Reaching a Milestone – IVLA at Fifty
Danilo M. Baylen
University of West Georgia
The International Visual Literacy Association, popularly known as IVLA, celebrated fifty years as an organization for visual literacy educators, scholars, and practitioners. 2018 is a milestone for IVLA members — celebrating fifty years — especially for those who are involved with the organization in its early beginnings.
Almost all annual IVLA conferences produce an edited book called The Book of Selected Readings (TBSR). The publication provides opportunities to those who presented at the yearly conference independent of their involvement in the field of visual literacy. The edited book contains a collection of papers that showcases scholarly activities focusing on visual literacy research and practice.
As the TBSR senior editor, I feel relieved that the edited book is now accessible online after several challenges in the editing and publication processes. I am in my second year to have the opportunity to review the works of experienced colleagues, mentor those interested in scholarly writing for this field, and collaborate with a diverse group of peers as editors and reviewers.
This year’s publication received support from an editorial team of Xiaoning Chen, Ricardo Lopez- Leon, Patrick Hickey, and Sarah Christensen. All of us are very proud of this year’s collection of writings from a diverse group of authors. After multiple reviews and revisions, the editorial team accepted eleven manuscripts for publication grouped into three sections: Reading the Visual, Experiencing the Visual, and Crossing Disciplines. Dreams and Inspirations are words chosen as part of the edited book’s title to acknowledge the theme of presentations and contributions from the annual conferences in Chicago (2018), Boston (2017), and Montreal (2016). There were many presentations made at those conferences. Still, the reality of time and other commitments prevented many individuals from translating their ideas into proposals and finally into manuscripts for publication consideration.
Reading and Experiencing the Visual, and Crossing Disciplines
READING THE VISUAL section included three chapters with a connection to visuals in children’s picturebooks, graphic novels, and photographs. EXPERIENCING THE VISUAL part focuses on visual literacy practices in various educational settings. The final section, CROSSING DISCIPLINES, focuses on the integration and teaching of visual literacy in diverse environments and content areas (e.g., arts-based curriculum, creativity, communication, information design).
Each chapter in this edited book includes different perspectives yet similar goals of improving learning, be it in a classroom, clinical setting, or in the community. It offers different strategies of teaching visual literacy to include inquiry-based, content-focused, process-oriented activities to improve the understanding of how we learn about things around us through images, visuals, illustrations, photographs, videos, or multimedia devices.
READING THE VISUAL section opens with Chapter 1, Engaging with Endpapers: A Visual Literacy Experience Upon Opening a Picturebook authored by Geri Chesner. The chapter reports on a study done of the endpapers in eighty-five picturebooks published in 2016. Chesner used two endpaper typologies based on the works of Sipe and McGuire (2006) as well as Duran and Bosch (2011). She found that the theme as a story element prevailed in the books studied.
Chapter 2, Using Graphic Novels to Illustrate Empathy, written by Lee Okan. She described and discussed how graphic novels could be used as teaching tools, and help students think critically about personal experiences. In analyzing graphic novels, Okan believes that “readers learn compassion through the medium.”
The last chapter in this section, Discourses of Power in Historical News Photographs: Bain News Service and Representation in the Age of Imperialism, by Denitsa Yotova investigated “visual discourses of power in early twentieth-century news photography.” At the end of the chapter, the author argues that “news photographs …. promoted a sense of nationalism and exceptionalism in the age of empire.”
Focusing on integrating visual literacy practices in teaching and learning contexts, the EXPERIENCING THE VISUAL section starts with Chapter 4 by Margaretha Häggström titled Visual Genealogy of Portraits, Self-Portraits, and Selfies: Same Phenomenon, Different Phases of History. She describes her examination of the genealogy of three types of portraits — portraits, self-portraits, and selfies. Using the four resources model by Freebody and Luke (1999) in her analysis of the portraits, she also discussed the concepts of visual code-breaking, visual meaning- making, visual use, and visual analysis. The ideas, mentioned earlier, supported the interpretation of her findings.
The team of Pamela Wicks and Meg Bero investigated how college students learned how to create a three-dimensional artifact using a software application. In Chapter 5, Papers, Pencils, and Crayons: A Case Study in Building Visual Literacy Skills for College Students, they shared a case study that documented how theory and practice worked when using digital tools.
