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Graphicacy
- Graphicacy: “Communication of information that cannot be conveyed by verbal or numerical means alone”
- Visual Literacy: "the ability to understand and produce visual messages"
Writers, such as Mackintosh (1998) argue that the development of children's visual literacy is at least as important as development of their print literacy or numeracy skills. In a society where so much information is conveyed by visual means, the development of a critical understanding of visual information is vital. Research has shown that "visual perception is a form of information processing which changes with age" (Mackintosh 1998) and children need to be taught to "read" and interpret visual images.
Research by Long (1953) found that seven-year olds seem not to see a picture as a whole, but as a series of separate details. Before investigating ways in which children might be encouraged to develop their graphicacy skills, I decided to see if the conclusions of this fifty-year old research might still be valid.
Research
I asked the teacher of a Y1 class in an urban primary school to present individual children with two images: the first chosen because of its level of detail and the second because it is similar to many others found in primary geography photo-packs about distant localities. The teacher asked the simple question: "What does this picture show?" and taped the children's spontaneous responses. I asked the teacher to help children to name unfamiliar objects in the images, but to give no other help. The children's responses are on the next page.
Task
Before going on to the next page, click on the links on the right to view the images and note down your answer to the question: "What does this picture show?" Use the browser's back button to return to this page.
References
- Long M (1953) 'Children's reactions to geographical pictures' Geography 180
- Mackintosh M (1998) Learning from Photographs in Scoffham S (Ed.) Primary Sources: Research Findings in Primary Geography Geographical Association, Sheffield
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