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Thriving Across the Lifespan and Around the Globe: The Day in the Life Visual Research Approach is the result of several decades of international, pan-disciplinary research-team collaborations using quasi-ecological visual methodologies to investigate the psychosocial development of children in diverse communities. The initial studies highlighted in this work involved filming a ‘Day in the Life’ of toddlers and primary school children, their families, and schools in diverse communities in Asia, South and North America, and Europe. Filmed in their homes and communities for an entire day, the youngest participants were commonly seen to be thriving in diverse psychosocial domains, such as in their security strivings, emergent literacy and graphic representations, and musicality. Research shows that the nature of a child's development can vary in as many ways as there are diverse contexts. Thriving in the transition from home to primary school is a second developmental milestone investigated in the research.
The book serves as an account of the lived experiences of thriving children,among their families, their schools and their communities. The contents give an invaluable insight into the psychology of early childhood while giving the reader an opportunity to understand the resilience of mobile early teenagers as well as independent older adults. The contributions in the book also provide an additional layer to our understanding of visual ethnography by covering such phenomena as agency and communitarianism, spirituality, and the place of humour in the context of challenges encountered across the lifespan. Through presenting quasi-ecological experimental approaches, this reference enhances the reader’s insight into the texture and nature of thriving in situ, in natural contexts.
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As a social scientist, I am fascinated by how visual images can be used to document people’s experiences in an emotionally visceral fashion. In 2009 I travelled to Halifax as part of a research team studying international youth resilience using a new (to me) visual methodology called ‘Day in the Life’ (DITL), co-developed by Ann Cameron and Julia Gillen. I was delighted to learn Dr. Cameron was one of the research leaders and would be providing instruction in DITL and photo-elicitation. We used DITL to study youth from five different countries by filming a day in their life from morning until bedtime. From video clips in their day and pictures they took, we learned how the youth viewed themselves in relation to the world around them. For example, while videoing a young Canadian Indigenous girl, I learned how she experienced exclusion from certain city spaces, from various streets and stores, and how she coped by interpreting this with her family who freely discussed the history of racism and showed an inclusive way of listening to each other. Video clips and pictures by a young boy showed the influences pushing him to join youth gangs and how his resistance and the support from a few family members helped shape an identity that was not gang involved. That I could learn this and more through DITL astounded me, and my experience of the youth being studied was much richer than could be achieved by more traditional qualitative research methods. The power of this methodology is vividly brought to life in the resplendent collection found in Thriving Across the Lifespan and Around the Globe: ‘Day in the Life’ Visual Research Approach.
Ann Cameron and Julia Gillen co-developed DITL in 2001 for four large ongoing international research initiatives in more than 15 nations investigating thriving toddlers, school transition, early adolescents, and older adults living independently. DITL research from the early years was published in Gillen and Cameron’s 2010 book, International perspectives on early childhood research: A ‘Day in the Life’. A later DITL book, with Claudia Stella, was published in Portuguese and included DITL research from Brazil! The current volume is based on this last book and is a product of this strength-based authorship and visual research. The book highlights the flexibility of DITL and shows variations in how individuals thrive globally and across the life course, highlighting themes such as the importance of family, intergenerational musicality, cultural practices, spirituality, humour, touch, school, and so much more. More than anything else, DITL provides a window into how people experience their world. This book also captures the power of visual methodologies, the development of DITL, epistemological shifts, and researchers’ experiences. I particularly appreciate that chapters outlining theory and process involved in DITL and histories of visual methods contain examples of additional rich and diverse DITL research.
Finally, I am impressed by the ethical and respectful actions of the authors in locating research within the social settings of the participants rather than of the researchers. Cameron, Stella, and all of the chapter authors have found a way to honour the participants by employing DITL, allowing readers to see the world through the eyes of each individual, and by ensuring their stories and pictures are shared.
This book is the welcome product of the dedication of a host of research collaborations around the globe. Pan-disciplinary teams of investigators have examined the daily lives of individuals across the lifespan in diverse locations. The book was initiated in Brazil where colleagues, under the leadership of Claudia Stella, adopted the Day in the Life (DITL) visual research approach to investigate the successful transition to formal schooling of mobile primary school-aged children living in Sao Paulo. This team of scholars developed fascinating case studies of the children they filmed and scrupulously notated as they followed them throughout a full day in their lives, interviewing their caregivers and teachers, and observing them and in situ in interaction with family and friends, going about the very dailiness of their lives.
