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Compare
Vol. 38, No. 3, June 2008, 349–362

Imaging girls: visual methodologies and messages for girls’

education
Cathryn Magnoa and Jackie Kirkb*

aDepartment of Educational Leadership and Policy Studies, Southern

Connecticut State University, New Haven, CT, USA; bDepartment of
Integrated Studies in Education, McGill University, Montreal, Canada

This article describes the use of visual methodologies to examine

images of girls used by development agencies to portray and
promote their work in girls’ education, and provides a detailed
discussion of three report cover images. It details the processes of
methodology and tool development for the visual analysis and
presents initial ‘readings’ of the selected images. This initial study
highlights the relevance of image analysis to the field of gender,
education and development and of critical reflection on the
different messages and meanings inherent in images of girls and
girls’ education which relate to complex questions of power and
privilege, position and post-coloniality. The authors recommend
that within development agencies education and communication
specialists work together to develop more sophisticated processes
for image selection, review and feedback, and that researchers in
the field further engage with visual methodologies to inform
current theories of girlhood, education, schooling and
empowerment.

Keywords: girls; education; images; representation; methodology

Introduction
Girls’ education is a key development intervention, prioritized by various
international development agencies and organizations and of interest to
scholars in the field of comparative and international education. Access to
education is a right in itself for women and girls, but it is also an ‘enabling
right’ that can have multiple, longer-term benefits, such as improved health
and economic outcomes and future opportunities. There is a wealth of
scholarship related to girls’ education and development, but the potential of
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visual methodologies to explore the dynamics of gender, education and
development has not been widely considered. This is somewhat surprising
given the extent to which diverse images are carefully and explicitly used by
media, marketing and others as powerful visual stimuli to provoke different
emotions, reactions and responses. Development assistance and charity
fundraising especially have used images to stimulate responses such as pity,
benevolence and ultimately donation (Holland 2004; Burman 1996).
Researchers in other fields have used visual imagery, including
photographs, video and websites, as new forms of research data and
representation. Visual culture is an important element of cultural studies,
including, interestingly, studies of the culture of childhood, ‘girl culture’, and
more specifically, for example, ‘tween girl’ culture. In educational research,
children’s drawings, photographs and videos are a source of data, and a
number of researchers also use images to explore teacher identity through
self-study methodologies (for example, Weber and Mitchell 1995; Mitchell
and Weber 1998, 1999). There are some connections between media studies
programmes and schools of education, such as at the Centre for Visual
Methodologies and Social Change (CVMSC) at the University of KwaZulu-
Natal. Here faculty and students use of a range of visual methodologies in
education research, teaching, cultural production and advocacy/action
(CVMSC 2007). At the University of Sussex researchers have used images
drawn and described by girls to understand the risks they face in and around
schools (University of Sussex 2007). Outside of such examples, there is no
evidence of wider use of images and image analysis to explore education,
gender and development issues.
Prosser (1998a) and Pink (2001) use images created through video,
photography and digital technology to explore and interpret everyday life.
Such alternatives can provide opportunities to disrupt the authority of text; it
becomes more possible to convey to readers, viewers, listeners or web-
surfers multi-faceted and multi-sensory representations of research data and
interpretation. Spaces are created for a politicized questioning of current
social relations and systems and for the interrogation of the researcher’s
own entanglement within them. In such ways, feminist visual ethnographers
explore gender– power dynamics through photographs, video and other
visual data (Pink 1997; Lamb and Brown 2006). Narrative and imagery
interact to engage the reader/viewer in a critical dialogue, in consideration
of the relationships between and across both forms of content. Stimulated
by discussion of the photographic representation of girls and girls’ education
at the 2006 Comparative and International Education Society (CIES)
Gender Symposium, the authors initiated a research project to investigate the
visual representation of girls in the context of international development
interventions for girls’ education. The research began with an analysis of the
various possible meanings conveyed by photographs on the covers of
development agency reports related to education. This article documents the
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development of an appropriate methodological process of visual analysis,
interprets some of the ‘readings’ produced and discusses their implications.
The initial research questions were process and methodology-focused, but
there was also a desire to explore how image work might contribute to
improved international development policy and practices related to girls’
education. The ‘we’ of the following text refers to the two authors whose
own gendered, social and professional positions as
viewers, readers and writers are necessarily woven into the interpretative
exercise.
We both straddle research, policy and programming worlds as university
faculty, agency staff, consultants and researchers but always as women
educators and former schoolgirls. We saw image work as research that would
necessarily involve critical analysis of the relationships between ourselves,
the girls whose lives we ultimately hope to improve, and the complex,
multiple layers of development interventions. Our research has to begin with
critical reflection on the multiple lenses through which we view these images
and the multiple positions we assume; we are both white, middle-class women
in our late thirties, living in big north American cities. Our investigative and
interpretative work has been constructed within these particular contexts.
The primary external participants in this initial research phase were faculty,
researchers, graduate students and staff of development agencies. Their
perspectives and positions as viewers of the images were diverse, and yet at
the same time constructed in the context of an international education
conference convened in the United States within a predominantly North
American cultural environment.

