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Photovoice in the English as an Additional Language (EAL) Writing Classroom:

No Need to Rush to Love Writing Because Love Will Grow with Time The Use of
Photovoice in Educational C...

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DOI: 10.18823/asiatefl.2020.17.1.19.269

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 THE JOURNAL OF ASIA TEFL
Vol. 17, No. 1, Spring 2020, 269-279
http://dx.doi.org/10.18823/asiatefl.2020.17.1.19.269

The Journal of Asia TEFL

http://journal.asiatefl.org/
e-ISSN 2466-1511 © 2004 AsiaTEFL.org. All rights reserved.

Photovoice in the English as an Additional Language (EAL) Writing

Classroom: No Need to Rush to Love Writing
Because Love Will Grow with Time

Sandi Ferdiansyah
Institut Agama Islam Negeri (IAIN) Jember, Indonesia

Handoyo Puji Widodo

King Abdulaziz University (KAU), Saudi Arabia

Tariq Elyas
King Abdulaziz University (KAU), Saudi Arabia

The Use of Photovoice in Educational Contexts

Photovoice, the use of digital photography, has been adopted to document both participants’ and
learners’ lived experiences in critical qualitative research. For example, qualitative researchers make use
of photovoice to collect qualitative data in which participants are asked to document their lives using
digital photography (Call-Cummings et al., 2019; Koltz et al., 2010; Mulder & Dull, 2014). In the
educational landscape, photovoice has been used to capture students’ in-class and out-of-class
experiences (Widodo & Ferdiansyah, 2018). The use of photovoice is viewed as a critical pedagogy
which encourages learners to voice their learning experience (e.g., beliefs, values, emotions, or
perceptions). Thus, this digital photography methodology can empower both teachers and students in
voicing their lived experiences in which their agency and identity are recognized.
Particularly in the area of language learning, photovoice can be a tool for making sense of learners’
emotional engagement. The use of photovoice was implemented in a study to promote the development of
a community-based literacy program of Native American high school students (Stanton & Sutton, 2012).
In this study, the digital photography task allowed the students to critically select and organize their most
powerful photographs geared for the construction of a narrative/story and tailor the story to their audience.
In addition, through action research, Rubrico and Hashim (2014) investigated how the Facebook
photovoice interface could effectively facilitate non-native pre-service English teachers’ development of
their language competency. The results of the study demonstrate that interfacing Facebook and
photovoice can promote learner autonomy, creativity, and motivation in language learning among pre-
service teachers participating in the study.
In the context of tertiary teacher education, Widodo and Ferdiansyah (2018) documented how pre-
service English teachers made use of photovoice to write reflective diaries during their teaching
practicum (school placement) program through “exercising their agency as classroom policy makers and

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curriculum actors, to build teacher autonomy, to explore different teaching practices, and to translate their
pedagogical content knowledge into action (p. 933).” Furthermore, Graziano (2011) found that
photovoice enabled pre-service English teachers to consider effective language teaching and learning
approaches through reflecting on their experiences. Grounded in this empirical evidence, the present
study aims to explore how pre-service teachers engaged in learning to write and documented their
emotional experience in learning to write through photovoice as a learning platform as they went through
different stages of writing.

