Diversity, Democratisation and Difference: Theories and Methodologies

Perspectives on Visual Methods

John Pryor

Centre for Higher Education and Equity Research

Umeå-Sussex Doctoral Seminar: Diversity, Democratisation and Difference: Theories and Methodologies

In the beginning

Was the word …

… or was it?

Probable agenda

• Introductory presentation (with talkback)• Practical activity with task• Plenary session raising issues • Closing thoughts?

Research and the visual• The visual nature of the world • Making understandings of the world through images • Listening only to words is to turn a blind eye to much of the

world. • Breaking the hegemony of the word as a means of

understanding. • The materiality of the world • The creative tension between the word and the image :

questioning established patterns and breaking the taken-for-granted.

• The ‘intrusive presence of the researcher’

Epistemology

• The visual and the real – naive triangulation

• Objectivity / subjectivity

• The hidden hand

Doubled meaning

• Internal narrative: what is? What is in it?

• External narrative: “… the social context that produced the image, and the social relations within which the image is embedded at any moment of viewing” (Banks 2001:11 my emphasis)

Visual data

• Photographs • Videos • Drawings • Diagrams • Movements, signs • Representations of the material world

Modes and methods

1. Researcher-recorded data 2. Objects of the subjects3. Active participation4. Stimulated response and data

chains

1. Researcher-recorded data

• Researcher is recording a social interaction by producing a visual representation – e.g. filming the meeting; photographs of the class in progress

• Fixing the complex • Recollection in tranquility • ‘Naturalistic’

2. The (visual) objects of the subjects

• Participants are producing visual representations for purposes other than the (self conscious) production of research.

• Who is the author of the image? • Who is the audience? What are they trying to

communicate through their representation? • Content and discourse: semiotic analysis

3. Active participation• Participants are interpreting social situations, events,

worlds through actively producing or collecting visual representations

• Giving a camera to participants to record their day, video diaries, drawings, mental maps, artefact narrative …– Phenomenological – ‘Empowering’ - voice, – spontaneous/ reflective, – The researcher ‘as witness giving testimony to the lives of

others’ (Lather 2007:41)– opens up the external narrative

4. Stimulated response and data chains

• Researcher is collaborating with participants by asking them to interpret visual representations of social interactions, events, people, objects

• Sorting, visual (usually photo) elicitation, ‘forensic’ interviews, stimulated video recall,

• Responses: cognitive, affective, aesthetic, physical

• Intertextuality • Polyvocality

Playing with photos• How can you use these photos across the three / four

modes and methods:– Internal content (1/2): Who are these people? What are they doing?

Why? When? Where? In whose interest? – External narrative (3): what are the processes of selection and

composition that lie behind the photos? What were their intentions? – Response (4): How could you use these photos for gaining a response

with their authors, subjects or others?

• How would it be different, if using other media (e.g. video)

• What methodological issues does the discussion provoke?

Stimulated video recall

• Video-based observation of events and activities provides visual data which may be analysed directly.

• After event view with participants generates interview data focusing on: – recall of practices– thought processes– interpretation of practices– status of practices compared with a norm– resonance with other events.

Ethics and Visual data

• Anonymity • Sensitivity with

participants • Sensitivity with ethics committees• Re-use – requires forethought and

persistence• Public data?

Some other issues with visual data

• Allowing for genre and aesthetics (often not done with other means) • ‘Reactivity’ • Storage and archiving

Reporting with visual data • Directness • Academic restrictions

(theses, journals) • Different strokes …

‘impact’