Educational Action Research

ISSN: 0965-0792 (Print) 1747-5074 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/reac20

Video, reflection and transformation: action

research in vocational education and training in a
European context
Barry Hutchinson & Peter Bryson
To cite this article: Barry Hutchinson & Peter Bryson (1997) Video, reflection and
transformation: action research in vocational education and training in a European context,
Educational Action Research, 5:2, 283-303, DOI: 10.1080/09650799700200025
To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09650799700200025

Published online: 20 Dec 2006.

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Educational Action Research, Volume

5, No.REFLECTION
2, 1997
VIDEO,
AND TRANSFORMATION

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Video, Reflection and Transformation:

action research in vocational education
and training
in a European context
BARRY HUTCHINSON & PETER BRYSON
University of Ulster at Jordanstown,
Newtownabbey, United Kingdom

ABSTRACT Many of us in higher education are under pressure to make our

courses more efficient by creating new forms of delivery and many of these are
usually media, particularly computer, based. As The Open University (OU) has
blazed the trail with text and video-based courses there is a model to follow for
those wishing to use the same media for such a purpose. This paper reports the
efforts of one group of trainers who used video to record and analyse their
practice in an action research project which also undertook to develop distance
learning modules. The masters degree materials were to include text and related
video programmes, though not in the OU fashion. The production of the video
programmes was based on, and sometimes used, the materials the vocational
trainers had shot. Inevitably, with hindsight, the production requirements vied
with the researchdevelopment tasks: the need for linear programming almost
swamped the need for exploration and experiment. However, the story reveals
some of the strengths as well as some of the pitfalls of using video in such ways.

Introduction
This article focuses on the contribution of video to promoting and sustaining
the process of critical reflection and of improved practical action, in an
action research setting. It is based upon the work of the MENYU project
(Meeting the Employment Needs of the Young Unemployed), a project which
was supported by a grant from the European Social Fund (ESF) under the
Employment-Horizon Initiative. The European Social Fund, Horizon
Initiative, sought to reduce the barriers facing the socially disadvantaged
through supporting collaborative projects involving transnational
partnerships of interested parties who would be prepared to network their
ideas and experience. The projects central intention was to engage with
vocational trainers of the young unemployed in order to construct and
develop vocational education and training strategies capable of enhancing
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BARRY HUTCHINSON & PETER BRYSON

the life and employment prospects of 16-25-year-old unemployed people

from the deprived inner city areas of North, West and East Belfast, in
Northern Ireland. It was intended that such strategies would be of value in
other places and in other circumstances.
The project recruited vocational trainers who worked in a variety of
state-supported and recognised training organisations: it ran for a period of
14 months beginning in November 1993, until December, 1994. While the
development of alternative, innovatory approaches to assist labour market
access was the central concern, an additional one was concerned with the
promotion of closer working relationships between the transnational
partners. Satellite broadcasting and video conferencing were two means by
which the partners attempted to share their work with each other. Creating
opportunities for greater social inclusion was therefore allied with the
promotion of European cohesion.
Central to both concerns was the requirement that each partner
should develop distance learning materials based on the work of the projects
in the partnership. This interest emanated from policy markers claims
about the increasing impact of new technologies on education and on the
labour market in general, and the need, outlined most recently in the
European Commissions White Paper on Growth, Competitiveness and
Employment (1993), to encourage access to and development of new
technologies. In other words, to gain financial support for educational
research and development projects of this type, specific attention had to be
given to exploiting the new communications technologies: in this case both
as a way of enfranchising the socially disadvantaged and as a way of
disseminating the products of the project to other vocational educators and
trainers. It is in this context that MENYU used video technology.
The project undertook to produce, on the basis of the experience of the
MENYU participants, an open and distance learning course for other
trainers of the young unemployed, a course which would be incorporated
into the Universitys School of Education, Postgraduate/Masters Degree in
Education programme. The course materials it was envisioned would
comprise both written and video materials, the latter illustrating and
illuminating the former. Additionally, however, it was intended to explore the
potential of video in supporting the vocational trainers critical reflective
research. That is, the project would be partisan in the empowering manner
exhorted by Zeichner (1993), and was designed to give the trainers control
over what is to count as knowledge about practice (Elliott, 1994), thereby
enabling them to transform their practice. However, as action research lives
in a tradition of the written and, occasionally, the spoken word, one question
to be answered was whether video, primarily a visual medium, could
contribute to the development of the trainers reflexive abilities: would the
claim that videos untiring ability to capture and reliably represent a
complete quotation (Collier & Collier, quoted in Prosser, 1992), sustain the
claim that the best way to improve practice lies not so much in trying to
control peoples behaviour as in helping them control their own by becoming
more aware of what they are doing, (Elliott, 1977)? More particularly, if the

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claim that, as Jaworski (1993) put it, The act of stepping outside seems
crucial to the reflective process, yet it is difficult to achieve (and as she goes
on to claim maybe one of the reasons why many teachers never reach the
reflective stage), it is pertinent to ask: would video be of help or a hindrance
to the enhancement of the trainers reflective capabilities? In addition then
to the potential value of video to the trainers action research, their
experience was to be captured and incorporated into teaching materials
which would be used in the future to educate others. A prime question then
was concerned with what would happen when these twin tasks were
undertaken: would the technical-illustrative task squeeze out, as Walker &
Wiedel (1985) asked, the role of imagery of a more direct visual kind in the
transformative process?

