The twenty-first century hosts a well-established global economy, where leaders are required to have increasingly complex skills that include creativity, innovation, vision, relatability, critical thinking and well-honed communications methods. The experience gained by learning to be visually literate includes the ability to see, observe, analyze,…

Behavioral objectives for visual literacy experiences are briefly delineated. The objectives concern skills related to: informative visual communication, persuasive and/or visual communication, general visual communication, visual concepts, and reading visual materials, as well as aesthetic and/or recreational skills. For example, the behavioral…

Suggests a connection between the perceptual world taken as a system of signs and the system of signs we normally think of as visible language and defends this thesis. (TO)

Describes two hours in the life of an eight-year-old to demonstrate that children acquire information and develop language skills from multiple sources. Argues that the conceptualization of literacy must be broadened from reading and writing skills to a definition that recognizes the layering of information and that includes all forms of the…

Film making as a means of exposing public school students to the power of visual language. (Author)

This paper develops a theoretical context for the concept that visual literacy involves a specific type of information processing that has been discussed in the literature on symbolism and epistemology for a number of years. Literacy is discussed first, as a general process of information processing involving the generation of knowledge through…

A discussion of how the information explosion will require instantanious visual communication. (HB)

This paper documents and describes a new course in visual communications developed at the University of Oklahoma to serve a general college undergraduate audience. The course content which is summarized in three areas--graphics and media techniques, visual/verbal message design and delivery, and "pure visual" message design and delivery--is…

This brief survey of successful visual literacy programs designed for students at the elementary and secondary level outlines projects to teach visual communication skills in Ohio, Indiana (Project Visual Understanding in Education/VUE), Virginia, Iowa (Media NOW), California, Canada, England, and Australia (Visual Education Curriculum Project).…

Visual literacy encompasses the ability to generate and make use of visual images to develop or clarify ideas, as a tool both for conveying information and for creative expression. The usefulness of visual thinking in study skills, problem solving, and living in an increasingly visual society is stressed. (Author/JDD)

A third-year study was made to evaluate visual imagery as an educational technique for effective learning with culturally disadvantaged students. The major objective was to improve self-concept of 9-, 10-, and 11-year-old inner-city pupils using the motivational forces of filmmaking and cultural experiences to improve the ability of the children…

This study discusses a visual communications project designed to develop activities to promote visual literacy at the elementary and secondary school levels. The project has four phases: (1) perception of basic forms in the environment, what these forms represent, and how they inter-relate; (2) discovery and communication of more complex…

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,…

A Title I 5 year Visual Literacy Experimental Program was initiated in four kindergarten classes during the 1972-73 academic year. The program was designed to focus on a hierarchy of visual skills and aesthetic experiences involving body language, graphic expressions, and photography, and to correlate these with the objectives of the classroom…

"Visual literacy" denotes the abilities, competencies, and skills necessary to accurately intercept, interpret, understand, and create communication in visual modes. The term also refers to a popular movement of both students and teachers (e.g., Visual Literacy Association, Action for Children's Television, The Screen Educator's Society) who wish…