This book makes a case for the usefulness of visual research methods for advancing a social justice agenda in education.  The author aims to provide education researchers with a wide range of qualitative visual research tools to invoke different stories, voices, embodiments, and experiences of individuals from marginalized communities; to advance emancipatory research projects; to embrace interdisciplinary knowledge-building; and to counter-narrate Western forms of knowledge, cultures, and values for the reimagining of education for social change.  It draws attention to the importance of visual methods in today’s neoliberal landscape of education to speak back to mainstream research and practices, especially when research participants lack words to describe, express, and represent what it means to be impacted by oppression and marginalization.

Laura Azzarito is Professor of Physical Culture and Education and Co-Director of the Visual Research Center for Education, Art, & Social Change (VRC) at Teachers College, Columbia University, USA. Her scholarly work is situated at the intersection of socio-educational and critical theory and practice, and uses creative visual methodologies to explore youth embodiment with a focus on the intersectionality of gender/sex, social class, race, (dis)ability from constructivist, CRT, postcolonial, post-feminist, and trans theories. 

“Laura Azzarito has opened up a new space in the research literature. There are many books about visual research methods, and a growing collection of diverse studies that involve the use of visual media, but this book steps beyond methods and techniques to place the visual as central to social action.” (Rob Walker, Emeritus Professor, University of East Anglia, UK)