Perspectives on Visual Methods
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Transcript of Perspectives on Visual Methods
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’