Book Review: The Sage Handbook of Visual Research Methods

Abstract

This handbook is a large volume at 754 pages and a traditional approach to a book review would have been difficult. For this reason, we have chosen to draw out a few key themes that arose from our group discussion of the book. These themes relate to what we felt to be forward thinking in the handbook, but also to points that need problematising further. As a group of early career academics new to social sciences, we found many of the issues raised in the handbook were interesting to reflect on. As we are also trained art historians, designers and architects now working in education, the book summarises much of what we have found in our transition from visual-based disciplines to the social sciences. This also relates to what it is to be from a generation that has grown up with images playing a large part of the way in which we make meaning, going into a group of established social science academics used to working with words. We feel that this handbook is a great resource for thinking about many of these issues.

The Barcelona Conference on Education 2023: Official Conference Proceedings

“…My pictures documented the outdoor horticultural area, creative gardens and communal forest school, the working indoor restaurant and the kitchen, the spaces that were often utilised to develop the students' life-long learning skills delivered through the 'Preparation for Adulthood Programme'. The digital images have since served to elicit (Yamada-Rice et al, 2015) other ideas, memories and questions that were not apparent on the day but have organically manifested as the partnership has evolved.…”