Visualising the health of communities: Using Photovoice as a pedagogical tool in the college classroom

Abstract

Objective:

To describe the use of Photovoice as a pedagogical tool to promote experiential learning and critical dialogue among participants on an undergraduate community health course.

Design:

A descriptive study of the use of the pedagogical tool Photovoice, based on three foundational education theories.

Results:

Based on teachers’ reflective evaluation of student responses, Photovoice emerged as a useful tool for encouraging dialogic engagement in the classroom, for experiential learning through interaction with the physical environment and for increasing student agency by reducing the teacher as authority model.

Conclusion:

Photovoice may be useful in a variety of college courses as a way to foster critical thinking, to promote agency among students, to enhance understanding of complex social phenomena and to expand the ways in which both students and teachers think about their physical and social worlds.