CCBC-Net Archives
Visual Literacy / Picture Books
- Contemporary messages sorted: [ by date ] [ by subject ] [ by author ]
From: Charles Bayless <charles.bayless_at_gmail.com>
Date: Tue, 16 Sep 2014 14:41:37 -0400
My personal opinion is that Visual Literacy is analogous to E.D. Hirsch's more general concept of Cultural Literacy. I.e. what are the knowledge sets and skill sets related to vision that are critical to function effectively, productively (and aesthetically) in society. Depending on how one defines function (and one's individual context), that can be a pretty broad net. I tend to think about it in terms of three sets of skills 1) Pattern recognition skills (repetition, association, and causation), 2) Information visualization skills and 2) Art comprehension skills (color, form, technique, line, perspective, materials, etc) and then in terms of seven sets of broad visual knowledge: Architecture, Landscape, Nature, Paintings & Sculpture, Body language/Expression, Product Design and Maps. There are additional important but narrower knowledge sets such as fashion, graphical symbolism, logograms, flags, alphabets, etc. These skills and knowledge sets basically provide the capacity to read and interpret an otherwise unfamiliar visual scenario.
Pattern recognition skills - I regard this as an especially critical skill set as it is also the tap root for critical thinking and the scientific method (in a nutshell: pattern recognition, inference, hypothesis, proof).
The simplest piece of pattern recognition is the direct observation of a pattern such as repetition (examples: tides, some Greek designs, Celtic art, Islamic art, etc.), symmetry (human face), progression (growth from child to adult), cyclicality (seasons), fluctuation (variance within a known pattern), affiliation (correlation between items such as winter/cold/snow), etc.. Beyond simple patterns which are easily accessible to young children, you get into more abstract pattern recognition which are more MG/YA such as: Normal distribution (examples, IQ), Pareto Distribution (income), J-Curve
(athletic effort and outcome), S-Curve (new product revenue growth), Oscillation (weather), Lotka curve (competitive outcomes), Power Law, etc.
Sophisticated pattern recognition is not only a foundation for critical thinking and the scientific method but also likely an ever more critical capacity in the future labor market. I have seen several interesting papers on the likely decline of all jobs that entail repeatable actions (i.e. they can be rendered in algorithms) and the rise of jobs that are dependent on instance analysis, i.e. the ability to diagnose a non-standard situation and develop unique solutions. If that is true (likely, but still a big IF), then it raises the premium on effective pattern recognition. And on that front, it is not clear that we are doing very well inculcating those capabilities. Arum & Roska's research seem to indicate that only a third of college graduates demonstrate any material development in critical thinking capacity during their studies. Interestingly, their most recent work shows that those with the highest critical reasoning capabilities are twice as likely to be employed full time, half as likely to have been fired from a job in the prior three years, and only 20% as likely to be underemployed. So if the habit of cultivated critical thinking (based on pattern recognition) is not in evidence at the tertiary level, then its cultivation in the primary and secondary levels of education becomes even more important.
There are plenty of books that support the development of this skill of observation and recognizing patterns: The Where's Waldo series where kids search for that red and white striped pattern in the crowd, Jean Marzollo and Walter Wick's I Spy series where finding the items involves both observation and pattern recognition. The Dutch artist M.C. Escher is a nice variant on this aspect of simple pattern recognition as he establishes a pattern and then with minor morphs, turns it into an entirely different pattern (fish into geese for example) without it initially being obvious how that was done.
Repetitive patterns then lead to associating (correlating) patterns and then ultimately to causative patterns. For example if you are in the arid southwest and see a meandering line of clustered green cotton wood trees in the otherwise barren landscape, the meandering green line itself is not a repetitive pattern. Cotton wood trees cluster where there is water so the pattern is recognizing that a line of cotton wood trees means there is an associated underground stream. Understanding the underlying causative mechanisms and the direction of causation then allows you to derive even greater information from a visual tableau. Seeing a picture of a walled medieval town immediately tells you three things from causative patterns; 1) the town is (or was) wealthy/productive because walls are expensive to build, 2) there is a sophisticated community/governance structure because walls are complex to build, and 3) there is a perceived external danger which makes the wall necessary. All that from the cultivated habit of recognizing repeating patterns, then recognizing associated patterns and then understanding causative patterns.
