Ali-Khan, C. & Siry, C. (2014). Sharing seeing: Exploring photo-elicitation with children in two...

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Teaching and Teacher Education xxx (2013) 1e14

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Teaching and Teacher Education

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Sharing seeing: Exploring photo-elicitation with children in twodifferent cultural contextsq

Carolyne Ali-Khan a, *, Christina Siry b, 1

a University of North Florida, Foundations and Secondary Education Department, 1 UNF Drive, Jacksonville, FL 32224, USAb University of Luxembourg, Faculty of Language, Literature, Arts, Humanities and Education, Route de Diekirch, L-7220 Walferdange, Luxembourg

a r t i c l e i n f o

Article history:Received 4 October 2012Received in revised form20 August 2013Accepted 23 August 2013

Keywords:Image-based researchCritical pedagogyPakistanLuxembourgChildhood researchTeacher education

q Resubmission for consideration in the special isEducation edited by lisahunter and Theo Wubbels entwritten text.* Corresponding author. Tel.: þ1 904 620 1883; fax

E-mail addresses: [email protected] (C. Ali-(C. Siry).

1 Tel.: þ352 466644 9717.

0742-051X/$ e see front matter � 2013 Elsevier Ltd.http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.tate.2013.08.004

Please cite this article in press as: Ali-Khancontexts, Teaching and Teacher Education (20

a b s t r a c t

This work uses text and photos to explore research into visual methods with children in Pakistan andLuxembourg. Children are typically positioned as unable to participate as actors in the knowledgeeconomy. Their insights and voices are seldom heard in educational spaces. Using image-based researchthe authors solicited the voices of children by encouraging them to speak to adults though multiplemediums. The children in this research responded by creating and analyzing images and communicatingto adults across difference in new ways. In addition they were able to use images as a base fromwhich tore-see their worlds.

� 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

1. Purpose: new voices in old worlds

1.1. Introduction

The value of allowing children to have a “voice” in research andteaching is well documented in educational literature, in particularin the area of research methods (e.g., Catts, Allan, & Smyth, 2007;McTavish, Streelasky, & Coles, 2012). This focus supports theUnited Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, which em-phasizes that those who work with children respect their views,and that children have the right to express their perspectives freelyonmatters that concern them (UNICEF, 2009). Including children inresearch can lead to new relationships between adults and children

sue of Teaching and Teacheritled: Scholarly work beyond

: þ1 904 620 1821.Khan), [email protected]

All rights reserved.

, C., & Siry, C., Sharing seeing13), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016

(Schiller & Einarsdottir, 2009) as well as increased power and au-thority for children as participants in the process of research (Coad& Evans, 2008). Literature on engaging children as co-researchershas highlighted the value of repositioning children so that theyare not simply involved in gathering knowledge, but are activeparticipants in knowledge production (Veale, 2005), including dataanalysis (Coad & Evans, 2008). In this paper, we explore the value ofresearching children’s voices as they generate knowledge throughphoto-elicitation projects as we examine the complexities andpossibilities of using photo-elicitation with children. We positionimages as viable discourse in education (Piper & Frankham, 2007) aswe highlight how photographic images created by children canencourage them to new understandings, and how image-basedprojects in international contexts can facilitate moving throughmultiple boundaries to communicate across differences. This workis intended to guide those working in the field of teacher educationto consider approaches to increase the use of image-basedmethodsto elicit, listen to, share, and respond to children’s voices, peda-gogically as well as methodologically.

Our data are drawn from two visual research projects inelementary schools: one in Luxembourg (Fig. 1); the other in

: Exploring photo-elicitation with children in two different cultural/j.tate.2013.08.004

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Fig. 2. Pakistan.

C. Ali-Khan, C. Siry / Teaching and Teacher Education xxx (2013) 1e142

Pakistan (Fig. 2). Combined, our projects offer insights on how theuse of photo-elicitation can provide space for children to movebeyond the worlds of print and text, by speaking across differencesthrough the use of images. We bring our research projects togetherin this paper to consider similar outcomes and shared conclusions,as well as to highlight ways that image-based methods and photo-elicitation can be valuable tools for educators and researchers. Wesuggest that this type of research contributes to democraticknowledge production and offers pedagogical and methodologicalinsights for teachers, teacher educators, and researchers who seekto deepen their understanding of the lifeworlds and experiences ofstudents (Fig. 3 and 4).

1.2. New voices: aims and rationale

Our research is based in visual methodologies (Banks, 2001;Harper, 1998; Lawrence-Lightfoot, 2005; Pink, 2001; Prosser,1998). Specifically, we utilized photo-elicitation techniques(Downing, 2006; Harper, 2002; Rose, 2007; Wang & Burris, 1994;Wang, Morrel-Samuels, Hutchison, Bell, & Pestronk, 2004) to ac-cess the understandings and lived worlds of children. In photo-elicitation projects, research participants are given cameras todocument their environments and experiences in order to providethem with their own visual referent as a starting point for con-versations about their perceptions. These techniques have beensuccessfully used with children to reveal their insights as theycontribute meaningfully to the process of research (Downing,2006; Ewald & Lightfoot, 2001). Research in the health field hasemployed these techniques as a way to be sensitive to and capturethe experiences and understandings of populations through visual,rather than purely verbal, self-reporting (Baker & Wang, 2006;Keller, Fleury, Perez, et al., 2008; Lightfoot et al, 2012; Lopez, Eng,Randall-David, & Robinson, 2005). These methods have beenargued to support the democratizing goal of critical pedagogy (e.g.Carlson, Engebretson, & Chamberlain, 2006) and have served toempower children (usually adolescents) to speak about their lives(Checkoway & Richards-Schuster, 2003; Hubbard, 1991).

