School Photographs as Freirean Ritualistic Codifications

• In Event: Codifications of Reality as Educational Tools for Critical Consciousness: Retheorizing Freire Through Praxis

Abstract

Although the 21st century is often described as “visually” dominated, imaged-based research methods are still not easily incorporated in educational research. Educational researchers have relied on under-explored notions of objective observation as the privileged method for conducting inquiries and to arrive to the “true nature” of the phenomenon under study. These perspectives assume the possibility of a direct unfiltered perception by the researcher, imagining that the observers’ gaze is not only scientifically neutral and objective, but also an efficient form to identify educational problems. So despite the seemingly unchallenged domination of the visual in recent decades, we only infrequently encounter educational studies in which images are used as research tools, or collected as data and not simply reduced as complementary illustrations.
This paper examines the use of school photographs as “codifications” of educational institutions. The conceptual discussion is grounded in a qualitative project that used photo-elicitation methods with 35 students in a teacher education program in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Borrowing from the tradition of photo-elicitation, this project collected 20 school-photographs that were meaningful for the respondents and which formed the basis of ethnographic interviews.
The respondents were asked if they had any particular image that was significant in relationship to their ideas about schooling. The most significant finding was that when questioned about what images were important in relationship to schooling, 20 students (out of 35) did not hesitate and brought ritualized photos for discussion. The most favored shot was the yearly ritual of the school photo, which retrieves and puts at work certain elements, which, from the standpoint of shared symbolism, provided important cues for understanding key social and cultural dynamics in Brazilian schools.
An analysis of the 20 photographs collected and the elicited interviews show the following trends: a) these future teachers privileged their images as school-children; b) the memories connected with the school-pictures were not pleasant but expressed a personal conflict with the institution; c) although from different grades and years, these school photographs can be seen as “codifications” of pedagogical rituals. In these rituals the children face the camera from almost identical positions, their hands identically crossed on the desks, a Brazilian flag by their side, the school and grade identification, and a map of the world behind them. These material elements, objects-signs, ultimate symbols of the school culture, play their parts in these students’ stories. They have been arranged in such a way that our reading of the scene at first glance suggests that in the Brazilian school everything is orderly, normal, and that Brazil is an important country.
The analysis of the images and narratives together reveals that schools operate within ideological regimes saturated by visual components. School photographs could serve as “codifications”, both research data and tool, not only a record of a past occurrence that helped in the process of shaping institutional subjectivities, but also as an event that can assist in re-viewing history, to transform present and future events as both participant and viewer.

Author

• Gustavo E. Fischman, Arizona State University