The research questions explored in this initial study relate to (1) how
agencies and organizations use images of girls to further particular
messages/perspectives/ideologies
with regard to girls’ education; (2) the messages conveyed/received
through such images by different readers; and (3) the relationships between
the images of girls and different discourses related to girls’ education. We
situate our study within relevant theoretical

literature on visual ethnography as it relates to children, girls and schooling.

Three emerging themes structure our interpretation: (1) the primacy of
formal schooling for girls;
(2) the innocence of girlhood; and (3) individuality and girlhood.

Developing a methodology
Prosser examines the relatively low status of image-based research relative
to word-based research (1998b, 97). In the ‘serious’ field of international and
comparative education, images may be seen as trivial as compared to other
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data forms, especially statistics, and yet, as our research is showing,
alternative approaches and methods inspired by visual studies do have
relevance for scholars in this field.
Theories underlying the use of such methods all maintain that images are
as inherently meaningful as the written word. As such, images are at the
centre of the inquiry, serving as the lynchpin of ongoing dialogue and playing
important roles in viewers’ thoughts and identities. Accordingly, visual
methodology aims to ‘explore how all types of material … are interwoven
with and made meaningful in relation to social relationships, practices and
individual experiences’ (Pink 2001). Importantly for comparative education,
it exposes the relationship between the image and notions of memory and
identity in western1 societies (Lury 1998), whose colonization and
economically dominant position in the world have resulted in physical banks
of photographs depicting the many and varied positions and roles of
servitude forced on populations elsewhere in the world. One can also reflect
on the ‘virtual’ memory bank of images that may exist in the minds and
consciences of many western viewers and which inevitably shapes the way
in which images of the self and ‘other’ are viewed and interpreted. Visual
methodology acknowledges photography as a force not only capable of
documenting history but also of encouraging shifts in ways of ‘seeing’ both
the subject and ourselves (McQuire 1998; Lury 1998). In-depth analysis of
the photograph requires the viewer to ask questions about position, status,
power, and privilege. The intention of research using visual methods is not
so much to reveal any particular ‘truth’ about the subjects’ lived experiences,
but rather to highlight how images occupy an ‘imaginative space’ that allows
for multiple truths and multiple perspectives. It problematises the purpose of
images by suggesting they are metaphors of experience rather than depictions
of reality itself (Pink 2001). This study opens dialogue on the multiple ways
viewers can make meaning from static images. We recognize that this
process can destabilize any particular intended truth on the part of the
photographer or contracting development agency, an important point
considering the histories of power and privilege of the western contexts from
which the education reports we access originate.
Our research is anchored in critical cultural theory, which emphasizes ‘the
contested
nature of meaning’ and the ‘practices of representation’ (Hall 1997, 9–10) and
reminds us to question the production of cultural knowledge and the role of
cultural objects. It is important to recognize that ‘[a]s products of a particular
culture, [photographs] are only perceived as real by cultural convention: they
only appear realistic because we have been taught to see them as such’ (Wright
1999, 6). The image can be considered a ‘cultural artifact’ in and of itself (Lutz
and Collins 1993), produced through the institutional lens of the agency which
uses it. Visual analysis promotes a reflexive process of awareness of possible
intentions behind the use of photographs to represent the ‘truth’ (Pink 2001).
We question, for example, in what ways a photograph ‘truthfully’ depicts a
 5
particular girl’s complex lived experience in the moment the image is shot.
Bourdieu (1993) comments that ‘the most trivial photograph expresses, apart from
the explicit intentions of
the photographer, the system of schemes of perception, thought and
6

