A narrative photographic approach: opening day ceremonies for Iran’s Nature Schools

Opening Day photographs appeared in Iran’s newspapers celebrating the succession of outdoor Nature Schools commencing each year from 2014. Using a narrative photographic approach, this qualitative study collected and analysed newspaper pictures for Iran’s Nature Schools in the half decade to 2017. At this time, government approval reflected careful planning to develop these new outdoor educational opportunities. Seven news media articles were thematically analysed from this period utilising twelve pictures. This photographic method provides another layer of understanding beyond official statements of intention, formal approval or written text. Through the local features of schools, a pattern of national intention and official endorsement can be seen, but also an awareness of invisible rules permitting outdoor learning experiences. What do these images tell us about this environmental opportunity for a new generation of schoolchildren? How do the pictures portray the urban need for the outdoors? Are there clues in these pictures of the subsequent shutting down of these outdoor schools, denying further expansion? These images tell their own story alongside formal narratives embodied in official Opening Day ceremonies and statements. We conclude these schools were meeting a strongly-felt need for the outdoors in highly urbanised contemporary Iran.


Introduction
As the Iranian Nature School movement commenced in 2014 and began extending across the country, newspapers chronicled the official openings of many of the schools with reports and photographs in their pages either locally or nationally (Vahabzadeh, 2015). This reportage often included photographs taken at the formal opening ceremony of the latest Nature School. Each of the photographs described in this study comes from one of the newspaper articles that reported the inauguration of one or other new Nature School in Iran. In this early phase the plan was nation-wide rollout of Nature Schools to create greater awareness of the outdoors and natural environment (Khakshoor, 2016). Altogether, almost one hundred schools commenced over a half-decade period .
In reporting these events, newspaper articles frequently included verbatim quotations from the official speech or from government departmental news releases. In the present study, one or more photographs in colour accompanied these newspaper article texts and the reported official statements at the inauguration ceremony, adding a visual narrative to the story. This qualitative inquiry asks: what does the juxtaposition of the visual imagery contribute to the textual accounts? Are the pictures simply the elaboration of the written explanations? Do themes in the pictures go beyond or behind the written description of the Opening Day ceremonies? In keeping with the tenor of the study, Fig. 1 shows a young Iranian student in what is now a highly urbanized country, experiencing the outdoors firsthand.
Taking these photographs at the ceremonial moment each Nature School was officially opened, gives the pictures a contemporaneous historical relevance. This does not render their meaning self-evident since questions about why a particular picture angle is adopted, or why a cluster of people or outdoor space are included or absent, still need asking. This at-the-time photography, however, supports inquiry into par- Fig. 1 Schoolchild embracing the tactile strength of a tree. Source: https://www.facebook.com/ Ir.NatureSchool/ allel or divergent meanings between imagery and statements. This is similar to law courts preferring first-hand witness accounts rather than later versions of events. On the one hand, an unstated but broad vision conveyed in these photographs is evident in the literal positioning of men and women around each ceremonial moment, including their attire. On the other hand, official plans and statements made on those dates, changed over the medium-term as political reading of the Nature Schools' success in moving learning outdoors shifted against this innovation.

