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Abstract
This article presents one portrayal of the role of photography as a language
of teacher inquiry. To inform teachers' use of photography, the first part of
the article presents a brief historical perspective of photography's role in
the study of human behavior in the fields of visual anthropology, visual
sociology, photojournalism, and media literacy. The second part of the article
includes three functional applications of photography in teacher inquiry:
representational, mediational, and epistemological. The three functions are
defined, and classroom examples and in-depth analyses of these functions are
provided to illustrate how photography promotes inquiry-based classroom
practices. These analyses include discussions of teachers' intentional focus
or mental lens, the importance of collective contexts of teacher study, the
metacognitive processes of teacher inquiry, and the appropriation of skills in
teacher inquiry. Each example demonstrates a progressively deeper analysis of
how photography can be used by educators to move the field of education toward
visual literacy. The examples are taken from preschool and early
elementary-school classrooms, although the applications may be extended to the
broader field of education.
Introduction
During the past two decades in the United States, teacher inquiry has become a
dominant focus of contemporary early childhood teacher education programs
(Hill, Stremmel, & Fu, 2004; Hubbard & Power, 2003; Burnaford, Fischer, &
Hobson, 2001; Moran, 2002; Fosnot, 1989). Teacher inquiry is characterized by
"both new and experienced teachers [who] pose problems, identify discrepancies
between theories and practices, challenge common routines, draw on the work of
others for generative frameworks, and attempt to make visible much of that
which is taken for granted about teaching and learning" (Cochran-Smith &
Lytle, 2001, p. 53). Teacher inquirers are classroom researchers who engage in
cyclic studies of learning in context, dependent upon the use of tools
(writing utensils, tape players, computers, and cameras) and records (audio
and videotapes, transcriptions, field notes, children's work samples, and
photographs) to help make teaching and learning visible. Through image-based
research, "a contemporary form of structured investigation" (Prosser, 1998, p.
3), teachers can learn to observe carefully, screening out nonseminal
information as they develop discernment, judgment, and decision-making skills.
Teachers who utilize photography as an integral part of their classroom
research are positioned to develop competencies for using this visual
language, as Whiting (1979) said, to represent, examine, and communicate
emerging understandings with others and with self (p. 8). In other words,
developing visual literacy through the language of photography is a part of
current initiatives on teaching inquiry.
The study of photographs (and video) of children's learning and classroom
experiences is fast becoming central to the work of many new and experienced
early childhood teachers (Goldman-Segall, 1998; Project Zero et al., 2003). In
the first part of this article, it is our goal to slow down and step back for
a moment to review selected illustrations from visual anthropology, visual
sociology, (1) photojournalism, and media literacy. In these fields where
photography has played an integral part in the study of human behavior over
time, we can learn how photography has contributed to these researchers' and
practitioners' thinking and practice and perhaps use their insights in our own
work. (2) In the second part of this paper, we describe the three interrelated
functions of photography that may be used as an analytical framework for how
photography contributes to the development of teacher inquiry. These are
representational, mediational, and epistemological functions. In this second
section, we include examples from preservice teachers and a master teacher
that illustrate how photography can serve as a language of teacher inquiry in
the field of early childhood teacher education.
Historical Perspective: Photography as a Visual Language and Research Method
From decades of research and practice in the fields of anthropology,
sociology, and photojournalism, theoretical, conceptual, and practical
understandings have emerged that can inform the use of photography as a
language of contemporary teacher inquiry. During the past 150 years (since the
invention of the photographic process), sociopolitical developments and
technical advances have expanded the use of photography from staged family
portraits to chronicles of wars and post-war humanism, and from studies of
distant and unfamiliar cultures to contemporary everyday life in cities and
rural communities (Bateson & Mead, 1942; Edwards, 1992; Whiting, 1979). In
these studies, photography has also been used to map geographic terrains and
archeological digs; chart societal life; and record, catalogue, and identify
developmental milestones and emotional behaviors (Collier, 1995). Moreover,
photographs have been used as artifacts that chronicle behaviors, places, and
experiences, making photography a part of ethnographic methods (Harper, 1998)
and "critical visual methodology" (Rose, 2001).
The notion that photography is a visual language (Kepes, 1944; Whiting, 1979)
and a research method (Collier & Collier, 1986; Prosser, 1998) is not new and
began to emerge during the mid- to late-20th century. However, what is new is
the use of photography as a seminal part of teacher documentation (3) in
teacher inquiry. It is an appropriate time, therefore, to take a brief look at
fields outside education and learn from them, because teacher documentation,
as inspired in particular by the Reggio Emilia approach to early education,
continues to dominate and exemplify the power and promise of making visible
the learning and researching of teachers (Project Zero et al., 2003; Project
Zero & Reggio Children, 2001).
Photography as a Visual Language
Photography is a visual language that shares some important characteristics
with verbal language--both communicative and structural. Typically, teachers
do not treat photography as a language. Rather, they often see a photograph as
a truth, an obvious fact, and therefore a photograph does not require
interpretation. Yet, we propose that teachers reconceptualize photographs as
more than simply classroom records. Instead, photographs hold the same
subjective, interpretive potential as words when teachers "read" photographs
from an interpretive view, where photographs are imbued with meaning.
Photography is a dynamic representational system that uses signs to produce
and communicate meaning--just as we do when we use words to speak. According
to the Swiss linguist Sausserre, a sign has two elements, that of signifier
and the signified--with signifier representing the form (in our case
photographs) and the signified representing the associated conceptual
understanding provoked by viewing a photograph--or its meaning (Hall, 1997, p.
31). For meaning to be constructed, these two elements must exist in relation.
Hall notes that it is the relationship between form and meaning that is "fixed
by our cultural and linguistic codes, which [in turn] sustains representation"
(p. 31).