appreciation common to a whole group’ (1990, 6). Therefore, it is critical to

examine how images represent photographers’ and institutions’ intentions,
power and status. Development agencies based in North America and Europe
are powerful mediators of information and the construction of knowledge
about other parts of the world. Report text conveys data and narrative
explanation but images also convey messages. In consideration of the
authoritative power of these agencies, we seek to understand how notions of
gender, age and culture as reflections of power (im)balance are constructed
in their presentation of visual images. Woven into this investigation is
acknowledgement of the power of our own interpretation and the extent to
which it is also socially and historically constructed. Burman’s
deconstructivist analysis (1996, 171) addresses the complex issues of power
and history embedded within the images themselves and in the interaction
between the images and the viewer. This is exemplified by powerlessness,
dependency, and the role of children in ‘the psychic economy … of
international aid.’ Burman finds that international charity appeals guide
readers into certain ‘positions’ of ‘us’ as opposed to ‘them’ and into power-
laden ‘donor’ and ‘recipient’ relationships as they encourage western guilt
(1996, 174–5). Although Burman’s assumptions of homogeneity in readers’
positions and feelings of guilt may be problematic, her assertion that ‘the
commitment to universalized, abstracted and homogeneous models of
development was shown to reinscribe western and masculine assumptions
which, through the attachment to a romantic, nostalgic concept of childhood,
globalizes the western cultural models and inadvertently imposes them on
Third World children, families and cultures’ (1996, 183) is of interest.
We understand that viewers bring certain expectations and assumptions to
their gaze on each image. As Holland (2004) asserts, ‘a complex structure of
looking … always involves doubts, judgments, and uncertainties about the
status of the image and about its subject. It may well leave little room for
manoeuvre by those subjects – particularly when they are children’. Post-
colonial scholars have highlighted the importance of ‘gaze’, whether it be the
uncomfortable feelings surrounding looks at and by the racial ‘other’
(Bhabha 1989), the potential political empowerment contained within the
culturally captured gaze (Bhabha 1989), or the reproduction of identity as
‘imagined’ through cultural artifacts (Anderson 1991; Appadurai 1996). As
Holland (2004, 149) suggests, in post-colonial contexts, images of children
may be less discomforting to the western adult viewer as they are divorced
from social contexts and are not active participants in potentially threatening
political movements. Thus, the relevance of the gaze for our study includes
the extent to which the innocence of a girl’s gaze is purposefully constructed
in a photograph, supporting notions of girlhood as innocent and of individual
girls as less threatening than groups of girls. At the same time, we are obliged
to deconstruct our own gaze/s and to examine the structures of power and
 7
privilege which allow us to have enjoyed good quality education, to be healthy
and financially stable, and to be developing professional careers around
themes of gender disparity, conflict, and poor quality education.
As feminist researchers committed to the de-silencing of female voices
and experiences, and particularly to girls’ rights to quality education, we try
to foster empathetic forms of understanding and acknowledge and represent
difference. As described above, we try to engage in critical analysis of our
own viewing positions, and are interested in methodologies that engage us
in relational activity that resounds with Gilligan’s (1993) emphasis on
relationship, context and contingency. In advocating reflection and analysis,
we strive for methodology that exposes and then challenges the implicit
power relations between the ‘developed’ and ‘developing,’ the educated and
uneducated, the western and non-western.
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Applications: tool development and use

The conceptual framework presented above informed the development of a
structured process to analyze images of girls used to promote girls’
education. The initial data set of three images was selected using purposeful
sampling. These images were taken from the covers of reports, and were
saved in electronic form. We selected images based on two key criteria: (1)
an image of a single girl; and (2) the report focused on education. These first
three images came from the Department for International Development
(2005) (see Figure 1).
Inspired by Frith’s (1998) work on interpreting media and advertising
imagery, and especially its application by Johnny and Mitchell to the study
of HIV/AIDS prevention posters (2006), we developed an analysis template
(Appendix 1) with six categories, explained below, which stimulate critical
thought and reflection.

