SELF-STUDY THROUGH VISUAL REPRESENTATION

1. Part III
Self-Study Through Visual
Representation

2. Faces and Spaces and Doing
Research
Methodology: Epistemology and Social Justice
The main issues for the visual self-studies:
- First, the view is taken that kind of educational knowledge constructed and
created in a self-study is wisdom rather information.
- Second study is concerned with active knowledge which is constructed by
human being as social beings engaged understand their word.
- Third, this is research which is underpinned by a concern for social justice.
The methodologies of studies focus on ourselves as teacher and researchers in our
specific contexts. Our studies are collaborative, including participants form
different social and professional positions.
Kant and Descartes showing how images are inextricably bound up with their
thinking. Self-study vary in the stage of research in which the visual is used and
also in what kind of visual material they used. Mostly they use images as data,
pictures which effect (three dimensional artefacts), drawings, and memories of
images such as photography.

3.  The Context for the Study: Previous Studies in
Nottingham
- The first study in Nottingham confronted the hidden power relation
everyday relationship within a teacher education institutional. The
second study investigated everyday justice in the workplace. In both
studies had used visual representations at the stages of formulation of
research question, data collection, analysis and presentation. However,
in the first study, the discussion was focused on a visual arrangement
of the data; in the second study there was more visual discussion of
individual picture.

4.  The Edinburgh Study
All staff in this study work in one department in the University of
Edinburgh’s School of Education. About 45 staff members mostly focus on
teaching beginning teachers within their subject specialisms, but also
teach on TESOL courses and a range of in-service courses, doctoral
courses, etc. The department is housed in four separate buildings. The two
were also increasingly impressed by the energy and optimism generated
when the academic staff were presented with an opportunity for
professional conversations across these geographical divides. They
thought this geography was worth investigating. Such a study seemed well
suited to a visual or visualizing approach like the ones used at Nottingham.
Places can be photographed and described. Visual metaphors readily
presented themselves.

5.  Methods Used and How They Evolved
Criteria for participation in the group were having a range of subject disciplines
represented. They began with a group of six, the initial research question was, Where do
they find or create places and spaces for research and how do they affect our research?
The process of the research could broadly be described as being iterative and cyclical.
Morwenna created a diagram as a way to represent visually the process of the study. This
visual helped them to consider and understand research process and be clear about what
we were doing. However, as valuable as this was in helping us see what we were doing, it
presented a somewhat false simplicity of the way the project was progressing. The
research process was full of stops and starts, changes in direction. There was a constant
sharing of pictures, ideas and thoughts (by blog, informal chats, formal meetings, and
email) throughout this process. These generated discussion, and themes emerged,
developed and evolved. New focus was placed on the research questions.
The visual element was present at every meeting – from photographs, pictures and other
images created to diagrams and pictures that formed part of the visual analysis and
interpretation. A Spaces and Places blog was started. They was coming together as a
group, spreading their photographs, pictures and other visuals and talking about them,
answering the research questions using the images. Through the face-to-face discussions,
the use of the visual was key at every stage.

6. What We Learned
 Diverse Space
From the start it was clear how different they were, some of they were dedicated collaborators,
while others preferred working individually. Some loved and frequented the blog, others did
not. Some comprehending the concept from a professional artist’s perspective, while the others
saw this more as a research presentation happening to take visual form.
 Collaborative Space
Because of their diversity, at some point they all described collaboration as a hard space,
disconcerting, but surprisingly in light of the bumpiness, they all agreed their collaboration was
worthwhile. Working as a group definitely resulted in synergy: the shared outcomes being more
than the sum of individual parts.
 Relevant Space
Amanda’s sequence of photographs illustrated this process: beautiful in themselves, they
helped to conceptualize clearly ways in which research and teaching are inextricably linked
through a teacher’s creation of materials and their metamorphosis in the pedagogic process
 Powerful Space
They all acknowledged the power of visual images. For example Rosemary’s reflections pointed
to the catalytic power of visual imagery for generating and eliciting ideas.

7. Facing the Public: Using Photography
for Self-Study and Social Action
 Introduction: Visual Approaches to Self-Study and Social
Action
To really notice that which we may have overlooked, not seen clearly, we need
to look carefully, to pay attention in what Maxine Greene would call a wide-
awake manner, the use of visual approaches to self-study can literally help us
see things differently. The strength of visual methods lies in harnessing the
power of images to bring things to light in both personal and public ways and
to offer multiple theoretical and practical perspectives on issues of social
import have also begun to explore the ways in which new media and new
technologies can complement (and expand) the possibilities for self-
representation in the public face of self-study. These range from the use of
digital cameras in creating PowerPoint albums, digitizing projects using
metadata and Movie Maker, and the use of blogs. Not only can digital
technologies contribute to expanding the repertoire of visual approaches to
self-study, they also contribute to expanding the range audiences.

