Tag Archives: visual literacy

We are hosting the IVLA 2022 conference in Jyväskylä!

05 Friday Nov 2021

Posted by in Uncategorized

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , , , , , , ,

The 54th Annual Conference of the International Visual Literacy Association (IVLA) will be organized at the University of Jyväskylä, Finland on 10-12 August 2022. It will be hosted by the Department of Language and Communication Studies in the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences in collaboration with the MultiLEAP (Multiliteracies for social participation and learning across the life span) profiling area of the University of Jyväskylä.

I am in charge of chairing the Local Organizing Committee. The call will be out in January 2022. Here is an overview of the conference theme (from almost ready CFP):

Connecting & Sharing – Envisioning the Futures of Visual Literacy

The past two years of ongoing restrictions caused by the worldwide pandemic have shown the importance of the visual in the everyday. Our lives have become more visual than ever before – from intense visual-sharing practices with relatives and friends, video conferencing and online education, to the visual presence of pandemic contexts in cityscapes, artistic practices in local communities, media feeds including charts and graphs, and creation of remixed images as a commentary to the crises. It has become clear that we increasingly need visual literacy in terms of image creation, reception and visual thinking. Therefore, in these current unpredictable (visual) times, we aim for the impossible – to envision the futures of visual literacy.
We invite scholars, educators, students, and practitioners from all over the world to discuss theoretical insights and to share research, artistic, and educational practices around the concept of visual literacy and/or in dialogue with multimodality, multi-sensory experiences and multiliteracies. The concept of visual literacy has been used for over five decades in education, art, museum studies, information design, photography, and new literacies research, but currently we have reached the point when we need to (re)build and (re)discover the (new) connections between the variety of theories, disciplinary traditions and educational practices in visual literacy and beyond.

The view on the Jyväsjärvi Lake in the center of Jyväskylä with Ylistönrinne Campus in the background (photo source: Jyväskylän kaupunki promotional materials).

Multi-sensory visual literacy in online education

25 Thursday Mar 2021

Posted by in #ONL211, Topic 1: Online participation & digital literacies

≈ 3 Comments

Tags

, , , ,

During the last two years, I was writing about screen-mediated family communication. Now, I’m trying to bring what I learnt to the educational context, specifically, to my never-abandoned area of visual literacy. A couple of weeks ago, I have been (re-)exploring the concept of digital literacy as one of the topics in the international online course on e-learning in higher education — the Open Networked Learning (ONL211), which I have recently joined. As it always happens with the concept of digital literacy, also this time the reference to already extensively criticized Prensky’s ideas of digital natives and immigrants couldn’t be avoided. However, this time we were introduced to something else, regarded as (more accurate) alternative: Davide White’s ideas of being/acting as visitor or resident in an online environment. White situates these two concepts on the opposite sides of the scale, but considering the relationship between them as a continuum. The place where we are, i.e., closer to visitor or resident mode in our online and digital encounters depends on our motivation to engage. This model doesn’t really speak to me, because I perceive as yet another way to classify and situate the practices, which cannot be defined by simple binary oppositions, but are more complex than that.

Nevertheless, there was a couple of thoughts on digital literacy, or specifically on teaching in digital habitats that I would like to note here. Davide White points out that the current, forced by pandemic, shift of higher education into online teaching requires different way of thinking about our teaching practices. He suggests that we need to reimagine rather than replicate our institutions online. Teaching online is not the same as in the physical space, and thus, I think that even the learning objectives of a course should be changed and adjusted to the specific practices of online teaching and learning. White even goes that far to suggest abandoning thinking about teaching as ‘contact hours’, but shift into thinking about education in terms of ‘presence‘. In this sense, online education, according to White, is ‘desituated, but not disembodied‘ — thus, we (teachers and students), although being geographically desituated, we need to be physically present in the teaching and learning process in the online context. And I think it isn’t simply about turning on the camera in synchronous teaching (btw, seeing a video of myself is really destructing, it’s like carrying a bunch of mirrors to the classroom and situate them at my desk). This is more about engagement in the learning (and teaching) process. And this is especially challenging in education at the distance, when we cannot feel the presence through all our senses.

