Why should preschool children learn photography?
Preschool children are very curious and eager to explore the world around them. Children who take photos will learn to observe the details in their environment, developing their observation and perception skills. Photography can also help develop their motor skills as they learn to hold the camera and press the shutter button correctly. Learning photography can also encourage confidence and independence in children, as they learn new skills and feel proud of their accomplishments. Additionally, photography can help children learn about new technologies and tackle the challenges brought about by the technological world. With help, children can create exhibitions of their photographs. These can be a great opportunity for them to learn about other cultures. This builds confidence and empathy.

This project has presented quite a challenge for me, as the children are very young. Coordinating eyes, hands, and pressing the shutter button can be a problem. Many of the photographs were aimed at the ground because the child was focusing only on the shutter button and not on framing. Some children needed my help to support the camera as their hands were still too weak. However, I wanted to start early enough so that I could accompany and challenge them until they reach the age of six, when they enter school. The children were very motivated when it came to photography and couldn't wait to have their turn to take pictures. When I started this project, there was always a crowd of other children around the one taking the pictures. At the beginning, I showed them the basics of how to aim the camera and press the shutter button. Then I let them manipulate the camera themselves. After a few days of manipulation, I started directing them towards framing their shots. I guided them by saying things like "Look, you can take a picture of the toy on the table" and "Find the red block and take a picture of it." The children slowly became more attentive to what they saw on the screen.

The children were all very different from each other in their understanding, perception, and coordination so I adjusted my approach to each individual. Some quickly grasped the basic instructions and soon started looking for their own shots, taking pictures of their friends playing, their teachers, toys, decorations, and more. Others needed more guidance, more precise instructions, and, above all, a lot of repetition. Some children lost interest in taking pictures after their initial curiosity.

When reviewing the photographs with the children, I was careful to comment on what I saw, saying things like, "Ah, I see you took a picture of a dinosaur." I refrained from evaluating the shots or the photographs themselves. At this age, I think it's most important for the child to fall in love with this kind of activity. The process is currently more important than the final product. However, when they have mastered the basics, I will take a more critical approach to the process of photography - from framing to commenting - and guide them towards self-reflection.

I also wanted to introduce the children to the entire process of photography, from pressing the shutter button to printing the photograph. So, I took them to the computer room, where we transferred and reviewed the photographs on the computer. Some children recognised their own photographs. Together, we chose the best ones, and the children even saw the printing process. Later, we created an exhibition of their photographs in the playroom, which they still enjoy looking at today.

​I was surprised to see that at this age, some children already showed a sense of photography and camera operation. Some children quickly mastered the camera without any special help. 

Jon Nicholls, Thomas Tallis School

As promised, here is part two of a blog about subjectification in (photography) education, in response to the ideas of Gert Biesta. As I mentioned in the first part of this blog post, Biesta's ideas are sophisticated and carefully argued and I don't pretend to grasp every nuance. I really do encourage you to read them yourselves, in the original. Nevertheless, I'd like to refer to a few ideas here in order to suggest that we photography teachers have a special duty to consider the ethical dimensions of our practice.

Note: Unless otherwise stated, all the quotations are from Gert Biesta's World Centred Education, Routledge 2022

Biesta offers a stark reminder about what's at stake here. In the race to the top of the league tables and ever greater competition between schools, students are at risk of being made the objects of various interventions:

This argument might sound, to some ears, like the kind of typical view of a die-hard 1970s 'progressive', an "enemy of promise". I'm sure you are familiar with this kind of dismissive put-down which features prominently in many Twitter debates. Biesta is keen to side-step the traditional vs progressive binary. He is a defender of teaching and schools and although his ideas are informed by many progressive thinkers, my own sense is that his theoretical standpoint isn't so easily pigeon-holed. If we might be tempted to consider the quotation above as a bit 'soft' or too 'child-centred' (insert your own EduTwitter put-down here), he is quick to remind us of the historical context:

He contrasts democracy with populism. In the "impulse society" we are told repeatedly that we can have whatever we want. ​

​If one of education's primary goals is to ensure that something like Auschwitz never happens again, it must undermine, disrupt and challenge the objectification of young people, and promote subjectification. In order to illustrate the meaning of the (rather odd) word 'subjectification', Biesta refers to the Parks/Eichmann paradox.

