Photo Evaluation A participatory ethnographic research and evaluation tool in child care and education

Dr. Barbara Schratz-Hadwich, Prof. Rob Walker, Dr. Peter Egg Paper for AARE: Doing the Public good. November 28 - December 2, 2004, Melbourne, Australia

Hermann-Gmeiner-Strasse 51 A-6021 Innsbruck, Austria / Europe

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Content

Seeing comes before words. .................................................................................... 3

Teach me, and I will forget … ................................................................................... 7

Show me and I will remember… ............................................................................... 8

Involve me and I will learn...................................................................................... 10

Imagine …............................................................................................................... 13

From looking to seeing........................................................................................... 14

From looking to seeing to learning. ....................................................................... 18

Outlook ................................................................................................................... 20

Contact ................................................................................................................... 22

Reference................................................................................................................ 23

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Seeing comes before words.

How can I talk to you about my winter land when you only have one word for snow and I have fifty three. Sigh of an Inuit.

(Source unknown.)

Seeing comes before words, says John Berger in his book Ways of Seeing (Berger, 1972). And he continues:

“But there is also another sense in which seeing comes before words. It is seeing which establishes our place in the surrounding world; we explain this world with words, but words can never undo the fact that we are surrounded by it.” (Berger 1972, n.p.)

Contrary to this sensual approach to understand - and create - the world around us, academic discourse and social science research is rooted in words. Terminology and a language often exclusive to the use of scholars are dividing those who know from those who don’t. By this exclusion knowledge is created and thus functions as a tool of power distribution (Foucault 1983, Willke 1995).

Evaluation as one form of inquiry and research is primarily based on this word focused understanding of our (constructed) reality and the surrounding world. And evaluation experts spend much time in defining words (e.g. internal or external evaluation, summative or formative, locus of responsibility etc.) and the respective connotations again and again (see for example the at the moment ongoing discussion of the German Evaluation Society at: forum-evaluation@uni-koeln.de).

Evaluation as an instrument of learning and way of de-constructing reality should nevertheless aim at the development of quality and therefore focus on processes - be it organisational or personal ones - as well as structures of systems and results. For everyday practice of evaluation in social organisations, be it care, health or the educational system the questions are we doing the things right (in reference to efficiency, effectiveness, cost-benefit-ratio, impact etc) as well as are we doing the right things (according to goals, vision, believes, values, task, mission, stakeholder needs and rights etc.) take centre stage in relation to evaluation theories, adequate evaluation tools, models and words.

Instead of locating an evaluation in terms of the definitions of technical terms, is it possible to create an evaluation defined by, and focused on, the impulse for (organisational) learning? The inquiry about how stakeholders experience care or educational reality – and how, if necessary –processes and procedures have to be adapted to achieve educational or care excellence is the task of evaluation - and not only the stating or description of an organisational status quo must be the leading theme.

The goal of evaluation in education and care has to be the notion of learning and “becoming better” in what we do – otherwise evaluation is reduced to controlling or a description of the organisational landscape of a given care system:

“As they use powerful instruments of evaluation, people modify their words, reorder their thinking and look for evidence to support their ideas: this is called learning. This is intelligence in the making.” (MacBeath/Schratz/Meuret/Jakobsen 2000, 92f)

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As learning is a very intimate process, and “the most personal thing in the world, as peculiar as a face or fingerprint, even more individual than love life” (Heinz von Foerster, in: Kahl 1999) organisational knowledge development through evaluation is an individual and sensitive systems’ learning effort. If evaluation is supposed to give constructive answers to the above raised questions, summarized by “how good are we, how do we know that and how can we become better” (MacBeath et. al. 2000) instead of leaving resentment to outcomes by those evaluated or the resistance to the necessary change suggested by the external evaluators’ findings, evaluation has to take serious account of this concept of learning. Only then does what Peter Senge describes as the essence of the learning organisation become possible: it is

„ an organisation where people continually expand their capacity to create the results they truly desire, where new and expansive patterns of thinking are nurtured, where collective aspiration is set free, and where people are continually learning how to learn together.“ (Senge 1990)

In education and health services therefore practitioner research has become one form of (self-) evaluation which fosters professional learning (Fook 2001). Action Research1 and Reflective Practice2 (Schön 1983; Elliott 1991; Schratz/Walker 1995; Zuber-Skerritt 1996; McTaggart 1997; Selener 1998; Argyris/Schön 1999; Reason/Bradbury 2001; Coghlan/Brannick 2002) represent prominent action and/or practitioner research approaches.

However, much of the literature describes practitioner research in terms that resemble the discussion of definitions mentioned earlier. Yet we know that practitioners do not routinely think about practice in terms of academic discourse, few of us do. We reflect on our actions in a more wholistic and associative way and then apply logical analysis to these reflections. Many accounts of evaluation appear to miss out this stage, and move directly from ‚data’ to analysis without taking time to reflect on experience in a more wholistic way. How might we do this? How might we collect data that lends itself to reflective deliberation and leads on to analysis? One possibility is to make use of visual records, and particularly photographs, for photos lend themselves to reflection, to diverse interpretations and to the discussion of memories.