Although arts-based methodologies, including photo-elicitation, can be particularly valuable in teacher education (Jevic& Springgay, 2008), little research exists specifically documentingthe value of photo-elicitation projects in encouraging children tospeak across multiple differences. We seek to work towardsaddressing this gap in the literature by:

1) Providing an analysis of the ways that children embraced and/or resisted opportunities to use visual mediums to create their

Fig. 1. Luxembourg.

Please cite this article in press as: Ali-Khan, C., & Siry, C., Sharing seeingcontexts, Teaching and Teacher Education (2013), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016

own stories, produce and share knowledge about their un-derstandings of the world.

2) Exploring the ways that images help facilitate the creation ofmeaning and allowed for new insights to emerge and beexpressed.

3) Offering examples of image creation by children that couldprovide a platform for teachers and teacher educators to betterunderstand children’s perceptions of the worlds they frame.

As critical pedagogues, we conceptualize ‘learning’ as a co-constructed endeavor through which teachers seek to work with,rather than for students. We utilize Shor’s (1993) Freirean notion ofeducation as something that students do, rather than somethingthat is done to them. Freire argued for “conscientization” e adeveloping of critical consciousness gained through reflection andaction (1970). To this end, he used images to teach literacy andsocial justice awareness. Using this idea as a guide, we used photo-elicitationwith children to encourage them to shift from expressingthemselves as knowledge consumers, to expressing themselves asknowledge producers. In previous research (Siry & Ali-Khan, 2011),we illustrated how providing space for students to challengetraditional knowledge production hierarchies (such as teacher-student, adult-child) can facilitate new identities in students. Inthe paper we present here, we use our findings to build upon theseideas and to argue that image-based research with children candemocratize educational spaces by removing epistemological au-thority from adults and placing it within the grasp of children. Wesuggest that this type of work can specifically contribute to the

Fig. 3. Documenting an investigation.


C. Ali-Khan, C. Siry / Teaching and Teacher Education xxx (2013) 1e14 3

knowledge base of teachers and teacher educators by encouragingthem to consider visual methods as a means to “good teach-ing”ddefined by Kincheloe (2003) as a continual and complexresearch of praxis.

Our work builds from the premise that “even very young chil-dren, when encouraged, have the ability to express complex livesvisually” (Ewald & Lightfoot, 2001, p. 12). In our analysis, we foundsimilarities across our two projects in children’s ability and desireto express their lives visually, and to, in effect, craft new voices forthemselves. These similarities emerged despite distinctly differentresearch contexts (a European city and an Asian rural area). Theyhighlight that providing children with opportunities for visualvoices can facilitate their experiencing and expressing their worldsin new ways.

Our studies were iterative research projects, and the primaryquestions that guided them emerged through the research process.In this paper we describe these processes andwe engage in analysisto shed light on the ways that image-based research shaped chil-dren’s involvement in research on teaching and learning.

In what follows, we present images that were produced,selected, and discussed by children, layered with images we havetaken as researchers. Because methodologies and epistemologiesthat privilege the written word miss the insights of multi-logicaland multi-method approaches (Lemesianou & Grinberg, 2006),we alternate between images and words as we strive towards po-lysemic and multimodal complexity. In moving between the visualand the verbal; the theoretical and the empirical; the documentedand the interpreted, we seek toweave a complex set of perspectivesand understandings. We intentionally present images withdifferent degrees of narrative analysis, as images do not contain thesame knowledge as words (MacDougall, 2006). Throughout thepaper, we focus on the importance of images while we implicitlysuggest that an “unconventional text which crosses over betweenthe visual and the verbal” (Chaplin, 1994, p. 273) can be used tobreak down a variety of barriers that exist for research. We intro-duce our conceptual grounding and elaborate the project details inthe next section beforemoving into a discussion of our findings andthe implications for teachers and teacher educators.

2. Methodology and methods

2.1. Conceptual orientations: messy knowledge

In this work we draw from cultural studies (e.g., Mirzoeff) andeducation (e.g., Freire) to create a bricolage of methodologies

Fig. 4. Discussing the cameras.


(Berry, 2006; Kincheloe, 2001). We seek to be storytellers who usevisual methods to join science and art, bridge disciplinary separa-tions, and push the boundaries of interpretive inquiry (Lawrence-Lightfoot, 2005). Law (2004) argues that research tends to super-impose clarity on a rich and messy world, thereby distorting it. Weheed his caution and try to be mindful to avoid the reductionistimpulse of a will to truth. To this end, we combine images andwords to allow for several layers of intersecting knowledge to bepresented simultaneously. We hope that this messiness allows forboth foreground and background meanings to emerge.

In alignment with critical and sociocultural theories, we posi-tion all human activity as cultural, social acts. As such, “knowledge”is culturally constructed, and “meanings change over time and fromplace to place” (Thomson, 2008, p. 9). Through this conceptualframework knowledge is mutable, as well as collective. As such, it isbourn through practices rather than passed down though texts(Roth, 2005). This collectivist epistemological view grounds ourperspectives on research.

We have employed Freire’s (2005/1970) concept of “generativetheme” to create pedagogical moments that encourage questioning.Generative themes are intended to encourage a questioning of thematerial practices and ideological assumptions buried in normalcy.Challenging the normalcy of adult research perspectives on chil-dren’s lives, we align with Cook-Sather (2006) who argues thatbecause children’s perspectives are unique, children should beprovided with opportunities to shape their education by beingpositioned to reveal these perspectives. However we are cautionedby Sensoy (2011) who embraces the complexity of critical visualwork with children, yet reminds us to focus not only on its eman-cipatory possibility, but also on the places where this potential ismet with resistance. In adopting these theoretical perspectives weembrace a multi-methodological, multi-theoretical bricolage(Kincheloe & Berry, 2004) and we borrow from Denzin and Lincoln(2008) the notion of research as a path across which interpretativetruths can travel back and forth.

