“My Mom Said You Can’t Use My Face, but My Voice Is Alright”: Children as Active Agents in Research Utilizing Video Data

• In Event: Roundtable Session 14
  In Roundtable Session: Participatory Research With Children in Studies of Language and Literacy

Abstract

Purpose
This paper explores the ways in which video data, typically thought of as a authentic representation of classroom activity, is actually a social construction of reality that is shared by both the researcher as well as the participants (Harper, 2004; Pink, 2003). Rather than treating the research camera as a non-entity in the research space, the children involved in this research study were encouraged to take ownership over the research camera and their relationship to it, a move, this paper will argue, strengthened the data collection process.

Theoretical Framework
This study is informed by social semiotic theory and multimodality, a theoretical shift from solely form to form-in-tandem with meaning, emphasizing the contexts within which signs are produced (Hodge & Kress, 1988). Multimodal analysis assumes attention to “situated configurations” (Jewitt, 2008) that network multiple modes together to create meaning for a viewer that is more powerful than a single mode alone.

Methods and Data
The data for this ethnographic case study includes approximately 28 hours of classroom video, researcher field notes, as well as raw image files and artifacts used throughout film production. The corpus of data was analyzed for moments of interaction between the student participants and the research camera; these moments were then indexed against the production practices students were engaged in at the time of interaction. These production moments were analyzed multimodally (Norris, 2004) to understand the interplay between the student participants creating their own digital films as well as actively constructing the larger research narrative.

Results
Students actively engaged in the process of video data collection; three patterns of behavior, in particular, are identified: (1) those who go to great lengths to avoid the gaze of the research camera, (2) those who are selective in what elements of themselves are represented on camera, and (3) those who are actively cultivating their presence in the data set, to the point of designating their own research camera. The affordances of allowing these kinds of relationships between student participants and the research camera is discussed, emphasizing how such an approach fortified the data set and overall research project.

Scholarly Significance
It is a common assumption that video data will “replicate accurately what is set before them” (Prosser, 2000, p.124); this paper seeks to challenge that notion by examining the ways young children, elementary-aged in this case, were able to interact and exercise control over the research camera within the classroom. By addressing the research camera in the space, by treating it as an entity, the data set became more robust and, this paper argues, a more accurate representation of the production practices of the student participants.

Author

• Nicholas Edward Husbye