Background to Nature Schools in Iran
Nature Schools, as an environmental outdoor educational movement, were pioneered by university ecologist Abdolhossein Vahabzadeh (2015;Khakshoor 2016) combining three factors. First, his international knowledge of European and North American outdoor/nature educational trends and initiatives (Waite et al., 2016;Perez, 2016), and a growing international awareness of the "nature deficit" among highly urbanized young people (Louv, 2005) in Iran as elsewhere. Second, his career-long commitment to an environmentally literate modern Iran, bringing the best of global information and practice to his country, often though translating ecological texts. Third, Vahabzadeh's (2015) and colleagues' own experience taking young, urban school-aged children on visits to parks and other places where the children could see, hear, and touch plants, animals, soil and water in natural environments. Endearingly, the children called these outdoor experiences, "The trips of Mr. Worms!" Several years before the Nature Schools commenced, Vahabzadeh met with Ministry of Education and Department of Environment senior staff. Together they formed proposals for developing Nature Schools nationally (Financial Tribune, 2017a). Extensive consultation resulted in formal Memoranda of Understanding between the two government agencies, with departmental resources approved for children 3-18 years of age (Financial Tribune, 2017a). The local pictures presented here do not reveal those background discussions and arrangements. However, the pictures speak to the environmental education purpose, public social acceptability, and reflect parental desire for more out-of-classroom education for their children.
In the commencement events described here, the articles and captions are in English language media. This selection of articles had enough page-layout space in their coverage of the event to include a photograph to accompany the text reporting the occasion. Generally, three main groups attended these ceremonies. First, the new teaching staff and Nature School leaders. Second, officials from either the Department of Environment (DoE) or the Ministry of Education (MoE) government agencies. These men or women officials usually made a speech on behalf of their organisation and staff who had worked to develop the strategic goals around environmental education benefiting Iran and the development of this new outdoor initiative for children's learning. Third, parents, particularly mothers and children involved with the new school, formed the audience for these Opening Day events formally establishing each new Nature School.
Our intention here is to continue scholarly interest in the investigative value of visual forms of communication we have used previously about other social sci-ence subjects centred on outdoor space. Examples of this work include comparing Pierre Bourdieu's under-appreciated use of photographs in his research in Algeria and France (Rajčan & Burns, 2020a;Schultheis et al., 2009), suburban social class distinctions in metropolitan Melbourne in Australia (Rajčan & Burns, 2020b), or critiquing the meaning of concrete terrorism bollards also in Melbourne (Burns et al., 2021). In this study that visual studies scholarly interest is brought together here with our focus on children in urban environments and their relation to natural environments . This helps elucidate additional implicit understanding of environmental and social discourses in Iranian education as the country further extends decades of rapid urbanisation (Assari & Mahesh, 2011).
In the course of previous research about the rise and fall of Iranian Nature Schools' we collected public and media sources about these schools . Our use of this data was to address the dearth of academic writing on the topic, as we researched children's contributions to urban and civic life . It is clear that the historical record of collaborative planning for Iran's Nature Schools would be richer if official records and files were accessible. These would trace the careful and considered organising of a national education plan for these schools. Analysis of the Nature School environmental and educational phenomenon has necessarily been reliant on a range of social media, mainstream news outlets, and internet sources mostly within Iran, some in Farsi and some in English.

Literature: layering the visual
The long-running preparation and respectful negotiations between academics, educators and officials came to fruition with the launch of the first Nature School in 2014. In examining the visual presentation of these Nature Schools Opening Days, we draw on a wide literature in sociology and related disciplines (Strati, 2008). For example, Jones et al., (2017, p. 3) observe that: Visuality is less concerned with the actual physicality-the haptic propertiesof artefacts, but instead focuses on the way material and immaterial objects are composed spatially, positioned with regard to the 'gaze' of audiences, and how aspects of, for instance, social distance, abstraction, colour, or perspective are reflected in core constructs and processes to influence processes of meaningmaking (Meyer et al., 2013).
In our own work (Rajčan & Burns, 2020b, p. 56) we have found that "inclusion of photographs, and the detailed reflection upon these, adds up to a much more nuanced and comprehensive account." Attention to the visual nature of human interactions and distinctions can be found in communication theory, cultural studies, and social science applications in many fields, including business disciplines. In his study, "From discourse to golf-course," DeChaine (2001) analysed websites showing the wide range of United States golf courses, neatly identifying types of visual "invitation." Pictures of golf courses created a visual discourse for potential golf club mem-bers that helped separate individuals they wish to attract and the image/brand they were aiming to establish and maintain. Davison's (2007) study of "photographs and accountability" developed categories for non-governmental organisations' commercial versus charitable orientations using the visuality of documents' front-covers. She drew from Barthes' (1980, p. 135) ideas of photographic directness, beyond words, images containing not-fullystate-able meanings; but also photographs' tendency to naturalise what can be highly constructed situations. What does the photography "ratify" as a "certificate of presence" that words and text cannot? Another study of visual images in corporate annual reports (Bernardi et al., 2002, p. 611) was able to illuminate corporate signalling of gender diversity: "photographs… are not merely window-dressing; they possess a power and a point of view that is based on the agencies or individuals that construct them." Questions always arise about the correspondence between such public portrayals with the realities inside the organisation.
The present study draws out themes of natural versus constructed truth of the photographs. We consider how the images of the Nature Schools signal to and inform their literate middle-and upper-class Iranian readership about the benefits or interest value of these schools. In addition, national theocratic governance means awareness that there will be political attention to topics and focus in how articles and photography are presented in newspapers. What are these photographs "telling" or "not telling" such viewers? For Barthes this includes the relationship between the text and the images. This may include how a picture inadvertently, artlessly, or using some latitude, may be chosen to represent or balance other signals of compliance, or communicate to the population more generally. Here the words reported in the short news articles reference attitudes that one or other government department holds, or which the newspaper wishes to show it understands.
Harper's (2012, p. 6) reflective comment after decades of using photography in his academic research work is relevant: "I like to take photos because I never am sure what the camera is going to teach me about seeing." Are there multiple meanings in these Nature School photographs? Harper then goes on to discuss photographic expertise in today's mobile camera era, observing that, "the world has never been more visually aware and visually engaged." Starting and departing from treating a series of photographs as "documentary photography, would raise several issues for Harper (2012, p. 18). First, the intention of dispassionate reporting and summation has points of similarity to academic inquiry; second, studying such material "allows us a kind of access to the worlds" thus portrayed; third, however, this also "allows us to see how photos create meaning in historical, sociological, and political circumstances that are themselves in motion." On each count, work and effort is needed to understand the visual message and representation.
From such a perspective, photography can be seen as depicting events and factual nature "out there" using an essentialist standpoint. This would involve, says Harper, working to commonly-agreed conventions and practice principles such as verisimilitude, sympathy and relevance. These parameters are clearly applicable to the photographs here. Alternatively, Harper suggests a constructionist perspective avoids insisting on how necessary or essential certain facts and definitions are, preferring instead to ask how this material "has been created and developed in the practical activities of individuals, groups and institutions" (p. 20). Other layers of understanding include: advancing-consciously or not-the privileged position of the creators, that is: "who pays for it, and under what circumstances?" What technologies are used to make and distribute it, and "for the documentary to succeed it has to have an audience?" The academic task of reflection in the analysis of meaning constitutes a divide (though overlapping) between simple visual presentation, even if beautiful and compelling, of a collation of materials and lived experiences, and its meaning. For Price (1994) the purpose or use of photographs is central to what they mean and how to interpret them.
Bringing visual analysis to the Iranian context, Sadeghi & Islam (2021, p. 2) examined Tehran art galleries. Notwithstanding the difference in subject matter to Nature Schools, key organisational points of comparability are present visually and in other ways: Organisations selectively mobilise the past in light of present-day aspirations, objectives, and concerns, with ample plasticity around what elements are recalled, represented, and recontextualised. Therefore, past conditions organise the present and future, even if they do not necessarily determine them. The past is not used "as is" but is evoked through different forms or modalities that include narratives, events, and artefacts. Shaped by present-day motivations, representations of the past are mediated in diverse ways that structure their representation. (References omitted) Sadeghi and Islam see the intersecting influence of past arrangements with present motivations as crucial in interpreting current visual practices.