The Study

This report presents a case study investigating how second-year pre-service teachers of English in an
Indonesian university utilized photovoice to document their experience in learning to write. These student
teachers took an Extensive Writing course in which a text-based pedagogy was adopted. The course
focused on developing student teachers’ writing skills. In this respect, the student teachers had to
demonstrate their ability to write several pieces of writing with different genres that they had learned in
the previous semesters, such as narrating, describing, instructing, and arguing. In this course, 15 students
(4 males and 11 females) participated in the text-based writing lesson. They ranged from 20 to 22 years
old. In the text-based writing pedagogy following Mickan’s (2017) text-based writing framework, the
student teachers observed, understood, responded to, analyzed, and composed texts. This framework was
later translated into pre-writing, while-writing, and post-writing stages.
In the pre-writing tasks, the students began observing a sample reading text including its genre,
communicative goal, text structure, and lexico-grammar. Responding to the text, they drafted their writing
based on the writing prompt given by the teacher. They could use graphic organizers, such as mind
mapping to help them visualize their ideas. When developing the ideas into a complete paragraph, they
reflected on the self-assessment and peer assessment forms provided by the teacher (see Appendix).
Finally, they re-wrote the paragraph and submitted it to their lecturer for final grading when they
underwent a series of the writing process.
In this writing course, photovoice was used as a pedagogical platform for the student teachers to
produce a text. Using Koltz et al.’s (2010) model of photovoice, student teachers were required to write
150 words of a photovoice text using the following moves: the context in which the photo took place; the
reasons why the photo was taken; and the emotional reactions students felt while engaging in the writing
process. In this study, six photovoice texts written by three students were selected because these three
students regularly submitted their photovoices via the e-learning platform, Edmodo. The pseudonyms of
the recruited student teachers were Ivon (female), Tayef (male), and Lana (male). In addition, their
photovoices were selected because they followed the organizational pattern of the photovoice; the student
teachers reflected on their learning experiences; and their photovoices were original. For the purpose of
analysis, the student teachers’ reflective journals were color-coded based on three categories of voice:
context, reasons, and emotion. In the photovoices, underlined words represent emotionality expressed by
the participants. Overall, some lexical items, such as phrases and clauses in the photovoices presented in
this article were also marked (underlined) or coded so as to indicate the recurring patterns of the emerging
themes and were displayed in a narrative fashion.

Writing Orientation

In the writing-orientation session, one of the authors introduced the students to writing pieces with
different genres they would learn during the whole semester. In this class, text-based pedagogy was used
in which students started learning to write with text. A text served as the point of departure for student
teachers to brainstorm, pool, and draft their ideas. The student teachers were told to carry out and submit

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Vol. 17, No. 1, Spring 2020, 269-279

five main portfolio entries: initial writing, self-assessment, peer assessment, revised writing, and
photovoice. While they submitted their written tasks directly to the teacher, their photography-mediated
reflective journal was uploaded onto Edmodo. The following is Tayef’s photovoice documented on
March 6, 2019.

Figure 1. Student teacher’s photovoice in the writing-orientation session.

Drawing on this photovoice, this student made use of a cloudy sky to express his feeling in the first
writing class meeting. He connected the cloudy sky metaphor with his writing experience. At the outset,
he was depressed and felt that it was difficult to choose what to write. However, he tried to motivate
himself and keep trying to find the answer. This student teacher’s voice has two practical implications for
the teaching of writing in EFL/EAL classrooms. First, teacher educators can make use of photovoice as a
tool for understanding what students feel about learning to write or even about writing to learn. Second,
the use of photovoice can help teacher educators experiment with meaningful pedagogical interventions
or tasks.

Pre-writing Stage

This pre-writing task was designed to help students familiarize themselves with different genres
through reading texts. The reading texts were taken from the book of Academic Writing from Paragraph
to Essay by Zemach and Rumisek, 2005. Student teachers made meaning of the text and analyzed the
communicative goal of the text and its organizational patterns. After that, they were given a writing
prompt that required them to think about their writing topic. They could draw a mind map to help them
visualize their draft. Here is the photovoice Ivon produced in class on March 19, 2019.

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Figure 2. Student teacher’s photovoice in the the pre-writing stage.

As seen in the photovoice evidence above, Ivon used the metaphor of flowers to illustrate her feeling
about the third class meeting of the extensive writing course. She argued that she would love writing with
time. It can be inferred that she would follow the writing process patiently because learning to write takes
time, process, and effort (Widodo, 2013). As seen in the photovoice, the student teacher participant
adopted mind mapping as a strategy for helping her pool ideas. This visual scaffold could assist Ivon in
generating ideas that could be developed into her writing piece. This photovoice can inform teachers of
how to cope with struggling writers in the early stage of writing, such as brainstorming or pooling ideas.

Paragraph Development

In a paragraph development task, student teachers began developing their ideas by drafting ideas from
the pre-writing task into a complete paragraph. They were required to write a certain number of words
based on the topic they chose. During this session, the teacher assisted the student teachers in developing
their paragraph by asking a series of questions and discussing what the student teachers had in mind. This
photovoice evidence shows how Tayef responded to this writing task (March 23, 2019).

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Vol. 17, No. 1, Spring 2020, 269-279

Figure 3. Student teacher’s photovoice in the paragraph-development stage.

