Day 1: Introducing Visual Methods

 
The first part of the workshop consisted of a theoretical, epistemological and methodological introduction of visual methods in educational science (and beyond). Starting with a description of the role of visualisations in the production of scientific knowledge (Latour, 1986) and a contextualisation of visual methods in the ‘visual turn’ in the social sciences (Dussel, 2013), we presented various examples of visual methods from the research literature. Examples included self-photographs by adolescents (Yates 2010), mappings of sociomaterial practices (Gourlay, 2015), historical drawings by children (Kay, 2021) and art-based projects with migrant children (Clacherty, 2021). Federico then presented some of the findings from his master’s thesis ‘Children’s and Adolescents’ Experiences of Migration: An Ethnography of the Casa Mambré Migrant Shelter’, in which he used visual methods in the form of comic stories. Finally, some visual examples from the data collection for the RED project were discussed. These examples were collected last year in our partner schools in KwaZulu Natal and Gauteng under the guidance of Dr Philip Ahiaku and Dr Godfrey Muyambi. Based on these examples, we demonstrated how visual methods can provide access to the lived experience of young participants and depict forms of knowledge that are otherwise difficult to articulate – an essential undertaking for the RED project, but one that also involves ethical challenges. We discussed these challenges, as well as the general potential of visual methods, with our South African colleagues.

Day 2: Creating Visual Narratives

In the second part of the workshop, we asked the participants to create their own visual narratives in the form of comic stories. As a ‘micro’ research project for the rest of the workshop, the participants described how they create a research text. As inspiration for this task we introduced a research paper by Lesley Gourlay, in which she adopts a phenomenological perspective to describe the material, social, affective, bodily and infrastructural aspects involved in the mundane practice of opening an email on a computer (Gourlay, 2024). After the production of the visual narratives, we discussed the process and the experience of production with the participants. It became clear that, on the one hand, the method was met with resistance – for many participants, the practice of drawing was associated with uncertainties, as was the sharing of personal experiences and feelings. On the other hand, however, they emphasised that the method opened up access to other forms of knowledge – situated, embodied and contextual knowledge – and thus enabled exciting and surprising insights.

Day 3: Analysing Visual Narratives

In the last part of the workshop, the participants analysed the visual narratives they had previously produced. In small groups, they considered what the narratives could tell us about the experience of producing research texts, about the human and non-human actors involved, and about the affects and emotions that arise during a writing process. In the discussion that followed, they raised topics such as the solitude or sociality of academic writing, the moments of inspiration or idea generation, and the role of digital platforms and infrastructures for writing. Finally, Federico provided insights into the analysis he is conducting on the visual narratives from the RED project for his doctoral dissertation. As examples, he presented the thematic grouping of narratives on the digital whiteboard platform ‘Mural’ and the possibilities of content analysis using coding and categorisation in the ‘MaxQDA’ programme.

We thank our colleagues from UNISA for the lively and inspiring exchange during the retreat. We also thank Prof. Dr Marcia Mkansi for her invitation and hospitality, Prof. Dr Paul Prinsloo for his support throughout the process and Dr Philip Ahiaku and Dr Godfrey Muyambi for their help with data collection and analysis.

Literature

Clacherty, G. (2021). Art-based, narrative research with unaccompanied migrant children living in Johannesburg, South Africa. Journal of Borderlands Studies, 36(4), 547–563. https://doi.org/10.1080/08865655.2019.1621766

Dussel, I. (2013). The Visual Turn in the History of Education: Four Comments for a Historiographical Discussion. In T. S. Popkewitz (Ed.), Rethinking the History of Education: Transnational Perspectives on Its Questions, Methods, and Knowledge (pp. 29–49). Palgrave Macmillan US. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137000705_2

Gourlay, L. (2015). ‘Student engagement’ and the tyranny of participation. Teaching in Higher Education, 20(4), 402–411. https://doi.org/10.1080/13562517.2015.1020784

Gourlay, L. (2024). More-Than-Digital Meaning-Making: Paratexts of the Postdigital. Postdigital Science and Education, 6(3), 756–766. https://doi.org/10.1007/s42438-023-00449-x

Kay, C. (2021). German children’s art during World War I. Global Studies of Childhood, 11(2), 195–212. https://doi.org/10.1177/20436106211015694

Latour, B. (1986). Visualization and Cognition: Thinking with Eyes and Hands. Knowledge and Society, 6, 1–40.

González López, A.E., Büchner, F. (2024). EdTech in a Broken World: Breaking and Repairing in Argentinian and German Schools. Postdigit Sci Educ (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s42438-024-00490-4 (open access)

This article offers insights into the everyday postdigital school life of two schools from two different world regions—Argentina and Germany. Based on ethnographic research in both contexts, it traces the introduction of one educational technology in each case, from the moment of its conception in policy documents to its landing in schools, its appropriation by various school actors and its integration into the socio-technical infrastructure of the classroom. Although both schools are situated differently and both technologies—a learning management system and a tablet computer—are of different quality, the article demonstrates the existence of a remarkable commonality in the journey of both educational technologies: their breakdown and the repair practices performed by various school actors. Breakdown and repair are analysed and conceptualised with reference to the Broken World Thinking exercise. By applying an Ethnography of Global Connections, the locally identified practices in both schools are framed as manifestations of global digitalisation processes in education. The article aims to shift the focus of critical EdTech studies towards two socio-material forces that are commonly addressed separately: material disruption and reassembling (and all the friction in between).