Background
While it might seem a straightforward question asking, What precisely is
video? it is a peculiarly difficult one to answer. To begin with, video can be
anything from a piece of technical hardware, such as a camera or a cassette
tape, to a mass communications format, or to a process of film or television
news programming and production. As a record it provides documentary
material which can be later analysed in order to develop appreciation, and
then edited for presentation and dissemination purposes. Additionally, it
captures real time moving pictures, unlike a conventional stills camera
which in freezing the action has the power to uncover or reveal or emphasise
the unexpected. In these ways video provides a distinct cultural inventory, a
visual record of events and circumstances which is more than illustrative,
but which is still necessarily selective. Video therefore is a title which covers
a range of activities, functions and purposes.
The mystique, or generality, of the term has to some extent created
barriers to the exploitation of the medium. Video use has been dominated by
the mass media and its potential has been shaped in the mind of the viewer
for that reason. Masked by the smooth and sophisticated format of the
professional television world, video has never really fulfilled its promise as a
medium for everybody (Community Relations Council, 1971), though as
the price of camcorders has come down, sales and presumably use, have
increased. While it might now primarily find its main use in making home
and holiday videos, and there are occasional slots for these uses on some of
the main TV channels in the United Kingdom, it initially made some inroads
into community development work (ibid.) during the 1970s, it was seen both
as a means to mediate community problems, and as a means of encouraging
dialogue between different groups. These attempts at community television
and video asked a simple question, Why do we assume that institutional
cultures such as the media have the sole rights to communication? The
work that these early pioneers did, in some ways reflected the subversive
nature of action research in that it challenged accepted norms, with the
intention of empowering individuals and groups enabling them to voice their
experience and concerns. However, the professionalisation of the medium
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BARRY HUTCHINSON & PETER BRYSON

produced a mode of behaviour aptly named by Hopkins et al (1972) as the

six oclock news syndrome. In their study of the potential use of video as a
community networking tool, they identified a trend amongst the bulk of
media consumers who perceived video and television as a domain of
responsible spokespeople, neatly dressed individuals who from behind their
desks delivered standard explanations in response to events. They found
that video, in fact, could act to further marginalise excluded groups because
the format of the medium was so alien to these groups. Current media
attempts to use video diaries and the like may have begun to ameliorate this
state of affairs.
It seems that the debate and underlying reticence over the nature of
communications media of any kind is based upon the question of control.
This is even more true today with a new generation of multimedia computer
technology being introduced. However, a parallel emphasis in the 1990s is
upon personal use: video technology is now becoming more accessible and
affordable for the general public. In some ways the use of video within the
MENYU project retraced the early attempts of community video projects, by
handing control of the medium to those outside the media professions. It
aimed to explore the possibilities for indigenous recording and production as
a support to self understanding, critical reflection and the networking of
experience.
Walker & Wiedel (1985) expressed surprise at the lack of exploration of
the connections, between documentary film and social science since as they
pointed out,
the issues that dominate documentary photography and
photojournalism are very similar to those that dominate the
fieldwork tradition in the social sciences: problems of objectivity, of
access and confidentiality, of political and other commitments
entering the debate between those striving for portrayal and those
pursuing analysis, questions about control over access to
audiences and manipulation of the relevant information channels
by publishers and editors faced with the demands of the market.
It was not anticipated at the beginning of the project which, if any, of these
issues would arise. This was due to the action research nature of the
approach being adopted. The trainers would be conducting the research
(using the cameras, etc.), and would analyse the (visual) records both
individually and collectively with members of the project team. It was hoped
that the distance learning materials could be constructed together and in
that belief we in the project team did not foresee any confusion or conflict
between research and documentary concerns. As it turned out we were in
fact wrong, but more of that later. It was important, however, at the
beginning of the project, in order to test the power of the medium, to try to
introduce its use without compounding the fears of the participants and
without subjecting the process of progressive focusing, inherent to action
research, to the technical requirements of video production. The democratic
context of action research seemed suited to this task and provided the
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VIDEO, REFLECTION AND TRANSFORMATION

exploratory framework for the participants to adjust to the medium and to

explore its value as a new research tool.
The general idea which lay behind the use of video in the project saw it
as falling into two phases, each of which would follow the progress of the
action research. The first, which would begin with an exploratory,
reconnaissance phase, recording-documenting the actual practice and
context of the participants, would attempt to capture their concerns,
understandings, intentions and values, and would indicate something of
their impact as trainers of the young unemployed. These recordings would
then be used for private and group analysis. In the second phase of the
project the role of video would change as the participants would be asked to
produce what the project director called a videaugraphy, a video
autobiography or visual essay of their developmental journey. The project
therefore used video in two different ways: first, as a research method, a
recording tool, producing source materials which would form the basis for
critical reappraisal in seminar discussions and which would create a
reference library of practical experience. Secondly, it would be used as a
means to create a videaugraphy, a visual essay of that experience. Both of
these it was hoped could be used in networking with the transnational
partners and to provide at least some of the open and distance learning
course materials which MENYU had undertaken to produce. This dual use of
video is crucial to the interest of this paper: could video meet the challenges
of action research, could it take a supportive role, supplementing the
empowering principles of action research, or, would it dictate the process
acting as a predictive, anticipatory mechanism, limiting the quality of the
participants investigations through its technical requirements?

