THE FORUM The TESOL Quarterly invites commentary on current trends or practices in the TESOL profession It also welcomes responses to rebuttals to any articles or remarks published here in The Forum or elsewhere in the Quarterly ESOL Educators and the Experience of Visual Literacy SUSAN BRITSCH Purdue University West Lafayette, Indiana, United States One approach to teacher education courses for professionals in ESOL (English for speakers of other languages) prioritizes language as the central mode of communication I argue, however, that it is visual thinking on which language learning is based (Arnheim, 1969; Barry, 1997); for this reason, visual literacy must be equally integral to, if not prioritized in, the training of ESOL teachers I make this argument, in part, with reference to the literature on visual thinking and visual literacy and, in part, through the description of an approach to teacher education that engaged education professionals in exploring the meaning of language and culture through visual media In other words, I endeavor to ask, and to suggest answers to, the following question: Does visual literacy have a role in the teaching and learning of language? & PERSPECTIVE Language does not develop as an isolated mode of communication Its relationship with visual imagery is primal Barry (1997) has pointed out that, ‘‘Because vision developed before verbal language, images are a natural part of our primal sense of being and represent the deepest recesses of ourselves’’ (p 69) In fact, the cultural linguist, Geoffrey Palmer (1996) has pointed out that ‘‘language is the play of verbal symbols that are based in imagery Our imaginations dwell on experiences obtained through all the sensory modes, and then we talk’’ (p 3) Concepts, then, derive from ‘‘perceptual images’’ whereas thought operations constitute ‘‘the handling of these images’’ (Arnheim, 1969, p 227) Sapir (1921), too, noted that ‘‘ the essence 710 TESOL QUARTERLY Vol 43, No 4, December 2009 Tesol Quarterly tesol207901.3d 31/12/09 18:23:40 The Charlesworth Group, Wakefield +44(0)1924 369598 - Rev 7.51n/W (Jan 20 2003) of language consists in the assigning of conventional, voluntarily articulated sounds, or of their equivalents, to the diverse elements of experience’’ (p 11) This means that a word such as house becomes a linguistic fact only when visual, kinesthetic, and auditory experiences ‘‘are automatically associated with the image of a house’’ (pp 11–12) Because ‘‘images are tied to the full range of human experience and expression’’ (Barry, 1997, p 69), communication becomes somewhat limited without them Visual communication forms an integral part of the environment, spanning written languages This applies not only to \ ): , #, É, 4, or %, but the cross-cultural impact of symbols such as #, also to our interpretation of any communication in which images cooccur with words Lesley Stahl, for example, has described a televised piece about Ronald Reagan that coupled negative oral commentary with stunning visual images A campaign official, unperturbed, commented to Stahl that ‘‘they [the audience] didn’t hear what you said They only saw those pictures’’ (as cited in Barry, 1997, p 78) One alternative for ESOL teachers, then, might be to employ visual images, graphic organizers, and hands-on activities as mere supports to the more central task of ‘‘understanding text structure and of supporting the development of academic writing proficiency’’ (Harper & deJong, 2004, p 158) But the visual lies at the center of language learning, not at its periphery Because it is not the task of the verbal to replicate the visual (Kress, 1997), the elimination of the visual does not lead to its direct replacement with the verbal The task for ESOL teachers, then, is to draw upon multiple ways of representing mental images Much of the learning process is indeed visual; problem-solving, for instance, is ‘‘inextricably connected with the visual mode’’ (Dondis, 1973, p 68) Conceptualization in the sciences, for example, often takes place through visual thinking Einstein’s first glimmer of what would later emerge as the theory of relativity came through his visualization of riding on a beam of light (Overbye, 2000, p 42) Stephen Hawking (1993) has characterized his own thinking as ‘‘pictorial’’ (p 35) His aim in A Brief History of Time, he has written, was ‘‘to describe these mental images in words, with the help of familiar analogies and a few diagrams’’ (Hawking, p 35) It was the art educator Gustav Britsch who noted that scientific problem solving, in fact, relies on synoptic thinking (as cited in Arnheim, 1969, p 233) All too often, however, school culture pays little attention to these realities, incorporating the visual in uninformed ways or even misusing it, and prioritizing written language instead (Ewald, 2001) As Seels has summarized it, ‘‘It is impossible to higher order thinking without using imagery’’ (Paivio, 1978, cited in Seels, 1994, p 99) Much work has discussed the importance of visual