City as learning experience through visual narratives

Abstract

This research was born from an innovation proposal based on the foundations of critical pedagogy in teacher training. The students had to keep a learning diary using written and visual languages to create a personal narrative and represent knowledge to capture everyday reality in the city. The content analysis of 149 photographs, which represent the city, contributes to making deeper the principal students’ discourses that merge from their images and their experiences. The results present the possibilities about the city as a space to promote experiences and meaningful learning. The key topics and discourses that arises from student’s images, reveal the implication with their own learning and the social and education change. We discuss how they build their learning experience to understand the way in which the city becomes a context and curricular text and how photograph contribute to create a critical view and a compromise with social equity.