Reading Visual TextA review of Walter Werner’s 2002 article in Theory and Research in Social Education

Call to use students’ agency to enhance visual readingActive and critical capacities to understand and knowFramed by the Birmingham tradition of Cultural StudiesMovement rooted in Marxist thought and informed by the work of Antonio GramsciCultural hegemony

Peter Seixas’ call for centering social education around cultural studiesWhat does this image tell us about Lincoln the Emancipator?"The Coming Man's Presidential Career, à la Blondin" by Jacob Dallas. Harper's Weekly, Aug 25, 1860, p. 544

Three conditions for reading visual textsAuthority Opportunity and Capacity Community for Engaging

Authority“If students are to engage in multiple readings of an image, they need to be positioned as interpreters”

Open?Closed?Figure 1: “The Industrial Revolution.” Source: William McNeill, The Rise of the West: A History of the Human Community (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1963), 743. © by the University of Chicago. All rights reserved. http://www.bu.edu/historic/staley.html

Opportunity and Capacity“Multiple readings of images disturb taken-for-granted assumptions underlying “reading” itself (‘Why are different readings possible?’), and focus on the interplay between text and reader.”

Ways to Reading Visual TextsInstrumentalNarrativeIconicEditorialIndicativeOppositional ReflexiveClosedResourceStorylineIconEditorialIndexPositioningMirrortext asOpen

Werner, 2002, p. 408

InstrumentalNarrativeIconicEditorialIndicativeOppositional ReflexiveFigure 3: “Hammurabi’s Great Society.” Source: Source: William McNeill, The Rise of the West: A History of the Human Community (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1963), 57. © by the University of Chicago. All rights reserved. http://www.bu.edu/historic/staley.html

Community“Multiple readings of images require a supportive classroom discourse (i.e., norms, beliefs, practices, and exemplars) that encourages student authority in reading, and provides ongoing opportunity to engage with multiple readings.”