this paper focuses on the approach for metadata organisation which is elaborated within the Horizon project AECED and its Participatory Action Research (PAR) to conduct cross-case and cross-country comparative analysis of the effect of using aesthetic and embodied learning (AEL) on experiencing democracy-as-becoming. As cross-case analysis is a method to facilitate the comparison of commonalities and differences in the events, activities, and processes, including the units of analysis in different case studies (Khan & VanWynberghe, 2008), the comparison of contextual and research-related commonalities and differences becomes topical. Six project universities are dealing with differences in educational and cultural backgrounds; experiences in democracy and AEL; arts-based and/or embodied learning methods used; educational phases of research presenting 19 cases; epistemological and terminological challenges caused by national languages and pedagogies, etc. To cope with the challenges caused by research-related differences and prepare a system for comparative analysis, we created a matrix to achieve high transparency of data (Cruzes et al., 2015). The matrix does not contain primary data in national languages but metadata in English which come out of the analysis of each of the 19 cases separately in accordance with the comparison criteria identified as crucial for each PAR phase. Each cell of the Matrix has its hyperlinked code; its name is constructed correspondingly from the country code, case number, letters of the PAR phase and comparison criterion. This guarantees cross-case transparency, easy data input and access, meaningful vertical comparison of metadata related to each criterion and cross-group collaboration. Only one click on a cell with entering the password opens an interactive Word or Excel file for individual and group work for all the research participants. The hyperlinking of each Matrix cell supports access to the most important data from each case at any level of information compression (Khan & VanWynsberghe, 2008), but also provides flexibility to minimize the tension between criteria/variable-oriented and case-oriented approaches (Miles & Huberman, 1994). The matrix serves as a tool to produce a synthesized outcome while remaining adaptive to the uncertainties related to the iterative process of PAR.

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