Exploring Critical Events in an Inaugural Arts-Based Research Class through Ethnographic Mapping and Poetry-Enriched Narrative Sketches

Arts-based research (ABR) employs the arts to explore the “experiences of researchers and the people they involve in their studies” (McNiff, 2008, p. 29). Acknowledgement of ABRs’ potential for enhancing social science inquiry has gained momentum along with the development of new ABR methods courses. However, there is a lack of published studies that investigate what goes on in ABR classes (Cahnmann-Taylor & Siegesmund, 2008; Leavy, 2015; Personal communication, The Qualitative Report 2018 Conference). In this inquiry we (Janet, course designer and instructor, and Steve, student and class assistant), employed ethnographic techniques to explore unexpected critical events that occurred in our inaugural ABR class. We wanted to discover why these problematic situations happened. We also hoped to learn how we might have anticipated and resolved these events before they became challenging. Similar to a bricolage process in which researchers cobble different modes of inquiry together, we interfaced ethnographic mapping with poetry-enriched narrative sketches to record and make sense of the data. We discovered some critical events resulted from circumstances outside of the classroom and other incidents were exacerbated because we did not attend to problems when they first developed.