Visual sample
Included: The qualitative method used in the present article involved collecting these articles made available when researching the history of Iranian Nature Schools. Clarke and Braun's (2013) thematic analysis does not commit to specific approaches such as grounded theory or phenomenological analysis. Instead, they used thematic analysis "as theoretically flexible because the search for, and examination of, patterning across language does not require adherence to any particular theory of language, or explanatory meaning framework for human beings, experiences or practices." (p. 121). The pictures were contained in news media reports analysed for the historical description of Nature Schools available in English. Pictures were analysed by date in representations of men, women, children, the presence and statements of officials at these ceremonies, and in relation to the outdoor setting of each new Nature School.
The present discussion brings this new evidence from a series of seven articles with the photographs presenting the visual complement to the inauguration ceremony reports appearing in written articles in the news media. Only one article has multiple pictures. One limitation: we recognise it would be possible to compare these photo-graphs with others in the Persian-language media. Farsi social media is dominated by Face Nama (similar to Facebook), Apparat (similar to YouTube), and Twitter, though social media raises distinct questions about authenticity and representation.
Excluded: We have not utilised social media pictures and individually-held photographs showing other informal, personal, and undoubtedly interesting pictures of Nature Schools. These also serve as contexts of children and families' outdoor learning activities and involvement, for example, websites such as https://www.facebook. com/Ir.NatureSchool/. Such data sources constitute an enormous reservoir of documentation about the actual experience and valuing of access to this innovative type of schooling, applying different academic perspectives. In contrast, the purpose in the present discussion is to document the public news media visual narrative in relation to the period when the blessing of government supported the expansion one after another of yet more Nature Schools as the movement grew rapidly.
Thematic analysis: Themes were identified in the historical, educational, and environment discourses in the collected visual data applying our previous Nature Schools investigation into Iran's experimental organisational form of environmental education. For Braun & Clarke (2006, p. 82), "A theme captures something important about the data in relation to the research question, and represents some level of patterned response or meaning within the data set," at the same time avoiding a "naïve realist" stance. Here, this approach brought the visual images to the textual descriptions, adding colour and a spatial dimension to the school engagements of parents, the education system and neighbourhood. Visual literalness utilised the specific time and place of the Opening Day to add another perspective on "truth" by considering this narrative-without-words, but which still needs problematising. Echoing Harper, others such as Bourdieu (2014) have deepened sociological understanding by questioning what is portrayed visually as "simple truth," or "just the facts." The brilliance of pictorial representation is that in conveying meaning without words, additional perspectives can be used to interpret that polysemic richness. These paradoxes are poetically expressed in summary in Russian writer Leo Tolstoy saying, "Art is never innocent," or by contrast, American conservationist Aldo Leopold's (2020, p. 161) remark that "the camera industry is one of the few innocuous parasites on wild nature."