Information visualization skills - I think Edward R. Tufte's books (Visual Explanations, The Visual Display of Quantitative Information, and Envisioning Information) are excellent (and beautiful) introductions to the skills of conceptualizing and interpreting visual information. These skills are indispensible for thinking critically and for communicating effectively
(a great antidote to the anemic use of powerpoint). Brief descriptions: From the Envisioning Information intro "The world is complex, dynamic, multidimensional; the paper is static, flat. How are we to represent the rich visual world of experience and measurement on mere flatland?" Visual Explanations intro "This book describes design strategies - the proper arrangement in space and time of images, words, and numbers - for presenting information about motion, process, mechanism, cause and effect." The Visual Display of Quantitative Information intro "Furthermore, of all methods for analyzing and communicating statistical information, well-designed data graphics are usually the simplest and at the same time the most powerful." Definitely adult books but kids like looking at them and there are great items to discuss.
Art comprehension skills - Lots of books out there covering this at just about all levels from crafts in general to painting in particular, from PB to YA. Lines, forms, perspective, style, materials, etc.
Then the knowledge sets:
Architecture - Any books that introduce children to how to read a city and a building through its architectural styles. Pulses of growth, fashions, cultural messaging, interplay of form and function, etc. Books like Richard Scarry's Busy, Busy Town for PB, A City Through Time by Philip Steele and illustrated by Steve Noon for MG, Cathedral: The Story of Its Construction by David Macaulay and that ilk for MG and YA. Bill Bryson's At Home: A Short History of Private Life is a good one for YA.
Landscape - Books that allow a child to read a landscape in terms of old growth trees, tilled fields that have lapsed, water meadows, evidence of past settlement, trails/paths/roads, managed rivers versus wild rivers, etc. I don't know of many good general books. Boy Scouts have some reasonable pamphlets. Oliver Rackham's The Illustrated History of the Countryside is a good example, though adult and I think out of print. Once There Was a Tree by Natalia Romanova and illustrated by Gennady Spirin sort of meets the bill. McCrephy's Field by Chistopher Myers and illustrated by Normand Chartier does as well. My Side of the Mountain by Jean Craighead George also has some of this.
Nature - Birds, Animals, Stars, Clouds, Trees, Plants, Fish, Amphibians, etc. How to see all the piece parts along with the whole and see the interconnections. How to see where there are similarities (trees, shrubs and bushes) and where (and why) there are distinctions (dogs, wolves, coyotes, hyenas) and how to relate them. Examples: Pagoo by Holling C. Holling; H.A. Rey's The Stars: A New Way to See Them; A Tree is Nice by Janice May Udry and illustrated by Marc Simont.
Paintings & Sculpture - Different general styles (Asian art forms, Roman, Greek, Egyptian, Modern, Impressionist, etc.) as well as different individual styles (Breughel from Picasso, Dali from Monet). Lots of books such as Katie Meets the Impressionists, Katie and the Starry Night by James Mayhew and others.
Body language/Expression - This one is tricky because it varies by culture and therefore is somewhat dependant on cultural context, but the capacity to recognize what is being communicated by either expressions or body language is a critical success factor. Virtually any well illustrated book with human characters can be used for this purpose.
Product design - More for YA but books ranging from In Pursuit of Elegance by Matthew E. May (interesting but loosey-goosey) to more technical design histories of the sort written by Henry Petroski (The Evolution of Useful Things, Remaking the World, Success Through Failure, The Pencil: A History of Design and Circumstance). One question I pose to kids which always leads to interesting conversations is: Why were there so many distinctively different, and beautiful, car designs in the 1950's and 1960's whereas most cars today (for example sedans) are virtually indistinguishable? Forces them to explore design fashions, technical and manufacturing capabilities, safety regulations, fuel efficiency regulations, etc., how they are interrelated and how they involve important trade-off considerations.
