Abstract This article examines Francis Alÿs’s Children’s Games as a global visual archive through which children’s play can be understood as an embodied and vernacular form of cultural heritage. Drawing on visual autoethnography, the three authors engage closely with individual films from Alÿs’s series: Hopscotch, Conkers , and Saltamontes . Through repeated viewing, collaborative dialogue, and autobiographical reflection, they consider how visual encounters with children’s games activate memories of place, movement, material objects, social rules, competition, and belonging. Across the reflections, play emerges as a form of cultural knowledge transmitted not primarily through formal instruction or institutional preservation, but through watching, repetition, correction, argument, adaptation, and embodied participation. The article considers the ethical complexities of interpreting images of children across unequal global contexts. The authors resist both damage-centered readings and assumptions of universal childhood experience, instead attending to how games are shaped by local environments, histories, resources, and social relations. They propose Alÿs’s films as visual pedagogical provocations that can support intergenerational memory work, oral history, place-based inquiry, global citizenship education, and the study of digital play. The films invite a pedagogy of wonder grounded in sustained attention to the ordinary practices through which cultural heritage is remembered, contested, adapted, and carried forward.
Abstract Kaitiakitanga: Turning the Tides is a documentary exploring the restoration of Waitarakao (Washdyke Lagoon) through research grounded in Māori knowledge, values, relationships, and responsibilities. The film documents how environmental knowledge, informed by maramataka (≈ a Māori lunar, seasonal, and ecological system of time) and intergenerational learning, guides collective engagement with the lagoon. Historically an important food-gathering area for Ngāi Tahu, Waitarakao has experienced significant ecological degradation, prompting collective efforts to restore the health of its waters and reconnect people with place. Through the voices and experiences of Indigenous knowledge holders, educators, children, young people and community members, the documentary shows how participants enact kaitiakitanga (≈ culturally grounded and intergenerational responsibilities of care, protection, and restoration) through environmental action and shared responsibility. The film foregrounds storytelling and visual media as ways of communicating research beyond conventional academic contexts. It invites reflection on how collective action, intergenerational knowledge transmission and sustained relationships with place can contribute to the restoration of ecosystems and the renewal of human relationships with the natural world.
Abstract Arts subjects occupy a marginalized position in Austrian middle schools (years 5–8) and are frequently taught by out-of-field teachers who lack formal training in the subject. Teachers’ embodied engagement, that is, the use of posture, gestures and gaze, is fundamental to effective arts pedagogy, as it models creative practice and directly shapes students’ learning experiences. This study examines how out-of-field teachers in Austrian middle schools navigate professional identity and the emotional challenges associated with teaching arts . Using a video-based design, two out-of-field teachers’ lessons were selected from a pool of 13 participants, filmed, and analyzed using multimodal (inter)action analysis, alongside pre-and post-lesson interviews. Findings reveal that out-of-field teachers displayed a high number of lower-level mediated actions, including frequent shifts in posture and eye contact, and increased use of gestures, particularly in emotionally challenging situations. These embodied patterns suggest that limited subject confidence constrains teachers’ ability to effectively support students’ learning in arts education. Taken together, these differences in body language reflect different coping strategies adopted by out-of-field teachers in unfamiliar settings, highlighting the considerable professional and emotional costs of teaching outside one’s area of expertise.
Abstract This study examines using poetry as a disruptive pedagogical innovation in university assessment. Looking into the implementation of a final exam in an undergraduate Learning and Development module for Initial Teaching Training, this exam used art dialogically for knowledge construction and critical-creative reflection of disciplinary content. Through Collective Autoethnography, it is argued that using poetry as a pedagogical resource, along with principles of dialogic pedagogy, disrupted and transformed the evaluative space turning it from rote memorization into a meaningful learning experience. Paired with surprise and curiosity, uncertainty is arguably central to the transformation of teaching and learning. The study contributes to the fields of active learning and innovative assessment by demonstrating how the evaluative process can become a learning process, while noting important considerations and limitations for implementation. The implications of this study are relevant for educators interested in making their teaching and assessment methods more dialogic, collaborative and reflective.
