Exploring the Value of Landscape Learning Using Photovoice

This study examines the implications of photovoice for students’ exploration of the varied landscapes depicted in their daily experiences. In landscape learning utilizing photoboards, students are tasked with capturing photographs of landscapes within their communities, selecting the most suitable images, and interpreting them through their own narrative voice. We assert that employing photovoice as an educational instrument improves students’ meta-representational competence, or visual literacy, which includes the capacity to depict and interpret a location or landscape. Furthermore, it cultivates the development of a non-representational geography via photography, enabling students to articulate their interpretations of the landscape’s representational elements through their own narratives. Photovoice allows youth to depict their daily experiences, generates personal significance, emotions, and affect; fosters experiential and active learning; stimulates critical awareness; and enhances their visual literacy and meta-representational abilities regarding visual “reading,” “writing,” and “thinking” skills.