Picture thinking: the development of visual literacy in young children

This research examines how visual literacy develops in young children by looking at the ways they use the modes of talk and drawing to make sense of complex multimodal picturebooks. By examining what it means to be visually literate, it is possible to broaden our understanding of childhood literacy by highlighting the role played by the different modes of communication. Visual literacy has become a familiar term within educational research, but there is no shared understanding of what it means to be visually literate (Boughton 1986; Raney 1997, 1998; Yenawine 2003). Previous research in the area has focused more on the content of children's spoken and drawn responses rather than looking in detail at the process of making sense from visual texts (Kiefer 1993; Madura 1998; Arizpe and Styles 2003; Anning and Ring 2004). This study suggests a definition of visual literacy which accounts for the active process of looking, thinking and making, as described by Raney, 'Visual literacy is not simply to do with passively receiving the visual world which flows around us; we also make our own representations, produce our own visual meanings' (Raney 1997:7). Her statement resonates with the socio cultural paradigm which emphasises the active role of both viewer and maker (Dewey 1934; Vygotsky 1978; Winner 1982). This definition embraces the opportunities for creative and idiosyncratic interpretation and response and the possibilities for infinite creative possibilities and transformations (Mitchell, 1980; Bakhtin 1981). The data is taken from interviews with twenty four children in two schools aged five, seven and nine years, talking and drawing in response to three different picturebook retellings of the same fairy story. The use of video allowed the simultaneous recording of the 'full repertoire of modes' described by Kress and others (Barrs' 1988; Kress 1997; Pahl2000; Beame 2003) by capturing non-verbal communication such as gesture, expression and other physical responses. Video footage of the children making their drawings is analysed alongside the final drawings and the children's comments whilst reading the books. The findings reveal that children have an acute awareness of the different communicative possibilities of word and image and how the use of these different modes is affected by expectations within the school environment. Children draw upon different types of knowledge to make sense depending on their age and experience. The research found that the most significant developmental differences in visual literacy lay in the strategies the children used when engaged in the multimodal process of reading, talking and drawing, what Kuhn describes as, 'increasing awareness and control of the coordination of theory and evidences in one's own thinking' (Kuhn 1999). The most visually literate children were continually reflecting upon and monitoring their own and others' performance. Children's careful and deliberate thinking as they interpret images and plan and make their own drawings demonstrates that visual literacy is a cognitively demanding and stimulating process