cathARTic: A journey into arts-based educational research

During my graduate studies, I was encouraged by professors to do traditional forms of enquiry instead of exploring Arts-based Educational Research (ABER). As well, I found most people outside academia had heard the term ‘doctorate’ but few understood it. After completing my doctoral studies at the University of Glasgow, I created cathARTic (2012) as a way to explore ABER and share the personal and professional layers of that academic journey. It is a mixed-media work consisting of 216 scrapbook pages that may be displayed as a tapestry or in a series of binders. It is organized chronologically and built from my printed dissertation, research notes, journal entries, photographs and ephemera collected during my doctoral studies. This visual essay includes images of the work’s creation and related text, in an effort to show how I used Barone and Eisner’s seven features of ABER as a conceptual and logistical framework.