Photo-Evaluation (Schratz/Steiner-Löffler 1998; MacBeath et al 2000; Schratz/Löffler-Anzböck 2004) is a form of evaluation which borrows from practitioner research and self evaluation as well as from Image-based research (Prosser 1998), Visual methods in Social Research (Banks 2001) or digital ethnography (Goldmann-Segall 1998; Walker 2004). It closes the circle from seeing to learning to understanding (Schratz-Hadwich/Lechner-Kreidl 2004) when using photos as main data resource:

“In social research pictures have the capacity top short-circuit the insulation between action and interpretation, between practice and theory, perhaps because they provide somewhat less

1 “Action research can be described as a family of research methodologies which pursue action (or

change) and research (or understanding) at the same time. In most of its forms it does this by - using a cyclic or spiral process which alternates between action and critical reflection and - in the later cycles, continuously refining methods, data and interpretation in the light of the understanding developed in the earlier cycles. It is thus an emergent process which takes shape as understanding increases; it is an iterative process which converges towards a better understanding of what happens. In most of its forms it is also participative (among other reasons, change is usually easier to achieve when those affected by the change are involved) and qualitative.” (Dick 1999, March 2004).

2 „The cultivation of the capacity to reflect in action (while doing something) and on action (after you have done it) has become an important feature of professional training programmes in many disciplines.” (Atherton 2003, March 2004)

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sharply sensitive instruments than words and certainly because we treat them less defensively.” (Schratz/Walker 1995, 76)

What makes Photo Evaluation unique is its feasibility to use it in evaluation and research with children. Involving children in research and self-evaluation processes adds richness to the research process and enables adults to understand and learn about framework conditions for children together with them. Digital photography is easy to use for children as it shows relevant data quickly. Adult and expert language can not overrule and the images look beyond stereotyped phrasing. It is easy to publish for the children themselves and makes individual expertise visible to others.

It diminishes the power distribution between adult and child as it is not language but image based. Children and youth usually do not show the same command of spoken or written language as adults and therefore it usually is difficult to establish equal power relations as for example children “find it very difficult to react to standardised forms of feedback or to write elaborate reports” (Schratz/Steiner-Löffler 1998, 236).

Research and evaluation, though in search of “truth” only can describe reality as the researcher and her/his research background is understanding the world:

“I focus on the multitude of points from which we view both the world around us and the world within us. The notion of points of viewing encompasses where we are located in time and space, as well as how our combination of gender identities, classes, races, and cultures situates our understanding of what we see and what we validate”

writes Ricki Goldmann-Segall in her book on children’s thinking (Goldmann-Segall 1998, 3-4). This is true for everyday life, as well as for research and evaluation: academic disciplines, theoretic frameworks, the researcher’s role as well as gender, professional skills, values and believes form the base from which a researcher or evaluator starts her or his journey of discovery (Prosser/Schwartz 1998, Seale 2004).

Photo Evaluation moves a step further than conventional image based research in social science: It is not the ethnographer, the researcher or the evaluator who take the picture – it is the children, and in doing so they become the evaluators and the action researchers3.

3 All photos presented in this paper were taken by the child researchers. Due to data protection no child

growing up in an SOS Children’s Village however can be mentioned by her/his real name which is problematic in itself for participatory research:

“ Aside from the possible risks to the individual, to make the boys and girls ‘visible’ by using their names was impossible in this project due to the legal limits on using children’s names if they grow up under the care of state or any other form of out of home care. The joy of the young researchers in being able to publish their findings within the village setting openly stands in contradiction to legal and ethical requirements of doing research within such an organisational setting.” (Children as Researchers 2004, 18)

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Photo Evaluation in SOS Children’s Villages

As in conventional qualitative research, photos are the “raw” data. They are processed within the course of the evaluation as any other data: a research question is defined, a study design is created, then the data is collected, then it is discussed, interpreted, and finally it will be published.

The photos within the evaluation process make - other than words in an interview, a written report or a questionnaire - the individual construction behind reality production “visible”. They engage the people involved in the evaluation in a dialogue about the meaning, the intention, the “truth” of the individual behind the collected data much more than verbal pictures, metaphors or stories ever can. They are a triangulation by themselves - the researchers (children and adults) and the “visible” data between them over which they have to interact, engage, develop meaning, reason, create knowledge.

Publishing the photos in an exhibition to the whole village.

So ownership of personal knowledge is no unsolvable question any more. And no more modern robber barons (Egg, 2004b) are active in social science and knowledge generation: data becomes visible, becomes visible knowledge of individuals that can be shared, discussed or questioned: it is knowledge in the making. Knowledge in a systemic understanding is generated in a process which takes data and information and combines it with the (biographical, professional etc.) experience of a given system (Willke 1995).

Photo evaluation in this sense is not just a technical method but used as part of an empowering approach: it is conducted by the participants it fulfils the demands of social transformation in social work,

„in particular in this respect, ethnography has come to be used by social work researchers to counter deficit models of social functioning of client groups, resources of personal strength and skill to survive their situation. Banks and Wideman (1996), arguing from a Canadian context for

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an ‘engaged ethnography’ approach to social work research argue, that twentieth-century social work was characterized by programmes of solutions prescribed in response to the assessed deficits and capacities for people, but that in the twenty-first century it needs to harness processes which work with local identification of community strengths. As an example of this, their empirical work describes the use of ethnography as a method of needs analysis in the community, local volunteers are trained to be ethnographic interviewer-participants. Their research identifies needs which become the focus of further action research programmes, ‘Through this experience we have observed how ethnography can transcend the bounds of research to emerge as a strategic motivational vehicle in promoting community praxis’ (Banks and Wideman, 1996:318)” (Shaw/Gould 2001, 139).

