A polyphonic approach to video research as a central form of visual surplus lies at the heart of this interpretation of dialogic methodology, as presented in the remainder of this paper. I should state from the outset that such an approach is not for the faint hearted. If certainty is desired, as is so often the case in educational research, then a polyphonic approach will fail to satisfy. If, on the other hand, a genuine desire to see richly and to be informed otherwise, is sought, polyphony offers such an encounter. In some fields of education where interpretation is less prescribed or certain this approach is, perhaps, easier to contemplate. Early childhood education (ECE) is one such domain, but there are many others that invite similar contemplation. Indeed, as I have tried to argue elsewhere (White 2011a, 2011b), those so-called ‘certain’ domains also benefit richly from suspending authoritative thresholds in order to contemplate what might be accessed in polyphonic chorus with other ways of seeing. Indeed, pedagogical research of a multi-perspectival nature is evident in early years studies with preschool aged children across diverse cultures where different teachers discuss and compare their pedagogical insights based on classroom video (see, for example, Hayashi & Tobin 2015).
Given my own interest in ECE it is hardly surprising that it is to the youngest learner that I orient by way of demonstrating a polyphonic approach to video research. It is worth pausing for a moment to explain why. As explained elsewhere (White 2016a, 2016b) infants in ECE research are often misrepresented in educational research due to a lack of understanding or, quite simply, placed in the ‘too hard basket’ and ignored altogether in pedagogical discussions. There are several reasons for this – many of which lie beyond the scope of this paper (for a fuller discussion see Dalli & White, 2016). Suffice to say that their recent entry into the educational realm has not been marked by a flurry of educational research activity beyond a legacy of developmental science and psychology that claims certain realities for infant experience and capability, largely based on laboratory tests with infants and their mothers. As a consequence, the experience of infants in educational settings is largely speculative. This is especially true for infants under the age of one year who are increasingly spending significant hours of their day in ECE settings with non-familial adults who have to work very hard to interpret their language cues (White et al. 2015b).
Taking up this challenge, I set out to action Bakhtin’s visual entreaty by trying to earnestly interpret the ECE experience of infants in polyphonic dialogue with others. Including the adults who work with infants (teachers and parents) as a means of understanding is not new to educational research (Lang et al. 2016) and is easily achieved by interviewing them about their interpretations in a similar way to David Clarke and his associates (Clarke et al. 2006). As a kind of ‘surplus’ this form of data generation goes some way to contributing to an enhanced understanding since adults who live and work with infants are able to offer important and additional insights to the research. However, in isolation of other interpretative approaches that foreground the infant experience from their own visual perspective and seeing the same event through different eyes, interviewing adults alone implies that they fully know the infant and can speak on their behalf. Moreover it denies the infant an opportunity to have their unique perspectives heard or alternative insights considered.
As such research that speaks on behalf of the infant – as if their perspective were fully known - represents a form of ‘ventriloquisation’ (Tannen, 2010) that fails to recognise the infant’s experience beyond the interpretation of another. Bakhtin has a great deal to say about this from an ethical standpoint, suggesting that an exclusive and intimate approach to evaluative activity alone may lead to a complete consummation of another in the absence of an outsider point-of-view. The same is true for approaches that are exclusively distant from the infant, and make assertions based on monologic claims that homogenise infants as developmentally ‘known’ (Cheeseman et al. 2015). Infant research is characterised by both extremes (Dalli & White, 2016).
Not withstanding the obvious linguistic, developmental and ethical limitations in providing opportunities for infants to contribute to the research (Elwick et al. 2014) a polyphonic approach deliberately sets out to view the experience through their eyes, in tandem with others. No ventriloquised assertions are made concerning infant interpretations of the event, but instead, build on what can be seen as a source of insight for all. Emphasis is placed on the language forms and their interpreted meanings in events, and the way participants give form to these through dialogue. This is a dialogic process which summons ‘the work of the eye’ – and the subjective ‘I’ of the researcher - to its fullest extent (White 2016a). As Deborah Hicks (2000) explains: “Rich seeing requires that the contemplator immerses him or herself in the “heaviness” of the social relationship’ (p. 232).
Operationalising a polyphonic approach to video data generation therefore entailed a revised form of richly seeing which encountered the visual field of the infant him or herself. Earliest attempts at this approach had revealed insights far in excess of previously held assertions concerning very young children, including their capacity to disorient adults in their understandings (White, 2011b). In order to access this lens I utilised four cameras which simultaneously shot film from a lens worn on the infants head, the teachers head and my own hand-held device. The role of the teachers is important to note here as the ECE setting operated with a key teacher-buddy system which meant that each infant had a special adult who held primary care responsibility, and who was supported by a back-up – buddy – when they were occupied elsewhere.
Figure 1 provides a view of the four visual fields, including four-month old Harrison, ten-month old Lola, Harrison’s key teacher (1) and Lola’s key teacher (2):
In the top left screen teacher 2 and Harrison are in the visual field of teacher 1. In the bottom left screen teacher 2 is (close up) in the visual field of infant 1 - Harrison. In the bottom right screen a different scene is evident in the visual field of infant 2 – Lola – who is in the same room. The top right screen shows the researchers visual field taken from a distance. Although all screens are shot in the same place and time, what they reveal is often very different, dependent on the direction of each participants head. While this technology cannot claim to track their explicit eye movements and thus cannot account for sideways glances (which are also important in dialogic research according to Sullivan 2013) they do provide a general overview of the visual orientation of each person.
Time synchronised, these visual fields taken over two hours were offered to the teachers for pedagogical interpretation (in an earlier study the family were also invited to offer their perspectives on polyphonic video events – see White 2009a, b). This meant that teachers were invited to select specific events from the polyphonic footage which they considered held pedagogical significance. These insights were shared in a subsequent interview which, in tandem with in-depth analysis by the researchers themselves, provided a rich source of visual surplus (White et al. 2015b). By tracing the field of vision, in tandem with the evaluative eye of researchers and teachers, a means of fuller appreciation of the pedagogical experience for these infants was established. This was seen as particularly important at the time of this study, when infant teachers were being accused of pedagogical incompetence in the absence of an articulated pedagogy that would satisfy the requirements of wider educational discourse (Education Review Office, 2015).