Professional Documents
Culture Documents
133]
On: 27 January 2012, At: 14:09
Publisher: Routledge
Informa Ltd Registered in England and Wales Registered Number: 1072954 Registered office: Mortimer
House, 37-41 Mortimer Street, London W1T 3JH, UK
Visual Studies
Publication details, including instructions for authors and subscription information:
http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/rvst20
To cite this article: Lyn Yates (2010): The story they want to tell, and the visual story as evidence: young people,
research authority and research purposes in the education and health domains, Visual Studies, 25:3, 280-291
To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/1472586X.2010.523281
The story they want to tell, and the visual story as evidence:
young people, research authority and research purposes in
the education and health domains
RVST
LYN YATES
Lyn Yates is Professor of Curriculum and Pro Vice-Chancellor (Research) at the University of Melbourne, Australia, and is a past president of the Australian
Association for Research in Education. Lyn is author of What Does Good Education Research Look Like? Situating a Field and its Practices (Open University Press,
2004) and co-author with Julie McLeod of Making Modern Lives: Subjectivity, Schooling and Social Change (SUNY Press, 2006).
ISSN 1472586X printed/ISSN 14725878 online/10/030280-12 2010 International Visual Sociology Association
DOI: 10.1080/1472586X.2010.523281
281
282
L. Yates
283
284
L. Yates
Whose Voice?
The plan with each participant (after they and their
parents had indicated willingness to participate) was that
the first visit to them would be at home, to talk briefly
about the project, to complete the required consent
forms from both parent and young person, and to leave
with them the camera and a tip sheet, Your experiences
in pictures. We decided not to give instructions about
how many photographs they should take (we used digital
cameras rather than disposable ones), and as far as
possible to avoid leading their responses. Following that
initial meeting, we would come back in two to three
weeks to download the photographs, give them a copy
and talk to them about what they had chosen to
photograph. Over the next two to three years, we would
visit them again at intervals to ask for further accounts of
what was happening in their lives and their perspectives
on what mattered to them in the education/health
context, and to revisit and fill out or revise their initial
accounts and photographs, using whatever means they
chose. As the project progressed we were forced to
re-think two of our initial design principles: the issue of
non-leading instructions; and the issue of avoiding
contamination of the young persons perspective and
involvement by banishing the parents perspectives and
involvement.
Our original thinking had been that it would be a
constraint on participants to speak freely if a parent was
there, and that we would discourage them from
discussing in advance with their parents the approaches
they took to the visual tasks. In fact we found that across
well over half of our study, and across different
researchers, neither the young person (and these are
teenagers) nor the parent saw this as a natural or
appropriate way to proceed. This is even more intriguing
given that one of our team has been involved in a
previous project3 concerning young people with serious
health issues where they were interviewed alone, and she
was involved in designing our initial protocols for this
project. Yet she too has discovered the same pattern
that generally it has been hard in the home to avoid
interviewing in a family area with others present. It may
be that our deliberately more ethnographic style invites
that kind of reaction.
Of course, when they take photographs, young people
are inevitably influenced, to different degrees, by
parents, friends and family, as well as by how they see the
researcher and their purposes (Sharples et al. 2003). And
they are also influenced by broader social norms about
what is appropriate (Holliday 2007). But in this study the
degree of ongoing involvement by many mothers,
285
286
L. Yates
FIGURES 13. These three photographs were taken by Alice as part of the
request to show your experiences in pictures at beginning of the project, in
September 2007.
287
What Meaning?
Some kinds of analysis of visual material can be relatively
factual and objective: How many photographs did they
choose to produce? How many people and which people
were included? But the more important issue for this
project is not simply what is depicted? but what is its
meaning? and what is its significance? That is why we
have taken a broadly ethnographic approach to this
material, and see the visits and interviews as inherently
linked to the meaning of the visual material. The
longitudinal element of the study is also important: what
people are prepared to say at a distance can be different
from what they will say immediately.
The brief discussion of Alice earlier shows some of the
ways visual and narrative are interpreted in dialogue
with each other. From the photographs alone, we could
say that she produced a very large number of them, and
that the great majority contained either other people, or
Alice doing something interesting and active. But it is
from her commentary that I interpret that some of the
photographs were about using the camera to interact
with teachers and people at school, people she
288
L. Yates
289
they want to tell. But what they want to tell does not
speak for itself, and is not singular. The photographs are
produced in particular contexts for particular purposes.
The story they want to tell is different when considered
as a one-off (in relation to one set of photographs),
compared with when considered as a story over time, not
just because more talk and photographs are produced,
but because the first set of photographs itself begins to be
seen in new ways. And analysing what matters to these
young people involves considerations and knowledge on
the part of the researchers that are not able to be equally
held by those producing the photographs.
Using the case studies of Alice and Jasmine, I tried to
show how the story they want to tell was a continuing
question for the researcher through the longitudinal
project, not something resolved by an initial set of
photographs. At the same time, the commitment of the
project to honour their voice and their own intentions in
relation to the photographic story was also of continuing
concern. Using the photographs as one strand of
evidence within a larger project, as evidence for
vulnerabilities as well as for the positive story, was
important and relevant to our broader purposes. It
understands marginalisation and lack of power as going
beyond issues of voice and representation. But finding
ways to honour the clear intention of the young people
to be visible and to be heard in particular ways, and to
show themselves as active, attractive and normal, was
also important. These dynamics need to be kept in play.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
The author acknowledges funding support for the
project A Multi-disciplinary Investigation of How
Trauma and Chronic Illness Impact on Schooling,
Identity and Social Connectivity from the Australian
Research Council and the RCH Education Institute and
her appreciation for the participation and contribution
made by Alice and Jasmine and their families. The
article draws on and has benefited from many
conversations with other members of the project team:
Julianne Moss, Sarah Drew, Julie White, Trevor Hay,
Peter Ferguson, Pam St Leger, Mary Dixon, Lyndal
Bond, Margaret Robertson, Tony Potas, Julie Green
and Hannah Walker.
NOTES
[1] The project is co-funded by the Australian Research
Council and the Melbourne Royal Childrens Hospital
Education Institute as an ARC Linkage Project
(LP0669735). The research team comprises: chief
290
[2]
[3]
[4]
[5]
L. Yates
REFERENCES
Alcoff, Linda. 19912. The problem of speaking for others.
Cultural Critique 20: 532.
Arnot, Madeleine, and Dianne Reay. 2007. A sociology of
pedagogic voice: Power, inequality and pupil
consultation. Discourse 28 (3): 31126.
Atkin, Karl, and W. I. U. Ahmad. 2001. Living a normal
life: Young people coping with thalassaemia major or
291