And that is reading the world.
In
chapter 7 “Reading Images”, Burke (2001) uses this final chapter to discuss the
ways that we all view images all the time and interpret them in some way based
upon the architect, artist, designer, builder’s motivation and our own
experience of what they mean to us. This ties directly to one of our questions
for the course, which is “what does it mean to be literate?”
If
we go back to Rosenblatt’s view we can look at literacy explicitly as reading
and writing, but with the influence of our life experiences which leads to
interpretation of this reading and writing. If we revisit Gee, we can see
literacy as the ways that we interact with others given the situation, circumstances,
and goals for the outcome and interaction. Burke’s chapter reminds me of Freire’s
theory of reading the world, and the ways in which we become fluent in how we
want to say/write/design something based upon the experience that we’ve had
with that object. And so, visual literacy is presented to all of us who can see
in almost every aspect of our day to day lives.
Burke
states, “I don’t think it is our responsibility to turn students into art
connoisseurs any more than I believe it is our job to crank out literary or
film critics. I do, however, want my students to be able to read texts in
different ways for various purposes, some of which include: aesthetic,
existential, informational, logical, narrative” (p 149). I think that this is
the goal of all teachers and when it comes to visual literacy we may sometimes
feel like we aren’t sure how to proceed. Burke gives some very specific
examples of how to do this in the form of projects and everyday understanding
of how often our visual learners can also have this type of interpretation
added to their classroom learning. I recently learned about logographs, which
are images students can design (much like emoticons) and use to label and
organize information in a way that makes more sense for them. Images can be
placed in the classroom, students can be given an assignment where they walk
outside and write about the space two feet around them (Burke, 2001). The
pivotal point to all of this is the reflection. Students, and adults, need to
time to think about what they’re looking at, understand what is there and what
is not, what the message is, what the motivation is, and figure out what it
means to them as individuals or as a part of any particular Discourse.
I
think that in this final chapter Burke has summed up a part of literacy that
many people take for granted. By paying attention to the world around us, and
all the visual aspects of our lives we are learning to read the world (Freire), become
literate in our Discourses (Gee), and tie our experiences to the way we interpret
text and deliver our own messages (Rosenblatt). Reading this book made all of these
literacies seem so obvious. The problem is that as busy humans we often take
things for granted, and don’t really see what is right in front of us. I want
to be the teacher that shows students that literacy means reading the world as
a whole and being able to function well in a society that sometimes doesn’t
spend enough time paying attention.
This is an excellent summary of teaching literacy. The part about selective attention might be the most important thing to teach to students, no matter what age or content areas. Adults can benefit from learning about selective attention as well, our brains in the 21st century are hardwired to take in endless amounts of information it seems like. Kids are so smart, it hurts to see their intelligence wasted on social media interactions instead of being applied to meaningful projects or assignments. What content area will you be teaching in the future?
ReplyDeleteWhat a lovely tie in of all the theorists! Reading your blog helps me to understand and solidify their concepts/theories. If we consider what it means to be literate we can see how Gee, Rosenblatt and Freire’s words are different but also all ring true. Literacy can be images like the logographs just as much as they can be academic writing. Having a firm understanding and base for being able to flow between different modalities will create the most comprehensive sense of literacy. As you quote Burke when he says, “I do, however, want my students to be able to read texts in different ways for various purposes,” we must learn to match our literacy needs to the situation at hand.
ReplyDeleteI have to echo others’ comments. This is a really wonderful summary of the theorists whose work we’ve read over the last month. I also appreciate your thoughts and connection to literacy as including images and pictures. I’m a visual learner, so in my science classes I distilled the information into pictures—when I could reproduce my own drawing without notes, I knew I understoon. Ironically I’d forgotten how powerful pictures and diagrams can be to learning science. Thank you for the very timely reminder.
ReplyDeleteThe being "able to read texts in different ways for various purposes" and the comment about students going outside and writing about the space two feet around them got me thinking. I'd like to try a similar activity for a different purpose in my life science classes. I had been thinking about doing something outside at the beginning of the school year, and going outside just to write observations sounds like a good way to do it. I'd like my 7th graders to see that writing with a scientific stance (aka purpose, aka "writing like a scientist") is something they already know how to do, just by recording their observations, asking questions, and focusing their selective attention on the world around them. There are so many ways of reading the world, thank you for helping to illuminate them!
ReplyDeleteInteresting post. I agree with molls I like the way that you linked the theories we are learning in class with your text. Science uses an ton of Images to convey information, this includes illustrations, graphs, tables, maps, etc. It is its own genre and students need to learn how to read these images. I never considered this before I took this class, hopefully treating scientific images as a "text" which need to be read science can be more accessible for students.
ReplyDelete