What Is Good, Right, True, and Beautiful: Photographs as Identity Resources

• In Event: Centering Identity and Political Dimensions in the Learning Sciences

Abstract

In this paper, I describe the development of a photographic research method as part of a community-based design research project in an informal program for youth and instructors historically kept out of STEM. I suggest that photographs can function as powerful identity resources (Nasir & Cooks, 2009) for youth, instructors and their families. Theorizing the use and meaning of photography at the intersections between learning sciences, cognitive science, Black studies and art, I propose a view of photography as having a special epistemic access to the cognition of self. Centering a process of creating and sharing of identity resources with nondominant community members represents an alternative to Western research approaches and represents a kind of axiological innovation.

Author

• Jarek Sierschynski, University of Washington