Rosa Parks chose to resist what she considered to be an unjust situation. Adolf Eichmann removes himself as subject from the equation when he delegates the responsibility for his actions. He fails to show up as an "I" when he claims to be just following orders. Biesta argues that this paradox illustrates precisely why learning (qualification) and development (socialisation) is not enough. What will I do with what I have learned and how I have developed when it matters, when I am faced with the question "Hey, you there, where are you?"

Turning our attention to photography education, how might we open ourselves up to a more balanced view of the purposes of our lessons so that we can find more space for subjectification. Biesta, and others, provide us with several clues about how this might be achieved.

There's been plenty of heated debate about the role of knowledge in education. This has prompted some interesting responses from visual arts educators - additional Art History classes, for example. It's a bit of straw person argument in the sense that no-one (I know) is advocating for a knowledge poor curriculum. The issue though is that knowledge isn't enough if it doesn't make sense to the student. As others like Michael Young have argued, knowledge is powerful if it challenges or extends what is already known. Powerful knowledge is disruptive. It is the world calling to the student, but not a world they are necessarily familiar with. The teacher's role is therefore to stage encounters with this new knowledge and to help students step into the frame of that knowledge so that it can make sense. Teachers live in this frame and it's easy to forget what it's like to be outside it. Biesta uses the example of his confusion during maths lessons and his frustrated teacher exclaiming "But can't you see it?" Each student may need a personal invitation, a key with which to unlock the door and appear in the frame.

The PhotoPedagogy contribution to this effort takes the form of Threshold Concepts. These ideas about photography are intentionally troublesome. I often use the analogy of an attic or jumble sale. An invitation is made to cross the threshold into a space that is full of potentially fascinating stuff. There are few labels or sign posts to get started but it's up to the student to rummage around and find something they perhaps didn't even know they were looking for. 

— Robert Frank

This is one of my favourite photographer quotations because I find it both beautiful and intensely puzzling. As David Campany and Stanley Wolukau-Wanambwa have reminded us recently, photographs are indeterminate and ambiguous. They promise to tell us something about reality but really only show us the light bouncing off a surface. There is something radically open about photographs, almost despite how they look. Perhaps the attitude needed by photographers, then, is a parallel openness, a willingness to be affected. Robert Frank seems to suggest that we might start by listening, very carefully, to what the world wants from us.

Hearing is entirely dependent on sound that comes from outside. We can't intend it. It requires a different kind of attentiveness than the other senses, a certain amount of vulnerability and openness to what will be given to us. What we hear will be a surprise to us, not something we can intentionally control.

​The sense of smell is invoked by photographer Peter Fraser to describe his (almost uncontrollable) receptivity to both external and internal stimuli:

— Peter Fraser

If democracy is to be defended and strengthened, Biesta argues, education should be concerned with freedom. But this is not the 'freedom' of the Libertarian market. We must learn to come into relationship with our desires, to test whether other people and the world with its limited resources can tolerate them. Are our desires desirable? Biesta calls this a 'grown up' way of living in and with the world, as opposed to an 'infantile' or 'ego-logical' relationship. He reminds us that this is not a matter of age. Young people are capable of being 'grown up' in this way, just as some adults remain 'infantile' in relation to their desires. Both the world and, more specifically, other people provide resistance. The job of visual arts teachers, therefore, is to encourage students to acknowledge and meet this resistance. 