2.2. Little pictures in the big world of text

Image-based projects that employ participatory photographycan shed important light on the lives and perspectives of children(Downing, 2006; Luttrell, 2006; Wang, Morrel-Samuels, Hutchison,et al., 2004). Yet image-based knowledge is often dismissed, andalthough the social sciences have taken an increasingly “visualturn”(Thomson, 2008), image-based research has suffered fromlimited status in research (Prosser, 1998). This is an oversight, asRose (2007) notes that it is important to study images becausesocial life happens through images. Similarly, Sturken andCartwright (2001) argue that we invest images with significantpower in our daily lives (p.10). Visual methodologies can enrichethnography (Harper, 1998; Pink, 2001), and enhance personalunderstandings, as visual images have the “capacity to defamiliar-ize experience” (Greene, 1988, p. 129).

We are surrounded by images. In the 21st century, visualcommunication is continually on the rise in every area of life (Banks,2001; Kenny, 2009; Luttrell, 2006). As globalization and corporateconsumerism continue to spread, they bring a multiplicity of visualimages to both material and electronic spaces. Concurrently withever cheaper and more accessible technologies, the publication ofpictures has become increasingly democratized (Appadurai, 2008;Mirzoeff, 2008). Even in places such as rural Pakistan, twenty-firstcentury changes in knowledge production and transmission arefamiliar to children who are exposed to and use media technologies(Datoo, 2010) such as cell phones (see Fig. 5).

In this era of pictorial representation and world awash withimages, the ubiquity of these images raises questions about “the


Fig. 5. Pakistani village teen on her cell phone.

Fig. 7. Child’s photo of investigation.


ability of language (alone) to accommodate conceptions of truth”(Scarry, 1994, p. 3). We acknowledge this by allowing images tospeak in the research/learning process.

We aim to create hermeneutic spaces for reader interpretationin this paper, as we position images that work to “disperse au-thority between author(s), other participants in the project andreaders” (Chaplin, 1994, p. 273). Throughout this paper, we offervisual evidence about the contexts, participants, and activities ofour work as we aim to engage readers with images as coherent,independent texts. However, acknowledging that a journal manu-script is to be read on paper and thus necessitates a certain amountof written interpretation, we layer these images with narrativedescriptions. Thus, the images and descriptions are intended tocome together to create a coherent picture of our research contextsand approaches, yet they ideally are each able to stand alone.

2.3. School contexts: old truths

Our projects took place in countries where both formalschooling and informal societal messages generally position chil-dren as empty vessels waiting to be filled with official, adult-sanctioned, knowledge. Children’s knowledge is assessed throughformal positivist means. In Pakistan, test scores are perceived byparents to be markers of intelligence (LEAPS, 2007, p. xvii). Simul-taneously, teachers typically work in classrooms that are under-funded and have few supplies (e.g. Fig. 6). Teachers often have littleformal training, and they tend to rely on traditional and conser-vative pedagogies (Mohammed, 2004; Westbrook, et al, 2009).Children (particularly in poor schools where books are scarce)typically sit in classrooms that have few written words and in

Fig. 6. Child participant’s photograph of classroom teaching in Banigala, Pakistan,Pakistan.


which they are expected to recite memorized answers when calledupon. Although Pakistani schools stand in starkmaterial contrast tothose in Luxembourg (where schools are well-resourced), thetraditional approach of memorizing and retelling is the preferredmethod for demonstrating “learning” in both contexts. Both authorsrepeatedly witnessed classroom lessons in both settings thatemployed teacher-led instruction and mimicked “banking” educa-tion, through which knowledge is deposited and retrieved fromstudents (Freire, 2005/1970).

2.3.1. Focus e LuxembourgIn the Luxembourg project, data was collected with children ages

4e6 years, who participated in a month-long unit in a Kindergartenclassroom that was based on the theme of water. As part of a largerstudy on children’s interactions in multilingual classrooms, photog-raphy was used to document, guide, and assess the learning of sci-ence. Childrenwere introduced to the study’s purpose and taught touse Kodak zi8 cameras to record still shots and video. Children usedthe cameras when and if they felt it necessary, and thus childrenwere often passing the cameras back and forth to each other duringthe course of one set of investigations.

At the end of each day, data were imported by the researchersinto iMovie or iPhoto. Informal interviews were held with childrenin small groups to discuss the images they collected, and childrenparticipated in small group discussions with their teachers inwhichthey examined their photos and chose ones that they felt were the“best” representations of their experiences. Decisions about whichphotos to use were individual as well as collective, as all the photosfrom the day were downloaded to a computer and the childrendiscussed with each other and their teacher which photos theywould like to print and use as representations of their science in-vestigations. In doing so, they typically cut out the photo, glued itonto a piece of paper, and illustrated their new products. Theycreated collages using photos and drawings, and then presentedthis work to their peers and teachers as they discussed the parts ofthe science unit that were important represent and retell (Fig. 7).

Children are often more relaxed with peers than with an adult(Graue & Walsh, 1998) and Fig. 8 illustrates children workingtogether in a small group. Three girls are retelling a classroomexperience in science, and are laughing together as the experimenthad taken an unexpected turn. The two girls are narrating theiractions. Children’s enjoyment working in small groups is evident insmiles and laughter. In addition to the documentation by thechildren, research discussions and interviews were conducted insmall groups, as group interviews enable children to have morecomfortable conversations than in one-on-one interviews(Einarsdóttir, 2007).


Fig. 8. Children working in small groups.

Fig. 10. Inside the classrooms, Banigala.


2.3.2. Focus e PakistanThe data for the Pakistani project were collected over the course

of a year in a local k-9 school (Figs. 9 and 10) and this year includeda preliminary trial data collection project with children. There isvery little literature available in English, or in general, on the lives ofchildren in the Muslim Middle East (Fernea, n.d., p. 1). A review ofthe literature revealed an absence of academic publications on thelives of Pakistani children as told by themselves. In the Pakistaniproject (Figs. 11 and 12) participants, ages 8e14, were selected bymembers of the school community. The children participated in athree-month long photo-elicitation project. They met with Caro-lyne weekly for 3e4 hours and between these meetings tookphotographs using disposable cameras. Each child was given a totalof 4 disposable cameras each with 27 pictures; they also shared adigital camera, which they each used for a week at a time. Eachchild took 108 individual photographs; collectively, they took anadditional 50 photographs.