N Surface Meaning refers to the overall impressions that one may have
from quickly studying an image. The surface meaning is often somewhat
shallow.
N Narrative tells a story either through a series of pictures or a
frozen scenario
that allows the viewer to imagine what has happened to the characters
within the
picture.
N Intended Meaning describes the meaning that the image presenter wants to
convey. N Ideological Meaning refers to the values that are expressed in a visual
text. The ideological meaning may be decoded by examining the underlying
assumptions and
implications within an image.
N Oppositional Reading refers to the process of decoding an image from
alternative positions and perspectives, acknowledging that the same
image may be read
differently depending on background and subject positions.

Our research demanded reflection on any apparent coherence – or dissonance

– between what was perceived as the intended message of the image and the
‘message’ of the report or
 9

Figure 1. Note. Photograph reprinted with the permission of Ron Giling,

Lineair Fotoarchief.
10

Figure 2. Note. Photograph reprinted with the permission of Susan Warner,

Save the Children.

the particular priorities and perspectives of the agency presenting the image.
We therefore introduced an additional category of ‘Coherency’.

N Coherency: extent to which the image ‘matches’ the content of the report
or the agency’s priorities and perspectives.
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Figure 3. Note. Photograph reprinted with the permission of
UNICEF/ROSA/BINITA SHAH.
Data collection was a two-phase process. The first phase involved the two
researchers, the second involved participants in an international education
conference. The language used throughout the process was English. Initial
researcher analysis comprised individual work with the images, using the
analysis template. Working separately with the same data set, we each ‘read’
one particular image at a time and completed a template for each. We then
used email to exchange these initial, individual readings for a second level
of reading. We each annotated and wrote into the other’s completed template
with additional comments and feedback and exchanged again several times,
thus generating dialogue on the different layers of possible meanings. Initial
dialogue focused on individual image analysis, and gradually the dialogue
shifted toward a meta-analysis of common themes across the image
collection.
The second phase of the research engaged others in readings, to apply a
different tool for eliciting critical reflection related to our research questions
and to find out more about how others involved in girls’ education perceive
the same images. We understood the subjectivity involved in the
interpretation of images and we were keen to explore the multiple
meanings and multiple ‘realities’ possible (Pink 2001) through the
juxtaposition of our readings with those of others. An invitation to present
our ‘work in progress’ at the 2007 CIES Gender Symposium gave us an
opportunity to engage a very relevant group of research participants in image
reading. To do this we developed a rapid response tool (see Appendix 2),
with questions mapped around the categories of our researcher analysis tool.
Our presentation – in a conference seminar room – began with a very short
background to the work. The rapid response tool was then distributed and
the selected images were projected to the audience, one at a time for one
minute each.2 Participants completed their rapid response tools individually
(one for each image) and then chose to leave for us as research data or to
take away. Both researchers read the data multiple times and dominant
themes were discussed. The first author then organized the data in emerging
categories in order to facilitate reflection within and against our researcher
readings. The participants (n 5 44) included nine professors, nine
practitioners, one policy-maker, two researchers, and 19 students (four
unidentified). Other background information was not collected, but the
demographic characteristics of the Symposium registrants imply that they
were predominantly women, based in North America. Most were white,
within an age
range of approximately 25–65.

Image readings and discussion

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This exploratory research does not intend to draw definite conclusions; rather
the analytical and interpretative processes aim to identify possible meanings
and messages related to girls’ education. Synthesis of the researcher readings
and the participant readings reveals three main themes related to formal
schooling, innocence and girlhood, and individuality and girlhood.