From this perspective then, photographs are culturally situated and
consequently convey different meanings to different viewers based on personal
life experiences, knowledge, and perspectives. Photographs, like words, are
both encoded and decoded with meaning. The creator first encodes a photograph
with meaning or intention when she takes the photograph, and then "it is
further encoded when it is placed in a given setting or context" (Sturken &
Cartwright, 2003, p. 56). For example, as photographs are viewed, reviewers
decode or "read" the meaning. The "reading" of photographs therefore is
subjective and partial (Skinningsrud as cited in Edwards, 1992, p. 4; Winston,
1998) and naturally leads to a range of interpretations. Such a variety of
interpretations are a positive aspect of photography as a language of teacher
inquiry because it is through sharing diverse meanings that new understandings
are co-constructed.
The relationship between the signifier and the signified, the idea that
photographs are culturally situated, and the co-constructive process whereby
interpretive meanings are the result of subjective encoding and decoding are
illustrated in the following example of a group of early childhood teacher
researchers who collectively explored visual literacy. In a recent research
project, the Reggio-Lugano Research Collaborative (RLRC) used photographs as a
research tool to discover the capacity of visual images to uncover, provoke,
and communicate beliefs and practices related to teaching and learning (Fu,
Goldhaber, Tegano, & Stremmel, 2000). This multi-member collaborative was
composed of teacher educators and teacher practitioners who spent nearly two
years systematically reflecting on selected photographs of each participant's
early childhood program in order to answer the question: "How does an
interpretative community find meaning in the visual images selected to
represent our adaptations of the Reggio Emilia approach?" In the analyses of
the data collected in this project, one finding included the participants'
discussions and questions concerning the context of the photographs: Whose
story was being told--the subject's story, the photographer's story, the
viewer's story, or all three? The following questions emerged:
* If it is the photographer's story, then is anyone who views the slides
without knowing the photographer's intent at risk for an inauthentic
interpretation of meaning?
* Because we are a group of intersubjective viewers (or striving to become
such a group), to what degree can we understand the authentic meaning of the
image for the children or adults in the picture?
* Are we ever capable of being authentic in our interpretation? Does it
matter?
* To whom does meaning belong? Can we lose what is not ours?
These questions illustrate how the signifier (the photographs) and the
signified (the meaning) and how encoding (the photographer's intended story,
in context) and decoding (the viewer's subjective interpretation, also in a
subjective context) are a natural part of the language of photography for
teacher researchers. For these researchers, the goal was not necessarily to
find answers to these questions. Rather, participants focused on engaging in
the discourse that provoked them to reflect on the meaning of context, its
role in "reading" photographs, and to co-construct a deeper understanding of
the positive, rich potential of shared subjective interpretations. The
questions listed above were the result of a joint process of finding meaning
in photographs and a shared intersubjective understanding of that process.
When photographs are used to stimulate discourse, uncover multiple
interpretive perspectives, and evoke questions, then teachers are moved to
reexamine and reconstruct pedagogical approaches.
Effective verbal communication includes meaning (semantics), word order
(syntax), and interpretation based on context (pragmatics). In other words,
the order of our verbalizations contributes to intended as well as understood
meaning. Although photography represents meaning, it lacks the syntactical
structure of spoken language. Without a similar, embedded "order" within
photography, it is up to the photographer to create it. The lack of "explicit
relational indicators" (Messaris, 1998, p. 75) in this visual language means
that the inquiring teacher must intentionally position photographs (often
linked to textual information) to convey a particular message. From this
perspective, there is a "double process of construction" (Hamilton, 1997, p.
85) that includes both the "choosing and framing" of a photograph at a
particular moment in time and the selection of photographs "from their
original ordering and narrative contexts, to be placed alongside textual
information and reports in publication" (p. 86). To an extent, some
photographs have an implied order (e.g., a chronology of a classroom event, a
sequence of learning), especially when a teacher takes a photograph. In this
case, she knows what preceded and what followed the click of the shutter.
Later, when the same teacher studies the photograph (or a set of photographs),
the order (syntax) is juxtaposed against her subjective meaning (semantics)
and contextual interpretations (pragmatics). In other words, the syntax,
semantics, and pragmatics are not only located in the photograph but, more so,
in the mind of the teacher. This does not mean that a photograph cannot stand
alone, but it does mean that a single snapshot may not be adequate to portray
the complex processes of teaching and learning that occur everyday in
children's classrooms.
This point is illustrated by Lawrence-Lightfoot's (1999) description of
photographer Dawoud Bey's (4) experience of creating photographic meaning,
meaning that is grounded in his curiosity and his need to "go deeper" and
discover more (p. 119). As a researcher, Lawrence-Lightfoot describes Bey's
process of selecting and grouping photographic images to answer his own
artistic inquiry into how to capture what Bey called a "more complex
representation of human experience" (p. 136). Lawrence-Lightfoot says, "he
soon discovered that the images looked more interesting when he put them
together, that with multiple pieces he was able to evoke the 'complex
relationship of time and psyche'" (p. 136). One hallmark of Bey's artistry
then is the "ordering" that permits the relationship among the photographs to
emerge and that allows his photography to convey a particular message. The
language of photography then is structural, communicative, and also
generative.
Just as speakers search for the right word, teachers who use photography as a
language of inquiry search for the right angle or how closely the camera comes
to the children or scene being photographed in order to convey a particular
message, for example. The camera angle and close shots, among others, have
been labeled by media literacy expert Meyrowitz (1986) as "para-proxemics" (5)
when they are used "as [a] means of affecting the viewer's emotions or
attitudes" (Messaris, 1998, p. 74). Para-proxemic devices and related
decisions for how to photograph a classroom scene, experience, or behavior are
part of the teacher's complex construction of meaning, because they determine
what she may intend to elicit in the viewer. These decisions, like the
ordering or positioning of photographs, are deliberate acts of selectivity.
