K a ren Keifer-Boyd and Jane Maitland-Gholson

Engaging Visual Culture

Copyright © 2007

Davis Publications, Inc.

Worcester, Massachusetts U.S.A.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be

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Publisher: Wyatt Wade

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Library of Congress Control Number: 2007000000

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Printed in the United States of America

v i

Empower: Creating a Personal SymbolTo take an active stance in reading and interpreting

visual culture, viewers need to be confident using

visual cues to communicate ideas or emotions that

words often cannot adequately capture. For this rea-

son, learning to use visual modes of communication is

empowering.

In the sidebar “Dialogue: Self-Symbols” on

page 12, we provide a sample of a typical conver-

sation that occurs among students as they do the

Self-Symbol activity. This dialogue shows the ways in

which students can see how their self-symbols reflect

their ways of thinking.

Reflect: Underlying IdeasThe Draw a Chair, Mind-sets, and Self-Symbol activi-

ties can reveal insights if students are guided to see

the ways in which the images were made, as well

as the strategies used to make them. Because these

activities reveal information about “ways of know-

ing,” they in turn affect interpretations of visual

culture.

For example, when one attempts to categorize the

chair drawings (see Appendix B), there is no rule stat-

ing that the same chair drawing cannot be placed in

more than one category. In fact, in observing hun-

dreds of people of all ages engaged in doing this

task, we have noticed that participants often want

to place chair drawings in more than one category,

but do not. This behavior indicates that many people,

especially those educated in Western cultures, per-

ceive categories as separate and not overlapping.

They may have a predisposition to contextualize

(“Under certain circumstances, the object could be

placed in both of these categories”), but they feel

constrained by an unspoken rule. A critical-thinking

question we could introduce is: “Who creates the

rules for how you see the world?”

S e l f - S y m b o l s

In the spaces provided below, experiment with creat-

ing a simple visual symbol that communicates some-

thing about you. When you feel comfortable with

the symbol you have devised, make your mark in the

bold-framed rectangle.

1 1B e l i e f s

1 2 C h a p t e r 1

Dialogue: Self-Symbols

Sam: Well, Carol, you’re being consistent.

Carol: What?

Sam: In the first task you did an h-chair—simple,

direct. Then you sorted into just two categories—

“good” and “mediocre.” Now you make your per-

sonal symbol your initials.

Carol: I keep telling you. I’m not very creative.

Sam: But you find great, quick ways to solve a tricky

assignment.

Carol: I think that’s how I look at things. What you

see is what you get.

Sam: So, what do you see in mine?

Carol: It looks like the Nike symbol. Are you into

sports?

Sam: I’m on the track team and I love running.

Jake: Me, too.

Carol: But your symbol is just some squiggly lines.

What does it have to do with running?

Jake: It’s like the wind blowing across my face when

I run. Running feels like freedom, I guess.

Sam: Your symbol is kind of like abstract art. There’s

kind of a hidden meaning. When you explain it,

it makes sense.

Carol: How did you categorize the chairs?

Jake: Simple/Realistic, Complex/Realistic,

Simple/Abstract, Complex/Abstract. I was trying

to overlap stuff. I think that’s the contextual

mind-set.

Carol: Okay, Sandy. Let me take a stab at yours.

You love the sun?

Sandy: It’s just a simple symbol for exploding ideas.

Derek: Well, I’m with Carol. I’m a weight lifter and

that’s what I tried to show.

Sam: Maybe our mind-sets really do have something

to do with how we see things. Carol’s and Derek’s

are concrete. So they have trouble with Jake’s squig-

gly lines. And instead of exploding ideas, they see

the sun in Sandy’s symbol.

Jake: Do you think advertisers think about concrete

and abstract messages?

1.3 Self Symbols

Our everyday actions often reveal much about

ourselves to ourselves if we pay attention and reflect

on our spontaneous first impulses. Interpretations tell

as much about the interpreter as what is interpreted.

The categories that we construct reflect how we

know the world and they help us to function in the

world. Human reasoning involves categorization.

However, the categories that we create, if not exam-

ined, can limit our understanding of others and can

limit creative or imaginative thinking.

In the chair categorization task, a common pattern

is for some participants to categorize chairs (they talk

about “wood chairs” and “La-Z-Boys”), while others

categorize drawings of chairs. When a participant is

talking about physical aspects of the chair drawings

such as “line drawings,” “armchairs,” or “straight-

back chairs,” he or she is revealing a concrete, literal

way of knowing. A contextual thinker might be con-

cerned that “you cannot really categorize a drawing

without understanding the intent of the maker.” Still

others name their categories with abstract generali-

ties, such as “artistic,” “symbolic,” “special,” or

“ambivalent.” Understanding a range of mind-sets—

ways of processing information—is important in

understanding the meanings of visual culture. Visual

literacy is not just being able to “read" something;

it is the ability to interpret not just the obvious but

also the hidden.