Theme 1. Formal schooling is good for girls

Reading the importance of schooling
The surface and intended messages of the three images present school as a
significant part of girls’ lives, either in its presence or its absence.
Interpretation of Figures 1 and 2 centers around bright, smiling girls whose
futures are now so much brighter because they are going to school; they
look positive and optimistic about their futures, and they are set on a path
for success. Participants comment: ‘happy girl going to/from school’;
‘learning is good for girls’; ‘girls are happy to have books and materials’.
In Figure 3, researcher analysis had probed how and why this girl is devoid
of any school materials or symbols. We recognized that we were troubled by
her disconnection from education; our discomfort is reinforced by the lack
of a smile on her face. Participant responses to this image indicated an
ideological message of girls needing help to go to school and survive.
Comments included, ‘she needs someone to help her’ and ‘girl out of school
yearning for something else’. Researcher oppositional reading explored the
tension between the possible ideological message that girls are strong,
determined and resilient and the reality that girls often have to be strong to
survive in a male-dominated world, and that those who are not strong are
unlikely to succeed.

Reading girls’ smiles

Figures 1 and 2 were interpreted as appealing to our sense of optimism about
education. They reinforce an assumed shared commitment to common
education aims and appeal to those engaged in education and development
who, because of the satisfied smiles on the girls’ faces, are able to feel good
about their work. The images correspond with shared understandings of why
schooling is good for individuals and society. The girls’ smiles reassure
viewers and reaffirm commitments to education and development.
Participants noted, ‘African girls going to school thanks to DFID
[Department for International Development]’; ‘happiness through study’;
‘happy to be reading, getting an education’; and ‘… investing in education
keeps girls involved longer’. These responses concur with Lutz and Collins’
(1993, 96) explanation of the smile as a tool that helps the photographer
‘achieve idealization of the other, permitting the projection of the ideal of the
happy life’. For researchers and agency staff whose work may contribute to
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a girl’s happiness, such images may provoke a sense of pride that they are
helping to make this possible. At the same time, our researcher analysis
probed if and how such images also reinforce different power positions
(gender, race, class, age, education) and therefore invoke a certain simple
pleasure in the adult viewer. Critical gender analysis forces us to consider
how the male eye may gaze at a young, attractive girl (smiling at him), and
how a subtly conveyed sexuality (in her eyes, the tilt of her head and her
physical position) may play into this pleasurable experience.

Reading challenging circumstances

Researcher readings of Figure 3 questioned the possibilities of formal
education in challenging circumstances. The landscape behind the girl and
the perceived message that she has a hard and challenging life with no
opportunities to study caused us to wonder about the limitations of common
educational inclusion strategies in reaching the most vulnerable girls. We
consider that this girl may be completely on her own, without family,
surviving day-to-day and at risk of abuse. The look on her face could be the
hardened, distrustful look of a girl who has been exploited and who no longer
makes eye contact with others, especially adults. We then raise another
troubling question: might she be so determined to access education that she
would be forced into exploitative sexual relationships to pay the necessary
fees or other costs? Viewing this photograph, Symposium participants felt
‘sad’; ‘anxious’; ‘sorry for her’; ‘distressed’; and ‘hopeless’. The message
that formal school is good for girls may be perceived indirectly through this
photograph, through a sensitivity to the lack of it, rather than the satisfaction
of the provision of it in the first two photographs: ‘If only she could go to
school…’
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Reading schooling symbols