This work had been inspired by visual qualitative research in many diverse communities around the world, where other children in transition to school were filmed, observed, and celebrated. Their emergent literacy and graphic representations, their transitional capacity to form connections between home and school, their zest for learning and communicating in story and song were celebrated. In collaboration with Ann Cameron, the Brazilian team invited other Day in the Life investigators to set the stage for a book in Portuguese that would tell the story of the strength of the quasi-ecological techniques of filming and detailed note-taking, in revealing the wide range of circumstances and responses to them of thriving children that speaks for the diverse human capacity to find strength of purpose in enacting common basic psychosocial functions.
The international teams responded with chapters not only describing primary school children in entering the school door, but harkened back to the strengths of the seven little toddler girls investigated in the first applications of the DITL approach. These investigations were also followed and reported by investigations of resilient mobile adolescents and a newer cohort of studies of flourishing older adults who live independently in diverse global communities despite their advanced ages. The capacity to use humour to compassionate advantage, to demonstrate agency in challenging circumstances, and to extend a communitarian hand to those less fortunate seem to be hallmarks of flourishing human development from cradle to grave. A detailed history of the development of the approach is provided in the Appendix.
Chapter 1 details the methodological adaptations that demonstrate the flexibility of the methodologies to accommodate and celebrate strengths-based investigations of healthy human functioning in diverse contexts around the globe and across the lifespan. Chapter 2 provides a brief history of trends in audiovisual research. Chapter 3 reports on an illustrative application of the approach. Chapter 4 offers reflections on researchers’ experiences capturing audio-visual data, and Chapter 5 reports on touch as a communicative and exploratory medium.
In Chapter 6 we proceed to highlight the importance of family in the transition to school in Brazil, originally written in Portuguese; Chapter 7 provides a counterpart bridging of home and school, originally written in English about a study conducted in Canada; and Chapter 8 reports on a study conducted in Brazil about the benefits of cultural transitions to educational success. Chapters 9 and 10 describe studies of the social skill adaptions pairs of Brazilian students and the learning through imitation that Italian children make (originally written in Portuguese and English, respectively). Chapters 11 and 12, both reporting on studies in Brazil describe intergenerational musicality and cultural transitions through heritage cultural mediation. We conclude our journeys around the globe with Chapter 13, a consideration of humour as a mechanism for thriving across the lifespan in diverse communities of flourishing toddlers through to the very elderly; and Chapter 14, a case study of the spirituality of a thriving older adult in Brazil (these chapters were written originally in English and Portuguese, respectively).
Across all these studies shines through the power, effectiveness in knowledge; the zest, vitality; the sense of worth and the sense of connection of these striving people no matter their circumstances. It is with gratitude that we present this book That we dedicate to our enthusiastic participants.
For a short overview of our Day in the Life research approach see this 4-minute video: Legend: “Day in the Life Research Approach (https://youtu.be/ehC_pDU2Mzg)”.
Our visual approach films one Day in the Life (DITL) of thriving participants at different periods of development over the lifespan (Gillen & Cameron, 2010; Italian translation, 2015; Brazilian adaptation, 2018) and in diverse locations around the globe. We have visual DITL records for seven thriving toddlers (30-month-olds). We have studied eleven children in successful transition to school (five- to seven-year-olds). We have filmed and reported on the Days of eight resilient migrant adolescents (13- to 15-year-olds); and six older adults (over 80-years-of-age) who are living independently at home). The films are supported by individual interviews with participants and members of their families and follow-through exchanges with participants when and wherever possible.
Our quasi-ecological visual approach involves filming one Day in the Life (DITL) of thriving participants at different periods of development over the lifespan (Gillen & Cameron, 2010; Italian translation by Pinto and Toselli, 2015; Stella & Cameron, 2018) and in diverse locations around the globe. We have visual DITL records for seven thriving 30-month-old toddlers in Thailand, UK, Turkey, USA, Italy, Canada, and Peru. We have studied four Canadian, two Italian, and five Brazilian children (five- to seven-year-olds) in successful transition to school. We have also filmed the Days of two Chinese, two Thai, two Canadian, and two South African resilient migrant adolescents (13- to 15-year-olds). And most
recently we have filmed six older adults (over 80 years-of-age) who are living independently at home in Canada (two), Lithuania (one), Switzerland (two), and one participant in Brazil. The films are supported by individual interviews with participants and members of their families, by sketches of their environments; by elicited photographs captured by participants; and follow-through exchanges with participants whenever possible. Table 1 provides a summary of the methodology.
