Good Question (ePub)

Good Question is a textbook intended for children and youth, teachers and researchers interested in doing collaborative research in their community. The volume starts out as comic book research methods textbook that intends to introduce children and youth to the fundamental structure of the research process, its elements and steps as well as with the research activities associated with the different aspects of research practice in general and arts-based/image-based research in particular. This unique approach allows children and youth to learn the "e;craft of research"e; in a play-ful way and to become knowledgeable and competent co-researchers with adults, contributing to all phases of the study's design. The volume encourages teachers and researchers to see the important role of play in teaching children and young people about the research process, and gives them the tools to engage children and youth in playful arts-based/image-based inquiries. The complexity of exploring collaborative research required an innovative way of overcoming the linearity of a paper-bound print text and the way we read it. The volume is intentionally organized in three sections, starting with the comic book because it invites an openness to layered, non-linear (research) literacy. The volume also includes an anthology of research examples of conducting arts-based/image-based research with children, and several theoretical essays focused on play as research and collaborative arts-based/image-based research.The later sections featuring research examples and theory, though heavily illustrated, have been peer reviewed and formatted more in the academic tradition. Thus, Good Question represents an attempt to make sense of children's play-ful engagement in arts-based/image-based inquiry activities with adults as research. By playing with the forms and traditions of the comic book, the research methods textbook, and the academic book together we have attempted to respectfully disassemble and reassemble book form. We invite readers to discover those 'research conventions' that are capable of establishing what is gathered and presented here as collaborative research with children. We imagine this volume contributing to the quest "e;for new ways of living together, of generating...more and more incisive and inclusive dialogues"e; (Greene, 1994, p. 459) as both a personal and a collective endeavor.