The visual evidences as way of knowing (epistemology) in Educational Ethnography
Author(s):
Fernando Hernández-Hernández (presenting / submitting) Juana M. Sancho-Gil
Conference:
ECER 2016
Network:
19. Ethnography
Format:
Paper

Session Information

19 SES 09, Visual Tools and Strategies for Voicing

Paper/Video Session

Time:
2016-08-25
13:30-15:00
Room:
NM-J102
Chair:
Christoph Maeder

Contribution

In the last four years, we have been presenting papers at ECER conferences and publishing articles and book chapters (Domingo, Sánchez, & Sancho, 2014; Domingo-Coscollola & Hernández-Hernández, 2015; Fendler  &  Hernández-Hernández, 2015; Hernández-Hernández & Sancho-Gil, 2015) on an participatory educational research project on  how five groups of young people were learning inside and outside secondary schools. The novelty of our proposal was to invite to those young people to participate in an ethnographic research, as co-researchers, by doing their own ethnographic cases. We carried out  this study with them and not on them ( Nind, 2014) in order to better explore and understand features shaping the ways young people learn and how they perceive and experience their own learning networks and environments.  The aim of this approach is give account  “through photographs, transcribed interviews, and audiotapes, the authentic, original voices heard, seen and felt in the field setting” (Denzin, 1997:32).

During the research process young people wrote their own texts, brought their own images and even elaborated their own conclusions, guided by us when they asked for support. Therefore, the collected data resulted into five collaborative ethnographic narratives developed by each group of students. To these narratives have to be added the reports five drawn up by researchers building on the data collected by them through the whole research process. During this period, we took field notes, photos, and videos, did observations and had conversations, both with students and teachers.  These sources were converted into field diaries. These diaries, the insights coming from the research group meetings at the University, and the young people’s ethnographic accounts, were the bases to write five interpretative ethnographic reports (Denzin, 1997).

Images generated in this ethnographic research process lay the gaze on the situation that is being explored, particularly when the method is photo-documentation (Rose, 2012). This method addresses to the production of series of photos taken by researchers in a focused or flouting way to document and analyze a particular phenomenon (Abakerli Baptista, 2014). As Banks (2010: 159) suggests   "the value of visual methods lies on promoting exploration, the accidental discovery and collaboration in social research". Photographs, in this project, not only illustrate the text, but are also able to generate additional evidence and ways of knowing in the research. Gillian Rose defines this approach as  “this body of social science work uses various kinds of images as ways of answering research questions, nor by examining images – as do visual culture studies – but by making them” (2012:10). In this research images also play different functions, and are  not subordinated to the text, but most times “might provide their own theories, have their own power, their own say in the structure” (Elkins  & McGuire 2013:1).

From this approach and taking into account the new roles of visual methods in social research (Margolis &  Pauwels, 2011), and photographs in particular (Freedman & Segismund, 2015) we try to answer in this paper the following questions:

  • Which are the roles (record, data, study, theory and research) developed by the images in the research on how youth learn in and outside secondary schools?
  • Which are the consequences of considering images not only as illustrations but as way of generating and expanding knowledge (epistemology)?
  • Which images reveal aspects of the social life of people participating in the research what would remain unseen and unspoken in the text?

Method

Sara Pink considers visual methodology as interdisciplinary field “that combines the practices, theories and ideas of different disciplines to produce novel outcomes and contributions to knowledge, theory and applied interventions” (Pink 2010: p.8). From this starting point we reviewed the ethnographic narratives generated by the researchers where a detail account of what happened in the field was presented. These reports content 58 visual evidences that allowed us to learn about their roles (illustration, theoretical, evocative, data,...) and to reflect about their effects not only in the ethnographic narratives but in the kind of knowledge they contributed to generate. At this point it seems relevant to remember that, according to Rose (2012:16) “an image may have its own visual effects (...), these effects, through the ways of seeing mobilized by the image, are crucial in the production and reproduction of visions of social difference, but these effects always intersect with the social context of viewing and with the visualities spectators bring to their viewing”. In our case, these images could have effects not only on the readers, but on the researchers and on the kind of epistemological, methodological, ethical and political positionalities they produce. We organised a first descriptive table, based on the five cases (secondary schools), where we included: each visual evidence; their captions, and the paragraphs where the images were included. This descriptive organization allows showing the different kinds of visual evidences used in the reports, the modes of relation between images and their captions and the meanings of the images in the ethnographic narrative based on the emphasis the researcher gives to them. This descriptive analysis gives us the opportunity of thinking on the functional, methodological and epistemological roles played by those visual documents. In the second part of our analysis we decide to “think with theory” (Jackson & Mazzei, 2012) on the visual evidences, and we took Deleuze's conception of image (1983, 1985), who sustains that we do not make images of things, but the pictures are things in themselves. From this approach the images presented as part of an ethnographic narrative would expand their usefulness and original meaning. These images will give account of the social life of young people reflected in these visual evidences would be transformed into something else by being photographed, and thus create a new reality independent of their original reference.