In the field of photojournalism, there are strategies for selecting and
organizing photographs to create "photo-stories" (Whiting, 1979, p. 34).
Photography has many utilities, including the conveyance of (1) emphasis, (2)
differentness, (3) motion or action, (4) the affordance of editing out
nonseminal information, and (5) the portrayal of time. When teachers
understand and skillfully use these utilities, they maximize the communicative
and generative qualities of photography as a language of teacher inquiry.
First, particular emphases are portrayed through the positioning of
photographs, such as placing the first and last pictures in a series to
connote "special prominence," and/or placing a picture "off balance" to
attract attention to that one picture (Whiting, 1979, p. 84). Additionally,
placing a vertically positioned photograph within (or next to) a grouping of
horizontally positioned photographs affects how one reads the photographic
montage (by giving special import to a single photograph over others). Second,
photographs afford "differentness" such as "close ups," "spotlight effects,"
and "startling depth" (p. 84) that illuminate details and encode particular
meaning. Third, photography is fluid because it has the potential to reveal
the dynamic within the static (for example, a photograph that shows the
exuberance of children or a series of photographs from which a story--a plot,
a developing theme--can be communicated). In photography, it is possible to
capture process through the control of motion. Control of motion may be
accomplished through freezing action and the deliberate selection of a series
of photographs so that "their final use will have motion between pictures, and
a pattern" (p. 83).
Fourth, the decisions surrounding the selection of a grouping of photographs
involves screening out nonseminal information and creating breakpoints within
the photographs. Take the example of a teacher who wants to make visible the
relationship between two play scenarios, one in the morning and one in the
afternoon. The breakpoints she creates across her series of photographs result
from her removal of extraneous information that occurred beside and around the
photographic scenes. In this way, she communicates her intended story of the
relationship between the two play scenarios. Fifth, such breakpoints (the
space between the photographs) enable her to manage the complex nature of time
(across 10 minutes, 2 hours, or 1 day) that she wanted to represent in
photographs. Moreover, breakpoints also permit the "reader" (the viewer) time
to sit with the meaning(s) in both communicative (I understand) and generative
(I have new understandings) ways. Thus, for teachers, photography is powerful
in its ability to portray complex meanings and practical in the ease of
manipulation of photographs as a language of inquiry.
The value of photography in teacher inquiry is to make visible our questions,
our in-depth study of children's learning, and our challenge to illuminate and
communicate discrepancies between theory and practice. It is through
continuous cycles of systematically creating, studying, and arranging
photographs and making public and visible intended and shared meanings that
teachers engage in classroom research.
Photography as a Research Method
Early in the 20th century, the use of photography as a research method by
anthropologists was marginalized because it lacked depth, descriptive, and
explanatory value (Edwards, 1992). Then, in the 1940s, Gregory Bateson and
Margaret Mead, following 10 years of studying and writing about Balinese
culture, began to integrate photography as part of an in-depth process of
observation. Bateson and Mead's (1942) visual ethnography Balinese Character:
A Photographic Analysis was created through a method of sorting, categorizing,
and cataloguing thousands of photographs in an attempt "to present several
perspectives on a single subject, or in sequences which showed how a social
event evolved through time" (Harper, 1998, p. 26). These anthropologists
repositioned and coupled photographs with two types of text (interpretative
essays and annotated details). By juxtaposing images alongside detailed,
written descriptions and analyses, Bateson and Mead used theory and knowledge
of the field of anthropology to interpret, contextualize, and validate their
photographic data. This method made "photography a respected tool in
anthropological research" (de Brigard, 1995, p. 26).
It was this intentional linking of photographs to text (informed by key
theoretical, conceptual, and contextual constructs) that marked an important
shift in elevating the significance of photographs from mere truth-value (6)
representations toward thoughtful representations with valuable information,
albeit data influenced by the subjectivities of the researchers. Even after
the publication of this influential visual ethnography, photography continued
to remain secondary in importance to the written word and to film in the field
of anthropology until recently, when all forms of visual representations from
film and photography to visual forms produced by the subjects of study (e.g.,
weavings, pottery, and art) are now highly valued and studied as "visible
cultural forms, regardless of who produced them or why" (Banks, 1998, p. 11).
The inclusion of cultural artifacts along with photography has enabled
anthropologists and more recently sociologists (Harper, 1998) to further
portray the complexity of behaviors in context. Through the creation of thick
descriptions (Geertz, 1973) or the layering of interpretations (Goldman-Segall,
1998, p. 32), photography has emerged as an integral part of the study of
signs and symbols that constitute research data and advances our understanding
of events, behaviors, and scenes in context. (7) For example, when does a
specific gesture mean something, or in what ways do particular classroom
routines that emerge within a group of children have meaning in that space?
The creation of a thick description then is an attempt by the anthropologist,
sociologist, or teacher to move beyond surface-level descriptions toward
interpretations, informed by more than one way of seeing or illuminating a
phenomenon. This can be accomplished through the creation of a series of
photographs and/or the coupling of photographs with artifacts, transcriptions,
and explanatory text to reveal an in-depth, full-bodied, and contextualized
interpretation.
Functional Application: Three Interrelated Functions of Photography in Teacher
Inquiry
Photography, as one form of teacher documentation, functions in at least three
primary ways: (1) representational, (2) mediational, and (3) epistemological.
These three functions often complement one another through the mechanical
(taking photographs), the metacognitive (studying photographs), and the
communicative (systematically using photographs) aspects of photography as a
language of teacher inquiry. These functions act in concert with one
another--sometimes at the same time and sometimes across time. They are not
intended to be exhaustive or exclusive, rather they constitute an interpretive
framework that has the potential for assisting teachers in navigating
reflective processes and communicating with self and others.