Probably close to this community's heart would be Petroski's book The Book on the Bookshelf which explores the history of the book and the bookshelf as design artifacts, combining engineering and reading.
Maps - Much more contingent on contextual knowledge but really engaging for some. It rests heavily on the imaginative and abstract capabilities to translate visual reality into represented reality in a distinctly different fashion from just plain illustration. Any large well designed atlas works but I have found that specialized ones (such as focusing on oceans, or history, or nature/wildlife/plant life, astronomy, archaeology, etc.) can be of deeply engaging interest to particular children.
Over a childhood of 0-18, what visual literacy concepts can be introduced, through which books, when, in what order, etc. is highly contingent on individual interests, tastes, capabilities and circumstances and parental/instructor goals. It also depends on the reading context; one to one, one to a few; one to many. To K.T.'s point regarding the hippopotamus, sometimes, the narrative is paramount, sometimes the exercise of visual observation is more important (what do you see?), sometimes it is visual interpretation that you want to emphasize (what does that mean?), sometimes it might be vocabulary reinforcement (new word in the text relating to something visual), sometimes it might be something else. I haven't used it in a while but I used to use King Midas and the Golden Touch retold by Charlotte Craft and illustrated by her mother K.Y. Craft. An ancient Greek story retold by a Japanese American woman depicted with Renaissance fashions, architecture and motifs, using a rather pre-Raphaelite style and rendered in a particularly distinctive, individual lush palette of colors.
It has the advantage that kids tend to like to read it multiple times and you can pull out different elements with each retelling. Good as simply a straight story for young ones. For older ones, you can begin to pull out some of the interesting questions such as why a Greek story in a Renaissance setting? What is she doing with the lush palette? What other influences are visible? How do you interpret some of the symbols on each of the pages? What are some of the things that relate to the story in the pictures but aren't mentioned in the text? Etc. It's a book that can be read as a story with beautiful pictures or you can ignore the text and derive the story from the pictures. Alternatively, you can simply imbibe the pictures or you can explore them. The different levels make it highly flexible.
The Golden Touch can then be compared to works such as Rumpelstiltskin retold and illustrated by Paul O. Zelinksy (also using Renaissance fashions and architecture but a much more subdued palate) to highlight differences in artistic style or Jan Brett who also uses her frames (for example in The Wild Christmas Reindeer or Christmas Trolls) to tell supplemental visual stories which are not reflected in the text, or Jane Yolen's retelling of the Icarus story in Wings which the artist Dennis Nolan has rendered more in period Greek style.
The skills and knowledge to support the end goal of being able to effectively read and interpret an unfamiliar scene (walking into an unfamiliar building, in a new town, on a nature trail, seeing a new painting, etc.) are equally applicable to reading books and exploring their illustrations. Much of it rests on not just the skills and knowledge sets but fundamentally on the trait of curiosity. A visual tableau is equally accessible to everyone but people take away more or less information from a scene based on their skills and knowledge but also substantially based on their curiosity and desire to explore. Sherlock Holmes' comment in A Scandal in Bohemia comes to mind, "You see but you do not observe."
For me then, Visual Literacy is the combination of the skills (pattern recognition, information visualization and art comprehension), the knowledge sets (architecture, etc.) and the will to both observe and interpret a scenario, whether it is real world or in a book illustration, to extract the most useful/interesting information possible.
Charles
==== CCBC-Net Use ==== You are currently subscribed to ccbc-net as: ccbc-archive_at_post.education.wisc.edu.
To post to the list, send message to...
ccbc-net_at_lists.wisc.edu
To receive messages in digest format, send a blank message to...
digest-ccbc-net_at_lists.wisc.edu
To unsubscribe, send a blank message to...
leave-ccbc-net_at_lists.wisc.edu
==== CCBC-Net Archives ==== The CCBC-Net archives are available to all CCBC-Net listserv members. The archives are organized by month and year. A list of discussion topics (including month/year) is available at...
http://www.education.wisc.edu/ccbc/ccbcnet/archives.asp
To access the archives, go to...
http://ccbc.education.wisc.edu/ccbc-net
...and enter the following when prompted...
