Walking Through Theory An Exploration of Theoretical Frameworks in Miniature Sara Scott Shields Abstract This article describes my experiences teaching the graduate research course, “Research Survey,” where I used an artfully imagined assignment focused on the development of theoretical frameworks. Through practitioner and arts-informed inquiry, I explore how students reflected and made sense of their theoretical frameworks by creating three-dimensional miniature spaces. This inquiry seeks deeper understand- ing of the usefulness of arts- and image-based practices in student and teacher negotiation of complex knowledge formation in higher education contexts. The goal of the research is to answer the question: How might the creation of three-dimensional miniature spaces allow students to develop and understand their theoretical research frameworks? Keywords: arts-informed inquiry, qualitative research pedagogy, arts-based research, theoretical frameworks While seasoned researchers are often soundly situated within a theoretical home (or at least traversing theory with purpose and focus), some new researchers come to graduate research courses with little to no knowledge of the underlying theory supporting their research ideas (Booker, 2009). Students are understandably over- whelmed with simply grappling over distinctions between positivist and postpositi- vist traditions (Cox, 2012; Hein, 2004; Luttrell, 2005) and often gravitate to the more concrete issues of methodology and analysis. Without an essential fluency in theory and philosophy, students’ abilities to create dynamic research frameworks are at risk of becoming watered down. This article describes my experiences teaching the graduate research course, “Research Survey,” where I used an artfully imagined assignment focused on the development of theoretical frameworks (Shields, Guyotte, & Weedo, 2016). 1 Through practitioner and arts-informed inquiry, I explore how students reflected and made sense of their theoretical frameworks by creating three-dimensional miniature spaces. This inquiry seeks deeper understanding of the usefulness of International Review of Qualitative Research, Vol. 11, No. 3, Fall 2018, pp. 286–302. ISSN 1940-8447, eISSN 1940-8455.  2018 International Institute for Qualitative Research, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. All rights reserved. Request permission to photocopy or reproduce article content at the University of California Press’s Reprints and Permissions web page, http://www.ucpress.edu/journals.php?p¼reprints. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1525/irqr.2018.11.3.286.