Visual Studies, Vol. 22, No. 1, April 2007 Visual methods and the visual culture of schools JON PROSSER This article examines visual methods for understanding the hidden’ conundrum as its starting point and goes on to visual culture of schools. It adopts an institutional culture explore an array of visual methods and examines how perspective to equate the visual culture of schools with the they contribute to educational research. I will argue for a ‘hidden curriculum’ of schooling. A range of visual sub- methodologically framed, qualitatively driven, visually cultures is touched upon including architecture, non- orientated, mixed-method approach to examining teaching space and postures of teaching and learning. The overarching and substantive educational themes and possibility of conceiving the visual culture of schools as a research questions which are central to understanding holistic entity raises the problematic of devising broader the quotidian nature of schooling in the twenty-first more encompassing visual-centric methodologies combining century. mixed methods and cross-disciplinary approaches. ‘VISIBLE BUT HIDDEN’ CULTURES OF SCHOOLING INTRODUCTION The ‘visible but hidden curriculum’ is important because it reflects implicit powerful forces that shape Visual research is concerned with the production, everyday activities and also provides a methodological organization and interpretation of imagery. It draws on rationale for the study of overarching themes in analytical perspectives including sociology, media education. A fuller explanation lies in an understanding studies, psychology and cultural geography to study a of school culture. In 1963 Halpin and Croft applied the wide range of topics ranging from community, power, term ‘organizational climate’ to educational settings, and gender studies, to spatial relationships, and transplanting longstanding concepts from studies of spectatorship. Over the last three decades visual studies organizations (Lewin, Lippitt, and White 1939; Cornell have come to play a particularly meaningful role in 1955; and Argyris 1958). Subsequently a wide range of educational research. Qualitative enquiry, one of whose metaphors, for example, climate, ethos, atmosphere, main methods is observation, has led to the growing character, tone and culture were used to evoke the recognition that observable and tactile information is uniqueness of complex organizations like hospitals, important in understanding the everyday realities of banks and schools. Ogbonna’s definition of school life. One strength of visual research is it’s the use organizational culture captured the essence of these of technology to slow down and repeat observations and metaphors: encourage deeper reflection on perception and meaning … the interweaving of the individual into a (McDermott 1977; Mehan 1993). This is important community and the collective programming of since visual acuity questions the connotation, the mind that distinguishes members of one denotation and significance of observations that are too known group from another. It is the values, often taken for granted. norms, beliefs and customs that an individual holds in common with members of the social This special issue of Visual Studies, ‘The Visible unit or group. (Ogbonna 1993, 42) Curriculum’, reflects emergent, substantive and methodological trends in the social sciences and grounds The notion of organizational culture is important to them in schooling. In his call for papers Eric Margolis schooling for three reasons. The first is incumbent in encapsulated the multi-faceted nature of everyday visual Morgan’s Zen-like definition: ‘how organisations work schooling and insightfully reflects its complexity by when no one is looking’ (1997, 145). This suggests that posing an apparent conundrum. He asked ‘what is an organization’s culture is embedded in everyday, visible? What is noticed?’ and then juxtaposes this taken-for-granted actions based on underlying ‘visible curriculum’ with the notion of a pervasive assumptions. It is rarely observed or viewed as ‘hidden curriculum’. This paper adopts the ‘visible but problematic. Hence, because school culture is Jon Prosser teaches International Education Management in the School of Education and is a member of the Leeds Social Science Institute at Leeds University. He is involved in two ESRC projects: ‘Building Capacity in Visual Methods’ which is part of the Researcher Development Initiative and the ‘Real Life Methods’ a Node of the National Centre for Research Methods http://www.reallifemethods.ac.uk ISSN 1472–586X printed/ISSN 1472–5878 online/07/010013-18 # 2007 International Visual Sociology Association DOI: 10.1080/14725860601167143 14 J. Prosser ‘unquestioned and unconscious’ (Schein 1992, 239) it draws attention to taken-for-grantedness and the forms a ‘hidden curriculum’ that is all the more powerful unquestioned and unwritten codes of habitual practice. because it is visible but unseen. Second, organizational The third element ‘schooling’ is process orientated and culture is significant because it influences an organi- provides the context in which visual culture is situated zation’s outcomes. For example, Rutter et al. (1979) and enacted. The three elements combine to give a used the term ‘ethos’ to link school culture with effec- working definition of the visual culture of schools: tiveness thereby raising it on the agenda of educational the ready-made standardised visual scheme researchers. Furthermore, Mortimore (1980, 68) con- handed down by previous generations of nected statistical relationships between factors contri- teachers and authorities as an unquestioned and buting to school effectiveness and the ethos of a school: unquestionable guide to all observable events, Because … of the stability of the performance rituals, situations, objects, materials, spaces and measures, it is likely that an influence more behaviours which normally occur within powerful than that of any particular teacher, everyday schooling. It is the trace and markings school policies or indeed behaviour of of the past, present and probably the future dominant pupils, is at work. This overall hidden curriculum. (Adapted from Schutz 1964) atmosphere which pervades the actions of the It’s important to recognize that the visual culture of a participants we call ethos. school is a combination of generic and unique elements. The third important characteristic of organizational Generic visual culture describes observable, inscribed culture is its methodological beneficence. The increased and encrypted similarities of schools in terms of visual use of ‘culture’ over other metaphors was probably due norms, values and practices, which constitute taken-for- to its analytic power in understanding school life granted visual schooling. However, because schools (Hargreaves 1999), and because it offers, via comprise individuals, agency and the capacity to ethnography, an accepted and fertile methodological (re)interpret generic visual culture, school people create framework. their own unique visual culture. To paraphrase Marx, people make their own schools, but not just as they WHAT IS THE VISUAL CULTURE OF SCHOOLS? please. The visual culture of schools reflects teacher folklore i.e. ‘all schools are the same but different’. The There are cases for convergence and divergence of visual next section examines methods for studying the visual culture and school culture. Educational research culture of schools. typically relied heavily on number and word-based methodologies and their different epistemological VISUAL METHODS AND THE VISUAL CULTURE OF assumptions to shape education policies. Quantitative SCHOOLS researchers thus view school culture as a holistic entity and use multi-level modelling to correlate various It is unclear the extent to which research questions shape measures of school effectiveness. In contrast, qualitative research design and the adoption of specific visual researchers, including visual researchers, tend to view methods. It is uncertain, for example, whether visual school culture as a dynamic system of distinct sub- researchers identify visual-centric research questions and cultures (Prosser 1999). This paper will attend to what then select from the range of visual methods to answer constitutes visual culture and suggest available visual those questions or vice versa. Contemporary visual methods and their contribution to understanding. studies examine the meanings and significance of the production, consumption and circulation of material ‘Visual culture’ is useful term because it encompasses culture; crosscut by thematic concerns e.g. race, gender and combines three key elements – ‘visual’, ‘culture’, or communication. To examine topic-method decisions and ‘schooling’ – each worthy in themselves but in relative to contemporary practice, this paper will explore combination sufficiently distinctive and powerful to the dynamic relationship between visual-centric topics warrant further critical reflection. Arguably, the ‘visual and visual sub-cultures of schools and then reflect on culture of schools’, is as important as word and number- how they shape and are shaped by methodological based constructions of school culture. Image-based practices. The aim, via an illuminative range of topic- methodologies can inform education policy. The first method rich exemplars, is to generate a range of element in a visual centric method gives primacy to what insightful emergent method and methodological issues. I is visually perceived