And here I can jump back to visual literacy. I wrote elsewhere that today, visual literacy needs to be understood as multi-sensory experience of the visual, and thus, visual literacy education is about developing competencies in visual reading and writing — but, considering the visual as multimodal entity; a visual, which engages other senses, not just vision. Thus, presence (’embodiment’) in online education is not only about turning on the camera, but to engage other senses in the teaching-learning process. How to do this? I’m yet there to experiment and discover this!

Today’s visual literacy is multisensory – notes from the IVLA 2019 conference

26 Saturday Oct 2019

Posted by in Uncategorized

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , ,

The IVLA conference in Leuven, Belgium (16-19 October 2019) started from a provocative, or even quite arrogant keynote by Brian Kennedy. He suggested that within the current condition of the visual, the IVLA should even consider changing its name! I don’t think it needs to go this far. Many papers presented during these two days have, indeed, indicated that the visual is currently understood more broadly – more as a (multi)sensory experience.

What is more, seeing does not only happen through our eyes. Instead, looking and seeing is fully embodied experience. I would like to know, however, where in our bodies we experience ‘seeing’?

Regarding the image, the act of seeing employs a number of senses as well as our (life) experience, knowledge, history, etc. However, what we see is not always ‘what’ and ‘how’ something is (as Nettie Boivin indicated in her paper). In another keynote, addressed by Alva Nöe, I noted a similar point: we do not achieve ‘seeing’ only by opening our eyes.

One of the most interesting initiatives toward development of visual literacy and reported at the conference is the “Power of Pictures” program in the UK. Charlotte Hacking, program leader, talked about the project that brings back picture books to primary education curriculum. The focus on visual literacy had positive impact on children’s literacy skills development. Elsewhere during the conference, it was also mentioned that children are naturally visually literate. This can be particularly observed in the drawing activities.

The conference provided me with a lot of inspiration, ideas for some new teaching activities as well as with more understanding where we are in terms of visual literacy theory and practice. I finally met people that I knew before only from online collaboration. Let’s see where this ‘embodied’ experience will lead me/us in terms of today’s and future visual literacy.

Special issue editorial: “Visual literacy practices in higher education”

29 Friday Mar 2019

Posted by in Uncategorized

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , , , , , ,

I learnt a lot. I made some mistakes that now I know could have been avoided if I would have had at least some editorial experience that I have now, when the process is over. Nevertheless, I am very proud that we both, i.e. me and my friend and colleague, Rasa Zakeviciute, made it to this point. Editing this (double) special issue of the “Journal of Visual Literacy” was a true adventure. Starting with issues with the Editorial Manager that we tried to solve when we both were on holidays in different countries; including looking for reviewers across academic context (and thus getting to know when they all have holidays); up to hours of editorial meetings along with long evening phone-calls trying to solve disciplinary disagreements between communication studies (me) and social sciences (Rasa) paradigms.

At the same time we experienced a lot of academic freedom in the editing process from Maria Avgerinou, editor-in-chief of the journal. We did not simply put the papers together, but we really worked with each single contributor to make this special issue happen. Thus, we acted both as guest editors as well as reviewers (in addition to the double blind peer-review process). You can enjoy an extensive introduction to this special issue in the Editorial, just being published ahead of print.

In order to read all eleven contributions, we still have to wait before they appear online, but here is the list of what you should look forward to:

  1. Asko Lehmuskallio. The look as a medium: A conceptual framework and an exercise for teaching visual studies.
  2. Gary McLeod. Rephotography for Photographers: discussing methodological compromises by post-graduate online learners of photography.
  3. Terry Loerts and Christina Belcher. Developing visual literacy competencies while learning course content through visual journaling: teacher candidate perspectives.
  4. Wendy R. Williams. Attending to the Visual Aspects of Visual Storytelling: Using Art and Design Concepts to Interpret and Compose Narratives with Images.
  5. Jeeyoung Min. Visual literacies in a U.S. undergraduate writing course: A case study of transmediation.
  6. Suriati Abas. Reading the world – Teaching visual analysis in higher education
  7. Dana Statton Thompson. Teaching students to critically read digital images: A visual literacy approach using the DIG Method.
  8. Choon-Lee Chai. Enhancing Visual Literacy of Students through Photo Elicitation.
  9. Vered Heruti. Reading Personal Photographs: A Case Study at an Israeli Art College on Multiple Identities.
  10. Gyuzel Gadelshina. Arrian Cornwell and David Spoors. Understanding corruption through freehand drawings: a case study of undergraduate business students’ visual learning in the classroom.
  11. Rosalina Costa. iPhone, iResearch. Exploring the Use of Smart Phones in the Teaching and Learning of Visual Qualitative Methodologies.

