“I Like the Stuff We’re Learning”: Participatory Visual Research as Alternative Pedagogy

• In Event: Thinking Ourselves “Out of” and “Into” Visual Research Methodologies in Education

Abstract

Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to discuss the pedagogical potential of Participatory Visual Research (PVR). The paper is based on the findings from a culturally responsive PVR education project in Nunavut, Canada.

Theoretical Framework
As many Indigenous scholars and their non-Indigenous allies posit, pedagogies rooted in Indigenous ways-of-coming-to-knowing and ways-of-being are a promising means of resisting current colonial conceptions of “education” (Aikenhead & Michell, 2011; Barnhardt & Kawagley, 2005, 2008; Battiste, 2000, 2005; Brayboy & Castagno, 2008; Cajete, 1999; Strong-Wilson, 2007) which continue to dominate school curriculum and teaching approaches in Nunavut (Aylward, 2007; Berger, 2007; Mason, 2006; Tompkins, 1998). One of the more troubling sites in which this relationship needs addressing is between Western science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) and Inuit Qaujimajatuqangit (IQ), which is defined as “all aspects of traditional Inuit culture including values, world-view, language, social organization, knowledge, life skills, perceptions and expectations” (Nunavut Social Development Council, 1998).

Methodology
Grounded in decolonizing (Smith, 1999), Indigenous (Cajete, 1999) and critical (Freire, 1970/1993) frameworks, this project responded to the pervasiveness of culturally inappropriate approaches to teaching STEM in Nunavut by investigating alternative, yet culturally appropriate and respectful, ways of delivering STEM education (see Belczewski, 2009; Gay, 2000, 2002; Grande, 2009; Sammel, 2009; Villegas & Lucas, 2002). This was achieved through the use of participant-driven videography (see Goldman-Segall, 1998), which Riecken et al. (2006) argue is a self-determined communication tool for cultural rejuvenation and resistance. Youth participants interviewed each other and a variety of community members around topics pertaining to STEM in order to visually express, through editing (see Goldman, 2004), what it means to navigate interfaces between Inuit and Western worldviews.

Data Sources
Data sources include ethnographic field notes (~80 pages), participant produced/edited videography (~1 hour), raw participant video footage (~10 hours) and participant interviews (~3 hours).

Results
For participants, the acquisition of video pre-production, production and post-production skills was a positive learning outcome in itself. Moreover, using video as a medium to resist dominant curricular discourses, youth were able to "rewrite the world in their own images, [to] resist others’ constructions of who they are” (p. 283), to build personal identity and pride. As a student-driven process, PVR facilitated youths’ participation in, and critique of, STEM education discourses. Furthermore, PVR enhanced the pedagogical relationship between participants and Indigenous community members (Brayboy, 2005) as video modifies power dynamics between interviewer and interviewee (Giroux, 1998; Riecken et al., 2006). “The camera was able to provide the means of giving the participants an authoritative voice” (Bloustien & Baker, 2003, p. 72), authoring what they wanted to document, to see and to create through video. This included all the youth, whether they were in the shot or view frame or providing support behind the lens.

Scholarly significance of the work
Through the implicit pedagogical process involved, PVR facilitates and enhances the creation of a space in which respectful cross-cultural education/research can take place (see Bhabha, 1994).

Author

• Marc Roderick Higgins, The University of British Columbia