A qualitative study of three secondary art teachers' conceptualization of visual literacy as manifested through their teaching with electronic technologies

visual literacy;art education;art teacher education;art and technology

Lin, Ching-Chiu

关键词: visual literacy;    art education;    art teacher education;    art and technology;   

Others  :  https://www.ideals.illinois.edu/bitstream/handle/2142/14306/08diss_CLin.pdf?sequence=2&isAllowed=y

美国|英语

来源: The Illinois Digital Environment for Access to Learning and Scholarship

【 摘 要 】

This qualitative case study examined and described three technologicallycompetent, secondary-level visual arts teachers' insights into the notion of visual literacyin the information age, and how this notion manifests through these teachers' teachingpraxis with art and technology in their classroom and school environments. The studyparticipants included both the three art teachers and selected students who were in theseteachers' art and technology courses at the time of the study.The study results indicate that these teachers interpret visual literacy as acollective term that describes what students should learn in contemporary society, butthat they do not engage the visual literacy language as it is framed in academic discourse.Rather these teachers derive their idea of visual literacy from their own teachingexperiences with students, from their conceptions about the schools and communities inwhich their students live, and to provide a unified learning experience and preparestudents for their future. Hence, these teachers' achievements go beyond developingstudents' visual competencies to embrace a holistic experience of teaching and learningthat involves such themes as student voices, trusting relationships with students,community engagement, lifelong skills, connections with lives, contexts of particularteaching praxis, and richness of teacher knowledge.The findings also show that these art teachers' notion of what students shouldlearn in the information age (i.e., these teachers' notion of visual literacy) embraces asociocultural approach, emphasizes student development of higher order thinking skills inconnecting art and lived experience, and fosters student ability to integrate multipleliteracy skills and multimodal communication in media production and analysis. In response to the larger context of teaching and learning, the findings also suggest the needfor a healthy human and technical infrastructure in public schools, recognition of thevalue of both old and new media in art and technology classroom integration, and a shiftin staff professional development away from technically oriented workshops to morecontent-oriented modules that exemplify content-specific technological applications.This investigation also produced findings and questions beyond the originalresearch queries that contribute to the study significance. These findings imply that thesituational and holistic engagement of learning with technology challenges the usefulnessto teachers of the term visual literacy as it is posited in academic discourse and questionsthe value of predetermined educational ends that accompany that visual literacy scholarlydiscourse.