communication to the expressive lives of students Igoa (1995) as well as Hull and Nelson 89 :) THE FORUM 711 Tesol Quarterly tesol207901.3d 31/12/09 18:23:40 The Charlesworth Group, Wakefield +44(0)1924 369598 - Rev 7.51n/W (Jan 20 2003) (2005), for example, have addressed students’ visual representations (drawn and digital, respectively) as components of multimodal narratives Whereas Igoa’s use of visual narrative helped immigrant students with acculturation experiences, Hull and Nelson’s work in Oakland related visual narratives to students’ personal relationships with culture and history In these studies, young people’s uses of visual imagery with oral language resulted in products that were semiotically richer than the written word alone Similarly, in teaching photography to children around the world, Wendy Ewald (2001) found the children’s photographs to have ‘‘an unsettling energy’’ that does not conform to the neat and cheerful stereotype of ‘‘children’s art’’ as it helps children to express and explore the realities of their lives (p 14) This conclusion highlights the importance of visual literacy, not only for engagement with contemporary visual–verbal texts, but also for teacher awareness of the ‘‘multiple narratives’’ present in a classroom, including ‘‘those that have been traditionally silenced in our school system’’ (Johnny & Shariff, 2007, p 614) Kress and Van Leeuwen (2006) have noted, however, that image creation diminishes after the first two years of schooling, when written text tends to predominate despite the increased use of images in all content areas and at all levels of schooling Although the visual plays an increasing role in both print and electronic media, instruction still too often fails to address the role of images either inside or outside of school (Kress & Van Leeuwen, 2006, p 27) There has been little departure from the ‘‘old visual literacy,’’ in which visual communication was ‘‘subservient to language and in which images have come to be regarded as unstructured replicas of reality’’ (p 23) For English language development, then, the visual clearly serves as more than a mere support to the verbal Merely substituting the production of visual images for verbal expression at lower levels of language proficiency or reducing the role of the visual in the experience of students at higher levels ignore the role of the visual in both culture and cognition Ironically, however, the use of visuals may still be viewed as just one strategy in specially designed academic instruction in English (SDAIE) among others meant to aid English language learners in eventually moving ‘‘beyond graphics’’ (Reiss, 2008, p 146) The remedy involves more than the inclusion of equal amounts of circumscribed drawing and writing space on journal and worksheet pages In fact, teachers in one professional development project found that overdictating the structure of the journal or worksheet page actually limited students’ writing and drawing, not only to the space provided but also to a lower level of communication—to labeling rather than synthesis, for example, in science activities (Britsch & Shepardson, 2007) In fact, it is necessary to redescribe the notion of support altogether for ESOL 712 TESOL QUARTERLY Tesol Quarterly tesol207901.3d 31/12/09 18:23:40 The Charlesworth Group, Wakefield +44(0)1924 369598 - Rev 7.51n/W (Jan 20 2003) instruction such that the visual and the verbal can exist in classrooms reconfigured as multimodal complexes The nonverbal is central to English language development, a process that must be seen as essentially multimodal instead of essentially linguistic Because a correlation exists between increased brain activity and the explicit creation of nonlinguistic representations (Gerlic & Jausovec, 1999, cited in Coggins, Kravin, Coates & Carroll, 2007, p 71), the combination of comprehensible input, social interaction, and opportunities for verbal as well as nonverbal processing of information by English language learners, will promote ‘‘deeper understanding and retention of material’’ (Peregoy & Boyle, 2005, p 79) Additionally, the integration of multiple modes enables English language learners to create a ‘‘representing world’’ of ‘‘symbols that stand for something in the represented world’’ (Norman, 1993, p 49) The use of visual, verbal, and gestural modes—all as direct symbols—thus engages word as a multimodal mediating element that students can enlist to modify a situation ‘‘as part of the process of responding to it’’ (Cole & Scribner, 1978, p 14) Integrating multiple modes extends Vygotsky’s (1978) view of written language development as a shift ‘‘from drawings of things to drawings of words’’ (p 115) For Vygotsky, this ‘‘transition’’ required that teaching unite written and spoken language via gestures or drawings (p 116) This transition need not be conceptualized as unidirectional, however In fact, the integrative incorporation of speech with that which it can ‘‘draw’’ (p 115) suggests a kind of ‘‘multimodal