The chapter examines the role of practice-related research in the arts, humanities, and social sciences. It will extend existing debates regarding the academic rigour of such methodologies as arts-based research and consider their impact on future research culture, using Zen arts as an example of a subject of study within such a methodological framing. It also discusses complimentary methods used by Zen arts researchers such as ethnography to examine why qualitative techniques are not only useful but imperative in the study of such fields. While practice is the key to Zen arts research, neither of the practice-related method types, practice-led or practice-based, currently defined describes how such practice or the writing function in PhD investigations, where together such components are the subject of investigation as well as the method of research and presentation. The chapter thus suggests an additional category of PRR, “practice-reflexive,” when describing such research whose focus is on the distinction of (or the lack thereof) the written exegesis and the notional artefact.
TopIntroduction
The differences and the introduction of new research techniques have provoked powerful challenges to the traditional paradigms and procedures of academia. Arts-based research, for instance, embraces a broad church of overlapping and shifting ideologies, methods of examination, production and presentation techniques. Growing number of researchers are engaging in creative, practice-related research, viewing it as the only way to explore their topic of study (Arnold, 2012; Mäkelä, Nimkulrat, Dash, & Nsenga, 2011; Schippers, 2007; Skains, 2018). The study investigates the techniques employed by practice-related researchers in the fields of arts, humanities and social sciences in order to analyse the parameters that justify its validity. As we see an increased blurring of discipline-based boundaries, and as researchers and institutions gravitate towards new modes of expression, strategies for finding effective and most appropriate techniques of exploration for given topics, including apt forms of presentation to communicate the value of one’s work, prove to be vital. Language is a culturally constructed tool and as coded as any artefact; convincing arguments are rooted in the recognition and admission of limitations in any subject area or research methodology. In selecting the appropriate mode of investigation and communication, the investigator may determine that non-linguistic methods are more apt for some research process and outcome. Furthermore, specific research questions and methods may emerge during the investigation process rather than prior to the start of the research; creative and responsive approaches in the arts, akin to the process of rapid prototyping in engineering, may thus benefit the work better than prescribed and fixed methods. The study will ask whether, in order for creative practitioners, including Zen arts researchers, to let research play a vital role as a practice of creative innovation and a space to express complex ideas, the rigour of the research design needs to be at the forefront of the work rather than merely the artistic content. The form of presentation/documentation and/or the curation of final portfolio should also be considered as a vital part of the context and the creative output. By expanding the focus from the stages of knowledge production towards the process of its transfer, the chapter aims to stimulate new ways of working, develop new contexts and discourses, and ultimately enhance academic status and the creative practice of alternate methods of investigation.
The chapter comprises two parts: Part 1 lays the foundation for Part 2 of the article by offering an overview of the current discourse and categories of practice-related research (hereafter denoted as PRR), focusing particularly on the relationship between practice and research in arts-based research (hereafter denoted as ABR). It will analyse the role of the creative artifice in relation to the written component of a doctoral degree, followed by a discussion on the function of scholarly writing within practice-based methodologies. Part 2 of the chapter begins by briefly summarising Zen arts and question where such an artform is positioned within the academic framework in order to further explore the validity of the parameters presented in Part 1. It also discusses other complimentary methods used by researchers of Zen arts, particularly ethnographic methods, to show why such qualitative techniques are not only useful but absolutely imperative in the study of such fields.