During a classroom-based study that explored the teaching and learning of visual elements of art and design, Grade 7 students had the opportunity to read four graphic novels. Theoretically, the research was informed by social semiotics, visual literacy, sociocultural theory, and Rosenblatt's transactional theory of reading. The instructional unit…

This paper relates visual literacy to the historical development of art education in the United States, emphasizing the work of Walter Smith, an art educator, during the later nineteenth century. The visual mode of learning, especially drawing, in public schools has been justified as a means to furthering industrialization and as an end in itself,…