— ​Gert Biesta, Art, Artists and Pedagogy, 2017

We may want to impose our will on the materials with which we work - a lump of clay, a blank sheet of paper, a camera etc. These materials will inevitably resist our intentions and we will need to adjust accordingly. Despite appearances, things are not inert. They may push back against our desire to manipulate them. For young people, this resistance can be frustrating and dispiriting. As teachers, we can support students to understand that things are not without their own agency. This ecological attitude supposes that we are all bound together in a constantly shifting network of relationships. 

— Henry Wessel

Biesta's concern with the form of teaching leads him to conclude that its fundamental educational gesture is that of pointing. When we point we show something to someone. We redirect someone's attention, turning their gaze towards the world. Crucially, pointing is beautiful because it is not about control. "Hey you, look there!" is an attempt to redirect the gaze but it does not force the student to do as we wish. It is an open gesture, it opens the world to the student and, potentially, opens the student to the world. The world, however, is not a "playground for the student's desires". Whatever freedom is generated by our pointing is the freedom to exist as subject 'in' and 'with' the world in a grown-up way.

When we point our cameras at the world, there is an implied redirection of the viewer's gaze. We are saying "Hey you, look there." But this gesture of pointing goes in two directions. We gesture out to the world and the world gestures back at us. The world exists in its own right. It is real. It does not exist simply to be an object for us. It resists us, "puts limits on what we can do with it, what we can want from it and how we can make sense of it." Because photography puts us into direct relationship with the world (the world, after all, is already full, not a blank page or canvas on which we can project our desires) it can speak to us if we are paying attention. As photography teachers, we can help to nurture this sensitivity in our students so that they recognise when the world might be calling to them, asking them a question. This is a subjectifying moment or event.

So much of current educational discourse (perhaps influenced by the learning sciences) seems focused on the removal of risk from the educational equation. And yet, when we remove risk we take away what is educational. We diminish the agency of our students to refuse, to walk away, to resist, to become subjects of their own lives. Biesta refers to this as "the beautiful risk of education". Schools need to provide the time and space for students to work through the question of their own freedom - what is the world (social and natural) asking from me? Teachers need to provide them with support and sustenance so that they can stay with this question. There is no way to control how students will respond when the world calls to them. The risk of subjectification needs to be shared and this is a test of the strength of a democracy.

Teaching is as mysterious and ineffable to me now as it was when I started 32 years ago. The same is true for photography and I suppose that's why both endeavours are so fascinating to me. If you've got this far, thank you for your patience. I hope I have provided you with some food for thought and a little sustenance for the year ahead. 

Jon NIcholls, Thomas Tallis School

​The sub-heading for this blog is "occasional musings about photography education". Since we haven't posted anything for over a year, this is something of an understatement. Nevertheless, a new academic year is fast approaching and I have what my wife refers to as "new satchel syndrome" and so here are a few thoughts about teaching.

A brief health warning: 

1. Nearly all of what I'm about to write is based entirely on the work of Gert Biesta, particularly his most recent book World Centred Education (which I strongly recommend every teacher, regardless of specialism, reads). In a relatively long career, I have read numerous education texts but it's no exaggeration to say that none of them has made more sense to me than this one.
2. I am not a philosopher nor an expert on ethics. Therefore, all these thoughts are offered in a spirit of amateur enthusiasm and I welcome any and all feedback about my weak logic.
3. I have divided this post into two parts. Part 1 sets up the argument. Part 2 attempts to answer the question posed at the end of Part 1. The alternative would have been a very long read!

In my experience, when teachers (including me) begin the process of thinking about a new year, uppermost in their minds is what to teach. This might mean returning to successful schemes of work (those which excite students and seem to generate decent results). The more energetic and enterprising may begin to write lists of ideas, materials and processes for new projects (perhaps related to brilliant exhibitions or artists they discovered on their summer holidays). Some may even begin to tentatively sketch out new resources or even whole schemes of work. Most of us will be reflecting on the summer exam results and wondering what worked, what might need tweaking for the coming year and what needs consigning to the dustbin of history.
I wonder how many teachers begin their planning for the new year thinking about ethics?

