Visual literacy is the ability to interpret, negotiate, and make meaning from information presented in the form of an image. Visual literacy is based on the idea that pictures can be “read” and that meaning can be communicated through a process of reading.
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Background
The term “visual literacy” is credited to John Debes, co-founder of the International Visual Literacy Association.[1] In 1969 Debes offered a tentative definition of the concept: “Visual literacy refers to a group of vision-competencies a human being can develop by seeing and at the same time having and integrating other sensory experiences.”[2] However, because multiple disciplines such as visual literacy in education, art history and criticism, rhetoric, semiotics, philosophy, information design, and graphic design make use of the term visual literacy, arriving at a common definition of visual literacy has been contested since its first appearance in professional publications.
Since technological advances continue to develop at an unprecedented rate, educators are increasingly promoting the learning of visual literacies as indispensable to life in the information age. Similar to linguistic literacy (meaning making derived from written or oral human language) commonly taught in schools, most educators would agree that literacy in the 21st Century has a wider scope.[3] Educators are recognizing the importance of helping students develop visual literacies in order to survive and communicate in a highly complex world.
Many scholars from the New London Group[4] such as Courtney Cazden, James Gee, Gunther Kress, and Allan Luke advocate against the dichotomy of visual literacy versus linguistic literacy. Instead, they stress the necessity of accepting the co-presence[5] of linguistic literacies and visual literacies as interacting and interlacing modalities which complement one another in the meaning making process.
Visual literacy is not limited to modern mass media and new technologies. The graphic novel Understanding Comics by Scott McCloud discusses the history of narrative in visual media. Also, animal drawings in ancient caves, such as the one in Lascaux, France, are early forms of visual literacy. Hence, even though the name visual literacy itself as a label dates to the 1960s, the concept of reading signs and symbols is prehistoric.
See also
Endnotes
- ^ What is visual literacy?, International Visual Literacy Association
- ^ Avgerinou, M. & Ericson, J. (1997). "A review of the concept of visual literacy", British Journal of Educational Technology, 28(4), 280-291.
- ^ Riddle, J. (2009). Engaging the Eye Generation: Visual Literacy Strategies for the K-5 Classroom. Stenhouse Publishers page 3. ISBN 978-1571107497
- ^ The New London School, Information Habitat wiki, Michigan State University
- ^ Kress, Gunther R. (2003). Literacy in the New Media Age. New York: Routledge. ISBN 0-415-25356-X. http://books.google.com/books?id=2vaNeafOoiYC&dq=inauthor:Gunther+inauthor:Kress&lr=&num=50&as_brr=0&output=html&source=gbs_summary_s&cad=0.
External links
- Journal of Visual Literacy, International Visual Literacy Association
- Learning Resources on Visual Literacy for Management, Communication and Engineering
- Visual Literacy from 21st Century Literacies, AT&T Knowledge Network Explorer
- Joel & Irene Benedict Visual Literacy Collection, Arizona State University
- viz.: Rhetoric, Visual Culture, Pedagogy, University of Texas at Austin
- International Visual Sociology Association (IVSA)
- Visual Literacy and Learning in Science - from the Education Resources Information Center Clearinghouse for Science, Mathematics, and Environmental Education
- Visual Literacy, Knowledge Quest, Volume 36, Number 3 (January/February 2008)
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