Further, Figures 1 and 2 present rather conventional, simple and
unproblematic representations of the school as a physical location. This is
a representation that is very familiar to the western viewer which may or
may not reflect the realities across the contexts addressed by the report. One
image contains a girl with a pile of exercise books on her head, and in the
other a girl is sitting on the steps of what looks like a traditional, brick
built school, again with textbooks on her lap. The textbooks and buildings in
these pictures act as global symbols of education and can therefore engage
the viewer in reassuring ways. These familiar objects can arouse comforting,
‘knowing’ feelings about the situation; the viewer is not challenged to think
any differently. ‘Girl happy to have papers on head’ and ‘Happy kids
read/have reading material’ write two participants.
Oppositional readings of these photographs question how reflective
these symbols are of education realities in development contexts. What
would be the effect of alternative symbols for a western viewer? For
example, would he or she recognize the slates that children use in many
places where supplies of paper are limited? Moreover, how might the
troubling unfamiliarity interrupt engagement with the image? We also
wonder why the girls are outside the buildings. Is it better not to trouble
the viewer with the realities of overcrowded classrooms where girls might
be squeezed into the corners in classes dominated by boys? Would the viewer
find the classrooms empty of learning resources apart from a blackboard,
thin wooden benches, and teachers’ canes more disturbing? Researcher
readings reflect the possibility that this girl is perhaps happier sitting outside.
Perhaps the conditions of the classroom and the quality of teaching are so
poor that she does not benefit. Perhaps the teasing and harassment of the
boys in the class – and even the teacher – who resent her intelligence and
commitment to her studies, mean that she prefers to study outside the formal
school building.
On the surface, a highly appealing and clear signal that she is a school-
going girl, the books on the girls’ head (Figure 1) prompted researcher
oppositional readings about the ‘weight of learning’. Perhaps these books
represent the pressure the girl feels to succeed in school and to prove
herself. As Holland (2004, 78) suggests, children are often going to school
not to fulfill their personal desires, but to fulfill the desires of the whole
community, a situation which constitutes quite the burden: ‘The weight is
on their shoulders. It is up to them to grasp the importance of school for
society and, at the same time, to reconstruct it as the only pathway to their
personal future’. Perhaps the image symbolizes the gendered social and
cultural role expectations that she will inevitably face – to carry water
and firewood, for example – even if she can manage to complete her
 15
education. Researcher interpretation was, however, interrupted and
challenged by the multiple ways of perceiving symbols; participant
readings referred to ‘Girl engaged in child labor’ and ‘girl selling
newspapers’.
Overall, the surface and ideological messages reinforce the hierarchical
nature of the relationship between image subject and image viewer. We
suggest that researchers and development workers are content to see
familiar representations of formal schooling and that such images can play
into assumptions that this is the best possible future for girls. Oppositional
reflection allows researcher interpretation to problematise viewer projections
about the symbols and importance of formal schooling and to challenge our
own assumptions about education and the lived realities of girls in very
diverse contexts.

Theme 2. Pre-pubescent girls: girlhood is innocent

Reading girlhood
Signs and symbols of formal schooling represent education but also act to
neatly demarcate childhood from adulthood and to convey the innocence of
the child who is still ignorant and yet wants to know (Holland 2004). We
note with interest that in the images studied, notions of childhood innocence
are conveyed through the portrayal of pre- pubescent girls rather than
adolescent girls, even when this is somewhat inconsistent with the content of
the text inside the cover. The UNGEI report, for example, highlights the
importance of education for adolescent girls affected by conflict, and yet the
cover depicts a clearly younger girl. Adolescent girls remain invisible – and,
we highlight, so invisible that they are absent from the report cover.
The reading and analysis methods used expose, and provoke reflection
on, the various power positions of readers, including ourselves, reading
images of young girls. Comments of the self-identified practitioner
participants, for example, when compared with those of the researchers or
faculty, were noticeably oriented to care-taking. In response to Figure 1,
several practitioners noted the concrete needs of the young girl, stating ‘she
needs a book bag’ – evidencing, perhaps, a very tangible understanding of
context and desire to respond to the immediate needs of young girls.