Catalyst: Ideas into Action in Your Classroom Having documented diverse groups of people per-

forming the Draw a Chair activity over a period of

years, we have identified some distinct patterns of

response—for example, an acute fear of not being

able to draw. The chair continues to provide a con-

sistently fruitful subject for close exploration. It is

accessible across ages, developmental and experience

levels, and even cultural and ethnic differences, all of

which add intriguing layers to discussion.

The drawing activity clearly makes the point that

one need not have artistic talent to engage in visual

culture. We continually find it helpful to emphasize

that an h-chair is a simple but elegant solution to the

task. It may not be a masterpiece, but it succinctly

communicates the idea of a chair. We tell participants

that they are quite able to do the task. They have

creative visual skills, if not technical skills, that tend

to lie dormant because they are more often asked to

be passive receivers of information (particularly the

visual) instead of active co-constructors of visual

information.

Finally, activities like this one allow us to remind

students that it is through actively manipulating

visual communication that they will learn how to

understand and articulate its deeper meanings.

Stating these contentions over and over can alleviate

anxiety and reinforce the intended learning.

Making Activities Age Appropriate

At this point you may be asking, “But how do I do

these activities with my fourth graders?”

All age groups can successfully engage in the

Draw a Chair activity. However, the discussion that

follows the activity would vary greatly depending

on the metacognitive skills of the participants. The

activities as described in this chapter can be most

fully engaged and understood by learners aged

thirteen and older, although such age designations

are arbitrary and do not describe all learners. Let’s

consider how to adapt these activities by looking

at three general categories of age and developmen-

tal level.

Primary The majority of five-year-olds can draw

a chair. However, at this stage, children would

1 3B e l i e f s

generally be engaged in figuring out conceptual

categories—colors, mammals, things you can sit

on—and the chairs they draw may not be connected

to adult concepts of chairs at all. So asking children

to form groups based on how their images look

would make little sense to them. Their chairs are

not necessarily connected to the real world of

chairs. In this case, a more appropriate debriefing

would be to ask for volunteers to “tell about

your drawing” in order to make the experiential

connection.

Knowing this, the teacher would need to consider

the learning objective. Our stated objective for the

Draw a Chair activity is to make explicit the varying

sociocultural filters and cognitive patterns that

influence a learner’s understanding of chair and,

therefore, visual culture in general. Clearly, this

objective would not be appropriate for five-year-olds.

However, at a very concrete level, the teacher could

point out that, based on the differences among their

drawings, all children have ideas about what chairs

are like. The teacher might demonstrate this by

gathering several different types of chairs in the

classroom (straight-back, cozy, office, rocking, etc.)

and asking children to choose the one in which they

would most like to sit. A concrete connection could

be made between the chairs they draw and their

experiences.

Nevertheless, there would be developmental limits

to the larger application of the activity. Certainly, the

Mind-sets activity would not be appropriate, since

most children at this age would almost exclusively

be employing literal ways of knowing. Likewise, the

Self-Symbol activity would be limited in its applicabil-

ity. But, if children were given a clear and concrete

focus for developing an image of, say, a favorite pos-

session, this activity would result in a concrete symbol

associated with self.

1 4 C h a p t e r 1

Content and Process Questions

Content Question

Can you envision some possible ways of thinking that

are missing from our mind-set distinctions?

There are many ways of approaching the idea of predis-

positions. Much has been written about learning styles,

interactive styles, and personality traits. If you have

engaged in some form of Myers-Briggs analysis, for

example, you may see some similarities to what we call

mind-sets.

Process Questions

Do you feel uncomfortable with the idea of “categoriz-

ing” people according to their mind-sets?

Maybe you are very contextual in your thinking. Our

purpose is not to pigeonhole people. Rather, being con-

sciously aware of dominant thought patterns will help us

understand not only our own thought processes but also

the reactions we have to the way others are thinking.

For example, when considering complex issues such as

“What constitutes pornography in art?” a literal and a

contextual thinker will probably come to irreconcilable

conclusions because their ways of knowing are so radi-

cally different.

Did you find yourself coming to conclusions very quickly?

One obstacle that tends to block our visual perception is

a tendency to reach judgments too quickly. For example,

a literal mind-set often leads to quick judgments because

the person becomes immediately impatient when he or

she perceives that alternative judgments seem to stray

from the straight path to the truth.

