‘Seeing’ into the past and ‘looking’ forward to the future: visual methods and gender and education research

Abstract

A small number of attempts have been made to take stock of the field of gender and education, though very few have taken methodology as their explicit focus. We seek to stimulate such discussion in this article by taking stock of the use of visual methods in gender and education research (particularly participatory and image-based methods). We undertake this exercise by looking at the claims researchers have made about the ways in which visual methods have advanced gender and education research, and by examining how these methods have been employed in research. We argue that the visual has become somewhat invisible in accounts of gender and education research. We conclude by considering different ways in which we might develop image-based research in the future.

Keywords:

• visual methods
• photograph
• image-based research
• gender and education
• methodology
• taking stock