Diane R. Collier - RESEARCH
LITERACIES digital/visual/ARTS Collaborative methodologies
Visualizing Citizenship - Children Reading and Writing Images
This research examines images in children’s everyday lives, how reading and making images is integral to engagement in offline and online learning spaces. We have been piloting photographic arts-informed and visual methods, developing ways of sharing and building connections and collaborations. Child participants are developing research skills and exploring images of self and family.
2019-2023 – Brock Internal funding (SJRI, Brock Explore, FOE) / CIs: Dr. Debra Harwood, Brock; RAs: Zachary Rondinelli, Simranjeet Kaur; Teacher-Researcher: Melissa McKinney-Lepp. PI: Collier
Socially Innovative Interventions to Foster and to Advance Young Children’s Inclusion and Agency in Society through Voice and Story (ADVOST)
Photo by Yan Chi Vinci Chow (CC BY-NC 2.0)
ADVOST was a collaboration between the University of Lapland, Leeds University and Memorial University in Newfoundland. The research team worked with educators to develop pedagogies that support and enhance children’s voices. In Newfoundland the research was focused on digital media, play, and land-based teaching approaches using culturally relevant arts-based approaches. Educators and children worked together to share children’s everyday lives and materials.
2019-2023 – Trans-Atlantic Platform for Social Innovation (SSHRC) - PI: Dr. Anne Burke, Memorial; Co-I: Collier
Pre-Adolescents’ Critical Media Literacy through Collaborative Parent Workshops
This collaborative, workshop-oriented research was designed to help parents help their 10-13 year old children develop critical media literacy (CML) skills. The research was carried out through a series of workshops on CML, based on parental need and interest, while many parent were supporting their children learning online during the COVID-19 pandemic.
2020-2021 – SSHRC Partnership Engage Grant / PI: Dr. Tiffany Gallagher, Brock; RAs: Taylor Downes, Yvonne Messenger, Caitlin Boden. Co-I: Collier
(clockwise left to right) 1. https://flic.kr/p/pFfv61 (CC0 Public Domain), 2. goo.gl/lJNlVF, (CC BY-NC-SA 2.0), 3. https://flic.kr/p/mQCsaE – (CC BY 2.0), 4. https://flic.kr/p/pFfv61 (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0), 5. goo.gl/y3yh8e (CC BY-SA 2.0), 6. goo.gl/UuKAh0 (CC0 Public Domain)
DigiYomo: Youth Mobilities in Public and Digital Spaces
This research examined how digital engagement can be enriched through creative and cultural production. Contemporary arts practices were taken up to frame and facilitate this inquiry, based on the relationship between arts practices and cultural, social, and global literacies. Researchers worked with an artist to co-facilitate workshops with youth to find out more about digital and cultural practices.
2016-2018 – SSHRC Insight Development Grant / Co-I: Dr. Mia Perry, University of Glasgow / Collaborators: Dr. Jennifer Rowsell, Brock; Dr. Theresa Rogers, UBC. PI: Collier
cc: Kathy Cassidy - https://www.flickr.com/photos/57634636@N00
Blogging and Descriptive Feedback in Junior Classrooms
We examined the theory-practice connections of teacher candidates as they were mentored by practicing teachers who were taking up blogging in their classrooms. The project was a collaboration between Brock and Hamilton-Wentworth Catholic District School Board. The school board produced a video about their students’ experiences of blogging.
2016-2019 / Co-Is: Collier, Dr. Tiffany Gallagher, Brock University; Judith Eaton, HWCDSB, Teresa Zupancic, HWCDSB
Visualizing Families: Visual Literacy and Photography
Visualizing Families was part of an ongoing collaboration in the Niagara Region. Working with families and children, we used family photos to disrupt conventional representations of families by reading children’s literature about diverse families, collecting and interpreting family photos, and using arts-informed inquiry to disseminate stories about families. Key findings have been how the mode of communication influences the kinds of stories children can and do tell about their families, and how children’s critical visual literacies take time to develop. This work asks what more in-depth examination of image use might reveal about images in children’s lives and how researchers might inquire alongside children and educators.
2014-2019 Co-I: Dr. Jennifer Rowsell. PI: Collier
Diane Collier, personal photo
cc: Bold Frontiers - https://www.flickr.com/photos/82955120@N05
“If you go out in the woods today, you’re sure of a big surprise!”: Forest School Project
In this collaborative project with early childhood educators, we documented children’s play with technologies (iPads, GoPro cameras) in the forest, and developed methodologies and methods for working with visual data. This work re-imagined children playing alongside nature (rather acting upon it), while using a Common Worlds framework.
2015 - present / PI: Dr. Debra Harwood. Co-I: Collier
cc: Attribution-NonCommercial License https://www.flickr.com/photos/55612714@N00
Making/Re-Making Canadian Families: A Visual, Narrative, and Longitudinal Study of Family Practices and Family Photographs
Re/Making Families was a 5-year study of diverse families (e.g., LGBTQ, First Nations, single-parent, migrant), their family photography practices, and the stories that they tell through their photographs. The development of theories about family practices, how families construct themselves through images, and how these images are shared and evoke family narratives was explored. We drew on the work of Rose (2004, 2010) and Chalfen (1998, 2002), who have studied how family photographs are made and used, and the place of family photos within larger societal contexts.
2014-2019 – SSHRC Insight Grant / PI: Dr. Andrea Doucet, Brock / Co-I: Dr. Jennifer Rowsell, Brock. Co-I: Collier