This article addresses a challenge for sociologists who teach at institutions located in unfamiliar cultural contexts through a photo elicitation project to develop students' sociological imaginations while teaching the instructor about students' social contexts. In introductory courses, we must present sociology as a field of study that is…

When talking with New York City educators about the circumstances of teaching during the upheavals wrought by COVID-19, common terms get repeated: "brutal," "chaotic," "confusing," "traumatic," "disorienting," "sad," and "lonely." While art education often includes digital tools…

Objects are rich sources of inquiry; they invite individuals to observe closely, pose questions, forge connections, and anchor ideas in the concrete. By examining a son's craft project, a family photograph, and an image of tectonic plates, the authors demonstrate how objects can elicit rhetorical invention. While this venture started as a writing…

Teaching the Holocaust in a first-year writing course--using photographs of the Shoah as a primary resource--authorizes students to engage in research and writing that provides a place of empathetic, dignified witnessing for those who were denied the possibility of realizing the lives they were meant to live. The author believes that in engaging…

Ling Li, who is an education professor in China, initiated the conversations that resulted in the dialog presented in this article. She sought out Susan's support for a grant from the Chinese government for arts-based educational research. Correspondences between Susan and Ling have continued over two years and set the stage for Morgan's research…

This paper explores how photographs can be used to teach urban social geography to second- and third-year university students. In it the author describes her work acquainting students with the skill of "directed observation". She argues that teaching geography through photography is not merely asking students to take pictures but rather, the…

This is the fourth and final installment in a series of articles presenting a new outlook on the methods of instructional design. These articles examine the nature of the process of instructional design and are meant to stimulate discussion about the roles of designers in the fields of instructional design, the learning sciences, and interaction…

The current interest in multimodal rhetoric was anticipated by Jacob Riis's social documentary texts and presentations during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. In contrast with the socialist urban critiques presented by Friedrich Engels, Riis's work demonstrated profound ambivalence toward the city's poor. While calling for reform…

This essay focuses on a 4th year course, titled "Search/Research/Resolution," that the author has developed at the Ontario College of Art and Design (OCAD), Toronto. First taught in 2002, the course is held over a fourteen week semester each fall, with one three hour class per week. It is offered within the photography area at OCAD in…

This paper reflects on the use of digital photography in urban-based human geography fieldwork. It draws on the authors' experience of introducing digital photography into the teaching and assessment of a level 3 undergraduate field course in Berlin. To begin they outline how they sought to use simple digital technologies in order to facilitate…

It's a hot day in July. The author finds herself in a university classroom in Banda Aceh, Indonesia, listening as an Achenese elementary school teacher narrates a children's story. As the teacher breaks into song in the middle of the story, the 20 other teachers in the classroom join in. The author is awed by their talents and thinks about how…

The perspective that the physical structure--the classroom, the building, the campus--in which one learns is irrelevant or, at best, ancillary to what transpires within the walls of the institution is troubling, especially for those concerned with educating individuals in the ways in which design and behavior interact. In this article, the authors…