Visual literacy is to do with ‘reading’ images of all kinds and seeing the connections between picture and print. Today’s children live in a society where images – in entertainment, advertising and in information sources – are a very important part of the culture. So becoming literate is no longer a matter of just learning to read and write – but is also to do with interpreting and evaluating both static and moving images in different contexts. Children bring to school considerable knowledge and experience about visual images since they are likely to have watched television, viewed videofilms and have been surrounded by print images. However, if they are to develop their capacity to use and evaluate the visual and see how it complements and extends the verbal, this kind of literacy needs to be brought explicitly into the curriculum.
The cultural context of images
In many ways reading a visual text is similar to reading a written text; in his introduction to Image Matters the Australian academic, Jon Callow, observes that both kinds of reading are dynamic processes involving ‘not only a text (verbal or written) but the person reading/ viewing, the authors, and the wider cultural context of all three’ (Callow, 1999, p. 2). Visual images can pass us by, remaining implicit and unevaluated: this is why it is so helpful to explore with children the meaning of images in advertisements and other mass media where they can be used to manipulate. They can lead us to assume certain interpretations of the world are universal or ‘the norm’ while in reality they represent the favoured view of one group. Getting
behind images to intentions helps put the young viewer in control. The increasingly ‘multimodal’ nature of classroom texts, drawing as many of them do on spoken, written, visual, spatial and musical modes is exciting but can also be overwhelming. Even print texts for young children sometimes assume they are familiar with the typical icons on the computer screen. We can help children by making time to explore and evaluate the different strands of such rich input together. (These issues are discussed by Kress and van Leeuwen in Reading Images, 1996.)
Ways of representing experience
In order to explore how we make sense of a visual world I want to look briefly at the work of the developmental psychologist, Jerome Bruner. He identified three main ways in which the growing child represents the world: enactive, iconic and symbolic. The baby knows the world through doing and through experience and this is termed ‘enactive representation’. The roots of many later activities are here, including acquiring the skills to operate all the technology to be found in a typical home or classroom or by using dramatic improvisation to explore how people lived in another historical period. As infants grows older they begin to have mental images of familiar objects and places, even if they are not present; for example ‘teddy in bedroom’ or ‘Peter Rabbit plate in the kitchen’. This Bruner termed the ‘iconic’ mode: from early beginnings this is the way of representing the world that develops into all kinds of visual literacy – how we make sense of maps, photographs and paintings and of moving images. The last mode of representing experience to develop is the ‘symbolic’ – this includes the ability to use language to express ideas and information. By the age of about five years a child is using all three modes of representation in making sense of and acting in the world. So when we think about visual literacy, we also need to consider how Bruner’s three ways of representing experience interrelate in the child’s learning.
A framework for teaching visual literacy
One of the most helpful frameworks in which to plan the teaching of visual literacy is suggested in Image Matters, edited by Jon Callow. There are chapters by teachers and academics on different image contexts in the classroom – including information books, picture books, television programmes and CD-ROMs. The framework for teaching visual literacy described in his introduction is a good starting point for classroom work with any age group. It suggests that learning about images parallels learning about language. We learn language from early childhood and refine and develop our verbal ability, we use language to learn about all manner of subjects both in and out of the classroom and we learn about language as a system with structures and functions. Let us see how becoming visually literate links with this analysis.
• Learning images – here the child learns to recognise symbols and patterns that represent the things they come across in everyday life and tries to make his or her own representations. So a sort of visual vocabulary is acquired.
• Learning through images – these help children learn in every part of the curriculum – in science, the humanities and the arts and about every aspect of our culture. Children’s own productions – electronic and print books, models and diagrams help make learning active.
• Learning about images – this involves knowing how to comment on and evaluate their cultural and contextual aspects and also (following the arguments of Kress and van Leeuwen, 1996) coming to understand the ‘grammar’ inherent in images. For many of us this is a new area of understanding and we need to learn alongside our pupils how images work and ‘mean’.
Explaining how the three aspects of this framework for organising visual literacy relates to print pictures and information texts, to the moving image in video, DVDs and CD-ROMs and in television would take a whole book to explore thoroughly. The books in the reference section of this entry will help build your understanding. You might like to take to your reading some thoughts about the different kinds of visual image children encounter.
Print images
A major art form in many countries is the children’s picture book where text and pictures can relate in exciting ways – sometimes to illustrate the action in a story, sometimes to extend the written text and occasionally to contradict it in a tantalising way (Arizpe and Styles, 2002). Some picture books like John Burninghams’s The Snowman and Shirley Hughes’ Up and Up – a cartoon about a little girl’s flying fantasy – are wordless and rely on quite young children’s cultural knowledge to gain meaning. Both these books yield their meaning through action. The sophistication of the best picture books make them valuable contributors to children’s literacy, both verbal and visual (see picture books entry).
