Developing Embodied, Relational, and Ethical Practices for Co-Viewing and Analyzing Video "Data"

• In Event: Reclaiming the Possibilities of Connectivity: Relationality in Education Research and Action

Abstract

Video research is ubiquitous in the learning sciences, a field that examines the how, when, where, and why of learning and development (Goldman, Pea, Barron, & Derry, 2007; Philip, Bang, Jackson, 2018). For example, video research studies examine teacher thinking and learning, cultural variation in the organization of learning, family and classroom practices, and mobility as a means and content for learning. In this paper, we reflect upon the relational and ethical aspects of video research. Specifically, we explore four dimensions of relationality in video research:
• Dimension 1: The original relationships with those individuals whose activities are captured for video-ethnographic purposes;
• Dimension 2: The transformation of those original relations and research activities to forms that we call data;
• Dimension 3: The new relationships that we build with other researchers as we ask questions about the ongoing action captured on video in order to build theory from data; and,
• Dimension 4: The role of our bodies and place in relational processes of knowledge building across dimensions, one, two, and three.

Framework and Methods: Our exploration of these four dimensions is grounded in the context of a graduate research apprenticeship course organized to support a diverse, all-women collective interested in video and film research within the domains of the learning sciences and cultural studies. To explore the embodied, relational, and ethical aspects of researcher learning and knowledge building we partnered with a theatre artist (Author 2) with a background in devised ensemble performance. We began with a basic premise – how we use our bodies-in-place to view and communicate ideas about video data shapes what we can come to know as researchers about the diversity of human learning and development. In collaboration with Author 2, we co-designed embodied practices for looking, listening, and analyzing video data that prioritized physical, enactive, relational movement-based strategies. The source material for these sessions was video data from the advising faculty member’s research project in which Indigenous mothers and their young children (between the ages of 4 and 8) were invited to go on multiple walks in forest preserves.

This paper draws on video records from four research meetings during which we engaged in co-designed theatre practices, co-viewing, and collaborative analysis. We examine the evolution of our embodied co-viewing practice as well as our reflections on the developing practice. Moreover, we trouble our research practice by exploring the following set of questions:
• How does participating in a diverse collective expand and trouble viewpoints about research relationships and the knowledge that is created from those relationships?
• How does participating in a diverse collective expand and trouble viewpoints about the role of the body and place in both co-participant and co-researcher learning?

Building from Wilson’s (2008) relational ways of being (with people, with the environment/land, with the cosmos, with ideas) we expand social-interactional methods (Erickson, 2011; Goodwin, 2013; Jordan & Henderson, 1995) of video research to account for the embodied, relational, and ethical aspects of co-viewing and analyzing video data in important and consequential ways.

Authors

• Ananda Marin, University of California - Los Angeles

• Elisa Noemí Orellana Faulstich

• Clementine Bordeaux, University of California - Los Angeles

• Heather F. Clark, University of California - Los Angeles

• Jamie D. Gravell, California State University - Stanislaus

• Lindsay Elizabeth Lindberg, University of California - Los Angeles

• Denise Morales

• Lilia Rodriguez, University of California - Los Angeles

• Renee White Eyes, University of California - Los Angeles