The First Phase

Within this phase the participants began to familiarise themselves with the
use of the equipment employing the camera within their work to record and
build a video research library of different aspects of their practice. They also
used it to record interviews and the social location of their training
organisation. They would rely upon these recordings, first, as a source from
which they could identify the problem or issue they wished to explore and,
secondly, as a referential means to develop and communicate their
hypotheses. (In fact, the trainers also had to write up case studies of their
action research experience and append their video materials as documentary
evidence.) At this first stage of the project, video was introduced as a toy to
be played with in recording whatever might help them develop the early
stages of their investigation. Besides extending the number of research
methods available at the reconnaissance stage, this was designed to
familiarise them with the equipment and to enable them to begin to engage
publicly in reflective exploration of their experience as vocational trainers.
Video was deliberately down played by the project staff to try to appease the
expected insecurities it would provoke amongst the trainers who not only
were engaging in a new educational experience (we are doubtful about the
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BARRY HUTCHINSON & PETER BRYSON

extent to which the claims about action research being a naturalistic

research method can be accepted), but who also had little knowledge of the
use of the medium. Video was the means by which they would start to reveal
their practice and their understandings to themselves, and a source from
which they could identify issues or problems. A crucial part of initiating
action research is to build and nurture a sense of openness within a
democratic context. The use of video could complicate this process because
as it captures a rich array of contextual and personal detail it blurs the
boundary between the public and private world. Therefore, the project team
foresaw that it might provoke fear and anxiety, and consequently be seen as
intrusive. None of the participant trainers had experienced using a video
camera, and many were reticent about introducing it into their working
environment. Their reticence can, in part, be attributed to their knowledge of
video images, mass forms of communication which carry with them the
threat of a mass audience. MENYU tried to stress the personal aspects of
video use, as a parallel form of diary or journal writing. As such the
participants were given control of the medium: they were expected to
familiarise themselves with the equipment by playing with it. They would
operate it in their place of work and they would have control over the
recordings. Very little instruction was offered at this point apart from
grounding the participants in the ethics of research and assuring them that
they would learn from their mistakes.
The participant trainers were asked to develop the initial
reconnaissance stage of their inquiry by recording aspects of their practice,
instances of their day to day experience, which seemed to be related to the
concerns they were expressing. The project team believed that these
recordings could be used as a collaborative focus in order to better
understand the complexities of their respective working contexts. By
recording real time instances of their practice the project aimed to encourage
the participants to re-evaluate their actions and to appreciate the provisional
nature of the contextual and personal conditions they worked within. In this
way video was hoped to provide a way into critical reflective thinking, or as
Sparkes (1991) put it, it was a means by which to explore, challenge and
change the structures that restrain. To this extent it was envisaged that it
would be used to explore both the self and the contextual features of the
participants practice.
As revealed by these early recordings, the trainers practice of training
turned out to be largely instructional in form and, consistent with this, they
came to the project expecting to be given practical and theoretical advice
which they could use to improve their training practice. They used the video
as if they were searching for an answer outside of themselves: all missed the
point of research which was to reflect about their own practice and
understandings, to develop their own abilities and to learn from designing
and attempting change. None of the participants viewed video as a part of
the change process they were embarking on, they used it as means to seek
answers, to justify actions and to display what they knew. The sense of
audience which accompanies the medium seemed to affect the participants

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use of the equipment: video evidence became a justification for their role and
their practice, an answer to the questioning of action research.
All of the trainers used the camera in interviews with their clients:
these were attempts at informal discussion to learn more of their trainees
experiences and viewpoints, but they came across in the recordings rather
like interrogations. Most of the interviewers focused the camera directly
upon the interviewee, they sat out of shot hiding behind the camera, they
approached the interview aggressively dominating the discussion and they
were shocked at the results of the recordings. In the project group meetings
the individuals discussed their purposes and their conduct of the interviews.
As time passed and as they all brought in recordings of themselves at work,
from the discussions of these they gradually became aware of the
participative aspects of action research and began to make links between
different experiences. The recordings revealed the same sense of lack of
control amongst their trainees that they themselves were coming to
experience as the project began to challenge their conceptions of themselves
and the work they did. In this sense the trainers took their first steps to
appreciating more fully the impact of the self: the recordings were being
used not just to discuss what was being said and done and how these might
be improved upon, but why they were saying and doing these things. The
shock the participants experienced in seeking answers from within
themselves may have been due to the realisation that the issues they were
facing were as much to do with how they understood their work and how
they related to others, as with the structures they worked within.
Familiarisation with the equipment proved to complement the initial
stages of the research. Discussions over why individuals were hesitant about
using the camera, why they choose to use it in a particular way and why
they chose to focus upon their trainees, proved to be very revealing about
their self-understandings of both their roles and functions as trainers. Also,
in reviewing the recordings together, the participants began to get to grips
with the projects collaborative aims and they began to pull together as a
group. The video recordings enabled them to see similarities not only in their
experience as research students, but also in their experience as trainers. For
example, through their initial recordings the trainers came to realise that
instead of illuminating the thoughts and feelings of their trainees they were
imposing their own thoughts upon them: they came to realise that they and
their NVQ training manuals contrary to much of the rhetoric surrounding
these qualifications, held an implicit deficiency view of the trainees they
worked with. Many initially used the camera as a means of control over their
subjects, as a weapon rather than as a research tool. In using the camera on
other people the trainers reflected their initial confusions over the whole
project approach. In this way video proved its value in having what Collier
(quoted in Walker & Wiedel, 1985), had called the can opener effect: it
speeded the growth of rapport between the group, it grounded and involved
all in each others experience, and it released anecdotes. This later was
particularly important because the anecdote provided a potent way into an
elaborated view of each participants understanding of themselves and their

