Necessary Commitments in the Use of Digital Film for Education Research

• In Event: Disrupting Representations in Research

Abstract

This paper engages with the possibilities and potentials of digital filmmaking as a participatory approach to scholarly inquiry that both opens discourses of understanding and forecloses interpretive possibilities. With the use of visual data, representation is contingent; hidden by the interpretive lens of the camera and the faulty confidence of the audience that seeing is believing. Drawing on data gathered from a research project where I worked with culturally and linguistically diverse children and their teachers to create a short (12 minute) digital documentary film, this paper elaborates possibilities and potentials for the use of digital film in education and educational research, and necessary commitments to accompany this work.

Author

• Saskia Stille, University of Toronto - OISE