The first step to removing this obstacle is to articulate

one’s own thoughts, consciously setting them aside (but

not abandoning them), while considering the circum-

stances in which an alternative judgment might hold

true. This is an acquired skill that requires practice.

Intermediate With age and experience (the actual

age will vary greatly from one child to another),

children’s ability to understand context increases

dramatically. In Piagetian terms, children at this

stage of development can reason quite skillfully,

although they are primarily focused on concrete

constructs. They line up linear strings of if/then

propositions and argue with surprising agility. For

example, we have all observed instances in which

children spent the majority of recess determining

the rules of their game rather than playing the

game. With this in mind, we see that the range of

chairs drawn by this age group may actually be nar-

rower than those of primary-aged children because

they may be attempting to adhere to a set of

“rules” about what a chair is supposed to look like.

Their chair imagery will focus primarily on concrete

representations.

Again, directly teaching about mind-sets as they

are presented in this chapter would not be appropri-

ate to this age group, since children’s ways of know-

ing would be primarily literal, dualistic, and linear.

Nevertheless, the teacher could note instances in

which a child chooses to think of a chair metaphori-

cally, since this would be an indicator of a more

sophisticated way of understanding and engaging

the visual world.

The learning objective might focus on categoriz-

ing the chair drawings as a way of understanding dif-

ferences in conceptions of chairs, but the extension

of how the learner draws a chair to the way in which

he or she sees other things would best be made at a

very concrete level. So, for example, the follow-up

activity described for primary-aged children (gather-

ing a variety of chairs in the classroom) could be

extended for this age group, but would still focus

on concrete differences in chairs and learners’ experi-

ences of chairs. Nevertheless, some learners will

demonstrate more advanced understandings and

should be encouraged to do so.

Secondary The traditional Piagetian indicator of

entry into adulthood is called “formal operations.”

This means that a learner gains the ability to reason

regarding abstract concepts. Of course, it is important

to remember that Piaget also posited that all cogni-

tive development is mode-specific. That is, learners

move through stages differently depending on the

discipline. For example, a learner may understand

mathematics at a concrete and literal level while

being able to interpret visual information abstractly

and contextually.

Teaching for Student Engagement

Teachers who would like to try out the exercises

described in this chapter should see Appendix C for

a specific example of how the Draw a Chair exercise

can work. Appendix D can be copied as a student

handout for the activity. Appendix E can be used to

make overhead transparencies to guide the group

process of drawing a chair.

One basic premise of this book is that learning at

any age happens most fully when students are given

opportunities to act on their knowledge and beliefs.

This idea has many implications for teachers. People

learn through action because they are sharing control

of the flow of information. Control is at the heart of

motivation. If teachers wish to motivate students, the

students must feel that it is within their power to

affect outcomes. When students feel this empower-

ment and know the information that they share will be

respectfully considered and valued, they will become

active constructors of their own meaning rather than

passive conduits of someone else’s belief system.

For an experienced teacher or facilitator, this

means taking the risk of giving up some control. To

1 5B e l i e f s

truly engage in the construction of new perspectives,

the teacher must be ready for some unanticipated

ideas to emerge. This is a rewarding but complex

process that requires the suspension of initial judg-

ments regarding students’ statements in order to

allow ideas, even those the teacher disagrees with,

to be voiced and then considered by the group.

When facilitating group discussions that focus on

objects students have created, we find that lively dis-

cussion happens when all group members have the

opportunity to voice alternative views. This activity

builds a sense of safety and respect.

In order to give voice to many points of view,

large groups should be divided into smaller groups to

allow for dialogue. Obviously, the teacher cannot be

present for every small group discussion to mediate

disagreement or mitigate misinformation. The

teacher will need to trust that active, engaged dia-

logue—people making their thoughts public and

then taking responsibility for them—is better, even

when it gets a little noisy, than disengaged passivity.

Also, since the teacher cannot monitor every discus-

sion, some misconceptions may occur, but they can be

corrected later.

Having students create an image or object that

“states their position” visually can alleviate some of

the tension of laying their beliefs out in the open.

Then the discussion can be about the object and

what the object seems to be saying. This technique

is quite effective in allowing all voices to be heard.

Finally, as experienced teachers know, maintaining

good control of what can be controlled is an excel-

lent counterbalance to what might at first seem to

be a chaotic approach. This approach requires careful

preplanning and anticipation of what the teacher

wants to happen and what actually could happen.

