Images are central to our understanding of and learning about our world. We argue that visual training needs to be improved in the higher education system to enhance the potential of visual thinking to mediate productively our relationship with the context we inhabit. Initiatives from the social sciences and humanities since the end of the twenty…

The art of looking is a museum and art gallery teaching tool at the core of the Visual Thinking Strategies, a Harvard School of Education pedagogy initiated as an educational experiment for schools across the United States almost two decades ago. Today, a large number of schools implement this teaching method to increase student engagement in a…

This article describes a pedagogical approach to collage based on the work of art historians John Berger (1926-2017) and Aby Warburg (1866-1929). Its aim is to understand how images can be used to develop critical visual thinking skills within the context of architectural education and architectural theory in particular. Drawing on the notions of…

Based on the presupposition that visual literacy skills are not usually learned unaided by osmosis, but require targeted learning support, this article explores how everyday encounters with visuals can be leveraged as contingent learning opportunities. The author proposes that a learner's environment can become a visual learning space if…

This paper demonstrates a dynamic, collaborative, and dialogic strategy for guiding students (and experienced researcher teams) through rudimentary forms of visual analysis using draw-and-write datasets. The approach identifies five sequential stages of the visual analysis process and further delineates twenty activities therein. Akin to the…

Guided looking, even done informally, has a huge impact on early childhood preparation for elementary school and is an effective way to address learning inequities. Why, therefore, does it play such a small role in schooling'? This is a question that occupied Philip Yenawine during his long career working in art museums, where the adults, once…

Due to the large number of students, instructors teaching high enrollment courses often rely on traditional assignments such as scantron exams and research papers. While these types of assignments are functional and satisfy a purpose, they are typically not meaningful or pleasurable for students. In an introductory information technology course,…

Business and professional communicators increasingly rely on visual thinking and design strategies to create effective messages. The workplace need for such thinking, however, is not readily accommodated in current pedagogy. A long-running study abroad short course for American students taught in London provides a model for meeting this need.…

This study examined how toddlers gain insights from source video displays and use the insights to solve analogous problems. Two- to 2.5-year-olds viewed a source video illustrating a problem-solving strategy and then attempted to solve analogous problems. Older but not younger toddlers extracted the problem-solving strategy depicted in the video…

Visual literacy, the ability to interpret and create external representations (ERs), is essential to success in biochemistry. Studies have been conducted that describe students' abilities to use and interpret specific types of ERs. However, a framework for describing ERs derived through a naturalistic inquiry of biochemistry classrooms has not…

The literary element of character is critical to literary meaning-making, and in picturebooks images provide information important to understanding characters. This manuscript shares results of an investigation that explored the kinds of pictorial information young children use to gain insights into the characters and provide practical ways…

Picturebooks tell stories in both words and pictures. Interacting with the printed word, the technical elements of illustration--color, line, shape and composition--work to establish and enhance the story. Sometimes simply by adding description of characters and setting, and, at times, by challenging the veracity of the text with ironic or…

The current study builds on previous research and theory in social studies curriculum to address how democracy is interpreted by secondary students through visual texts. The author begins with a brief exploration of hermeneutics as a theoretical framework for this work and a sketch of methodology employed in this study. The author then presents…

One way that people learn, remember and communicate is visually. We combine past experiences with new visual information to construct meaning. In this study, elementary teachers introduced their students to the peoples and places of the ancient silk routes using illustrations from two children's picture books, "Marco Polo," written by…

This paper describes deep viewing, a research and instructional method used to reach social understandings of visual texts through the use of communal talk, pictorial, and written means. It provides a means of analysis for any type of visual text. The theoretical origins and premises of deep viewing are examined. Also, the deep viewing methodology…