Arts-based Research and the Artistic and Creative Role of Artifacts as Stories in Literacy Practices

This paper makes a debate on arts-based methodologies in terms of their application to literacy practices of students’ wherein out-of-school artifacts are used to reveal stories about students’ lives and strengthen their creative and critical thinking skills. it is argued that different stories and narratives emerge when we listen to students’ narrating about artifacts, thus we claim that the application of arts-based methodologies to the field of literacy would enable educational researchers to obtain useful information about students’ identities, values, and cultural backgrounds, and assist students artistically in using their creativity, imagination, and self-reflection in the narration process. throughout the paper, the importance of multimodal literacy practices and how such practices can be enhanced through the use of narratives; the issue of self-reflexivity to emphasize students’ subjective and reflexive presence as co-researchers in arts-based inquiries; and the issue of visual objects as modes of arts-based inquiries are discussed. a discussion on artifacts and everyday objects as reflections of others’ lives and self-identities is also presented. finally, artifactual literacies as both mode and medium in arts-based research are introduced.