Findings: Nature School photographs
Each of the following twelve pictures, across seven articles, illuminates themes in understanding the naturalised versus constructed paradox of photography in interpreting the visual images, and asking what more is there to understand? Even articles without photographs accompanying them conjure visual mental images. The following written description is evocative (Financial Tribune, 2017a): Children are feeling the trunk of a tree with their eyes blindfolded; a happy smiling girl is cherishing a rabbit, and some other children are watering flowers planted in a corner in the yard. These are some of the pictures taken at a Nature School in the country. There are no school benches, no books or pencils.
The article refers to the 29th Nature School commencement since the first opened three years earlier, speaking of planned "increase in such schools to 1,000 over a five-year period" according to the Deputy of Education and Public Participation at the Department of Environment. He re-affirmed the outdoor pedagogical value: "The schools have two guiding principles in their programs: connecting deeply with nature through practical participation, and exploring the environment as co-learners." This news report also conveys the double narrative that is the central tension in the subsequent articles with pictures: the organisationally positive narrative of educational and environmental progress that positions itself innovating within the requirements of the enviro-religio-pedagogical national education framework. In negotiating transition to a new world of student learning, four themes can be noted.
First, the rich evocation of feeling for the outdoor environment that comes through in the previous quote-perhaps like the child in the earlier Fig. 1. Second, several short paragraphs sketch the trajectory of establishing Nature Schools across Iran, an ambitious and far-sighted national plan worked out between two government agencies and an ecology professor. Third, even in adaptations like one-day-a-week Nature Schools, and other pragmatic adjustments for rolling out Nature Schools, the news reports carefully express the wholesomeness of children's need to reconnect with nature in outdoor learning. Finally, while the text is studiously local, the text reflects awareness of international efforts developing similar schools in other urban societies, and that "development of Nature Schools in Iran has lagged behind the rest of the world. The first nature preschool in the US opened in 1967." This opening, two years after the first such Nature School in the city of Mashhad, has found a location in a sports complex rather than a school (MQ/MG (2016a).

Learning about raising living birds
The first Nature School in Tehran will be set up by the end of summer at the Azadi Sport Complex, an official with the Ministry of Sports and Youth Affairs said. According to an order made by the Minister of Sports and Youth Affairs Mahmoud Goudarzi and a license issued by the Department of Environment a space is allocated to the Nature School at Azadi Sport Complex, Reza Shaji told ISNA news agency on Saturday. The school is getting off the ground and will be inaugurated by the end of summer, he added. The Nature School is not intervening with the Normal School operating under Education Ministry's supervision, Shaji said, adding, the Nature School is a place for the children to spend their free time and enjoy the (environmental) activities there with their parents.
The Minister emphasises due process by an order granting space for the Nature School. As is common in these new releases, the familiar refrain in the report declares the non-interference of the Nature School with the existing "normal schooling operating under the Education Ministry's supervision" (MQ/MG, 2016a).

Plants, soil and growing activities
In Fig. 3 it is plants rather than animals that provides the focus of the connection with nature. The photograph narrative is of active children shown engaging with the physical outdoors in their learning.
The DoE official emphasises the impressive progress the Nature Schools rollout is achieving that "will be doubled" in the present year (MQ/MG, 2016b). Nature Schools in Iran will be doubled by the end of the current Iranian calendar year, falling on March 20, an official with the Department of Environment has said. "So far 20 Nature Schools are up and running in the cities of Tehran, Rasht, Mashhad, Tabriz, Kermanshah, Hamedan, and some other cities, and we are planning on increasing them to 40, twice as many as the current number by the end of the year," Mohammad Darvish said, ISNA news agency reported on Sunday. "We have to bring up a generation who will not trade on natural resources and that would happen in Nature Schools," Darvish said, adding, "These schools can also create job opportunities for the experts in the field of environment." Nature Schools are not interfering with the normal schools operating under Education Ministry's supervision, rather it is a place for the children to spend their free time and enjoy environmental activities there with their parents.
The dual concerns about children growing up without familiarity with nature, and that the Nature Schools are "not interfering" with "normal schools operating under the Education Ministry's supervision" is almost word-for-word the same as on previous occasions (MQ/MG, 2016b).