Following Ewald and Lightfoot (2001) with each set of prints thechildren were encouraged to individually and collaboratively selectphotographs that they found meaningful, and to discuss andinterpret the photographs in self-selected groups. They looked forthemes and planned the next steps in the research by talking aboutwhat theywould photograph the followingweek. They interviewedeach other about the meaning of their images. As they participatedin analysis of their images, they used connecting strategies (Kenny,2009) to analyze the relationships between their photographs andnarratives and broader issues in their lives and communities. As the

Fig. 9. Outside the classrooms, Banigala.


research progressed, the children selected 2e3 images each towrite about. These images were duplicated, enlarged, and framed.One set was exhibited in their school the other was given to them.

2.4. Modes of inquiry, data sources, and analysis: speaking inshuttered tongues

We each are personally familiar with the school systems in theresearch contexts studied, yet are also US-acculturated and wereoccasionally perceived of as outsiders to the society. From theseinsider/outsider positions and insights, we were privy to the day-to-day workings of life in our research contexts, yet also had tonavigate difference. In both research contexts we lived with ourfamilies near the communities in which the research took place.With this in mind our relations with the teachers and the childrenin the study were formal relationships predicated on the research.Further, there were formidable gaps between our ages and those ofour research subjects. Our research was intended to traverse thesedifferences.

Children are rarely positioned as having expertise, or even beingexperts on their own experiences (Dockett & Perry, 2005). Chal-lenging this, in our studies, children were provided access tocameras (both still and/or video cameras) that allowed them tocreate representations and communicate their ideas as experts ontheir worlds. They elucidated their understandings of their socialcontext through their own words as they selected and interpretedtheir photographic images. By giving children cameras and askingthem to create narratives around their images we positioned themas authors. We hoped that this vantage point could create the spacefor children to “skirt the heavy restrictions of adult speech” andfrom that position “play a symbolic role in questioning hierarchies

Fig. 11. Children’s photographs of classmates in a group.


Fig. 12. Children’s photographs of classmates.


of power because of their relative freedom to make counter-hegemonic observations” (Karimi & Gruber, 2012, p. 291).

Our data combined narratives, interviews, and traditionalethnographic field notes, following Emerson, Fretz, and Shaw’s(1995) conventions, to richly describe children’s experiences.Guided by the work of Rose (2007) and Mitchell (2011), we usedphoto-elicitation to encourage participants to reflect on theirworlds through the documentation and discussion of the photosthey captured. Noting both denotative and connotative meanings,we viewed photographs taken by research participants as docu-ments that are simultaneously irrefutable and ambiguous, and thatcall for a hermeneutic understanding of the complexity of theinterpretive act. A critical lens to our ethnographies (Carspecken,1996) supported us as we documented experiences, focusing onissues of power. Using children’s visual images as data can increasechildren’s power in research, as the process of data collection is inpart in their hands as they make decisions about what is importantto capture (Einarsdóttir, 2007). Therefore evidence was collectedthrough the children’s own narratives, photo documentation, andvisual ethnographies.

Mindful of ethical considerations, we note that an inherent riskin conducting research with human subjects is their right toconfidentiality and anonymity. As Denzin (1989) suggests “.Thelives and stories that we hear and study are given to us under apromise, that promise being that we protect thosewho have shared

Fig. 13. Our multi-leve


them with us” (p. 83). With young children especially, there is anethical obligation to ensure parental consent as well as the chil-dren’s assent to participate. Parents and children in both studieswere informed of the research objectives and activities, andparticipation in both studies was voluntary and participants couldwithdraw at any time. Participants’ consent and assent wererevisited periodically through the study, and children’s and teach-ers’ right to not participate in the research was respected. All re-searchers had conversations with the children about their purposeas participants in their classroom, andmade as open as possible thedecisions about the research design. All information collected fromthis study was kept private. All information was kept confidentialand participants are not identified by their real or full names.

2.5. Bringing together two studies analytically

Both the contexts and the research methods of Carolyne Ali-Khan and Christina Siry shared similarities. As authors workingcollectively, we utilized three levels of analysis. We began by con-ducting individual analyses on our projects. Throughout this indi-vidual analytic process we continually shared ideas andinterpretation with each other, knowing that our studies sharedsimilar groundings and foci. As a second level of analysis, we cametogether to re-analyze our findings collaboratively with each other,and also with the teachers in the schools and the children. Finally,from this interpretive perspective weworked together to write andreflect on our work collaboratively.

Fig. 13 illustrates the analytic process that has led to the findingselaborated in this manuscript. On one level, we collaboratively con-ducted a hermeneutic interpretation of our researcher perspectiveson the challenges and limitations of cross-cultural multi-modalresearch. Methodologically, the hermeneutic circle served as a lensthrough which to be able to focus on the parts of the projects (rep-resented by the children’s individual photographic experiences)while also incorporating a focus on the projects as a whole (asframing how/what we can learn about children’s perspectives ontheir knowledge). In a second layer of analysis, we used digital stills inan intertextual discourse analysis as we considered how the pro-duction of texts (which encompasses the verbal and the visual) cantransform our understandings and ideas. We investigated the waythat photographs and written texts combined to produce meaning(Weintraub, 2009) both for the producer as well as the reader of thetext. Camera images on their own only tell part of the story that wasintended by the image producer (Einarsdóttir, 2005). Therefore, wecombined a variety of layers of images and interpretations by the

l analytic process.


Fig. 14. Discussing possibilities.

