Using photovoice to engage orphans to explore sexual violence in and around a township secondary school in South Africa

ABSTRACT

This article examines the vulnerability of orphans to sexual violence in and around their township secondary school. Using photovoice as a methodology with which to unearth these experiences and narratives, we examine how such an approach might engage the voices of orphans to inform thinking regarding sexual violence. Our analysis was informed by our desire to engage learners as critical and creative thinkers who are capable of grounding and thinking critically about their own issues. Findings highlight the vulnerability of orphaned girls both in and outside school. The photographs they produced demonstrate the pervasive nature of sexual violence directed against them. Photovoice enabled both ourselves and our participants to investigate experiences of sexual violence among orphaned learners. In particular, as a participatory visual method, photovoice facilitated the development of a transformative pedagogy in which we created a safe space for orphaned learners, a group that is often marginalised and silenced in many spaces to speak about their experiences. While many groups, particularly poor girls and women, experience high rates of sexual violence, the vulnerability of orphaned girls and boys is further increased by their social status within their families, communities and at school.     

Breaking through boundaries with PAR – or not? A research project on the facilitation of participatory governance through participatory action research (PAR)

ABSTRACT

In this paper, two researchers reflect on the institutional space for participatory governance in a participatory action research (PAR) process that was initiated by the Ministry of Education, Culture and Science (ECS) in the Netherlands. It was implemented in two schools by researchers contracted by the ministry. The project’s aim was to explore possibilities for involving schools in policy processes using PAR. We conclude that PAR sheds light on the communication strategies, power and authority balances, and meaning of participation among the participants. The attempt to break through traditional hierarchies generated new insights into the institutional space at both the participating schools and the government institutions that can be used to create participatory approaches to governance. The researchers were the bridging actors between the schools and the government institutions. While previous research showed that a bridging actor can play a positive role as an objective party who is able to deliberate between the participants, we found that it impeded the creation of a participatory governance space.     

‘Are we famous or something?’ Participatory Health Research with children using photovoice

ABSTRACT

Photovoice is a child-friendly method used in Participatory Health Research (PHR) to put children in a subject position to drive the research and social change. Little is known about the actual experiences of doing photovoice related to health issues in a primary school context regulated by adults. The purpose of this article is to explore how children’s voices can be genuinely taken into account in research and social change, and what the potentials and tensions are when using photovoice in schools. We present a case example of a PHR with primary school children using photovoice, and will focus on the lessons learned. Participating children were eager to tell their photostories, proud of their achievements, and felt ‘seen’ by adults, expressed in the phrase ‘Are we famous or something?’ Playful activities and concrete instructions helped children to create their own narrative. For the development of the children’s critical consciousness reflexive participatory actions and photo-elicitation were crucial. Their visuals prompted discussion and led to actions and plans taking into account their perspectives. Tensions included the struggle to find a right balance between guidance and control, protection and respect for autonomy and preset system requirements. Reflexivity and creativity are required to handle such tensions.     

Destabilising equilibriums: harnessing the power of disruption in participatory action research

ABSTRACT

This article draws on insights gained from three projects described as participatory action research (PAR) undertaken in the UK. What binds them together is that each project coordinator raised the issue of the under-representation of opportunities for disruption in the possible trajectory to knowledge democracy.

PAR places a relational process at the centre of the research practice. It brings together people with varied knowledges, perspectives and experiences and aspires to be a non-hierarchical, relational, collaborative endeavour. This challenges the traditional hierarchical hegemony of the external expert in research situations. Bringing people together does not, however, equate to shared agency, authentic participation and knowledge democracy. For different knowledges to be created previous knowledges need to be disrupted.The argument raised in this paper is that a neglected element of PAR has been the deliberate intent to nurture disruption within communicative spaces in relationally based engagements. It is posited that the disruption of beliefs and assumptions that underpin local actions, is an important enabler of other voices and knowledges being recognised and acted upon. The three projects described reveal how and why the harnessing of power through disruption contributes to creating a functional knowledge democracy for more radical change.     

