Abstract
Boundary Bay: A Novel as Research in Education
She closes the book and thinks about how she will approach the novel in new
ways with her students this year. From the angle of risk, perhaps new
readings, to the lighthouse and back again. In the novel, the act of thinking, the
act of giving human love, the act of dipping a brush in shades of blue and green
trying to convey what is seen on paper, the act of making something enduring
and permanent-these are acts made at great risk. In the novel, the word risk is
the repeated refrain, the response to the question: What does it all mean?
(Dunlop, 1999, Boundary Bay, p. 192)
In September 1999, my
novel Boundary Bay became the first novel to be accepted
as a doctoral dissertation in a Faculty of Education in Canada.1
There has been a proliferation of narrative experimentation in
research across disciplines, including the use of short fiction,
poetry, "nonfictional educational stories," and multiple
genres of arts-informed research (Banks & Banks, 1999; Ellis
& Bochner, 1996; Neilsen, Cole, & Knowles, 2001; Norum,
1997). However, the form of the novel as a dissertation in educational
research is a new phenomenon in Canadian universities and is still
relatively new in the United States and internationally (Crooks,
2001; Dunlop, 1999; Geelan, 1998; Sellito, 1991).
Copyright © AJER, the Faculty of Education, and the University
of Alberta, 2002.
Last revised: November 14, 2002.
Designed by G.H. Buck