The initiation of the procedures involves the initial very time-consuming recruitment processes before the actual research really commences. In the illustrative Table 1 case of the current work, in the recruitment of preschool girls and boys, their teachers and parents in numerous locations around the globe, precursor work involved extensive ethical consideration and thoughtful engagement. Research institutional ethics review boards and educational authorities must be satisfied of the professional ethical standards of the research. Participants must be well-apprised of the potential limits on anonymity occasioned by the dissemination of findings from visual data, despite use of pseudonyms, the opportunity to withdraw participation at any time and other cautions carefully negotiated before proceeding with the research and continuing participant-checks of continuing consent over time. Educational approvals are accomplished, and institutional ethics boards are approached and approvals obtained.
The work with children to be identified as doing well at home and in transition to school involves visits to both home and school. School and family visits require meeting teachers, school administrators, and children and their families, providing all ethical details of research procedures, and ensuring all potentially involved become fully informed and involved. The teachers and families are left with all the information and asked to contact the researchers if they are interested in proceeding. No pressure is placed on potential participants to volunteer that engagement. No research is conducted until this stage is completed.
Once pro-actively contacted by the potential participants, the researchers make preliminary research visits in which they obtain informed consent, gather basic demographic information, interview families about their childrearing practices, their children’s histories, hold brief filming practices, and provide the families with a camera, including instructions for eliciting photographs by the children. Schools are also visited with the same agendas of informed consent uppermost. It is intended that practice filming acclimatized participants to the intended procedures. A date is arranged for actual filming that would be convenient to the school, the family, and the Child Study Laboratory. The interviews with teachers and family members regarding demographic and contextual information are audiotaped and transcribed.
The crucial research phase is enacted with the actual filming of a Day in the Life of a participant. The local researchers visit the child’s home first thing in the morning and then they go on to school with the child for the full school day and then return home after school for the rest of the child’s waking day. One researcher films the Day (up to 12 hours), the other takes field-notes, sketches surroundings, and retrieves the disposable camera. In some locations, the research team toggled two-hour shifts of notetaking and filming as each task has different challenges and shifting roles can enhance engagement and reduce relentless physical demands on the researchers.
The local and international members of the team (at least three researchers) create one half-hour compilation that represents the events of the Day. Each team member individually views in real-time the footage of the full day, making suggestions of a half- to one dozen possible short, filmed-segment clips. These suggested clips are discussed within the team until a consensus is made and a half-hour compilation of about six five-minute clips of exemplary action is created. The child’s elicited photographs are also printed and put in an album for their inspection. The half-hour compilation and photos are used for iterative data collection purposes, to elicit parent, child, and teacher contemplations, so the researchers acknowledge and record the responses of each of the child, the parents, and the teacher, as they reflect on the compilation and photographs.
Data analysis and dissemination: All research teams compile their information from their local data collection to share with the full team of investigators who collaborate on data analysis and publication. This includes: Interview responses, field-notes, maps, video footage, and photographs. Once all data are collected at each distal site, footage, recordings, and transcriptions from the first four research stages are shared with the entire international research team from a highly secure central institutional Cloud location.
Consultations between researcher subgroups who work together result in member-initiated theme selection and protocol analyses all grounded in the data. Interpretation of data is always the main responsibility of the local investigators, but international input is often welcome and enriching to understanding. Dissemination ensues through individual oral presentations at scholarly conferences, through team-developed symposia, colloquia and workshops at international professional meetings, and through books and book chapter contributions.
In conclusion, this book provides researchers, practitioners and community members engaged in supporting the healthy development of humans from cradle to grave a lively vision of the texture and taste of the daily experiences of ordinary flourishing people in situ. The methodology can inspire readers with a felt sense of the navigational processes of quotidian life, be they: community case workers, teachers at the chalk face, parents in intimate contact with their child or teenager,
or researchers with a general sense of development but in search for the underlying nature of its basic processes.
One need not be a researcher to learn from the lessons of the chapters of this book to take away notions of how to co-experience the navigational processes reported here, and see and re-see the depth of understanding one gains from embedding oneself on the ecological experience of being partners with community members, be they toddlers, teenagers or elders, to gain a deeper understanding of looking and listening to their experiences in concert with other interested partners. One can learn about the early journey toward citizenship starting in kindergarten in Chapter 3, the learning at home and school and then arriving at home again, as in Chapter 7 and the magic of intergenerational sharing of same in Chapter 11.
