About the author

Carlie D. Trott, Ph.D. is an Associate Professor in the Department of Psychology at the University of Cincinnati where she heads the Collaborative Sustainability Lab and advises students in the Community and Organizational Research for Action (CORA) PhD program. Dr. Trott’s climate justice research agenda aims to bring visibility to, and work against the inequitable impacts of climate change, socially and geographically. As a social psychologist by training and community psychologist in practice, Trott’s work aims to center the voices and actions of those most affected by environmental injustice and the climate crisis and often involves community-engaged, participatory, and action-oriented research methods. Her research has been funded by the National Science Foundation, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and Bloomberg Philanthropies. Her research has been published in the journals Sustainability Science, Action Research, Children’s Geographies, Local Environment, Environmental Education Research, Studies in Higher Education, Journal of Social and Political Psychology, and others.

Chapter overview

This chapter provides a modifiable step-by-step guide to photovoice for the climate justice classroom—an approach that simultaneously attends to the “more-than-science” dimensions of the climate crisis and invites learners’ affective engagement with the topic from their own position and point of view. Recent research suggests that people actively involved in climate change mitigation and education are as, or perhaps more, motivated by justice concerns as biospheric concerns. Despite this, climate change education has disproportionately focused on the scientific and environmental dimensions of the climate crisis over its social and political dimensions. The activity described in this chapter brings a participatory action research method — photovoice — into the classroom to facilitate critical dialogue and action focused on climate justice. Historically, photovoice has been a social justice strategy used by community groups to capture images of their lived realities using photography, discuss photographs collectively and make meaning of the situation, and finally to take action--often towards policy change. Increasingly, photovoice is used in educational settings as a way to decolonize the classroom and encourage learners to bring their own perspectives and experiences into conversation with course material. Importantly, this is occurring across disciplines — in science, social science, and humanities classrooms.

As a step towards recognizing and welcoming students’ complex emotions regarding the climate crisis, photovoice is an accessible and versatile pedagogical strategy that can help students navigate their own emotions, validate each other’s emotions, and take student-led action. Climate change education research has documented that taking action, including through photovoice, can be an important avenue towards ameliorating the emotional toll of the climate crisis (e.g., climate anxiety; climate grief). This chapter lays out how to facilitate photovoice in the classroom, a process made easier by the rise of digital photography and the ease of photo-sharing through mobile devices. Steps for educators across disciplines and educational levels include: (1) Defining the scope of the photovoice activity; (2) Inviting students to take photographs (e.g., related to specific classroom topics, climate breakdown, social injustices, or their intersections); (3) Facilitating classroom-based photovoice discussions; (4) Encouraging student reflection; and (5) Providing an outlet for student-led action based on problems or issues identified. Steps are modifiable, and emphasis is placed on climate justice throughout. By centering students’ perspectives and inviting their critical reflection and action, photovoice is presented in this chapter as a decolonizing approach to climate justice education that challenges “top-down,” science-centric educational approaches and better positions students to envision and enact climate justice–driven alternatives in their classrooms and communities.

Excerpts from the chapter

Photovoice: A Social Justice Strategy

“For more than two decades, photovoice — a participatory action research (PAR) method — has been a social justice strategy used by community groups “identify, document, and represent their community’s strengths and concerns from their own perspective through the use of a specific photographic technique.”[i] Specifically, photovoice participants capture images of their lived realities using photography, discuss photographs collectively to make meaning of the situation, and finally take action — often towards policy change.[ii] Photovoice methodology has theoretical roots in: (1) critical pedagogy and the notion of critical consciousness;[iii] (2) feminist theory and the concept of voice;[iv] and (3) documentary photography, “the genre that allows the most vulnerable people within society to convey their own vision of the world.”[v] As a PAR method, photovoice has most often been used with marginalized groups who have been silenced in the policymaking realm[vi] and has been implemented in a range of community contexts and applied to numerous issues from healthcare to homelessness. […]”

Figure 1. Step-by-Step Guide to Photovoice for the Climate Justice Classroom

“[…] In its earliest applications, photovoice was a resource- and time-intensive method, often requiring facilitators to provide cameras to each participant, and later wait for physical photographs to be developed from film and hand-delivered back to participants for discussion. As a result, the method was out of reach for low-resource community groups and classrooms. Importantly for CJ action, today the method is much more widely accessible due to the ubiquity of digital photography, mobile devices, and online file-sharing platforms. That photovoice has withstood the test of time speaks to its strengths as a powerful tool for community dialogue and social change action. Diverging sharply from ‘top-down,’ science-centric CCE approaches, the potential ‘bottom-up’ outcomes of photovoice are as wide-ranging and multi-faceted as the perspectives and aspirations of its participants. As a pedagogical pathway to climate justice, photovoice can invite students to recognize and collectively process their emotions, critically reflect on the sociopolitical dimensions of present-day challenges, and imagine and bring into being better futures through their own actions.”

[i] Sutton-Brown, “Photovoice,” 169.

[ii] Wang and Burris, “Empowerment,” 171, and Wang and Burris, “Photovoice,” 369.

[iii] Freire, Education for Critical Consciousness.

[iv] hooks, Ain’t I a Woman.

[v] Wang and Burris, “Empowerment,” 177.

[vi] Mitchell, Shanondora Billiot, and Lechuga-Peña, “Utilizing Photovoice,” 51.

Contact details

Carlie is interested in speaking to live audiences. You can contact her via this email.

Carlie’s personal website: https://www.cdtrott.com/.