This photovoice illustrates how Tayef struggled to use and string appropriate words into meaningful
clauses or sentences. This student participant used the metaphor of fabric in order to represent how he
wrote a coherent paragraph. He addressed two aspects of a good paragraph: coherence and cohesion. The
discourses of coherence and cohesion challenged this participant to communicate his ideas clearly and
coherently so that his writing purpose could be clearly communicated. Although this participant struggled
to write a coherent and cohesive paragraph, he had the courage to keep practicing learning to write. This
shows that self-ought-to motivation (Siridetkoon & Dewaele, 2018) plays a pivotal role in learning to
write. For this reason, teacher educators should play different roles in scaffolding students to produce
paragraph-level or essay-level writings. The use of photovoice can become a source of evidential
information for teacher educators to think about practical considerations to develop students’ lexical
inputs. In line with this, Benko (2012) emphasizes teacher’s specific ways of scaffolding students in
learning to write. Therefore, teachers could discuss the use of transition signals with students, which may
refer to the model text as a strategy to ensure coherence and cohesion in students’ writings.

Self-assessment and Peer Assessment

Asking students to self-assess their writing was geared to help the student teachers develop their
awareness of their writing practices. This self-assessment could encourage student teachers to reflect
upon different writing stages through which they went. This self-dialog might help student teachers see
their strengths and weaknesses. Being a reflective writer helps student teachers grow with time and self-
question what they write. In addition to self-assessment, one of the authors implemented peer assesment
so that student teachers could learn from each other. Implementing self-assessment and peer assessment
could scaffold student teachers in building their learning autonomy. Here is Lana’s photovoice written on
May 8, 2019.

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Vol. 17, No. 1, Spring 2020, 269-279

Figure 4. Student teacher’s photovoice in self-assessment and peer assessment practice.

As seen in this photovoice, this student teacher made use of the metaphor of a thatch to reflect on his
experience in self-assessment and peer assessment. He was expressing his strategy to cope with the
problems they faced, doing self-reflection, and asking peers for advice. Contextually, he found a peer
assessment task, such as giving and receiving peer comments useful to help him write better ideas. This
indicates that marrying self-assessment and peer assessment in learning to write can engage students in a
reflective practice so that they are aware of their own writing repertoire. Reflecting on this student
teacher’s experience, writing teachers are encouraged to help students by providing them with a more
reflective learning environment. Widodo and Ferdiansyah (2018) highlight the importance of reflective
practice as a means of seeing student teachers’ learning development. In other words, writing teachers can
encourage students to engage in continuous self-assessment and peer assessment to help them explore
different stages of the writing journey.

Teacher’s Feedback

After revision based on self-correction and peer feedback, students submitted their writing to the
teacher to see whether their writing still needed further revision. The teacher feedback aimed to give
students the opportunity to take another look at their writing. In addition, the teacher here played a role as
an editor and proofread the student’s writing before it was submitted for grading/publishing. Here is how
Lana responded to the teacher’s feedback on May 30, 2019.

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Figure 5. Student teacher’s photovoice in the teacher-feedback stage.

The photovoice describes how Lana was feeling frustrated with the writing assignment. What Lana
wrote here demonstrates the importance of teacher’s feedback. He felt that the teacher’s feedback gave
him opportunities to review and revise his work. He said that he learned new things that he could use for
the next writing assignments. The text-based pedagogy in writing classroom, generally, helps students to
rework their work. In this text-based writing, students can draft their initial writing and ask their peers and
teacher for feedback so that the students can make several revisions. Both peers and teacher can play roles
as reviewers, editors, and proofreaders. With this in mind, they can build a strong commitment to
sustaining their motivation to learn to write and become competent writers. As Park (2018) points out,
responding to either peer review or teacher’s feedback allows students to engage actively in the process of
writing through which they also develop the ability to examine their own piece of writing and attend to
the reviewer’s comments.

Post-writing

By the end of the class, student teachers were encouraged to re-write and polish the final version of
their writing for the purpose of publication. They had another look at the teacher’s notes and attended to
the comments as required. Here is how Ivon responded to this final writing stage on June 20, 2019.

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Vol. 17, No. 1, Spring 2020, 269-279

Figure 6. Student teacher’s photovoice in the post-writing stage.

