Reaching new heights and capturing complexity: A case for greater use of visual methods in qualitative educational research

Author(s):

Kate Reid(submitting)Dely Elliot(presenting)Baumfield Vivienne

Conference:

ECER 2015

Network:

22. Research in Higher Education

Format:

Poster

Session Information

22 SES 05 C PS, Interactive Poster Session

Interactive Poster Session

Time:

2015-09-09

11:00-12:30

Room:

338. [Main]

Chair:

Christine Teelken

Contribution

Despite the exponential growth of visual research in the social sciences in the last three decades, its full potential has not been recognised in educational research. Visual methods compliment and often enhance the use of traditional interview based methodology. Their use can also enable the views of marginalised, challenging or hard-to-reach participants to be innovatively accessed. In this study, non-British postdoctoral academics took photographs that visually or symbolically represented their professional and personal transitions relevant to their academic acculturation experiences during their PhD study in the U.K. Semi-structured interviews of educational-related experiences that made a significant impression revolved around participants’ visual metaphors. We examine the use of metaphors in a photo-elicitation technique, as critically reflected upon by the participants who are academic researchers themselves. The paper offers a collective reflection not only of the advantages of this innovative approach, but also of the key challenges as well as some recommendations for future research.

Method

Participants were non-British post-doctoral academics employed by a research-intensive institution in the UK in 2013-14. Coming from wide-ranging disciplines, they had completed their PhD education in a British institution between 2008 and 2013. The study’s strong emphasis on the phenomenological ‘lived experience’ of the international PhD student journey, through participants’ reflection during the post-doctoral stage, necessitated a technique that could help stimulate and strengthen participants’ recollection of their experiential journey. It was considered appropriate to employ a visual methods and metaphors approach, which is widely used in sociology and is increasingly used in education and psychology to generate in-depth, reflective and personal meaning of the experiences to the participants during their PhD study. This comprised a two-tiered approach: a) giving participants a disposable camera to capture visual representations reflecting their educational experiences, and then, b) utilising participants’ self-selected photographs as stimuli for the interviews. With the use of NVivo software, an inductive data analysis approach, i.e. Interpretative Phenomenological Approach (IPA) that suits phenomenological studies was then employed to analyse transcribed audio-files systematically and rigorously by cataloguing emerging codes prior to identifying the most salient (or superordinate) themes. Verbatim interview data and photographic data from the fourteen participants were complementarily used to report the emergent themes surrounding the International PhD students’ journey

Expected Outcomes

The use of visual elements in qualitative methods offers an inclusive and innovative way of conducting research and produces rich and comprehensive interview data. When photographs are used as interview prompts, they encourage a greater partnership and equality between researcher and participant, leading to greater openness and access to 'lived experience'. Additionally, researchers strongly supported the idea that the visual and the narrative are not only complementary but offer components for triangulation and validate each other. We also believe that continuous investigation in the use of this medium in a rapidly advancing technological age will help reveal untapped ways by which the visual element can be used in research, especially in conjunction with already established methodological approaches.

References

Cotterall, S. (2013). More than just a brain: emotions and the doctoral experience. Higher Education Research & Development, 32(2), 174-187 Elliot, D. L., & Gillen, A. (2013). Images and stories: through the eyes of at-risk college learners. International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education, 26(7), 912-931. Prosser, J., & Schwartz, D. (1998). Photographs within the Sociological Research Process. In J. Prosser (Ed.), Image-based Research: A Sourcebook for Qualitative Researchers (pp. 115-130). Oxford: RoutledgeFalmer. Radley, A. (2011). Image and imagination. In P. Reavey (Ed.), Visual Methods in Psychology: Using and Interpreting Images in Qualitative Research (pp. 17-28). East Sussex: Psychology Press. 187. Reid, K., Flowers, P., & Larkin, M. (2005). Exploring lived experience. The Psychologist, 18(1), 20-23. Schweisfurth, M., & Gu, Q. (2009). Exploring the experiences of international students in UK higher education: possibilities and limits of interculturality in university life. Intercultural Education, 20(5), 11

Author Information

Kate Reid (submitting)

University of Glasgow

Glasgow

Dely Elliot (presenting)

University of Glasgow

School of Education

Glasgow

Baumfield Vivienne

University of Glasgow, United Kingdom

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