Opening a new environment
This occasion is close to what proved to be the halfway point in the rollout of new Nature Schools (Fig. 4).
The report accompanying this picture references "environmental literacy" and the progress of establishing Nature Schools (MQ/MG, 2017a). "We believe those who passed courses in Nature Schools would never do harm to the environment and would react to the damages inflicted upon the environment, biodiversity and the wildlife," he added. He further noted, "it appears that the only way to save the environment is to bring up a generation who would be able to make up for the mistakes we've made and help save the environment."… Nature School is not interfering with the normal school operating under Education Ministry's supervision, rather it is a place for the children to spend their free time, enjoy environmental activities there with their parents, and get in touch with nature.
Again, a combination of "not interfering" is reaffirmed along with observations about generational change and young people's needs environmentally.

Exploring dirt trenches with digging trowels
The Fig. 5 picture provides a contrapuntal narrative to the officially prepared communication text. At least a dozen children, well-dressed and haircut, are with few exceptions actively exploring mounded beds of potential water channels in dry soil. A couple of children wear sunhats, several work with identical trowels in the earth, and a there is a partly obscured adult at the right-hand edge of the picture. A few trees and piles of rocks/concrete fade to a mountain-range backdrop.
In contrast to the picture, the organisational narrative in the text is crisp, delivered by the official present and consists of a series of factual soundbites about the developing network of Nature Schools.
These organisational metrics fit the heading of the story "Nature Schools increase" announcing that "the number of Nature Schools has surpassed 40" across Iran. Three of these are in the capital city Tehran. The spokesperson for the DoE states that this is in conformance with the larger organisational agenda. This broader strategy is still in early 2017, to "increase such schools to 1,000 over a five-year period. Further, the news reports that the formal "2013 memorandum of understanding was signed between the DoE and MoE by which they were committed to establish Nature Schools in the country." As well as disclosing the inter-organisational nature of this programme, the reader is advised about the planning and setting up structures before the first Nature School had been started in 2014. The specific goals of the inter-organisational arrangements had been based on a preparatory phase: "At the time, the DoE developed the educational package to be used in schools for children and adolescents in the age groups 3 to 18" years (Financial Tribune, 2017a).
The number of Nature Schools has surpassed 40 in the country, said Fariba Rezaei, head of the Education and Public Participation Office at the Department of Environment. "There are three Nature Schools in Tehran and its districts including Varamin, Fasham and Damavand," she said at a recent specialised session on environment in Tehran. The DOE plans to increase such schools to 1,000 over a five-year period, ISNA reported. Stressing the importance of connecting children with nature, she said such schools are the only way of attuning children to the environment, and encouraging them to play outdoors instead of computer games behind monitors. In 2013, a memorandum of understanding was signed between the DoE and Education Ministry by which they were committed to establish Nature Schools in the country. At the time, the DoE developed the educational package to be used in schools for children and adolescents in the age groups 3 to 18. It is worth noting the organisational view surrounding the picture is coming directly from the DoE spokesperson. Two further details are reported: the first is that this recent presentation is the task of the Education and Public Participation Office at the DoE; the second is that it is the most senior person of that organisational unit that is making the statement, though not at the opening ceremony itself (Financial Tribune, 2017a).
The written rationale in the article's text is carefully curated in its assertion of facts and information in conformity with pre-arranged institutional logics between government departments to fit within the government's larger national strategic policies. The visual rationale is provided by the aesthetics of children playing outdoors in a natural but managed environment. Safety and nature are balanced for parents indicating innocuous activity for official eyes. Visually the school picture offers a counter-balance to urbanised living away from the smaller communities in Iran's still-recent past.
The clearly managed and organised learning occasion stands in marked contrast with the wide-ranging claims made by the principal in the Sect. 6 Nature School opening below in Figs. 7, 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12. Visually, Fig. 5 here shows children demonstrating to newspaper readers their outdoor youthful co-operative behaviour in contrast to modern problems as indoor "computer games behind monitors." Parents, educators, and government policy makers, all might take reassurance from the picture. The school is the first of its kind in the province and is aiming at improving the youngsters' environmental literacy, knowledge and understanding of the environment and the circumstances and conditions affecting it. Taking 17 mobile Nature Schools nationwide into account, there are currently 46 Nature Schools up and running in the provinces of Tehran, Hamedan, Isfahan, Khorasan Razavi, South Khorasan, Mazandaran, Gilan, Golestan, Fars, Yazd, East Azarbaijan, Kermanshah, and Kordestan. Children aging 3 to 12 can enroll in the schools. "Setting up Nature Schools nationwide is one our policy which we are pursuing in association with private sector and environmental groups," Masoumeh Ebtekar, the chief of the Department of Environment said during the inauguration ceremony. "The Ministry of Education also plays an important role in promoting such extracurricular activities," she added. Nature School is not interfering with the normal school operating under Education Ministry's supervision, rather it is a place for the children to spend their free time, enjoy environmental activities there with their parents, and get in touch with nature.