Pictures have always provided powerful ways into bodies of information. Visual media can convey concepts that might be difficult to explain in writing. Harnett (1998, p. 72) reminds us that medieval paintings showed the mysteries of heaven and hell, with beautiful angels and terrifying demons, to non-literate people. Even in our more literate society, advertisers exploit the power of pictures to move, persuade and excite. The money spent shows how much advertisers believe in the power of the visual image to effect people’s views and actions. How teachers might approach a study of advertisements to put children in control of their viewing is discussed further under the Advertisements entry.
Children’s information books make considerable demands on children’s visual literacy as they feature a rich variety of illustrations including photographs, drawings, diagrams, maps and portraits. These need to integrate well with the written text so that they are illuminating and not obscuring or misleading. Children themselves enjoy discussing how useful the illustrations are in particular books they have been using. The increase in variety of illustrations has come about since the end of the Second World War. Those of us of a certain age well remember the distinctive black and white line drawings in Unstead’s history series along with a few coloured pictures. Artists’ drawings continued to dominate in the 1960s and 1970s. Since then there have been vast improvements in reprographic techniques and, while artists’ illustrations are still used a great deal, photographs are equally favoured. Books and CD-ROMs show animals in their environments and wonderful close ups of creatures. In the United Kingdom, the National Curriculum programmes have included visual literacy. For example, in history the role of photographs of objects and buildings as a valuable source of historical information has been stressed. The potential role of diagrams in ‘explanation’ texts is also recognised.
There is interesting research on children’s use of pictures in history; Blyth (1988) found that children by about the age of nine years could be helped to understand abstract concepts like change and power with the help of pictures. Seeing a number of pictures of people and objects from a particular period helps children make generalisations about, for example, what people wore and the objects they used. Harnett (1998) found a development in children’s competence in using pictures as information sources. Around age five years, children talked about all the details in a picture while as they neared eleven years they were able to look more broadly at a series of pictures and draw specific conclusions. Sequencing abilities in both history and in English can be developed by looking at a series of pictures and ordering them.
What comes through particularly powerfully in Harnett’s study is the way in which children supported each other in making sense of visual input. Some children were looking at a portrait of Elisabeth I and a child said the queen had a ‘heart shaped frill’ on her back. Another child explained that it was not really a heart shape ‘it just goes round like a semicircle’. The social, collaborative side of history work links it with English. A study of portraits through the ages helps children understand how ‘image’ ‘is constructed and put them in a position to question the way today’s media images manipulate us.
Moving images
We encounter the moving image in CD-ROM texts, televisual texts and on film. CD-ROM versions of information texts have the advantage of being able to show function as well as structure. A print version of a diagram of the blood system could indicate the direction in which the blood is flowing using devices like arrows, but the electronic version could show the system in action. Concepts like the water cycle, migration, earthquake and so on can be brought to virtual reality. These dynamic texts are discussed further under the ‘CD-ROM’ entry.
Turning to watching television and film, while many people of all ages are frequent viewers of serials and other narratives, they tend not to have a profound understanding of the medium. There is, however, an evolving language to talk about the moving image. Annemaree O’Brien in her chapter in Image Matters (1999) edited by Callow entitled ‘Reading TV: A basic visual literacy’ argues that learning to ‘read’ television texts can start early and can help develop visual literacy and analytical and critical thinking abilities.
O’Brien identifies two key aspects to reading television. First we need to understand how visual and sound techniques create meaning in television and film stories and how they influence how we interpret them.
Second, it is important that we help our pupils to understand that television programmes are created to affect the viewers in particular ways. Programme makers make choices about scripts, locations, dialogues, the order in which events are shown, colours used and sounds. Like other texts there may be multiple layers of meaning and bias. There is more about this under the ‘advertisements’ entry.
For more about the benefits of children experiencing the same story in both print and in film form please see the entry under ‘video-film and DVDs’.
Arizpe, Evelyn and Styles, Morag (2002) (eds) Children Reading Pictures: Interpreting Visual Texts London: Routledge.
Bearne, E. et al. (2004) More Than Words: Multimodal Texts in the Classroom London: QCA/UKLA.
Blyth, Joan (1988) History 5–9 London: Hodder & Stoughton.
Callow, Jon (ed.) (1999) Image Matters: visual texts in the classroom. Marrickville, Australia: PETA (Primary English Teaching Association).
Hall, James (1974) A Dictionary of Signs and Symbols in Art London; John Murray.
Harnett, Penelope (1998) ‘Children working with pictures’ in Hoodless, Pat (ed.) History and English: Exploring the Links London: Routledge.
Kress, G. and van Leeuwen, T. (2006, second edition) Reading Images: The Grammar of Visual Design London: Routledge.
Morris, Susan (1989) A Teacher’s Guide to Using Portraits English Heritage.
National Portrait Gallery (www.npg.org.uk) Courses for teachers and children on decoding period and contemporary portraits.