Fig. 15. Interviewing.


children. In our own interpretation of these photographs andphotographic stills and children’s discussions, we focused on theways that children reflect on their own knowledge. In a final phase ofanalysis we considered multi-textual approaches and the ways inwhich the children’s images reveal their understandings of the worldand of knowledge production, and we analyzed the limits of theproduction of knowledge through suchmethods as established in ourresearch.

3. Findings: layered documentation

Three layers of findings emerged from our collaborative anal-ysis, and in this section we illustrate these findings using examplesof children’s work that typify them. We draw on parallel data fromeach study to highlight that our findings are not unique to onecontext. We highlight implications of our findings for those whowork in the field of teacher education and seek to learn more aboutchildren’s own perspectives of their life worlds. We argue thatmethodologically, as well as pedagogically, children’s points ofview and representations thereof can be richly accessed throughtheir images. This has implications for teachers and teacher re-searchers who may find it beneficial to move away from a strictfidelity to written text as they plan and reflect on classroom andresearch decisions. We use the term “layers” of findings, as they areinterwoven, and layered upon each other. In our analysis weintertwine connotative and denotative meanings as we act as por-traitists (Lawrence-Lightfoot, 2005) who navigatemultiple researchrelationships and trace emergent themes.

3.1. First finding

Images can encourage children to speak to adults in ways that chal-lenge knowledge hierarchies

Our projects provided a platform for children to elaborate ontheir perspectives and experiences. We found across the twostudies that pictures were not viewed as closed texts. Instead theywere the places that allowed other conversations to start. As theburden of understanding was placed on the viewer, the childrenappeared eager to engage in conversations. They could no longer‘get things wrong’ and both authors witnessed children who hadbeen shy verbally begin to use images as a path to dialogue. Chil-dren in both projects appeared excited to produce knowledge. Asan example, in one instance in Pakistan, children arrived toparticipate in the research without umbrellas in the pouring rain,and each child expressed that s/he did not want to wait for the rainto end to work. This attitude was evidenced and expressed to theauthors by the children in both studies and showed the children’scommitment to their investigations of their texts. Figs. 14 and 17illustrate the children’s engagement in the process of producingknowledge collectively and in new ways as they captured andreviewed their investigations.

Our image-based projects allowed children a space from whichto formulate and convey sophisticated understandings of theirworlds. Acting as authors rather than consumers of texts, theyrepositioned themselves in the knowledge economy and began tosituate themselves as both knowledgeable and capable ofconveying knowledge. We each witnessed the children workintensely to think about and create their texts. As an example,Fig. 14 illustrates the children’s collective engagement as theypointed to their photographs (with Carolyne), which they thenselected to discuss. As Kaplan and Howes (2004) have noted in theirwork, images can be a node for reflection and discussion, and wehave found this to be the case consistently across the two studies.Mitchell (2011) elaborates on the methodology of deliberatelyremembering as “memory work” which presents the opportunity


for reflection, which then can guide knowledge production. In bothof our studies, we found that the reflective nature of images createdthe space for children to rethink their experiences and observationsand, through the reflective process, elaborate on their perspectives.

Fig. 15 shows the children pretending to be on television as theyinterviewed each other about their pictures. They built on therelationship between performance and still photography (Mitchell,2011). As they presented themselves in the role of experts’, theirfacial expressions, gestures, and voices changed, they stoodstraighter and their voices were measured and formal; they soun-ded authoritative (Fig. 15). In this performative production, we arereminded of Goffmann, who noted “when an individual presentshimself to others, his performance will tend to incorporate andexemplify the officially accredited values of the society, more so infact, than does his behavior as a whole” (1959, p. 35). Image pro-duction allowed children to try out the idea of themselves asexperts.

Mitchell (2011) argues that “memory work” can be done with aphotographic image as well as with other types of representation.As an example, Fig. 16 shows a drawing that a child has done torepresent a science activity in which children had filled up anaquarium. There is adult writing next to the drawing; a quite typicalearly childhood school practice in which a child narrates a drawingto a teacher, who then writes the children’s retelling onto the pic-ture. In this case, the child told his teacher about the waves that hehad made in the aquarium, and the drawing became the starting


Fig. 16. Making waves.


point for a conversation about how hemanaged to “makewaves” inan aquarium. In such an exercise, the child is positioned to retelland explain their representation. Here the producer of the drawingexplained what he had learned from the experience, and theteacher wrote his points down word-for-word. In essence, shecaptured his explanation, and held it firm in writing. The imagebecame a central point for exchange, dialogue, and reflection uponwhat he had learned and experienced.

Fig. 17 shows a nuanced example of the way that images canserve as a point of documentation, dialogue, and reflection. Here isan image that a child created by using a photo of her and herfriends’ investigation into trying to make scissors stay afloat in theaquarium of water. There are smaller drawings around the photo, inwhich she has drawn images of the aquarium (from the top andfrom the side) with the items in it that the girls were testing forsinking/floating. The black marks on/around the drawings and theblack spots on the children’s faces are significant as they wereplaced on the image deliberately by Tanya, as she was discussingthis with her teacher (who again wrote some notes around whatTanya was saying). Tanya used a marker to point out her classmatesin the photo as she narrated the investigation, and outlined thedifferent components of her investigation. The drawings in Figs. 16and 17 both became concrete points of discussion, reflection, anddialogue. This process positioned the children as experts as theyretold their investigations to the teachers, who in turn furtherdocumented the children’s investigations in writing. Childrenexpressed their different ways of knowing in drawings and

Fig. 17. Document produced through photo-based discussion.


descriptiondways that include “wonder, imagination and awe”(Gallas, 1994, p. 78). This process was repeated consistentlythroughout the research, as dialogue around documentation servedto reveal children’s perspectives, and also to position them asproducers of knowledge. It is important to note the shift of powerduring the process of using documents for elicitation of children’sperspectives: the children were positioned to reflect upon theirown learning and experiences, and the adults were positioned tolearn from what the children had to say about their experiences.