Opening ceremony of 46th Nature School
Mobile Nature Schools were a practical innovation in places where land, staffing or other resources were insufficient to establish a continuing physical environment as an outdoor facility. Briefly referencing the need for environmental knowledge in this report segues to an impressive list of provinces representing nearly 50 Nature Schools that are "up and running." Once again the accompanying the mantra of "not interfering" with normal schools can be seen. What is new here is the DoE head's statement that the establishment of Nature Schools was being achieved, "in association with private sector and environment groups" (MQ/MG, 2017b).

Suite of pictures showing children working at play
All six photographs show children actively playing with rocks, water, sand or painting, rather than the formal Opening Day ceremony itself. The article is longer than others at just over 700 words in English. The article content references a media report about the Fasham Nature School, one of 50 such schools. The article articulates a philosophy and pedagogy of the schools, in statements about "their advantages over conventional schools. … In Nature Schools, students' learning coefficient rises by 25%, and their hyperactivity drops by 40%, says an education official. Students are free in Nature Schools" (IFP, 2017).This decentring of the official moments of the ceremony inaugurating a new school is continued via the perspective of the principal focused on the learning of children, saying "students in Nature Schools have none of the limitations they would face in ordinary schools" (IFP, 2017): Nature Schools are not like conventional schools where little kids would sit at their benches, listen to their teachers and answer their questions. Students spend their time in another way in Nature Schools. They even wouldn't force students to learn new methods of planting trees. In Nature Schools, the bottom line is to "set oneself free." In such schools, students learn how to establish a relationship with nature, and that's how they learn. This simple sentence is so difficult that not everyone can get along with it. For example, one of Iran's 50 Nature Schools is located in Garmabdar in Fasham resort on the suburbs of the Iranian capital, Tehran. There, kids will not be told off if they run around trees, jump over pieces of rock and put their arms in soil elbow-deep. No one will tell them "Stop that!" Figures 8 and 9 show children energetically involved in the manipulation of the weight, texture and movement of physical objects in the environment (IFP, 2017).

