Using image-based techniques in researching pupil perspectives

(This is an extended version of the presentation delivered at the November 1 Conference)

Using image-based techniques in researching pupil perspectives:

How the deepest discoveries require sometimes the briefest expression

Aims:

to examine some image-based tools and techniques for generating data ways of generating data
to examine the use of specific talk-and-draw techniques as an interview tool - which copes with diversity

what I did

why I did it

how I analysed it - using theory; using constant comparison

reconceptualisation of a theoretical framework (p. 245 Ely)
turning images - visual representations - into meanings

limitations - being a learner - the research goes into the field as a learner

Introduction:

(a) brief intro. of research interest/problem of head teachers

Why (or should we be asking "when"), do pupils have difficulty expressing themselves?

Children know more than they know they know. They surely know more about what they know than the researcher does. Most of what they know, they know implicitly. Knowledge is not filed away in pupils' heads in answer form waiting for the stimulus of the perfect question to release it. No researcher has ever found out what it means to be a new age traveller's child or a foster child or a teenage mother by asking directly, "What does it mean to be a . . . ?" The purpose of image-based techniques in interviews is to get them to represent what they know, feel and think about what they know - and to help them to talk.

The typical sit-down research interview is difficult to conduct with children. Why?

Pupils will most likely have not had any experience with this particular form of interaction with you.
Pupils can feel pressure to either give you the "right" answer. Children often don't feel the freedom to move from looking for a "right" answer or one that will please you.
Pupils can find it find it hard to respond to the question - don't understand it
Pupils can be threatened by the question and can feel no leeway in how they answer
Pupils are less familiar with and feel less competent in interviews
How can we release the realities of pupils experiences?

As researchers, we have to make the simple but all important step of using unusal novel and even new research tools - using instruments without sharp edges but with powerful zoom lens from which to conduct interviews with pupils. Instruments which will give you insights into pupils perspectives very convincingly using kinds of evidence.

2. Image-based techniques - ways of generating data - providing more inclusive approaches to researching pupils' perspectives - Creating Forms: Informing understanding - There are multiple ways of generating data - Unusual ways of recording pupils' perspectives - getting data - using image-based techniques - provides a strong and powerful way of accessing thinking of a diversified group of pupils; to explore the wider varieties of pupils perspectives and edges of possibility in their struggle to create and represent meaning

What are they? So let's now consider some of the image-based techniques that qualitative researchers have used on the discovery and construction of meaning

Using talk-and-draw technique (Prosser, 1998) - exploring the visual image of understanding

Ask pupils to draw an image or pictorial representation to convey some aspect or aspects of what it is your researching.
They, you invite them to explain in detail how these pictures relate to their experience.
The critical question needs to address one specific concern e.g. Thinking back over your experience of . . . .what for you, does it mean to . .. . .? Can you show me in drawing, an image or shape, how you might represents what . . . . . means to you? Can you tell something about this?

Using print and visual resources - photographs or pictures of images - ask the children to explain to you "what is going on" - pupils responses can be richly informative because you have provided something concrete to focus on. For example, pictures of the children in a classroom can be very useful for getting at pupils understanding of classroom social interactions. One might array the photos on the table, then pick out the photo of Mary and ask, "If Mary was working at the art table, what other children would come and work with her". Be aware that small details, like picture size, are important. Discovering that pictures will not all fit on the table one is using will make for an awkward interview session. Laminating paper props makes sense.
Using metaphors - objects can make coherent links with pupils as a way of developing a narrative or representational account of "working together" - the aim is to use things (materials, forms) in such a way as to throw up shared voices
Rivers of experience - critical incident charts: can be extremely useful and powerful in stimulating dialogues with pupils. This is a research tool which encourages active involvement from the participants, in an emancipatory and democratic manner. This technique allows the pupils to investigate their meanings. It involves the contemplation and reflection on experience. It doesn't feel like an interview but rather a reflective conversation. Like rivers, the words start to flow without too many constraints from a simple question: "What has led you to be a student who . ."

The river of experience is, in fact, a reflexive tool, since the pupil, on her or his own, draws it in any way he or she feels appropriate and links a critical incident leading up to a particular experience/role/situation, to each bend of the river's path.

