Using participants’ photo-narratives to elicit their perspectives on social interactions in schools.

Visual methods are well recognised as a means for capturing participants’ views of their experiences (Pink, 2001, Prosser, 2009). This paper discusses why visual methods might be used in investigating insiders’ perspectives, particularly those of school students, of their social and policy situations in schools, and how this might lead to the empowerment of marginalised insiders whose voices are often repressed by those with formal authority in institutions. In considering the different ways in which visual data may be analysed the paper focuses on the importance and richness of visual subjective data, especially when organised into narratives by participants, and points out how the cross-referencing of subjective data becomes the means of constructing the credibility of a study.