Use of Images to Support Critical Visual Literacy (original) (raw)
Related papers
From visual literacy to critical visual literacy: An
2011
This article discusses differences in purpose, orientation and method between what is commonly known as "visual literacy" and what is being called "critical visual literacy". It does so through a comparative critical analysis of two sets of materials produced for classroom use: those produced in 1993 under the umbrella of visual literacy and those produced in 2011 under the umbrella of critical visual literacy. Through an examination of different approaches to context, semiotic choice and authorial discourse in the development of the material, the article shows the distinctive nature of critical visual literacy -its emphasis on the positioned and positioning nature of visual texts, on the socio-political consequences of semiotic choice in visual texts, and on reading against rather than reading with the visual text.
From Visual Literacy to Critical Visual Literacy: An Analysis of Educational Materials
English Teaching Practice and Critique, 2011
This article discusses differences in purpose, orientation and method between what is commonly known as "visual literacy" and what is being called "critical visual literacy". It does so through a comparative critical analysis of two sets of materials produced for classroom use: those produced in 1993 under the umbrella of visual literacy and those produced in 2011 under the umbrella of critical visual literacy. Through an examination of different approaches to context, semiotic choice and authorial discourse in the development of the material, the article shows the distinctive nature of critical visual literacy -its emphasis on the positioned and positioning nature of visual texts, on the socio-political consequences of semiotic choice in visual texts, and on reading against rather than reading with the visual text.
Visual Literacy as a Classroom Approach
Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy, 2012
I (Cheryl, second author) recently observed 2 ninth-grade general English classrooms in an urban high school in which I do research. Both were print rich-walls covered with posters, charts, and artwork that referenced literature texts, content knowledge, and curriculum standards. In both classrooms, similar content was covered, including literature texts such as Monster, Who Am I Without Him? and Day of Tears.
Beyond the Literal: Teaching Visual Literacy in the 21st Century Classroom
Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences, 2015
Visual imagery and composition inherently have the power to shape comprehension and interpretation beyond the literal. Today's students increasingly inundated with a steady stream of imagery from multimedia platforms including the Internet (i.e., social media-Facebook, Instagram, Twitter), television, film and advertisements (White, 2012) are global consumers of media in their everyday lives yet they often lack the skills necessary to move beyond passive receivers of visual media messages. Visual literacy is vital for 21st Century learners and those who teach. Classrooms can become spaces for students to effectively communicate in and contribute to analytical and global dialogue for discussions of race and diversity, multicultural life and history thus encouraging students to become active deconstructionists of visual grammar.
Reflections on Visual Literacy as learning spaces for theories and practices
The reflections presented in this paper are based on the Master's research "Investigations on Reading through Cinema in the University: Critical Literacy in English Teaching" 1 .Our initial interest was the interpretation of images by teachers and students in Brazilian university contexts. We realized that practices regarding images were still attached to what we called traditional structuralist paradigms 2 . Often, the teachers' discourses revealed an expertise regarding critical pedagogy as theorized by . They would claim "to be critical" and "to be developing critical work". However, by analyzing their lessons, we realized most of their practice focused on criticalreproductivism 3 as in Saviani (Saviani 1990). We believe that it is still a challenge for us teachers to theorize and practice critical approaches to teaching through English in university contexts. Reflections on an education within "other" concepts such as critical literacies (visual literacy in the case of this study) and critical pedagogy would provide, in our view, possibilities of other paradigms for educational processes within the claims of social change.
Literacy and the visual: Broadening our vision
The inclusion of visual images in current educational literacy discussions tends to contextualise them within more semiotic, socio-critical and textually focussed theoretical traditions. These particular traditions privilege and emphasise the structures and "language-like" aspects of visual images, and include the broader social and cultural structural frames, such as gender and class, as well as the specific codes and "grammars" of individual images. While there are strong benefits in employing these approaches, the nature of visual images themselves may require a broader, interdisciplinary approach. This paper will include discussion of the field of visual culture in general, the unique nature of images, the role of philosophy in regard to image, the inclusion of the individual's hermeneutic role in meaning-making, and the attendant educational implications when applying such work to contemporary educational literacy practice.
The Development of A Visual Literacy Course in Higher Education.
The Aristotle University of Thessaloniki in Greece has provided a curriculum for the post-graduate programme titled Italian Language and Culture. Our contribution to this curriculum was an innovative course titled Visual Literacy in Language Teaching and Learning for students specializing in Applied Linguistics. We have followed the "new pedagogies of multiliteracies" 1 , shifting from the dominant print text and examining how literacy can be practised when analysing video, as a new form of multimodal text, in the new millennium. By employing this new concept of pedagogy, we aim to introduce a framework consisting of two elements, a systemic functional (SF) approach and multimodal discourse analysis (MDA), to describe the activities of individuals as they identify, read and create new texts using various semiotic codes. This approach to literacy was introduced in a university setting in response to the call for higher education to adopt a strong commitment to a socially pertinent visual literacy 2 .
This book is an edited volume, with contributions by Barbara Stafford, W.J.T. Mitchell, Jon Simons, Jonathan Crary, and others. It was the product of a combined conference and exhibition of the same name, which has generated another book, "Visual Practices Across the University" (which is uploaded, in its entirety, on this site) and "Visual Cultures" (not yet published). "Visual Literacy" is intended to survey the meanings of the expression, and related notions such as visual competence. Some contributors are interested in the theory of literacy when it pertains to the visual; others in its rhetoric; and others in its implementation at college and secondary school level. The book is intended to serve as a resource for conversations about what comprises minimal or desirable visual ability, competence, or literacy in a university or secondary-school setting. This text is the introduction, the only part of the book I wrote--and so the only part I will upload here.