Pupils are asked to reflect on specific instances or critical incidents, which they considered had influenced the direction of their school lives. That is, in private, to visualise their lives as a winding snake or winding river in which each "twist" in its body, or bend in the river, represents a change in direction of, or intention for, gaining friends, achieving, skipping school
Ask the pupils to share stories of special memories which "tell you about their memorable experiences of school, friends . . . "
Whilst they recall these events in their histories, they or you, locate each narration or drawing or image on different bends along the length of a winding river (or snake) where each bend represents an influential incident.
Then, you ask them to reflect upon these incidents giving to the attitudes and orientations implicit to each incident.
What flows from the river are vingettes, images, narratives, stories which fall out - You let the pupil talk without interrupting.
Reflect on the whole picture - patterns start to emerge
Patterns emerge, linking individual stories from the singular, to plural to multiple.

How can they be used?

recalling critical incidents - with them, thoughts feelings or attitudes are conveyed
to make sense out of a particular sequence of events
to construct meaning through reflection on previous sessions
to inform understanding of how pupils feel about something at different times
to reflect on prior experience

Ways of seeing and then seeing again - Image-based techniques as Interview Tools used in the Soundings Project

a. what I did

b. why I did it

c. how I analysed it - using theory; using constant comparison

reconceptualisation of a theoretical framework (p. 245 Ely)

Important steps in the research process: problems and promises
The initial negotiation phase: Establish a rapport with the pupil. Are you comfortable? Are they? The first temp in interviewing pupils is negotiating the process - what it is all about and how one does it. Depending on the pupils and the context, and your relationship to them, this initial negotiation may be very time-consuming. Expect the first real interview session to take longer than you expect.
Be very creative in finding/developing new ways to interview (look for inspiration in visual arts, performing arts, drama crossovers)
Think about a range of possibilities for interviewing pupils:

pair or small-group interviews: pupils are more relaxed with a friend than alone with an adult. They help each other with their answers. They also keep another on track and truthful.
Props - provide something concrete to focus on; provide images or draw images; using pictures
Hypothetical questions: well-formed hypothetical questions allow pupils to turn the interview into pretend play, an activity they are more familiar with and more competent in than interviewing. Hypothetical questions allow older children the freedom to move from looking for the "right" answers. "Suppose I was a little kid and I was coming to this school for the first time and I didn't know anyone, or what to do or where to go, and suppose you saw me. What would tell me so I wouldn't feel so scared and out-of-place?"
Third-person questions. An easy way to make questions less threatening and to allow more leeway in how they answer is to ask questions about pupils in general in their context. Questions about "what kids do" as opposed to "what you do", permit a respondent to answer honestly without having to implicate him/herself. "Sometimes kids sneak out of school and hang out in the part because. . ."
Recording interviews: There can be hesitation about talking freely into a recorder. Children are not that innocent and they are aware. Be mindful of their response. They may say things when the recorder is turned off that they will not say when it is running.

Aim for empathic attunement - where the researcher becomes attuned to each pupil's thinking and feeling state - empathy seeks to work from the inside out, working to discover what makes an individual think and feel the way s/he does. It is the act of putting oneself in the place of someone else; having pupils help you to see new things The validity of images and meanings: Qualitative research emphasises the validity of multiple meaning structures. It recognises the importance of the subjective and the experiential lifeworlds of individuals. It embraces the multitudes of personal meanings. Use of member checks and peer debriefing or use of independent referees are three qualitative practices that ensure that the researched and the researchers have the right of reply.

5. What are the limitations?

Being a researcher: Three basic assumptions should underlie the researcher's attitude twoard the pupils he/she is studying:

1. All kids are smart. They know how to get along in the world they inhabit. They know what works there, what does not work. They only way to get as smart as they are about their world is to learn from them.

All kids make sense. What may appear from the outside to be dysfunctional activity, from the inside, to those involved, makes sense. The only way to understand how those actions makes sense is to listen and observe very carefully.
See the pupils as co-researchers, not of the wider research project, but as a researcher of their own personal experiences, their correlations and meanings.

Finding out, as Geertz put it, "What the devil people think they are up to" requires attending very carefully to them and respecting their abilities.

References

Burnard, P. () How children ascribe meaning to improvisation and composition.

Prosser, J. (1988). Image-based Research: a sourcebook for qualitative researchers. (London, Falmer)

Gave, M. E. & Walsh, D. J. (1998) Studying Children In Context: Theories, Methods and Ethics. London: Sage

Dnicolo, P. and Pope, M. (1990) Adults Learning - Teachers Thinking. In Day, C., Pope, M. & Denicolo, P. (Eds). Insight into Teachers Thinking and Practice. Basingstoke, The Falmer Press. Pp. 155-69.