FORM: AN ALTERNATIVE TO VALIDITY IN QUALITATIVE, ART-BASED RESEARCH
ANNE BAMFORD
anne.bamford@uts.edu.au
UNIVERSITY OF TECHNOLOGY, SYDNEY
Institute for Interactive Multimedia and Learning
Centre for Research in Education and the Arts
Abstract:
Criteria for judging art-based research are still developing. The axioms for validating trustworthiness and quality need to be opened to greater discourse. Validity in an art-based inquiry is not a matter of fulfilling a set of criteria - but rather traits that characterise the essence of what is trying to be achieved. In qualitative, art-based research notions of "form" provide a more appropriate way of determining the merit and value of research than traditional notions of validity. Form is defined as the
configuration, arrangement and style of the research. It exists as an abstract ideal form comprised of the entities combined with, but also beyond, the physical form. Put simply, form is the essential nature of the research.Introduction:
Criteria for judging art-based inquiries are still developing. Aesthetic appreciation as a form of educational research has not been widely used for long enough to have developed a body of critique that are well grounded in a community of researchers. This is a comparatively new form of research dialect and the rules for this discourse are yet to be more firmly conventionalised. One of the challenges for aesthetic appreciation as an emerging form of educational research is to engage with issues of significance and develop criteria for determining the trustworthiness and quality of emerging research studies.
Notions of validity are closely linked to the axioms and aims of research. The traditional definition of validity is expressed as the question, "Are we measuring what we think we are measuring?" . Lincoln and Guba established four terms, credibility, transferability, dependability and confirmability, to equate to validity in naturalistic paradigms. But validity in an art-based inquiry is not a matter of fulfilling a set of criteria - but rather traits that characterise the essence of what is trying to be achieved.
Validity is not a boundary line between truth and non-truth. It is rather linked to the type of knowledge you want to create. Validity has been thought of as the degree of 'rightness' of a particular research. This notion implies that there is a right answer, or a defined point to which the research is aimed at attaining. This is a problematic notion in art-based research as if there is no defined summit, how does the researcher know when she is getting close to reaching it! Postmodern and poststructuralist research would argue that there is no single right answer or truth. Similarly, such research also questions the whole idea that valid research is that which most closely represents reality. Postmodernist and feminist critics consider that there is no single reality and that reality is socially and personally constructed and within any situation multiple realities can exist. If validity is defined as, "the congruence between some representation of an object, context, situation, event, or person and the object that is "signified" by that representation" the question is raised as to which representation (of the multiples possible) is the 'truest' and on what basis are certain aspects 'signified'? Omission becomes as significant in determining what is 'read' as reality as does inclusion.
In qualitative, art-based research notions of
"form" provide a more appropriate way of determining the merit and value of research than traditional notions of validity. Form is defined as the configuration, arrangement and style of the research. It exists as an abstract ideal form comprised of the entities combined with, but also beyond, the physical form. Put simply, form is the essential nature of the research. The term form is used in artistic and literary language to imply the manifestation that results from the fashioning of particular parts into a holistic, creative shape.The arts have historically emphasised the importance of form as a generation of feeling and, in turn, the relationship of feeling to insight . Form is the shape of a thing. It implies the creation of expressive frames that are visually, audibly and/or imaginatively perceivable. Whether the form created could justifiably be called 'artistic' research depends upon the desire of the maker to compose it into a form that expresses her idea of a feeling or a whole nexus of feeling . Form also exists in relationship with the reader or audience, as it requires this relationship in order that others can sense significant form, where such form presents itself. A modernist view of form would argue that 'seeing is believing' and that form is obvious, apparent and can be singularly read. The preferred postmodernist view would argue that form exists as the result of interactions between makers and audience and is multi-layered, seriated and affective. In other words, 'believing is seeing'. Cassirer argued, "We may have met with an object of our ordinary sense experience a thousand times without ever having "seen" its form. We are still at a loss if asked to describe not its physical qualities or effects but its pure visual shape and structure. It is art that fills the gap"
In determining merit and value of research, this paper aims to elicit the nature of significant form as could be applied to judge validity in art-based qualitative research. The difficulty is that significant form is often 'known' in an instinctual sense before it can be fully revealed in traditional ways of seeing. The artist or critic may know what she thinks, but why she does what she does the way she does is less explainable. Significant form is grasped or felt, but not defined. Such significance is implicit but not conventionally fixed . Langer argued that:
We cannot conceive significant form ex nihilo; we can only find it, and create something in its image; but because a man has seen the "significant form" of the thing he copies. He will copy it with that emphasis, not by measure, but by the selective, interpretive power of his intelligent eye.
Despite the inherent difficulties of defining significant form, there is no doubt in the art and natural world significant form exists. Significant forms possess an ambivalence of content which words alone cannot create. Significant form presents in a harmonic fashion, demonstrating feeling with a purpose. Form represents the essential character of something. It is the configuration of an experience that shows a close relation between apperceptive unity and logical distinctions in such a way as to present both unity and diversity . The form is not only the evident shape of research, but also notions of form shape the research process. In this way, form becomes a tacit determinant of the formulation, process, product and ultimate reading of the research.
Form, as an alternative conception for validity, would imply that the research has merit and value if it enables people to;
See or hear unity, organic integrity, development, growth, and feeling "expressed" in the apparition before us. We perceive them when we see or hear or read the work, and they seem to be directly contained in it, not symbolised by it. The work itself takes on a semblance of life.
Form as opposed to traditional tenets of validity allows many individually conceived things and properties to be related to each other, either directly or indirectly, to produce a holistic picture. Within a conception of research that stresses form, rather than validity, elements are identifiable from one another but the assumption is that form acts an inclusive unit to describe the research. As Langer cautioned, "Like living substance, a work of art is inviolable; break its elements apart, and they no longer are what they were and the whole image is gone."
