“Photography is a way of feeling, of touching, of loving. What you have caught on film is captured forever… It remembers little things, long after you have forgotten everything.”

“I feel it is the heart, not the eye, that should determine the content of the photograph. What the eye sees is it’s own. What the heart can perceive is a very different matter.”

I was hesitant to comment on the readings prior to class for various reasons. Mainly, I struggled to reconcile the positionality of the researcher in relation to the underserved participants of this ethnography. Especially when we consider the role educational research has played to reproduce the dominant narratives and values of white supremacy, one could understand my skepticism/hesitancy. But I digress…

Upon completing the reading the first few questions that came to mind were:

Why did Luttrell choose this particular subject and narratives? and what is social justice within this subject?

How much work had Luttrell done around interrogating her whiteness and how it carries into her work? and has she consider its implications in her interaction with these students

I could go on… and what I quickly started to realize was that I was centering the positionality of the researcher in a way that didn’t allow for me to present to the voices the students in the research.  So I took a step back and decided it engaged in conversation with colleagues and Luttrell before posting. This process allowed for another set of questions to emerge…

If we are the center the voices and narratives of the participants in our work, how do we maintain the integrity of those narratives while being transparent about our positionality in relation to the research and communities in which we seek to collaborate with in this work?

How did Luttrell navigate the absence of the photos and narratives that weren’t shared in the articles? Does the absence of these photos and narratives compromise the integrity of collective voice or “seeing” of the community of study?

Who is allowed to share what stories?

What I most appreciate about this week’s article and the talks was the intentionally and vulnerability Luttrell shared as she discussed some of her struggles in maintaining the integrity of the voices. The use of photography lends itself in ways text is limited or vulnerable to further misinterpretation.  Photovoice, depending on the implementation,  redistributes power within the researcher-participant dynamic with participants directing the focus. I’m still developing the ways in which I intend to use arts-based research and visual methodology within my work. And  I’m inspired in the by the possibilities it invites in how I may collaborate and share narratives in my work.

As for the questions above, I don’t know that I have the answers…but I do have thoughts that….

“To preserve multiple meanings and diverse perspectives including those of the teacher participants, dominant educational discourses, and my own. And through these many-sided jumbles, I work to bring forward (conceptual, visual, and bodily) themes of relationality in teacher work.”

   I appreciate Victoria Restler’s use of the college, or jumbled methodology, to disrupt and dismantle the oversimplification of the narratives embedded within data-driven

algorithms measuring a teacher’s work and school life. As the Audre Lorde once stated “ There is no such thing as a single issue struggle because we do not live single–issue lives,”  Collage as a methodology, lends a researcher an analytic lens allows more room for nuances and contradictions to be documented.  

     My work focuses on the development of learning communities cultivated through storytelling and mentorship. In both my personal and professional life, I combine collage and storytelling. That is, I create stories by way of collage.  One of my projects explores the origination stories of the development of STE(A)M identities for Black and Brown women. Drawing from my personal narrative and a legacy of hidden narratives, I toggle between the formal and informal learning spaces that have shaped both past, current, and aspiring and scientists.

To locate my own positionality in the research (acknowledging my voice/ mark/ eye as a white woman, artist, mother, researcher, etc.) and to make the often hidden work of analysis and interpretation, visible.

Going back and forth between Restler’s dissertation and the digital assemblage webpage, I was taken back the layers of teachers work and school life and the ways in which Restler choose to document these realities. In many ways Reslter’s use of collage to highlight and expand our understanding and imagination of teachers’ invisible care work, resonated with the ways in which I intend to utilized collage as a method in my dissertation. I am extremely curious to know/learn more about what her creation process entailed in the development of her outline/research proposal.