Bringing Often-Silenced Voices to the Public Sphere through PhotoVoice

This talk explores the use of an innovative participatory documentary photography tool (PhotoVoice) with minority EFL students to illuminate the challenges they face in their daily lives. Grounded in critical pedagogies, PhotoVoice creates a space for participants to publicly highlight issues that are personally and socially significant, with the goal of fostering awareness and promoting social change. Equipped with cameras, students capture photos of concerning aspects of their lived experiences, compose written commentaries to accompany their photographs, and share both their images and narratives (“voices”) with an invited audience. This talk will present several examples of PhotoVoice projects from Israeli Arab EFL classrooms across different educational levels, including elementary, high school, and college.

Dr. Rawia Hayik is a senior lecturer and head of the English Department at Sakhnin Academic College for Teacher Education. She holds a PhD in Literacy, Culture, and Language Education from Indiana University. Her research interests focus on critical pedagogies in the Israeli Arab EFL classroom, multicultural children's literature, linguistic landscapes, and the professional identities of future English teachers.

The event takes place in cooperation with the International Office and the Weingarten Graduate School.

All interested guests are warmly welcome.