Critically Analyzing Dominant Images of Teaching

• In Event: Visual Thinking Strategies: An Expansive Method for Qualitative Inquiry

Abstract

In this presentation, we’ll share how we used Visual Thinking Strategies (VTS) to analyze images of teaching collected from top Google Image search results. These images were collected as part of a study in which we used critical collage methods to “restory” (Thomas & Stornaiuolo, 2016) dominant visual narratives of teaching. Early in the project, we leveraged VTS as a tool for collaborative analysis and creation of a curated image corpus based on the initial search results.

Our theoretical lenses drew on queer theory (e.g. Butler, 1988; Sedgwick,1990) and decolonial theory (Patel, 2016; Zavala, 2016) as well as critical multimodal literacy (Cappello et al., 2019) – lenses that informed our discursive construction of meaning. Like other scholars who have analyzed visual representations of education and/or teachers (Kachorsky, Reid, & Chapman 2020; Ticknor & Averett, 2022), we found that the images commonly reflected a colonial banking model of education (Freire, 1970) and the heteronormative “teacher exemplar” described by Kahn and Gorski (2016). Our analytic process also generated methodological insights relevant to future critical visual and multimodal researchers.

Developing and deepening our methods for critically analyzing images of teaching in popular culture, media, and digital spaces is essential for understanding the multimodal mechanisms by which (cis)gender normativity, heteronormativity, and colonial educational norms continue to be reinforced. As culture is transmitted visually and multimodally, we argue that strategies like VTS, when combined with critical epistemologies and theoretical frameworks, can provide a crucial starting point for collaborative critical analysis of this type of visual data and a foundation for counter-storytelling and queering the hegemonic norms they transmit.

We collected images for our inquiry by searching for the term “teaching” in Google’s image search engine. We then examined the first 200 results, engaging in several rounds of VTS-prompted annotation and discussion while documenting patterns and emerging insights in a shared digital whiteboard. By prompting us to interpret what was “going on” in each image, VTS helped us make our interpretive lenses visible to ourselves and each other. This led to more layered interpretations and gave us opportunities to be intentional about the critical lenses we applied as we constructed meaning around the images and identified patterns in the visual narratives they presented. The interpretations and evidence we generated in response to the protocol also prompted critical self-reflection and sharing of our own narratives as teachers, students, and researchers. These discussions led us to expand on VTS in generative ways; for example, by inverting the first question in the protocol. In other words, in addition to asking ourselves “what’s going on in these images?” we also asked “what isn’t happening in these images?” This act of reading the image results both for their content and their silences became an essential source of inspiration for our eventual restorying of the image corpus through critical collage (de Rijke, 2024; Vaughan, 2005).

Author

• Kris Bell, Claremont Graduate University