Methods Festival 2017Session description form

30.-31.5. University of Jyväskylä

Session name:Co-exploring visual practices in educational settings

Session chair:TamásPéterSzabó, University of Jyväskylä, Department of Teacher Education

Session content and objective

Our panel discusses what role schools play in developing students’ visual literacy, that is, their ability to create and interpret visual materials. Our focus is on school premises that we consider as socially co-constructed built environments which influence (preferably, enhance) interaction and various learning activities. Although we are aware of the fact that the materiality and visuality of urban public spaces and home spaces also influence pupils’ visual literacy, we devote special attention to schools because we consider them as material environments custom designed for learning and teaching.

With this panel our main goal is to show various ways in which researchers and practitioners cooperate with each other in order to develop strategies that consciously build on the exploitation of visuality and materiality of school environments. Doing so, we discuss how the generation of visual data (e.g. fieldwork, classroom observation, collecting artwork from students, etc.) as well as the joint interpretation of the data (e.g. researcher-led hands-on workshops with school community members) influence schools’ visual practices.

Format

The 90-minute panel includes 4 panelists. First each panelist presents her or his work (10 minutes for each). We ask all panelists to choose one or two still image(s) or a max. 1 minute long video excerpt as (a) representative example(s) with the help of which they can reflect on their work. We also ask the panelists to avoid traditional lecturing, encouraging them for self-reflection. This part serves as an introduction of the panelists themselves and the demonstration of using photo elicitation at the same time.

In the next 30-35 minutes the panelists engage in interaction with each other, focusing on how the concepts of ‘methods’/‘methodologies’ and ‘visuality’ are connected to each other in their work, from their special perspective. In one clause, the question would be “why visual matters?”

The last 10-20 minutes are reserved for interaction with the audience.

Invited panelists:

  1. Kati Kajander,Ph.D., lecturer in Foreign Language Education, Department of Teacher Education, University of Jyväskylä.Her research interests include L2 teaching and assessment, in particular innovative approaches to teaching Swedish to young language learners and using European Language Portfolio as a pedagogical tool for fostering learner agency and autonomy.
  2. Petteri Laihonen, Academy Research Fellow, Centre for Applied Language Studies, University of Jyväskylä. His publications deal with sociolinguistics, multilingualism, regional linguistic minorities, language ideologies and linguistic landscapes and language policy in East-Central Europe.
  3. Raija Kattilakoski, M.Ed., Consulting teacher at Center of learning and consulting Valteri, Onerva and Ph.D. student at the University of Jyväskylä. She does ethnography on open learning space defining culture of teachers and school counselors. In her contribution she focuses on the following questions: How to do observations in school? What kind of visual elements of school buildings are important for teachers and counselors?
  4. TamásPéterSzabó, postdoctoral researcher, Department of Teacher Education, University of Jyväskylä. He moderates the session. He has investigated various forms of discourse, ideology and interaction in Hungarian and Finnish education. His research interests include the management of diversity in institutional settings, schoolscapes, and agency in interaction.