In this study, as part of an intervention program in which students and their teachers participated in a school development project, we examined students' perceptions of connectedness to their urban school. A photovoice method was employed to map out the multiple emotions associated with the school connectedness experienced by 61 students from…

Multiliteracies pedagogy has played an important role in the way classrooms worldwide conceptualize literacy learning. And yet, some argue, its orientation toward literacy by design, with an ultimate focus on the production of transformed texts, may narrow the very possibility of opening students' social futures that it seeks to promote. Recent…

In this research, the authors explored how teachers using student-generated photography draw on local knowledge. The study draws on the framework of funds of knowledge to highlight the assets marginalized students bring to the classroom and the need for culturally relevant pedagogy to address the needs of a diverse public school population. The…

The paper draws from a longitudinal ethnographic study of a group of diverse children growing up in an urban, low-income, predominantly immigrant community in the northeastern United States, who were given cameras to portray their everyday family, school and community lives. It analyses the images, narratives, activities and intimacies of their…

This study, situated in an inner-city school in Western Canada, involved 20 seventh graders producing photo essays about living with racism, classism, or sexism. Two questions guided the study: (1) How do students working with a critical pedagogue conceptualize their own experiences with race, class, and gender in ways that either interrupt or…

The high school dropout crisis in diverse urban communities in the United States is evidence of an endemic disengagement from formal education. The project on which this essay reports utilized visual sociology methods to explore city students' perceptions of schools' purposes, as well as the supports for and impediments to their school success.…