Happily,
The school is located next to a river; here, a school means a yard full of trees, two plump rabbits, three dogs, a few lambs, hens, roosters and a field covered with stones, soil and grass. If interested, kids can take the eggs laid by the hens and fry them in a pan, or they can run after butterflies and watch mulberries on trees. In Nature Schools, the principle is to set oneself free. The principal has been a committed environmentalist for over two decades (IFP, 2017): With the cooperation of 20 facilitators, he is staying at the school and spends his time, day and night, with kids between 3 and 12 years of age. He believes children should play until they are 12 years old. He says kids' relationship with nature shapes their characters, prompts them to protect the environment in the future and helps them use their skills in different fields. "3-to-12-year-old children do not need direct education. They will get the chance to get an education later on. Direct education stifles creativity and keeps creative skills in children from developing," the school principal quotes Vahabzadeh as saying. Nature Schools were first introduced in Europe. Then Vahabzadeh, a renowned environmental activist, brought the idea to Iran. … Iran is the first country in the Middle East to have started building Nature Schools. The Iranian Department of the Environment offers good loans to those who build Nature Schools. Conventional Schools have no trees and so much competition.
This is a much stronger view than expressed on other opening occasions. How these ideas about children's learning are shared with others, or what notice government inspectors took, is not known, but it raised significant questions about cultural and generational change.A parent with academic knowledge of environmental issues is cited giving a family-client perspective. As a PhD candidate majoring in the environment, she has brought her daughter to this school (IFP, 2017): "There are not enough green spaces and trees in schools. The Education Ministry has only created a competitive atmosphere for children. The kids are always anxious, waiting to take part in competitions, and win prizes. That's why they don't enjoy their childhood. Nature Schools are a way to establish a relationship with humans' basic foundation, which is nature. Through violence and giving orders, one cannot expect children to become useful citizens in the future," she says.
This critical commentary is then elaborated in the article by discussing the value and role of Nature Schools in Iran. If "ordinary schools are similar to barracks… what do children exactly do in Nature Schools? (IFP, 2017): According to Kermanshahi, it is necessary that children be left alone and allowed to play until they are 12 years old, because their job is "playing" only. "Taking kids to class and teaching them certain things will separate them from playing and creativity. This is wrong. This age period is a time when children are curious and get to know the environment around them, themselves, their capabilities and their small society. This comes as all these basic necessities are restricted in conventional schools." The principal backs this up. Like parents, the advocacy of Nature Schools' benefits, is in those same statements a critique of conventional educational practice.
The principal of the Nature School believes that these environment-friendly schools sound the death knell to all limitations which exist in conventional schools, limitations such as, "peers must study together, you need to get permission before talking, if you act otherwise you will be punished. This age period is the time when children get to know social relationships, but our schools have turned into barracks. One should know that not all children should be educated in the same way. It has been years since the world has come to this conclusion: Children should play to become creative and learn all social and individual skills." The alternative outdoor pedagogy of Nature School learning includes lack of formal classes (IFP, 2017).
No special classes are held in Nature Schools. The only events might be gettogethers for cooking jam or touching the leaves of different plants. Children are free in this environment. Everything is free as long as the kids themselves or others are not facing serious harm. There is only one important law for children here: Don't hurt yourself, others or nature. Those working here let children be free. They have no role in children's playing. They just help if the kids ask for it. For example they offer consultations if the children need a solution. We adults are among the key environmental factors here. The history of mankind indicates that our ancestors did the same. But now, we send kids as young as 3 to different classes to learn different things, e.g. to play the piano. However, these things can be learned after the age of 12 or throughout one's life, too.
What we do not know as we write about these Nature Schools, raises several questions. How much were the strong views expressed here about children's self-directed freedom to play, also present at other Nature Schools? (There are some elements of creative self-directed learning shared with international education formats like Montessori Schools and others, e.g. Lillard 2017). Did such strong views grow as the Nature School movement grew? Or were such views characteristic of a smaller number of educators who had prior commitments to environmental concerns? Was it part of a desire for less-constraining teaching methods felt by many parents about the prevailing top-down educational system? Alternatively, was it a more localised variation of environmental educators attracted to these positions?
Certainly, the opinions here do not express views about religious instruction or detailed commentary on the top-down pedagogy, independent of religious instruction. Instead, they are couched as a general response to the relative advantages conferred by Nature Schools (IFP, 2017): Each Nature School should have at least 5 facilitators, though a group of 20 experts are cooperating in this school. The school principal says the team comprises 30 people, but 20 of them include experts such as sociologists, biologists, etc., who are certified facilitators. The most important thing they learn is to not manage children's games.
Sometimes it appears that it is the educators/facilitators or the parents who need the education! "They should be trained to feel comfortable with the concept that children should be left alone," says Kermanshahi. Six days are for kids and Fridays are for families. Of course, this… does not apply to Nature Schools because not all fathers and mothers can leave children alone the way facilitators expect them to. But this is the decision the principal has made for the school. As the principal explains, a more advanced training course has been envisaged to learn how to keep track of the progress that children make after they enter Nature Schools.
Those newspaper reports that were more scripted, emphasised the national program of Nature School rollouts, and the interface with existing educational practices and programs. In contrast, this longer report was educator-centred, the report disclosing in the text a much more detailed aspiration for lifting the quality of foundational learning among Iran's children. There are more photographs than other news reports, and the content and multiple pictures provide a broader window of children's activities engaging with their outdoor surroundings.

Active play on rope web structure
The picture from this article shows children in a traditional way playing with recreational equipment (Fig. 13). Although the open space is evident at the edge of housing, the children's focus is playing in a loose group rather than digging, touching, planting, or working with the physical environment around them. Speaking to reporters and the opening ceremony for the second Nature School in the Chaharmahal and Bakhtiari Province, he said that Nature Schools have already been opened over the past 30 years in countries such as Finland, Sweden, Norway and Denmark, and then after the US, Canada, Japan, Indonesia and Malaysia, some four years ago, it entered Iran. Students from 29 provinces have taken advantage of services rendered by some 77 Nature Schools, he said. Establishment of such schools is underway in other provinces such as Qom and Khuzestan, he said. In such schools, students have the option to be acquainted with natural life and culture.
Relating the Iranian situation with what is happening overseas was part of the underlying logic of the Iranian Nature School national initiative, arranged between government departments and Professor Vahabzadeh.

