Looking and Learning E-Book

• Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
• Kategorie: Bildung
• Serie: J-B TL Single Issue Teaching and Learning
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 184

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2015

Beschreibung

In this volume, the authors focus on the importance of inclusive teaching and the role faculty can play in helping students achieve, though not necessarily in the same way. To teach with a focus on inclusion means to believe that every person has the ability to learn. It means that most individuals want to learn, to improve their ability to better understand the world in which they live, and to be able to navigate their pathways of life. This volume includes the following topics: * best practices for teaching students with social, economic, gender, or ethnic differences * adjustments to the teaching and learning process to focus on inclusion * strategies for teaching that help learners connect what they know with the information presented * environments that maximize learners' academic and social growth. The premise of inclusive teaching works to demonstrate that all people can and do learn. Educators and administrators can incorporate the techniques of inclusive learning and help learners retain more information. This is the 141st volume of the quarterly Jossey-Bass higher education series New Directions for Teaching and Learning. It offers a comprehensive range of ideas and techniques for improving college teaching based on the experience of seasoned instructors and the latest findings of educational and psychological researchers.

Leseprobe

New Directions for Teaching and Learning

Catherine M. Wehlburg EDITOR-IN-CHIEF

Looking and Learning: Visual Literacy across the Disciplines

Deandra Little

Peter Felten

Chad Berry EDITORS

Number 141 • Spring 2015

Jossey-Bass

San Francisco

LOOKING AND LEARNING: VISUAL LITERACY ACROSS THE DISCIPLINES Deandra Little, Peter Felten, Chad Berry (eds.) New Directions for Teaching and Learning, no. 141 Catherine M. Wehlburg, Editor‐in‐Chief

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NEW DIRECTIONS FOR TEACHING AND LEARNING (ISSN 0271-0633, elec-tronic ISSN 1536-0768) is part of The Jossey-Bass Higher and Adult Education Series and is published quarterly by Wiley Subscription Services, Inc., A Wiley Company, at Jossey-Bass, One Montgomery Street, Suite 1200, San Francisco, CA 94104-4594. POSTMASTER: Send address changes to New Directions for Teaching and Learning, Jossey-Bass, One Montgomery Street, Suite 1200, San Francisco, CA 94104-4594.

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Cover design: Wiley Cover Images: © Lava 4 images | Shutterstock

EDITORIAL CORRESPONDENCE should be sent to the editor-in-chief, Catherine M. Wehlburg, [email protected].

www.josseybass.com

Contents

Editors' Notes

References

Chapter 1: Teaching Visual Literacy in the Astronomy Classroom

Visual Literacy in Higher Education

Reading Visuals in Astronomy

Writing Visuals in Astronomy

Synthesizing Visuals into Presentations

Conclusion: Visual Literacy as a Component of Information Literacy

References

Chapter 2: Learning to See the Infinite: Teaching Visual Literacy in a First-Year Seminar Course

Overview

Timeline of Visual Literacy Activities

Summary

References

Chapter 3: Sociology through Photography

Overview

Photography and Self-Expression

Photography and Sociological Inquiry

References

Chapter 4: Seeing Is the Hardest Thing to See: Using Illusions to Teach Visual Perception

Count the Black Dots

This Is Not a Checkerboard

Tabletops

Concluding Thoughts

Reference

Chapter 5: How to Navigate an “Upside-Down” World: Using Images in the History Classroom

Meaning Making and Images in the History Classroom

Images and Pedagogy: Deep Attention

Images and Universal Design: Bringing Everyone In

Conclusion

Note

References

Chapter 6: Teaching Film and Filmmaking in a Second Language

Objectives

Course Design, Assignments, and Scaffolding

Sample Course Module Design: Framing and Composition

Tools and Technical Notes

Assessment/Results

References

Chapter 7: Learning—to and from—the Visual Critique Process

Introduction

Origins of Critique

Pedagogy

Three Types of Critique

Challenges and Best Practices

Conclusion

References

Chapter 8: Teaching Visual Literacy across the Curriculum: Suggestions and Strategies

Consider Carefully How Visual Analysis or Creation Helps Students Meet Your Learning Goals and Objectives

Plan Assignments or Classroom Activities That Align with Your Goals or Outcomes

Consider the Ways in Which Experts and Novices “See” Differently

Scaffold Assignments to Help Students Develop Visual and Disciplinary Expertise

Model Professional Integrity for Image Use, and Help Students Understand Current Ethical and Legal Practices

Make Visual Literacy a Long-Term Part of Your Teaching Practice, and Work Steadily over Time to Develop the Skills and Resources You Need to Help You Teach and Your Students Learn