What does it mean to be visually literate?

16 Thursday Aug 2018

Posted by in Uncategorized

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, ,

We should close the debate over the concept of visual literacy and do something about its implementation in education. I draw this conclusion by actually coming back to the roots of visual literacy movement and Fransecky and Debes’s (1972, p. 5) call: ‘If you really want to understand visual literacy, you will have to do something about it’.

In my recently published article: “What does it mean to be visually literate? Examination of visual literacy definitions in a context of higher education”, I intended to avoid either compiling a corpus of visual literacy definitions or advancing its theory. Instead, I selected several visual literacy definitions that can be useful for education practitioners, particularly within university education. The selection includes both the more established as well as some recent definitions. I further aimed to translate them into concrete learning and teaching objectives. As a result, I constructed lists of skills (abilities, competencies) that a visually literate individual should be able to demonstrate.

The figure below shows three categories of visual literacy skills with thematic groups of skills, based on the review of eleven visual literacy definitions published between 1969 and 2013.

Figure_VL skills

 

rjvl

CFP: Developing visual pedagogies in university classrooms: What, why and how? (Journal of Visual Literacy)

13 Tuesday Mar 2018

Posted by in Uncategorized

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , ,

With this special issue we attempt to fill the gap by encouraging prospective authors to reflect on visually oriented teaching practices in university classrooms. We want to compile this special issue along the argument that visual literacy should be the basic educational requirement for both undergraduate and graduate students. Therefore, we welcome theoretical, and foremost, practical papers on visual education in university classrooms. Being aware of the palette of various definitions applied, we understand visual literacy as a group of abilities (skills or competencies) in visual reading (interpreting or meaning making), writing (creating or using visuals), and visual thinking. As such, submissions across disciplines are welcome.

Types of submissions:

  1. full theoretical or empirical papers discussing the need for visual literacy, visual education and relevant visual pedagogies in university education, or
  2. innovative teaching ideas intended for university classroom that employ visuals of any kind or form and which have a potential to develop students’ visual literacy skills.

This call for papers is open until 30th June 2018, the special issue is expected to be published by the end of 2018. Please address questions, inquiries and letters of intent to the editors of this special issue.

Full text call and guidelines: Journal of Visual Literacy special issue CFP

Special issue editors:

Joanna Kędra, PhD, Postdoctoral Researcher in the Finnish Institute for Educational Research, University of Jyväskylä, Finland, joanna.kedra[at]jyu.fi

Rasa Žakevičiūtė, Doctoral Researcher in the Department of Social Sciences and Philosophy, University of Jyväskylä, Finland, rasa.zakeviciute[at]jyu.fi

Doctoral dissertation defence

19 Thursday Jan 2017

Posted by in Uncategorized

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , , ,

Dissertation: 10.12.2016 MA Joanna Kędra (Faculty of Humanities, Journalism)

Start date: Dec 10, 2016 12:00 PM

End date: Dec 10, 2016 03:00 PM

Location: Seminaarinmäki, H320, Historica

MA Joanna Kędra defends her doctoral dissertation in Journalism Interpretation of journalistic photographs as an instrument of visual literacy education. Opponent Professor Emeritus Terence Wright (Ulster University, United Kingdom) and custos Professor Epp Lauk (University of Jyväskylä). The doctoral dissertation is held in English.

Contemporary culture is increasingly visual. Images are everywhere: private and commercial photographs, news images, billboards, leaflets, diagrams, road signs, pictorial instructions, drawings. However, the everyday encounter with images is not a sufficient condition for becoming visually literate, but any kind of visual training can help to develop visual literacy skills.

Thus, in her dissertation, Joanna Kędra designed teaching guidelines that can be used for visual training in higher education. The visual training that she proposes is based on the interpretation of journalistic photographs.

Why we need visual literacy?

– My study was driven by personal observation that the more images people create and disseminate – the less they are able to see. And seeing is crucial in the times when high volumes of information are mediated to us visually, Kędra says.