Discussion and conclusion
A key value in the visual narrative considered here has been to gain a glimpse of everyday human needs that would not be apparent in the official statements and texts. In our previous writing about Iranian children's participation, the visual images, along with other documents and reports, informed our understanding in a general way . The visual narrative examined more closely in these news articles has provided a fuller perspective in understanding what was said and done. This better interprets how the Nature School movement was initially planned, consulted on, and carefully set in motion with the government's Department of Environment and Education Ministry formal approval.
Later than the pictures examined here, from about 2018 a new phase of the Nature Schools movement set in. Instead of the intended, "up to" 1,000 such schools in the original planning, and even stated in recent expressed expectations, government spokespeople began making critical comments about the pedagogy and educational worth of the schools. The creative and relatively unstructured outdoor learning valued by teachers and parents came to be viewed as unacceptable by key figures in government. This grew to the point of rejecting licenses for new schools. Eventually existing licenses were withdrawn or restricted, schools were closed, and proactive senior environmental staff were replaced. No official explanations have been offered about the government's thinking. This escalating pattern of challenge and contestation raises questions about differing motives and directives within the Iranian Ministry of Education focused on Iran's national education priorities, compared to the Department of Environment tasked with creating environmental awareness and the importance of climate mitigation learning and activities.
The enthusiasm for Nature Schools in Iran can be seen in these photographs and accounts as each school opens. The visual images were grounded in the official narrative and have captured in these photographs and accompanying articles some of the underlying subtext of tension between the developing societal and educational needs, and the government's interpretation and control of these needs. The photographs reflect substantial human interest for newspaper readers in seeing children active in water, digging, tending to plants and trees, and using trowels. Children were visible using hammers, watering cans, fishing rods, paint-brushes, rope and poles in varied places: yard, garden, field, park bench, dirt trench, tree background, rocky stream and bare ground. Except for one picture, boys and girls were both present. Traue et al., (2019, p. 327) describe visibility as follows. It is "not just as a representation of the social, but as an aspect and element of the social and cultural orders sui generis," involving "understanding the practices, power relations and technological infrastructures in which (audio)-visual practices unfold." Adults seen mingling in these pictures of new outdoor educational places also reflect these "social and culture orders." Senior men in suits officiate at the openings, representing their government departments that have allowed these schools to open at this time, an important consideration in a theocratically managed education system. There is an unstated government gaze observing through these media reports the progress of Nature Schools beyond any individual opening ceremony. Women commonly appear in traditional head-and body-covering attire, literally embodying pre-modern cultural norms and gendered relationships. Also implicit in the photographs is the middle-class readership's gaze through these news stories of a new generation of parents' educational desires for their children's educational wellbeing. The emergent narrative apparent in the pictures, however, is the sense of discovery and engagement of young children showing the benefits of the natural environment for the children's learning in the open and their creative development. The human interest of the pictures and stories feeds the commercial needs of news outlets to sell their media production; these organisations, too, have an implicit awareness of surveillance in what they present to the public.
A constant refrain throughout this period from 2014 to about 2017 was that Nature Schools are opening with the blessing of the DoE and MoE. This created an underlying sense of momentum in the regularity of new schools appearing. Not long after this series of positive news images, the government withdrew its approval or acquiescence from the Nature School movement. It is not possible to know what part the pictures, the articles, or the perception of success and momentum the article/pictures conveyed, led to central government becoming concerned about an alternative pedagogy emerging. The positive attraction the images invoke for nascent middle-class modern, urban families' desires, or the realisation of the need for changing environmental expectations, appear as significant themes, but similarly cannot be quantified on this data.
It may be that the pictures went under-the-radar of attention in terms of philosophy and religious ideology. On the other hand, however, it is possible that the visual nature of these photographs was part of what aggravated prevailing religious orthodoxies about these not being religiously observant schools. Gratton (1996, p. 358), commenting on Barthes (1980), observed that "Language, then, stands in an ironic relation to photography, doubling, alternating, adding, moving on, even as it seeks to register how the photographic image and its referent are permanently stuck together." Each picture examined here was an active conversation with readers/viewers. The first was with the local community and school-aged children. The second was with the government whose continuing permission for the innovative teaching of Nature Schools' outdoor educational experience was essential. The third was the growing Iranian middle-class increasingly concerned about the constraints of urban living and lack of outdoor experiences impacting children's upbringing and educational wellbeing in a less naturally engaged society.
Funding Open Access funding enabled and organized by CAUL and its Member Institutions Data Availability All data sources of information used are listed in the references.

Declarations
Competing interests The authors have no relevant financial or non-financial interests to disclose.
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