Visual Images as Tools of Teacher Inquiry

Abstract

As aspiring professionals, pre-service teachers must become good consumers of educational research as well as competent researchers who can use tools of inquiry to improve their practice and conduct their own educational research. Many, however, resist learning research skills or find difficulties in doing so. This article presents ways in which learning in a graduate research class was prompted by methods of multimodal analysis and composition. The graduate-level teacher candidates in the class were taught, in particular, to use visual images as analytical and generative tools, and in doing so, they came to learn about the research process and their role as researchers. Moreover, working with visual images allowed the pre-service teachers increasing clarity in observations and interpretations of what they were seeing in classrooms where they were observing. By using visual images, teacher candidates seemed to arrive at theoretical insights that were possibly predictive of future, productive classroom practices.