Teach me, and I will forget …

Teach me, and I will forget, show me, and I will remember, Involve me, and I will learn.

(Source unknown)

Child participation is a notion still to be taken into more consideration by practitioners as much as policy makers. Although part of the three P’s along the Convention of the Right of the Child4 - Protection, Prevention and Participation - especially in care and educational systems, where adult responsibility for processes and structures has a long “grown up” tradition based on adult expertise and knowledge it is still a challenge for practitioners as well as policy makers to transform from sovereignty to co-determination.

(Child -)Participation or co-determination demands specific consideration of structural and systemic conditions regarding power distribution, access to knowledge and knowledge generation, decision making processes, goal setting and language. Very often (child-) participation projects are more of a “decoration” or an “alibi” than joint development and co-determination (Cooke/Kothari 2002; Egg 2004a).

The concept of “modern” childhood (Ariès 1962) is - in the cycle of social evolution - a young one and closely combined with the concept of (nuclear) family and western values in regard to public and private spheres. Originating in child protection and focussing on better health, hygiene, primary education measures (for a higher survival rate5 of babies and toddlers) it changed discourse focus by seeing children no longer solely as a source of family income and future support of parents however by creating them as precious objects of family care – and hence the future of a nation. Whereas the notion of (better) education, care and health has to be appreciated, nevertheless the paradigm shift created dependency on a variety of levels.

Women, who also were inflicted by this paradigm shift - especially through the social reduction of their role as wives and mothers - started opposing their reduced roles in waves of women

4 UNICEF (1989) The Convention on the Rights of the Child. UN General Assembly, General Assembly

resolution 44/25 of 20 November 1989. January 2004. 4 Comparable to “under five mortality” as a poverty and social indicator for UNICEF for example.

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liberation movements. For children it was and is different. Access to education, verbal skills, to power and resources, possibilities to assemble and unite are even more restricted to children than ever were to women. Hence children and youth up to a certain age do need adult support for co-determination and participation, whereas women can draw from their own strength and power as a social group.

Co-determination and participation of children in an adults’ world has a tradition guided by adult thinking. Youth Parliaments, child forums, child city counsellors are well meant approaches coming from adult forms of democracy and social interaction, however do not always reach youth and child population adequately, as they resemble the adult world and do not originate in child or youth interests (Egg 2004a). Quota systems for women work neither in the political nor the corporate world really well and would work even less for children and youth. Usually quota positions boil down to “decoration” or alibi” functions. Hence a re-framing of thinking is necessary.

Next to political stakeholders, policy makers in either educational systems or care organisations, also social science researcher have to undertake this re-framing of thinking towards children and childhood - if child participation is supposed to be more than lip service or stays put with small scale community projects but is to become part of social transformation and knowledge generation. In education photo evaluation has a longer tradition and proves it can support this transformation:

“However, when pupils move through their school building taking photographs, by discussing and reflecting ‘in the jungle of feelings’ this fine distinction between learning questions and life questions is partially remediated. In trying to find the unknown in the known and to sense where relationships exist between their school world and their world of feelings, their own views begin to count. What is important is how they feel.” (Schratz/Löffler-Anzböck 2004, 143)

For care systems, which have to combine tasks of care as well as (informal) education and cater to the development of the whole being (other than the educational systems which in their self concept do understand themselves responsible more for the intellectual than the social development and skills of the children), this taking serious “what they feel” and “how they can articulate it” seems to be even more important in care systems than in school systems, as there is only a fine line between “protection and care of somebody” and “making decisions for someone” (Sennett 2003).

Show me and I will remember…

„Criticisms of qualitative social work research have also come from within social work. For example, some research funders, especially within government departments in Western countries, too often mistrust qualitative

research as anecdotal on the one hand or guilty of mystification on the other.” Qualitative Research in Social Work. (Shaw/Gould 2001, 5)

Qualitative research often is considered unscientific (Seale 2004), qualitative research focussing on children and qualitative research done with or by children is seen by critics as an exotic project within a field that is itself contested, and so kept at arms length by those who might be expected to defend it. (Clark-Ibañez 2004; Egg 2004)

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Knowledge as an adult and expert domain is defined by adult thinking parameters (Foucault 1983, Willke 1995), deriving from a variety of scholastic fields in education, health, psychology, therapy, medicine, early childhood, development etc. This expert knowledge yet again is being used in the professional discourse as the basis for quality discourse in care as well as educational systems which cater to the needs of children, forming an exclusive circle of knowledge which is a challenge to enter for “other forms of knowledge” (see for example the difficulty of publishing results of “non-standard” research and evaluation approaches in articles in specific journals!) as “the role that competition plays in the generation of knowledge is not widely understood.” or taken into too much consideration (Gibbons et al. 1994, 55).

Academic tradition with its orientation towards “deficit” (a survey done on research in the field of out of home care in Europe in 2003 showed a high focus on trauma and deviance from norm [Egg/Ganzer 2003] and only little into “happiness and the well being” of children6) “creates” the academic view on children and their (supposedly non existent) capacity to participate (or not participate until well educated, well cared for etc…) as social actors in social processes: Or in other words - do we keep children as children, because we keep constructing them as children?

