Visual Learning and Multiple Temporalities
Juliana Ferreira de Oliveira
Federal University of Paraná, Brazil
Juliana Bueno
Federal University of Paraná, Brazil
Abstract
The articulation between different temporalities and spatialities is an important field of discussion for understanding historical information. When considering the Brazilian high school context, specifically the humanities curriculum, this paper discusses the use of a didactic tool for visualizing temporality to enhance the visual literacy of teachers and students as primary and secondary target groups, especially from a synchronic-diachronic perception of historical time. We investigate how the articulation of the multiplicities of time and space might mediate strategies for teaching and learning history, considering visual language in a currently changing curriculum for high school. To this end, we briefly describe the tool’s design in the previous phases of our research and its connection to curricular demands, data visualization, and traditional historiographical models. Through user evaluation, we discuss the reception of the tool among teachers and students, as well as the implications for cultural learning. The research was instigated by the distancing many students feel when attempting to place themselves within a historical narrative. During the learning experience, it is essential to understand how history is constructed by the participation of groups and individuals and not by distant, impersonal forces; this broadens the discipline of history to include the narratives of students’ lives. In addition, we understand that these social perceptions, which include those of time and space, are lived through multiple languages and cognition channels and are mediated by the teachers. Thus, visual language acts as a mediating device for teaching and learning information literacy so that all narratives can be more easily addressed and all learners are perceived as active agents of social change.
Keywords: data visualization, didactic tool, timeline, history, high school