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A Short Guide to Making a Visual Narrative
What is Visual Narrative?
Visual Narrative is a useful method for providing children
identified as being on the
autism spectrum with the opportunity to have their voices heard.
The opportunity
provided by this method is especially significant for this group
as their voices tend to
be marginalised (Humphrey and Lewis 2008).
When photographs are put together in a sequence it is called
Visual Narrative. Images
alone do not tell us enough and often need words to accompany
them. The method
outlined here will promote the use of Photo Story 3 to create
Visual Narrative. This
method could be used in a range of ways within the classroom,
beyond the classroom
and even beyond the school depending on what information was
needed. In my own
research, one thing I was interested in was how children
experienced different areaswithin the school and used it to explore
this (McGovern 2013).
Benefits of Photographs
Photographs are inclusive way of researching as it allows
allchildren to have a say.
Since photographs are visual in nature they are a natural way to
empower those on the
autism spectrum as they tend to be visual learners (Dunlop et
al. 2009). Photographs
help to address the social and political imbalance between
adults and children and
provided a format that allowed children to make a contribution
to their community
dialogue. Cameras are technically straightforward to operate and
allow perspectivesto be captured by all with similar levels of
technical skill.
Making a Visual Narrative in 3 Steps
1) Children to take photographs with the appropriate structures
provided to enable
them to complete the task
2) Photographs to be uploaded to the computer to allow children
to create their visual
narrative
3) Visual Narratives can be created on a number of programmes.
It is recommended
to use Microsoft Photo Story 3. This can be downloaded for free
fromhttp://www.microsoft.com/en-gb/download/details.aspx?id=11132
If you want to
make voice recordings you will also need a headset with a
microphone
Photo Elicitation
The Photo Story 3 Programme by Microsoft can be used to create
the concept of
Visual Narrative. Photo Story provides space for photo
elicitation a valuable and
underutilised method (Harper 2002). Photo elicitation involves
using photographs to
evoke comments, memory and discussion. According to Banks (2007,
p. 88) with
such a method, specific examples of social relations or cultural
form depicted in the
photographs can become the basis for a discussion of broader
abstractions and
conversely, vague memories can be given sharpness and focus,
unleashing a flood of
http://www.microsoft.com/en-gb/download/details.aspx?id=11132http://www.microsoft.com/en-gb/download/details.aspx?id=11132
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detail. A range of methods can be used in Photo Story 3
depending on the child's
communicative preference. There is the possibility for typing,
speaking into a
microphone or getting an adult to type. Be creative about it and
use the children to
help you generate more methods if possible.
When visual narratives have been created with groups of children
not on the autismspectrum, the tasks set have been opening ended
e.g. children are provided with
minimal instructions (Ryan 2008). However, when I used visual
narrative with
children on the autism spectrum, I structured the task much more
than it had been in
the previous examples I had looked at this helped to support
children who had
difficulties with imagination (Wing 1996). Children were given
very specific
instructions including how many photographs they were expected
to take and a time
limit was also set. In some cases some children asked if they
could do other things as
part of the task. Some asked if they could take extra
photographs because they had
used all that was allowed as part of the initial allocation;
this was encouraged as the
main purpose of the structure was not to limit what they all
could do but to enable all
to access the research at some level.
Some of the support materials I used can be found below. Please
feel free to edit. If
you have any questions please feel free to email me @
[email protected]
