English Teaching: Practice and Critique
Literacy and the visual: Broadening our vision
Jon Callow (The University of Sydney)
The inclusion of visual images in current
educational literacy discussions tends to contextualise them within
more semiotic, socio-critical and textually focussed theoretical
traditions. These particular traditions privilege and emphasise the
structures and “language-like” aspects of visual images, and include
the broader social and cultural structural frames, such as gender and
class, as well as the specific codes and “grammars” of individual
images. While there are strong benefits in employing these approaches,
the nature of visual images themselves may require a broader,
interdisciplinary approach. This paper will include discussion of the
field of visual culture in general, the unique nature of images, the
role of philosophy in regard to image, the inclusion of the
individual’s hermeneutic role in meaning-making, and the attendant
educational implications when applying such work to contemporary
educational literacy practice.