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context, and invariably did so in a humorous manner. Schostak (1991)

seems to be absolutely right when he says:
Anecdotes preserve...levels of interpretation in the telling through
the tone of the voice, the laughter on the face, the triumph in the
eyes, the chosen vocabulary, the form through which it is put
together. All this...is essential to the structure of lived experience
and hence the ways in which judgements are formed, decisions
made and actions performed. Anecdotes provide a key route into
the representation of lived experience...Each anecdote details her
experiences, establishing from her own point of view her sense of
self, her social skill, her self control in relation to experiences of
disorientation, of strangeness...The anecdotes then become the
common property of groups and employed as keys to entry into
groups as one person says to another I too have experience like
yours...
To this extent Johnstons (1994) claim that narrative inquiry represents a
more natural way in which teachers come to know themselves and their
practice, than does action research, seems well enough made: Peters (1987)
view that people [are] much more interested and articulate in talking about
particular situations and their emotional responses to them indicates this
to be true of more than just teachers. Whether it is rigorous enough to
sustain personal improvement efforts over time, and whether it is
collaborative enough to attempt and to secure organisational change, is not
so certain. To the extent that narrative reveals critical awareness then there
would seem to be little difference in this respect between narrative inquiry
and action research. It is perhaps better not to see these approaches as
distinct but rather to see them as co-terminous: action research begins with
and ends in, stories made stronger through rigorous and shared data
collection and analysis.
Video recordings contained a rich array of information not only about
the subject under review but also about the thinking which developed and
constructed the recording. This interpretative appeal of video recordings
acted as a catalyst to critical self-reflection and as a stimulus to appreciating
different perspectives on actions which previously may have been taken for
granted. Video, because it was transparent in intent (Prosser, 1992) and
provided a sense of undeniable validity, opened the world of the obvious and
the routine for questioning why things had come to be the way they were,
and for speculating on what they might become: it was this visual world
which contributed the detailed images from which these action researchers
could begin to change and improve their practice. It is this difference which
arguably sets video apart from more conventional research methods. It is an
active medium which has the capacity to simultaneously open up both the
personal and the public aspects of professional practice. As the trainers
linked what they saw to their training manuals, to their personal
understandings and to the expectations of their line managers, the

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recordings became the source for democratic debate and the sharing of
experience.
This became more clear as the participants use of the medium
developed. They moved on from individualised, often defensive recordings, to
group shots of their working environment. The camera was left running in
the corner of the room with the minimum of disturbance, capturing up to
3-hour periods of activity, focused on the training room. Abandoning the
camera in this way reduced its media impact, its sense of audience effect
within a working environment: the participants began to forget about
constructing images and, with no operator to question, the camera soon
became part of the furniture. As the trainers began to feel more comfortable
with the presence of the camera, they were better able to discuss what the
recordings had captured. As they began to involve colleagues and their
trainees in their research, they began to appreciate more the participative
ideals of the project.
Initial problems in using video as a means of recording are related to
its unfamiliarity. Time is required for familiarisation and for the development
of a style or recording routine. In allowing participants the time to develop a
personal understanding of the use of video and in relegating its use to the
requirements of their research, the project allowed them greater control over
it. In particular, initially clarifying the trainers concerns provided the
substantive framework within which the technical concerns could be
addressed. This would seem to confirm the advice which Schouten & Watling
(1994) offer:
Playing around with techniques can consume quite a lot of time,
time that might be more usefully spent on content. Our advice is to
start with content, and to keep technique off the agenda for as
long as possible...talking about content and discussing the way
the subject should develop make it much easier in the later stages
to select and use the most appropriate techniques..start to use the
equipment when [you] know what [you] want to make with it.
Secondly, time became a problem for the participants in reviewing the
recordings. Video is not an impartial observer, the researcher chooses his or
her location and subject of interest. However, while within the frame a static
camera is discerning, analysis of a video recording can be a huge
undertaking because of the sheer content and detail captured. The project
suffered due to the lack of time available at the weekly meetings to analyse
all of the recordings. Trainers found it a hard task to analyse their
recordings without the collaborative opportunity provided through the
weekly group sessions and the weekend workshops. It may be that the
process of recording practice can be personalised to allow the user the
control over the camera, but playback is a participative activity relying upon
the variety of interpretations the recordings can provoke. The participants
noted this difficulty and extended it to the whole process of engaging in
action research. That is the challenge of, as one trainer put it wearing two
hats, first, as a vocational trainer and, secondly, as an outside observer of
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that role, a researcher interested in improving understanding and practice.

Without the opportunity provided by the meetings, the trainers found it a
difficult task to review the material in isolation. This difficulty seemed to
reveal the importance of context in playing back the recordings: participants
relied upon the weekly meetings to assume the role of researcher these
meetings gave them the physical and temporal space to contemplate their
work free from its contextual, and apparently imperative, demands.
Furthermore, since video is an overt medium, it can be disruptive and
intrusive. If it is to be accepted as a research method rather than a weapon,
understanding of its operation is a basic need by all those involved in its
use. Familiarity breeds confidence and, in the experience of MENYU as the
participants became less wary of its challenge and more interested in what it
recorded, ability to use the video developed alongside their understanding of
the action research values and processes, each mirroring the others
development. The recordings of their actual practice again contributed to
their understanding of the projects direction and interests and
simultaneously enabled them to identify aspects of their own practice which
they were interested in pursuing: they wanted to improve their
understanding of their practice and to develop improved strategies. They
were able to virtually take part in their own training sessions, to recognise
their own style and its impact, and to critically assess why they had chosen
a particular training format asking, crucially, what it might mean to be
fulfilling their clients needs. Critically looking at their context was more
problematic.
Whilst the trainer participants began to build a shared understanding
of their practice and their motivations, the project team began to build, on a
more macro-level, a picture of the structures and systems of training which
informed the trainers understandings. The project team could access the
recordings to try to initiate discussions about the context of training and the
systems in which the trainers worked. In this way discussion was
established, facilitated and mediated by the video recordings. The video
therefore served as a catalyst to individual learning and as a stimulus to
debate in a profession which has suffered under the increasing profile of
employment issues and constantly changing policy responses. However, as
things progressed it became clear that all of the trainers found it difficult to
look critically at the assumptions, values and purposes on which their
training programmes were based: their task was to deliver training as
specified in their NVQ statements, the accompanying manuals and in their
job contracts. While they were prepared to complain about difficulties arising
from different facets of NVQ statements and particular problems created for
some trainees, they remained reluctant to question the broad ideas which
lay behind the framework. This was almost totally due, they reported, to the
fact that their jobs were not secure and they had no desire to rock the boat.
To the extent that NVQ statements described things to be done, the trainers
got on with doing them to the best of their ability. When however difficulties
became a matter of personal concern, and in a peculiar way distinct from