I took this picture on the recent TUC march in central London. There were loads of brilliant, hand-made signs. My favourite (which I failed to photograph) simply said:

This one came a close second. It got me thinking (again) about the importance of ethics in education. So much of educational discourse is dominated by the "what works" agenda. There is so much pressure on teachers and leaders to 'produce' results that it's easy to lose sight of some fairly fundamental issues concerning the how (pedagogy) and the why (ethics) of education.

I feel very fortunate to work in a local authority state comprehensive school which affords me a high level of professional autonomy. I have friends and colleagues in less fortunate circumstances. What, and to some extent how, they teach is very strictly policed. I am fully aware of my privileged position. Moreover my headteacher chaired a national commission which produced a Framework for Ethical Leadership in Education. But ethics isn't just for school leaders. I suppose what I'm suggesting is that all of us could spend a bit more time reflecting on the purposes of education.

This is where the brilliant Biesta is so helpful. There's no substitute for reading Biesta's lucid, closely-argued but accessible texts. All I can hope to do is cherry-pick the bits that appeal to me and encourage you to seek out the rest for yourselves. There are some very good clips of him speaking on YouTube.

How much professional development time is taken up with discussions about either the curriculum, techniques for more effective dissemination of the curriculum (including how to support students with SEND), exam preparation and behaviour management? My guess would be approaching 100%. Biesta proposes that there are three domains of education: qualification, socialisation and subjectification (see diagram above). He argues that these domains ought to be kept in balance. My experience tells me that we spend a disproportionate amount of time considering issues related to qualification, less time thinking about socialisation and almost no time at all exploring subjectification. But what do these terms mean?

Qualification - knowledge and skills (what students need to know and be able to do)
Socialisation - cultures, traditions and practices (how we do things here)
Subjectification - the freedom to act or refrain from acting as a person

Subjectification is a tricky concept and one that seems (to me) to be less important in CPD planning and provision. Biesta offers this further explanation (my italics):

What's photography education all about?

​No-one would deny that photography education should be concerned with knowledge, skills, cultures and traditions. But If we accept, for a moment, that education should also be oriented towards the freedom of the individual, what implications does that view have on our day-to-day practice in the classroom? And how might we engage our students in reflecting on the relationship between photography and (their) freedom? 

Tune in again soon (hopefully not as long as the last gap between blog posts!) for Part 2, in which I offer some thoughts on the subjectification of photography education.

Hi, I’m Daniel. I’m a New Zealand based photographer and educator. Prior to the COVID-19 pandemic I had been working 3 months on/off in China. I was contracted by a New Zealand polytechnic to deliver a programme of lens-based media and visual culture to Chinese students in the city of Huangshi (100km from the more well-known Wuhan). The aim was to prepare Chinese students for further study abroad. Huangshi, population almost 3 million, is historically an industrial mining city but has more recently promoted itself as a picturesque tourist destination with its lake, mountains and the Yangtze River.

Prior to working in China, I had completed a MFA specialising in photography and moving image at Massey University, Wellington in 2016. It was during this study that I had participated in a 2-week artist residency in Singapore and, while there, discovered the work of Shanghai photography duo, ‘Birdhead’ in a local art gallery exhibition. Birdhead’s casual attitude and use of traditional Chinese craft techniques seemed refreshing to me. Until this point I had largely been influenced by European innovators such as Juergen Teller, the more subtle Anders Edström, and well-known Japanese photographer, Araki. My MFA research focused on the atmospheric street photography of Japanese Provoke era photographers such as Takuma Nakahira and Daido Moriyama along with younger digital photographers who were producing work in dialogue with emergent internet technologies and aesthetics. So even before I set foot within The Middle Kingdom, my interest in aspects of Asian aesthetics was piqued, and I appreciated the degree of sensitivity towards practices of observation that are perhaps not as developed within Western photography traditions.