3.2. Second finding

Children understand and are able to challenge visual conventionsIn a second layer of findings, we note that tropes and visual

conventions were evident in some of the children’s work, yet weresometimes transformed and owned by the children. This suggeststo us that children are aware of dominant visual discourses, con-ventions, and narratives, and perhaps believing that this is ex-pected of them, then produce their own images to fit normativetexts. Yet they also appear able to adapt these texts to experimentwith new truths.

Figs. 18 and 19 reference the symbolic importance of flowers.Flowers are commonly used in images in Pakistan as symbols ofbeauty, wealth, and idealized world, following an aesthetic tradi-tion that dates back to the Mughal era (Schuster, 2008). They werealso described to Carolyne as representations of the generosity ofGod. Flowers are prominent in most public celebrations (e.g. Fig. 18shows a participants brother at a wedding). They are a commonmotif in folk and truck art (Soekefeld, 2008). The use of flowers as abackdrop to frame photographs of individuals was not uncommonin the pictures taken by the children in this project (Fig. 19).However, Fig. 20 breaks from this convention. The girl who holdsthe rose in this image does not address the photographer, smile forthe camera, or pose. The visual convention of associating flowerswith beauty and richness is upheld, yet challenged, as the rosestands in sharp contrast to the background. The image was simplylabeled “flower” and the creator of the text chose not to elaborate;however, this title (regardless of intent) does not detract from the

Fig. 18. Flower backdrop 1.


Fig. 19. Flower backdrop 2.

Fig. 21. Interviewing each other.


fact that the symbolic positioning of the flower breaks from popularvisual conventions and creates an ambiguity of meaning.

Tropes were evident in video recordings as well. Children ofteninitially recorded each other in an interview format, with therecorder asking questions of the child being recorded. This is rep-resented in Fig. 21 in which one child holds a camera as he in-terviews another child about their collective science experiment; athird child stands off to the side watching the interview process. Itappears that these ‘Q & A’ formats for video recording increase aschildren become older, and perhaps more accustomed to institu-tional expectations for “school” (Siry & Mick, 2013), yet even at theKindergarten level, this tended to be the format that children firstadopted when provided with cameras. The majority of children’sfirst video recordings were of them recording a classmate, as shownin Fig. 21 (and also introduced in Fig. 15). This was the format thatchildren most adopted when adults were present; and, perhaps, isthe format the children thought was expected of them by theirteachers. However, over time, this routine changed, and childrenmoved away from a format of interviewing to use the video cam-eras primarily for documenting their collective experiments andinvestigations.

Fig. 22 was taken by the children in Pakistan. In this image thechildren (holding cameras) were giving directions to an adultteacher (wearing blue) to make sure that the content and compo-sition of the photograph they were getting ready to take, fit their

Fig. 20. Flower foreground.


vision. This illustrates how the children were beginning to seethemselves as directors and authors of their imaged-based scriptsand were making decisions in that role.

Similarly, in the Luxembourg project this notion of being thedirector of the ‘script’ or ‘performance’ was evident in a video thatwas taken in a first grade class and shows two children retellingtheir experiences of a science investigation with a sinking andfloating experiment earlier in the day. This video was recorded by athird child. As one girl held the video camera and filmed, the twoother children were retelling their experiences e there are noadults visible in the camera shot, as the children were in a hallwayoutside of their classroom. While Tim began to retell, Anne, thevideographer, instructed him to speak louder, as she could not hearhim. He elaborated on which items in their investigation sank, andwhich floated. An offprint from this video is seen in Fig. 23. At thispoint, the child at the fore, Maria, walked straight up the camerawith a smile. Suddenly, she looked at Tim and used her arms as adirector would use a clapperboard in a film, to say “cut!”, and madethe clapperboard motions with a load, sudden “TSSSCHT!” sound.She then turned to the camera and began to retell her experienceswith the sinking and floating experiment (Fig. 24).

Collectively these images illustrate that children were aware ofthe conventions in image production and their work reflects theirexposure to visual tropes. The children revealed an understandingof symbols, the physical language of authority, and the conventionsof visual image production including interviewing and directing.The more typical roles of visual production were represented intheir images, but they were also able to use photographic tech-nology to take control of knowledge production. Although the

Fig. 22. Posing the teacher.


Fig. 23. Maria.


children utilized visual conventions, they also were able to adaptthem to tell personal and idiosyncratic stories.

Fig. 24. Examining the video.

3.3. Third finding

Image production creates generative spaceOur third finding is that as photographs “stand still” long

enough to allow for reflections on the social construction ofmeaning (Fasoli, 2003, p. 43), the children’s images operated asgenerative space and opened up broader questions for the researchparticipants. This finding builds on the previous two, and we see itas representing the powerful possibilities for research and teaching.Normative assumptions were challenged throughout the twostudies, both between the children, and between the children andus as researchers. In the Luxembourgish study, for example, oneexchange between Christina and a boy named Richard is illustrativeof how our expectations as researchers can position us to not al-ways “see” what children are intending in their documentation. Inone of the Kindergarten classes that was focusing on water, thechildren had gone out after a rainstorm with the video cameras toexplore and document their ideas of water in this context. After thisepisode, the videos were collected from the children and importedinto iMovie. Christina noticed when she was reviewing the moviesthat many of the video clips were difficult to hear or watch, as thechildren were very active when outside with cameras. One of themain purposes of the videos taken by the childrenwas to documentscience investigations in order to look back on them, discuss, andquestionwhat was happening in the videos. To that end, the videosneed to have a certain level of steadiness so that the children couldview them again. In discussion with the teachers and the children,Christina decided to find a few videos to use for discussionwith thechildren to highlight what types of filming strategies result invideos that could be watched afterwards. She selected one of thevideos of approximately 40 s which appeared to have been taken asa child held the camera to face the ground, quickly swished it up tothe sky, and then held it back to the pavement. The movement fromground to sky and back again made the video difficult to watch, andit actually appeared to be taken in error, perhaps when the camerawas dropped and picked up again.

