Guidelines
The following guidelines are intended to support students in understanding a range of visual texts.
- Understanding the viewing process is as important as understanding the listening and reading process. Students should understand that effective, strategic viewers engage in the following procedure:
- Pre-viewing : Students prepare to view by activating prior knowledge, anticipating a message, asking questions, setting a purpose for viewing, and other pre-viewing activities.
- View ing: Students view the visual text to understand the message by attending, seeking and checking understanding by making connections, making and confirming predictions and inferences, interpreting and summarizing, pausing and reviewing, and analyzing and evaluating. Students should monitor their understanding by connecting to prior knowledge and experiences, questioning, and reflecting.
- Post-viewing or Respond ing: Students should be given opportunities to respondpersonally, critically, and creatively to visual texts. Students respond by reflecting, analyzing, synthesizing, evaluating, creating, and other responding activities.
A visual text can invite different responses. Some questions to promote personal, critical, and creative responses are provided below.
Personal Response
- What is my initial reaction to this text?
- Why did I respond this way?
- What feelings, connections, and associations did this text evoke?
- What stands out after viewing this text?
- Do I agree or disagree with what I have seen? Why?
- What have I learned from this text?
Critical Response
- Who is communicating what message for what purpose?
- For whom is this message intended?
- Who owns or supports this mode of transmission and what impact does such ownership have on its content?
- What is the surface text (subject and what is being shown about that subject) and subtext (underlying assumptions, messages, and values)?
- From whose perspective is the message presented?
- What communities or viewpoints are presented in the text and what communities or viewpoints are absent?
- What elements are used to get and hold the viewer’s attention?
- What were the outstanding parts of this visual text? What were the weak parts?
- How was this visual text constructed?
- What are the noteworthy technical aspects of this visual text (e.g., camera shorts or angles, layout, setting, lighting, special effects, size, shape, spacing, etc.)?
- What use is made of colour, shadow, and images such as symbols, photographs, and three-dimensional objects? Is it effective?
Creative Response
- How could I build on and extend this text?
- How could I create a similar text?
- How could I create a new text about this subject?
- What techniques, language, and artistry could I use to create the effect or impact of my text?
- As in listening, reading, and responding to aural, oral, and print texts, students should analyze the message, purposes behind, impact, and production of visual texts. Some examples follow.
- All texts contain ideological and values messages:
- Who is communicating and why? (Who produced this visual text? What were their intentions? What ideology/view of the world do the creators/producers assume and present?)
- Why else do you think the visual text was created?
- When was it created?
- Who is the intended audience?
- What is the message of this visual text?
- What genre is it (e.g., soap opera, science fiction, documentary)? What form or type is it
(e.g., video, painting, radio, drama, film, dance)?
- How was it produced? What production techniques were used to create the visual text (e.g., codes and conventions, structures, special techniques, etc.)?
- Each text uses certain techniques, conventions, and aesethetic elements (e.g., light, angle, colour, focus, composition, shape) and psychological appeals. Students might analyze the elements of design in an ad for a popular product. They could consider both the elements and principles of design using a matrix such as the following:
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Line |
Shape |
Texture |
Space |
Size |
Colour |
Images |
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Lettering |
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Background |
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Foreground |
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Students could also consider dominance (focal point), movement, balance, unity, variety, repetition, and the impact.
- Help students use visual texts for both learning and enjoyment by modeling both efferent and aesthetic stances.
- Model and give students strategies for viewing to learn by considering the ideas that are being presented (i.e., take an efferent stance).
Viewing to learn by gathering information requires students to develop and use key skills to acquire knowledge. Key skills and strategies include:
- asking questions (What is this going to be about?)
- using prior knowledge to make inferences and predictions about what students are about to hear (What do I already know about the topic? What does the visual text want me to know or do?)
- recognizing what is not known (What is the significance of what I am watching? What have I learned? What else do I want/need to know about this topic?)
- being able to synthesize information or create summaries (What do I need to remember from this presentation?)
- knowing when to adapt the viewing approach to the situation (Do I need to take notes, pause, review, conduct research, check facts or claims, use a dictionary, compare with other texts?)
- taking a critical stance by considering the deeper meanings, implications, limitations, or biases of the visual text.
- Model and give students strategies for viewing to use their imaginations or to take an aesthetic stance.
Proficient viewers usually assume an aesthetic stance when they view for pleasure. They:
- enter in – building a mental picture and figuring out what the presentation is about
- move through – considering the visual text and their own experiences as they construct meaning
- examine what is known – using developing ideas to rethink what they have learned from the visual text
- take a critical stance – moving away from personal involvement to consider deeper meanings and connections between the visual text, and social and cultural issues (Langer, 1998, pp. 16-23).
As students view a visual text or a multimedia text that includes visuals, students should ask questions such as:
- How does what I am seeing make me feel?
- Where and when does this take place? How do things look?
- How might things sound, taste, feel, and smell? How is this similar to what I know or have experienced?
- Do I identify with any of the characters or the situation or the point of view? What would I do if I were in there and experiencing these events or this experience?
- Does what I am seeing involve a conflict? If so, what is it? How might it be resolved?
- Does what I am seeing involve humour? If so, what makes it humourous?
- What are the main images, ideas, symbols, or themes found in this visual presentation?
- If the presentation is multimedia, what can be learned from this visual presentation?
- What types of listening and/or reading strategies will enhance my understanding of this multimedia text?