communicative competence’’ (Royce, 2002, p 192) in which the visual can work in a central way toward English language development A prerequisite, however, is teacher knowledge and experience with visual literacy The next section describes a graduate course that took steps toward a visual approach to the education of ESOL teachers, initially by focusing attention away from language as a foregrounded mode of communication A COURSE IN VISUAL LITERACY EXPERIENCE Effective professional development in visual literacy begins with activities that allow educators to experience visual communication before applying it to the design and implementation of instruction (Way, 2006) For this reason, the 16-week graduate course described in this article aimed to challenge and enhance the visual literacy and communication skills of its participants, in-service ESOL teachers as well as graduate students in education Three of the course participants were native speakers of English, one a speaker of Arabic, one a speaker of Chinese, and one a native speaker of Spanish THE FORUM 713 Tesol Quarterly tesol207901.3d 31/12/09 18:23:40 The Charlesworth Group, Wakefield +44(0)1924 369598 - Rev 7.51n/W (Jan 20 2003) In terms of more traditional topics, the course compared the research addressing the effectiveness of various types of English language development (ELD) with bilingual programs, for example But the course also invited participants to draw upon concepts not often applied either to mainstream classrooms or to ESOL contexts Some participants were more comfortable with topics usually associated with languagefocused courses, whereas others drew new links to ESOL teaching and learning from the discussion of nontraditional ideas For example, the course related Donald Norman’s (1988) ideas to language learning as a process that combines information that resides ‘‘in the world’’ with learned information that resides ‘‘in the head’’ (p 54) When the amount of ‘‘in the head’’ material that must be remembered is too large, memory alone is not enough (Norman, 1988) To deal with this problem, language learning activities that rely primarily on the learner’s memory for ‘‘arbitrary things’’ (p 67) should be redesigned to instead incorporate meaningful visual and kinesthetic relationships or explanations based on mental models This emphasis helps learners to discern structures that make sense (Norman, 1988) and to develop a sort of contextualized conceptual model of the language Norman’s ideas about design thus apply to the mediation of language learning For additon, Coggins et al (2007) describe the use of visual strategies that allow English language learners to deconstruct and conceptualize double-digit multiplication problems through the use of manipulatives (such as base 10 blocks) and rectangular diagrams that function as mental models bridging to the more abstract use of symbols in algorithms While student work in groups with these visual and manipulative tools engages their basic interpersonal communication skills (BICS), the teacher’s modeling via hands-on materials, discussion, and visual strategies engages their cognitive academic language proficiency (CALP), directly linked to the students’ visual representations as well as to their talk Engagement As a means of exploring communication through modes other than language (e.g., Britsch, 2009; Jewitt & Kress, 2003; Kress, Jewitt, Ogborn, & Tsatsarelis, 2001; Martinec, 2001; Norris, 2004; Plowman & Stephen, 2008; Prosser & Loxley, 2007), the course explored the notion of narrative from a multimodal point of view Learning narratives that did not foreground the verbal were considered through, for example, a video in which a child spontaneously learned a skill in his home through observation and gesture with little to no talk; this fashion of learning continued the cultural narrative as well Narrative construction then addressed the multimodal and the digital through ‘‘Lyfe-N-Rhyme’’ from the Digital Underground Storytelling for Youth (DUSTY) project (Hull 714 TESOL QUARTERLY Tesol Quarterly tesol207901.3d 31/12/09 18:23:41 The Charlesworth Group, Wakefield +44(0)1924 369598 - Rev 7.51n/W (Jan 20 2003) & Nelson, 2005) Course participants also learned to read images as narrative by noting details and by ‘‘thinking consciously about the elements that go into making a photograph’’ (Ewald, 2001, p 17) They related these observations to their own understandings of culture and to the experiences of the students with whom they worked The next step was to involve the participants in producing visual communication through a task their own English Language Learning students might carry out Thus, based on Ewald’s (2001) task for children, course participants used digital cameras to shoot photographs that formed visual narratives telling the stories of their own relationships to community, as they defined this construct Photography was selected instead of other visual media in part because of its history of use with students as a readily accessible