Sitting with one group of children, Christina showed the videoand asked the children what they thought was happening in thevideo, and what their comments on the video were. Antonio’s facelit up into a broad smile as he excitedly said, “This is my video!”Christina responded with, “Really? How can you tell?” The other


two children nodded, and Nuria pointed out, “There you can seeAntonio’s sneakers, Miss, and listen to hear his voice.”

Christina played the video again, and sure enough, there wereAntonio’s shoes and his voice was evident in the video. “So what’sgoing on here Antonio? It is really hard to see what you are doinghere,” Christina asked, assuming he would comment that he hadperhaps dropped the camera. Her researcher perspective expectedthat a science investigation would result in “clean” video that wasrelatively easy to watch, and instead, this video was nearlyimpossible to view as it could make a viewer feel nauseous. In thediscussion, however, Antonio clarified that this video was veryimportant as it represented his experiment with a raindrop. He andhis classmate had “caught” a raindrop in their hands, thrown it uptowards the sky, and then watched it. “Look, here you see it goingback to be a part of the puddle.” This was a critical turning point inthis study, as the video and resulting conversation challengedChristina’s assumptions of the children’s videoing, and the videoinstead became an important starting point for her in interactingwith children like Antonio to hear about their investigations, ex-pectations, and perspectives.

In the Pakistani project, the potential of image-based work as atool for critical pedagogy and Freire’s (2005/1970) conscientization(or critical consciousness) became clear in the picture produced byKirin (Fig. 25). Kirin, at the time of this research, was a 12 year-oldgirl who had approximately four years of schooling. In Fig. 25, hertext juxtaposes evidence of wealth and poverty as her photographsof rich people’s homes and poor people’s homes in her neighbor-hood were laid side by side. She carefully selected these image-sdtalking about them and retaking them during the researchdandshe created the text with the input of her peers after much delib-eration about language and word choice. She expressed that shewanted her text to highlight “poor people is a problem.” In this textshe does simply comment on the images as local facts and evidenceof her surroundings, but specifically points out that they illustrate aproblem for the country. She notes the importance of education (aneducation that, given her social class, she is likely to have no accessto beyond her current grade school). Kirin’s image, comprised ofthree photographs is directly confrontational and agentic. Shestrengthens her visual argument with text that describes the dif-ference between a life of wealth and of poverty in Pakistan. Bycontrasting the rich and poor neighbors she pushes viewers tothink about her claim of happiness as tied to wealth, in the contextof rural Pakistan. The image challenges the doctrine of universality


Fig. 25. The neighborhood through a child’s eyes e Banigala.


that is contained in the commonly held (Western) assumption that‘a concern for money is superficial’. The images and text that Kirinpresents dares viewers to consider her claim carefully.

In the Pakistani project Kirin positioned herself as a knowledgeproducer and used her photograph and accompanying text toquestion the inevitability of things as they are. As such sheexhibited an understanding of systems of oppression as normal-izing inequity in which rich people are happy with their education,jobs, and big houses, while poor people lack the basics such aseducation, jobs, and medicines. As she created, selected, titled, andadded narrative to these photographs (while collaborating with herpeers) she evidenced active resistance to the ideologies that pre-sent the children’s environments as acceptable, and wealth ineq-uity as immutable. In the Luxembourgish project, the children usedtheir images to position themselves as knowledge producers, andalso to represent their complex understandings of science pro-cesses (e.g., Siry, 2012). We find it significant that in both of theseprojects the use of images challenged notions of what children“can” and “cannot” do and know. In addition the images producedwere able to facilitate rich dialogues as they encouraged children tocommunicate across differences in age, culture, languages, and lifeexperiences. Across both studies, it is consistently evident that theproduction of visual documentation (in photos, videos, andartwork) also became a generative space for problem posing forchildren, both individually and collectively.

4. Discussion

4.1. Finding and losing

Although we highlight the ways that the act of producing im-ages seemed to empower children, it is equally important to notethe limitations of our research. We find four main points forreflection and learning. First, although we argue that using photoelicitationwith children across cultures can be away for children toexpress complex polysemic and critical knowledges, we alsoacknowledge that the material limitations of the medium canhinder understanding. Our participatory methods limited thesample and selection of images. In addition, pictures are not alwayseasy to reproduce and disseminate in high quality format, andsignificant details can be lost in reproduction. Second, the subjec-tivity of hermeneutic interpretations is inherently problematic. On


the one hand, the analysis of documents by the research partici-pants and authors is grounded in a lived understanding of thecontext; but on the other hand, images are open to multiple in-terpretations. Our claims are one set of interpretations in aworld ofinterpretations; they are intended to highlight the complexities ofsocial life. As interpretations they are also, by definition, refutable.This is the power of hermeneutic work, as it highlights the com-plexities of social life and interpretations thereof. We presentlayered analysis, but alsowewish to point out that we acknowledge“tensions between accepting children’s own analysis and locatingfindings within wider social and economic factors” (Coad & Evans,2008, p. 43). Third, we are aware that the images produced byphoto-elicitation techniques are always products of the task(Croghan, Griffin, Hunter, & Phoenix, 2008). As such they should notbe interpreted as absolute understandings or “truths”. Given thatcritically grounded research highlights both patterns and contra-dictions, there is much to be learned from considering contradic-tions as they emerge (Tobin, 2006). For example, in keeping withfindings from recent research on using photo-elicitation methodswith children for critical pedagogy (Sensoy, 2011), our findingsconfirmed that children did not necessarily embrace the opportu-nity to say new things through their photographs, and sometimesrelied on tropes and conventions, (as described in our secondfinding). Fourth, we note that there is an inherent seductive plea-sure in performing knowledge, which may not align with what isactually learned (Hunter, 2011). Although the children performedas experts we do not have access to how significant this role may(or may not) be to them as they move forward. In addition to thesepoints, we acknowledge that it is only possible to present a sam-pling of these projects in order to show their congruity. Althoughour projects shared many similarities, we recognize that a broadclaim of universality would be simplistic. While we are aware ofthese limitations and caveats we are optimistic that our researchcontributes to strengthening the case for visual methods ineducational research and practice.

