Visual methods and voice in disabled childhoods research: troubling narrative authenticity

Abstract

Visual methods are a popular way of engaging children and young people in research. Their growth comes out of a desire to make research practice more appropriate and meaningful to them. The auteur approach emphasises the need to explore with young participants why they produce the images they do, so that adult researchers do not impose their own readings. This article, while recognising the value of such visual techniques, argues that their benefit is not that they are more age appropriate, or that they are more authentic. Instead it lies in their capacity to display the social influences on how participants, of any age, represent themselves. The article does so through discussion of an Economic and Social Research Council research project, which made use of visual and other creative methods, undertaken in the UK with disabled young people. The research involved narrative and photo elicitation interviews, the production of photo journals, and creative practice workshops aimed at making representational artefacts. Through analysing the photography, the journals and interviews the article examines what it was research participants sought to capture and also what influenced the types of photographs they gathered and the type of person they wanted to represent. We argue that they aimed to counter negative representations of disability by presenting themselves as happy, active and independent, in doing so they drew from broader visual iconography that values certain kinds of disabled subject, while disvaluing others.

Reflection/Commentary on a Past Article: “The Integrated Use of Audio Diaries, Photography, and Interviews in Research with Disabled Young Men”

“…Moreover, we have done additional work to problematize the still-common assumption of the production of “authentic voices” with these methods (Gibson, King, Teachman, Mistry, & Hamdani, 2017; Teachman, McDonough, Macarthur, & Gibson, 2018; Teachman & Gibson, 2018). We concur with McLaughlin and Coleman-Fountain (2018) who in a recent paper noted that creative methods are valuable not because they are “child friendly” or “more authentic,” but rather because they can be used to better understand how social relations and contexts mediate how young people re/present their identities.…”

Collaborative Filmmaking: A Participatory, Visual Research Method

“…The method shifts the voice from the researcher to the participant, in which participants are fully in control of the way their experiences and stories are told and shared. Numerous social science scholars have called for approaches that shift the voice from the researcher to the silenced or otherwise marginalized participants (Luttrell, 2010; McLaughlin & Coleman-Fountain, 2018).…”

Lived difference

“…In a study on disability, youth and the body, McLaughlin and I noted how the pursuit of 'ordinary' lives and futures entailed an ongoing negotiation, through modification or replacement, of 'conventional' everyday practices (McLaughlin and Coleman-Fountain, 2018a). This included envisioning adapted heteronormative practices and imagined adulthoods (McLaughlin and Coleman-Fountain, 2018b). Being compared and comparing oneself with standards of 'normal' embodiment influenced the meaning our young participants made of these practices as 'ordinary' but 'different'.…”