The story they want to tell, and the visual story as evidence: young people, research authority and research purposes in the education and health domains

Abstract

RVST The story they want to tell, and the visual story as evidence: young people, research authority and research purposes in the education and health domainsYoung people and research in education and health LYN YATESThe decision to use participatory visual methods with young people in education, health or public policy research is linked to a desire to allow them to have some greater voice in the research and the professional activities that impact on their lives. But how that 'voice' is produced, whose voice it represents, and how the product of that research is used and interpreted are all contentious issues for researchers. This article analyses some of these conceptual, methodological, political and pragmatic issues from the perspective of a current Australian Research Council-funded project working with young people across education and health domains. It is argued that allowing or not allowing visual accounts to speak for themselves is not simply a political decision but one related to epistemological understandings about meaning, and also to different purposes of different visual projects, in particular their relative emphasis on voice as a window to the world of the young people, compared with voice as a window to 'who I am'. The project discussed is one which aims to give greater authority and centrality to the visual accounts and voices of young people, but also one where researchers understand both the visual and voice as constructed rather than given. Case studies from the project are used to illustrate the way in which these commitments frame decisions about technology and methodology, and also to show and argue for an approach which treats the meaning of the visual evidence as something to be constructed ethnographically and reflexively over time.

Advancing towards inclusive social research: visual methods as opportunities for people with severe mental illness to participate in research

“…Some authors emphasize the value of visual methods in empowering disadvantaged groups (Yates, 2010). With respect to this, in the research presented here the researchers yield some of their power as they do not control the script for the interview, rather it is up to the Photo and graphic elicitation has clear advantages, but also some drawbacks that the researcher must evaluate when deciding whether to use photographs or drawings.…”

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Drawing on Dynamic Local Knowledge Through Student-Generated Photography

“…Using photography as a lens to children's worlds and identities has been the important work of Yates (2010), Luttrell (2010), and Luttrell, Doresey, Hayden, and Shalaby (2011). Lico and Luttrell emphasize the need to provide "multiple opportunities for young people to produce, interpret, circulate, exhibit, and analyze their own and each other's self-representations" (2011, p. 681).…”

Comprensión, competencia y logro en la educación artística escolar

“…El niño alcanza la comprensión del adulto cuando llegan a los 13 años de edad (Anderson y Hanson, 2010). En el caso de estos adultos, se utilizan cámaras de fotografía y de vídeo para el registro de imágenes con el objetivo de crear visiones personales de la realidad y para componer historias significativas basadas en la vida cotidiana (Yates, 2010), ya que los relatos sobre las imágenes registradas proporcionan a los fotógrafos la oportunidad de comprender su entorno y su realidad inmediata (Beilin, 2005).…”