Care and educational systems have to take into consideration how the knowledge serving as basis for the social architecture of care or education environments is being created and leads into discourse, quality standards, guidelines, structures, processes and infrastructure of care and education settings - if child participation is to be considered a serious goal.

Developing forms of knowledge generation which take children’s thinking as one form of knowledge generation serious, needs to be joint effort of researchers, care and education practitioners as well as policy makers. Photo evaluation, digital ethnography and other forms of visual research are inclusive forms of qualitative research with children appropriate for education and care settings. Using photography as medium and photos as data for knowledge generation, the research process balances inequality between adult academic researcher and child as it is not language centred but uses photos for triangulation:

“What young people see through the lens of a camera, and what they capture in their photographic frame, demonstrates the ‘interconnectedness’ between places, rooms and areas, and feelings, emotions and associations.” (Schratz/Löffler-Anzböck 2004, 133)

6 In organisational research and development as well as in community development an „appreciative“ path

of inquiring for the strength and capacity of communities, individuals and organisations is strongly supported by Appreciative Inquiry and the Taos Institute for example. http://www.taosinstitute.net/ and the Imagine Chicago Programmes. www.imaginechicago.org.

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Involve me and I will learn.

“Quality is comparable to love. You can not take hold of it, yet it exists. You can experience it, but can not quantify it.

It is volatile, and you have to look after it constantly.” Evaluationen zur Rechenschaftslegung oder Qualitätsverbesserung. (Müller-Böling 1997, 90.)

SOS Children’s Village as an organisation has a long and powerful tradition in child care, building on educational and pedagogical expertise of many decades and countries with diverse socio-cultural settings. As a care organisation the focus and range of activities for many years has been on catering to the needs of the most marginalized group of human beings: children deprived of parental care. This has supported a social architecture of protection - with corresponding vision, mission and values. Nevertheless the paradigm shift of recent years from protection to prevention and participation alongside the Convention of the Rights of the Child discourse has had impact on any care discourse and also leaves its imprints in enriching the beliefs and values within the organisation and its social architecture towards a more rights based approach, with all the unavoidable challenges, as

“respect is an expressive performance. That is, treating others with respect doesn’t just happen, even with the best will in the world; to convey respect means finding the words and gestures which make it felt and convincing.” (Sennett 2004, 207)

Taking the steps from protection to participation demands new processes of organisational learning. A “creative” research project (Pichler 2004) is supposed to support a couple of those steps. “Seeing beyond Violence“ is a project geared towards organisational as well as social learning and insight and focused on social issues. It feeds back into the organisational learning cycle. It is participatory and touches intercultural and gender issues.

It started simple. The UN Human Rights Commission wants to publish a report (Pinheiro 2003) about violence against children, following the study on Children in Armed conflicts (Machel 1996). NGOs were asked to present their research. SOS-Kinderdorf-International, though active in the field of child care and child protection - and on the practical level confronted with the outcomes and sources of violence on a daily basis for more than 50 years - did not have ready made reports or available data on the issue.

The issue however is highly relevant. SOS Children’s Villages like any other care organisation unit are no heaven nor islands, acts of violence do not stop in front of guarded gates. Violence is an issue, in everyday practice, as well as in structural and educational discourse – in any child care and educational as well as social system.

In the organisational discourse and self construction of SOS however violence is what occurs “outside” of SOS – and the terminology hints to the dichotomy that if there exists an outside an “inside” must exist as well – often separated by walls, guards, barbed wire fence from the hostile and violent “outside reality”. There is a historical root into this, grown from first world charity discourse (Sennett 2003) in the beginning of the organisation’s growth and the concept of idealisation of the western norm of family living (Ariés 1962).

“First, there is a strong sense of the Village as a small world. Just outside my window is the boundary fence. On this side there are trees and flowers and the paths between the stone built houses are quiet and shaded. The plants attract a variety of birds and butterflies. You might

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hear the occasional child cry (or more often laughing) but mostly it is quiet and peaceful. I understand why Shubha told me she just loves to come here to work. On the other side of the fence there is an area of wasteland, piles of rubbish inhabited by warring packs of feral dogs, and beyond that concrete houses, large gum trees (but few shrubs) and the mix of streets and dirt roads that mark an area in transition from rural to urban as the growing city overtakes its surroundings.” (Walker 2004, 111)

“The premise for the children was always that violence does not exist in the Children’s Village. This would not have been acceptable for the people involved considering the violence, crime and living conditions of the people living outside the Children’s Village.” (Egg 2004b, 59)

How were we as an organisation to research into this challenging field – into violence – in the context of an organisational framework which implicitly touches north-south dialogue, concepts of childhood in a variety of socio-cultural settings and religions, educational discourses, national welfare practices and legislations, organisational practices, gender issues, cultures and taboos? Would it be enough to contract independent researchers? Would it be sufficient to open the field – and touch the issue and taboos – just to report to UN authorities – which then will compile any findings into a twenty page report? What else could/should we strive to achieve besides producing paper and statistics?

In the study we decided not to investigate into violence – neither the violence the children had experienced before admission, nor the forms of violence, the children might or hopefully might not have encountered after admission in daily educational or care routines and hence dig deeper and deeper into a complex web of causes and roots but to change the focus: To investigate the “absence” or “opposite of violence”.