Chapter 6, Introducing Graphic Facilitation and Recording, presents graphic facilitation (GF) and graphic recording (GR) for those interested in expanding visual literacy in the workplace. Sharlene Kennedy, the author, included in her discussions “a curated history, sample exercises and examples to illustrate the benefits of and similarities and differences between graphic facilitation and graphic recording.” She believes that reading this chapter can enhance the understanding of GF and GR, and appreciation of “its potential impact on learning, growth, and communication for individuals, groups, and organizations.”
Chapter 7, Funny feeling – Introducing a Performance Art Approach towards Visual Literacy, written by Elke Mark, provides a unique perspective on connecting visual literacy and performance art. Mark describes “an experiential attempt to access the underlying complex tactile experience and the Gleichgewichtssinn (sense of balance) and translate it into a perceptible interactive experience. Given the background, the author “introduces the example of a reading practice which acknowledges bodily experience, and opens visual literacy beyond usage and design.”
The last section focuses on CROSSING DISCIPLINES, where researchers and practitioners identified areas that visual literacy knowledge and skills would be useful and helpful in learning discipline-specific content or material. In Chapter 8, Constructing Arts-based Literacy Practices through Kwame Alexander’s “The Playbook”, by Anne Katz, describes the experience of using targeted reading, writing, discussion, and arts-based literacy projects with public middle school students. Also, the author explored how the experience can increase “pre-service educators’ commitment to their field and expand their learning.”
For Chapter 9, Surveying Visual Literacy Guidelines for Information Design Application, by Randy Howe discusses how professional information designers make design decisions. In this chapter, he also describes the process undertaken in creating a “more comprehensive and informed list” from fifty guidelines and rules found in the literature.
Phillip Gallagher wrote about “pedagogical change toward designing these artifacts in technical communication” in Chapter 10. His chapter titled Design: Changing Zeitgeist, Changing Communication also examined how “cultural attitudes affecting teaching practices” including the trend in communication instruction “towards visual, design-based methods for training technical writers.”
Finally, Chapter 11, Creativity and the Development of New Ideas: The Generative Potential of Visual Literacy, by Brad Hokanson, discusses that becoming visually literate includes the “capability to create and think using visual media.” The chapter addresses the creative process, “whether internally through visualization or externally through distributed means” such as informal drawing, sketching, thinking pictures, etc.
A Million Thanks
The editorial team (Xiaoning, Ricardo, Patrick, and Sarah) and I appreciate all those who made this book of selected readings a reality. The chapter authors deserved a lot of kudos for the quality of their work. As senior editor, I believe that these chapters can be useful to those interested in promoting visual literacy — whether as a new teacher, faculty member, researcher, scholar, or, practitioner. Also, I hope it will inspire experienced as well as beginning visual literacy scholars to study ideas and practices with courage and a sense of adventure given the rapidly changing visually-rich world.
The edited book has become a reality due to numerous individuals, from those who initially proposed, authored manuscripts, and acted as peer-reviewers, and multiple contributors. The editors would like to thank them all for the accomplishment. On a personal level, I would like to acknowledge a good friend, Cristine Goldberg, who cheered and provided sage advice “when things got tough,” while making this dream a reality. Also, a big thank you to Michelle Wendt, 2019 IVLA president, for her support. Finally, the editorial team and I hope that you will enjoy reading the book chapters as we did, and will be inspired to do more teaching, learning, and research related to visual literacy soon.
We look forward to your participation in IVLA annual conferences and submissions to future books of selected readings.
Sincerely,
Editor, Senses and Experiences: The Book of Selected Readings
Carrollton, Georgia 30118 USA
December 31, 2019
Featured Chapters
Geri Chesner
National Louis University, USA
Abstract:
Picturebooks are sophisticated forms of visual design that offer much to delight and inform readers of all ages, not just within the pages of the story, but in the design of the books’ peritextual elements. Picturebooks contain highly illustrated elements of art and design that can support the understanding of visuals and narrative. Those developed for young people are an indispensable tool for developing and extending visual literacy skills when emphasizing their visual elements and structural design (Stewig, 1986). Endpapers, an integral peritextual element are often illustrated and provide good sources of information for visual interpretation. In recent years, well developed and cleverly utilized endpapers in picturebooks have provided a growing opportunity for readers and viewers to understand and engage with the meaning of the visuals and narrative intended by the artists who create them. This research details a study done of the endpapers in eighty-five picturebooks published in 2016 in relation to two endpaper typologies, that of Sipe and McGuire (2006) and Duran and Bosch (2011). It was evidenced that of all the story elements reflected, theme was the most prevalent in the books studied.
