewed as the predominant thinking and communication tool in social science research. This language-dominant view leads to a problem: what cannot be articulated in language is deemed invalid or unreal. Today arts-based research methods open up new channels for research participants to engage in the research process. However, they do not simply supplement existing qualitative approaches. Arts-based research methods are grounded in performativism, not representationalism. This chapter argues that, by allowing research participants to project feelings onto external materials, arts-based research methods have an affective containment function. This can mitigate potential emotional distress experienced by researchers and research participants. Moreover, when using arts-based research methods, educational researchers should see agency and meaning as emerging from the intra-action of language, body, material, and environment. The arts in educational research should not be studied independently from the research participants, their languages, lived experiences, cultural contexts, and materials. It is the assemblage of all these human and non-human factors that yields meaning and exercises world-changing agency.