Photo by Fabian Irsara on Unsplash

The first field research showed: The digital infrastructure, the equipment with digital devices and also the students’ and teachers’ digital competence differ dramatically between schools. But also within schools, a broad spectrum of digital practices can be observed: While some students use digital technologies to translate tasks into their first language and thus participate in class, other students use digital technologies to escape from class (with the help of video games or music). We also find it interesting to look at the non-use of technology. Students do not use their devices for various reasons: because they don’t want to (and want to concentrate on other teaching elements instead), because they don’t know how to (and first have to learn how to use keyboards or certain apps), because they can’t (and the internet at school is down) or because they are not allowed to (and have been forbidden to use a tablet because of diagnosed addictive behaviour). We want to follow all these tracks in our second ‘fieldwork’.  

We are particularly looking forward to conducting a workshop with our school classes at the end of these visits, in which we also hope to gain insights into the students’ data practices. Data inequality – a currently under-researched aspect of digital inequality – is of immense interest to us at RED.  It is here that a global perspective is needed, which we develop through regular exchanges with our international colleagues who are also currently visiting schools.  

Photo by Dan Dimmock on Unsplash

We were granted access to the corpus to conduct an analysis on how the complex interrelations of digital education and in/equalities are imagined and manifested as well as on what is problematized within those documents. So far we identified three ‘Critical Discourse Moments’ (Chilton 1988) – moments of massive public controversy and chaos – into which we zoom in for our analysis. With this research we hope to contribute to a critical reflection of the unprecedented global health crisis which also became – for some more than for others – a massive education and social crisis.

Photo by Maksym Kaharlytskyi on Unsplash

We find this ‘meta-narrative’ for example in the highly influential policy strategy Education in the Digital World by the Standing Conference of the Ministers of Education and Cultural Affairs (KMK) from 2016. This strategy contains a competence framework claiming to provide students with competencies and tools to enable a life in the digital world that is ‘selbstständig’ (independent) and ‘mündig’ (See KMK 2016). And here we encounter the pragmatic problem of how to even translate ‘Mündigkeit’ to English. The first translation coming to mind is ‘maturity’, after that maybe ‘autonomy’ or also ‘responsibilty’. ‘Mündigeit’ contains the meaning of all the named and even more. It is maybe the most prominent educational ideal in the German education discourse and certainly one of the most value-loaded and normative terms out there. ‘Mündigkeit’ is directly linked to the ideas and philosophies of the European Enlightenment and was frequently used by Immanuel Kant. In his 1784 Essay Answering the Question: What Is Enlightenment? Kant famously writes: “Enlightenment is man’s emergence from his self-incurred immaturity” (Kant 1784). ‘Immaturity’ of course being a direct translation of the word ‘Unmündigkeit’. ‘Unmündigkeit’ or ‘Immaturity’ in Kant’s sense is “the inability to use one’s own understanding without the guidance of another” (Kant 1784). So when the KMK strategy claims that in the digital world students are at risk of being ‘unmündig’ and therefore need specific competencies to become ‘mündig’ again, we can trace back a certain view of ‘the digital’ represented in this policy: ‘The digital’ as mentioned here hinders students of using their own understanding, they are guided by something other than themselves – in short: they are dependent.

But dependent on what? At this point the policy does not clarify any further, it seems to be enough to state the high risk of being ‘unmündig’ to legitimize the policy itself. This is where we face a problem with the stylistic ‘meta-narrative’ of asking ‘what is at stake?’. The tendency seems to be to reach for the very big education ideals that everybody seems to agree on – like ‘Mündigkeit’ in the German context. But in doing this without really explaining how the education ideal is connected to the problematization that is made, the ideal itself becomes more and more fuzzy and ultimately empty. A good example of this fuzziness is an excerpt of a speech given by current Minister of Education and Research Anja Karliczek during the educational conference Bildungswelten der Zukunft in 2019. There she claims: “Only those with a basic understanding of the new technologies, only those being digitally mature (‘mündig’), can take part, can participate, and are not without a chance on the labour market” (translated, Karliczek 2019). Here being ‘digitally mature’ seems to mean being able to understand technologies and as an effect becoming valuable human capital. This is at the same time an immense simplification of what ‘digital competence’ might include (other than understanding technologies) and also a reduction of the education ideal ‘Mündigkeit’ to it’s envisioned potentials on the labour market.

For us it remains interesting while analysing our digital education policy archive to keep an eye on what is claimed to be at stake. How is ‘Mündigkeit’ an education ideal at risk in the ‘digital world’? We were also wondering whether there are similar ‘meta-narratives’ to be found in the analysis of the archives in the other countries. Do you also have education ideals like ‘Mündigkeit’ to help legitimize the urgency of your policy documents?