Part C : Research Synposis

 Hi Everyone! 

Welcome to the last part of the series for Reading Review. I cannot believe we are in week 3 of the school semester. Time is flying by super quickly. This quote below really sets the tone because I think having visual literacy is a privilege and also a perk. However, I understand that especially when students are young, learning visual literacy takes baby steps because not everyone might be fluent in the alphabet or words and so when educators are thinking of incorporating visual literacy into curriculum there is definitely a sensitive portion to studying visual literacy. Noneless a very exciting journey!

For Part C of the assignment we are looking at my understanding and insights of the resources I collected last week. I have gathered a collection of resources that have significantly increased my understanding of the topic. The research process was very smooth because I found that visual literacy is a popular topic. The online websites I used were UBC’s library for scholarly articles and also youtube. These resources include journal articles, a book, and a video. I was able to find 15+ articles and literature on visual literacy and narrowed it down to the 4. The 4 was super relevant to my topic as it covered Social Media Literacy, Visual Literacy, Technology into Classrooms, Age in Visual Literacy and Multi-Models of Literacy. There wasn’t an absence of literature pertaining to my topic. My key takeaway are as follows~

1. The first resource, "Experimenting the effect of using visual multimedia intervention to inculcate social media literacy skills to tackle fake news" by Zhang et al. (2022), presents an experiment on using visual multimedia intervention to enhance social media literacy skills and combat fake news. They included 470 participant students and included a control and experimental group. Visual literacy and critical thinking was a contributing factor to being able to see which news was fake and usually students aren’t exposed to those types of thinking. Students might not understand what is being reported. What I found to be really interesting was that the control group, in contrast to the group that received visual multimedia teaching on literacy skills, were not as successful as those that received training, also confirming the study's hypothesis. The outcome of the study shows how important visual multimedia intervention would improve a student’s capacity to identify fake news which will be super important in the future in whatever future endeavors they decide. This study allows me to incorporate into my personal curriculum from teaching the students about fake news to incorporating it into further classes on social media awareness. It is directly relevant to my research, as it provides insights into the effectiveness of visual interventions in improving digital literacy, a very important aspect of education right now. 

2. The second resource, "Teaching Visual Literacy in the Primary Classroom" by Stafford and Taylor (2011), focuses on teaching visual literacy in the primary classroom, offering practical guidance and ideas. This book was able to clarify visual literacy terms and allow me to gather more knowledge as stated in the book that the visual literacy work in english should be linked to the “act of storytelling”. I use this book as inspiration of how I can better incorporate visual literacy lessons but to also tailor to my classroom and their age. As different grade levels would allow for more in depth dive into visual literacy without the overwhelming aspects. The book used examples such as artwork, comics and pictures. There was a strategy to allow students to understand the meaning of the information presented in the image as the artwork or the example used always came with questions such as “How could we describe the characters we see standing around the experiment?” “What are they feeling?” or “what is the tone of the scene and how does that make us feel?”. These are all aspects to allow students to understand the information that is within the visual. It provides valuable insights into incorporating visual texts into education, which aligns with my interest in integrating visual literacy into the curriculum.

3. The third resource, "Culturally-Embedded Visual Literacy: A Study of Impression Management via Emoticon, Emoji, Sticker, and Meme on Social Media in China" by Wang et al. (2019), explores the cultural aspects of visual literacy, particularly in the context of social media in China. This was also a very fun read because they had used various icons and used the term visual literacy to refer to people’s knowledge and ability to use visual expressions on social media. What they had found during the study was that all of the participants valued visual literacy in managing their online and offline impression in front of DIFFERENT audiences. They were given various icons to chat with different ages such as a younger age group, older authority figures and a familiar age group. They dedicated effort into their online performance through the use of visual expression. The visual literacy had three core components 1) juggling text and various forms of visual expression in dialogical context 2) tailored impressions for different audiences 3) interaction with audience memory. Through these core components it was found that these participants saw visual literacy as deeply embedded in the particular cultural context of contemporary mainland China. How they fleshed out the idea of that point was that participants accumulated knowledge, skill and abilities through living in Chinese culture and engaging with visual expression. They acquired essential cultural dispositions about what images they could present to different audiences such as friends or teachers. They added in their own tastes and opinions and all included cultural roots. The participants also categorized and tailored their icons to the audiences. All in all,  this study adds a multicultural dimension to my research, emphasizing the importance of understanding cultural variations in interpreting visual content which is what I will incorporate into my classroom curriculum to be more inclusive and aware. 

4. The fourth resource, "Chiselled Horizons: A Multicultural Approach to Visual Literacy" by Brown (2016), delves into the multi-modal aspects of visual literacy, emphasizing its relevance not only in education but also in various domains, including mass media. It broadens my perspective on the applications of visual literacy in and beyond the classroom. Especially when the article mentions visual literacy of communication information namely quantitative information. They mentioned journalism, especially in the recent years have added some sort of mathematical information but at times can be misused and so it’s important to be able to spot incorrect information from graphs such as not incorporating enough information in the legend or if it gives a distorted view of the data. I think these skills are important to also teach students that visual literacy does have faults and sometimes the information we see can be distorted. 

Overall, these resources collectively offer a comprehensive view of visual literacy and its applications in education and beyond. They address various dimensions of the topic, from the effectiveness of visual interventions to the cultural aspects of visual communication.

Future Plans : 

In my research, I discovered that visual literacy is a multifaceted concept that extends beyond the ability to interpret images; it encompasses a broader understanding of visual communication in diverse cultural contexts. Additionally, the resources highlighted the importance of integrating visual elements into educational practices to engage students and foster analytical thinking. 

My Final Vision Project, I would like to utilize all the new insights and knowledge I gained from the comprehensive resources for an interactive curriculum on visual literacy. I would have a digital artifact that engages students in my class in the exploration of visual communication. Such that it relates to the cultural embedded visual literacy resource and hence would delve into cultural dimensions of visual literacy. This would allow students to understand the diverse perspectives and to open up conversations of what each student would think prior and after the class on visual literacy. I would also use Kahoot to contrast fake news and real news to help students with awareness on the ability to parse visuals that may be deceptive, which was the study done by Zhang’s group in their scholarly article. Kahoot is a great tool because students can use their phones or borrow school’s devices to choose yes or no and it also shows the majority votes which can lead to great debates and discussions. The goal is to empower students with the skills needed to critically analyze visual content, whether it's in the form of social media posts, news articles, or even billboards. By creating this digital artifact, I aim to contribute to the broader conversation on visual literacy in education and give students a valuable skill set for all the visuals that come in their daily lives. 

Thank you for reading my post! 

I would like to leave you all with a video: 

Why visual literacy is lacking in the school systems. 

See you all next week for my new project (:

References : 

Zhang, L., Iyendo, T. O., Apuke, O. D., & Gever, C. V. (2022). Experimenting the effect of using visual multimedia intervention to inculcate social media literacy skills to tackle fake news. Journal of Information Science, 16555152211317.

Stafford, T., & Taylor & Francis eBooks A-Z. (2011;2010;). Teaching visual literacy in the primary classroom: Comic books, film, television and picture narratives. Routledge.

Wang, Y., Li, Y., Gui, X., Kou, Y., & Liu, F. (2019). Culturally-embedded visual literacy: A study of impression management via emoticon, emoji, sticker, and meme on social media in China. Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction, 3(CSCW), 1-24.

Brown, T., Castellanos, A. M., & Brill Online Books. (2016). Chiselled horizons: A multi-cultural approach to visual literacy. BRILL.