How is the space arranged? How will students get

into groups efficiently? How will students move

around? How will students know what to do when

the noise of movement and activity makes it difficult

for them to hear? These are all basics of well-planned

teaching, but if the approach is new, these basics

require direct attention until they become second

nature.

Principles for Curriculum Development

So, what are some underlying, “take-away” principles

introduced in this chapter that teachers could use for

creating a curriculum supportive of a visual culture

perspective? A first foundational principle to learning

about visual culture is a belief in the power of belief.

It is critical to pass on to students the idea that what

they believe, the assumptions they make, and the

values they hold will shape their world. If they

believe they are powerless to reshape the visual

world around them, they will be manipulated by its

messages. So, belief systems, assumptions, and values

about the world in general and about visual informa-

tion in particular need to be exposed.

A second foundational principle to learning about

visual culture is that deconstructing unexamined

ideas—exploding them—leads to deeper understand-

ing of them and motivation for change. Individual

beliefs are formed from historical and cultural narra-

tives that pervade our lives. These beliefs often

unconsciously influence patterns of conceptual organ-

ization of and behaviors related to the visual environ-

ment. Such organizational schemes are the bases of

visual culture knowledge—how we know the world.

Through a process of recognizing our conceptual

schemes, we expose beliefs that are taken for

granted and can begin to explode our assumptions

about some ways of knowing being better than

others. As art educators, it is our task to help stu-

dents consciously own the sets of ideas that drive

their behaviors.

1 6 C h a p t e r 1

The third foundational principle that undergirds

learning about visual culture is a belief that as art

educators, a key goal of our teaching is to foster

democratic values. We can do this by helping stu-

dents to gain access to and be empowered to act on

their visual environments in ways that reflect their

beliefs and values. One access point is to examine

critically the larger systems that encompass their

lives—belief systems, patterns of thought, represen-

tations of self—that are directly related to the perva-

sive influx of visual imagery that tells them what to

believe, how to think, and how to be.

Notes1 Martin Fishbein and I. Ajzen, Belief, Attitude, Intention

and Behavior: An Introduction to Theory and Research

(Reading, MA: Addison/Wesley, 1975).

2 John Berger, Ways of Seeing, (New York: Penguin Books,

1991; original work published 1972); Joseph Margolis,

Selves and Other Texts: The Case for Cultural Realism

(University Park, PA: The Pennsylvania State University

Press, 2001); Mab Segrest, “On Being White and Other

Lies.” In Sing, Whisper, Shout, Pray! Feminist Visions for a

Just World, M. Jacqui Alexander, Lisa Albrecht, Sharon

Day, and Mab Segrest, eds. (Fort Bragg, CA: Edgework

Books, 2003), 243–285.

3 Stephen D. Brookfield, The Power of Critical Theory:

Liberating Adult Learning and Teaching (New York:

Jossey-Bass, 2005); Fritjof Capra, The Hidden Connections:

Integrating the Biological, Cognitive, and Social

Dimensions of Life into a Science of Sustainability

(New York: Doubleday, 2002); Seth Chaiklin and Jean

Lave, Understanding Practice: Perspectives on Activity

and Context (New York: Cambridge University Press,

1993); Berger, Ways of Seeing; David Hyerle, Visual Tools

for Constructing Knowledge (Alexandria, VA: Association

for Supervision and Curriculum Development, 1996);

Colin Renfrew and Chris Scarre, Cognition and Material

Culture: The Archaeology of Symbol Storage (Cambridge,

UK: McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research,

1998).

4 Mary Belenky, B. M. Clinchy, N. R. Goldberger, and K. M.

Tarule, Women’s Ways of Knowing: The Development

of Self, Voice, and Mind (New York: Basic Books, 1997;

original work published 1986).

5 Herbert Ginsburg and Sylvia Opper, Piaget’s Theory of

Intellectual Development, 3rd ed. (Englewood Cliffs, NJ:

Prentice Hall, 1988).

1 7B e l i e f s

Appendix B: Example Set of Student Chair Drawings

Example Set of Student Chair Drawings 1 4 1

1 4 2

1 Prior to class, reproduce the handout shown in

Appendix D, one per student. For large groups,

these can be reduced to smaller formats that

allow several handouts cut from a one-page

photocopy.

2 In class, distribute the handout to all students,

asking them to follow the directions on the

handout.

3 When students are finished, explain all the steps

of the next task (shown below) before they begin.

For large groups in which significant conversation

will be generated, provide an overhead of instruc-

tions for visual reference. The steps are:

• Fold the handout in half to make the chair

visible without the text responses.

