Activities involving photographs stimulate visual perceptual awareness. Children understand visual stimuli before having verbal capacity to deal with the world. Vision becomes the primary means for learning, understanding, and adjusting to the environment. Photography can provide an effective avenue to visual literacy. (Author)

Describes a film study program to help students open up to the beauty that exists around them. Notes that key ingredients of the program are a linkage between the films shown and the asking of probing questions. (RL)

Suggests a simple, adaptable pattern for teaching the grammar of films and television, i.e., its agreed conventions of vocabulary and syntax. A variety of feature-length films and extracts are listed to illustrate the concepts being taught as well as film distributors and addresses. (MBR)

This essay discusses 13 pictorial devices with which one must be familiar to understand the illustrations in Virginia Lee Burton's "Mike Mulligan and His Steam Shovel." Color constancy, implied background, sharply drawn lines, abstractions of caricature, use of perspective, face on objects, and picture book narration are noted. (EJS)

Provides topics and activities by which English teachers can make their students visually literate and capable of critical television viewing. (RL)

The author urges art educators to contribute to holistic education by emphasizing the unique and alternative modes of thinking and acting which are intrinsic to visual arts. He presents two exercises to help students develop a perceptual rather than conceptual or linguistic mode. (Author/SJL)

Teachers should turn the pervasive influence of television into a tool for developing critical thinking and media literacy in children. Promoting critical television viewing skills can also contribute to the achievement of other, more traditional, instructional goals. (SK)

Discusses three major theoretical approaches in using feature-length films to teach gender roles: semiological analysis, Marxist analysis, and sociological analysis. For each approach, relevant literature is cited and specific examples of films are given to illustrate some applications of that approach to gender role analysis. (MBR)

Based on the notion that visual decisions play an important role in what children recognize and interpret in books and that teachers have a special responsibility to help students become visually literate, this article draws parallels between visual and verbal concepts and suggests some activities for teaching "picture reading" skills in the…

Discusses importance of the ability to visualize images evoked by the written word in the development of children's skills in both reading and creative writing. Specific skills involved are noted, examples from picture books are given, and 48 picture books that would be useful to developing such skills are listed. (EM)

The 40 papers in this collection cover a wide variety of topics within the broad field of visual literacy. Three preliminary papers discuss visualization through film. The second section, which emphasizes visualization in a social context, contains 10 papers addressing cultural, political, social, and psychological issues, touching upon such…

Focusing on video technology, this discussion of integrating new electronic media into the classroom suggests ways to help students critique and use new visual technologies effectively and to develop visual literacy. (LRW)

Designed for professionals who design and develop instructional materials, this paper identifies specific and general strategies that educational technologists can employ in their media productions to enhance aesthetic awareness. A brief overview of aesthetics and aesthetic education is provided, including definitions and various approaches to…

In 1899, the Committee of Ten on Drawing, organized by the National Education Association, proposed that one of the main goals of art education should be "to offer a consistent development in the faculty of sight." Art appreciation was centered on the literal translation of the painting. Importance was placed on connecting the painter's…

Discusses the use of picture books of folk tales to develop literature appreciation and cultural awareness in children and the need to select books that retain the style of the original version of the folk tale, rather than loose adaptations of the story. (CLB)