The form of a given piece of research is the conception from which all discourse emanates and through which intuitive apperception of the total can be formulated. While form, may have a level of universal communication, the individual form of research must be contained within that research and be highly specific to the context and nature of that particular study.
The characteristics of quality form that may be applied to determine the worth or merit of a piece of research include:
If a piece of research is valid in terms of its form, then that form will convey the consciousness of the researcher and also the consciousness of the participants. It will objectify the felt experiences from the research process and present them in a mode amendable to wider understanding. In this way, the form surrounding a piece of research represents a symbol that should also speak to the consciousness of the audience and more broadly the educational community.
Form is not a purely physical characteristic. Form resonates with the researcher's biases. Form only records what is significant, and these are presented as a projected vision for future educational or research practice. The way an artist or researcher develops form can be described as the 'treatment' of form. Treatment is simply the mode of imitation applied to the study. Treatment is frequently unconscious and constantly evolving. Technique is the power of the researcher to produce a version of the affective captured in a real existence or a realisation of things in the world. The aim of technique is always a definite sensuous or emotional effect, which is to be brought to perception. The goal of technique is rarely representation, but rather semblance, an apparent form expressive of intuition and feeling. Cassirer argued that one of the triumphs of effective technique was the ability of the created form to make humanity see commonplace things in their real shape and true light. This is not to say form is merely the result of techniques of imitation and presentation. On the contrary, the true value of technique is the manner in which it imbues the form with a dynamic and catalytic life.
Form is not static nor is it replicable. Using form as a notion of validity for qualitative, art-based research is to accept the axiom that every researcher will see something different in a study. There will be multiple ways to interpret the form and a range of techniques that can be used. Similarly, form is not static and it will change as soon as it is created. Form is also ultimately born in the imaginings of individual readers or viewers of the work. Cassirer described this clearly in an analogy to the work of an artist. He stated:
If we say of two artists that they paint "the same' landscape we describe our aesthetic experience very inadequately. From the point of view of art such a pretended sameness is illusory... For the artist does not portray or copy a certain empirical object - a landscape with its hills and mountains, its brooks and rivers. What he gives us is the individual and momentary physiognomy of the landscape. He wishes to express the atmosphere of things, the paly of light and shadow. A landscape is not 'the same' in early twilight, in midday heat, or on a rainy or sunny day.
This quote also accentuates that place and time ultimately define form. These may be physical contexts or social, political or cultural 'places' and 'times'. Location may be temporal and transient. The researcher is a collagist or bicoleur, often trying to pull pieces out from a form that already exists and then reconstructing it into a representation of the world, as the researcher knows it. The art of collage in research is about starting with a background and then building up layers. These become sensuous abstractions that are expressionistic rather than realistic. Areas within the form can be constantly reworked or reinterpreted. To this extent qualitative, art-based research is never actually finished. The skill of the researcher as with the artist, is knowing the point at which the study is still 'under worked' or at what point it has become 'overworked'.
Criticism has inherent technique and form. The ultimate test of form within qualitative research based on notions of critique is located within the work, not in social consensus . Quality of form in criticism acts as a cue that allows the reader to enter the work under investigation in a manner which foregrounds significant moments and takes the reader beyond what is currently know, either implicitly or explicitly. Critical inquiry needs to be assessed by the extent to which it illuminates communal or individual understanding.
All artistic forms hold meaning. Through critical interpretation, the viewer experiences interplay between form and context, both inside and outside the artwork. Lincoln wrote of the importance of establishing a holistic context for the interrelation of form;
Comprehending meaning within a context, understanding the social and cultural milieu from which an artefact or program draws its particular expression, seeing something fully, not particle-sized, but in its wholeness, being able to sympathise with, even if we would not particularly want to adopt it ourselves.
In art-based research methodologies seeing and telling is always transactional . The conceptual frameworks of the researcher, the participants and the audience mediate the understanding of significant form. To see form, all these stakeholders must learn to listen and look. Aesthetic form, as a determinant of research merit and worth, requires immersion, sympathy, openness and awareness. All the people involved in the research shape the form. Through an abstracted vision, form enables the stakeholders in the research and the audience to anticipate or search for features and to formulate dreams of an imagined future.
Some postmodernists and post-structuralists would see form as a very modernist way to describe the quality of art-based research, yet this is not the case. Contexts for conceptions of form in qualitative research are in constant movement. The postmodern notion of form described in this paper is essentially highly tentative. The characteristics of postmodernist form include things such as:
Postmodernist form is not an absolute entity, but rather changes as a result of the time, place and context in which it is presented and interpreted. Postmodernist form exists as a balance between intellectual, moral and aesthetic values. Different viewpoints change the focus of the form. Traditions and frames orientate the reading of the form. Form is not a single logical criterion, or unitary concept, but instead encapsulates a multiplicity and diversity of discourses and interpretations. As Lincoln noted, "We need to understand that social, political, aesthetic, cultural, and moral expression takes many forms, and to recognise and apprehend the strength and diversity that variety contributes."
It has been the contention of this paper that determinants of validity need to be reconsidered in the light of qualitative methodologies. Measures of validity adapted from scientific paradigms of research do not adequately fit the axioms of art-based and more humanistic and creative forms of research. In this paper, it has been proposed that notions of 'form' may provide some new axioms by which the merit and worth of art-based research methodologies can be assessed. Art-based methodologies have only recently been adopted more broadly as a form of educational inquiry. It takes some time before well-developed measures of quality can be delineated in any new research paradigm. As more researchers engage with these types of methodologies, a level of critique and discourse needs to be promoted that can assist in developing sets of qualities that can be used in a trustworthy manner to determine quality and fittedness of research within these paradigms.