In this special issue, each author addresses how ABER work connects with and/or directly addresses society's need/s and the public good as perceived by the researcher. As there are many construals of the "public good" and the relation to art-making and the arts to this "public good," each author will conceptualize her/his…

This paper discusses a cultural exchange project that is being conducted between classrooms at the Songwon Elementary School in South Korea and the Lee School in Massachusetts, USA. As its main communication tool between the students in the two countries, this project uses VoiceThread--an audiovisual discussion tool that can serve as an ideal…

A rally in Washington, DC to transform the U. S. schools provided an example of merging poetry, performance, and research for social justice activism. The arts-based research forms of a/r/tography and performance ethnography provided the poet/performer/researcher/activist with frameworks of sense-making that were fluid, intrasubjective, and…

In the period after the 1896 U.S. Supreme Court decision (Plessy v. Ferguson), "white" supremacy was codified and reinforced through law, custom, and mob violence. Despite this, African-descended women artists in the Western Hemisphere committed the revolutionary act of declaring, "I am; I am here; I am here remaking/reimagining the…

This essay explores silent conversations with the past, but also navigates through the labyrinth of artistic process, with its manifold passages of research, chance occurrence and aesthetic experimentation. The double metaphors of silent conversations and labyrinths apply to the essay and the artwork within it, to the research and to the practice.…

Embracing "metaphor as method" (Prendergast, 2005; see also Prendergast, 2006a, 2006b, 2008a), which I suggest is a key characteristic of thinking poetically and doing poetic inquiry, is the process conveyed in this suite of found poems. The investigation began with a cross-disciplinary scholarly database search on the term "education as art" that…

Using narrative method in the form of journaling has the power to shape identity and relationships between teachers and students. This article reflects on such journaling and the process of writing poetry to create a space of understanding between two very different people who found themselves in the relationship of teacher and student. "The…

Teaching is vulnerable work where self and other enter into intimate encounters that can change one's sense of self and purpose within the world. Through this poetic rendering, I seek to piece together a story of communal becoming within the space of a student teaching seminar. The work was collaborative and ongoing as students engaged with one…

Building upon a First Nations circle metaphor this paper explores how employing the interrelated concepts of pedagogy, poiesis, politics, and public positioning can provide a more holistic approach in designing and assessing arts-based projects be they for instructional and/or research purposes. It takes a "postmodern" stance (Giroux, 1991),…

Different ways of writing and seeing can jointly provide a more multidimensional discussion of inquiry in education. This paper, which reports on findings of a qualitative study focused on action research with practicing teachers, describes and analyzes the ways poetic transcription of interview texts by both researcher and participant can provide…

This paper tells the story of a researcher's analysis process that became a journey to an unfamiliar place and, ultimately, to a new way of conceiving analysis and a new way of seeing--at least, new to the author as researcher. The study was an analysis of interview data gleaned from a series of conversations about what it is to be a musician. She…

The meaning of "progress" in U.S. educational institutions has undergone much debate (Tyack & Cuban, 1995). Standards-driven practices have often promoted a search for "right" answers in place of critical and diverse thinking. Globalization and its impacts compel us to continue revising and articulating the meaning of progress for 21st century…

How might songs, like John Lennon's "Imagine" or Bob Dylan's "Blowin' in the wind", offer ways to explore alternative ways of being in the world, to challenge the status quo? How might these songs become springboards for original pieces that capture students' ideas about world issues? In this article, I observe what happens when selected…

This article places youth spoken word (YSW) poetry programming within the larger framework of arts education. Drawing primarily on transcripts of interviews with teen poets and adult teaching artists and program administrators, the article identifies specific benefits that participants ascribe to youth spoken word, including the development of…

In this paper we suggest that narrative representations that seemingly fail to reach an audience as intended may engage the audience in more meaningful ways. We use reader response theory to explore how an audience's responses to a conference narrative presentation made available a multiplicity of interpretive frameworks and narratives to the…