The Body-Camera Approach: Teacher Identity through Video Elicitation and Video Essay to Create Shared Heritages

Abstract

This paper presents an approach to teacher identity heritage as a result of the implementation of a research device created through Arts-Based Research (ABR) methods, specifically with video elicitation and video essays used as research tools. Two main objectives were addressed. The first one was to establish the real relevance of focusing performance on teacher identity. The second one involved testing a new methodological proposal specifically designed for this purpose, but still useful in other contexts where heritage identity is as present as in teaching. The device, a body camera, involves a process that allows new ways to understand the creation of identities using video to encourage the production of new meanings through visual and oral data. The participants were teachers in training during their internship period. Some notions about teachers’ identity heritage were revealed, and also preserved, firstly through personal perspectives by video elicitations, and secondly through collective perspectives by video essays. Both are video structures used in ABR which mix creative experience, memories, life experiences, relationships, and links that shape the teachers’ professional identity.