Production Values: Objectivity and First-Person-Perspective Video in Educational Research

• In Event: 34.079 - Roundtable Session 14
  In Roundtable Session: 34.079-5 - Critical Perspectives on Digital Tools in Qualitative Research

Abstract

Drawing on theories of knowledge production offered by Science and Technology Studies (STS), this paper critically examines one recent data collection strategy that has gained purchase in the science of learning: first person perspective video. Learning phenomena as diverse as “epistemic stance,” “learning on the move,” and “computer mediated learning” have been explored using these new videographic technologies that put the production of video data in the hands (and on the bodies) of participants, who are often young children. Positioning young children as data collection instruments has ethical and epistemological implications. This paper attends to notions of “objectivity” and to how these new video production techniques reconfigure learners and the science that studies them.

Author

• Deborah Silvis, University of Washington - Seattle