I began my first teaching contract in China in 2017 and had built a lifestyle around spending half the year in China teaching and working on personal photography projects, and the other half freelancing as a photographer in Wellington, New Zealand. Prior to my first contract in China I had taught at several NZ based institutions, where I had developed a somewhat free and open student-driven pedagogy, while being nimbly receptive to student need and desire. But my immersion into the Chinese university system was an abrupt culture shock, which offered both personal learnings, and opportunities for innovation within my teaching practice.

At this point I should note that my Chinese language ability was poor (albeit I’m now attending Mandarin night classes in New Zealand), and the English language abilities of individual students was diverse. Additional challenges to teaching in China were around technology and access to research material related to the topics we covered. The students each had a portable computer or tablet and a mobile phone, and local internet access, and most but not all of my teaching rooms had a projector for delivery of teaching materials. I was supported by a translator (human), and while this slowed the flow of dialogue between myself and students, it did enable a workable starting point to explore ideas specific to Western art history and contemporary photography practices, within a Chinese context. I’m grateful for the students' patience as I adapted to the new environment in those early weeks of teaching.

I have made use of a few of the teaching plans found on photopedgaogy.com as shorter warm-up projects before the students embark on their main assignments. A lesson plan I found particularly useful was ‘Wrong’. Based on John Baldessari’s artwork of the same name, the project introduced students to postmodernism in a way that directly activated their willingness to explore unconventional composition in photography and consider by what/whose standards an image is judged. I found this to be an excellent point of departure to explore post-modernism in more depth and allow students to express their own culture and aesthetic sensibility within the post modern paradigm. Using post-it notes was a useful way to engage the students to share their thinking with the group, though as teaching has now shifted to online classes, I have replaced physical post-it notes with Padlet.

'How I see things' is a new series of posts from guest contributors. The idea is to present an individual viewpoint about some aspect of photography education. The way we teach is intimately connected to our experiences, our knowledge and our interests. We are delighted that Meg Wellington-Barratt has kindly agreed to kick us off with a thoughtful post exploring her own photography education, her experiences as a student and teacher, her research interests and a plea for more and better photoliteracy in schools. 

I started out wanting to photograph animals. Travelling around the world capturing wildlife was the dream. As a teenager I was besotted with American punk rock and the culture that accompanied it. Then it was extreme sports. I carried disposable cameras everywhere, compelled to photograph and not really knowing why. ​

The photographic education I received was mixed, mostly because I wasn’t a brilliant student. Studying A-level Photography was the key to developing my knowledge of genre, technique and image analysis. I had no breakthrough moment, no big ideas and I still wasn’t sure if it was something I wanted to pursue beyond school. Like most 17-year olds, I was pretty lost. I’m glad of this experience now as a teacher because I can empathise with students’ struggles.
​
I fell into photography as a degree choice and decided to combine it with psychology at a middle of the road university. I received no help with UCAS and, coming from a small seaside town, it was an unwritten rule that we had to leave quickly or resign ourselves to being there forever. I chose the former, rushed my university options and attended no open days. Despite not having flashy facilities, or being top of the league table, we were given the bones of an excellent photographic education - we were taught to stop and look. Tom Wood was one of my visiting tutors and, after a gruelling group critique, he invited me on a shoot in North Wales. He turned up to the shoot with 3 decorators’ lamps and camera kit in a Tesco trolley. He doesn’t drive, so seeing him lugging this kit with him to a student charity shop photoshoot really helped me pay attention. He took every moment of every shoot as seriously as the last and placed no more or less value on this day despite the grim weather. I was full of admiration for this. Gobsmacked in fact. It was there and then I started to take my work much more seriously. He spoke to me at length about my degree project, a study of my grandmother. I read in an article recently that photography students often focus on safe spaces or stories before trying out their skills on unfamiliar subjects. This is what I did. I lacked confidence and was dragging my heels. Tom Wood said, “She won’t be here forever”. With that, photography became my obsession.