In this part of the paper, the representational, mediational, and
epistemological functions are defined and classroom examples (from preschool
and early elementary) are given to illustrate each. Although this discussion
is separated by function, the reader should keep in mind that taken together
these three form a larger, broader conceptualization of photography as a
language of teacher inquiry. It is through this conceptualization and the
ability to deconstruct (understand the parts) and reconstruct this framework
(use in dynamic, transactional, personal ways) that photography becomes a
language, a communicative tool for making visible teacher inquiry. Thus, these
three functions have value for classroom teachers as they (1) respond to the
problem of moving away from photographs as discrete, prescriptive, factual
records that limit classroom documentation and (2) meet the challenge of
moving toward a communicative, transformative, and generative process of
systematic and intentional study.
Representational
The representational function of photography is about creating meaning--to
depict and to symbolize--through the use of photographic language. Hall (1997)
writes, "representation connects meaning and language to culture" (p. 15);
that is to say that representation (to depict or to symbolize) connects the
interpretation (meaning) and the photograph (language) to the context
(culture). For instance, when a teacher uses the representational function of
photography to depict or symbolize children's block constructions, she
connects her photograph of block constructions and her own interpretation
(that may be based on her intention to observe or on the meaning she
associates with the block constructions) to her particular classroom, on a
particular day, built by particular children (context).
Photographs are not passive artifacts but instead represent active forms of
meaning with layers of potential interpretations. Sturken and Cartwright
(2003) remind us that there are at least two elements that contribute to the
construction of meaning other than the creator of the photograph and the
photograph itself: "(1) how viewers interpret or experience the image and (2)
the context in which an image is seen" (p. 45). From the time a teacher first
takes a photograph, it has meaning. Photographs are artifacts that "suggest
meaning through the way in which they are structured" (Edwards, 1992, p. 8)
such as the choices made to select what and how to photograph and,
concomitantly, what was not selected to photograph. When teachers share
photographs with others, the original meaning may not always remain with the
photograph. Instead, it can be transformed or embedded in layers of others'
interpretations whose views are influenced by their diverse experiences,
knowledge, and the context in which they are viewing the photographs. Edwards
(1992) describes the process of building upon layers of interpretation as
giving "meaning" for "its original audience and for subsequent generations of
interpreters" (p. 12). It is in the actions of taking, using, and interpreting
photographs (with self and others) that the range of meaning is expanded, new
questions considered and posed, and diverse representations provoked.
There exists, perhaps, a general assumption that multiple perspectives are
positive; however, this is not necessarily true. Recall the earlier example of
the Reggio-Lugano Research Collaborative, in which teachers and teacher
educators met over a two-year period to engage in systematic analyses of
photographs. During early exchanges, the members of the group were directed to
review and respond to photographs submitted by individual members. In these
first exchanges, there were occasions when different viewpoints were perceived
as evaluative and even negative by those whose particular photographs were
being analyzed. This negative perception emerged from the dissonance between
what the photographer intended to represent and the subjective analyses of
others. Some members of the group were uneasy about others' perspectives being
associated with their pictures, because these multiple perspectives did not
match what the photographer meant to represent. In this scenario, multiple
perspectives were initially problematic but ultimately (because the group
stayed in relation and were committed to the task) became a powerful tool for
generating and communicating new ways of knowing. Thus, when teachers
recognize that photographs have the potential to represent different
perspectives--even generate dissonance--then they reposition themselves to
reconstruct their thinking. This position holds the greatest promise for
transforming ways teachers use the representational function of photography.
Two examples of the representational function are included here. The first is
from a junior-level preservice teacher (Elaine (8)) as she begins her journey
toward visual literacy at the simple level of matching her pictures to her
pre-stated intent about what she wanted to observe in a toddler classroom. In
this class assignment, she represented, through text, photographs, and a work
sample, two children's ability to look at a bird and to draw the bird (Figs.
1-3). Example 2 demonstrates the representational function at a more complex
level when photographs of a master teacher are shared and discussed with a
novice teacher.
[FIGURES 1-3 OMITTED]
Example 1. Elaine wrote her pre-stated intent to observe and photograph:
The intention of my observation is to observe children in an environment where they are participating in a curricular domain (bird lesson), to listen to the children's conversation that shows cooperation (social knowledge), to watch the children work in a cooperative learning activity, and to observe children representing their knowledge.... Elaine's photographs were directed by her intent to observe. Elaine's field notes chronicled the children's process: * The children observed Bill-ee the bird and then leaned closer to look and touch the feathers. * At my prompt to examine the bird's claw, Jason called out, "There are only three." * I asked the children to draw the bird, and each chose a body part to draw. * Jason took three of his fingers and placed them onto the paper and traced only three fingers. Then he called out, "This is the bird's claw." * Jason and David worked together, looking at the bird, then looking down at their papers to draw, then looking at each other's papers. When one would draw something, the other asked what it was and then would point to the bird to show what he was drawing. Elaine's wrote an analysis of how her photographs represented her intent: My images do match my intent. I wanted to observe children working together on an activity and to observe children representing their knowledge. The children were cooperative with one another and were helpful to each other throughout the process. They were able to represent their knowledge to their friends, teachers, and parents. Jason and David helped each other understand what part of the bird they were drawing by pointing to the bird when one [child] would ask [questions about the other child's drawings].... The images matched my intent because I knew what I wanted to observe.... I wanted to see children working together ... to look at children's representation of knowledge, so I picked a lesson [in which] I knew the children would have to represent their knowledge that was visible.
Example 2. In this example, Angie, a master teacher, and Lisa, a novice
teacher, look at photographs taken by Angie of 3-year-old children in her
classroom drawing and painting a mural of paperwhite flowers (Figs. 4-7).