Consider Ways to Share What You and Your Students Learn with Others

Note

References

Other Titles

Order Form

Advert

Index

End User License Agreement

List of Illustrations

Chapter 1

Figure 1.1 An Image, a Diagram, and a Plot from the Curiosity Rover on Mars

Figure 1.2 The Earth–Moon System Represented to Scale

Figure 1.3 Student Whiteboard Sketches of Eclipses

Figure 1.4 Student Slides before (Left) and after (Right) Instructor Meetings

Chapter 3

Figure 3.1 David's Self-Portrait

Figure 3.2 Sarah's Other-Self Portrait

Figure 3.3 Leilani's Other-Self Portrait

Figure 3.4 Scene from Hannah's Family's Tobacco Farm

Figure 3.5 Scene from Hannah's Family's Tobacco Farm

Chapter 4

Figure 4.1 Hermann Grid

Figure 4.2 Adelson Checkerboard

Figure 4.3 Shepard Tables

Chapter 5

Figure 5.1 Time to Sow Potatoes and

Ocas

Figure 5.2 World Map of the Kingdom of the Indies

Figure 5.3 Title Page:

El Primer Nueva Corónica

Figure 5.4 The Rich Imperial Town of Potosí

Figure 5.5 General Augusto Pinochet (Chas Gerretsen, September 19, 1973)

Guide

Cover

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From the Series Editor

About This Publication

Since 1980, New Directions for Teaching and Learning (NDTL) has brought a unique blend of theory, research, and practice to leaders in postsecondary education. NDTL sourcebooks strive not only for solid substance but also for timeliness, compactness, and accessibility.

The series has four goals: to inform readers about current and future directions in teaching and learning in postsecondary education, to illuminate the context that shapes these new directions, to illustrate these new direction through examples from real settings, and to propose ways in which these new directions can be incorporated into still other settings.

This publication reflects the view that teaching deserves respect as a high form of scholarship. We believe that significant scholarship is conducted not only by researchers who report results of empirical investigations but also by practitioners who share disciplinary reflections about teaching. Contributors to NDTL approach questions of teaching and learning as seriously as they approach substantive questions in their own disciplines, and they deal not only with pedagogical issues but also with the intellectual and social context in which these issues arise. Authors deal on the one hand with theory and research and on the other with practice, and they translate from research and theory to practice and back again.

About This Volume

Visual images are memorable. Much of the research in the area of memory and lifelong learning seems to support the rationale that we learn quickly and deeply through images. This volume is focused on teaching and learning with visuals and provides innovative examples of teaching with images in both disciplinary and interdisciplinary contexts. The authors within this volume connect visual literacy theory directly to classroom practices and student learning. The chapter authors describe and also analyze their use of innovative techniques that help students make meaning of images within the specific context that they were created and viewed. I am very pleased to present to you, the reader, this important volume that truly integrates theory with practice.

Catherine M. Wehlburg Editor-in-Chief

Editors' Notes

We live in a visual world. Historians (including two of the three editors of this volume) tend to be deeply skeptical of “never-before” statements, but, in this case, never before seems an apt description of the way that technology has brought digital images to the lives of sighted people. Each day, each hour, each minute, connected people are able to retrieve, manipulate, and share images through computer or mobile devices with a worldwide audience; such a phenomenon only builds on earlier media developments in the twentieth century (Sturken and Cartwright 2001). Full-time news cycles further saturate our lives with the latest tweeted image or YouTube video; viewers rarely have the time to ponder the meanings before the next images arrive. Images sometimes appear to be both the means and the message in our lives. Cultural critic W. J. T. Mitchell presciently wrote (way back) in 1994 that the “problem of the twenty-first century is the problem of the image” (2). Today, such a statement seems almost banal given the inundation of images in our lives.

The sheer volume of images might lead some to dismiss the significance of this visual flood. Some skeptics may write it off as lowbrow detritus of a shallow media age, while others might assume that today's university students are “visual natives” who have grown up in an environment that prepares them to be more visually sophisticated than those of us who came of age in the predigital era (see Prensky 2001). Both of those views are flawed.

Learning to look, it turns out, is more complicated than it seems. The mechanics of vision are so apparently familiar as to be misleading. Vision is the primary way sighted individuals gather information about the world. More than a third of the human brain is devoted to the process of seeing, and much of this process is automatic, efficient, and largely effortless. Yet vision is not a passive process. The seemingly simple act of seeing is an “active construction” (Hoffman 1989, xii) that encompasses both the physical interaction of light with our visual systems and the rational, emotional, and social ways we learn to make meaning from experiences and memories. As photographer and critic Susan Sontag (1977, 2003) reminds us, seeing can be deceiving; we do not all see the same thing even when we are looking at the very same image. William James (1890/2007) made this point well more than a century ago: “Whilst part of what we perceive comes through our senses from the object before us, another part (and it may be the larger part) always comes out of our own mind” (2:103).