means of expressing inner experience via the recording of outer experience, both digitally and through children’s use of the darkroom (e.g., Dragan, 2008; Ewald, 2001, 2006; Laycock, 1979; Way, 2006) For the graduate course, either disposable or digital SLR (single lens reflex) cameras presented the most available and expedient tools that could be immediately used by all course participants to produce images The choice of this photography also linked to the possible exploration by adults of activities designed for children by such photographers as Ewald In addition, my own background as a photographer allowed me to facilitate course participants’ reading of visual images and to elucidate the role of visual relationships in the composition of images After shooting their images and assembling them with PowerPoint, participants presented their visual narratives without oral description so that the class could respond to the images themselves The presenters then added verbal language to complement the visual, and noticed that the photographs, along with the process of selecting the particular subject matter to best address community, resulted in changed perceptions that writing about their conceptualizations of this subject could not (Kress, 2000) Course participants were asked to make conscious links between the images comprising each narrative, discussing the foregrounding and backgrounding in each, the details that were repeated across the images, and the audiences that the images addressed and ignored The images thus served as nonverbal mediational means, externalizing perceptions that suggested mental models (Norman, 1988) held by each participant This task raised another question: If teachers assume mental models that are not necessarily shared by students, is it the task of English language learners to juggle their own mental models and those of the school? In this connection, the class explored the notion of foregrounding certain modes (e.g., language) in curriculum design and the social contexts this creates for many students (Gonza´lez, Moll, & Amanti, 2005) This suggested a visual approach to THE FORUM 715 Tesol Quarterly tesol207901.3d 31/12/09 18:23:41 The Charlesworth Group, Wakefield +44(0)1924 369598 - Rev 7.51n/W (Jan 20 2003) the examination of teaching practice: Which modes are foregrounded in our classrooms? Which are really valued as loci of learning and which are minimized? Project Work As a way of further exploring their own uses of imagery for thinking, learning, and expression (Braden & Hortin, 1982), the participants next designed projects that pulled the visual directly into their own teaching and research vocabularies in original ways For example, a teacher of adult English language learners compiled original digital photographs of the local community into a book, using Photoshop to create images that could be linked with language familiarizing learners with the community Another course participant carried out a personal and cultural advocacy project focusing on a gap in the publishing world: the near nonexistence of children’s picture books in Arabic As a familycentered educator, this course participant’s engagement with visual literacy emerged from a personal need for her own children as language learners Another course participant wrote and performed a video scenario in which she used an Anglicized pronunciation of the target language (Spanish) to enact hilarious point-and-repeat segments based on decontextualized nouns and a quiz segment in which viewers were to repeat lip-synched phrases Through the enactment of inappropriate techniques, this DVD encouraged visual thinking about effective language teaching and learning Another student explored a connection between the iconic nature of the Chinese writing system and Chinese students’ learning of apparently noniconic languages such as English Those course participants who had not worked with nonalphabetic languages had not previously viewed English language learning in terms of iconicity These projects created communicative comfort zones that gave course participants a ‘‘sense of freedom,’’ in their words, not typically experienced in university courses This freedom involved them in portraying cultures as amalgams, in visually articulating some of the ways in which ‘‘proprietary’’ cultural elements can mix together to create ‘‘horizontal’’ cultures embodying ‘‘a multicentered reality’’ (Shavelson & Setterberg, 2007, p 12–13) The picture book project, for example, linked a genre that the participant had encountered in the United States with the oral literacy traditions of the Arab world Similarly, this participant’s visual narrative on community had commingled family photographs taken at various landmarks in the Arab world with snapshots of the children playing with American toys in the United States Another student’s narrative visually juxtaposed meaningful elements of life in China with their American counterparts: the 716 TESOL QUARTERLY Tesol Quarterly tesol207901.3d 