Critical Race Photovoice: A Methodological and Pedagogical Tool for Critical Race Theorists

• In Event: Critical Race Theory: Methodological and Pedagogical Tools for Critical Race Theorists and Beyond

Abstract

When investigating the lives of college students pertaining to retention, engagement, and satisfaction, higher education research tends to rely heavily on quantitative methods. However, to adequately capture the experiences of underrepresented populations in higher education, this researcher argues for the need to incorporate critical race methodologies to examine complex social problems. The purpose of this paper is to illustrate how critical race theory (CRT) enhances Wang & Burris’ (1997) methodological tool known as photovoice, which helps better understand the lived experiences of first-generation college students at a four-year university.

The overarching framework for this study is Critical Race Theory (CRT), which centralizes race, racism, and their intersection with other types of “-isms” in the researcher’s line of work to help identify and reveal injustice caused by oppression. CRT also challenges dominant ideologies, commits to a social justice agenda, uses experiential knowledge as data, and incorporates trandisciplinary perspectives and knowledge to help construct all aspects of the research process. In particular, the researcher strategically combined the strengths between critical race theory and Wang & Burris’ (1997) methodological tool known as photovoice to document the lived experiences of three first-generation college women at a four-year university. Photovoice refers to the process by which people can ‘identify, represent and enhance their community’ through a specific photographic technique which is suggested by the acronym “VOICE”—voicing our individual and collective experience (Wang and Burris, 1997).

The three freshmen women were given a digital camera and were asked to capture their lived experiences as first-generation college students via photographs. After the participants captured their experiences via photographs, photo-elicitation interviews were conducted, which refers to the use of a single or set of photographs as stimulus during a research interview. During the photo-elicitation interview, participants were given the opportunity to give “voice” to their captured photographs. If “a picture is worth a thousand words”, it is important that the photographer is given the opportunity to interpret, respond to, and/or reflect upon her produced photographs, especially as images can have multiple interpretations depending upon the viewer (Harper, 1989). Furthermore, capturing the informants’ voice is not complete without elucidating their experiences (Altheide & Johnson, 2011). For that reason, there were two goals for these photo-elicitation interviews: (1) participants explain their reasoning for capturing those particular photographs; and (2) participants explain what those photographs mean to them as first-generation college students.

Preliminarily findings suggest that these participants’ families served as sources of on-going persistence as they dealt with the demands of higher education. More specifically, the students used aesthetic artifacts such as family photographs to physically bring their family to campus, serving as a source of motivation and persistence. This exiting study illustrates a specific critical race methodological and pedagogical approach using Wang & Burris’s (1997) term known as photovoice through a CRT framework. Furthermore, the study used existing data from a larger-exploratory study to exemplify such an approach, and provides an insight into how CRT can make unique contributions in the field of methods and pedagogy in educational research.

Author

• Janet Rocha, University of California - Los Angeles