On Supervising Arts-Based Research

This article discusses issues regarding supervising arts-based research. The author shares hir 1 experiences of being an educator supervising student researchers and the challenges of maintaining rigor in evaluating the research process. The author identifies four main issues in supervising ABR. They are decentering traditional ways of knowing and issues of legitimacy, which allows for an alternative and nonlinear view of the data; the intelligence of artistic inquiry, which focuses on how the arts can hold multiple and even contradictory perspectives; when to trust the process and when to challenge it, which speaks to the tension between living in the art-making process and the pressure to produce results; and evocative and robust results, which deals with understanding and evaluating the results. In defining these issues, examples from the author’s experience are shared.