I adore photobooks. Currently, I love Stephen Gill’s books. I attended his excellent talk at Martin Parr’s BOP festival in Bristol. It helped me understand his process. The Pillar was a Christmas addition to my growing library and is as valuable to me as Tom Wood turning up with his trolley. I feel photography departments should all have a copy of Nan Goldin’s Ballad of Sexual Dependency. Students are always in awe of Goldin’s images when they are first introduced to her work. It means so much more to them seeing it in a book than on screen, although it’s good to remind them that the project started life as a slideshow with music! Photobooks always inspire students. Choices about types of paper, scale and binding help students see that photobooks can be a vehicle for delivering their visual stories.

I don’t see as many photography exhibitions as I would like to. The last one that I really enjoyed was last year’s Format Festival in Derby. I enjoy a group exhibition much more than a solo exhibition. I enjoy thinking about curators’ choices, how context affects the meaning of photographs. Craig Easton’s Sixteen was poignant and benefited from an unusual location. It screamed first job, first social experiences, first memories as a teenager. Seeing the work of Kensuke Koike at Format helped me get a stuck student out of a rut. I approach exhibitions as both a photographer and a teacher. I am thoroughly looking forward to seeing Hannah Starkey at the Hepworth Gallery.

I feel that students get the most inspiration from looking at physical books and photographs, seeing work in exhibitions and experiencing life. However many Pinterest boards they look at, however many photographers I give them, the most powerful influence is often something they’ve discovered, seen or been through themselves. I highly recommend students listen to Ben Smith’s A Small Voice podcast. I discovered it last year and it has really helped fill a gap. The process and experience of a photographer making work is something I spend a lot of time thinking about. Hearing them talk candidly for an hour with brilliant host Ben is particularly refreshing. I often have it on in the background during A-level lessons. The best thing about discovering it late is that I have so many back episodes to get through! The Daniel Meadows episode was an enjoyable listen, as was Ian Weldon’s. The Photographer’s Playbook is a brilliant resource for students who want to expand their practice, but it works equally as well for students who have no ideas and for me when I’m short on ideas for assignments. Photography magazines are a widely overlooked resource too. They combine the fresh practitioner perspectives and thematic curation with tactile presentation and decision making. I subscribe to British Journal of Photography, Foam, and Source but there are dozens more.

Carving out research in photographic education is difficult. There isn’t a whole lot out there but I knew I wanted to contribute my own work to the field. I originally started a practice-based PhD exploring themes of domestic representation in family albums, but quickly became lonely and disenchanted. It was working in schools and colleges that spurred me on. I have taught the subject for eight years now, and it was what I was seeing in the classroom (or not seeing perhaps) that helped me decide to research photography education.

There are no set models for teaching photography and most of what exists is based on art and design practice or historic pedagogies. Photography is so important for students but not only as a standalone subject. Students need to be able to analyse and interpret the imagery they see every day, and photography skills help them do this. Equally, learning how to analyse photographs helps make them better photographers. I am interested in the process of photographic education - what is taught, who is teaching it, what the students are taking photographs of and why. There are several related strands.

For example, a recent paper I have been working on explores the use of photography across the wider curriculum. Another examines the educational backgrounds of the teachers teaching the subject. I plan to work with Source Magazine’s Graduate Photo Online to conduct research into themes and patterns across higher education student work. The collector/obsessive in me wants to know everything, so a doctorate helps to placate this need.

As a teacher of photography, I notice daily what students lack in terms of knowledge and skills and this encourages me to try and fill these gaps with my research discoveries. Students sometimes cannot interpret meaning in imagery, even on the simplest level, and it is my belief that this has come from a desensitisation caused by the sheer number of pictures they are exposed to. A new level of visual literacy, or photoliteracy, is needed. It is also my belief that if photographic literacy was embedded properly and thoroughly across the wider curriculum, then it could pave the way for photography teachers to work together to build a strong and suitable model that suits both the needs of the wider education field and most importantly, photography students.