Abstract Although a wide range of digital picturebooks is available on the market, it may be difficult to identify those that have been optimized for children’s literary experiences and language and literacy development. To provide strong examples for educators, parents, and digital picturebook producers, the authors explore how research-based knowledge about children’s engagement with digital picturebooks can inform digitization practices that may enhance the potential of print books. Following a brief review of research evidence underpinning the digitization process presented in this article, the authors describe how a production team of researchers and a designer collaboratively developed a set of twenty digital picturebooks for use in research with three- to four-year-old children in both home and early childhood education and care settings. Finally, the authors discuss and illustrate specific design features intended to promote children’s literary experiences and enhance their language and literacy learning.
Abstract This article explores how participatory photography can offer new ways of understanding children’s visual lives, interests, and meaning-making in early childhood education. It draws from a doctoral study that investigated children’s experiences of visual arts learning in three early childhood settings in Aotearoa New Zealand. While the broader project used a range of participatory and qualitative methods with teachers, children, and families, this article focuses specifically on the methods used with young children. Six participants and their families across the three ECE settings were invited to document their visual experiences at home using digital cameras, offering insights into what held significance in their visual and material worlds. The article shares the narratives of three children, four-year-old twins Ellie and Sydney, and four-year-old Finn, to illustrate how child-led visual storytelling can challenge adult-centric research norms and foreground children’s agency, creativity, and rights. Framed by an interpretivist, narrative orientation, it concludes by considering the ethical and methodological implications of positioning children as co-researchers and argues that participatory visual methods can meaningfully value children’s voices, identities, and lived experiences, contributing to debates on children’s rights ( UNCROC Articles 12 and 31), visual literacy, and methodological justice in early childhood research.
Abstract After she organised a workshop for teenagers, focusing on the visual representation of Social Utopias, the author considers the motivations behind what made an Island theme spring quite instinctively into the minds of students, as a site for social improvement. Is the figure of the island a fertile cocoon for the imagination? A bubble for creativity, allowing for the suspension of preexisting social constraints inherited from actual realities? Shifting between Utopia and Heterotopia, the author analyses the figure of the Island, as a counter-space connecting – or not – with the rest of the world, as a place for dreams, and an ideal site for visualising social futures.
Abstract The authors are collaborators on Sylvester Tonga’s doctoral documentary, filmed with the weavers and farmers who sustain these agricultural traditions in Leimatu’a, his village of origin in the Vava’u Islands of Tonga. An archipelago of fifty-one atolls, Vava’u lies 300 kilometres north of Tonga’s capital, Nuku’alofa. Using screengrabs and photographs made by the production crew with the Leimatu’a contributors, they consider how Sylvester’s cultural identity shaped both the community filming process and the cross-generational collaboration between himself, a Tongan migrant to New Zealand, and the New Zealand-born Tongan producers, Rewi Amoamo and Nikolase Meredith. Here, they reflect on the conceptual and methodological intricacies that have emerged from this cross-generational teamwork between a migrant Tongan who has lived his adult life in Auckland and a New Zealand-born Tongan production crew.
In this article the life of droids is explored through a weaving of scenes, dialogue, analysis, theory and an exhibition. The imagery and text are employed to work through the experiences of the droids and the relationships that are revealed, or perhaps even presenced (Heidegger, 1993). The works of Heidegger and Camus on technology and science, the story of Viktor Frankenstein’s absence of care for ‘his’ creation, and insights from Daniel Wallace’s book, Star Wars: The New Essential Guide to Droids add textual flavour to the images that have been produced by the authors and that invite exploration of life in the age of droidean corporeal horror. In this exhibition of machine lives, the images are presented as uncanny moments (Rancière, 2010), revealing questions concerning technology and being (Heidegger, 1993). The educational intention of this work is not to emancipate machine life through the horror stories of droidean cultures and communities, but rather to offer insights into the error of Modern mastery.
‘For the better, right?’ is a Star Wars meme that depicts a scene from Episode II —Attack of the Clones . Although the scene and dialogue never occur in the actual film, the meme provides a concise fourteen-word analysis of how Empire conceals itself. Using postfoundational inquiry, this article examines the meme’s pedagogy through Brian Massumi’s work on play in relation to politics and affect. Concealment and interruption are identified as two characteristics of these relations. Author-created iterations of the meme demonstrate how play, as theorized by Massumi, can rework these tactics of concealment and interruption, enabling them to imagine alternative approaches to resisting Empire: a visual pedagogy that does not replicate its systems or foundational logics.