Lisa's children are ready to begin a similar project, and she has asked Angie
to meet with her to show her photographs and talk about how Angie helps
children move from a drawing toward a painting phase. As Angie scrolls through
her photographs on her laptop computer, a photograph of Michael appears.
[FIGURES 4-7 OMITTED]
Angie: Children first trace the shadows [of the flowers] with pencil and then
drew over the pencil lines with fine tip markers like Michael is doing here
(Fig. 4).
Lisa: But he is going off the lines!
Angie: That's okay because going off the lines is not the most important thing
to me. See, in these other photographs (Figures 5-6), children have to
negotiate working alongside and on top of other children's earlier work.
So, what I value is not so much the final product of the mural but more about
how these children learn to work closely together and seek one another out for
help as they participate on a joint, shared project. I am mostly interested in
how they learn to work together, not whether the youngest in the group stays
on a line.
Lisa: I see. Okay, so staying on the line is not so important because he
[Michael] is just 3 years old.
Angie: Yes, exactly. It is not important to me that he stay on the line but
that he feels a part of the whole project ... and that he develops an ability
to stay focused on a task.
As Angie recalls this exchange with Lisa, she thinks about both her original
intent as well as the meaning Lisa associated with the photographs. Lisa's
questions and comments cause Angie to reconsider and work to state clearly
what was most important to her when very young children joined with older
children in a shared, and sometimes demanding, project. Angie notes,
Now, I recognize that there is a wide range of interpretations (when I share my photographs with others), and I now think about Lisa's understanding as well as my own. For me, the photographs represent children's potentials and relationships, not so much a narrow skill such as staying on a line. In fact, as we talked, Lisa told me that she had thought I had pre-drawn the lines for the children and then the children were simply tracing over them. Sharing my photographs gave me a chance to clarify that, no [I had not done the work for the children], the children had done all the work and to make a point that very young children are capable of not only drawing details but negotiating roles and responsibilities for completing a large-scale representation.
In this final photograph (Fig. 7), children stop and take a break from
preparing to paint a paperwhite mural, to review photographs from one of their
earlier murals.
Angie describes her interaction with Lisa:
I explained what the moment represented for me to Lisa. Lisa just thought that the children were looking at the photographs out of general interest. But the children were actually looking at the photographs to recall what they did earlier to help them in their current work [with the paperwhite drawing]. Lisa was not there and did not understand the importance to me of the children using photographs as referents to guide their next steps in the process of a new painting.
Mediational
The mediational function of photography serves to link thought to action. It
is situated in the act of taking a photograph. The act of bringing the camera
to the eye links what is in the mind to what is happening outside, such that
the camera is a tool that connects what one aims to record to what is actually
recorded in a photograph. Moreover, the camera also provides a lens to focus
the teacher's attention--the lens mediates between the mind's eye of the
teacher and the essence of the teacher's intention. For instance, when a
teacher sees something that he wants to record, he sets an intention.
Consequently, the camera becomes a "mind-guided" (Whiting, 1979, p. 28) tool
that mediates between (1) his intention and his action of taking a photograph
and (2) his focus. In the field of photojournalism, the gestalt of this
mind-set is referred to as "picture-thinking"--"the photographer, then, first
learns to see with his camera and think with his eyes" (p. 34).
During this process, there are two related and concurrent actions underway.
The first is the nonvisible yet deliberate decision to act. This action is
informed by what is sometimes called the photographer's "gaze" (Cruickshank &
Mason, 2003, p. 7; Sturken & Cartwright, 2003, pp. 76-77) or intent, such as
his orientation to the study of children's learning, his interest, or his
mental lens. We each have a gaze--shaped by biases, interests, and
perspectives--that influences what we most want to photograph as well as what
we have in mind to project to viewers of the photograph. Second, this mental
orientation directs the mechanical response of taking a photograph. The
physical act of holding and aiming a camera on one spot rather than on
another, for example, links the head and eye to a particular place or an
action in the classroom followed by yet another decision to take one, three,
or a even a series of shots.
In this first example (Figs. 8-11), Angie is interested in learning how one
child teaches a second child to trace the projected shadow of a leaf in
preparation to paint it. The teacher's gaze or intent is clear in her mind.
Angie directs the camera lens on the faces and hands of the children while
including enough context (the projected shadow of the leaf) to situate the
image.
[FIGURES 8-11 OMITTED]
The deliberateness with which she takes this series of photographs is an
example of how the camera acts as her tool, the mediator, between her desire
to record this classroom interaction such that she may study it later, and her
focused attention in the moment. Angie later studies the photographs and
revisits her understanding of how 3-year-old children appropriated skills in
teaching their peers to first trace (with their fingers) the lines that they
would later paint with a paint brush. In doing so, Angie has made visible the
capacity and the potential of young children to "teach" their peers the skills
and processes of symbolic representation for her own and the children's
metacognitive analyses, as well as to communicate this capacity and potential
to parents and other teachers.
For example, a senior-level preservice teacher reflected on her earlier
coursework and experiences in using the camera to develop focused classroom
observational skills. She told her classmates, "I don't just take [random]
pictures. I wait until I see the moment of learning that I have been waiting
for. I plan a lesson and when I document it, I know what learning I'm trying
to see with the camera." This student describes her ability to anticipate the
moment of learning on which she intends to focus. Her description reveals that
she may be better "prepared to engage in subsequent similar activities" (Rogoff,
1995, p. 150), even without a camera to always mediate her focus. In this
example, the student is evidencing a move away from her dependence on the
camera and is beginning to appropriate (9) both the tool (the camera) and the
process of discernment about where to focus her attention.