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NVQ language as was to be the case with questions about identity, image
and self then they were prepared to take a closer examination.
What the video was particularly efficacious with was this exploration
into self, into identity, and what it revealed was something of how identity
was formed and transformed. The former was revealed through the close
connections that could be established between what the trainers said about
their practice, the forms their practice took, and the requirements on them
as they interpreted the NVQ competence statements. Since at NVQ level 1
most of the work activities are defined as routine and predictable, and at
Level 2 will require only some individual responsibility or autonomy, (The
NVQ Monitor, e.g. Autumn, 1994), they assumed little autonomy for
themselves and for their trainees. It was not surprising therefore that at the
beginning of the project they all expressed concern with the level of
dependence their trainees placed on them. This dependence they variously
described as taking either a passive form, as in showing a lack of initiative or
not taking responsibility for their own learning, or, as taking a more active,
but negative form such as a failure to abide by the rules of the training
programme, or a repeated crashing out of their microcomputers. While these
characteristics revealed something of how the trainees felt about themselves
and their situation, their past and their future, they also reflected the NVQ
expectations of them. It was this lumpiness effect, as the trainers
experienced it, which they reacted to and which through the video
recordings they could see themselves as contributing to. It was at this point
that video began to contribute to the transformation process: the trainers
began to question what they were doing and why, and began to question
why their trainees were acting in the ways that they had observed. As this
happened, change possibilities began to appear and the trainers began to
tentatively formulate new possibilities for action and for understanding.
Their sense of their own identity at the same time began to become more
problematical. MacLure (1993) argues that identity is a site of struggle and
should not be seen as a stable entity. It is not to be seen as, she claimed,
something that people have but as something that they use, to
justify, explain and make sense of themselves in relation to other
people, and to the contexts in which they operate. In other words
identity, is a form of argument. As such, it is both practical and
theoretical. It is also inescapably moral: identity claims are
inevitably bound up with justifications of conduct and belief.
What appeared to be happening, however, was that, compared to their
autobiographical account in which they had tried to articulate the childhood
educational experiences they valued most, the trainers had separated their
personal and intimate values into a private world, leaving their public world
to be peopled by the institutional demands exerted on them. The video
recordings raised this bifurcation in a way which allowed it to be explored,
but which, as has already been hinted it, did not allow it to be resolved.
Whether it is due to differences in age and experience, and or to differences
in context, we did not find much evidence to support MacLures (1993) claim
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that a, feature of all identity claims is that seemingly abstract,

educational issues relating to curriculum, pedagogy and professionalism are
woven together with local and idiosyncratic concerns such as lifestyle and
politics: the trainers maintained a quite conscious separation between
these.
By mid-project the aim was to begin to assemble the participants
understandings into videaugraphs, research-development autobiographies.
From the initial reconnaissance stages the participants could embark on
designing and attempting to implement their action hypotheses. This
introduced a new aspect of using video, the ability of the medium to link
different points of the research cycle, to make sense of the confusions of
self-analysis, to overtly display how an understanding was reached, to reveal
how practical improvements were constructed and tested and to map
whatever progress was or was not made. In recording their practice the
trainers had captured real time instances of their experience and had
developed their understandings of their practices from the recordings. After
coming to some understanding of the aspects of the practice they were
seeking to change, they were asked to write a visual essay joining instances
which were significant for them. Video was no longer a tool, it became the
means to communicate their experience. In linking or editing together
sequences from different parts of their research the aim was to make the
action research process more transparent both to themselves and to other
students. In addition, the project team hoped these materials could be used
as part of the distance learning course.
One good example, which was produced much later in the project, of
this complicated task can be seen in the trainer Florences videaugraph: in
eight short sequences we are able to see her development. (In addition to
this, the following passage gives an example of how the project team
attempted to build the distance learning materials from the work of the
trainers.) The first section is taken from an interview with one of her
trainees, whom we shall call Katie: the camera is pointed directly at Katie
the top of whose head comes half way up the screen. She is responding to
Florences questions about herself, and her hopes and fears: the interview
was conducted in order that Florence might get better insight to Katies
needs. What Katie says turns out to be a verbatim recitation of some advice
Florence had recently given her on what to say in a job interview. Far from
revealing her needs, the interview reveals her dependency on Florence who,
in the second sequence, an interview shot later by the project team,
expresses astonishment that she could have such an influence. The script
for this section was taken from one of Florences written case studies.
The third section presents an example of Florences normal training
practice at the beginning of the project: it is a practical maths session with
the trainees seated around a square of tables. With the camera in one corner
of the room we see Florence circulating, checking each individuals work,
correcting it and telling them how to do things properly. Directions, but not
explanations are given. Similarly, in the fourth section, another sequence of
normal training practice with one of the project team operating the camera,

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we see a simulated interview session where one trainee interviews another.