username: ccbc-net
password: Look4Posts
Received on Tue 16 Sep 2014 01:41:37 PM CDT
Date: Tue, 16 Sep 2014 14:41:37 -0400
My personal opinion is that Visual Literacy is analogous to E.D. Hirsch's more general concept of Cultural Literacy. I.e. what are the knowledge sets and skill sets related to vision that are critical to function effectively, productively (and aesthetically) in society. Depending on how one defines function (and one's individual context), that can be a pretty broad net. I tend to think about it in terms of three sets of skills 1) Pattern recognition skills (repetition, association, and causation), 2) Information visualization skills and 2) Art comprehension skills (color, form, technique, line, perspective, materials, etc) and then in terms of seven sets of broad visual knowledge: Architecture, Landscape, Nature, Paintings & Sculpture, Body language/Expression, Product Design and Maps. There are additional important but narrower knowledge sets such as fashion, graphical symbolism, logograms, flags, alphabets, etc. These skills and knowledge sets basically provide the capacity to read and interpret an otherwise unfamiliar visual scenario.
Pattern recognition skills - I regard this as an especially critical skill set as it is also the tap root for critical thinking and the scientific method (in a nutshell: pattern recognition, inference, hypothesis, proof).
The simplest piece of pattern recognition is the direct observation of a pattern such as repetition (examples: tides, some Greek designs, Celtic art, Islamic art, etc.), symmetry (human face), progression (growth from child to adult), cyclicality (seasons), fluctuation (variance within a known pattern), affiliation (correlation between items such as winter/cold/snow), etc.. Beyond simple patterns which are easily accessible to young children, you get into more abstract pattern recognition which are more MG/YA such as: Normal distribution (examples, IQ), Pareto Distribution (income), J-Curve
(athletic effort and outcome), S-Curve (new product revenue growth), Oscillation (weather), Lotka curve (competitive outcomes), Power Law, etc.
Sophisticated pattern recognition is not only a foundation for critical thinking and the scientific method but also likely an ever more critical capacity in the future labor market. I have seen several interesting papers on the likely decline of all jobs that entail repeatable actions (i.e. they can be rendered in algorithms) and the rise of jobs that are dependent on instance analysis, i.e. the ability to diagnose a non-standard situation and develop unique solutions. If that is true (likely, but still a big IF), then it raises the premium on effective pattern recognition. And on that front, it is not clear that we are doing very well inculcating those capabilities. Arum & Roska's research seem to indicate that only a third of college graduates demonstrate any material development in critical thinking capacity during their studies. Interestingly, their most recent work shows that those with the highest critical reasoning capabilities are twice as likely to be employed full time, half as likely to have been fired from a job in the prior three years, and only 20% as likely to be underemployed. So if the habit of cultivated critical thinking (based on pattern recognition) is not in evidence at the tertiary level, then its cultivation in the primary and secondary levels of education becomes even more important.
There are plenty of books that support the development of this skill of observation and recognizing patterns: The Where's Waldo series where kids search for that red and white striped pattern in the crowd, Jean Marzollo and Walter Wick's I Spy series where finding the items involves both observation and pattern recognition. The Dutch artist M.C. Escher is a nice variant on this aspect of simple pattern recognition as he establishes a pattern and then with minor morphs, turns it into an entirely different pattern (fish into geese for example) without it initially being obvious how that was done.
Repetitive patterns then lead to associating (correlating) patterns and then ultimately to causative patterns. For example if you are in the arid southwest and see a meandering line of clustered green cotton wood trees in the otherwise barren landscape, the meandering green line itself is not a repetitive pattern. Cotton wood trees cluster where there is water so the pattern is recognizing that a line of cotton wood trees means there is an associated underground stream. Understanding the underlying causative mechanisms and the direction of causation then allows you to derive even greater information from a visual tableau. Seeing a picture of a walled medieval town immediately tells you three things from causative patterns; 1) the town is (or was) wealthy/productive because walls are expensive to build, 2) there is a sophisticated community/governance structure because walls are complex to build, and 3) there is a perceived external danger which makes the wall necessary. All that from the cultivated habit of recognizing repeating patterns, then recognizing associated patterns and then understanding causative patterns.