The mediational function of photography is maximized when teachers participate
in collective contexts of study. When groups of teachers critique photographs,
diverse perspectives are often voiced as they talk out loud and think about
the intention of the photographer in relation to his or her own
meaning-making. The mediators are both the photographs and the conversation.
In these contexts, teachers search for congruency among what is in their
heads, what is being co-constructed with others, and what is represented and
made visible by the teacher-photographer. In this second example of the
mediational function, we begin with an excerpt from a written reflection by
senior-level preservice teaching partners Lynn and Kaitlin:
Our intent to observe was focused around the social construction of knowledge. As we reviewed and discussed our photographs, we collaborated about the different types of learning that were displayed through our documentation. Lynn noticed [that] many of the pictures showed cooperative learning between the children. Kaitlin shared her realization that the expressions on the children's faces showed their high level of engagement. As she looked through the photos, Lynn realized that Kaitlin was right; all of the children were actively participating in the game. This shared understanding helped us hypothesize that this type of activity resulted in increased engagement as well as cooperative learning.... By collaborating as teaching partners, we strived to connect with each other and understand our different viewpoints.... This resulted in a "meeting of the minds" or intersubjectivity.
[FIGURES 12-14 OMITTED]
Vision (along with speech) has the distinction of being the most important
means by which we apprehend reality (Hayakawa, 1944, p. 10), or in this case,
realities, such that for each photograph there is not a single reality. The
language of photography is contextual, and therefore the "view" is partial.
The meaning of photographs is filtered through the particular beliefs, values,
and experiences of the viewer, resulting in a number of interpretations. The
objective is not to hold onto our old ways of knowing, simply agreeing with
the perceptions of others, including that of the creator of the photograph.
Rather, "to perceive a visual image implies the beholder's participation in a
process of [mental] organization. The experience of an image is thus a
creative act of integration" (Kepes, 1944, p. 13). To experience an image with
others means that we will likely change our minds about what we originally saw
in a photograph and consequently return to our own classrooms with new mental
lenses that will in turn direct and focus the very lenses located in our
cameras.
Thus, once taken, photographs are used by teachers not only to make children's
learning visible but also to inquire about their own gaze. This mediational
function is a metacognitive process because teachers have access to records
created by them that in turn help them think about their own thinking. In this
case, photographs provoke questions and observations such as, "How does one
child teach another the strategy of first tracing a shadowed line in
preparation to later draw and then paint it?" or "What are the different types
of learning that were displayed in our images?" or "How might I do a better
job framing my photographs to record children's hand-use, their facial
expressions, or nuances of their contemplative glances?" The answers to these
questions mediate or guide teachers' inquiry. Here, the aim is to use the
language of photography reflexively to discern what matters to each of us in
our study of children's learning, what we are learning, and how we can more
deliberately use photography to communicate our interests, our questions, and
our evolving understandings with self and others.
Epistemological
The epistemological function of photography is the use of photographs as a
source of new knowledge. Through individual and collective study, reflection,
and analyses of photographs, teachers access the epistemic potential innate to
using photography as part of the process of teaching. This epistemological
process is propelled through teachers' participation in creating and using
photographs. As such, teachers who use photography as a language of inquiry
have a chance to continually construct new understandings about children's
learning and to better understand what they want to know and "how they come to
know it." For example, photographs freeze-frame moments in time so that
teachers can later study them more closely, ponder their original intentions,
and construct new knowledge as they return again and again to challenge old
ways of knowing.
In this first of two examples, the photographs and reflective writings of a
senior-level preservice teacher dyad demonstrate these teachers'
epistemological understandings (Figs. 15-19).
We believe that our images clearly evidence both the teaching and learning that occurred during this activity. (10) We were purposeful in the manner in which we presented the materials to the children in order to encourage autonomy in their selection of materials. Our images reveal many of the children moving immediately to solve the problem without comprehending the question that was being asked.... The images we have selected are connected to one another because they portray one child's thought process as he worked toward a solution. [The solution is to figure out how many people or animals lived in Grandpa's house to equal 12 feet and 1 tail.] The images illustrate: the presentation of the problem; the child's initial drawing; his second more logical representation; the use of Unifix cubes to prove the solution in the drawing was correct; and the culmination of the lesson in which each child's solution was presented and discussed. As a teaching team, we differ in what we might adapt if we were going to teach this lesson again in the future. One of us feels that we might allow more time to explore other solutions that were not generated by the group. The other would prefer to introduce additional materials to the children with which to solve the problem such as figurines of people and animals. This adaptation might assist the children who were having problems solving the problem in more abstract ways.
[FIGURES 15-19 OMITTED]
Through the language of photography, a disposition of inquiry is developed--to
observe, to see and see again with discernment, and to construct meaning.
These epistemic processes are initially and intermittently dependent upon the
aid of tools (cameras, lenses) and signs (photographs). Yet the language of
photography does not remain solely on the external plane. Instead, over time,
it is likewise appropriated and used mentally on one's personal or internal
plane. From this perspective, the construction of meaning develops both in the
head of the teacher as well as in her hands; that is, in the manipulation of
the camera and in the adjustment of her lens as well as in her rationale for
what to record. At these times, the teacher's conceptual constructs developed
from so many photographs taken, so many conversations shared, and so many new
understandings inform her decisions and beliefs about what is important to
photograph to her. She is not only photographing for the moment but also for
broader purposes: her particular interests, her need to know more, her
developing focus of inquiry. And these purposes are simultaneously re-informed
by an individual teacher's conceptual constructs.
In this second and final example of the epistemological function, we once
again consider a master teacher's use of photography as she sets her sights on
a question about children's understanding of measurement for which she does
not have a ready answer. It is spring, and outside the multi-age preschool
classroom, Angie and the children have planted a flower garden. On this day,
six children go out together to explore the flowers. Angie's goal was to
determine what the children were most curious about so that she could plan
relevant follow-up activities to help them explore their questions and
observations. She documented their interests not only by what they said but
"how long they stayed focused and how they explored an aspect of a flower and
how they oriented their bodies to the plants" (Figs. 20-30).