At one point the interviewee comments that he believes this firm does not
operate a fair employment policy, whereupon Florence interrupts to advise
that such a comment should not be made in an interview otherwise all hope
of getting the job would be lost she is quite firm about this. It is clear that
Florence has adopted a do this, dont do that approach to training. The
issue is raised of whether training sessions are about helping trainees to
learn how to present the kind of image it is supposed employers want, rather
than with learning something of their personal identity.
The fifth section is a two-shot of Florence with a different trainee,
James, whom she believes is losing out in the group training sessions
because of his shyness and reticence to speak. Rather than give him her
written comments and corrections on his effort at writing a letter of
application, she has decided to hold this individual session with him. She
begins by explaining that she wants him to assess his own work: he quietly
begins to reread his letter with Florence looking on. He soon begins to point
out what he thinks are mistakes: some are, but some are not. Florence, in
the silence which follows, begins to clue him towards mistakes, but in his
growing confusion he successively guesses incorrectly. Her attempt at
personalising her instruction has not turned out as expected, but does
suggest another possible way forward.
The sixth section shows Florence in a group situation dealing with the
task of completing application forms: the camera is again in one corner of
the room, this time facing Florence who has the trainees around a table in
front of her. Behind her is a flip chart. Normally she would have been
writing up on the flip chart the advice she wishes to present in the
structured manner she had developed. This time, having distributed a blank
example of a job application form, she begins by asking the group to
describe any difficulties they have had in filling in such forms. As the
comments are given she asks for clarification and whether anyone other
than the person who has provided the example, has had a similar difficulty.
An interesting and well focused discussion ensues, during which Florence
records the important points on the flip chart. Sharing experience becomes a
way of personalising the tasks and reveals how Florence can benefit from
reflecting on her own experience.
The seventh section is an excerpt from an impromptu interview one of
the project staff held with another of Florences trainees who had finished
his training with her as the MENYU project was coming to an end. He had,
in other words, experienced Florences attempted improvements in her
training practice. Previously, a young man who was timid and nervous, and
who stammered when speaking in public, he had volunteered to play the
part of James in videoing the re-enacted sequences from Florences early
recordings. The interview was held at the end of the filming some weeks after
he had left training. In it he highly commends Florence for helping him gain
confidence in himself, to the point where he looked forward expectantly to
applying for a job in a career path which he had now determined on. Being
now able to conduct himself in an interview situation and feeling much

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better about himself, he attributed to Florences ability to make you think

for yourself...it was not like at school, he added.
The final section is a reconstructed enactment of the interview Florence
had with Katie this time it was properly framed, with appropriate
cut-aways to each of them when they spoke. Both were nicely dressed,
wearing make-up as if they were about to go out on the town, so to speak.
As well as a means of communicating their experience and ideas,
constructing the videaugraph, as the above example illustrates, became a
means by which the participants could take stock of the previous six
months activities. This was seen as a neat way of bringing the initial
exploratory phase to an end, allowing the participants to summarise their
findings and to keep the momentum of the research going, whilst clarifying
its direction. Video has the ability of being flexible with time, it can map the
often disparate influences which contribute to understandings within action
research, draw them together recreating a research journey. To this extent it
seems that video provided in visual images what words do in a written
narrative. The tension between telling the story in pictures and telling it in
words of an accompanying commentary was one which was not satisfactorily
settled. Whether we think in words and in pictures, simultaneously or not, it
seems that those in the technical world of video production are convinced
that the primary requirement, a sine qua non, for a good programme, is the
availability of well taken visual material. While this might seem obvious, this
technical axiom posed difficulties in the project for the trainers and the
project team much in the way the early community users of video
experienced. One prime difficulty resided in the fact that much of what the
trainers initially shot was part of their reconnaissance, and as such was of
an exploratory nature. This essentially means that this material has to be
more open, indeterminate and more loosely focused than normal
programming requires. There is a real sense in which what the camera is
filming is unknown until a review is conducted. Related to this is the
realisation that much of the learning that goes on in an action research
process has little visual appeal to it. For example, a shot of a trainer sitting
at a desk with a book and pen at hand, staring blankly into the distance,
was difficult to make visually attractive at the reconnaissance stage.
Whether Rodins The Thinker would have sufficed is doubtful, but the idea
that it might catches the difficulty of how best to use the visual strengths of
the medium in order to communicate the meaningfulness of interior
experience. To do this effectively clearly requires knowledge and experience
of the processes of programme making and production. The project aimed to
explore how far the trainers could take this process without over
emphasising the technical processes and detracting from the need to
continue into the next phase of action research. As Hadfield & Bennet (1995)
put it, The key issue...was whether the process of video production could be
assimilated into the process of action research....

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As a recorder the trainers understanding of video was informed by their own
mistakes: they gradually learned the basics of location, where to put the
camera, the importance of sound and picture quality, and safe recording.
Each reached his or her own level of competence based upon the level of
interest they had in the potential value of the medium. Programme
production on the other hand involves understanding of the whole process of
communicating. It is rather like asking an adult to learn a foreign language
or a child to write a diary of the first four years of life. However, despite the
technical problems there is a larger problem of compatibility with the action
research process. The project team began to discern a split between the
trainers need to produce their videaugraph, concerned with their recent
research history, whilst continuing to advance and develop their research. In
the end the trainers could not cope with the increased pressure of video
production, they wanted to focus upon progressing their action hypotheses
and to begin to experiment rather than make broadcast quality programmes
which required them to retrace their steps by wading through their research
libraries. Nevertheless, each trainer did produce a piece of edited footage
which most used to punctuate their written presentations and which were
used in transnational meetings. The task of assembling the footage and
creating their research stories for the distance learning programmes was
then left to the project team. It was decided that rather than use the actual
VHS and super VHS recordings the trainers had made, they could be used
as source materials to recreate, using a U-Matic television standard format,
the important aspects of each trainers experience. The adjustment meant
that the project team would video the trainers attempted improvements,
plan three 30-minute programmes and reshoot the trainers experience
relying on their reports. The reason for this decision was based upon the
need to produce an acceptable standard of recording for the planned videos
which would accompany the open and distance texts. In yielding to the
technical conventions of video use which the project had set out to stretch
and test, it became clear that the mechanistic production process was at
odds with the flexible highly personalised character of action research.
This really became clear as the trainers began to try to implement their
action hypotheses: their research paths began to diverge and each began an
individualised process of experimentation to try to improve upon an issue or
problem they had identified in their practice. While each individual
developed his or her very personal concerns, all were able to share and learn
from each other. This was because, as it turned out, most of the problems
surrounded the issue of dependency. The trainers collectively established
during the exploratory stages of the project, that their trainees lacked much
sense of responsibility for their own learning: now they moved on to explore
differing aspects of the problem. These ranged from issues concerning
self-respect and confidence building, to personal effectiveness, identity