“In this study we did not set out to add to the accumulated evidence on violence against children but to try and turn the instruments of research around so that we could see the world as children see it. One aspect of the problem, we believe, is that to continue to add to the research on violence against children, important as it is to do so, risks the consequence that it reinforces the role of children as victims, which is in itself a symbolic act of violence.

We do not want to deny the facts, but we want to create some small space in which children themselves can speak. In this study we set out to ask children to help us imagine facets of the world as they want it to be, not in abstract or futuristic terms but in terms circumscribed by their lives. We chose groups of children in four countries, Nicaragua, Colombia, Thailand and India who shared the fact that they had been orphaned or abandoned and were growing up in SOS Children’s Villages. We asked them to tell us about the aspects of their lives that they most valued. We explained to them that most languages do not have a word which describes ‘the opposite of violence’, only words that are negatives ‘absence of violence’ and ‘non-violence’, or words that are used so indiscriminately as to be almost meaningless, like ‘love’ and ‘peace’.

We knew that to ask children to respond to these questions in words alone was too abstract and too difficult and so we asked them to approach the task through images. We gave them digital cameras and asked them to photograph the most positive aspects of their lives, the things that were important to them, the things (people and places) that they loved, where they felt secure/protected and the things that were fun. Some of them we asked to select those photos that were of highest importance for them and to explain to us why and to write down their words. We asked them to share their images and to talk about them and it is the results of this project that we will report here.“ (Children as Researchers 2004, 10f)

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Research into violence against children has produced a long list of publications, its findings summarized in recent publications like Children and domestic violence (Tricket/Schellenbach 2002), HIV/AIDS orphan reports (UNAIDS/UNICEF/USAID 2002) or statistical handbooks on poverty (Kaul/Tomaselli-Moschovitis 1999; Kaul 2002). Statistics (see for example http://www.unicef.org/publications/index.-html) show that violence regardless of all the existing information about roots and results is growing as a social factor. Knowing about reasons and roots, better laws or the proclamation about rights and responsibilities alone does however not evoke change, learning and transformation as knowing what we don’t want does not directly lead to actions leading to what we do want.

We hoped that the changed focus, the paradigm, which in organisational and community development is known as “Appreciative Inquiry” or “Imagine” projects7 and in health discourse as Salutogenesis (Antonovski 1979, in: Schratz 2004) as well as the resource oriented approach in ethnography for example (Shaw/Gould 2001) will help in the organisational and social learning endeavour about those factors that constitute non violence – be it structural, social, emotional, gender wise or cultural.

Good practice, another term from organisational development (and in the gestalt of best practice nowadays benchmark of must-haves in any professional system), is usually defined by policy makers and/or practitioners – by those, who design or perform the practices, or by those, who define the standards or benchmarks for those on the practitioner line.

In the case of SOS Children’s Villages Good practice Workshops are being held in many countries and on all continents, where highly qualified staff work alongside handbooks and manuals to define whether their good practices are in line with organisational framework requirements8.

But those who are the beneficiaries or customers of the good practices – who are at the recipient’s end of practice - are seldom asked, can rarely participate. But would not they understand best what good practices are in professional child care settings?

So the idea grew and took roots – we wanted to learn from the children, understand what they consider good practices.

7 Imagine Chicago: http://www.imaginechicago.org

8 SOS-Kinderdorf International: Continental Workshop “Best Practice”. Asunción, Paraguay, 6 to 11 April 2003. Conclusions and recommendations. SOS-Kinderdorf International: Continental Good Practice Workshop South Africa, Johannesbug, 12-16 MAY 2003 SOS-Kinderdorf International: Good Practices Seminar. SOS Children’s Villages of India. 28 October - 01 November 2003 – Delhi (all: SOS-Kinderdorf-International, http://intra.sos-kd.org/kdi/projects/-good_pr_workshop/ )

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Imagine …

„There is, therefore, a political dimension to Bourdieu’s conception of science and what sociology should do in the modern world. It is political in the sense that for Bourdieu a key objective of social-scientific research is to

struggle against all forms of symbolic domination. He thinks of the intellectual vocation of social scientist in an activist sense. Acts of research, no matter how seemingly mundane, are acts of struggle, conquest, and victory

over taken-for-granted assumptions about social life: scientific research is a struggle against all forms of symbolic domination. By exposing through research arbitrary mechanisms that maintain power relations, the

social scientist is able to challenge the legitimacy of the status quo. As existing power relations lose their taken-for-granted character, this opens up the possibility for alternative ways of constructing social relations.“

Culture and Power. (Swartz 1997, 261)

Imagine 71 girls and boys.

Imagine them growing up in SOS Children’s Villages.

Imagine them, equipped with digital cameras catching glimpses of their realities. Working hard to show adults and friends what they understand by non violence.

In their photos the adult observer finds friends, brothers and sisters, flowers, trees, water, prayer, learning, games, laughs and tranquillity, places of retreat, music and meditation, dreams of lost biological family, images of one’s self, rainbows and a stray dog - as a symbol of free spirit. Only few adults encounter the careful observer in the collection of the photos.

