TEACHING FOR VISUAL LITERACY: CRITICALLY DECONSTRUCTING THE VISUAL WITHIN A DEMOCRATIC EDUCATION

Literacy is an ability to access, analyze, evaluate, and communicate information in any form. Educators have worked to systematically address the understanding of words for students. What are we doing collectively in schools to address understanding of the image? A goal of visual literacy and effective viewing are included in the Ohio Competency Based Curriculum Model for Language Arts, leaving teachers to determine techniques and purposes independently. This qualitative, interpretative study illuminates the meanings, purposes, and methods for a visual literacy curriculum for language arts teachers within a small suburban school district in southwestern Ohio. Through ethnographic techniques a visual arts teacher searches for ways to help language arts teachers curricularize and teach for visual literacy. With philosophical underpinnings of phenomenology and Deweyan pragmatism, professional development work sessions allow teachers to determine their own working definition for visual literacy and to determine elements and art forms to be considered. Individual planning sessions, followed by classroom observations, help to draw a picture of district possibilities an