As a collaborative artist, documentarian, and National Geographic Explorer, Jon Cox is no stranger to the power of photography. While much of his work puts him behind the camera, he also empowers people to share their perspectives and stories through their own images, often through a practice called PhotoVoice. PhotoVoice encourages individuals to take pictures and share them in group discussions, and several workshops with minority populations in Kenya, Slovakia, and the United States have shown that it may foster more impactful engagement than interviews and action research. In a new article he co-authored for Social Science & Humanities Open, Cox details a new horizon for PhotoVoice— the classroom.
PhotoVoice has helped groups explore personal and cultural issues, and studies conducted with college students have shown that the practice encourages critical thinking and greater connection with more abstract societal concepts. However, its success with younger groups had long been unexplored, having been tested in after-school and English language learner programs, but not in a typical classroom setting. Some researchers have voiced concern that the practice may be too emotional and hard to process for younger students.
To account for this, Jon Cox planned a study around a more age-appropriate photoVoice workshop in a Pennsylvanian middle school. Rather than centering on a specific topic, these sessions sought to improve cultural literacy: knowledge gained through emphatic, tolerant, inclusive interaction. After an introductory presentation on personal and cultural narratives, middle-schoolers were tasked with taking pictures that answered the question “What does culture mean to you?” Students developed their pictures through cyanotype printing and led their own discussions about their responses.
Through this work, some students demonstrated sub-surface and deep cultural understanding in their responses. Students’ feedback demonstrated they had been opened up to new ideas about history, religion, and cultural practices. Letting students lead discussions eliminated much of the perceived difficulty of the practice, which assured critical thinking, creative expression, and emotional engagement with more conceptual subject matter. Cox and his co-authors encourage further research on PhotoVoice, suggesting it be brought into an array of curriculum.
As modern environmental topics become part of K12 student curriculum, there’s much potential for students to engage with them through PhotoVoice. Having students identify how issues like sustainability and climate change manifest in the world around them can help form clear understandings of their societal implications. As youth navigate a world with more stimuli vying for their attention, developing visual representations of issues facing our planet are the fastest way for their importance to resonate.