While James's focus is psychology and Sontag's is photographs, faculty in higher education classrooms often encounter similar complexity. For instance, Place, Hillyard, and Thomas (2008) vividly describe a moment in a particular class when they realized that an activity using video clips was not succeeding in the way they had intended. Their students interpreted the videos far differently from the ways the authors had initially thought were “obvious,” reminding them that “[v]isual modes are particularly seductive” because “codes and conventions appear over time as natural, real and transparent to viewers” (77). As they point out, often we assume our students can look at an image and see just what (and as) we do. However, experts in any field have learned how to look; they know what to look for and what to screen out. Novices in the field, on the other hand, may be confused by too much or irrelevant information present in the perceptual field. This is not surprising, of course. The same expert–novice gap is apparent in all facets of teaching a discipline; students need to learn to conduct an experiment, to read a poem, and to analyze a data set. The same is true for visual capacities. Looking carefully, particularly through a disciplinary lens, is a complex process that must be learned.

The art historian James Elkins connects this complexity and the ubiquity of visuals to argue, flatly, that “Images are central to our lives … it is time they are central in our universities” (Elkins 2007, 8). As we noted in an article in Liberal Education, however, college and university classrooms rarely acknowledge, let alone teach, students to make disciplinary or other meaning with visual sources (Little, Felten, and Berry 2010). Exceptions exist, and some disciplines excel at cultivating visual capacities in students, but too few students are afforded the opportunity to develop their visual skills. Indeed, Carmen Luke points to the ways visual meaning is often intentionally minimized in university classrooms, where interpreting written texts takes priority, making most college classes the only time students are not “blending, mixing, and matching knowledge drawn from diverse textual sources and communications media” to understand the world and express themselves (Luke 2003, 398). Just as listening to a playlist on an iPod does not teach a person to listen critically to music, let alone to create it, using the various platforms in which visuals predominate—from the Internet to Instagram—does not necessarily instruct users or viewers in analysis or construction (Felten 2008). When researchers note that many students are not learning to read and write with texts, an uproar ensues about students being “academically adrift” (Arum and Roksa 2010). And, many higher institutions have sophisticated programs and curricular structures to develop progressively their students as writers, a development that certainly is an essential part of higher education. In today's world, however, visual skills are no different; students bring some capacities with them to campus, but even the strongest students should be challenged and supported to further hone their abilities to make meaning with and from visuals.

To do that, faculty and colleges will need to cultivate visual literacy across the curriculum. The term visual literacy was coined in the 1960s by John Debes, who cofounded the International Visual Literacy Association, and he offered an initial attempt at defining the concept: “a group of vision-competencies a human being can develop by seeing and at the same time having and integrating other sensory experiences” (Fransecky and Debes 1972, 7).

To make the term more useful to nonexperts, Barbara Seels emphasized visual learning, visual thinking, and visual communication as the most basic and important components of visual literacy (Seels 1994). More recently, James Elkins simultaneously clarified and complicated these definitions, explaining that visual literacy involves “understanding how people perceive objects, interpret what they see, and what they learn from them” (Elkins 2007, 2). More simply, Felten claimed that visual literacy “involves the ability to understand, produce, and use culturally significant images, objects, and visible actions” (Felten 2008, 60).

A strength and challenge of visual literacy as a mode of inquiry is its expansive nature. Many different thinkers approach it from a virtually endless array of perspectives: the fine arts and design, certainly, but also philosophical, conceptual, communicative, pedagogical, and neuroscientific to name but a few (Avgerinou and Pettersson 2011). To help identify broad but specific, cross-disciplinary visual literacy skills that students should master in college, in 2011, the Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL) published “Visual Literacy Competency Standards for Higher Education.” The ACRL defined visual literacy as “a set of abilities that enables an individual to effectively find, interpret, evaluate, use, and create images and visual media” (ACRL 2011, para. 2). By emphasizing observable performance standards linked to that definition, the ACRL aimed to establish a framework that will help institutions and individuals develop visual literacy in college students. In this approach, a visually literate student

determines the nature and extent of the visual materials needed;

finds and accesses needed images and visual media effectively and efficiently;

interprets and analyzes the meanings of images and visual media;

evaluates images and their sources;

uses images and visual media effectively;

designs and creates meaningful images and visual media; and