Reading pre-pubescence
We suggest that youthfulness is non-threatening for the intended readers of
the reports, for whom education is subtly presented as serving ‘unknowing’
and ‘undeveloped’ children. It may be that pre-pubescent girls represent
passivity and acceptance of the more knowing adults around them, notions
which subtly serve to reinforce the gender– age status quo of social and
political structures in society. Or, we contest, is this something more to do
16
with the pleasure and/or discomfort that might be provoked by an image
of an older, more ‘knowing’ and less innocent girl? Holland (2004, 191)
describes how relations of power through sexuality underlie a game of
provocation and denial, titillation and outrage, played around unstable
divisions between adult women and girl children, particularly for the male
viewer. In further probing of the issue of ‘coherency’, we wonder if an image
of an older girl might challenge the viewers’ easy assumptions that she can
learn everything she needs to at school. Viewers may be obliged to consider
negative life experiences which inevitably affect her schooling experience
and outcomes. Adequate water and sanitation facilities in schools are
especially important to menstruating girls and an older girl’s body might
force reflection on the extent to which the school, and even the adults within
the school, are able to cope with her mature body. Will she have bathroom
privacy or will her messy, ‘leaky’ body be considered a nuisance in school
(Kristeva 1982; Oakley 1984; Young 1990)? With high rates of teenage
pregnancy in many countries, the likelihood of an adolescent girl getting
pregnant whilst still in school is high. We question further: would the school
be able to provide facilities for her to continue her schooling?
Adult viewers of images of pre-pubescent girls become implicitly
engaged in power- laden social relationships that range from protective to
paternalistic to sexual, depending on the viewer’s gender, age, and societal
position (Frith 1998). Holland (2004) refers to the dual nature of the adult
gaze: pleasure (beauty and seductiveness of childhood) and power
(superiority of the adult gaze). In these images of girls’ education, we suggest
that the potentially too uncomfortable is avoided by portraying pre-
pubescent girls.

Reading race
Related to power constructions around age and societal roles are power
dynamics vis-à-vis race. Very few participant responses (as described above,
from predominantly white participants) noted the race or ethnicity of the girls
in the images (five out of 44), causing us to wonder why. Does this apparent
‘color blindness’ speak to a more subconscious assumption about who is
needy and who, symbolized through white walls and white papers, should
provide for the needy? Do viewers consider these innocent girls of color as
also ‘historically innocent’, i.e. without a history of their own (Lutz and
Collins 1993), prior to the arrival of colonization and western schooling?
Particularly for Africa, race functions as a symbol of the tribal and the
primitive (Lutz and Collins 1993). It is because we know this that we do not
want to see these girls as ‘black’? Given the historical construction of racial
hierarchy, is their need for assistance subtly conveyed through their skin
color in ways which render it ‘normal’ to a development worker audience?
 17
Theme 3. Girls alone: individualist perspectives
Reading solitary girlhood
A surface interpretation of the images of individual girls could confirm
positive notions of individuality, independence, and self-reliance in girls who
are going to school. Yet, oppositional readings contest that the representation
of the single girl is problematic because she is de-contextualized; she is apart
from her family, friends and home and from anything that could interrupt the
central message of ‘happy schoolgirl’. This is particularly interesting given
increasing attention to school–home–community linkages and to the
relevance of cultural, social, and political context to curriculum and
pedagogy. It also contrasts with increasing attention to the need for girls to
find strength in numbers, to support each other and to collectively advance
their cause (Kirk and Garrow 2003) through initiatives such as the Girls’
Education Movement (GEM) (UNICEF 2008). We therefore question the
absence of relationships when we know that the socialization and esteem-
building of girls is highly relational (Gilligan 1993).

Reading passivity
However, for the viewer who looks for a certain amount of affirmation in the
images, the individual girl is perhaps easier to accept, especially in
submissive physical positions. Sitting down, with books on her head, she is
non-threatening to the photographer or to the viewer – and, we could suggest,
to the adults in her life. Her gaze – the look on her face – is also non-
threatening. In response to Figure 3, participants felt concerned and noted
that she looks like ‘she’s suffering’. We suggest that such perceptions may
make viewers, when confronting a girl who embodies powerlessness and
poverty, feel uneasy. Confrontation by an alternative image – a girl whose
forthright gaze challenges the power positions of the viewer’s gaze – could
bring their privileged position into sharp focus.
Finally, researcher oppositional readings suggest a possible message
that rather than promoting gender equality in education in a holistic way,
we can approach the issue one girl at a time. Supporting access to education
for individual girls is not necessarily going to improve gender equality for
all girls, but with these photographs the viewer is not troubled by the other
girls in the same village who did not manage to obtain the scholarship or
to find money for school clothes, for example. He or she is not forced to
think about those families who need their daughters to work or those girls
who cannot walk from their distant homes to school and back every day.
The viewer can enjoy a false sense of security
360

that because this one girl is accessing quality education, others are too. Such
an image choice allows for avoidance of the complexities of gender, race and
class dynamics in country contexts in which girls’ education is impacted by
the ramifications of complex, macro level issues such as corrupt leadership
and often ineffective social policies.

