Illuminating Perspectives through Critical Visual Literacy: 56th Annual IVLA Con

Opening classroom spaces to less traditional forms of inquiry, communication and sense making, fosters validation and empowerment. This paper highlights the work of Hispanic students in a Hispanic serving community college, whom were encouraged to personally connect their lived experiences to course content. Framed by critical multimodal literacy framework and visual and multimodal methods, participants created hybrid expressions of their lived experiences and their connection to what they learn in a Chicano history course. It is strongly recommended that educators incorporate multimodalities to create more meaningful and culturally responsive spaces for students.

Deliberate intentional drawing and art making has the power to hold energy that can transform thoughts, release emotions, shift perspectives, and reframe narratives. In this workshop, participants will learn a variety of ways to use drawing and doodling as a tool for challenging existing paradigms and creating new frameworks for personal and collective meaning-making. By the end of the workshop, participants will have created at least one intentional drawing to shift or reframe a personal or global narrative to affect positive change. 

This presentation shares insights from a 2023 survey in New Zealand Aotearoa on tertiary educators' visual literacy. Despite being recognized as vital, the integrating visual literacy into higher education remains a challenge. This study investigates tertiary educators' understanding and application of visual literacy in curriculum design, highlighting its importance in contemporary pedagogy. Survey findings reveal gaps in teachers’ visual literacy skills, however, encouragingly the study suggests visual literacy uptake in a vocational tertiary setting may differ from higher education counterparts. The presentation concludes with recommendations and a proposed visual literacy framework for upskilling teachers in higher education.

This proposed interactive session addresses the imperative need for critical visual literacy in our current educational landscape. It emphasizes the importance for educators and students to possess the skills to analyze and interpret visuals and their underlying messages. A critical visual literacy framework will be introduced, emphasizing its significance in teaching and learning. This session also will provide an overview of critical visual literacy concepts that are incorporated into the framework. Participants will gain insights into how the critical visual literacy framework can foster critical thinking and cultural awareness by applying it to examine visual primary sources from the Library of Congress. The session will conclude with collaborative discussions aimed at refining the framework and integrating it into diverse educational environments, promoting collaborative learning and networking.

The PIVOT Model (Perspective shifting, Interpretation enhancing, Visual Observation Technique) serves as a pedagogical tool to enhance students' critical thinking and analysis of visual images. Its graphic nature emphasizes alternative perceptions, elevating the quality of analysis for visual messages. This versatile tool proves invaluable in teaching and research across educational curricula, offering powerful insights into visual communication.

Visual Literacy II: Understanding Visual Content in Art and Graphic Design will examine the problems and their solutions encountered in the first offering of this course, as well as featuring student analysis of art and graphic design images.