[FIGURES 20-30 OMITTED]
Angie recalls the day,
At first, I took many photographs to study their pure explorations. I then began to focus on their questions, and I audiotaped their conversations. I wondered what they wanted to know and how to help them investigate it through their experiences and later through their study of photographs of their experiences. I listened for their questions.
That morning, among the observations posed by the children, Susan and Danielle
noted, "it's too little," meaning that they could not measure the height of
the tall lilies with their 12-inch ruler. It was this problem, first posed by
Susan and later explored by Danielle, that most caught Angie's attention.
Angie wanted to know, "What does Danielle understand about measuring?" and "Do
I give her a longer measuring tool or, instead, wait and encourage her to
continue to figure out her own solutions to the problem?"
Teacher: What do you mean it is too little?
Danielle: Because the flower's tall.
Teacher: How do you think we can measure the flower?
Danielle: I'll do it with my hand.
Teacher: How are you going to use the ruler to measure?
Danielle: Here, I'll show you. It's 20: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10 buds.
I'll make my hand go up.
Teacher: Oh, I see you are connecting your hand to the ruler for the rest of
the flower's height. What can we connect? Your hand doesn't have numbers, so
how will we measure?
Danielle: I'll count. (counting on the ruler): 1, 2, ... 12 (to end of ruler,
then on arm) ... 24.
Teacher: How can we tell how long your arm is?
Danielle: My mommy said I can't draw on my arm.
Teacher: Ok, how can we know how long your arm is?
Angie reflects on her process:
I studied the photographs and transcriptions over and over. I was confused. At first, I didn't know what Danielle meant about how she was using her arm to help her measure. I kept photographing her as she talked to me about how she would extend the ruler with her arm to make a long enough tool to measure the lilies.
Angie was not only photographing for the moment but also for broader purposes.
In the moment, Angie used the photographs to help Danielle revisit her
strategies of inquiry for determining how to measure a tall flower with a
ruler that was shorter than the flower. On a broader level, Angie further
developed her own focus of inquiry through her study and guidance of
Danielle's cycle of inquiry.
Angie continues:
As Danielle talked to me, she used two words (much and old) that aren't usually used to describe height. I kept asking her [clarifying] questions because while I believed she understood what she meant, I was still confused. Danielle: Let's count again. When the flower comes to my hand, then we'll count the numbers: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12 (begins using hand and arm as measuring device when ruler runs out), 13, 14, 15, 16. It's 16 much. Teacher: What is much? Danielle: Much means 16. Teacher: But what is much? Danielle: Much means 20: 20 years old. Teacher: Are we talking about how tall or how old? Danielle: It is just this tall, okay? Let's measure the tall one. I hope it goes up to my arm up here (pointing to the edge of her shoulder again). I have to go down for 1 ... and up to 16. That's 16 much old.
Angie goes on to say:
Later, I read over the transcriptions and looked again and again at the photographs, ordering and re-ordering them, arranging them alongside her transcribed words. I began to understand that she used the words "old" and "much" interchangeably to describe units of length. What I mean is that when Danielle first used the words old and much, she understood her meaning but I didn't, until I studied my photographs and her words with her.
The next day, Angie invited Danielle to revisit the series of photographs in
order to help Angie clarify exactly how Danielle conceptualized extending the
ruler (using her arm) to measure the lily. In these photographs, Angie
rechecks her interpretation of Danielle's thinking about measurement (Figs.
30-32). As they looked at the photographs together, Angie read Danielle's
words to her. Danielle was able to restate her thinking to Angie and confirm
Angie's original hypothesis. Angie says, "I learned that she had a far more
sophisticated understanding of measurement than I knew, and I used this to
plan other measuring activities for her."
[FIGURES 31-32 OMITTED]
From here, Angie was able to create subsequent classroom tasks using
manipulatives to continue to test Danielle's thinking strategy in another
context (Fig. 33-35).
[FIGURES 33-35 OMITTED]
Through the coupling of transcriptions with photographs and by sharing these
with Danielle, Angie decoded the information and constructed new
understandings about Danielle's problem solving. Concurrently, Angie
appropriated this strategy (studying photographs with text and sharing it with
others) to refine and expand her repertoire of inquiry practices--even as she
engaged in the metacognitive process of recognizing what she wanted to know
and how she came to know it. That is, there comes a time when focusing the
camera lens, manipulating photographs, and reading transcriptions become a
mental gestalt of actions that occur in the head of the teacher, with
increasingly less reliance on the actual tools or actions themselves.
Thus, the epistemological function of photography contributes to teachers'
knowledge about and processes of learning through inquiry. Photography makes
visible the metacognitive processes of teaching and learning. The acts of
focusing attention to capture images of classroom moments, manipulating
photographs, studying transcripts, and developing interpretive meanings and
text are processes that encourage the development of metacognition in
teachers. These processes are made visible through the act of documentation
and are appropriated by teachers when inquiry becomes a habit of mind, even
without the presence and manipulation of tools and documents.
Concluding Remarks
Photography as a language of inquiry is therefore generative and
communicative--generative because through photography teachers construct new
understandings and are more prepared to engage in subsequent similar
activities and communicative because photography conveys and provokes meaning.
Thus, photography can be a powerful research tool for educating students and
teachers in the construction and co-construction of knowledge about the
processes of teaching and learning; and as well, photography is one way to
make visible these same processes.
