Visual Literacy in a Digital World: A Guide for Educators
Featuring a White Paper from Shannon Flaum, Ph.D.
In a digital learning environment, students rarely interact with educational materials that consist of only text. Instead, available content usually includes graphics, images, and even sound. Visual elements like these, in addition to digital visual elements such as screen layout, play a major role in a student’s relationship to the content and likely convey important information not communicated in the text. Traditionally, we think of “literacy” as the ability to read, write and interpret text — but as learning materials become more visually dynamic, researchers and educators have begun to explore how we can more broadly conceptualize a student’s ability to learn from these visual elements.
Visual literacy is defined as student’s ability to “use, interpret, analyze, and think critically about visual images and the significance of what they are seeing” (Bamford, 2001). It’s increasingly significant in the digital age — and also more complex. Students are bombarded with visual information, from a wide variety of sources and devices, and each requires a technological vocabulary. In the classroom, we ask students to not only interact with visual and digital content, but to interpret and leverage it in a meaningful way.
It can be a challenge to design learning experiences that incorporate purposeful applications and practice for visual literacy while fostering critical thinking skills. There are a variety of cultural implications to consider, and a number of terms and definitions to understand within the field. We’re here to help — one of the many pieces of research in our PreK-12 Research Portal can support your teaching and learning. Dr. Shannon Flaum’s Fostering Visual Literacy in the X-Box Generation contains on overview of visual literacy along with a few key related topics, including:
- How to read images, and the complexities of syntax and semantics in visual literacy
- Deep Viewing, a methodology to aid the interpretation of images and graphics
- A list of tangible, research-based instructional strategies to foster visual literacy
To read Dr. Flaum’s work, see below:
Or, find more by exploring our Research Portal:
Bamford, A. (2001, July). The grammar of visual literacy within the world of interactive media.Paper presented at the Education Research Network Conference on Learning. Spetses, Greece.
