Although visual complexity is increasing and graphics are essential to support readers' comprehension of disciplinary texts, visual literacy receives scant attention. Research suggests that effectively instructing students to interpret discipline-specific graphics would yield better comprehension. However, before this line of inquiry can be…

Decades of research have demonstrated the correlation of spatial abilities to chemistry achievement and career selection. Nonetheless, reviews have highlighted the need and scarcity of explicit spatial instruction to promote spatial skills. Therefore, the goal of this literature review is to summarize what has been done during the past decade in…

This article discusses differences in purpose, orientation and method between what is commonly known as "visual literacy" and what is being called "critical visual literacy". It does so through a comparative critical analysis of two sets of materials produced for classroom use: those produced in 1993 under the umbrella of…

This study investigated the use of comics (Cary, 2004) in a guided writing experience in secondary school Italian language learning. The main focus of the peer group interaction task included the exploration of visual sequencing and visual integration (Bailey, O'Grady-Jones, & McGown, 1995) using image and text to create a comic strip narrative in…

Ways in which instructional design specifications for television production may be extended into a more precise domain, where forms of representation may be cataloged and culturally defined, are suggested in this study. Differences between film and television are discussed, and a distinction is made between format codes (i.e., culturally and…

This experiment compared six methods of teaching concepts of painting style. A practice-plus-verbal feedback teaching strategy (active condition) was compared to a strategy using modeled verbal response (passive condition). Each strategy was combined with three amounts of information: none, artist's name, and name plus style rule. (Author/SJL)