Photo by Jaiyla*
Informed by the narrative inquiry (Saldana, 2011) and photo elicitation (Walls & Holquist, 2019; Cleland, & MacLeod, 2021) processes, the intention of my data analysis is to provide an understanding, from the perspective of the student participants, of how they used college space during a typical day on campus. In narrative inquiries, researchers communicate their understanding of people’s worldviews through the telling of stories. Mined from the data these stories help readers to reflect on their own life experiences (Saldana, 2011). Saldana explains, “The common goal, however, is to create an evocative portrait of participants through the aesthetic power of literary form” (Saldana, 2011, p. 128). In the following section, I have created a data-informed, evocative written snapshot of each student’s experience of how they use campus space. Participants took photographs that were prompted by specific questions about how they use campus space. They were then interviewed about why they took the photographs. These interviews and photographs inspire a rich collaborative understanding of belonging at community college between the photographer participants and me, the researcher (Harper, 2002; Samura, 2016). At the end of each interview, students were asked to choose their own pseudonyms.
The photographs within each student's narrative were taken by them unless noted.
*Jaiyla is pseudonym for a student who took photos but did not participate in the interview process.