Introduction

My own definition, and the one on which this book is based, is that visual literacy is the active process of reading, interpreting and understanding images and visual media. This is not, of course, to say that any given image necessarily contains an essential ‘correct’ meaning which we need to decode, but rather that developing our visual literacy provides us with the skills to analyse what we see effectively and offer our own informed interpretations of it. Therefore visual literacy is not simply an ability that we possess; it is something that we ‘do’ and requires us to develop a set of quite specific skills and abilities. I have included the term ‘visual media’ in my definition purely because my background and interest in English means that my application of visual literacy concepts and knowledge is one which is biased towards English as a subject. The concept of visual literacy and the skill set it requires will, however, be differently nuanced for each subject area. This book does not deal with what it is to be visually literate in Art, for example, or in History, but what it is to be visually literate in regard to the subject of Literacy. The aim of this material is therefore to develop and use visual literacy concepts in two ways: first, as valuable educational and life skills which deserve

to be taught in their own right and, second, as an exciting way of enhancing and supporting existing Literacy teaching in primary schools. As regards the latter point, one of the key ideas here is narrative: the activities contained in this book explore the ways in which images function as sophisticated storytelling methods, helping us to better understand narrative and its associated elements such as plot and character.