Visual literacy in education

Visual literacy in education develops a student's visual literacy - their ability to comprehend, make meaning of, and communicate through visual means, usually in the form of images or multimedia.

History of visual art:

Images have always been involved in learning with pictures and artwork to help define history or literary works. However, visual literacy in education is becoming a much broader and extensive body of learning and comprehension. This is due to the integration of images and visual presentations in the curriculum as technology and the increasing availability of computers.

Traditionally, in education in particular, the conventional approach was that young learners acquired conventions of print which made each student a discursive learner. As we have recognized that there are multiple learning styles which better suit some students, some are text oriented, others are visual, kinesthetic, auditory, or a combination of two or more, developers of educational materials have adapted and made use of new media and technology. In 1989, there was a call for new curriculum in social studies, which was uniquely suited to bringing visual information to educational programs by introducing map reading skills, charts and graphs for analyzing data, primary source visuals from the period ephemera, and paintings, sculpture, architecture, objects of daily use, and other evidence of material culture that is the archive from which historians draw their information about past and present cultures. Materials that were embraced for their visual energy, authenticity, and characteristic interest to engage students were prepared by a research and development group named Ligature, whose design director, Josef Godlewski, a teacher of graphic design at The Rhode Island School of Design, brought to what is now the accepted integration of visuals with text that we see in print and media basrd learning programs.

What are the different elements in visual art?

1. Color – this includes the name of the color for example orange, the intensity of it in other words the brightness/dullness of it and the value of the color.
2. Form – this is three dimensional and encloses volume.
3. Line-continuous marking on a surface for example a pencil drawing or a wire outlines.
4. Shape-enclosed space
5. Space-distance or area between, around, above or within things.
6. Texture-surface quality or “feel” of an object for example roughness, smoothness etc.
7. Value is the lightness pr darkness of a color.

 

 

 

 

What are visual arts?

It is the object that you can see visually and some of these include drawings, paintings, sculptures, architecture, photos and films. Some of the decorative arts are ceramics, furniture and interior design, jewelry making, metal crafting and wood working. The word “Arts” come from the Middle Ages, where it was known as the seven arts namely grammar, rhetoric, dialectic logic, arithmetic, geometry, astronomy and music. These were not things you could look at physically. It was also know as Fine Arts and it was only studied by people who were not laborers. After some hundreds of years past, science was taken out of fine art and only the art (as we know it) was left behind. Fine art now included dance, paint, opera, sculpture, music, literature, architecture and decorative arts. In the 20-century fine arts were divided into three divisions namely Visual arts (painting etc.), auditory arts (dance, spoken literature etc.) and performing arts (visual/auditory but it is performed).

When a child is young the first way they learn is by seeing things and through visual objects for example the animal kingdom or all the shapes and colors. When your child reaches 5 years of age their cognitive ability will develop 6 fold. How will you know if this is their left or right brain (analytical or visual)? Therefore, you need to stimulate both sides. The Left brain right brain dominance theory says that the right brains ability includes more creative and expressive tasks like recognizing faces, expressing emotions, music, reading emotions, color, images, intuition, creativity. While you’re left brains ability is language, logic, critical thinking, numbers and reasoning (Kendra Cherry). Each child needs stimulation for both these parts of their brain because they are individuals that learn in a certain way and they have different God given talents therefore they excel in different areas. Visual arts are of critical importance in the curriculum so that each child receives equal opportunity to develop these skills. Each person develops one type of thinking that they prefer above the others. If I think of myself I definitely prefer learning by seeing something visual rather than reading about the same thing. For example I see how a water turbine works rather that reading how it works. I think visual arts plays a much bigger role in a child`s life than what we make it out to be. We as educators should place more emphasis on this subject and change to perception that there is attached to children that do art. They are seen as “less intelligent” than the children that do mathematics or science.

 

Why visual art is an important resource tool

References:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visual_literacy_in_education

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fauJEloQXHQ