Classrooms as Installations: A Conceptual Framework for Analysing Classroom Photographs from the Past

This paper suggests a new way of working with and analysing school photographs in history of education research, especially photographs of school classrooms. It advances a new methodological approach for inquiring into the spatiality and materiality of schooling. This approach is located in the practice of installation art and draws from the theory of relational aesthetics and postproduction. As demonstrated in the paper, thinking about school spaces and places as installations, and place-making practices as a form of installation making, presents opportunities for posing new and different types of research questions. It also provides opportunities for generating new inquiry and representational practices in educational research. Conceptualising school spaces and places as installations that demand spectator participation to function as intended requires educational researchers to think critically about the spatial dimensions of educational experiences and the experiences of place in educational contexts. (Contains 4 figures and 32 footnotes.)