The photovoice that Ivon wrote here was very strong. She symbolized her feeling with the sunrise
which she thought of as positive energy. She was satisfied with her performance, even though she still
struggled with the use of vocabulary and grammar in writing. Moreover, she found that by engaging
herself in the writing process, she enjoyed learning to write more as she engaged in the entire writing
process. For teachers, reading this final photovoice can help them construe what students actually need. In
this case, engaging students in the process of writing is significant to help develop their writing skills. In
addition, with this approach, it is expected that the students will find a different yet meaningful learning
experience. Martin and Dismuke (2015) contend that pedagogical tasks and focused learning materials
can promote the development of learner engagement in writing.

Conclusion

This article has shown the potential of photovoice as a pedagogical tool to capture second-year
undergraduate students’ engagement in writing in which emotion plays a crucial role in the EAL writing
classroom. Therefore, it is suggested that teachers can design pedagogical tasks, such as text-based
pedagogy that provide students more opportunities to participate in learning in more effective and
meaningful ways. Additionally, teachers can use a meaning maker tool in learning to write, such as
photovoice, to empower both teachers and students to become reflective thinkers. It is recommended that
teachers and students use a variety of classroom activities that trigger students’ critical and creative
thinking. Photovoice can be a valuable tool for maximizing students’ learning without too much pressure
on students. Language teachers can adopt this classroom-based methodology to interact and engage with
their students effortlessly. Photovoice has proved to be anxiety-free and engaging in EAL classrooms.
Although student teachers in this study yielded positive outcomes in terms of the enactment of process
writing, this cannot be used to overgeneralize these outcomes. Thus, future research on how photovoice

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might be used to capture how language learners learn to write an academic essay in an EAL writing
classroom should be undertaken.

The Authors

Sandi Ferdiansyah is an English language instructor in the English Education Department of Institut
Agama Islam Negeri (IAIN) Jember. His areas of interest include ELT methodology, technology-
enhanced language learning, and teacher professional development.

Handoyo Puji Widodo is currently affiliated with King Abdulaziz University (KAU) based in Jeddah,
Saudi Arabia. Widodo has published extensively in refereed journals and edited volumes. His areas of
specialization include language teaching methodology, language curriculum and materials development,
systemic functional linguistics (SFL) in language education, and teacher professional development.

Tariq Elyas is Associate Professor of Applied Linguistics at King Abdulaziz University (KAU), Jeddah,
Saudi Arabia. Dr. Elyas has a strong background in research on World Englishes, Language & Identity,
Language & Culture, e-Learning, and Media & Language. His publication record includes scholarly
papers in some of the most prestigious peer-reviewed journals in the field as well as an edited book and
contributions to the most recent (2018) TESOL Encyclopedia of English Language Teaching.

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Appendix

Self-assessment
Scores
No Descriptions
1 2 3 4 5
1 I follow all stages of the process writing
2 The idea of my writing is truly interesting
3 I write a clear topic sentence
4 I develop my paragraph by elaborating on the main idea
5 I once again restate my topic sentence at the end of the paragraph to write a
concluding statement which may impress my readers
6 I have used appropriate words in every sentence. I confirm its appropriateness using
digital dictionary
7 I double checked each of the grammatical elements in my writing
8 I am sure that I used appropriate connectors to conjoint sentences where necessary
9 My writing is original. No parts of this piece are taken from any sources
Total

Description:
45 – 36 I am happy with my writing. I believe that it will be interesting to readers. Readers will also understand
this piece with ease
35 – 26 I am happy that my writing is complete. It is going to be interesting. But, I am still worried about
whether readers will understand it easily. I need to re-read it.
25 – 16 I am not really happy with my writing. I feel that I missed some important elements that will influence
reader’s understanding of this piece. I should re-check it.
< 15 I am not confident with my writing at all. I am worried that it is not interesting, and readers will be hard
to understand this piece. Thus, I must take a look at the idea and lexico-grammar.

Peer assessment
Scores
No Descriptions
1 2 3 4 5
1 My friend’s piece of writing is interesting
2 I could follow the idea that my friend wrote in his/her writing
3 My friend’s writing has a clear topic sentence
4 I saw that my friend has used appropriate grammar in his/her writing
5 My friend has used appropriate words in his/her writing
6 The sentence connectors have been appropriately used in my friend’s piece
Total

Write comments on your friend’s piece of writing in 50-100 words.

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