- Extend students’ viewing responses by using dialogue and split-page journals, conferences, discussion, and other activities.
- Use strategies such as View, Pause, Predict, and Think-aloud (VPPT) to model and verbalize thoughts and strategies for viewing and considering the text and subtext. Use the pause function in a video, for example, in order to model making predictions and reflecting upon, talking about, comparing, and critically evaluating key points in the visual texts. Periodically stop an information video, for example, to question a statement, an opinion, or a perspective. Encourage students to make notes during pauses and to consider not only the information being presented but also the technique being used.
Use a Directed Viewing-Thinking Activity (DVTA) when guiding students through a visual work or presentation. The focus in a DVTA is on making observations and predictions, formulating questions, and confirming or rejecting ideas before, during, and after viewing. Steps for the DVTA are listed below.
Step 1: Activate the background knowledge by looking at the title and any visual cues available in a survey of the work.
Step 2: Make predictions about the content of the work and support predictions with reasons. Set a purpose for viewing.
Step 3: Have students view the work, keeping their predictions and purpose in mind.
Step 4: Have students confirm or reject predictions by finding proof or supporting information in the work.
Step 5: Have students continue to view the work with different purposes or foci for viewing, and finding evidence in the visual text for their ideas and conclusions.
- Discuss the techniques, elements, and conventions that are used to construct texts that include visuals. Some conventions of visual texts are listed below.
Print Texts with Visuals
Newspapers, magazines, newsletters, leaflets, brochures, pamphlets, etc.
Techniques and Elements
Captions, layout, graphics, charts, tables, diagrams, pictures, flowcharts, logos, headline fonts (style, size, and placement), white space, spacing, proportion, pictures (foreground/background), colour, shape, borders/ wraps, etc.
T wo and three-dimensional Texts with Visuals
Photographs, pictures, posters, billboards, comics, cartoons, drawings, brochures, maps, collages, dioramas, sculptures, tableaux, movement or dance sequences, leaflets, print advertising, etc.
Techniques and Elements
Subject, medium, composition, arrangement, foreground/background, colours, shape, line, light, shadow, camera angle, focus/focal point, movement, frame/panel, balance, text/copy, etc.
Multimedia Texts with Visuals
Films and television (dramas, children’s shows, movies, science fiction, westerns, documentaries, nature shows, news, advertising, special interest shows), videos, stage plays, music videos, dance performances, computers (desktop publishing, Internet web sites, home pages, e-mail, browsers, search engines, CD-ROMs, simulations), emerging technologies, etc.
Techniques and Elements
Scenes, story elements (setting, plot/sequence, character, dialogue), production elements (camera shots, movement, sound/music and sound effects, colour and lighting, transitions, special effects, makeup, costumes, sets, props, blocking), graphics, pictures, video, animation, hypertexts, hyperlinks, anchors, typefaces, spacing, proportion, continuity, models, clips, slides, graphics, displays, etc.
- Use viewing guides .Students should view a variety of different texts for a variety of purposes (e.g., to explore, to understand, to evaluate, to empathize, for pleasure). Viewing guides can be created to help students “watch for” specific issues and techniques including the implicit and explicit purpose, point of view, message, and values as well as the techniques, elements, and structural features of the visual text. Viewing guides,such as the following, could be prepared for different purposes and mediums including television, film, comics, cartoons, posters, advertisements, and graphics.
The following Collaborative Viewing Guide (Wood, 1994) on page 19 could be used by students as they view a presentation in which their purpose is to connect prior learning with new learning and to develop ideas for future learning. It is a variation of the KWL technique (Ogle, 1986). A sample viewing guide for a photograph is found on page 20 and a viewing guide for a video presentation is found on page 21.
- Students should have the opportunity to compare different visual texts. Comparisons can include the presentation of similar content by two or more media (e.g., compare news reports of the same event by different media), the form and techniques (e.g., two forms of advertisement of the same product), and the representations of gender, race, and culture (e.g., in a sitcom or a gallery display of photographs). Ask students to make generalizations about the ways in which content has been adapted to different purposes and audiences in the visual texts and to evaluate the various adaptations. Which form is most effective in fulfilling its purpose?
- Help students consider the ethicsof what they see. “Visual messages are a powerful form of communication because they stimulate both intellectual and emotional responses — they make us think as well as feel. Consequently, images can be used to persuade and to perpetuate ideas that words alone cannot. When controlled by economic interests and corporate considerations, [visual texts] can be powerful tools to persuade people to buy a particular product or think a specific way. Any viewer or producer of visual messages must be aware of the ways that [images] are used to convince others of a certain view. A creator of images has an ethical and moral responsibility to ensure, for example, that a picture is a fair, accurate, and complete representation of someone from another culture.” (Lester, 1995, p. 73). Students could consider the visual persuasion and ethics in advertising (e.g., a clothing advertising campaign or a current television commercial).
- The Internet is a valuable medium for communication. Using it wisely and safely, however, requires critical thinking skills. Teachers will find a number of resources in the bibliography that accompanies the Secondary Level curriculum as well as the Media Awareness Network (www.media-awareness.ca) useful for developing students’ critical thinking and viewing abilities.
- Incorporate visuals throughout each unit of study and encourage students to share visuals associated with the unit theme or issue students find effective in communicating an explicit or implicit message.
Assessing and Evaluating Viewing
Pages 22–23 contain sample forms to be used in the assessment (i.e., gathering of information) and considered in the evaluation (i.e., making a judgement based on the gathered information) of student learning.