Practice-based reflections of enabling agency through arts-based methodological ir/responsibility

Arts-based methods are well-placed to enable disruptions to normative positioningof researcher, respondent and subject. This chapter draws on theauthor’s reflections of opening the research processes to the possibilities ofmethodological ir/responsibility. It focuses on a selection of mixed-methodprojects where a significant contribution to the validity of the empiricalresearch emerged from the arts-based methods employed, including the use ofjournal writing, story-telling, metaphoric and visual imagery. The discussionis structured around the validity of the methods for the purposes of generatingdata to inform the evaluation of and research on that which is often difficultand elusive to analyse in higher education. A particular contribution of thechapter is the discussion of how the construction of research participantsinformed both the data generation processes, and the analytic approach to thetexts they authored. An argument is made for the importance of establishingconditions which enable the possibilities of participants’ agency.