The Listening Guide and a visual method to learn about the self-performances of Palestinian adolescent girls

Abstract

This article demonstrates the power of using two qualitative research methods, namely the Listening Guide and art-based methods, to learn about the selfhood of Palestinian adolescents. Both methods were embedded within ethnographic fieldwork that took place at the Friends School in Ramallah. Participants created expressive self-portraits, which were used to facilitate an interview or dialogue, the Listening Guide Method was then used to analyze the narratives. This article specifically presents one case example of Lubna, a 15-year-old Palestinian girl. Lubna’s visual and narrative represent the struggle of dissociation and of entering the adult the world (Brown & Gilligan, 1992; Gilligan, 2011). By applying the Listening Guide to the narrative, a strong voice of ‘knowing’ about the ‘system’, ‘culture’ and ‘order’ could be heard throughout Lubna’s narrative, in which she responded to and resisted through creating a body that looked different in her expressive self-portrait, heard in the voice of wanting to be ‘humanized’. At the same time her constructed body was partially connected to that system, hence embodying the struggle of dissociation. This contribution provides an example of how relational approaches to doing research creates alternative knowledge about adolescents and more specifically about Palestinian adolescent girls.