Conclusions and implications

In this article we present researcher and participant readings of a selected set
of three images and share interpretations, not as research ‘findings’ as such,
but rather as part of an iterative, exploratory process of applying visual
research methods to the context of comparative and international education.
Methodologically, the study stimulated robust analysis of the multiple layers
of meaning contained in what look to be simple, ‘transparent’ photographs.
The researcher analysis and rapid-response templates provoked dialogue,
challenged assumptions, and elicited multi-perspective data that was both
corroborative and nuanced. The resonance between the researchers’ readings
and the participants’ rapid-response readings may indicate a certain
methodological soundness; it also forces reflection on the extent of
difference and diversity amongst education and development workers in
North America.
Especially in a world in which images are used in very creative,
persuasive and even manipulative ways, we see the value of developing tools
and processes for critical image analysis within the field of international and
comparative education. In particular, the use of oppositional readings
served to destabilize our own confidence in development work for girls’
education, as we unraveled the de-contextualized nature of the images and
the many possible underlying risks for girls. We do not suggest that
development agencies are actively engaged in intentional manipulation of
the image viewers; rather that images are chosen for a variety of reasons,
often with little attention to the multiple meanings and implications inherent
in the image selection process. We suggest that destabilizations are critical
to ensuring the quality of development initiatives, and we are interested in
engaging a broader group of stakeholders in image reading. Such methods
may be further adapted and refined in order to engage researchers,
programme staff, policy makers, educators, as well as girls themselves in
critical reflection on images and realities of girls’ education as well as on
their own participation in different efforts to improve education for girls.
Therefore, future research will include and will seek further engagement of
different stakeholders and exploration of diverse positionalities. The tools
used in this initial study will help to investigate the ways in which images
used by international agencies contribute to a reification of historical and
contextual power structures and/or are developed and disseminated in ways
 361
that empower the subjects of the photographs.
We are also interested in further exploration of how image analysis and
consideration of ‘gaze’ in the context of the gender and power relations of
girls’ education and international development may add new dimensions to
theories of post-coloniality, subjectivity and especially of ‘gaze’. We have a
compelling visual data set with which to deconstruct gender, age, race,
power, position and privilege through readings of the ‘gaze of’ and the ‘gaze
on’ ‘other’ girls within and outside of education.
We conclude that images are powerful tools used in the construction of
gender relations, ethnic/racial difference and power relations as well as
conceptions of development, underdevelopment and overdevelopment. As
educators and researchers, we strive to engage with and teach about
development and development contexts in ways that do not objectify and
are not paternalistic. Delving deeply into the multiple meanings and
readings of images of girls’ education helps us to question our own
paternalistic acts of ambiguous participation in development work, and
particularly that of girls’ education.

Notes
1. Although uncomfortable with the term, the lack of an appropriate
alternative forces us to use the term ‘western’ to refer to the physical and
majority cultural contexts of North America, Europe, Australia and New
Zealand. Although referencing similar patterns of history, society,
economics, politics and power, and the predominance of the white
European majority, the term also has to be understood to encompass a
vast amount of diversity within and across the different country contexts.
2. Frith (1998) affirms that most readers interpret advertisements in 3.2
seconds, and social psychologists have determined that observers form
relatively complex impressions of static images in as few as 10 seconds
(Bar, Neta, and Linz 2006).

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Appendix 1. Analysis template

Document Title:
Document Type:
Year of Publication:
Organization:
Summary of the Content / main points / recommendations: Surface
Message:
Narrative:
Intended Message:
Ideological Message:
Oppositional Reading:
Coherency (extent to which the image reflects the content of the report):