In this article, we attempt to situate photography in teacher education within
the broader frameworks of visual anthropology, visual sociology,
photojournalism, and media literacy. For educators in the digital age,
photography is an effective and rich resource that expands both the tools
(writing utensils, computers, tape recorders) and the records (field notes,
work samples, transcriptions) that we use in our classrooms to include cameras
and photographs. We present descriptions and examples of three functional
applications of photography in classroom investigations. The representational,
mediational, and epistemological functions of photography are useful in
explaining how teachers use photography as a language of teacher inquiry. The
use of photography as a functional language of inquiry in education is
portrayed as a means for moving the field of education toward visual literacy.
Finally, early childhood education is a field in which visual documentation
techniques are emerging, and as such, the functional categories of photography
presented here are one means to give substance and clarity to our burgeoning
understanding of praxis in a visually literate world. In this article, we
chose specific examples from preschools and early elementary schools to
illustrate each of these functions. Although the examples are taken from early
childhood classrooms, we believe that the information presented here has
application to the broader field of education, precisely because of its
inherent adaptability to cultural contexts. As educators learn to use
photography to construct new understandings and to convey meaning in classroom
contexts, it is our hope that this article provides one means by which they
may begin to articulate their use of photography as both a generative and a
communicative language of teacher inquiry.
Acknowledgment
The authors wish to acknowledge the valuable contribution of documentation by
master teacher-photographer Angelia Beth Jenkins, B.S. Angie is a teacher and
curriculum coordinator in a private preschool in Georgia. She recently
presented her work at the National Association for the Education of Young
Children 2004 annual conference in Anaheim, California.
Notes
(1.) Visual anthropology and visual sociology are more recent, secondary
variations of the larger fields.
(2.) While documentary film, more than photography, has dominated the
above-mentioned fields (Hall, 1997; Sturken & Cartwright, 2003), it is beyond
the scope of this article to discuss both film and photography. Therefore, the
focus of this article is on the use of still photography in teacher inquiry.
(3.) Documentation is the purposeful gathering, systematic organization, and
use of diverse symbolic representations that depict multiple perspectives of
children and teachers' constructions of knowledge (Tegano & Moran, 2005). "It
is ... an instrument of exchange and sharing. These acts of recording, of
documenting, are not passive. They continually propel the educator to a fuller
understanding of what happens in the learning process" (Tarini, 1993).
(4.) Information about Bey may be found on this Web site: http://www.dia.org/dawoud_bey_site/introduction.html.
(5.) Para-proxemics refers to the "framing variable," that is the "choice of
close-ups, medium shots or long shots" used to frame the portrayed scene that
influences the viewers' perception and response to the image (Meyrowitz, 1986,
p. 256).
(6.) This notion infers that a documentary photograph is a "simple record ...
its factual or objective basis seems at first glance quite unexceptional ... a
way of presenting 'facts' about its subject in a purely informational way"
(Hamilton, 1997, p. 81).
(7.) There is an argument among some contemporary researchers in the fields of
visual anthropology and visual sociology, in particular, that the use of
photographs as a central form of data is problematic (Harper, 1998). Some of
the arguments reviewed by Prosser (1998) include (1) photographs are too
complex and ambiguous, (2) the act of taking photographs "alters the objective
content and subjective meaning of the image ..." (p. 98), and (3) the social
construction and mediational nature central to creating and "reading"
photographs distorts their meaning and diminishes their usefulness as data. If
the goal of teacher inquiry is to pose hypotheses and generate/analyze data,
then these arguments may also hold true for teachers engaged in classroom
research. However, teacher inquiry does not typically aim to prove or disprove
a theory or to ensure that there is only one truth represented in a
photograph. Rather, inquiry-oriented practice is a cyclical process from which
teachers pose problems, questions, reflections, and challenge prior ways of
thinking and practicing, as they represent and re-represent the extraordinary
in the ordinary learning lives of teachers and children.
(8.) All participants' names have been replaced with pseudonyms.
(9.) Participatory appropriation is a "process by which individuals transform
their understanding of and responsibility for activities through their own
participation...." As a result, they are then better prepared to engage in
similar types of activities in the future (Rogoff, 1995, p. 150).
(10.) Grandpa said that he grew up in a house where there were 12 feet and 1
tail. Who could have lived with Grandpa? This activity was taken from Young
Children Reinvent Arithmetic: Implications of Piaget's Theory by Constance
Kamii (2000).
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Dr. Mary Jane Moran is an assistant professor of early childhood education at
the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, in the Department of Child and Family
Studies. She teaches undergraduate and graduate courses on early childhood
education, action research, and early learning environments and curriculum.
Her research interests include the study and development of teachers engaged
in collaborative action research, the use of documentation as a tool for
developing critical thinking among teachers, and the role of photography and
film as languages of teacher inquiry. She and Dr. Deborah W. Tegano have
developed Web-based approaches for helping preservice teachers develop
critical thinking through visual literacy.
Mary Jane Moran, Ph.D.
The University of Tennessee
Department of Child and Family Studies
1215 West Cumberland Avenue, Room 115
Knoxville, TN 37996-1912
Telephone: 865-974-4538
Email: mjmoran@utk.edu
Dr. Deborah W. Tegano is an associate professor of early childhood education
at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, in the Department of Child and
Family Studies. She teaches undergraduate and graduate courses on early
childhood education, action research, and children's play. Her research
interests include inquiry-based curriculum development, teachers' roles in
promoting problem solving through play, and the role of photography and film
as languages of teacher inquiry. She and Dr. Mary Jane Moran have developed
Web-based approaches for helping preservice teachers develop critical thinking
through visual literacy.
Deborah W. Tegano, Ph.D.
The University of Tennessee
Department of Child and Family Studies
1215 West Cumberland Avenue, Room 115
Knoxville, TN 37996-1912
Telephone: 865-974-4538
Email: dwtegano@utk.edu
