5.2 Of school-centrism

Part of the induction provided for each participant before they commenced their study included the instruction that they could take the camera wherever they wanted, in school, at home, on holiday, at clubs, whilst shopping, with friends, with relatives. The first surprise then was how student perceptions of learning were so tightly focused on school. Not a single image was captured of any activity which was not school related, nor any photo with people who had no connection with school. Even the visit to Bletchley Park, though in a location other than school and showing a couple of guides from the site, had been organised by school and many of the images captured were of activities similar to those students would experience in school. Naturally then the responses participants and respondents provided during the interviews reinforced the emphasis on school, since the images provided the narrative for those discussions. When asked to consider their portfolio in toto and say whether they felt there was any area of their learning they hadn't had the chance to capture, some mentioned field trips scheduled for later in the year or that certain lessons/subjects had not been included and two remarked that they had no images of anyone engaged in homework activity. This despite each of the participants choosing to return the camera at the point where they felt they had captured the range of their learning experiences. Ethically, I didn't feel it was appropriate to press home the point that there might be some unexplored areas and possibly risk suggesting they had not done a good job. M was the one respondent who volunteered to take a camera, after observing "Yeah, I would have expected more out of school things really." She captured eleven images of which only one was not connected with school. And her first comment when asked about this image?

Figure 19 - driving lesons

This fixation with connecting learning and school needs further exploration to tease out the reasons why this is so. Perhaps the substantial proportion of time young people spend in school and from an early age afford school a significance over and above other activities or experiences they encounter. That together with the overt focus on learning that schools generate and formality and structure associated with it, as opposed to informal learning which is hidden or not discussed in the same way. On the other hand it could simply be that carrying a camera, albeit a compact one, around all day or whilst out with friends just isn't practical for a teenager. It could also be that the culture and ethos in this particular school has an influence on the way students perceive learning; might it be that in a different school, one where independent, self-directed learning features more heavily, students relate learning to the larger world from which they draw their support?

It is interesting to speculate what the portfolio of images might have been, had the study been initiated with similar individuals in a different environment within which learning occurs: scouts/guides, a book club, sports club, part-time work. Would the subjects of the images still have represented formal learning situations because the participants still think along those lines, or might the different environment encourage a completely different perspective?