31/12/09 18:23:41 The Charlesworth Group, Wakefield +44(0)1924 369598 - Rev 7.51n/W (Jan 20 2003) experience of doing Tai Chi outdoors in a locale where this is uncommon a tree that evoked Chinese imagery a very small shelter at a local bus stop coupled with a spoken note that bus stops in China are much larger and filled with public transportation riders In these projects, perception and communication through word and image worked to redescribe language as a range of symbols accommodating both concepts that could ‘‘only be clearly expressed through words’’ (McCloud, 2006, p 30) and those that emerged clearly through visual framing As such, the projects themselves worked as mediational means that enabled their designers to actualize ideas, unconfined by a single format or mode of delivery The Arabic picture book project addressed the visual image as central to first language maintenance and the learning of a genre central to the L1 The images in the Photoshop book were effectively linked to language patterns, but language emerged from the images, and not vice versa As a series, the photographs also conveyed a longstanding familiarity with the local area so that both word and image took viewers inside a personal history of the community Thus, each participant directly experienced the visual as much more than a support to the verbal, instead it became a central means of organizing and conveying meanings FIGURE A nostalgic tree for one of the students, from a visual narrative for the course THE FORUM 717 Tesol Quarterly tesol207901.3d 31/12/09 18:23:41 The Charlesworth Group, Wakefield +44(0)1924 369598 - Rev 7.51n/W (Jan 20 2003) FIGURE A very small American bus stop CONCLUSION Visual language is structured by relationships that, once learned, become a rich mechanism for both developing and expressing understandings (e.g., Bang, 2000; Leborg, 2006; Lohr, 2003) For this reason, ESOL teacher education needs to include the development of visual literacy so that teachers can experience the ways in which the interplay of the visual and the verbal permits language learners to ‘‘fully represent’’ their meanings (Kress, 2000, p 337) in communication that is semiotically more authentic Because ‘‘no sign or message ever exists in just one single mode’’ (Kress, 1997, p 10), the interaction of the visual with the verbal necessarily engages a more selective and informed use of both as each supports the development of the other The aim is not simply to merge visual learning with the verbal curriculum but to reify a multimodal view of identity and its role in learning The presence in classrooms of a poorly weighted balance between the verbal and the nonverbal for both learning and assessment has long been acknowledged (Halliday, 1980) In the current teach-to-the-test environment, what is needed is not a separate curriculum for English language learners that maintains this visual–verbal imbalance (Thompson, 2009) Instead, today’s ‘‘intensely visualized culture’’ (Mirzoeff, 2005, p 228) demands classroom discourses that blend semiotics, digital and nondigital image creation, multimodal communication, and visual literacy to shape the curriculum and to mediate 718 TESOL QUARTERLY Tesol Quarterly tesol207901.3d 31/12/09 18:23:46 The Charlesworth Group, Wakefield +44(0)1924 369598 - Rev 7.51n/W (Jan 20 2003) classroom language learning (Jewitt, 2008) What is needed for ESOL teacher education? N professional development that incorporates the visual thinking that is so central to the language and content learning of English language learners; N training in the use of technological tools that facilitate this kind of learning (TESOL, 2003); N a focus on sophisticated and informed instructional uses of visual literacy and visual thinking, based on a solid understanding of visual literacy as a basis for second language development The university fails if it does not involve ESOL educators in this sort of transition—transforming language curricula by challenging ‘‘models of literacy to keep up with lived practices’’ that more fully engage students’ identities as well as new media and information technologies (Low, 2005, p 115) THE AUTHOR Susan Britsch is Professor of Curriculum and Instruction at Purdue University, West Lafayette, Indiana, United States Her research focuses on visual literacy, the visual analysis of multimodal discourse, and the integration of literacy and science curricula She teaches courses in English Language Learning, early literacy development, and language study for educators REFERENCES Arnheim, R (1969) Visual thinking Berkeley: University of California Press Bang, M (2000) Picture this: How pictures work New York: Sea Star Books Barry, A M S (1997) Visual intelligence: Perception, image, and manipulation in visual communication Albany: State University of New York Press Braden, R A., & Hortin, J A (1982) Identifying the theoretical foundations of visual literacy Journal of Visual/Verbal Languaging, 2, 37–42 Britsch, S (2009) Differential discourses: The