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formation, and to considering how best to recognise and encourage the

existing abilities of their trainees within their respective working contexts.
From a purely production point of view video, in the time available,
could not cope with the range of issues which arose from their investigations
and the wealth of evidence from their experimentation; nor could it cope with
the variety of outcomes which arose from each individuals approach. The
best that could be done was to sample from each persons experience, and to
try to illustrate the narrative while communicating something of what the
journey felt like. It became clear in the struggles between production and
research that video needs and seeks to simplify the complexities of
experience: its interest is in retelling as visually as possible what happened
rather than in presenting a full understanding of why or how it happened. It
caters for an external audience and in communicating experience cannot
match, nor can it reveal, the complexities of the personal developmental
process: rather it provides a taste of what happens. This lessens the
research tasks of exploring, coming to understand and of developing
alternative practical approaches.
Secondly, it is difficult to translate the language of action research into
video commentary: the actual thoughts, feelings and motivations of the
participants grow in complexity as each discovery is made. This requires a
great deal of contextual visual information which is constantly changing and
developing. With this latter the programmes had to resort to audio script as
it was impossible to visually reveal, without distorting the experience, the
emotions and intellectual processes which were undergone as events
occurred. Video production is instrumental and predictive: it involves
planning and holds fixed expectations about the outcome of the scenes to be
shot. This can limit the spontaneous progression of research because it puts
pressure on the researcher to make things work. Programme production
could be viewed as a linear process whilst action research is a developmental
spiral, this mismatch reduces the flexibility of video use and the exploratory
potential of the research. The completed videos suffer from a lack of visual
backup content so the production comes across as script based. This means
that the weight of information the viewer is asked to digest in the
programmes is not contextualised by visual examples or cut-aways. This
problematises the ability of video to capture the richness of the trainers
experience.
For example, in the instance of experimentation where Florence tried a
different approach to writing application forms with a trainee who was
having particular difficulties, her aim had been to try to build the trainees
confidence by allowing him to spot his own mistakes and to try to encourage
him to suggest alternative answers. However, what transpired in the
recording was the realisation that application form writing requires a
willingness and an ability to present an image of the self which is in line
with the employers requirements. This provoked a consideration of what
employers look for when they advertise and interview for jobs. Thus, while
the trainers experiment did reveal some negative and contradictory insights
to her attempted improvement, which were interesting and of value in their

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own right, it opened another path of exploration which she included into a
revision of her action hypothesis.
Thirdly, the process of writing in pictures is not an automatic ability, it
is a difficult and skilled process which itself requires much experimentation
and hands-on experience. Creating a story from a library of research
recordings was a difficult task for the group and for most it detracted from
progressing their research focus. However the challenge of attempting to use
video technology to voice their research story may have been beneficial for
the group and should not be underestimated. At the end of the project, as
the video production attempted to catch up with their discoveries and
progress, the trainers provided all the content for the programmes,
recreating scenes, organising interviews and participating in the writing of
the scripts. Although they did not grasp the overall process of production
each of them contributed to different aspects of the process. This
involvement was in keeping with the participative aims of the project and the
democratic aims of action research. The programme production phase of the
project although failing to enable the trainers to make their own video
programmes did maintain their participation and did maintain their control
over the content and direction of the programmes. Achieving the completion
of the three videos was important not only for the project to fulfil its
contract, but also it allowed the trainers to see the results of their work. The
videos displayed the degree of participation and progress of the research.
They commented that they now saw the value of video and had they been
able to appreciate it at the beginning of the project they felt that the
familiarisation process would have been easier.
In summary, the demands of producing high quality videographic
accounts of research progress are incompatible if combined with the ongoing
nature of research. It is achievable if project design allows for the video
production process to catch up after the formal research has been
completed. This does not negate the possibility of using low quality
recordings, but again projects must allocate time for participants to
negotiate the technical barriers which surround this process. What the
project revealed in attempting to incorporate programme production with
research is the expectations we as audiences of visual media have of
production standards. The media formats which we digest through
television, present a virtual world without setbacks, complications,
organisational difficulties or co-ordination problems. We as viewers do not
appreciate the process of creating visual images, rather we are usually, and
unconsciously content to digest and believe that visual communication is an
uncomplicated representation of reality. This is misleading: television and
video production construct rather than represent reality, into easily
digestible segments. If research wishes to embrace new technologies it must
appreciate that to incorporate video into a project is the starting point of a
long learning curve for those involved, that expectations must be tempered
and success assessed in terms of the attempt to use the technology. It is the
process which is important within action research, similarly it is this