Keywords: Comprehension, endpapers, picturebooks, visual interpretation, visuals
Lee Okan
Simmons University, USA
Abstract:
The graphic novel has long-served instructors as powerful teaching tools. Through graphic novels, students can pair visual images with words to examine how interdependent images and words can create a narrative. Graphic novels are essential for teaching students to think critically about personal experiences in the visual form, thereby teaching empathy. Graphic novels require visual learning to appreciate how the form addresses empathy. Graphic novels can be used to examine complex concepts. Artists can simultaneously depict stories internal and exterior conflicts of characters. This allows readers to become more empathetic to the characters. The visual form, as well as the accompanying narrative, provides an intimate medium to engross readers in parallel experiences. As educators struggle to engage students, the accessibility of graphic novels and their visually-rich narratives teach students both literacy and visual literacy. Through the images and the texts, students make connections and develop compassion for characters’ experiences. It is the connection of text and image interplay that conveys a greater sense of empathy with readers. This book chapter will analyze creators’ works in how readers learn compassion through the medium.
Keywords: Graphic novels, visual literacy, empathy, immigration, intercultural teaching and learning
Denitsa Yotova
University of Maryland, College Park, USA
Abstract:
News photographs, as a form of visual communication, serve a critical role in the formation of knowledge and understanding of the past and present. The ability to interpret news images in the context of their production is an essential visual literacy skill that aids the effectiveness of both the production and the consumption of visual messages. To illuminate some approaches to the news image interpretation process, this paper investigates visual discourses of power in early twentieth century news photography. The study takes a closer look at one of the first news photo agencies in the United States, Bain News Service, and the images it provided to the American press. The visual representations of the social, political, technological, and cultural progress of the United States, as compared to other nations, demonstrate that the news photo service helped introduce, at least visually, both the domestic “self” and the foreign “other” to the American people in ways that suggested domestic superiority. The paper analyzes select photographs George Grantham Bain’s service produced between 1900 and 1920, to investigate how these mediated representations served to illuminate differences and otherness and to position the United States as a world power. Ultimately, the paper argues that Bain’s news photographs, as sold to and eventually published by the press, promoted a sense of nationalism and exceptionalism in the age of empire.
Keywords: Bain News Service, news photography, visual image interpretation, visual literacy, representation, power, cultural diplomacy, nationalism, exceptionalism
Margaretha Häggström
University of Gothenburg, Sweden
Abstract:
This book chapter explores how the use of portraits has developed over the years. The purpose is to examine the genealogy of three types of portraits — portraits, self-portraits, and selfies — and to reveal similarities and diversity between these. A sample of portraits and self-portraits by painters, and selfies by amateur photographers, are analyzed through the four resources model by Freebody and Luke (1999). In this study, this model contains four theoretical concepts: visual code- breaking, visual meaning-making, visual use and visual analysis. The result shows that both professional artists, such as painters and photographers, and amateur photographers, are visual literate, but on different levels. Visual literacy ability is needed in all these types of portraits, and is always culturally grounded. The images included in this study, show the creators’ awareness of how to express specific personalities. Although, there are differences between the older paintings and today’s selfies, the similarities are more connected than might be thought.
Keywords: Portrait, self-portrait, Selfie, visual literacy, identity creating, subject positioning
Pamela Wicks and Meg Bero
Aurora University, USA
Abstract:
A case study approach involved students enrolled in a sophomore-level visual communication course who struggle to construct a three-dimensional artifact using Photoshop. The students could not create a sense of depth needed for an effective composition. They did not understand how to translate their ideas to the landscape they were designing on a two-dimensional plane. Two case studies took place at a museum housed on the campus of a small liberal arts university in the Midwest. Students took part in a unit on composition in art, which was proposed to see how theory and practice worked when using the tools in the Photoshop program. This case study used the method of observation, analysis of documented student comments, student scores, and data collected from assessment reports to determine if learning occurred. Students met in the museum where they worked on creating visuals that started with the creation of three-dimensional displays, continued with blind contour drawing, and finished by creating art with construction paper. Overall, the unit served as a way to increase the learning experiences of the students in the Visual Communication class by providing them access to real pieces of art. They also learned the skills of observation and interpretation of art as a method needed to understand the construction of visuals.
