Through their Eyes: Capturing Rwandan Students’ Perspectives of Learning through Photo-Elicitation

Abstract

This paper explores the use of photo-elicitation to understand Rwandan secondary students’ perceptions of the factors that support, hinder, and are valued in their learning environments. Drawing on a constructionist and interpretivist framework, the study involved 72 students across six schools who used tablets to capture photographs reflecting their school experiences. These images served as stimuli in subsequent semi structured interviews and through an iterative, arts-informed analysis process, data were analysed to uncover key themes. Overall, our findings revealed that students perceived access to teaching-and-learning resources, quality infrastructure, supportive relationships, and outdoor spaces as essential supports to their academic and emotional development. Conversely, insufficient infrastructure, poor hygiene, corporal punishment, inadequate food, and negative peer behaviours were perceived as barriers. Students also deeply valued representations and expressions of national identity and cultural values in their schools, safety, notably for girls, and the presence of religious spaces, findings which indicated that education is experienced not only cognitively but also spiritually, socially, and emotionally. This study, which contributes to the emerging body of research using visual methodologies with youth in Sub-Saharan Africa, sheds a light on how structural and relational dimensions of schooling can profoundly influence students’ well-being and learning. It also highlights the value of photo-elicitation as a participatory method for accessing rich, student-centred insights which hold strong potential for informing more responsive and contextually-relevant education research and practice in Rwanda and other Sub-Saharan African contexts.