This document discusses using visual texts to teach critical thinking skills. It defines what critical thinkers do, such as evaluating multiple perspectives, and what they know, such as understanding that texts are constructions rather than transparent windows. Visual texts are recommended because students find them engaging and they allow teachers to focus on skills beyond comprehension. Examples are provided of activities using visual texts, such as analyzing manipulated photos to develop rhetorical awareness. Graphic narratives are discussed as another multimodal text to analyze different interpretations. Maps and monuments are also presented as forms of argument to critically examine.

1. Using Visual Texts to Teach
Critical Thinking

2. What Do Critical Thinkers Do?
• They argue a point.
• They justify their reasoning.
• They look for interrelationships.
• They explore multiple perspectives.
• They evaluate.
• They adopt the most reasonable point of view.

3. What Do Critical Thinkers Know?
• a text is a construction, not a transparent window
on reality
• being both a composer and a reader of texts
helps them develop a rhetorical awareness (an
understanding that workplace writing is
persuasive and that it must consider the
rhetorical situation--purpose, audience,
stakeholders, and context)
• they must be active communicators and readers
rather than passive consumers of texts

4. Why Use Visual Texts to Develop
Critical Thinking?
• What we create and compose is increasingly
multimodal and not at all neutral
• Using material that students find accessible
and engaging allows teachers to focus on skills
beyond comprehension—skills that develop
critical thinking

5. Reading
Photos
What do you observe?
Do you trust your
observations?
Why or why not?

6. Hoax Photo Test
• Test your photo literacy by trying to guess
which are the hoax photos (i.e. those that
have been manipulated in some way) and
which are real.
http://www.pps.k12.or.us/schools-c/pages/binnsmead/student/Hoax/hoax_test/Hoax%20Photo%20Test.htm
• Number one to ten and after each picture
write “hoax” or “real.”

7. 1. A hunter poses by the enormous bear he shot.

8. President Bush doesn't notice his book is upside down
President Bush doesn't notice his book is upside down
2. President Bush doesn't notice his book is upside
down.

9. 3. A car loaded down with lumber. Note the person
asleep in the front.

10. Senator Daschle pledges allegiance backwards
4. Senator Daschle pledges allegiance backwards.

11. 5. A deer crashes through a windshield.

12. 6. A jet plane caught in the instant that it breaks
through the sound barrier and causes a sonic boom

13. 7. Image taken from a camera found in the rubble of
the World Trade Center. A tourist poses for the camera,
unaware that a hijacked plane approaches from behind.

14. 8. A man shows off his 87-pound cat.

15. 9. Michael Jackson's nose disintegrating

16. 10. Shark Attack!

17. 1. A hunter poses by the enormous bear he shot.
REAL. Bears do get big. This photo was taken in November 2001 in
Alaska.

18. President Bush doesn't notice his book is upside down
President Bush doesn't notice his book is upside down
2. President Bush doesn't notice his book is upside
down.
HOAX. The book in President Bush’s hand has been
digitally turned upside down.

19. 3. A car loaded down with lumber. Note the person
asleep in the front.
REAL. The owners of this car really did try to strap all this lumber to their
car and drive it away. What can one say? They were idiots.

20. Senator Daschle pledges allegiance backwards
4. Senator Daschle pledges allegiance backwards.
HOAX. Daschle’s body was digitally flipped around so that his hand
appears to be on the right side of his chest.

21. 5. A deer crashes through a windshield.
REAL. An unfortunate accident, but real. It was caused by a deer jumping
off an overpass and landing on a passing car.

22. 6. A jet plane caught in the instant that it breaks
through the sound barrier and causes a sonic boom
REAL. A photo taken over the Pacific July 7, 1999 by Ensign John Gay. The
plane is an F/A-18 Hornet assigned to Strike Fighter Squadron One Five One
(VFA-151). The image is available on a Navy website (link from hoax test URL).

23. 7. Image taken from a camera found in the rubble of
the World Trade Center. A tourist poses for the camera,
unaware that a hijacked plane approaches from behind.
HOAX. The plane has been digitally inserted into this picture of a tourist
posing on the observation deck of the World Trade Center. The plane is
not the same model as the ones that crashed into the towers.

24. 8. A man
shows off his
87-pound cat.
HOAX. The cat
has been
digitally
enlarged. The
cat which served
as the model for
this photo
actually weighs
21 pounds.

25. 9. Michael Jackson's nose disintegrating
REAL. Horrifying, but real. The rumor is that Jackson has to use tape to
keep his nose attached to his face.

26. 10. Shark Attack!
HOAX. The shark was digitally inserted into a U.S. Air Force photo taken
near San Francisco’s Golden Gate Bridge.

27. Activity: Create an Argument through
Juxtaposition

28. Activity: Create an Argument through
Manipulation

29. Discuss the Ethics of Juxtaposition
and Manipulation

30. Texts as Constructions: Reading
Graphic Narratives
• Three multimodal versions of Kafka’s “The
Metamorphosis”
– Which version is closest to the “real” story, which
we might assume to be Kafka’s written version?
– Which version best conveys Kafka’s tone and
vision for the story?
– Which version best conveys Kafka’s ideas to a
modern audience?
– Why? Why? Why?

31. Maps and Monuments as Arguments

32. Image Credits
Hoax Photos
http://www.pps.k12.or.us/schools-c/pages/binnsmead/student/Hoax/hoax_test/Hoax%20Photo%20Test.htm
iStockPhotos.com Bingham family photo
Picturing Texts
Lester Faigley, Diana George, Anna Palchik, Cynthia Selfe
NY: Norton, 2004
Al-Ahram, Egypt’s state newspaper, 9/14/10 Getty Images, US
Denver Post, September 2010
http://japanfocus.org/data/350px-East_Wall_Vietnam_Memorial_VDay.jpg