8.  Seeing for Ourselves: Curating Self-Study Photo Albums
as Social (Action) Texts
Photo albums in self-study involve performance that can lead to social action.
For example education policy in South Africa identifies a complex range of HIV
and AIDS-related responsibilities that all teachers and school managers are
meant to assume: giving HIV and AIDS-related advice to learners, parents, and
the wider community; challenging customary attitudes toward sex and talking
about sex; giving emotional help and guidance to learners who are bereaved or
orphaned. Consequently, in a number of projects operating out of the Center
for Visual Methodologies for Social Change at the University of KwaZulu-Natal,
we have seen how self-study can bring teachers front and center in looking for
solutions to serious problems. Among the various visual methods used in these
projects, one of the most interesting, the use of photo albums, is also one of
the most portable and adaptable.

9.  Creating, Curating, and Using Photo Albums for Self-
Study
Our use of photo albums for self-study in education is informed by two
sets of visual practices: photovoice and critical memory work with photo
albums:

10.  Photovoice
Caroline Wang’s (1999) visual methodology, called ‘photovoice,’ enables
project participants to be researchers. They are invited, guided, and
equipped to produce their own images, making visible their voice around
a particular social issue that affects them directly. The images themselves
contain elements of social critique, which is further interrogated through
eliciting responses to the photographs, often by displaying them in public
venues or showing them to specific community or policy groups.
Photovoice is often used in the context of community work or social
activism to better understand what really matters to people.

11.  Critical Memory Work with Photo Albums
The work of Jo Spence (1988), in her book, Putting Myself in the Picture, in
What Can a Woman do with a Camera? Offers an up-close self-study
component of producing images and working with photo albums, draws
together a fascinating collection of essays describing visual projects based on
still photography carried out by ordinary girls and women.
A young teacher in rural KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa, who was enrolled in a
graduate course in Cinematic and Documentary Studies. In that course, the
starting point for the study of documentary video was for the students (all of
them practicing teachers) to first create their own photo documentaries, using
domestic photographs that had already been taken by others. Later, in another
course and drawing on our work with photovoice and the idea of teachers
taking their own pictures, we expanded the album project to one that could
also include photos that teachers had taken themselves.

12.  Protocol for Creating and Curating Self-Study Albums
The approach we have used to creating albums is quite simple:
• Find (not take) or take (not find) some photos that appear (to you) to be linked to some sort of
theme, narrative, or question that is relevant to your life (to your self-study inquiry).
• Choose (select) and organize seven or eight (no more) of these photos into a small photo album.
• Provide a title, and write a short ‘curatorial’ statement of 150–200 words to introduce and frame
your collection.
• Write short captions to a company each photo, and include acknowledgements and dedication
(where appropriate), and ‘about the artist’ (optional).
• Contain each aspect of the textual material (e.g., curatorial statement, captions, and images) to
what can be placed within a plastic album window (or single page).
• Make an oral presentation of your album to your intended audience (for example, colleagues,
administrators, community leaders, policy makers) and take note of their responses/critiques.
• If possible, display your album (make it available) where most appropriate.

13. Methodological Considerations: Features of
Curated Photo Albums as Self-Study
We have identified nine significant features of these methods that in a very practical (and often
observable)
1) ‘Looking, gazing, seeing, noticing: Gathering evidence and evaluating’.
2) ‘Remembering, considering, and gathering information through dialogue’
3) ‘Choice’ is central to the inquiry process that underlies curated photo albums.
4) ‘Constructedness’ (in this case the album) can be framed as a type of playfulness—a tentative
Lego construction that could incorporate a variety of shapes, be it grandiose or small, and
denote different meanings, depending on how things are put together and taken apart.
5) ‘Explication’. The challenge in writing or talking about a photo collection is to set the ontext,
situate one’s theoretical or political stance, and guide interpretation.
6) ‘Materiality’ is a seldom acknowledged, tacit feature of photo album work. This idea of
materiality is critical, not only in relation to the individual photographs contained in the album
but also in relation to the actual album as a material object.
7) ‘Embodiment’ is a basic modality of curated photo albums, the requirement that participants
present their albums orally obliges them to put their bodies on the line to give voice to their
interpretations and indings.
8) ‘Performance,’ closely linked to embodiment, is central to the curating process.
9) ‘Reflexivity’ Participants comment on the ways in which the processes of selecting photos,
assembling the photos for the album, composing the captions and curatorial statement, and
finally presenting and engaging in dialogue.

15.  Making Meaning of Practice through Visual
Metaphor
This approach focuses on particular moments in time that are perceived as significant
occurrences.
 The Emergence of Metaphoric Representations
Drawing “moments in time that mattered in our work”
 What We have Learned from Using Metaphoric
Representation
We have been able to make meaningful decisions about our professional work both for
the immediate and for the long term. This reflective process helped us to more deeply
understand our practice. We discovered that reflecting in thought and in conversation, or
even in writing, lacked the power of a metaphoric drawing as a basis for our reflection.
When we returned to our drawings, we returned to the moment in which they were
made which revealed for us new understandings about the metaphors and thus about our
practice.

16. By Andrea Arcos D.
Thanks.