Access to higher education in South Africa: expanding capabilities in and through an undergraduate photovoice project

ABSTRACT

There is a gap in research on access to universities in South Africa. The research that exists focuses on quantitative methodologies, although some qualitative studies are now emerging. These research methodologies, although necessary and substantial for the development of equity measures and policies, might be less successful in their impact on the local context, on research participants and in expanding what counts as knowledge in the university. In this paper, participatory research, which has not been used to research access, is explored. The paper seeks to go beyond the instrumentalization of research participants – especially those from low-income households – highlighting the potential of using multi-strategy research, in which participatory elements are included as a way to foster both participants’ human development and local impact. Drawing on a research project on access to higher education in South Africa, the paper demonstrates that by including participatory elements (in this case photovoice) has the potential to operationalize Appadurai’s notion of the ‘right to research’ among undergraduates. Using data, including processes, observations, workshops, interviews, and visual narratives from a participatory photovoice project, the findings highlight how methodological plurality creates space for locally and relevant knowledge production, challenging epistemic barriers and fostering human development among the research participants.     

Photovoice as a research method for higher education research

ABSTRACT

Higher education (HE) research often draws on a range of qualitative research approaches. However, some methods developed in other fields are underutilised in HE research, even though they could be of great use for answering particular kinds of research questions, or for involving students more actively in the research process. In this article, we draw on a study that piloted different methodological approaches to explore students’ conceptions of good teaching and effective learning at university. The participants in our study included 33 high achieving international, Māori, Pacific Island, and (other) local students enrolled in Humanities subjects. Our study used photovoice as a visual data collection approach in conjunction with more traditional methods of data collection: open-ended focus group questions and critical incident technique. In this article, we review the photovoice literature, which is mostly from outside HE. Then, we describe our study, discussing the students’ responses to photovoice, and the different kinds of data it elicited. We note that, while most students expressed appreciation of the photovoice approach, some also found it restrictive and challenging in some respects. We conclude, photovoice offers a useful methodological addition to HE research, while noting, as with all data collection approaches, researchers need to be mindful of its limitations.     

Placing photovoice under erasure: a critical and complicit engagement with what it theoretically is (not)

While there have been multiple breaks, shifts and developments within the theories that shape photovoice (i.e. praxis and feminist standpoint theory), they are rarely accounted for in the ways in which photovoice is (re)constituted. In this paper, I ask and engage with the questions: what might it mean to reconceptualise photovoice through a substitution of these similar yet different iterations of these theories? What is produceable in turn? By placing these (mis)readings of theory in conversation with concepts key to photovoice, empowerment and voice, I provide not what photovoice should be but rather possible possibilities for what it could be.     

Open secrets and problems of queer ethnography: Readings from a religious studies classroom

This article questions the logic of ethnographic inquiry that seeks to make gay and lesbian subjects seen and heard. I consider poststructural and queer challenges to ethnography's project of representing subjects, experiences, and voices to suggest that inquiry into gay and lesbian subjects analyze practices as they are constituted in social and institutional locations. Queer theorists' explorations of the "open secret" and the "epistemology of the closet," characterized by circulations of knowledge and ignorance, point to a need to place the contours of (un)knowing at the center of inquiry. I turn to participants' readings of Introduction to Christianity, taught by a lesbian faculty member, to theorize the effects of religious and sexual open secrets in constituting her pedagogy. Based on the intangible circulations of knowledge and ignorance in and around her teaching, I posit possibilities for ethnography that engage with queer theory to understand the construction and effects of practices.     

INTERDISCIPLINARY COLLABORATION AND PROFESSIONAL PREPARATION IN CAMPUS‐BASED CHILD DEVELOPMENT LABORATORY PROGRAMS

ABSTRACT

In an undergraduate families and communities course situated at a university in the borderlands of the United States and Mexico, early childhood majors have used Black feminist thought combined with photovoice to generate projects that explore family and community experiences with power and oppression. As a professor, teaching assistant, and student enrolled in the course, we share our conceptualization of Black feminist photovoice, student trends and issues engaging with photovoice throughout the semester, and provide an example culminating project that focuses on colonization. By describing students’ engagement with Black feminist photovoice, we illustrate how transformative spaces can be forged in early childhood teacher education, where students critically examine the struggles and empowerment of marginalized communities, and generate possibilities to serve as agents of social justice and change.     

The complexities of participatory action research and the problems of power,identity and influence

This article highlights the complexity of participatory action research (PAR) in that the study outlined was carried out with and by, as opposed to on, participants. The project was contextualised in two prior-to-school settings in Australia, with the early childhood professionals and, to some extent, the preschoolers involved in this PAR project seen as co-researchers. This article explores the author’s journey to PAR, which she considered a socially just mode of inquiry. However, it is not without its complexities and challenges. This article makes transparent these complexities and explores issues of ‘power’, identity and influence in collaborative research. Questions often reflected upon by researchers are re-visited in this article: What theoretical underpinnings align with the investigation? Why undertake such a demanding research design as PAR? What does this research design involve? Where does the university researcher fit? How does a PAR team ‘work’ when there are so many different personalities involved? What are the challenges that are faced by participatory action researchers and how might these be overcome? While these challenges are not new to PAR researchers, the solutions and discussion put forward in this article may generate further reflection and debate.     

