From the ‘Eye of History’ to ‘a Second Gaze’: The Visual Archive and the Marginalized in the History of Education

Abstract

This paper has several concerns. It is about both the stories we tell and the images we place with those stories; it is also about historical practice and the power of the image to generate new research approaches. The paper is organized into three sections: the ‘eye of history’ and historians and the visual archive; histories of black and minority ethnic schooling; and the idea of a second gaze in the visual archive. The paper will look at the historical literature around using visual sources in research, and in particular will draw attention to the ‘problem of authenticity’, ‘the reality effect’ and the ‘aura of believability’. It will then shift its focus to consider the educational history of black and minority ethnic children in British schools and problems associated with the dominant policy‐driven narrative that is used to explore that history. The paper goes on to address the importance of the photographic record for surfacing hidden elements in cultural history. Finally, the paper will argue that historians need to be sensitive to the idea of a second gaze when researching the educational experiences of marginalized groups in society.