Information visualization skills - I think Edward R. Tufte's books (Visual Explanations, The Visual Display of Quantitative Information, and Envisioning Information) are excellent (and beautiful) introductions to the skills of conceptualizing and interpreting visual information. These skills are indispensible for thinking critically and for communicating effectively
(a great antidote to the anemic use of powerpoint). Brief descriptions: From the Envisioning Information intro "The world is complex, dynamic, multidimensional; the paper is static, flat. How are we to represent the rich visual world of experience and measurement on mere flatland?" Visual Explanations intro "This book describes design strategies - the proper arrangement in space and time of images, words, and numbers - for presenting information about motion, process, mechanism, cause and effect." The Visual Display of Quantitative Information intro "Furthermore, of all methods for analyzing and communicating statistical information, well-designed data graphics are usually the simplest and at the same time the most powerful." Definitely adult books but kids like looking at them and there are great items to discuss.
Art comprehension skills - Lots of books out there covering this at just about all levels from crafts in general to painting in particular, from PB to YA. Lines, forms, perspective, style, materials, etc.
Then the knowledge sets:
Architecture - Any books that introduce children to how to read a city and a building through its architectural styles. Pulses of growth, fashions, cultural messaging, interplay of form and function, etc. Books like Richard Scarry's Busy, Busy Town for PB, A City Through Time by Philip Steele and illustrated by Steve Noon for MG, Cathedral: The Story of Its Construction by David Macaulay and that ilk for MG and YA. Bill Bryson's At Home: A Short History of Private Life is a good one for YA.
Landscape - Books that allow a child to read a landscape in terms of old growth trees, tilled fields that have lapsed, water meadows, evidence of past settlement, trails/paths/roads, managed rivers versus wild rivers, etc. I don't know of many good general books. Boy Scouts have some reasonable pamphlets. Oliver Rackham's The Illustrated History of the Countryside is a good example, though adult and I think out of print. Once There Was a Tree by Natalia Romanova and illustrated by Gennady Spirin sort of meets the bill. McCrephy's Field by Chistopher Myers and illustrated by Normand Chartier does as well. My Side of the Mountain by Jean Craighead George also has some of this.
Nature - Birds, Animals, Stars, Clouds, Trees, Plants, Fish, Amphibians, etc. How to see all the piece parts along with the whole and see the interconnections. How to see where there are similarities (trees, shrubs and bushes) and where (and why) there are distinctions (dogs, wolves, coyotes, hyenas) and how to relate them. Examples: Pagoo by Holling C. Holling; H.A. Rey's The Stars: A New Way to See Them; A Tree is Nice by Janice May Udry and illustrated by Marc Simont.
Paintings & Sculpture - Different general styles (Asian art forms, Roman, Greek, Egyptian, Modern, Impressionist, etc.) as well as different individual styles (Breughel from Picasso, Dali from Monet). Lots of books such as Katie Meets the Impressionists, Katie and the Starry Night by James Mayhew and others.
Body language/Expression - This one is tricky because it varies by culture and therefore is somewhat dependant on cultural context, but the capacity to recognize what is being communicated by either expressions or body language is a critical success factor. Virtually any well illustrated book with human characters can be used for this purpose.
Product design - More for YA but books ranging from In Pursuit of Elegance by Matthew E. May (interesting but loosey-goosey) to more technical design histories of the sort written by Henry Petroski (The Evolution of Useful Things, Remaking the World, Success Through Failure, The Pencil: A History of Design and Circumstance). One question I pose to kids which always leads to interesting conversations is: Why were there so many distinctively different, and beautiful, car designs in the 1950's and 1960's whereas most cars today (for example sedans) are virtually indistinguishable? Forces them to explore design fashions, technical and manufacturing capabilities, safety regulations, fuel efficiency regulations, etc., how they are interrelated and how they involve important trade-off considerations.
Probably close to this community's heart would be Petroski's book The Book on the Bookshelf which explores the history of the book and the bookshelf as design artifacts, combining engineering and reading.