Through a series of visual provocations from Star Wars’ Episode III – Revenge of the Sith , this article contemplates the allure and danger of a singular truth. Anakin Skywalker’s transition from Jedi to Sith Lord, Darth Vader, amplifies and breaks down notions of truth and lies, posing seductive simplicities and paradoxical tensions. These come to the fore in the battle which marks Anakin’s final transition from Jedi to Sith, with his former Master Obi-Wan Kenobi’s ironic, absolutist declaration “only a Sith deals in absolutes” (Lucas, 2005). This article explores how these scenes seduce viewers with the clarity of absolute thinking and undermine it through dialogic contradiction, signalling the allure and dangers of simplistic, idealised, certainty.
This video article reports on a film-making pilot study with a group of eleven- to twelve-year-olds, conducted in a bilingual (Welsh-English) secondary school in West Wales, in 2023. The study sought to explore how mobile media-making technology and creative processes might fit into the Expressive Arts Area of Learning and Experience (specifically, the ‘Film and Digital Media’ strand of the subject area) in the Curriculum for Wales (2022). It also aimed to understand how such production and creative processes might align and intermingle with the languaging practices present within a bilingual education context, to scaffold expressions of individual- and collective-identity. The written component of this article sets out the context of the study, including its parameters, and maps emergent patterns in relation to the cross-curricular concept of cynefin (‘belonging’). The video component of the article showcases a sample from the corpus of work created by the participants, with particular focus on the emergence of three key factors – bilinguality, agility, and agency – to illustrate the complexities of the participants’ content creation.
Adolescents experiencing physical abuse by parents range from 20 to 25 percent internationally and in Switzerland, which significantly impacts their socio-emotional development. As part of a Swiss National Science Foundation ( SNSF ) project, the authors aimed to strengthen the resilient development of youth despite such violence. A participatory, design-based approach was applied to involve adolescents in the development process. In co-creation workshops conducted by the National Coalition Building Institute ( NCBI ), adolescent participants collaborated with professional video illustrators to create appealing, youth-centered video content. These videos are intended for use on social media and educational platforms to raise awareness about violence resilience, improve access to support services, and facilitate effective learning. By combining current scientific insights from resilience research with creative methods of youth engagement, the project aims to empower adolescents and produces sustainable tools for knowledge transfer. The videos are intended to inform practitioners, shape future research, and create sustainable products for science–practice transfer.
Academic writing support for students in hybrid programmes can be troublesome. With academic writing support mostly offered face-to-face on campuses, distance students face a ‘sink or swim’ mentality. The COVID -19 pandemic ‘forced’ many universities to move teaching online at short notice, which provided the impetus to re-think how current academic literacy support could be employed in a completely digital learning environment if pandemics such as COVID -19 were to persist. This article offers insights into how a postgraduate programme sought to support distance students’ English academic writing skills. Purposefully crafted webinars were created to explicitly scaffold students through multiple aspects of academic essay preparation, thus ensuring English academic writing practices were available to students asynchronously. Data findings suggest a positive upward trend in students’ writing skills, and convergence towards a higher academic writing outcome with a narrower dispersion amongst students. Put differently, even academically weaker students have an equal opportunity to improve their writing abilities through the use of video-based scaffolding.
This collaborative project brings together doctoral student Fritz Filisi, supervisor Teena Brown Pulu, video producer Nikolase Meredith, and independent camera operator Rewi Amoamo, all of whom trace their ancestry to Sāmoa. Together, they produced a Sāmoan language mini-documentary for social media audiences exploring the auala funerary tradition. This ancient custom, performed upon the death of a high chief, involves the gathering of tulāfale (orators) who recite genealogies that connect chiefly titles, kinship lines, customary lands, and lagi (heavens) of ancestral gods. Filmed in Si’umu village, Sāmoa, the project delivered culture-specific educational content to diasporic Sāmoan young adults, many of whom are unfamiliar with this ceremonial practice. This short article is a companion to Le Auala Masani (2025) that explains conceptual and practice-based considerations of connecting a mini-documentary made in Sāmoa to Sāmoans in the diasporas.