A presentation of the pictures to the organisation’s top management left the listeners puzzled. “How much organisation” does the organisation provide – toys, rooms, gardens, activities, psychologists, therapists, playgrounds? And how little of these material assets of care are captured in the photos – and if, mostly incidental, background to the much more important message the children wanted to convey:

”there is not only one ‘reality’ in an organisation […], but multiple realities. Taking photographs offers a challenging opportunity to bring to the fore the different layers of reality of the […] ‘world’. So, the camera provides a special lens which can be focused on the single elements of [organisational] life by alternating between the foreground and the background and thus enabling apparently ‘unimportant’ details to become the main focus of interest.” (Schratz/Löffler-Anzböck, 2004, 142)

Much more than about infrastructural devices or educational staff the children’s photos tell us about relationship, about dreams and emotions, about complex intrapersonal processes to distinguish between fear and fun – and overcoming fear, about the importance of not being separated from siblings, the power of laughing, dancing, spirituality, the chances of education and hence leaving the circle of poverty and violence, the healing forces of nature.

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From looking to seeing.

“The world is only as big as the window you open to it.” (source unknown)

The photos differ somewhat in their sujets, character and depths. Some came up more accidentally in the course of events, some in a more precise process design.

They can be interpreted, categorised, grouped.

But most of all they lead a dialogue with the observer. About the observer’s own understanding of non violence. About the emotions that rise when looking at the smiling faces of two boys so close up any other photographer than another child would have invaded their privacy:

Two boys from Bangpoo, Thailand (Egg 2004, 93)

Or the girl, on the way back from an outing, beyond stereotyped images, in the village mini bus.

Kala looking back at the camera in a less conventional, less stylised and more reflective way,

rather than adopting the standard poses that are normally expected by adults. (Walker 2004, 147)

Some plants, bean stalks actually, turning from ordinary vegetable to the symbol of growth, capability, nurturing and life giving forces by a child’s comment:

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“Happiness, pride ... I sowed them.” The photographer is Ines,

a 9 year old girl from Medellín, Colombia. (Trübswasser 2004, 47)

“This is a qualitative study, but it is qualitative, not because we have a commitment to qualitative methods, but because the principles of participation require that we work in ways that make participation possible. We chose to work with digital photography because this provides the basis for methods that are transparent, that involve children and adults directly and immediately in collecting, interpreting and using information without the need for extensive training, understanding of theory or knowledge of the research literature.

This places the onus on the reader, rather than the subject, to understand the methodology of the project. For some this is a challenging position, since the project makes demands on the reader who has been schooled in conventional research or policy analysis to see the world as it is seen by those at the other end of the process. Sometimes this will mean following the research into areas that are important to those involved but perhaps not seen as immediately relevant by those removed from them. At other times it will mean being prepared to suspend critical disbelief as we explore interpretations that are speculative and imaginative but may not provide adequate evidence for generalisation.

Our aim is to bring about a shift in perspective – to help the reader see the world a little differently. We are not setting out the challenge the facts but rather to look at them from a different angle, perhaps to look behind and underneath them as well as facing them full-on.” (Children as Researchers 2004, 11f.)

For the children the story of the little boy who set out to become an artist yet had to learn that adults are incapable of understanding his art (are not able to see what he was seeing) was fun and mind setting as well:

“Once when I was six years old I saw a magnificent picture in a book, called True Stories from Nature, about the primeval forest. It was a picture of a boa constrictor in the act of swallowing an animal. Here is a copy of the drawing.

In the book it said: ‘Boa constrictors swallow their prey whole, without chewing it. After that they are not able to move, and they sleep through the six months that they need for digestion.’

I pondered deeply, then, over the adventures of the jungle. And after some work with a coloured pencil I succeeded in making my first drawing. My Drawing Number One. It looked like this:

I showed my masterpiece to the grown-ups, and asked them whether the drawing frightened them.

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But they answered: ‘Frightened? Why should any one be frightened by a hat?’

My drawing was not a picture of a hat. It was a picture of a boa constrictor digesting an elephant. But since the grown-ups were not able to understand it, I made another drawing: I drew the inside of the boa constrictor, so that the grown-ups could see it clearly. They always need to have things explained. My Drawing Number Two looked like this:

The grown-ups’ response, this time, was to advise me to lay aside my drawings of boa constrictors, whether from the inside or the outside, and devote myself instead to geography, history, arithmetic and grammar. That is why, at the age of six, I gave up what might have been a magnificent career as a painter. I had been disheartened by the failure of my Drawing Number One and my Drawing Number Two. Grown-ups never understand anything by themselves, and it is tiresome for children to be always and forever explaining things to them.

So then I chose another profession, and learned to pilot aeroplanes. I had flown a little over all parts of the world; and it is true that geography has been very useful to me. At a glance I can distinguish China from Arizona. If one gets lost in the night, such knowledge is valuable.

In the course of this life I have had a great many encounters with a great many people who have been concerned with matters of consequence. I have lived a great deal among grown-ups. I have seen them intimately, close at hand. And that hasn’t much improved my opinion of them.

Whenever I met one of them who seemed to me at all clear sighted, I tried the experiment of showing him my Drawing Number One, which I have always kept. I would try to find out, so, if this was a person of true understanding. But, whoever it was, he, or she, would always say:

‘That is a hat.’

