Session 4: Thinking and Thought in Education
Session 4: Thinking and Thought in Education
Chair: Jan Connelly
Researching the Visual in Education Research: From the ‘Linguistic Turn’ to ‘Visual Turn’ in Education Policy Documents
Aaron Koh
Department of English, The Hong Kong Institute of Education, Tai Po, New Territories, Hong Kong
The attention to the ‘visual’ in education policy is a much neglected area of study. This paper argues that it is not only important, but necessary to pay attention to the visual in education policy, as increasingly education policy documents and materials are media/ted via cultural technologies, such as traditional print media, glossy brochures, prospectuses, documentary or video presentations, and even representations on the Internet, to the public. This paper analysed two visual texts related to the ‘Thinking School, Learning Nation’ (TSLN) education policy in Singapore. The two visual texts analysed are, respectively, a glossy teacher-adjunct material and an episode of a documentary entitled Learning Journeys. My analysis specifically draws attention to the concept of “visual design”, which I argue works ideologically to constrain the semiotic meaning potential of visual texts to a preferred reading path, and that ‘design’ textually contributes to an ideological closure. It needs to be pointed out that the notion of design does not work from a theoretical abyss, but is situated and intertwined in the complex interplay of institutional constraints, ideological underpinnings, political assumptions and priorities. My textual analysis will point out that the image design in the TSLN policy documents prioritised the construction of preferred schooling identities and schooling in what is assumed to be the imperatives of changing economic conditions.
Supporting Creativity with EduArt
Jaroslav Vancat
Univerzita Karlova v Praze, Fakulta humanitnich studii, Praha, Czech Republic
This article discusses the essentials of educational EduArt project, supported by Czech Ministry of Education and European Social Fund. In this project was developed a pilot methodology of encouraging creativity through deepening of imagination implemented in the elementary schools. Project EduArt applies semantic analyse of modernistic painting in form of graphical methods application and educational software application. The concept of EduArt project is established in expressiveness of the pictorial elements, pictorial objects and pictorial clusters interrelations and its semantization based on personal experience and knowledge of the pupil. The educational software EduArt Editor enables pupils to examine interrelations between particular pictorial elements, objects and clusters gradually, in variations and not to understand construction of painting as un
bloc. Gradually increasing structure of pictorial elements, objects and clusters, both static and dynamic, allows understanding principles of visual media. Generally, structural construction of the image in EduArt project motivates the pupil’s imagination and creative capabilities.
Flowcharting and Visual Literacy: Exploring Tacit Knowledge through the Visual
Barbra McKenzie
Language and Literacy, Department of Education, University of Wollongong Wollongong New South Wales, Australia
This paper discusses the flowcharting process undertaken by classroom teachers to explain how they transfer professional learning into classroom practice as a type of visual literacy that utilised a combination of both textual and visual concepts to assign meaning and share understanding. The ability to create and interpret information from a multiplicity of visual sources is becoming a ‘survival skill’ in today’s schools in particular and society in general; a necessity for the visually literate consumer. This is an ability that is supported by the use of reflection1,2 and the capacity to engage in critical thinking. Visual literacy is the segue between these two aspects ‘…the ability to assign meaning to a visual field so it can be predictably interpreted’ 3. Flowcharts, diagrams and graphic symbols have the ability to provide an alternate semiotic system through which a personal and complex narrative can be conveyed to the viewer in a more compressed and abstract form:
The diagram establishes itself as a democratising device and a conduit through which complex worlds can be described to the lay observer’ 4.
Using the power of image and/or graphics in combination with text to form a flowchart demands higher order thinking skills to ensure the developers’ tacit knowledge 5,6 is clear and accessible to the viewer.
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