Creating research questions from strategies and perspectives of contemporary art

This essay considers how strategies and perspectives from contemporary art can suggest new questions for educational research. Although al cs-based re search has become more prominent lately, the concern of this paper is that the arts have become used primarily as decorative features to educational r esearch (to further illuminate, depict, and explain the ambiguities and com plexities of educational practices, see Donmoyer 1997), rather than deeply moving or disorientating perspectives on education. Another stimulant for l ooking into contemporary art is the concern that education must focus more on the edges of what is understood, rather than on the centers (see, for ex ample, Fox 1995). The essay uses examples to demonstrate how a number of th emes from contemporary art can be interpreted to redirect our curiosity abo ut educational practices, policies, and theories. The paper concludes that further consideration of contemporary art can move researchers to ask more varied questions, especially about the wisdom of our progressive, critical, or humanistic views of students and learning that we have built over this century.