This article addresses a gap in early childhood education and care ( ECEC ) research and policy, where warmth is frequently mentioned in official documents but seldom theorised or translated into pedagogical practice. Drawing on narrative inquiry and agential materialism, the authors explore warmth as both an affect, and a relational force – constituted by and constituting more-than-human entanglements. Using the guided tour method, rooted in narrative inquiry, they co-produced three hours of video, 296 photographs, and field notes during a visit to an ECEC setting in Gdańsk. The research material reveals inspiring enactments of warmth emerging from responsible/ response-able , value-based, and place-attuned practices. These practices cut through dominant dichotomies of power, allowing a life-sustaining web to unfold, entangling humans and more-than-humans across the kindergarten and the city.
This article brings together the Buddhist philosopher Chögyam Trungpa’s notion of idiot compassion and a moment of Jedi mind control in Star Wars: Episode II – Attack of the Clones to question pedagogy in early childhood education. Through a philosophic playing with theory, the analysis situates a pop culture fragment – the bar scene in which Obi-Wan Kenobi encounters drug dealer Elan Sel’Sabagno – as a site for thinking critically about the ethics of compassion, authority, and pedagogical influence. Drawing on Buddhist philosophy, the article questions whether the Jedi’s use of power constitutes compassion or coercion, and how this tension resonates with educational practice. The discussion proposes that idiot compassion, a form of empathy that avoids discomfort but often inadvertently perpetuates harm, has parallels in early education when teachers prioritise being ‘nice’ over engaging with conflict, inequity, or supporting children’s agency. Using a visual analysis of the Star Wars mind control film clip, the article explores how cultural texts can function as pedagogical tools to foster critical reflection. Arguing for a shift from simplistic notions of kindness and care toward a more nuanced, skilful, and intelligent compassion in early childhood pedagogy.
This article examines how Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order serves as a case study for Martin Heidegger’s concepts of Enframing ( Gestell ) and poiesis . By focusing on the journey of former Padawan Cal Kestis – who suppresses his spiritual identity amidst a technologically dominated Empire – the discussion highlights Heidegger’s argument that technology, when approached purely instrumentally, can reduce reality to a resource for exploitation. The narrative portrays the Jedi’s thoughtful engagement with tools, as lightsabers and other advanced devices are used not merely for utilitarian ends but as extensions of a spiritual calling. Through meditative reflection and reconnection with the Force, Cal embodies Heidegger’s notion of poiesis , wherein technology’s dangers are transcended by embracing a creative, reverent stance. Key cutscenes illustrate how the double-bladed lightsaber becomes more than a weapon, symbolizing a rediscovery of balance between the material and the immaterial. By weaving technology and spirituality into a cohesive whole, Fallen Order challenges modern assumptions about scientific progress and spiritual depth being at odds. In so doing, it invites educators, scholars, and practitioners alike to reconsider how advanced frameworks can either obscure or illuminate our deeper connections, reaffirming the potential for technology and authentic being to coexist when approached poetically and mindfully.
Abstract The existence of disinformation in online environments increases the risk that young people will be exposed to manipulated content. It is not surprising, then, researchers and educators are focusing on ways to build pupils’ multiliteracy competencies. In this article, we look at the role visual information plays when students assess the trustworthiness of online information and disinformation. The authors present data from Austrian classroom interventions, where eight teachers used a phenomenon-based learning (PhBL) approach to build their 107 pupils’ multiliteracy competencies. The authors undertook video-based and written classroom observations and conducted interviews (n = 44). They found that visual information plays a significant role in pupils’ decisions on whether to trust online information or not. Other factors that increase trust include human actors (e.g. teachers or other pupils) and easily accessible digital information (e.g. visuals or information provided by algorithms or ai). The phenomenon-based pedagogy approach meant that pupils were working in groups, giving a greater opportunity to engage in reflective dialogue, and being more critical about online information.
Abstract This essay and accompanying video explore the concept of the unseen as a posthuman position and its impact on teaching and learning. It theorises how the covid-19 pandemic and virtual learning environments have revealed previously unseen aspects of students’ lives, such as their working spaces and home environments. Drawing on posthuman philosophy and the rhizome metaphor to consider the complex and interconnected nature of the unseen, the essay discusses how awareness of the unseen is crucial for effective teaching. This essay also describes the development of the short film Unseen, which was inspired by my own unseen struggles whist trying to develop a presentation for the Association of Visual Pedagogies twitter conference. The film is an invitation to consider unseen aspects of your own life that may affect your learning and teaching, with an extended invitation to engage in further shared thinking via Padlet.
