MA Week 2 - Research Methods are not quite as scary as I'd thought

Reflection on taught session, Friday 9th October 2015

Research Methods introduction

 

In the afternoon we had an introduction to Research Methods with Sam . I was relieved to find that I was undertaking some of the methods already, but didn’t know they had defined names.  Research concerns itself with discovering something in a systematic way, and crucially, disseminating the new knowledge. The steps can be defined as: identify problem, observation, enquiry, experimentation, reflection, solving, making the solution public. So obviously one way I could make the “solution” public would be by exhibiting my artwork. This ties in with my thoughts on “where I fit in”, as mentioned above. Arts-based research is considered to be a different approach to either traditional social science qualitative and quantitative methods, and can be divided  into: Research into arts practice –history, theory; Research through arts practice – studio projects plus supporting documentation; Research for arts practice – media experimentation etc. Rather than gathering data, the primary research activity can be something such as drawing or producing technical diagrams.

Having pondered on my notes from Sam’s session, I can see that I am doing a lot of research into practice at the moment. To a certain extent I find this limiting and frustrating, but the research through and for practice will definitely follow next year once these first two modules are delivered. I also concluded that my practice has elements of narrative enquiry – not least into myself. By using my own story and image, I avoid a lot of ethical issues (and this is why I do use my own image). I undertake lots of action research, or experimentation – which tied in with Annabeth’s idea of “playing” from the morning session. I usually produce drawings or images of one sort or another as my primary research. I have tended to work “bottom-up” or in an inductive manner, building up small pieces of visual information, but I am now using these pieces of work to find my “frameworks”, or “meta-narratives” (“top down” approach). So far I am thinking of my meta-narratives as: socialism/anti-Thatcherism, feminism, repeatable forms/patterns/processes…. but watch this space!