4.2. Democratizing knowledge production by including Children’svoices

We do not intend this work to universalize. However, with thatin mind, we do find it significant that although our contexts werevery different, our research lead us to similar claims.We conceive ofthis as a strength of drawing across two seemingly discrepantcontexts and studies. In both projects, the value of using visualwork as a tool for democratic knowledge production became clear.Our combined work also illustrates the value of child-created im-age-based communication as a tool to help children re-see, critique,and challenge the world. In short, images empowered children tosee and to speak, while it fostered in them an apparent confidencethat in the space of pictures, adults would hear what they had tosay. This is in keeping with the transformative focus of criticalpedagogy. Photo-elicitation can serve as a generative space thatallows children to produce knowledge that questions theworld andencourages them to share this questioning across the boundaries ofage and culture. Further, photo-elicitation techniques can highlightthe impact of dominant visual cultures as visual tropes are repro-duced or adapted in children’s images. As noted in our introduction,children’s voices are seldom apparent in knowledge production.We see it as pedagogical significant that photographic image pro-duction with children appeared to afford them new ways of seeingand communicating the world. The images children produced, andtheir discussion about these images, suggests that photographyprovides children the opportunity to highlight moments and con-ventions that might otherwise pass unnoticed. Not only did thephoto-elicitation appear to encourage higher-order (detailed,


Fig. 27. Constructing knowledge together, Banigala.


evaluative, analytical) thinking in children but it also encouragedchildren to engage in this process collectively. Figs. 26 and 27 belowillustrate this process as the children used their images to collec-tively construct a world of knowledge.

4.3. Significance to teacher education

The broadest significance of our work to teachers and re-searchers of teacher education lies in the possibility that researchsuch as this will encourage educators (particularly critical educa-tors) to reconsider the value of visually rich pedagogical andresearch methods. This can provide a strong focus to teacher edu-cators as they work to bring new pedagogical methodologies intotheir work with pre- and in-service teachers. In our studies, wewere seeking to inform our understandings through children’sperspectives. This type of work can prove just as valuable ininforming teaching with the voices and ideas of children. This workhas illustrated to us that the power of visual methodologies that usechild-generated texts lies in their ability to open spaces for adults,including teachers, teacher educators, researchers, to learn fromand with children about their perspectives.

Significant to teacher education, and specifically to pedagogicalpractice, is our central claim that allowing children to express theirworlds through multiple modalities and languages allows them toexpress amore nuanced and complex rendering of reality than theynormally express in educational spaces. Tufte (2006) argues, “evi-dence that bears on questions of any complexity typically involvesmultiple forms of discourse” (p. 83). However as we noted earlier,visual discourses are often dismissed and therefore not a part ofteacher practices. As the 21st century takes an increasing visualturn we suggest that it is important that teachers and researcherslearn to communicate through, rather than exclude, the language ofimages. The ocularcentrism of the last couple of centuries(Gronbeck, 2008) is increasing, and educators whowish to respondcan look to research such as this as base from which to form theirown line of inquiry. By providing complex ethnographic evidence ofthe lives of children though images, and by facilitating voices notheard, we see this work as highlighting the possibilities ofimproving social and educational dialogue between adults andchildren. In the international contexts that our research took place,children’s voices are seldom legitimized and such research canserve to open the spaces for children to develop a new under-standing of themselves as capable of knowledge production.

5. Concluding thoughts

Through this research, we worked to create spaces from whichchildren could learn to frame and reframe their worlds. This can

Fig. 26. Constructing knowledge together, Luxembourg.


shed light on the value of positioning children as capable researchparticipants who are moreover capable of producing “unprece-dented knowledge about the world” (Kincheloe, 2008, p. 21). As wehave explored the children’s work with image-based projects, wehave “zoomed-in” (Roth, 2005) to look more closely at the ways inwhich these projects facilitated opportunities for the children toexpress themselves in complex and nuanced ways. We examinedthe texts they produced for evidence of the children’s agency asknowledge producers. We sought to consider how this type ofresearch, in these international contexts, can push against institu-tional structures to create generative spaces, and how these spacespoint to the possibility of eventually challenging inequities bydemocratizing knowledge production.

We stress the importance of not only working towardsproviding students with a venue for their “voices”, but that in thefacilitation of “student voice” through visual images, ensuring thatthese voices are listened to, and acted upon (Cook-Sather, 2006;Siry, 2013). The work of the children in these projects can serve asevidence that steps toward a critical consciousness are possiblewith photo-elicitation methods, even with young children incontexts where critical stances are discouraged in schools. Asknowledge hierarchies are challenged and insights are sharedthrough research like this, we hope for a future in which childrenwho have developed a critical lens will continue to have the skillsand vision to challenge the worlds they see. Our studies provideda space for children to go beyond what they knew as theyexplored new languages and found new voices. We hope that weas teachers and teacher educators can continue to create spacesfor new voices to emerge, while in response, we find new ways oflistening.

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank the anonymous reviewers and thejournal special issue editors for their very helpful comments andsuggestions that have served to strengthen our arguments andwriting significantly.

Research projects details: The Pakistani project received IRBapproval from the Graduate Center, CUNY. Consent to publish wasgranted by all the participants for all of the images. GraduateCenter, IRB Number: 10-03-066-0135. The Luxembourg project wastitled CODISCILEA project (“Competences for Organizing Discourse-in-Interaction & SCIence Learning”) funded through the Universityof Luxembourg’s Research Grant Program. PI: Charles Max. Dura-tion, 2008e2011.



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