Visual Artifacts as Mediational Means for Telling and Listening

Jaakko Hilppö, Lasse Lipponen,

Kristiina Kumpulainen, & Antti Rajala

Deparment of Teacher Education, University of Helsinki

ISCAR 2014 Sydney

• The aim of our study was to provide a methodological contribution to current understandings and discussions concerning visual methodologies. Focused on the way in which visual tools were used by the participants through an embodied interactional analysis (Goodwin, 2000).

• Highlight how participants orient to visual means while doing telling and listening

A methodological contribution

• The idea of tool mediation is central to visual methodologies (e.g. ,Thompson, 2008) Recent calls for the critial and rexlexive appraisal of visual methodologies (e.g., O'Brien et al., 2012; Barker & Smith, 2012; Knoblauch et al., 2008; Sewell, 2011; Pyyry, 2013; Gallagher & Gallagher, 2008; Westcott & Littleton, 2005) How do visual means affect the research process and its outcomes?Need for conceptual development regarding the visual tools -> what are they?Both are warrated if we want to strive for the reflexivity and authenticity of visual methodologies

Why focus on how pictures are used?

• The concept of mediation action is one of the foundational building blocks of socio-cultural approaches to human action (Roth, 2007; Miettinen, 2009; Wertsch, 2007).

• the use of cultural tools extends our competence to perform actions, and our relation to the environment becomes culturally mediatedHowever, not all of the artifacts present in a given moment function as a tool

- The task for the analyst is to conceptually and empirically parse out which artifact(s) functions as a tool at a given moment.

- Implicit ja explicit mediation (Werstch, 2007)Unconscious, unreflective, or transparent use of toolsmediational tool is clearly introduced as a new object into the present activity

Theoretical framework

- Embodied interactionSpoken language is just one of the many semiotic resources people use to be understood and also use to understand others in joint interactions (Goodwin, 2000).

- Any action is constituted by a complex arrangement of multiple semiotic fields, such as gestures, the body, and spoken language, that are deployed simultaneously and which elaborate each otherThe moment to moment arrangement of these various semiotic fields is called a contextual configuration

• Thus, to understand how photographs and pictures functioned as explicit mediational means in the focus groups situations, we analyzed how they were oriented to as relevant semiotic fields in the interaction, and what their relation was to other relevant semiotic fields.

Analytical framework

• A preschool in Tampere in spring 2011.19 preschool children (6-7 years old), 9 girls and 10 boys, and Ellen, the female teacher of this preschool communityWhat are the “moments of joy” preschoolers have during their day? Part of the AGENTS research project which investigates childrens agency in formal and informal settings (Kumpulainen, Järvelä, & Lipponen, 2010) Work with children as co-researchers to understand their perspective (e.g., Clark 1999; 2005; 2010; Goldman-Segall 1998; Plowman and Stevenson, 2012; Cook and Hess, 2007)Visual methods were partly endemic to the preschool pedagogy, and also good way to capture the fleeting and ordinary moments which otherwise easily go unnoticed

The Study

• Taking pictures and drawing was “fun”, “It felt good and nice”, “It was titanic” Also, sharing the pictures with others was fun

- “When I am older, I will join your research group.”Ideas for alternative ways of “moments of joy”: Performing, playing or writing

What did the kids say?

• preschool children (n. 19, age 6-7) share and jointly discuss photos and drawings the children had taken or made about their positive experiences, and moments of accomplishment during a preschool day.

• joint, multiparty conversations• two to three children• two to three adults• Althogether nine (9) situations between 10 to 30 min.

each• part of the AGENTS - research project

Data set

• How are photographs and drawings used as explicit mediational means when children tell and discuss their preschool day experiences?

Research question?

Samantha

AlexandraJonna

Tuuli

- The centrality of the photos and drawings for telling however, not in all situationsThe two ways in which the photos were used as part of the tellingTo illustrate details in the verbal narrative

The results

- To provide a background for re-enacting a play situation etc. The polysemic nature of the photographssame photograph mediated topically different narrations

The Results

• Results highlight:

• Centrality of the photos

• but not in each situation

• How children make meaning in these situations

• How ”non-verbal” or ”multimodal” aspects of the interaction come to playVisual artifacts are flexible and polysemic

• also material, stabile and resist certain uses

• Not just cognitive tools (Clarke, 2010)

• Captured the complex interactional processes between material and human agents in ways which pay homage to their separate and emergent qualities as well as the interaction between them.

Discussion