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Abstract
Relying on a critical pedagogy framework and youth participatory action research (YPAR) and visual sociology methods, the authors of this article – teachers, teacher educators, and community activists – have worked with photo elicitation methods and young adults in the USA and Haiti to document youths' impressions of the purposes of, supports for, and impediments to school. Participants have shot more than 12,000 images and written about 1800 of these, which the authors have analysed to discover approximately 30 findings related to school leadership, literacy instruction, and secondary curricula and pedagogies. These methods have raised a number of professional, personal, and research ethics issues, particularly as the project has shifted to include international participants. The nature of authorship and the risks involved with young people sharing their ‘difficult stories’ are just two considerations that have consistently arisen. Recently, the authors have recognized connections between visual methods, YPAR methods, international development, and the ethical issues considered by these fields. The authors suggest that visual research projects in the US and international contexts – where the social contract of schooling is at best damaged – might be understood as ‘development’ activities. The authors illustrate how such methods might be informed by a development perspective and the ‘agreements’ that development ethicists consider.