Relationality as a response to challenges of participatory action research in indigenous contexts: reflections from the field

ABSTRACT

Three researchers share their reflections on the challenges and goodness of fit of using participatory action research (PAR) in studies with indigenous peoples in the United States and Canada. Three central challenges of participatory methodologies are identified: (1) defining what constitutes participation; (2) the extended time required for a PAR study; and (3) researcher positionality. The authors discuss tensions inherent in the western academy when shifting final decision-making authority over research processes away from the academic institution to the indigenous community. A model situating the principles of PAR alongside perspectives and values congruent with the indigenous concept of relationality is presented as a means of mitigating these challenges. This approach aligns PAR principles within culturally-congruent definitions of relationship and encourages researchers to re-imagine participation as a form of relationship, allowing them to engage more deeply and genuinely with indigenous participants.     

A review of photovoice applications in environment,sustainability, and conservation contexts: is the method maintaining its emancipatory intents?

Abstract

Photovoice, a Participatory Action Research method developed by Wang and Burris, has gained popularity as a pedagogical tool to engage youth with environmental, sustainability, and conservation issues. Influenced by Paulo Freire’s critical pedagogy, feminist theory, and documentary photography, photovoice supports reflection about place, critical dialogue about community issues, and social change by reaching policymakers. Some scholars have modified the method and applied varying frameworks to increase relevance for diverse participants. However, adaptation also may lose the original tenets. Through a scoping review, this study examined methodological applications to science, conservation, and sustainability education and whether emerging approaches align with Wang and Burris’ original goals. The scoping review identified and analyzed four applications of photovoice: i) place as pedagogy, ii) conservation and sustainability, iii) STEM teaching; and iv) decolonizing education. Current scholarship shows promise for photovoice in environmental education applications to support participatory, diverse, and equitable educational settings, but some projects would benefit from more explicit attention to the original emancipatory intents of the method.     

Research methodology,education, and theoretical fashions: Constructing a methodology course in an era of deconstruction

In this article a case is made both for the utility of deconstructive questions and also for the danger of taking such questions as a sole or overriding methodological agenda in education. The discussion is mounted by attention to grounded contexts and dilemmas rather than by a commitment to abstract concerns about ''power'' or ''Other'' or ''polyphony of voices.'' The framing dilemma is how one might construct a research methodology course that is not based on positivism, relativism, or a reification of current theory as an enduring answer for students. The article takes two substantive fields of inquiry in education- (1) inequality and access in education and (2) gender and education- to argue that following through some substantive issues for educational research can provide ways of thinking about the relative merits, power, pertinence, and relationships among quantitative, qualitative, and deconstructive agendas. Finally, the article outlines a research methodology course constructed by the author to attempt to put into practical form the assumptionsabout education and research methodology that are argued in this article.     

Photovoice: understanding high school females’ conceptions of mathematics and learning mathematics

Photovoice is a participatory action research tool that is grounded in the literature for critical consciousness (Wang & Burris, 1997). Four creative high school girls who reported struggles with mathematics were given cameras and asked to take photographs to answer the following questions: (1) What is mathematics? (2) What is your ideal learning environment? (3) What things impede your learning of mathematics? Within-case and cross-case analyses of the photographs and interview responses were conducted. Each individual case was analyzed using the work of Belenky, Clinchy, Goldberger, and Tarule (Women’s Ways of Knowing, 1986) who investigated women’s epistemological perspectives. The girls were either silenced (disconnected from the mathematical knowledge of the teacher), received (lacked confidence to do mathematics independently), or “fragily” subjective (viewed mathematical knowledge as personal rather than imparted by the teacher) knowers of mathematics. The use of photovoice has the power to facilitate the nurturing of silence as it moves toward the “roar which is on the other side of silence” (Belenky et al., 1986, p. 4).     

Re-signifying participatory action research (PAR) in higher education: what does ‘P’ stand for in PAR?