contribution of visual analysis to defining scientific literacy in the early years classroom Visual Communication, 8(2), 207–228 Britsch, S., & Shepardson, D.P (2007) Multimodal science and literacy: A CLASP approach to helping teachers meet their goals of integrating literacy and science In V Akerson (Ed.), Interdisciplinary language arts and science instruction in elementary classrooms (pp 237–262) Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum Cole, M., & Scribner, S (1978) Introduction In L S Vygotsky, Mind in society: The development of higher psychological processes (pp 1–14) Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press Coggins, D., Kravin, D., Coates, G D., & Carroll, M D (2007) English language learners in the mathematics classroom Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin Press Dondis, D A (1973) A primer of visual literacy Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press Dragan, P B (2008) Kids, cameras and the curriculum Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann THE FORUM 719 Tesol Quarterly tesol207901.3d 31/12/09 18:23:50 The Charlesworth Group, Wakefield +44(0)1924 369598 - Rev 7.51n/W (Jan 20 2003) Ewald, W (2001) I wanna take me a picture: Teaching photography and writing to children Boston: Beacon Press Ewald, W (2006) Towards a promised land London: Artantel Gerlic, I., & Jausovec, N (1999) Multimedia: Differences in cognitive processes observed with EEG Educational Technology Research and Development, 47(3), 5–14 Gonza´lez, N., Moll, L., & Amanti, C (2005) Funds of knowledge: Theorizing practices in households and classrooms Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum Halliday, M A K (1980) Three aspects of children’s language development: Learning language, learning through language, learning about language In Y M Goodman, M M Haussler, & D S Strickland (Eds.), Oral and written language development research: Impact on the schools (pp 7–19) Urbana, IL: National Council of Teachers of English Harper, C., & deJong, E (2004) Misconceptions about teaching English-language learners Journal of Adolescent and Adult Literacy, 48(2), 152–162 Hawking, S (1993) Black holes and baby universes and other essays New York: Bantam Books Hull, G A., & Nelson, M E (2005) Locating the semiotic power of multimodality Written Communication, 22(5), 224–261 Igoa, C (1995) The inner life of the immigrant child Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum Jewitt, C (2008, March) Teachers’ design of interactive whiteboard materials in the subject English secondary school classroom Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Educational Research Association, New York, NY Jewitt, C., & Kress, G (Eds.) 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Video and the representation of interaction British Educational Research Journal, 34, 541–565 Prosser, J., & Loxley, A (2007) Enhancing the contribution of visual methods to inclusive education Journal of Research in Special Educational Needs, 7(1), 55–68 Reiss, J (2008) 100 content strategies for English language learners: Teaching for academic success in grades 3–12 Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Royce, T (2002) Multimodality in the TESOL classroom: Exploring visual–verbal synergy TESOL Quarterly, 36, 191–205 Sapir, E (1921) Language New York: Harcourt, Brace & World Seels, B A (1994) Visual literacy: The definition problem In D M Moore & F M Dwyer (Eds.), Visual literacy: A spectrum of visual learning (pp 97–112) Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Educational Technology Shavelson, L., & Setterberg, F (2007) Under the dragon: California’s new culture Berkeley, CA: Heyday Books TESOL (2003) TESOL / NCATE program standards Standards for the accreditation of initial programs in P-12 ESL Teacher Education Alexandria, VA: Author Thompson, G (2009, March 15) Where education and assimilation collide The New York Times, pp 1, 16–18 Available from http://www.nytimes.com/learning/ teachers/featured_articles/20090320friday.html Vygotsky, L S (1978) Mind in society: The development of higher psychological processes Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press Way, C (2006) Focus on photography: A curriculum guide New York: International Center of Photography THE FORUM 721 Tesol Quarterly tesol207901.3d 31/12/09 18:23:50 The Charlesworth Group, Wakefield +44(0)1924 369598 - Rev 7.51n/W (Jan 20 2003) ... levels of language proficiency or reducing the role of the visual in the experience of students at higher levels ignore the role of the visual in both culture and cognition Ironically, however, the. .. of visual images and to elucidate the role of visual relationships in the composition of images After shooting their images and assembling them with PowerPoint, participants presented their visual. .. For this reason, ESOL teacher education needs to include the development of visual literacy so that teachers can experience the ways in which the interplay of the visual and the verbal permits