For a short overview of our Day in the Life research approach see this 4-minute video: Legend: “Day in the Life Research Approach (https://youtu.be/ehC_pDU2Mzg)”.
Not applicable.
The author declares no conflict of interest, financial or otherwise.
I thank the generous colleagues who have written journal articles, book chapters and, translations that have furthered our understanding of thriving across the lifespan and around the globe.
This chapter outlines some of the key historical and epistemological shifts that have affected how visual and audio-visual methods have been understood and used in the social sciences. It details the technological advances and broader theoretical transitions that have enabled new opportunities for working with teams across disciplinary, geographic, and cultural boundaries. It uses the Day in the Life audio-visual, quasi-ecological methodologies as an exemplar where possible, of a more collaborative and participatory research design that uses visuals and reflection to foster reciprocity between researchers and participants, minimize power barriers and produce new knowledge, while amplifying the authenticity of the research findings.
Visual images have the power to move us emotionally in ways that words alone cannot. However, visual imagery produces effects that go beyond the personal; visual data can offer supplementary insights that may be inaccessible via other methods alone (Lynn & Lea, 2005). Photographs and other visual images have been used to document the human experience since the 19th century (Prosser & Loxley, 2008). Early technologies for capturing visual images, such as the microscope, telescope, and camera, made it possible for researchers to observe, report, and theorize in different ways about the world, according to Prosser and Loxley. Galileo’s invention of the telescope was an especially important precursor to the inclusion of visuals in research practices: 1) it had the effect of scientists understanding the ‘reality’ of the world as discoverable via instruments as opposed to an understanding of the world based purely on faith and belief and 2) the “legitimacy of science came to be based in large part on its claim to describe a world in visual terms. In this way, the eye became the privileged sense of science,
and of modernism” (Harper, 2003, p. 177). It was the invention of the camera, however, that brought forth the birth of modern visual research (Harper, 2003; Prosser & Loxley, 2008).
The use of visuals for social science research first occurred in the disciplines of anthropology and documentary photography, followed by developments in sociology (Ball & Smith, 1992; Prosser & Loxley, 2008). Images were originally used in anthropology to capture and catalogue detailed anthropometric measurement and classifications of different human social and racial groups, in collaboration with paleontologists, archaeologists, and geologists (Ball & Smith, 1992; Prosser & Loxley, 2008). Early visual anthropologists used photographs as evidence to authenticate their reports on the “visual differences of alien culture” (Ball & Smith, 1992, p.9). Documentary photography, on the other hand, used still and moving images to highlight social injustice and promote change by buttressing a political message (Blyton, 1987). The documentaries showed, for example, impoverished conditions of exploited factory workers, war victims, and the rural and urban poor (Blyton, 1987). Likewise, photographs were first used within the discipline of sociology to elucidate the difficulties associated with inadequate housing, prisons, employment, and other social issues (Stasz, 1979).
By the 1950s and 1960s, changes began to occur in who took the images for research and for what purposes. Anthropologist John Collier had a professional photographer take photographs of local living situations in Quebec and used the images as prompts in interviews (Prosser & Loxley, 2008). Previously, anthropologists and ethnographers had professionals take photographs of ‘unknown’ cultures (or took the photographs themselves). Prior to the 1960s, positivism dominated the theoretical frameworks employed by visual researchers. This was primarily due to the belief that because the camera operates via mechanics, it captures ‘reality’ and therefore known and measurable truths could be discovered through its use (Ball & Smith, 1992). But scientists began to criticize the trustworthiness of visual studies beginning in the 1930s because of the recognition of the ease with which photographs could be manipulated (Harper, 1993; Prosser & Loxley, 2008). Following the mid-1960s however, social scientists began to integrate photographs and other images into their research processes again, albeit with more critical and reflective stances. There was increased understanding “that the type of media and mode of production of visual data are important in determining the meaning we ascribe to imagery” (Prosser & Loxley, 2008, para.9).
The late 1970s and 1980s signaled several significant shifts in visual research. There was an increased proclivity to exploring the multiple ways people experience and understand visual artifacts and everyday imagery. This led to a new field of analysis within the field of cultural studies, labeled visual culture. Studies of visual culture focused on how visuals are produced, consumed, perceived, and experienced (Goffman, 1979; Prosser & Loxley, 2008