Jacqueline Simpson, Weblog Entry #1
In the reading from July fourth, Messaris (1998) implies that interpreting visual cues and how we make meaning from them is essential in order to critically examine the world around us and, more specifically, the types of images we are presented with by media and popular culture. The act of viewing is not passive, yet visual literacy necessitates an awareness of how, exactly, we interact with visual space. Where “explicit relational indicators” are not present, Messaris implies that students (or all viewers) will not be able to critically assess the images and their responses to them. Alternatively, Frey and Fisher (2004) posit that students are able to make meaning from images that they are presented with, often critically interpreting them without explicit awareness or specific prompts to lead their thinking in response to an image. Without the explicit relational indicators that Messaris has identified, Frey and Fisher observe that students are able to create their own meaning and—as shown by students’ responses to images as writing prompts—they were presenting a critical analysis informed almost entirely by their own experiences and the knowledge they were already bringing into the classroom. In this sense, images support text as much as text supports image.
The positive outcome that Frey and Fisher identified from their study is that popular media allowed students to find a way into classroom literacy by inspiring interest and sparking imagination. Aside from developing writing techniques (largely creative writing techniques—the article does not suggest how or if popular media such as graphic novels and the internet could foster the development of formal writing, although it does suggest that comic books such as an adaptation of Kafka’s Metamorphosis can draw students into challenging works of literature), Frey and Fisher noted that students were also becoming “more knowledgeable consumers of ideas and information” (p. 24). By creating the links between words, image, and meaning for themselves, students were interacting with both text and image in a way that was “authentic,” as it brought their own ideas and experiences into examination through the construction of their narratives. While tradition forms of literacy were taught, they were not done so through remedial exercises. As a result, students were engaged in the writing process, and perhaps were more creative in their experimentations with both narrative and language.
The barriers identified by Frey and Fisher—that the content of graphic novels often barred them from the classroom, that there are issues of access—are likely familiar to anyone who has tried to bring forms of media that are not privileged forms or canonical (in the case of written text) into the classroom, and this problem would remain familiar despite research to suggest that students become more engaged when they are interacting with “real world” (rather than “school”) texts. The problem is as much administrative as it is logistical, although simple picture prompts could easily be brought into any classroom. A problem in accessing more texts or resources that engage multiple literacies is that findings such as “students were more engaged” are not quantitative, and traditional methods of teaching writing and reading prevail based on a notion that it produces the desired results (despite quantitative research to the contrary). I think that there is a shift towards recognizing the role visual literacy (as well as other forms of literacy) can play in a traditional classroom setting, and in most cases (by my observation) activities like the ones described in the article are used more frequently than remedial drilling of content. Still, the barriers remain.