Photo-Based Methods: An Opportunity for Cross-Cultural Research

• In Event: 63.074 - Participant Empowerment Through Photo Elicitation in Ethnographic Research: New Research and Approaches

Abstract

This study explores the potential of digital photo-based methods, for understanding environmental sustainability perspectives of teachers in the Narok District of Kenya. The objective of this presentation is to share the three types of photo-based methods (photovoice, photo-based vignette interviews, and interactive photo exhibit) in a long-term study with Kenyan teachers creating an environmentally based science curriculum. This study provides examples for researchers to understand how photo-based methodologies provide a flexible and participatory method for cross-cultural study.
Meaningful and participatory engagement on the part of local communities in addressing their own issues has been shown to be important in the process of arriving at long-term resolutions of those issues (Akao & Managi, 2007; Morgan et al., 2010; Sultana, 2007). Thus, this project engaged community members in an economically and environmentally fragile region (the Narok district in Kenya) through an interdisciplinary, and integrative approach of collecting digital photographs and captions to understand environmental sustainability from their perspective. There were three phases of this 3-year longitudinal study. Phase 1 was the Photovoice project (Author #2, 2013). Phase 2 was the photo-based vignette interviews (Author #2, 2014). Phase 3 was the interactive photo exhibit (Author #2, in progress). Findings for this study included:
1) Participating teachers were empowered by the data they collected and their own analyses to make changes in their community and reconstruct their environmental thinking in ways than they had not previously.
2) Participants revealed that the act of documenting the environment caused them to critically reflect on both the degradation to the environment and positive changes happening in their community.
3) The acts of photographing their environment and documenting their process had profound effects on the teachers’ ability to create an environmentally based curriculum rooted in their own constructs of culture and environment.

Historically, teachers, scientists, and sociologists have utilized photographs as prompts for learning and understanding their surroundings (Harper, 2002). In our study, we looked to photo-based methods on a cross-cultural study to understand the environmental perspectives of Kenyan teachers and community members. These methods shifted the power from researcher to participant. Our participants were in control of both the data and the analysis, empowering these teachers to create positive, culturally based, changes in their environments.

Author

• Cassie Fay Quigley, Clemson University