The power of/in Photovoice

ABSTRACT

Photovoice, which falls under the methodological umbrella of participatory action research (PAR), is a method of inquiry used to visually document and honor the knowledge(s), voices, and experiences of community members about particular issues affecting their lives. By privileging these voices, photovoice seeks to investigate, disrupt, and ultimately improve structures and practices that often fail to fulfill the needs of diverse populations. In this piece, the authors come together in vulnerable reflection to examine tension points that emerged during a photovoice project with English Language Learners at a middle school in Virginia, USA. Analyzing themes from journal entries and interviews, and reflecting on specific scenarios in which questions of power were at play, we conclude that it is important to ground any participatory inquiry in an explicit commitment to the emancipatory epistemological commitments of PAR so that when questions of power arise, researchers can refer back to those commitments as a kind of guiding compass.

KEYWORDS:

• Photovoice
• participatory action research
• power
• English language learners
• reflection
• schools

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

ORCID

Meagan Call-Cummings http://orcid.org/0000-0002-9952-0449

Melissa Hauber-Özer http://orcid.org/0000-0001-6621-1204

Christie Byers http://orcid.org/0000-0002-3689-3686

Greer Peden Mancuso http://orcid.org/0000-0002-1281-8497

Notes

1 Twenty percent of students in the United States now come from homes where English is not the primary language, and these linguistically diverse students often struggle on achievement measures, especially literacy, and have lower rates of school completion (Bell et al. 2011; Kelly-Jackson and Delacruz 2014; Zenkov, Pellegrino et al. 2014).

2 All names are pseudonyms except for those of the authors.

3 While Carspecken does offer a specific and useful approach to analysis of power, his approach is intended for data that is interactive in nature – often observational data. Because the data we had access to was not interactive, we chose to code with Carspecken's ideas about power in mind but not to conduct an analysis of interactive power. The ways his approach influenced our thinking and understanding is more fully explored in the discussion section of this piece.