Keywords: Hands-on learning, museum artifacts, Photoshop, three-dimensional, visual literacy,
Sharlene Kennedy
Fusionary Thinking
Keywords: Graphic facilitation, graphic recording, group graphic design, scribing, sketch noting, visual mapping
Read the full chapter here
Elke Mark
Europe University Flensburg, Germany
Abstract:
How can one succeed in making the experience of a lecture performance comprehensible to people who were not present? How can it be translated into a text which still gives an idea of what happened? This paper is an experiential attempt to access the underlying complex tactile experience and the Gleichgewichtssinn (sense of balance) and translate it into a perceptible interactive experience. A textile ribbon approximately 60 meters in length, on which the whole lecture is printed as a single line, accompanied the experience. The ribbon was set up in the entrance of the lecture room serving as a guide to those who joined the audience. Based on visual imagination of the lecturer, and emphasizing a logic of its own, this concept introduces the example of a reading practice which acknowledges bodily experience, and opens visual literacy beyond usage and design.
Keywords: Body, experience, performance art, reading, sensuous knowledge, tactility
Anne Katz
Georgia Southern University, USA
Abstract:
Teacher education candidates collaborated with local middle school students in order to cultivate reading comprehension, creative expression, and critical discussion skills through a visual literacy lens. Collaboration through a visual literacy lens is defined as a practice which invites students to construct meaning through images and text curated to express individual artistic expression. Undergraduate College of Education students enrolled in a Living-Learning Community “Investigating Contemporary Issues in Education” course exchanged pen-pal letters and created mini-lessons for middle school students around issues presented in Kwame Alexander’s The Playbook: 52 Rules to Aim, Shoot, and Score in This Game Called Life (2017) over the course of a semester. These students visited the school on several occasions to work with their pen-pals. Pairs conversed about life lessons and autobiographies of athletes presented in the book as well as how the text (varying font sizes and colors, layouts, and the use of photographs and illustrations) affects the reader. They completed interactive activities guided by post-it note prompts and worked collaboratively to answer the prompts. The college students also worked with the middle school students to construct book-inspired arts-based text and image collages to represent their personal life philosophies. The question that this service-based research project seeks to answer is: “Would the use of targeted reading, writing, discussion, and arts-based literacy projects with public middle school students improve pre-service educators’ commitment to their field and expand their learning?”
Keywords: adolescent literacy, arts-based literacy practices, community collaboration, engagement, motivation, university-school partnership
Randy Howe
Fitchburg State University, USA
Abstract:
Visual literacy literature is full of guidelines established by various means — from personal taste to established traditions, perception studies, zeitgeist, and big data observations. This chapter explains how fifty guidelines and rules were taken from the literature and classified as a starting point for the creation of a more comprehensive and informed list. Guidelines and rules were randomly selected in this initial effort from some of the fields’ most respected theorists and practitioners among other sources. They were assembled to assist undergraduate students enrolled in a course titled Information Design to think critically about the design decisions made by professional information designers. This chapter further explains the methodology that went into the list’s creation, as well as specifics as to how it was applied in a classroom setting as an instructional aide, with additional reflection for possible enhancement.
Keywords: Design rules and guidelines, information design, instructional method, visual literacy instruction, visual literacy luminaries
Philip B. Gallagher
Iowa State University, USA
Abstract:
Teaching and learning how to communicate effectively is influenced by the zeitgeist of each new age. During each age, changing ideology, culture, and technology reshape communication and necessitate instructional redesign. An examination of communication instruction over the last half century reveals a trajectory toward designing documents using multiple modes of communication — the written, oral, visual, and electronic forms. This study looks at pedagogical change toward designing these artifacts in technical communication. It examines cultural attitudes affecting teaching practices and shows how communication instruction is trending toward visual, design-based methods for training technical writers. Ultimately, learning a design thinking practice is a worthwhile addition for teaching multimodal communication and document design for the digital era.
Keywords: Design thinking, digital communication, multimodality, pedagogy, technical communication, visual literacy
Brad Hokanson
University of Minnesota, USA
Abstract:
The goal of this writing is to expand our understanding of visual literacy to include the capability to create and think using visual media. It begins with a reference to the way we ourselves work, think, and create. Following a brief examination of historical and contemporary descriptions of visual literacy, the current understanding of creativity is reviewed. How we create, whether internally through visualization or externally through distributed means is discussed. The use of external media to examine and develop ideas is mapped onto visual methods such as informal drawing, sketching, and thinking drawings. An examination of our own visual practices extend the scope of visual literacy to include thinking and creation.
Keywords: Creativity, distributed cognition, visual media, visual thinking