The merger of art schools into academic institutions and the consequent proliferation of higher degree courses in the visual arts has created pressure for these courses to justify that their research content ‘measures up’ to more traditional research practices.
The author describes the confusion surrounding postmodern conceptions of social science, including the blurring of traditional distinctions between science and art. He argues that the disinction is an important one, for, as the two basic forms of human inquiry, science and art serve fundamentally distinct purposes. Unfortunately, only (social) scientific texts are considered useful by many educationists. The author attempts to clarify the basic purpose of value negation that is served by good arts-based research texts and argues for their legitimacy as a form of educational research.