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process which is important when attempting to incorporate new technologies

into research.
MENYU embarked on this learning curve in its use of video as a
research tool. So what has been learned? First, that it is simply not
sufficient to use the term video. In using a visual medium researchers must
ask what aspects of the medium can contribute to their understanding.
MENYU successfully used the recording and playback capabilities as a
source for reflective activity. The project benefited from the detail which
video can capture: this ability enabled a dialogue to be set up between the
project team and the participants benefiting both parties and enabling them
to learn from each others experience. Recordings were seen to act as a
catalyst to critical thought and as a stimulus to self analysis and
exploration. They grounded the trainers experience, context, personal aims
and difficulties in a way which due to the interpretive character of the
medium encouraged the participants to explore their own and each others
experience. This openness of the medium fits with the exploratory nature of
action research, in watching their recordings the participants began to seek
alternative meaning in the actions they saw themselves performing. This
finding in itself could point to the use of video speeding up the process of
self-discovery, self-awareness and self-determination. It seemed to do this
because of the immediacy and validity of the recordings and because of an
intellectual and emotional distance they created with them. The trainers
were able to hold themselves at arms length and to consider the merits of
what they saw and heard. It was in this impulsive space that the trainers
were able to reflect and to reconstruct themselves through developing a
sharper sense of the self which now took account of how the self appeared to
others. The conclusion that video did contribute to the development of
greater self-knowledge seems warranted and support can be given to Elliotts
(1994) view that:
teacher knowledge is embedded in concrete practices. Teachers
may be unaware of their action and of the beliefs and
assumptions (theories) which underpin them. Understanding
comes through the analysis of evidence about practice and the
generation of new knowledge comes via the formulation and
testing of action hypotheses in the light of such analyses.
So, too, does the view that this self-knowledge supported greater
self-assessment which in turn enhanced self-control and self-determination
to the extent that those trainers who wanted to change their practice and
develop their understandings, as well as their trainees who wanted to
develop particular personal abilities, were able to do so.
It did not, however, have the same effect on all of the trainers and it
may be there is either a power and/or gender issue at work in this
occurrence. The male trainers seemed to make the video records of
themselves at work fit the good image they held of themselves. It was not
until the project was over that this became clear, so considering why this
happened is necessarily a more speculative undertaking. One of these
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trainers was also a manager of the training organisation in which he worked;

another was the newly-appointed trainer to a highly and publicly visible
project which was designed to rescue young people from the streets and
encourage them back into full-time education. Both felt themselves to be
under public pressure to succeed in a way that most of the female trainers,
who were neither in such senior nor public positions, did not. In fact the
manager-trainer used his research to bolster his position to the point where,
faced with some discrepant evidence about the poor quality of work-based
training some of his trainees were experiencing, he left the project. Clearly,
the question of images and identities was not solely an issue for the trainees
male or female. Perhaps the crucial consideration is the impact of context.
To the extent that the male trainers appeared to set severe limits to their
desire to attempt to change, and to the extent that the female trainers
limited their appraisal of their institutional and other wider contexts, it
seems undeniable that context, while it provided some of the grounds for the
trainers research it also set limits to the extent to which they were prepared
to closely examine those grounds. This was not, however, a clear-cut affair:
the influence of context and the degree to which it comes to form part of a
central research focus, are mediated by the participants awareness of the
tenuousness and vulnerability of their own positions, what Biott (1995) calls
strategic common sense. Mindful of how questions seeking explanations
might, as one of the trainers said, upset the applecart, they judiciously
turned their eyes in other directions. So while video was potent in
supporting and encouraging reflection, that is in developing the ability, to
uncover ones own personal theories and make them explicit (Griffiths &
Tann, 1992), it was not sufficient in rendering all aspects of these open to
inspection. Hesitancy must therefore be the response to Bengtssons (1995)
claim that through critical reflection each trainer would be able to see
through all political, social, historical and other ideological factors embedded
in every educational situation and from this elevated position choose freely
and consciously in order to take full responsibility for his or her actions.
Empowerment clearly has graduations and is not an all or nothing affair.
As a means of communicating this process of personal growth to a
wider audience the project ran into the difficulty of combining a technical
process with a continuing exploratory process. It succeeded in giving the
participants the experience of trying to produce videaugraphs, but lessened
their control over the process of creating the actual research stories. Video
production cannot adequately present reality because our experience and
understanding of reality is so diverse and complex. However, it can organise
and present a version of experience, and in doing, so it allows researchers to
retrospectively map their progress. The challenge of action research is often
overwhelming especially in the early stages of self exploration: video can act
as a reference point for researchers enabling them to review findings in
conjunction with diary recordings and notes. The recordings over time
capture the impact of practitioners and the adjustments they are making,
often unconsciously, to their practice. Capturing this process on video can
often assist those involved in the research to reassess the direction and

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purpose of their investigation at a very personal level. Additionally, a record

of experience is left behind for those about to embark on the process which
can assist them in the adjustment to and familiarisation with the process of
investigation. Beyond all this, video gives the potential for a researcher to
become the audience to his or her own self development, to take the role of
the other, allowing a space within which to examine the motivations,
understandings and intentions of their own practice, and to realise the
potential for change and its effect.
In summary, the experience of MENYU suggests that while the use of
video did make a valuable contribution, it also set limits to the dialectical
process of self transformation and social change: the process through which
individuals can simultaneously remake themselves and their social life
(Carr, 1995). Because it belonged to the realm of lived experience and
provided a memento from a life being lived, (Berger, quoted in Walker &
Wiedel, 1985), it supported the process of turning back on oneself and as
such it was a potent aid; as a means of producing visual teaching materials,
it reduced the reflective task to a not so simple set of technical concerns.

Correspondence
Barry Hutchinson, School of Education, University of Ulster at Jordanstown,
Newtownsabbey, County Antrim BT37 0QB, United Kingdom.

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