• Hold your chair drawing in front of your fore-

head so others can see it.

• Move around the room looking for other

drawings that look like yours.

• When you find other drawings that look like

yours, form a group with the people who

created them.

• Identify three characteristics that everyone

in the group shares.

• Name your group, based on your chair

drawings.

• Write down a belief that everyone in your

group agrees the chair drawings expose.

• Describe the type of conversation your group

had.

• Identify ways in which your chair drawings

relate to who you are and the beliefs you hold.

4 Drawing conclusions: Debrief the activity in turns,

by writing on an overhead transparency made

from Appendix E for each group, or by asking

students to write on their group’s overhead and

present their conclusions with their overhead

transparency.

5 When each group has debriefed, summarize their

conclusions by identifying the groups in relation-

ship to the categories established in Chapter 1 of

this book. These are:

Cozy chairs are representations of easy chairs,

overstuffed chairs, or recliners. A strategy might

be: “I created the chair I would like to be sitting

in right now” or “I wanted to create a chair that

would be comfortable.” This response is often

accompanied by a feeling of well-being and satis-

faction with the drawing.

Real chairs are those that reflect an attempt at a

realistic representation of a chair, often employing

one- and two-point perspective. Makers of real

chair images may express feelings of frustration

that the drawing does not look real enough.

The h-chair is one of the most common render-

ings. Creators of this type of chair are likely to

describe their approach as efficient and task-

oriented. In addition, the “h” chair creators often

express discomfort with the task and state, “I’m

not an artist. I can’t draw.”

Imagined chairs are visualized in the mind of the

creator and transferred to page. “I saw a chair in

my head and drew it,” they might say. They report

A p p e n d i x C

Appendix C: Step-by-Step Instructions forthe Draw a Chair Activity

feelings ranging from satisfaction to frustration,

depending on their perceived ability to reproduce

the imagined image.

Observed chairs are a result of a strategy in which

the maker looks at a chair in the room and draws

what is seen. These creators often report feeling

good about their end result, but may be frus-

trated with their technical skill. “I haven’t had to

draw something in a long time,” is a typical

response.

Outlier chairs are drawings that in some way defy

the conventional solutions to the task described

above. These may be more metaphorical or truly

original in their meaning. The explanation, “All

the world’s a chair” reflects such a strategy, often

accompanied by a satisfied feeling in creating a

unique way of perceiving a chair.

6 Point out the following, as they may apply:

• Everyone can do it because all participants,

regardless of age, cultural differences, or eth-

nicity have a shared idea of “chair” and can

quickly invent a strategy to share it visually.

• Although a great variety of chairs are pro-

duced, in the end, what we share socially and

culturally is apparent in our images and how

we talk about them.

• When we find others whose chair images are

like ours we find other connections. Images are

powerfully communicative of who we are.

• Those who draw realistic or literal chairs iden-

tify concrete, literal characteristics that they

share, such as, “We all are wearing red, have

tattoos, and eat meat.” These are very concrete

thoughts.

• Important beliefs are expressed in how the

group names itself. For example, a group who

names themselves “misfits” because their chairs

1 4 3

are outside the mainstream, will likely identify

shared characteristics such as not following

the current clothing style, often spending time

alone, or enjoying activities that involve risk.

Similarly, an “h” chair group will routinely

report that the type of conversation they had

was quick and efficient. A need for rapid, effec-

tive solutions will tend to cause members of

this group to make quick interpretations of

what they see.

• We are all capable, regardless of our beliefs

about our technical skill, of both producing

and interpreting a tremendous amount of

information from visual sources. Yet, in many

cases, we don’t think of ourselves as “being

artistic.”

• There is a false belief that only a select few

deemed “talented” develop artistic ability. This

encourages passive observation of, rather than

active participation in, constructing visual com-

munication. Perhaps more damaging, we can

come to believe that we are impervious to the

meanings embedded in visual messages, espe-

cially those designed to manipulate our choices.

The advertiser’s dream is the person who thinks

they are not influenced by visual messages!

Step-by-Step Instructions for the Draw a Chair Activity

1 4 4

First, in the space provided below, draw a chair. Then answer the following questions:

1 What strategy did you use to accomplish this task?

2 How did it feel to do this task?

A p p e n d i x D

Appendix D: Student Handout for the Draw a Chair Activity

1 4 5

Group name

Chairs look like

Three shared characteristics of people in the group

One shared belief

The type of conversation your group had

How chair drawings relate to who you are and your

beliefs.

Drawing Conclusions Overh e a d

Appendix E: Drawing Conclusions Overh e a d