Maps - Much more contingent on contextual knowledge but really engaging for some. It rests heavily on the imaginative and abstract capabilities to translate visual reality into represented reality in a distinctly different fashion from just plain illustration. Any large well designed atlas works but I have found that specialized ones (such as focusing on oceans, or history, or nature/wildlife/plant life, astronomy, archaeology, etc.) can be of deeply engaging interest to particular children.
Over a childhood of 0-18, what visual literacy concepts can be introduced, through which books, when, in what order, etc. is highly contingent on individual interests, tastes, capabilities and circumstances and parental/instructor goals. It also depends on the reading context; one to one, one to a few; one to many. To K.T.'s point regarding the hippopotamus, sometimes, the narrative is paramount, sometimes the exercise of visual observation is more important (what do you see?), sometimes it is visual interpretation that you want to emphasize (what does that mean?), sometimes it might be vocabulary reinforcement (new word in the text relating to something visual), sometimes it might be something else. I haven't used it in a while but I used to use King Midas and the Golden Touch retold by Charlotte Craft and illustrated by her mother K.Y. Craft. An ancient Greek story retold by a Japanese American woman depicted with Renaissance fashions, architecture and motifs, using a rather pre-Raphaelite style and rendered in a particularly distinctive, individual lush palette of colors.
It has the advantage that kids tend to like to read it multiple times and you can pull out different elements with each retelling. Good as simply a straight story for young ones. For older ones, you can begin to pull out some of the interesting questions such as why a Greek story in a Renaissance setting? What is she doing with the lush palette? What other influences are visible? How do you interpret some of the symbols on each of the pages? What are some of the things that relate to the story in the pictures but aren't mentioned in the text? Etc. It's a book that can be read as a story with beautiful pictures or you can ignore the text and derive the story from the pictures. Alternatively, you can simply imbibe the pictures or you can explore them. The different levels make it highly flexible.
The Golden Touch can then be compared to works such as Rumpelstiltskin retold and illustrated by Paul O. Zelinksy (also using Renaissance fashions and architecture but a much more subdued palate) to highlight differences in artistic style or Jan Brett who also uses her frames (for example in The Wild Christmas Reindeer or Christmas Trolls) to tell supplemental visual stories which are not reflected in the text, or Jane Yolen's retelling of the Icarus story in Wings which the artist Dennis Nolan has rendered more in period Greek style.
The skills and knowledge to support the end goal of being able to effectively read and interpret an unfamiliar scene (walking into an unfamiliar building, in a new town, on a nature trail, seeing a new painting, etc.) are equally applicable to reading books and exploring their illustrations. Much of it rests on not just the skills and knowledge sets but fundamentally on the trait of curiosity. A visual tableau is equally accessible to everyone but people take away more or less information from a scene based on their skills and knowledge but also substantially based on their curiosity and desire to explore. Sherlock Holmes' comment in A Scandal in Bohemia comes to mind, "You see but you do not observe."
For me then, Visual Literacy is the combination of the skills (pattern recognition, information visualization and art comprehension), the knowledge sets (architecture, etc.) and the will to both observe and interpret a scenario, whether it is real world or in a book illustration, to extract the most useful/interesting information possible.
Charles
==== CCBC-Net Use ==== You are currently subscribed to ccbc-net as: ccbc-archive_at_post.education.wisc.edu.
To post to the list, send message to...
ccbc-net_at_lists.wisc.edu
To receive messages in digest format, send a blank message to...
digest-ccbc-net_at_lists.wisc.edu
To unsubscribe, send a blank message to...
leave-ccbc-net_at_lists.wisc.edu
==== CCBC-Net Archives ==== The CCBC-Net archives are available to all CCBC-Net listserv members. The archives are organized by month and year. A list of discussion topics (including month/year) is available at...
http://www.education.wisc.edu/ccbc/ccbcnet/archives.asp
To access the archives, go to...
http://ccbc.education.wisc.edu/ccbc-net
...and enter the following when prompted...
username: ccbc-net
password: Look4Posts
Received on Tue 16 Sep 2014 01:41:37 PM CDT