Expected Outcomes

This double analysis us (a) give a description of the nature of the visual documents in the research: types of images, functionalities, meanings in the narrative, spaces of visibilization given by them, kind of data they bring into the research,… and (b) bring us to explore which realities the visual evidences create. Particularly if we make the distinction between ‘images-monument’, which generally have a claim to build consensus by fixing representations as homogeneous, to convince about something, to give explanations and unquestionable finished; and ‘images-potency’ which must critically express a view on something and become political material capable of being analyzed (Bello, 2016). This analysis make possible to pay attention to how these images, in the case of our research, fictionalizes young people, ethnographic work, school, outside activities, etc., by reinforcing and excluding some aspects and meanings of the Other, the methodology path, the social milieu and the binomial in-out. As images-potency contribute to the creation of realities. Because they are not to fixing truths, we explore the kind of realities we create and make visible. At the same time, they are images that confront us with the unknown and the new, with the difference, shaping our subjective approaches. And images will allow to know whether the images presented in the reports alter how we see to the others and ourselves in the ethnographic account. We also put in question the totalitarian character of those images, but consider them as partial, because they only explore and fix, as mentioned above, some aspects of the phenomena represented. In our study we want to confront with the unresolved tensions and contradictions visual evidences generate in an educational ethnographic research, by opening new questions and hypotheses about dilemmas that may emerge between these images and the knowledge displayed in the ethnographic reports.

References

Abakerli Baptista, M. B. (2014). Relations between Visual Culture and Inquiry Project Approach in a Self-development Teacher program. Barcelona: University of Barcelona. Unpublished Doctoral Dissertation. Banks, M. (2010). Los datos visuales en la investigación cualitativa.[Using visual data in qualitative research , 2008.] Madrid: Morata. Bello, M. J. (2016). Imagen-tiempo y pedagogías transaccionales: •Reconfigurando la postmemoria de la dictadura con los jóvenes a través de un proyecto de investigación visual narrativa. Barcelona: University of Barcelona. Unpublished Doctoral Dissertation. Deleuze, G. (1983). L'Image-mouvement. Cinéma 1. Paris: Les Éditions de Minuit. Deleuze, G. (1985). L'Image-temps. Cinéma 2. Paris: Les Éditions de Minuit, 1985. Denzin, N. K. (1997). Interpretive ethnography: ethnographic practices for the 21st century. Thousand Oaks [Calif.]: SAGE. Domingo, M., Sánchez, J. A., i Sancho, J. M. (2014). Researching on and with Young People: Collaborating and Educating. Researching with Young People: Collaborating and Educating. Comunicar , 42, 157-164. doi: 10.3916/C42-2014-15. Domingo-Coscollola, M. & Hernández-Hernández, F. (2015). Jóvenes que investigan en educación secundaria: alternativas para aprender. Profesorado. Revista de curriculum y formación del profesorado, 19 (2). 133-146. Elkins, J. & McGuire, K. (eds.). 2013. Theorizing visual studies: writing through the discipline. New York, N.Y.: Routledge. Fendler, R. & Hernández-Hernández, F. (2015). Visual culture as living inquiry: looking at how young people reflect on, share and narrate their learning practices in and outside school. + q knsmidrs d imgns: Mapeando y evaluando la investigación sobre Jóvenes Productores de Cultura Visual [Mor thN img cnsmrs: Mapping and Evaluating Research on Young People as Visual Culture Producers]( Pp. 281-299). Pamplona: Universidad Pública de Navarra. Freedman, K. & Siegesmund; R. (20 15), On Criteria in Arts-Based Education Research: The Continuing Dialogue. 3rd Conference on Arts-Based Research and Artistic Research. Porto: University of Porto. 28 – 30 January 2015. Hernández-Hernández, F. & Sancho-Gil, J.M. (2015). A learning process within an education research group: an approach to learning qualitative research methods. International Journal of Social Research Methodology, 2015, Vol. 18, No. 6, 651–667, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13645579.2015.1049468 Jackson, A. & Mazzei, L (2012). Thinking with theory in qualitative research. New York: Rutledge. Margolis, E. & Pauwels, L. (eds.) (2011). The SAGE Handbook of Visual Research Methods. London: Sage. Nind, M. (2014). What is inclusive research? London; New York: Bloomsbury Publishing Plc. Pink, S. (ed). (2012). Advances in Visual Methodology. Thousand Oaks [Calif.]: SAGE Publications. Rose, G. (2012). Visual methodologies. Thousand Oaks [Calif.]: SAGE Publications.

Author Information

Fernando Hernández-Hernández (presenting / submitting)
University of Barcelona, Spain
Juana M. Sancho-Gil
University of Barcelona, Spain

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