New perspectives: using participatory photography to evaluate widening participation interventions

Abstract

With much emphasis now placed upon determining the effectiveness of widening participation (WP) interventions, there is value in identifying evaluation methods best able to provide insights into the impact of this work. One method that has received little attention in the field of WP and yet has considerable potential in this respect is associated with the use of photography. Where they have been employed in such work, photographs have tended to be used to illustrate the character of interventions. However, photography can also be used as a means of generating data for the purposes of evaluation. This paper presents the findings of a pilot study that used participatory photography to evaluate a university-based WP intervention. By enabling participants – pupils from targeted schools – to determine the photographs that best captured their experiences and to compose the descriptions that accompanied these photographs, this method is shown to offer new insights into the impact of such activities; not only in terms of the pupils’ engagement in the event but also in the learning they derived from it. Other benefits from deploying this research method, notably the insights it afforded the university students helping deliver the event and the practitioners leading it, are also explored.

Keywords:

• outreach
• participatory photography
• photo-elicitation
• evaluation

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank Lisa Ambler and Natalie Savage for their permission to pilot this evaluation method on one of the events they manage, and for their ideas and support in ensuring the study was successfully conducted. I would also like to thank the student helpers involved in the event for their insights and feedback, as well as colleagues who commented on an earlier version of this paper, which was presented at the Research in Post-compulsory Education International Conference, University of Oxford, 11–13 July 2014.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.