The 9th Decade and Beyond: The Perils of the Narrative of Decline

Twenty-three participants ranging in age from 80-102 years living on remote islands in the Pacific Northwest, USA reported the privileges of their current years. The aim of the study was to explore lived bodily experience and its impact on social exclusion. Participants utilized a unique visual methodology by photographing their experiences which highlighted daily life. While acknowledging that their years ‘before’ were different, and that life going forward may present unwelcome challenges, life in the now brought new joys and self-determination, despite various bodily compromises. Their perceptions of their bodies defied the dominant narrative of decline. These important findings warrant further investigation of the ways in which this emerging cohort views the challenges of aging bodies and their ability to remain socially connected. The role the dominant narrative of decline plays in their lives may prove to misdirect supports.

Internet Meme: A Virtual Visual Artefact of Digital Visual Culture

The internet is one of information, business and entertainment source to date. It’s also the apparatus for communication. Thus, the internet become one virtual world, it possessed almost the same mechanism as the real world, and subsequently rising new culture. One of the internet cultures is internet meme. Recent study conducted on internet meme conclude that the internet meme is another way of communication and the sample of the study is fairly obsolete. This study is an endeavor of new approach on internet meme, seeing it as a visual culture and phenomenon rather than mere communication phenomenon. This research also seeks to provide a novelty of understanding about internet memes. Three samples of internet meme were taken, ranging from 2018 to 2020. Samples is analyzed using visual methodology by looking at 3 sites of the sample image: production, image, and audience. Each of the sites contain 3 modalities: technology, compositionality, and social which will be elaborated through this study. The result of the study is that the internet meme can be a visual representation of important events from the history presented in more amusing way by people, although the communication aspect is still attached. The internet meme is also an attempt to respond an important historical event of their time in an amusing way.

Exploring age-old Xhosa values in the teaching of sexuality education

Research demonstrates that teachers’ cultural perspectives influence how they teach sexuality education; however, it is not clear how this occurs. Therefore, in my study, I explored how Xhosa teachers’ cultural perspectives influenced their practice of teaching sexuality education to adolescent Xhosa learners. I purposively selected 9 female Xhosa teachers and took them through the photovoice process, adopting a critical paradigm and drawing on a participatory visual methodology in achieving this aim. The findings reveal 2 themes: on the one hand, the participants used the past as a lens by drawing on some age-old cultural values and adhering to a didactic model of teaching, and on the other, they shifted towards a new practice by innovating their teaching method and refocusing on a safe lifestyle. The participants stated that the values of assertiveness and passivity were necessary for girls to navigate their adolescent sexuality successfully, even though the 2 values seemed contradictory. This presents a dichotomous dynamic, calling for the scrutiny of the Xhosa culture as it relates to sexuality. This work has implications for teacher professional development and training, as innovative and participatory methods are appropriate for use within sexuality education.

Cultural and Religious Influences on Adolescent Sexual Behaviour and the use of Participatory Visual Methodology by Basotho Learners in South Africa

This article documents the use of participatory visual methodology to illustrate how a few Basotho learners in a life orientation subject in Grade 10 classes are influenced by culture and religion to converse a controversial aspect of the curriculum. The use of virtual methodologies forms an important part of indigenous knowledge system that shapes adolescent sexual behaviour affecting on imaginative outlook in South Africa, which interturn ignite on the Department of Basic Education (DBE) curriculum theme, 'relating to decisions making regarding sexuality', is an issue which fits into the broader topic of the Life Orientation subject in Grade 10. The theme is not adequately address in life orientation. Two hundred and forty learners participated in the project. The aim was to enable the learning community of life orientation to participate freely in a sustainable learning environment space for social justice. The Critical Emancipatory Theory of the Frankfort School was used as the lens couching the project. Participatory action research was employed as an approach in data generation; visual drawings were used as the instrument data generated, and a discourse analysis was also applied to reach the following findings: adolescents acquire resilience in sex and sexual behaviour due to cultural and religious influence. Religion has a profound impact in delaying sexual practices in adolescents. These findings have implications for school curriculum leaders, regarding the allocation of duties to teachers. The paper recommends the use of indigenes knowledge systems as creative approaches to teach difficult conversations in life-orientation classes.

Exploring Eating Challenges and Food Selectivity for Latinx Children with and without Autism Spectrum Disorder Using Qualitative Visual Methodology: Implications for Oral Health

Diet and food choices significantly impact teeth, including enamel quality and development of dental caries. However, studies focusing on diet and its relation to oral care in Latinx children with and without Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD) have been minimally addressed in research. This qualitative study used an inclusive visual methodology to explore what Latinx caregivers learned about their child’s diet preferences and food routines in relation to their oral health. As a secondary aim, the study sought to explore whether notable differences in diet emerged between Latinx children with and without ASD. Participants were 32 Latinx caregivers from 18 families with children with and without Autism (n = 8 with a typically developing child and n = 10 with a child with ASD) who completed a food journal activity and photo elicitation interview. Interviews were thematically coded for themes pertaining to parents’ perceptions of their child’s diet and oral health. Findings of this study indicate that the process of taking photos helped Latinx caregivers to better situate the barriers and behaviors influencing everyday food routines in their children within the context of relating to their overall oral health. Via their active participation in the research process, parents were empowered to note strategies they could employ that would directly impact their child’s oral health outcomes, such as reducing juice intake and monitoring sugar consumption. Therefore, visual research methodologies are an important strategy for researchers to consider in order to empower participants to be part of the research process and part of the outcomes, and to offer better understanding of the lived experience of populations underrepresented in the literature, such as Latinx children with and without ASD and their families.

The Clip Approach: A Visual Methodology to Support the (Re)Construction of Life Narratives

Major life changes may cause an autobiographical rupture and a need to work on one’s narrative identity. This article introduces a new qualitative interview methodology originally developed to facilitate 10 prostate cancer patients and five spouses in the (re)creation of their life narratives in the context of a series of interventive interviews conducted over a timespan of several months. In “The Clip Approach” the interviewees’ words, phrases, and metaphors are reflected back in a physical form (“the Clips”) as visual artifacts that allow the interviewees to re-enter and re-consider their experience and life and re-construct their narratives concerning them. Honoring the interviewees as authors facilitates autobiographical reasoning, building a bridge between the past and the future, and embedding the illness experience as part of one’s life narrative. The Clip Approach provides new tools for both research and practice—potentially even a low-threshold psychosocial support method for various applicability areas.

Making Sense of the Social, Making the ‘Social Sense’: The Development of Children’s Perception and Judgement of Social Class

This article presents an exercise in ‘cognitive class analysis’ by tackling the question of when young children first develop the ability to perceive and judge stereotypical representation of class identity. With the aid of a specifically designed visual methodology, 82 children aged 5 to 12, were asked to combine a series of figures into a set of ‘class families’, to assign different amounts of money to these families, to attribute an occupational status to the parents of each family and to indicate their most and least likeable family. Results show that children prove capable of perceiving and judging class stereotypes at a younger age than previous studies have suggested. A considerable number of 5- and 6-year-olds already demonstrate the ability to classify people on the basis of differences in dress and appearance and effectively recognize these classifications as based on differences in class position. In addition, visible markers of class-status also appear to play a role in shaping children’s preferences for different types of families and playmates.