Participatory Redesign: Visual Methodologies and Student Voice

• In Event: Spatialized Pedagogies, Innovative Learning Environments, and School Redesign: Researchers, Teachers, and Students Coproducing Knowledge

Abstract

Often missing in the discourses of school reform and improvement of student learning are student voices (Author 2008, Rudduck and McIntyre 2007). And when student voices are heard, they are more often around school decision-making rather than around pedagogy. A particular methodological strength of a study of innovative learning environments (ILE) in 12 schools in Victoria, Australia, has been the use of visual data collection, generation and analysis (Dixon 2009). In seeking to explore how students were understanding and responding to new learning spaces and how spatiality, temporality and connectivity informed pedagogical practice, new visual methodologies were developed that facilitated student voice (Burke, 2008, Cook-Sather 2006).
The paper first provides accounts of how these visual methodological tools provided the researchers with new opportunities about how to research what and how students learn, Second, it illustrates how these research tools afford teachers with ways of thinking about how they could use them to enhance their pedagogical practices through student voice. This process of participative redesign is premised on the co-production of knowledge with the stakeholders in schools as part of an ongoing generative research project.

While there have been a number of methods used to collect data in flexible learning spaces, the focus has been on the quality of the learning spaces rather than how these spaces are used and with what effect (Authors 2011 a). While it was possible to observe what was taught, and how the space and resources were used in the study, as well as track movement within flexible learning spaces, this did not inform us about the quality of learning or how students responded to different pedagogies in different spaces. Our focus on the spatialized pedagogical relationships between teachers and students, between teachers and teachers, and between students and teachers led to the development of multiple visual methods (e.g. student maps and cartographic annotations; student photographs to elicit responses; Google and Near Maps to track movement in school grounds over time; design blueprints to discuss with principals their aims in designing the spaces)(Pink 2007, Leitch 2008).

These tools elicited student voice about their (often unexpected) responses to the ILE, to new buildings and spaces, to different pedagogical practices, and to social relationships with peers, emphasizing issues around identity and belonging. Using these research tools also involved teachers, who reflected on their pedagogical possibilities in working with students.

Authors

• Joanne O'Mara, Deakin University

• Jillian Anne Blackmore, Professor, Deakin University

• Deb Bateman, Deakin University