Then I would never talk to that person about boa constrictors, or primeval forests, or stars. I would bring myself down to his level. I would talk to him about bridge, and golf, and politics, and neckties. And the grown-up world would be greatly pleased to have met such a sensible man.”(Saint-Exupéry 2001)

The researchers used the story as an introduction of the theme, and varied it with the story of the “white elephant” which is a useful tool for introducing research: As the blind men in the Hindu fable are sent out by the king to find the famous White Elephant and come back and describe it to the king (Schratz/Walker 1995), the children were blindfolded by the researcher and had to describe an object – each one only allowed to touch a single part of it (which resembles the “individual” academic approach to a research topic – according to a researcher’s background, her/his leading paradigm, theories and applied instruments the knowledge generated will differ and vary [Seale 2004, 412]) – and then, as a group had to discuss their findings and come to a conclusion on a shared understanding of what the object they had individually touched in segments was as a whole.

This helped the children to step beyond conventional looking and searching, although it was a process that took time and demanded a lot of experimenting with cameras and sujets.

“The first evening we began by explaining the idea of the project and having the children discuss in small groups what they would most want to photograph and which locations they wanted to visit. It was a universal choice to photograph the Mothers (especially in the kitchen and with the smaller children), to photograph where they lived, the gardens around the Village and their brothers and sisters. They were also very keen to visit the Fun Park and some liked the idea of going to the gardens. They thought too that they should take me to a temple so that they could explain to me about their beliefs. (At one level, Catholic and Muslim children seemed to

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share some aspects of Hindu belief and the families were far from doctrinaire about religious differences).” (Walker 2004, 102)

After discussing the project, the goals and possibilities with the children, the children took off in the villages to find what for them resembled the absence of violence best: They took photos, filed them on the laptop in archives, came back to them again and again to look at them whether they had captured what was important to them, took new photos, talked about them to the researchers and other children, interviewed each other:

“Digital photo cams are particularly suitable, since children can take numerous photos (up to 4,000 photos on a 512 MB Card). The photos can be seen immediately on the screen and, for example, be transferred to a laptop or – independent of a laptop – printed with a photo-printer onto photo paper. Speed (regarding viewing of photos and production of photos) is very suitable for working with children in this association.

The shot-dynamism can be compared to ‘lomo photography’. No shots are taken which are determined by the classical photo standards. Just as in lomo photography, the message and the dynamism of the shot is of primary significance. In many shots, therefore, people appear head-less, the photos are blurred, they are not centralized etc. However, the children take close-up shots which adults would find difficult to take without losing out on dynamism. Children are truly nearest to other children. Digicams are simple to use and are thus very suitable for groups of all ages.” (Egg 2004b, 76)

After collecting the photos and discussing them, they were published: all (child) researchers as well as the other children and the SOS Village staff should have a chance to see the photos. First of all, to learn about the project and the outcomes, about the ideas the children in the course of research were developing and the knowledge generated.

Secondly, only photos which were agreed on by children and SOS staff were to leave the village for further use (in publications or exhibitions etc.)

“JoT and I prepared an exhibition of the selected photos with the children’s comments for the last afternoon. One big poster for the photos of every child hung up in the CV-hall. First we invited the participating group to see the exhibition – which they enjoyed very much and after that we had a short meeting with them saying thanks to them and asking to give me their

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permission for using their photos in some publication of the investigation results. I explained them that the CV will get a copy of any publication with their photos.

After that they invited their families and showed them their work. They all enjoyed that moments very much – they seemed to be proud and happy (the participants as well as their mothers).” (Trübswasser 2004, 40)

From looking to seeing to learning.

“Success reflects a perception of quality as judged by a particular community of practitioners. But, all quality control is linked, legitimated and, ultimately, receives its credibility and scientific authority

from an idea, image, or concept of what constitutes good science including best practice.” The new production of knowledge. (Gibbons et al. 1994, 33)

Although the study is not meant to be an evaluation (or self-evaluation) as in the original use of the methodology (Schratz/Löffler-Ansböck 2004) we as an organisation hoped to learn from the researchers’ findings more about adequate non-violent framework conditions for family based out of home care from the children’s point of view. Not only for SOS Children’s Village programmes but also for out of home/residential /foster care in general. But it was in the nature of the enquiry that we could not force this, but rather had to give children access to the process and wait patiently to see what they did with it.

The effects of a case study like ‘Seeing beyond Violence’ within the organisation are manifold. It is a giant step to trust children to be researchers, since this reverses so many assumptions that we hold about expertise and authority. Addressing a hot issue like violence beyond a (narrowly) psychotherapeutic realm or statistics out of children’s files requires an imaginative leap. We still have a long way to go on both counts but involving the children in the study is a significant first step, and showing the staff of the four villages the potentials of participatory methodology an important achievement.

From the data of the sample of 71 girls and boys in four countries we can suggest that children growing up in the family based care of SOS

x are able to see themselves in relation to their given environment and have the capacity to reflect on themselves and their actions/attitudes according to their age,

x show a high level of reflective ability in understanding many of the material, immaterial as well as structural requirements for “non-violence”,

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x have a sense of what fosters their well being, independent of their culture, their religion, their sex and their personal biography,

x are capable of distinguishing between promoting and preventing conditions required for their and their brothers’ and sisters’ and friends’ well being,

x are able to establish trust and develop relationships with foreigners/researchers if given the conditions to do so,

x are able to express feelings and emotions and relate them to specific reasons and causes.

