XENIA DANOS PhD

Status & Value of graphicacy within education

 

The power of images has great possibilities and potentials. It can break through the barriers of language and academic status; it can change one’s perception and decisions. It can be used as a tool for learning and for recording thinking. This is a message which has to be clearly communicated and demonstrated to educationalists. ‘At  a time when (all of us) are exposed to more media messages than ever before, young people in part are given no guidance on how to read, interpret and critically evaluate the images and information they are exposed to. ‘This renders them visually vulnerable and potential victims of a language that can influence and manipulate them’ (Considine, 1987:635).

 

Currently graphicacy does not explicitly feature within the structured curricula in England; a situation that is similar in many other countries within Europe, the US and Australia, among others. Educationalist are often advised to use visual images as teaching aids, yet we know very little about how these are perceived by children with different abilities.  A range of terms exist today to describe the ability to communicate through pictures and images. Two terms in common usage are ‘visual communication’ and ‘visual literacy’, and more specific terms like ‘cartography’ and ’drawing’ are used to describe particular elements of graphicacy. Past research has highlighted the importance of visual communication in a variety of subjects, including the sciences, mathematics, geography and art and design. The term ‘graphicacy’, was first introduced in geography to describe the skills required to read and understand maps. Mathematicians have also used it for the ability to deal with mathematical graphs and charts.

 

While teaching graphicacy skills through the lessons of art & design and design & technology, everyday observations suggested that all students could potentially learn how to create images to high standards. Specific teaching and learning is required for each type of image, which could enable even the ‘non-artistic’ children to read and understand and even create images deemed as ‘complex’ for the specific student and/or age range. Through strategically designed teaching methods, most students are able to improve their skills and abilities, which can also improve other areas of study through cross-curricular links  e.g. mathematics and science, through teaching and learning of one and two point perspective drawing, using scale, perspective as perceived by the human eye etc.

 

 

Personal motivations

Education aims to offer new knowledge, build on existing knowledge, and help each individual to progress and develop academically. To achieve that, clear goals, aims, targets and a clear understanding of the path required to be followed are essential. These are not, however, always found in curriculum documents. An example of this can be found in design and technology curriculum documents (Norman, 1997); a key subject area in teaching graphicacy. In the UK schools’ curriculum provision, we find literacy, numeracy and articulacy being the main focus areas across the subjects, placing no substantial focus on graphicacy. However, in all subjects, lessons are primarily taught with the use of verbal and visual communication. Despite this, the teaching of understanding and working with different types of images takes up only a minimum time of the curriculum.

 

Furthermore, the National Curriculum in England at the moment offers vague level descriptions in relation to skills in different elements of graphicacy. This often confuses educators, especially art and design and technology teachers, when dealing with graphicacy. They are often advised to approve all children’s work in order to avoid discouraging further effort, but not to praise work unless it is up to the standard for the age level. This is a longstanding problem which has been going on at least since the 1970s. Rhoda Kellogg identified this problem, and commented that ‘…nowhere are age level standards defined in a way that is both objective and usable in an ordinary classroom. Thus each teacher’s personal taste actually becomes the final measure of age-level achievement’ (Kellogg 1970:152). Since then, there has not been much significant improvement made in this area. It is my belief that once continuity and progression has been determined and clearly presented, graphicacy can consciously be taught and nurtured to reach new achievement levels.

 

 

The evidence for the potential of nurture to enhance graphicacy capabilities is clearly visible through the drawing tasks illustrated in the figure below, following the first unattended drawing.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A RESEARCH TOOL DEFINING GRAPHICACY IN THE CURRICULUM

Identifying graphicacy across the curriculum would require the use of a research tool, clearly defining graphicacy. A number of existing taxonomies of images (called diagrams by the authors, Blackwell & Engelhard; 1998) were identified for the study of diagrammatic representations through the literature review. A significant diversity in taxonomic analyses of diagrams exists; proposing 6 taxonomic dimensions shown in TABLE 16. Blackwell and Engelhard encouraged the development of more taxonomies to be developed for specific purposes. The ones closest to the study proposed above include: the selection of representations for educational contexts (Dale, 1969; Goldsmith, 1984; Cox & Brna, 1995) and related to cartography, typography, and graphic design (Bertin, 1981; Twyman, 1979; Richards, 1984; MacDonald-Ross, 1977; Garland, 1979; van der Waarde, 1993; Engelhardt 1998).

 

A taxonomy not mentioned by Blackwell and Engelhardt was Fry’s taxonomy of graphs (1974). According to its originator the taxonomy was designed to be useful for teaching and testing graphs knowledge in the government-funded schools and

in helping writers and readers in many communication media, including journals, textbooks, popular press, computer graphics, and television.

 

Fry’s taxonomy (1974) was the closest one identified relating to a research tool for studying graphicacy within the curricula. He published a wide-ranging taxonomy categorising images according to the type of information represented, i.e.,

quantitative, spatial, lineal, etc. He illustrated examples probably following the images most commonly used in academia at the time. As times have moved on, the Internet has emerged, and computer drawing tools have become more common in schools, the nature of drawing within the school curriculum provision has changed, i.e., use of colour, photographic, and 3D images. Hence, there is a need for an updated taxonomy.

 

The new taxonomy required has to serve as a research tool to map graphicacy across the curriculum, and ultimately to support the identification of the skills and abilities to communicate through still visual images. To achieve these goals, the categories have to be organized so as to accommodate all types of images, grouped according to the different types of understanding one requires to be able to create or read and understand these. For example, symbolic representations such as maps and symbols use colours, shapes and lines and other elements to represent ideas and allow comparisons between features to be made. This new taxonomy shown is the Figure below a modern, cross-curricular framework which can be used to explore graphicacy across all years of secondary education.