While carrying out a study aimed at understanding the contribution of participatory action research (PAR) to the political realm in contemporary higher education, a problematic situation was found when doing a literature review in the field of action research. This problem concerns the intermittent appearance of the ‘participatory’ component (P) in the acronyms used by PAR practitioners. To flag this problem, a decision was made to use the parentheses around the ‘P’ in PAR; that is, (P)AR. This intermittent appearance of (P) in the literature of action research is linked to one of the main findings in the study; namely, the existence of contested views of ‘action’ and ‘politics’ in action research. In order to address the concept of ‘participatory’ in PAR, and drawing from Hannah Arendt’s notion of ‘natality’, it is suggested that the participatory aspect of PAR (i.e. the ‘P’) be re-signified on the basis of six imbricated ‘P’ notions: people, plurality, publicity, participation, power and politics. The objective of this article is to present how this theoretical resource was utilised to re-signify the ‘participatory’ component of PAR. It is discussed that this re-signification of participation (the P), together with the re-signification of the action (‘A’) and the research (‘R’) components of PAR, constitutes one of the implications to contribute to the re-humanisation of contemporary higher education.     

The student voice in well-being: a case study of participatory action research in positive education

Positive education blends academic learning and student well-being. Although research and application in positive education is growing, most has involved psychologists and educators applying strategies in schools, with little research that involves student voices in the development and implementation of a school’s positive education strategy. Assumptions are frequently made about what is best for student well-being, with little input from the students themselves. This paper describes a case study of participatory action research (PAR) carried out by students (N = 10) at a publically funded Australian school aiming to implement positive education. PAR is a form of collective inquiry undertaken by the people that the issue directly affects. The PAR group researched the school community regarding well-being during the school year. Mixed methods examined PAR student’s well-being, self-efficacy, autonomy, social and emotional assets, and other competencies before and after the process. Student involvement allowed the school to better understand their students’ well-being, and student-led communication about positive education laid the groundwork for its implementation. Results suggested benefits for the PAR students, particularly in engagement and self-efficacy. This realistically scaled study suggests that involving students using a framework of PAR is a promising, accessible, evidence-based, and developmentally beneficial approach to the implementation of positive education.     

Living in the basement of the ivory tower: a graduate student's perspective of participatory action research within academic institutions

As academic interest grows around participatory action research there is a need to reflect on the ways in which universities are adapting to the presence of alternative research methodologies. This article examines the rapidly expanding field of participatory action research (PAR) as it relates to academic involvement in community research and dialogue. The article concentrates on the advantages and disadvantages of the PAR approach as a research practice in academic institutions. Untimately, this article raises a number of questions for academics to consider including the possible outcomes and implications for implementing PAR within graduate school curriculum.     

Realising the school science curriculum

Abstract

This article identifies historical, pedagogical and epistemological problems which distance the school science curriculum from social questions, and issues of social justice more specifically. Drawing on a critical realist approach it addresses these problems and aims to demonstrate that social justice lies at the heart of inquiry in science in schools.     

Disrupting metaphors of coloniality to mediate social inclusion in the global South

ABSTRACT

New voices emerging in the global South are contesting the academy’s elitist and exclusionary ethos by disrupting the normalcy of coloniality. Concerns raised by the student protests of 2015 and 2016 have challenged the higher education sector to rethink its traditional teaching, learning, and assessment practices in response to student calls for decolonised and transformative curricula. This paper explores the ‘voice’ of the marginalised, who dare to ‘speak’ in authentic and provocative ways to call the university to action. We pose the questions: are alternative voices enough to inspire institutional change if traditional hierarchies of power remain intact? What does this mean for the collective project of re-imagining a university that carries a promise of social inclusion and social justice? What are the implications for academic development (AD) work, which finds itself on the margins, in service of mainstream (and dominant) epistemic and pedagogic practices? Using reflective narratives, and drawing on decolonial scholarship, this study explores a group process involved in curriculum change work at a university in South Africa. It raises challenges for AD and its role in the current context of change.     

Roses from the Cracks: A Pedagogical Reflection on the 2018 Religious Education Association Annual Meeting

Abstract

This essay explores what surfaces when we lead a reflection on the 2018 REA meeting with questions about teaching and learning. What pedagogical models appeared to be operative during the meeting? What voices were missing and which ones were privileged? Who benefitted from the pedagogies at work in the meeting? Who was marginalized? What pedagogical possibilities burst through the painful and difficult spaces in the meeting that can be a “North Star” to guide us in our future work?