Any serious notion of violence prevention, we believe, needs to take this expertise into consideration. In practicing “non-violence” – be it within SOS education or in any other form of child care system - we believe that this means that children should participate in those processes, where framework conditions are being created for them, be it by

x an individual care giver

x a family of origin, a foster family or an SOS family

x an organisation for out of home, residential or family based care

x a community

x youth or social welfare officers

x policy makers.

This requires that any decision making body has to guarantee that children are given the conditions required to enable them to contribute to decisions. This includes giving them:

x the time

x the space

x the voice and

x adequate methodologies

to participate in the dialogue about the prerequisites for their well being and to guarantee, that children are not only “heard” but “listened to” so that their voices will be mirrored in the actions of the adults.

The processes required are not only those of rational decision-making about material conditions. According to the categories developed by the children in the research project on material, immaterial and structural preconditions for “non-violence” (like nature with water, flowers, trees and the like, friendship, brothers and sisters, spirituality and prayer, tranquillity and laughing, activities and chances), girls and boys (growing up in out of home care) must be given adequate possibilities

x to reflect on their needs and emotions,

x to make these explicit, and

x to find understanding and support with those who care for and guard them.

According to their age and capabilities children should be part in any decision making processes which concern them and their daily reality. If any organisation, any family, any community or any school will create opportunities for children to be heard, listened to, understood and accepted as partners in dialogue (and not an adult’s or organisation’s monologue) this will be a big step

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ahead. This, of course, presupposes that adults will not use these opportunities for purposes of exploitation, control or oppression, as there is that dark side to photography that we should not forget – the Nazi officers who took photos in the ghettos and the death camps, the US soldiers who photographed prisoners in Iraq, the terrorists who filmed executions etc. etc.

In the case of SOS the research project has already shown its impact on organisational decision making: the Austrian SOS association, planning a new SOS Village in downtown Vienna, will start a youth participation project together with the researcher Peter Egg: local youth authorities, representatives of SOS and the local community will develop a project of child- and youth participation, involving also community schools. Especially the highlighting of relationship instead of infrastructure, of self-organised instead of organisation-organised, was a trigger for Austrian SOS officials to rethink building and infrastructure plans.

In Latin America, where violence prevention is a community development issue for SOS the possibilities (and limits) of child participation in research projects and knowledge generation for prevention measures are being discussed.

If research is to fulfil its task as a tool not only for gathering information but generate knowledge (Willke 1995) and

„ethnography has come to be used by social work researchers to counter deficit models of social functioning of client groups” (Shaw/Gould 2001, 139)

“digital ethnography” (Walker 2004) as applied in Seeing beyond Violence might be a step into integrating expertise and tacit knowledge which otherwise might not become visible.

Outlook

“Each person, whether teacher, parent, student, or researcher, can find ways to honour the potential of any given media form and to push it beyond its boundaries. The author is artisan and explorer,

creating artefacts for others to share, change and exchange.”

Points of viewing children’s thinking. (Goldman-Segall 1998, 266)

Questions for quality development in child care as well as educational settings are manifold. It will depend on the given system and the individual system’s setting which questions will arrive for which Photo Evaluation can be a useful tool to find answers to.

Gender issues for example in out of home care would be areas for photo evaluation: asking for spaces in which girls and boys feel safe, feel strong, can learn about male and female identity for example might give new insights in more gender sensitive care and education processes. Integration within local environment and society might be another area: which spheres and places do children know, where do they move freely, what can they picture and explain, what actions to they pursue? Self reliance and independence another - what do they picture when asked to describe what helps them to feel independent, supports them in their decision taking, what supports their social learning for example? Another area might be on the structural level - how do children perceive welfare processes - admission to foster care for example? What would they picture if asked what made them feel welcomed, feel accepted?

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In cultural studies Photo Evaluation can play a mayor role: after the assassination of a controversial filmmaker in the Netherlands in November 2004, cultural and religious riots started in the liberal country and lead into an unknown level of collective violence, burning schools, churches and mosques. SOS Children’s Village Netherlands immediately launched a school project inviting schools of all level to send in their pictures of absence of violence: under the website http://www.soskinderdorpen.nl/tegenover/ schools already have sent more than a hundred pictures and messages within a couple of days after the start of the project expressing their understanding of absence of violence.

Along with the political discussion within EU countries regarding forms of cultural violence as an answer to mismanaged integration policy on national levels photo evaluation might proof a resourceful tool for social learning processes in regard to cultural awareness and learning.

Important is - as for any self-evaluation process - that those in charge and involved want to learn and that from the findings of the photo evaluation project the respective decision makers will take adequate actions towards change and development.

Impressum

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Contact

SOS Children’s Village Hermann Gmeiner Academy

Hermann-Gmeiner-Strasse 51 A-6021 Innsbruck Austria

www.hermanngmeineracademy.org

Public Relations

Ms. Karin Salchegger, karin.salchegger@sos-kd.org,

phone: +43-512-3316-5675 fax: +43-512-3316-5686

Research Management

Dr. Barbara Schratz-Hadwich barbara.schratz@sos-kd.org

phone: +43-512-3316-5681 fax: +43-512-3316-5686

Reference

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