The visual literacy skills of reading, understanding, and interpreting as well as thinking and learning in terms of images are essential skills for the 21st century. Yet, contemporary higher education often takes them for granted. Therefore, students are usually poorly equipped to smoothly move in a visually stimulated environment and efficiently and effortlessly communicate visually.

– The need for visual literacy education is urgent. Visual literacy is important for all students, irrespective of discipline or major, because studying images teaches the skills to think critically and creatively, Kędra underlines.

The joy of seeing

In her dissertation, Kędra proposes four different models and approaches that can be used for exercises for interpreting journalistic photographs. Models can be used both in an individual or group-work assignments and are aimed to facilitate training in visual literacy in higher education.

– In my approach to visual education, I mostly favour the joy of photography interpretation, rather than any final result of such interpretation. Thus, my models are based of viewers’ personal experience, cultural background and knowledge. They also use journalistic photographs as images of multi-level meanings, Kędra explains.

More information:

Joanna Kędra, joanna.kedra[at]jyu.fi, tel. +358 40 7753 614
Viestintäharjoittelija Katja Ketola, tiedotus[at]jyu.fi, tel. +358 40 805 3638

Joanna Kędra obtained her diploma of Master of Journalism and Social Communication in 2009, and Master of Comparative Studies of Civilizations in 2010, both from the Jagiellonian University in Poland. Kędra worked as a grant researcher in the Department of Communication, University of Jyväskylä in 2010-2016.

The study was funded by the Kone Foundation, Department of Communication at the University of Jyväskylä and VITRO Doctoral Programme.

The dissertation is published in the series Jyväskylä Studies in Humanities number 297, 56 p., Jyväskylä 2016, ISSN: 1459-4323; 297 (nid.), ISBN: 978-951-39-6796-3 (PDF). It is available at the Soppi University Shop and University of Jyväskylä Web Store, tel. +358 (0)40 805 3825, myynti[at]library.jyu.fi. E-publication: http://urn.fi/URN:ISBN:978-951-39-6796-3

Abstract

Images are produced, used and distributed on an enormous scale. However, the skills of understanding, interpreting and using images as well as thinking and learning in terms of images are taken for granted, and thus, they are not sufficiently taught and developed, especially in higher education. The need for introducing visual literacy into the curriculum was identified in late 1960s, but no concrete guidelines have followed. This study proposes to apply interpretation of journalistic photographs as an instrument of visual literacy education. The main focus is on the image interpretation process and the kinds of meanings viewers apply to a photograph in the interpretation process. In each of the four articles included in this study, a model or approach to photography interpretation is proposed. The first method is the model for press photograph story analysis, immersed in visual semiotics. This model was simplified and improved and became the model for the interpretation of journalistic photographs. Both models were created as a synthesis of some of the visual research methods, including classical theories (elements of visual semiotics, visual rhetoric, Barthes’ concept of studium and punctum), approaches having their roots in the analysis of paintings (Barrett’s principles for interpreting photographs, compositional interpretation, iconological context analysis), methods dedicated to analysis of photographs in the press (quantitative content analysis). The concept of context of journalistic photographs is also critically discussed, indicating a context of production, context of medium and page context, and arguing for the decontextualized interpretation of journalistic photographs (proposing an intertextual approach) with a context limited to the caption. In addition, the study compiles the genre typology of journalistic photographs as an instrument for visual education. The study calls for changes in a largely textual higher education curriculum towards a more visually oriented one, which can serve as a start point for future research on the assessment of visual literacy skills.

New Article

07 Friday Jun 2013

Posted by in Uncategorized

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , ,

The new dissertation article has been just accepted for publication in the “Journal of Visual Literacy” for the next, Spring issue 2013. The title of the article is: “To See More: A Model for Press Photograph Story Analysis”.

Journal of Visual LiteracyThe article presents and evaluates an interdisciplinary model for press photograph story analysis. The research comprised two stages: familiarizing study participants with the interpretation model and qualitative content analysis of the participants’ interpretations of samples of press photograph stories. The study was undertaken in 2011 at the University of Jyväskylä, Department of Communication. The result of this study is that the model for press photograph story analysis could be used in the educational context to develop the skills of visual literacy among students.

The article also includes samples of the analysed press photograph stories, thanks to the following photographers: Francesco Zizola/NOOR, Lars Lindqvist and Meiko Herrmann.