ABSTRACT
Arts-based methods are well-placed to enable disruptions to normative positioning of researcher, respondent and subject. This chapter draws on the author’s reflections of opening the research processes to the possibilities of methodological ir/responsibility. It focuses on a selection of mixed-method projects where a significant contribution to the validity of the empirical research emerged from the arts-based methods employed, including the use of journal writing, story-telling, metaphoric and visual imagery. The discussion is structured around the validity of the methods for the purposes of generating data to inform the evaluation of and research on that which is often difficult and elusive to analyse in higher education. A particular contribution of the chapter is the discussion of how the construction of research participants informed both the data generation processes, and the analytic approach to the texts they authored. An argument is made for the importance of establishing conditions which enable the possibilities of participants’ agency.
