The Critical Eye how visual literacy has become a vital tool for negotiating modern culture

Visual technologies and childhood development Children today see more images than most adults saw in their entire lives previously The imagery is not necessarily related to the creative arts - it can be of absolutely anything(for example: the average American child now sees 40,000 dramatised murders before the age of 18) Try to conceive of the daily life of the child. Try to guess how much visual information they may be exposed to in a day (there are estimates that some American children are exposed to about 11 hours TV viewing per day alone) The general predominance of using visual information as a mode for learning/entertainment instigates particular developmental skills in the child.

What effects is our contemporary visual culture having on the child? Much visual information is not high quality, but highly commercial or contrived Children respond to this information in ways that seem appropriate to them (for example: the rise in the marketing of junk foods is coextensive to the rise in childhood obesity) The commercial market also recognises that children have persuasive power over the consumer choices of their parents (for example: in 1997 the aggregate spending of American families, influenced by their children was AUS$260.9 million) Children are becoming more body aware than ever before Often children are being exposed to an equal amount of visual imagery (with the same content) as their parents All these help to give children a prescriptive understanding of the world, rather than allowing them to form their own opinions

Examples of popular youth media Television Magazines Images removed due to copyright restrictions

Internet Music Cinema Art Images removed due to copyright restrictions

Fashion Games Home film Digital imagery Mobile phone Images removed due to copyright restrictions

What is in store for teachers? A growing awareness from advertisers of schoolchildren as a potential market audience Classes of students that are able to access and understand many more images (and thus information) than you as a teacher Classes of children that have well established, homogenised views of the world and of their own lives Students that are unwilling to look beyond the immediate resource, or of the appropriated version of things A disparity between what children access in their personal lives and what can be accessed in the classroom

Multi-modal ways of looking and interrelating with current media Music –Consider combinations of sound, action and language –Consider how each of these is read and understood simultaneously –Consider nuances of style and who relates to what –Consider which of the intelligences is able to receive and process all this –Consider culture, appropriation, genre, history Internet -Consider prevalence -Consider combinations of sound, animation, text, imagery, the interface -Consider how each of these is read and understood simultaneously -Consider information searching/ access -Consider the shaping of culture, identity, history

Games –Consider physicality –Consider combinations of sound, action, imagery –Consider expectation –Consider simulacra, appropriation, culture Mobile Phones –Consider communication, play, status –Consider technology –Consider combinations of sound, text, imagery, action –Consider how each of these is negotiated simultaneously –Consider culture, identity, belonging

Facilitating a critical eye Developing key questions as discussion starters Encouraging cautiousness in students Elaborating on semiological and cultural coding systems Promoting diversity and pluralism Facilitating autonomous learning Instigating high-order thinking tasks Imagining alternatives

Reject or accept what you see? Levels of acceptance and suspicion Do we want independent thinkers? Is it uncomfortable? For whom? How we can enrich education –Diversity and pluralism –Multi-modal ways of learning –High-order thinking –Critique with confidence –Acknowledge visual culture