Friday, May 08, 2015

Creative research

Traditional research methods are used to “avoid creativity” (179) Such is the provocative challenge by Helen Kara, Creative Research Methods in the Social Sciences: A Practical Guide. She argues that traditional research value hard facts and replicability. In so doing, it ignores contextual specificity and limits the knowledge, experience and skills that many sectors of society can bring to the table.

Kara is an independent social researcher. As a result the book is practical, filled with examples of research. The focus is on four methods of creative research: art-based, technology, mixed-method and transformative. Each are tracked through processes of ethics, data gathering, analysing and communicating. The bibliography, running at 19 pages, is a reassurance that creativity in research does not mean a decline in quality and rigour.

I really like the way she includes a chapter on writing and another chapter on presentation. This in itself is a reminder that an essential part of research is how we communicate our thinking. As Kara explores graphs, art, technology, I was struck again by how narrow is the world of thesis and journal articles.

colouring outside lines I’m encouraged to read Creative Research Methods in the Social Sciences: A Practical Guide alongside Colouring Outside the Lines. Celebrating postgraduate work in mission and ministry from the Adelaide College of Divinity 2010-2014 (more here). Many of the essays from our Adelaide College of Divinity post-graduate students are creative in their research.

Reading Kara’s Creative Research Methods in the Social Sciences: A Practical Guide also brought to mind a recent post, in which I ponder activist research (one of the methods praised by Kara) and consider it theologically.

The church I serve, the Uniting Church, makes specific mention in it’s founding documents of scholarship. Paragraph 11 of the Basis of Union acknowledges that God gives to the church “faithful and scholarly interpreters of Scripture.” What is interesting is how these scholars (and presumably their research?) is placed in this paragraph within an activist framework. “The Uniting Church thanks God for the continuing witness and service of evangelist, of scholar, of prophet and of martyr.” In other words, the Uniting Church does not conceive of the stand alone scholar (or the stand alone theological college). Instead, it envisages partnerships among evangelists, scholars, prophets and martyrs. (Funny how we have theological colleges for scholars, but not colleges for evangelists, prophets and martyrs).

And the horizons, in the Basis of Union, for all these charisms is activist – “It prays that it may be ready when occasion demands to confess the Lord in fresh words and deeds.” The task of scholars and research is, in partnership with other parts of the body, to be a pilgrim people on mission.

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Overall, Creative Research Methods in the Social Sciences: A Practical Guide feels emancipatory. It wants to see all sorts of knowledge and experience woven into quality research, incorporated in ways that still value ethics, planning, analysing, communicating. Kara is aware that this requires risk, primarily for the status quo. But it does provide some intriguing possibilities, especially in seeking to integrate communities and leaders of communities into the real-life change possibilities that should be inherent in research.

Posted by steve at 01:06 PM

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